OK – a couple of weeks ago we said that this is
where the rubber meets the road – now we get it in gear.
There is no better bible study than when we are
actually looking for an answer or evidence for our query and we approach it
from the point of view of whatever we find – does it add up?
If you just came upon this series of Lessons, you
can backtrack here
and catch up.
So let’s dig in! -CL
This Study 3 - will cover:
· Two more parables - of the mustard seed and
leavening
· Explanation of leavening – is it a symbol of sin?
· Why was unleavened bread used on Passover, but
leavened bread for the peace offering as the first fruits of the Lord? How does
that relate to the Christian communion (Lord’s Supper)?
· Are wars and rumors of wars the sign of the end?
· What is the Christian dominion assignment and how
have we misunderstood it?
· What does Satan own?
(The following is from Gary North’s book - “Unconditional
Surrender”.)
"Another parable put
he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard
seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: which indeed is the least of
all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a
tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.” (Matthew 13:31-32). From something tiny to
something substantial, from something almost invisible to something that gives
support and shelter: here is the way that the kingdom operates in time and on
earth. It is a growth
process - continuous, not cataclysmic, which leads to its visibility among men,
and its support for men.
"Another parable
spake he unto them; the kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman
took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened" (Matthew 13:33). First of all, before anyone
jumps to conclusions, leaven
is not a symbol of sin. The Hebrews were not permitted to eat
leavened bread at the Passover, but leavened bread was used in the sacrifice of
the peace offering (Leviticus 7:13). The leavened bread was offered as the
first-fruits of the Lord, meaning the best of a family's productivity: "Ye shall bring out
of your habitations two wave loaves of two tenth deals: they shall be of fine
flour; they shall be baken with leaven; they are the first-fruits unto the
LORD" (Leviticus 23:17). Leaven is the best man has to
offer, the bread he eats with pleasure. It is man's offering to God.
The Passover avoided leaven. In the Passover, people also ate bitter herbs with
their unleavened bread (Exodus 12:8). This bread and bitter herbs symbolized
the hard times in Egypt, the world out of which God had delivered them.
Unleavened bread avoided the additional time necessary for yeast to rise
as a symbol of a major historical discontinuity, for God delivered them from
Egypt overnight. Unleavened bread symbolized God's overnight deliverance, since
it was not the best of what man had to offer God. God broke in to the daily
affairs of His people and delivered them from bitter herbs and unleavened
bread. He delivered them into a land flowing with milk and honey, a land in
which men have the wealth and time to bake and eat leavened bread. They were to
offer this bread to God in thankfulness. Leaven is a symbol of time, of continuity, and of
dominion.
But what was the meaning of unleavened bread? Why were the Hebrews required to eat it at
the Passover? Why were they required to get rid of all leavened bread in the
land for a week before the feast? (Exodus 12:15). Because the original Passover was celebrated in Egypt, it
was Egypt's leaven which had to be purged out of their midst, before
they left the land. It was a symbol of Egypt's culture, and therefore of
Egypt's religion. Leavened bread was representative of the good life in Egypt,
all of those benefits in Egypt which might tempt them to return. So God required them to
celebrate a discontinuous event, their overnight
deliverance from bondage. They were to take no leaven with them - none
of Egypt's gods, or religious practices, or culture to serve as "starter."
Once
they entered the land of Canaan as conquerors, they were required to eat
leavened bread and offer it as a peace offering to God. This was the leavened
bread of the first-fruits offering. This is why Christians are supposed to eat leavened bread when
they celebrate Communion (the Lord's Supper). It is a symbol of conquest. We
are now on the offensive, carrying the leaven of holiness back into Egypt,
back into Babylon. We are the leaven of the world, not corrupting
the unleavened dough, but "incorrupting" it - bringing the message of
salvation to Satan's troops, tearing down the idols in men's hearts. God's
holy leaven is to replace Satan's unholy leaven in the dough of
the creation. Leaven is therefore not a symbol of sin and corruption, but a
symbol of growth and dominion. It's not a question of an "unleavened" kingdom vs. a
leavened" kingdom; it's a question of which (whose) leaven. It's
not a question of "dominion vs. no dominion"; it's a question of
whose dominion. The dough (creation) is here. Whose leaven will
complete it, God's or Satan's?
