The Leaven, Part 1

Matthew chapter 13 describes the kingdom of our Lord between the rejection of Christ and his return, the second coming.

The two parables we're discussing that are together, the mustard seed and the leaven, are two parables that help us understand the influence of the kingdom of God. Many of you have been walking maybe with your father or your mother and you come across a pond or a lake and you take a stone and throw it into the pond. And as the rock hits, the water, and the ripples begin to move out from that stone, the place of impact, you realize that the whole shore will at one time feel or feel the ripple effects of that stone.

That's sort of like the kingdom of God. It starts small and it spreads throughout the whole realm of the world. And Christ uses two parables, the parable of the mustard seed and the parable of the leaven to help us understand the influence of the gospel. It's going to be a global wide influence, and the disciples needed to understand that. We live in a time as never before in the history of the world where Christianity has affected the entire globe, more so than ever before. We might think that Christianity isn't doing much, the gospel isn't doing much, but it is.

If you lived during the Egyptian Empire or the Greek Roman Empire or the Babylonian Empire, you'd realize that today is a lot better than back then because the gospel has had its effect on music, on art, on literature, on our entire world, our legal system, everything. To some degree, Christianity has had an effect. And the ultimate effect it will have will be during the military reign of Christ when he returns and the whole world is under his rulership. In Matthew 13, verses 31 to 33, Christ gives two parables that explain to us the nature of that impact, the nature of the influence of the kingdom of God as relates to the world.

This is important because the integrity of Christ is at stake and the truthfulness of His word is at stake. So the kingdom of God is going to do exactly what Christ said it was going to do, or he's a liar. and we believe the Bible to be true. You've got to realize that the disciples were living a life of anticipation. We've been in those kinds of places. We anticipate all kinds of things, but the disciples were anticipating the coming of Christ. That's what they long for. That's what they look for.

They would really want to know about the Messiah, his return, and what was going to happen because when he returned, great things were going to take place. There'd be peace on earth. Righteousness would rule the land. He would rule with the Rwadavient. Great things would happen. In fact, the angel said to Mary in the gospel of Luke, the first chapter, these words, and behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus.

He will be great. It will be called the son of the most high. And the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David. And he will reign forever and ever over the house of Jacob. And his kingdom will have no end. Now imagine yourself being married. About 13 years of age, the angel comes to you and tells you that you're going to give birth to the Messiah. That's an amazing thing. And the son you're going to give birth to is going to sit on the throne of David. His kingdom will have no end and he will reign forever and ever.

Can you imagine what must have been going through the mind of Mary when she heard those words? And then to realize that through her would come the Messiah and the anticipation that she had. And she would be able to voice that anticipation to the disciples over time as she would talk to them about her son Jesus and what she anticipated. And when the disciples had gathered around the Lord Jesus Christ and realize that he was the Messiah, they expected great things to happen. They did not expect the Messiah to be rejected.

They didn't expect him to be blasphemed. They didn't expect people to turn their back on him. and yet there was a growing amount of rejection toward their Messiah. They had a hard time understanding that. And yet they believed that Jesus Christ was exactly who he said he was. I love what it says over in the book of Micah, because the disciples would understand this. Micah 4, verse number 1. And it would come about in the last days that the mountain of the house of the Lord will be established as a chief of the mountains.

It will be raised above the hills, and the peoples will stream to it. And many nations will come and say, come. And let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us about his ways, and that we may walk in his paths. For from Zion will go forth the law, even the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he will judge between many peoples and render decisions for mighty distant nations. Then they will hammer their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks, nation will not lift up sword against nation, and never again will they train for war.

And each of them will sit under his vine and under his fig tree, with no one to make them afraid, for the mouth of the Lord of Host has spoken. Though all the people's walk, each in the name of His God, as for us, we will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and never. That's what they expected. That's what they believe was going to happen. this was going to be an amazing kingdom there'd be no more war there'd be no more bloodshed everybody would say hey let's go to the house of the lord together let's go hear what the word of the lord is today but as the disciples would hear the lord preach and people would be against him and turn against they had a hard time grasping that what's going on here and they would begin to realize that that that people weren't beating their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks and there wasn't people peace and there wasn't an end to punishment.

