SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/14/2022 10:18 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “The Parable of the Leaven”
Bible Reading & Meditation
Reference: Matthew 13:33
Message of the verse: “33 He spoke
another parable to them, "The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a
woman took, and hid in three pecks of meal, until it was all leavened.’”
Before I begin to comment on this parable I want to
say that I have listened to MacArthur’s sermon in this parable two times and I
learned many things that I did not know before listening to it. My prayer is that I will make this section
very understandable to all who read it will learn the things I have learned. Let me just ask a question as we begin this
section and that question is “What do you think about when you hear the word
leaven in the Bible?”
We
have learned that Jesus uses ordinary things to base His parables on, and this
certainly is true of this parable. It
happened in every household that the woman was responsible for baking bread and
she would save a piece of the leavened dough from a risen batch just before it
was baked. So when the next batch of dough was mixed, she would then take the
saved piece from the previous batch and hid it in the new, in order that its
leaven, or yeast, could ferment
the new batch of dough and make it rise.
As we go on through this parable we will see that the word “ferment” is
going to be very important.
As
we look at the word’s “three pecks of meal” this was about the equivalent of a
modern bushel, and that is something that is very surprising to me, but it was
common in most households of the day, and the reason was that bread was the
major item of food. We see this much
bread being made in a couple of places in the Bible and the first is the one
from Genesis 18:6 which tells the story of when the preincarnate Christ came to
Abraham with two angels and Sarah made bread using three measures. I have heard that when the Jewish people make
this amount of bread they go back to when Sarah made that amount for God and
His two angels. Next it is seen in
Judges 6:19 where it was Gideon who prepared bread before, once again the
preincarnate Christ.
Let
us move to the second point of the parable and that is the influence is
positive. If you ever have eaten
unleavened bread you will find out it is not very tasty, as the leavened bread
certainly has a more desirable taste to it.
John MacArthur writes “To symbolize the break with their former life in
Egypt, God commanded His people to eat only unleavened bread during the Feast
of the Unleavened Bread, which began on Passover evening. They were not even allowed to have leaven of
any sort in the house during the seven days of the feast (Ex. 12:15,
18-19). But the bread they ate the rest
of the year was leavened and perfectly acceptable to the Lord. To the average person of Jesus’ day, Jew or
Gentile, there is no evidence that leaven carried any connotation of evil or
corruption.”
Now,
because of the importance of this subject I will conclude this section with a
couple of quotes, one from MacArthur, and one from a man that he quotes,
William Arnot.
MacArthur
writes “The ancient rabbis often referred to leaven in a favorable way, One of
them wrote, ‘Great is peace, in that peace is to the earth as leaven is to the
dough.’ When a Jewish girl was married,
her mother would give her a small piece of leavened dough from a batch baked
just before the wedding. From that gift
of leaven the bride would bake for her own household throughout her married
life. That gift, simple as it was, was
among the most cherished that the bride received, because it represented the love
and blessedness of the household in which she grew up and that would be carried
into the household she was about to establish.”
William
Arnot writes insightfully:
“Boldly as a sovereign may,
this teacher seizes a proverb which was current as an exponent of the adversary’s
successful stratagems and stamps the metal with the image and superscription of
the rightful King. The evil spreads like
leaven; you tremble before its stealthy advance and relentless grasp: but be of good cheer, disciples of Jesus,
greater is He that is for you than all
that are against you; the word of life which has been hidden in the world,
hidden in believing hearts, is a leaven too.
The unction of the Holy One is more subtle and penetrating and subduing
than sin and Satan. Where sin abounded,
grace shall much more abound.”
4/14/2022
11:42 AM
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