The
kingdom is like leaven. Christianity is the yeast, and it has a leavening
effect on the pagan, satanic culture around it. It permeates the whole of this
culture, causing it to rise.
The bread that is produced by this leaven is the preferred bread.
In ancient times – indeed, right up until the nineteenth century –
bread was considered the staff of life, the symbol of life. It was the
source of men’s nutrition. “Give us this day our daily bread,” we are to ask God (Matthew 6:11). The
kingdom of God is the force that produces the fine quality bread men
seek. The symbolism
should be obvious: Christianity makes life a joy for man. It
provides man with the very best. It is what all men really prefer, when
they have the time and money to obtain it. Leaven takes time to produce
its product. Leaven is a symbol of historical continuity.
Men can wait for their leavened bread, for God gives them time sufficient for
the working of His spiritual leaven. They may not understand how it
works, how the spiritual effects spread through their culture and make it a
delight, any more than they understand how yeast works to produce leavened bread,
but they can see the bread rising, and they can see the progressive effects of
the leaven of the kingdom. They can look into the warming oven and see
the risen bread. If we really push the analogy, we can point to the fact
that the dough is pounded down several times before the final baking, almost as
the world pounds the kingdom; but the yeast does its work just so long as
the fires of the oven are not lit prematurely. If the full
heat of the oven is applied to the dough before the yeast has done its work,
both the yeast and the dough are burnt, and the burnt mass must be thrown
out. But given sufficient time, the yeast does its work, and the result
is the bread men prefer.
What a marvelous description of God’s
kingdom! Christians
work with the cultural material available, seeking to refine it, to permeate
it, to make it into something fine. They know that they will be
successful, just as yeast is successful in the dough, if it is given enough
time to do its work. That’s what God implicitly promises us in the
analogy of the leaven: enough time to accomplish our individual and our
collective tasks. He tells us that His kingdom will produce the
desirable bread. It will take time. It may take several
poundings, as God, through the hostility of the world, kneads the yeast filled
dough of man’s cultures. But the end result is guaranteed.
Then what about the terrible things that the
whole world suffers? What about
bloodshed, chaos, fear? Christ’s words are familiar to many Christians: “And ye shall hear of
wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must
come to pass, but the end is not yet.” (Matthew 24:6). The words may be familiar, but are they
really understood?
Jesus announced a remarkable prophecy: there shall be wars and rumors of
wars. We should expect this. We should not be
troubled. Why not? For the end is not yet. But how are
we to know for certain that the end is not at hand? Precisely because there
are wars and rumors of wars! Why can’t modern Christians
understand this? Because we hear of wars, and because they keep breaking
out, we know that the end is not yet. We need not be troubled, for
this, too, shall pass.
What shall pass? Wars and rumors of
wars! What Christ told His disciples
in no uncertain terms is this: there must come an era in which
Christians will not be besieged with wars and rumors of wars. This
period is not on the far side of the day of judgment, for the end is not
yet. When will the end come? After a period in which
men do not make war, and the rumors of wars finally cease. What else
could Christ’s words mean? This sign to His people that the end is
not imminent is the very existence of wars and rumors of wars.
For as long as they exist,
the end is not yet. After they cease, we can start thinking
seriously about the possibility of the end of this fallen world. When the
world is subdued to the glory of God, then we face the increasing
possibility of the end. When the yeast has done its cultural work, and
men are at last eating the fine leavened bread that the Christian yeast has
produced, then they can contemplate the final judgment. When all men have before their
eyes the testimony of God to the success of His law and the success of His
ambassadors in bringing peace and justice to the world, then
the rebels will have something to rebel against in that last desperate act of
Satan and his host (Revelation 20:7-9a). That rebellion will be
immediately crushed (Revelation 20:9b-10).