It continued. And so through all that, they began to wonder. They lived in anticipation, a lot like we do. Don't you anticipate the coming of the Lord? Sure you do. Didn't you wake up this morning thinking that this could be the day? You did, didn't you? And didn't you go to bed last night thinking, jolly, man, I can't believe he didn't come today? Well, maybe you'll come tomorrow. Don't you anticipate the coming of the Lord? You do, don't you? Or is the fact that we are so... Let's see, we're so earthly-minded, we're no heavenly good.

That could very well be. We're to be people who look and long and love the Lord's appearing. That's what we anticipate. That's what we want more than anything else in the world. And so we should be anticipating the coming of our king to take us home, to be with him forever and ever. disciples had an anticipation about them, and that this Messiah, this Jesus that they wanted to follow and gave their life for, that they would forsake their jobs, they would forsake their families, their friends, everything for the Messiah and follow him.

And yet, people hated him, rejected him, blasphemed his wonderful name, and they had a problem with that. And the Jewish people, they anticipated the coming of the Messiah too, but Jesus wasn't. the Messiah they wanted. They couldn't stand him. Because they had a certain expectation. You ever been there? Sure you have. You expect Jesus to do certain things for you. And you're expecting to come through. And when he doesn't, you're a little disappointed in Jesus. As if it's his fault that things didn't work out the way you thought they should work out.

As if you were in control and Jesus was following you. But remember the parable of the soil in the soils. There was that second soil where the seed fell upon the ground and it quickly sprung up but it had no root Luke's account says it lacked moisture and when the sun came out and escorts that that planet it withered it died it fell away remember that those are the people with the confused hearts those were the people who expected Jesus to do certain things for them and when he didn't do for them when he didn't rescue them from the Roman government and their authoritarian life over them, when he didn't do what they thought he should do, they didn't want anything to do with them.

And those were the people where the seed fell upon that ground. It sprung up quickly. Oh, they followed him because they loved his miracles. He fed them, he healed them. He did all kinds of, they thought that was great. But outside of that, they didn't necessarily like what he said. said. And they didn't like how he said it. And so they would blaspheme his name. And one day they would yell, crucify him, crucify him. Because he didn't fulfill their expectations. The disciples had expectations. But they really sought the answer.

And so Christ would begin to explain it to them. Help them to understand that, yes, the kingdom is going to come exactly as has been prophesied throughout the Old Testament, what Micah said, what Zechariah said, what Jeremiah said, what Isaiah said, what Amos said, it's all going to happen, just exactly like they said. But before it does, there's going to be a period of time. It's called a mystery. Something that the Old Testament of prophets didn't see. So they didn't write about it. But I'm going to tell you about it today.

And so Christ in Matthew 13 would give them the kingdom parables. to talk to them about the dynamics of this mystery age, where Christ is still the king, he's still on the throne, except it's not a literal reign upon the earth. That's going to happen. Right now it's that spiritual reign in the life of those who have given their life to him. And he will rule and reign in their lives, and they will show the dominance of the kingdom of God in their lives when people observe them and see that they follow a different master, a different ruler than those of the world follow.

And that's our Lord Jesus Christ as he begins to explain to his people, his disciples in Matthew chapter 13. Paul would say it this way, the kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. That's the kingdom of God. And that's why when Christ was talking to the Pharisees, and they asked, If you're a king, then where's your kingdom? And Christ said in Luke 17, verse number 20, the kingdom of God is in your midst. You've missed it. You've missed the whole concept of my kingdom, my rulership.

