Our upcoming sermon is titled A Modern House of Worship. This is a phrase Melissa uses in the writing you’ll hear this Sunday.
Consider how this parable is as poignant, truthful and inspiring today as it was when Moses preached this 170 years ago. Melissa wasn’t the only one present to it. Consider others who heard it that day.
We are the recipients of the tiny seeds of their faith. We worship in the sanctuary they gifted to us. What makes this text modern—what makes this parable real and in the now—is that tiny seeds of faith then, like tiny seeds of faith today, grow tremendously.
As we celebrate All Saints Day this Sunday, we have the opportunity to cultivate good soil (verse 8). Good soil is needed for planting tiny seeds that grow great faith into the future.
Look at Melissa. Look at Moses. Great faith was grown for us. Read this text (below) with the same promise from God they heard: even if our soil isn’t what we want it to be just yet, God will grow great faith in us not just in the now, but in the future.
All Saints Day 2022, an historic church, scripture preached 170 years ago, and a modern house of worship? Join us!
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Our October 30, 2022 scripture is Matthew 13:1-13a, 31-32.
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13 That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. 2 Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore. 3 Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. 4 As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. 6 But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. 8 Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. 9 Whoever has ears, let them hear.”
10 The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?”
11 He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. 12 Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. 13 This is why I speak to them in parables.
The Parable of the Mustard Seed
31 He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field.
32 Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”