It is
one of Satan’s most successful lies that Christians look at their defeats on
the battlefield of faith, that they listen to rumors of wars, and see wars on
their television screens (“Live and direct by satellite: nuclear
holocaust! Full details at eleven.”), and they conclude that Jesus is
coming soon. But Jesus is not coming soon. We must accept
His words at face value.
We are still besieged by wars and rumors of
wars. God’s kneading process is still going on. The yeast has not
done its work yet. The dough is not ready for the oven. The time
has not come for cooking the cultural dough. There are still wars and rumors of wars;
therefore, the end is not yet.
Now it might be possible to argue that Christ
meant that wars and rumors of wars will continue, and that Christians will be
pounded down until the hypothetical first return of Christ; when only His
people will be raptured into the sky, after which He shall return with them
(now fully transformed, possessing their perfect bodies) in power to set up His
earthy kingdom. This could be interpreted as the era of the oven, when
God’s leavened bread will be baked, and men will love one another and eat the
bead of righteousness in peace. Wars and rumors of wars could then be
seen as pointing to the first return of Christ, and therefore our end – our
preliminary end – does draw nigh in the midst of wars and rumors of wars.
But this interpretation is
in flagrant opposition to Christ’s parables of the kingdom, which rely on the
idea of continuity in history, the unwillingness of God to separate the
wheat from the tares until the final judgment, when the tares will be burned.
According to this misinterpretation, the tares are not burned at the
hypothetical first return of Christ in power, which is to be followed by a
thousand-year direct reign, in time and on earth. The tares remain in the
field, along with a mixture of fully redeemed Christians in their new, perfect
humanity (I Corinthians 15:52), side by side new converts to Christ, in their
normal bodies – the kind Christians presently battle with – and side by side
the tares. What kind of agriculture is this? What kind of
agricultural parable can be conformed to this sort of discontinuous
agriculture? An agriculture of premature uprooting?
Modern Christians have abandoned the concept
of slow but steady growth.
Christians sometimes want
victory for the church, in time and on earth, prior to the final
judgment. They believe in it. But they are so discouraged by the
signs of the church’s present impotence and the visible power of Satan’s troops
that they conclude that they need a divine miracle, a radically discontinuous
intervention in history, in order to bring them the cultural and political
victory they long for. This was the error of the Hebrews in Jesus’
day: they expected the Messiah to set up an instantly successful Jewish kingdom
in tiny Palestine. That’s why the crowds rushed to welcome Jesus to
Jerusalem at the beginning of the Passover week, and that’s why they crucified
Him at the end, when He failed to give them what they wanted: a miracle
elevating them to total power, despite their own failure to exercise authority
on earth in terms of God’s law. They had rejected the primary tool used
in God’s dominion assignment. They had broken the terms of His peace
treaty. They had violated His Bible-revealed law continually, having
substituted the words of men. Yet they expected the Messiah to place the
keys of dominion right in their laps. Christ rejected their offer of an
earthly kingship on their lawless, treaty-breaking terms. They called for
His crucifixion.
(At this point, the author begins what might be
described as a cynical parody. It might be difficult for some of us to accept
this criticism, but let’s ask: Is it true?
Have we possibly sold God short in that we have
not accepted the mantle of responsibility and leadership He has delegated to us
as a church? Remember that He promises us victory if we step forth in faith.
Maybe we just didn’t quite understand what that responsibility was, since it
hasn’t been regularly taught from the pulpits. All of those facts might be true
from the past, but now we are confronted with an option – is this information
Biblically true, and if so, what do we do about it?
The purpose here is not to lay blame – it is to
make our choice the best way we know how and proceed on our charted course.
Please take it in that spirit.)