What am about why I came? And they missed it completely. Disciples, they would soon learn, as Christ would explain to them in Matthew 13, about the kingdom age. They learned that the gospel would go out. The scene would be sewn. and most people would reject the gospel. One out of the four soils was the good soil. It received the gospel. It bore fruit. The other ones did not. And so they would hear this and realize that here's our master, here's our king, and he's telling us that the seed is going to be sown, the seed which is the word of God is going to be sown, and people are going to hear it, but the majority of people are going to reject it.

And then he would tell them another parable, the parable of the wheat and the tears. And that not only will they reject it, but the evil people are going to grow together with the good people. The tears and the wheat are going to grow together until the end of the age, until the harvest time. And then the angels who will be his reapers will come and separate the wheat from the tears. And so they would understand something about the kingdom of God. Not only will the majority of people reject the gospel, but the evil people will coexist with the good people.

That is, the aides will coexist with the saints and the Christians with the non-Christians. And they thought, well, wait a minute. Why that? And if that's the way it's going to be, if very few people are going to respond to the gospel, and if the evil people are going to grow together with the Christians to the end of the age, Lord, we're going to be overrun. We're going to be dominated by worldly people. And so Christ would encourage them by giving them two more parables, the one about the mustard seed and the one about the leaven.

We talked about the mustard seed last week where the kingdom of heaven was like that little mustard seed and planted in the ground, but grew to this huge, huge tree to illustrate the fact that the kingdom of God is going to be tremendously huge. Bigger than you can ever imagine, a great big kingdom, global influence. It will start small but become extremely huge. talks about the the external growth of the kingdom and then right on the heels of that he gives another parable the one we're talking about tonight the parable of the leaven very important because this deals with the internal aspect of the kingdom you see you can be real big but not have a a very good impact the issue with the parable of the leaven is that it too starts small but it permeates the entire globe it permeates the entire world and has an internal effect so much so that it makes a significant impact in that which it touches.

And that's the parable of the leaven. It's only one verse. Let me read it to you. Matthew 13, verse number 33. It reads as follows. He spoke another parable to them. The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three pecks of meals. until it was all leavened. This is a message of hope. It's a message of hope to the disciples who had just heard about the people who would reject the kingdom, who just heard about those who rejected the kingdom would stay alive until the harvest age, until the end of the kingdom.

And so they would begin to wonder, and Christ would give them a message of hope, and here he gives the parable of the leaven. Our outline is the same as it has been. Let's begin by looking at the instruction of the parable. Several things I want you to see. First of all, is the practice.

And that is the practice of making bread. Remember, parables are earthly stories with a heavenly meaning. And Christ would always use the things that were common to man. They knew about this. They knew about the bread-making process. Most of us don't know anything about it, unless, of course, you're of the female persuasion and you love to cook, okay? Most of us in the male persuasion, well, we'd rather watch the football game than we would stay in the kitchen and cook bread. I mean, wife says, hey, we need some bread.

We go down to Vaughns or go down to Ralph's and pick out the cheapest loaf of bread we can and bring it home and say, here we go, babe. Let's, let's, here's the bread. Let's make some sandwiches. But these people, they couldn't go down to the local grocery store and buy some bread. They made the bread. They made it. It was a normal practice of these people to make this bread. And Jesus would grow up watching his mother make bread as all the disciples would grow up, stand in the kitchen, watch their mom break bread.

In fact, I even watch my mom used to make bread all the time. I mean, it tasted great. It was great bread. And I used to watch her do it. And these men, of course, would watch their mothers make bread. And the person making bread would prepare a, a batch of dough, they would knead it, squeeze it together, and put in a piece of sour, fermented dough from a former loaf of bread, place it in the new loaf. And that leaven would cause the new loaf to foment and to bubble, and would permeate the whole loaf causing that bread to rise.

The disciples would understand this. Very simple illustration. Our Lord and the people knew about the making of bread. It was a common practice. The second thing I want you to see is the portion.

