Port City Faith Church
Sunday Morning - October 4th, 2026
  • 10,000 Reasons (Bless The Lord)
  • King Of My Heart
  • See You Move
  • Mystery

      • 1 Corinthians 11:23–26ESV

  • We have been looking at the main subject of Jesus’s teaching
    The kingdom of Heaven
    First we looked at how the Kingdom of heaven is here, not as a political kingdom, but as a kingdom not of this world.
    Then we explored what it looked like to be part of the Kingdom of Heaven as Jesus described in the Sermon on the mount.
    Then last week we looked at the kinds of people that enter the kingdom of heaven,
    Not the super religious, not those who think they have everything right,
    but those people who like Children are completely reliant on God and His mercy.
    Today we are going into how Jesus describes the kingdom of heaven, in some of his parables.
    Now Jesus has a lot of parables, but i am going to pick out some of the ones that point out specific things, and over the next couple weeks we will explore these.
    And we will start with the First parable recorded:
    Mark 4:3–8 ESV
    “Listen! Behold, a sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and immediately it sprang up, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched, and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. And other seeds fell into good soil and produced grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.”
    Now this is one of the rare parables where Jesus describes what it means:
    Because on the surface it sounds like Jesus is telling us to go be farmers - and in a sense he is, but I’ll get to that.
    But rather than explain it, I’ll let Jesus explain it:
    Mark 4:14–20 ESV
    The sower sows the word. And these are the ones along the path, where the word is sown: when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them. And these are the ones sown on rocky ground: the ones who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy. And they have no root in themselves, but endure for a while; then, when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away. And others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. But those that were sown on the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.”
    Some peoples hearts are hard, and they reject the gospel immediately.
    Some People have hard lives, and they are looking for anything to hold onto, and they might look like Christians at first, but when times get hard they fall away.
    Some people just have too many other concerns, and though they might believe in Jesus, they don’t really give him the time of day, they don’t act on that belief.
    But to those who are ready to hear the gospel and accept it, and who truly have faith, they will go and share it with others.
    And it will grow!
    And that it the main point of several of his parables
    Mark 4:26–29 ESV
    And he said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”
    Here we have a typical Parable of what the kingdom of heaven is like,
    a farmer sows seed, and it grows,
    and then when its ready he reaps it.
    But the farmer is not in charge of the growth.
    So it is with the kingdom of heaven,
    We can sow the word of God, we can share the gospel, But the growth of the kingdom only comes from God
    1 Corinthians 3:6–7 ESV
    I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.
    The next couple parables build on that idea:
    Matthew 13:31–32 ESV
    He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”
    Now i could go into some of the description of the tree called the mustard tree in this passage, and how it is different to the mustard plants we have, but that is not the point.
    the point is the kingdom of God starts small, like a mustard seed, and grows, and grows rapidly into something quite large.
    But as we already saw, God is the one who brings growth.
    So we are called to plant the seed, no matter how little, and if we are faithful in that, God will bring growth, that is a promise.
    But look at the next verse:
    Matthew 13:33 ESV
    He told them another parable. “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.”
    something that most of us might be more familiar with is leaven,
    A little bit of yeast can make a dough rise dramatically
    Often recipes say “rest until doubled in size”
    But what is facisnating is that that small amount of yeast, it will continue to grow, given time, and if you were to take a pinch of that yeasted dough and put it into a fresh dough that wasn’t yeasted, and mix it in, then suddenly that dough will start to rise as well.
    that partially how sourdough starters work,
    and so this one verse parable points something out that i think is profound,
    that the Kingdom of Heaven is supposed to grow within the world, and influence everything around it.
    and If you ever take some people and plant a new church in some other part of the world, as missionaries, its like adding a bit of that already leavened dough to a new lump, and the process starts all over again.
    The kingdom of heaven is supposed to grow, in the world, but not of the world.
    and we are called to share the gospel and help it spread, and God will bring the growth.
    But that’s only with that “good soil”
    But there are others that look like they believe but are not part of the kingdom,
    The Rocky soil, or the weeds
    what happens to them?
    Well its not pretty.
    Matthew 13:24–30 ESV
    He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, “Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.” ’ ”
    This is another parable where Jesus gives an explanation.
    Matthew 13:37–43 ESV
    He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.
    So the way Jesus explains this is that we have the world, and it is essentially divided into two groups of people,
    Those who are in the Kingdom of God,
    and Those who are not,
    The seed on good soil, and the seed that fell on everything else.
    And while the Kingdom grows, so does the world, but they grow alongside together, because in removing the evil, God does not want to destroy that which is good, not until everything is ready.
    Which church, is part of the reason why God allows evil to exist, if he were to destroy all things evil, the world itself would be destroyed with it.
    So he wait until the right time to separate the evil from the Righteous
    He follows up this same idea in another parable:
    Matthew 13:47–50 ESV
    “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind. When it was full, men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into containers but threw away the bad. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
    Again at the end of the age God will separate the righteous from the evil, and the evil will be destroyed.
    But what that means for us, church, is that we will always have some people who are not totally devoted to Jesus around us, and often in our church.
    And it is NOT our job to root them out.
    Rather we are still called to live a kingdom citizens, showing love and mercy, and trust God to sort through everything in the end.
    Because here is the thing:
    it is easy for us to say “oh they aren’t good soil, so they are not listening or falling away,”
    Or we can say “we are the wheat, and they are the weeds” - and become like the pharisees that Jesus rejected.
    Look at this with me:
    Romans 3:10–12 ESV
    as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”
    Church, if we are simply trusting that we have faith and therefore are righteous, we need to remember that we were not righteous, and we cannot achieve righteousness without Jesus.
    In other words Jesus took us as weeds and turned us into wheat.
    Jesus took us bad fish, and turned us into good fish.
    Jesus took our hearts and removed the rocks and thorns and plowed through the trodden paths to make us good soil.
    If Jesus can do that for us, who are we to block him from doing that for others?
    So will we have fake Christians within the church, yes. but it is not up to us to call them out and remove them, it is up to us to love them, and see if maybe God can complete that work in them.
    And if we are faithful in showing God’s love, God will either bring growth, and change their hearts, or God will sort them out when the time is right.

      • Mark 4:3–8ESV

      • Mark 4:14–20ESV

      • Mark 4:26–29ESV

      • 1 Corinthians 3:6–7ESV

      • Matthew 13:31–32ESV

      • Matthew 13:33ESV

      • Matthew 13:24–30ESV

      • Matthew 13:37–43ESV

      • Matthew 13:47–50ESV

      • Romans 3:10–12ESV

  • Reckless Love
Port City Faith Church
portcityfaith@gmail.com
(315)-342-5333
http://portcityfaith.com
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