Isn’t this basically what the modern church
wants? Don’t
Christians expect God to promote them overnight from buck private to at least
captain? Some of them are corporals, and they expect to become field
grade officers, preferably bird colonels, in one move. Christians want to
become field marshals, just like the native corporals in Africa became field
marshals once the British and French pulled out. But what kind of field
marshals should we expect on this basis? We have seen the “field
marshals” in the African ‘democracies’. A hundred years ago we would have
called them tribal tyrants. Men who have no idea what a kingdom is
elevate themselves from “President for Life” to “Emperor for Life” in
Africa. And a few years later, or less, they are assassinated. A
short reign indeed! But Christians expect Christ to bail them out of their
present troubles, and to stand behind them, like a cosmic big brother, in the
coming kingdom where He will rule directly on earth. He will tell them
exactly what to do, and He will back them up, day by day, moment by
moment. He will give them a totally centralized political system, and they
will be obedient bureaucrats, initiating nothing, rescinding nothing, making no
mistakes, and making no responsible progress. They will serve in a real
kingdom as play-pretend rulers. They will carry out their orders.
They will not mature personally. God will subdue the earth using them as
crude tools, since Christians have failed to subdue it as maturing
stewards. Until then, Christians will remain perpetual failures.
Such a
view is a counsel of defeat. It means that God’s plan in Eden has been
successfully overthrown by Satan. God's hope to have man, specifically created to exercise
dominion, actually exercise dominion as a faithful, fully responsible
subordinate, has been destroyed. God finally calls the experiment to a halt.
"Get down there, Son," He says to Jesus, "and clean up this
mess. They can't rule, they can't build anything permanent, they're a bunch of
foul-ups, and you're going to have to get in there and fix it up. Don't give
one of them an ounce of personal responsibility. Don't let one of them make an
in dependent decision. No mistakes, from now on. I'm tired of their mistakes.
They're a wash-out. Give them their officers' epaulets, make every one of them
at least a second lieutenant, but You give every command. They couldn't tie
their own shoelaces without making a mess of it."
And Satan's response? "It's just what I
told you. I told you so about Job, and I told you so about them. They ignored
Your law. They wouldn't bear any serious responsibility. They were culturally
impotent. Your kingdom plans are a shambles. Sure, You're a Big Shot. You can
always get in there and straighten things out. Everyone knows that. But Your
plan was a failure, Your hopes for man an illusion, for You didn't plan on me.
I stopped You. I messed them up. I may not be the Almighty, but I sure am
pretty mighty. I was mighty enough to thwart the very definition You gave to
man, the very being You made him: dominion man. He's no dominion man.
He's nothing but a rotting robot. That's it, God, Your great work of art, the
capstone of creation, the being who possesses Your very image, is nothing but a
breathing robot. Personality? Nonsense. He's a robot. You're right, man can't
tie his own shoes; not even Your adopting can change that. I may be going into the
lake of fire, but I proved my point. Your second lieutenant, redeemed man, is
no more a second lieutenant than some brand-new recruit. And I'm the one who
did it to You!"
Christians
believe this all too often. Maybe they haven't thought through the implications
of their hope in a premature rapture into the clouds, and their hypothetical
return in glorified bodies to rule the earth as robot bureaucrats, but they
ought to think about it. They have denied the reality of the parables of
growth. They have denied the reality of God's dominion assignment. Millions of
them explicitly deny their obligation to use God's revealed law as a tool of
dominion, or in any other way.
Yet they hold out hopes for a promotion. They all want to become officers, but
few of them want to attend officers' candidate school. Boot camp, they believe,
is just about all they can handle. That's what the generation of the exodus
thought, too, and they died in the wilderness. They all died in boot camp,
except Joshua and Caleb.
The parables of growth point to a fulfillment of God's
plan, in time and on earth. They point to a steady expansion of the leaven
of the gospel. They point to an expansion of God's kingdom, in time and on
earth, as the leaven makes something edible of the fallen dough of
creation. The fallen dough will rise. It takes leaven. It takes
kneading. It takes time. But the fallen dough of the cursed creation will rise.
God promises this.
Christians still refuse to believe it.
When Christ announces the kingdom of God is like unto . . . ;" they reply,
"Oh, come on, it couldn't be like that. No, it's really like this . .