The text says, The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three pecks of meal, or hid in three measures of meal. I thought about that and began to ask myself the question, well, how much is that? How much is three measures of meal? Well, simply this. Three measures of meal are three seahs, and three seahs are equal to one ephal. How is that? That's not pretty good? Okay? One ephal is equal to one bushel or about 50 pounds. Okay? That's important. Because 50 pounds of dough, can you imagine how big that must be?

be. I mean, that, that's huge. And Christ is using a very significant illustration to help these men understand that that little leaven once placed in that dough is going to affect all of it, not just parts of it, but all of it. And in those days, they had to make a lot of bread. They had to defeat their families. They had to defeat their servants and to make sure there was enough to go around. And so they did a lot of bread making. Third thing on what you see is the pattern.

This was a normal pattern. Normal pattern. This size was normal. I went back and looked back in the book of Genesis, and we've been studying that, but let me refresh you of Genesis chapter 18.

You know the story. When the Lord appeared to Abraham, and there were two angels with him, they appeared to Abraham. Listen to what Abraham said to Sarah. He said this. So Abraham hurried into the tent to Sarah and said, quickly prepare three measures of fine flour kneaded and make breadcakes. Hurry up, Sarah. Get 50 pounds of dust. together. Make some bread. Sarah had to be a godly woman to put up with Abraham. Can you imagine that? Okay, dear, whatever you say, you know. But here she was. She had to put this thing together.

And if read over Judges chapter 6, 1st, number 19, Gideon made some bread. He also used three measures of meal. So this was a pattern throughout the Bible. This was a common pattern. This was probably the amount of which they would make normally so people would have an idea of what Christ was talking about. Full thing I want you to see is the power, the power. The large amount of meal that a little piece of leaven can influence indicates the enormity of the task that leaven can accomplish. The power of that one little piece of fermented sour dough of yeast placed in that 50-pound bushel.

Three pecks of measure affected the entire amount. All of it. The text says in Matthew 13 that all of it was affected, not just some of it, but all of it. And it talks about how a tiny piece of leaven is capable of extending its impact to a massive amount of dough. That is going to speak volumes to us in a moment. The power to change everything about the dough is amazing. Because it talks about the power of the kingdom, right? And now the power of the kingdom from the inside out completely changes that which it touches.

That's important to understanding the impact of the gospel. And the power of the gospel, the transformation power of the gospel, the supernatural power of the gospel, to do what nothing else can do, to totally transform an individual, a community, a tribe, a city, into something that God wants it to be. That's amazing. The next thing I want you to see is the person. Notice the parable says that a woman is making bread.

That's not necessarily real important, but women often worked outside and they made the bread and men would work in terms of in the fields. So Christ was using something that was very common to them. The next thing in what you see are the particulars of the bread. Leavened bread is far superior to unleavened bread. Unleavened bread is flat, hard, dry, unappetizing, and it tastes terrible, to say the least. Leaven bread is soft, spongy, warm, and tasty. But there are two things to notice about leaven.

One is this. A small amount can influence a massive amount of dough. And number two, it influences a dough in a positive way to make it better looking as well as better tasting.

That's important. Which leads me to the next point, the placement of the leaven. The placement of the leaven, the leaven was placed in the dough, in the bread. It wasn't on the counter. The leaven doesn't sit in the counter and say, rise. Rise, oh, bread. Get up from where you are. It doesn't work that way. You got to eat the leaven, and you've got to place it, insert it inside the dough in order for it to have its permeating influence, its permeating effect. That's very important to understanding what Christ is saying about this kingdom of God.

For God didn't stand up on some high cloud and say, okay, people, change, be better, do better, you can do it. Come on now, I know you can. It's not what he did. He came into the world. He came to us. And by coming into the world, he, like the leaven, was placed in a massive place, a massive place. And that doe represents the world, the globe. And he was placed here. And his permeating effect, his permeating influence affects and will ultimately affect the entire world. That's important to understand.

Great parable. It's one verse. I could go on and on, but we've got to stop. Let's pray. I'm