." Some Christians substitute a parable of uprooted wheat, which is then
replanted, though fully mature, alongside of the still-maturing tares, and
alongside of newly planted wheat. Others, who do believe in historical
continuity, have rejected this vision of a premature uprooting. But they have
no confidence in Christ's earthly leaven, either. They wind up arguing for the
triumph of Satan's earthly leaven. Satan's leaven will steadily push out the
few remaining traces of Christ's cultural leaven. Only at the final judgment
will Christ return in power, instantaneously remove Satan's leaven, and
instantly fire up the oven, leaving His earthly leaven, the church, to do its
work instantly, raising the dough in the midst of the oven. In other words,
their view of the leaven of the church violates the whole analogy, that is, the
steady rising of the dough before the oven's final baking.
Both approaches are popular. Whichever of these two substitutions a man
accepts, he has abandoned the analogy of the leaven. He has abandoned the
principle of godly growth over time. He has abandoned Christ's explicit
teaching concerning the true nature of His kingdom. He may deny the continuity
of growth (uprooted wheat). He may deny the continuity of victory (Satan's
leaven wins). Christ's dominion man must fail, in time and on earth. In the second
view, Satan's leaven triumphs, and God doesn't even bother to go through the
"breathing robot" stage, with the direct rule of Christ, in Person,
through His robots. God just scraps history, wiping out Satan. God redeems the
earth in an instant, makes His people into fully redeemed, perfect dominion
men, who now can exercise dominion over a fully redeemed creation. The Garden
of Eden was a failure as a training camp for dominion; the land of Canaan was
equally a failure as a training ground for dominion; and finally, the church of
Jesus Christ, the New Jerusalem, winds up an historical failure as a training
ground for dominion. Nothing worked, so God will scrap the whole program in an
instant and intervene graciously to give us the victory on a platter. Here is a
revised version of the parable of the mustard seed: just add instant judgment
(since time, God's law, and the ethical subordination of Christ's church to the
Master obviously failed, and since the preaching of the gospel failed, and
since Christian institutions failed), and presto: an instant mustard tree. So
much for continuity!
(After a pretty hard hitting narrative, the author
now summarizes the topic.)
What does God expect to accomplish, total
victory? Yes. Does He
expect to achieve total victory, in time and on earth? No. He doesn't offer total victory to cursed
mankind. Paul's first letter to the Corinthian church spells this out in
considerable detail. We must be changed, in the twinkling of an eye (I
Corinthians 15:52). The final discontinuous event, the ascension of the saints
(sometimes called the "rapture") and their instant transformation,
brings the final judgment and the creation of a new world, that final oven
in which the leaven-filled, risen kingdom is baked. Peter wrote: "But the day of the
Lord will come as a thief in the night; in which the heavens shall pass away
with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth
also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all
these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be
in all holy conversation and godliness, looking for and hasting unto the coming
of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and
the elements shall melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according to his
promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth
righteousness" (II Peter 3:10-13).
The whole earth is going to be burned up, producing a new loaf. The whole earth
is subject to that final transformation. This implies that the whole earth
shall have been filled with the leaven of the gospel not perfect, but ready for
the oven. Then our bodies will be transformed, glorified, for flesh and blood
cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit
incorruption" (I Corinthians 15:50). The continuity of history is finally
interrupted. This is the end of the world.
But that's the point: it's the end of
the whole world. What area of life will avoid this final conflagration?
Which part of the leavened dough will be untouched by the blinding heat of the
oven? Which part of the loaf will be left unbaked? None of it. The boundaries
of God's kingdom are the boundaries of the whole earth. It is the task of every
Christian to serve as yeast for a fallen world. It is a task that cannot
legitimately be avoided. Can we point to whole portions of the unleavened dough
and say: "Well, that's not the responsibility of Christians. The law of
God doesn't apply there. The dominion assignment doesn't cover that zone. Satan
owns that section, lock, stock, and barrel"?
What does Satan own? Why, the very gates of hell cannot prevail against the church (Matthew
16:18). Satan doesn't hold title to anything. He lost title at the cross. Or
better put, his lease was cancelled. Jesus announced in
the vision given to John: “I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive
for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death" (Rev elation 1:18). Satan is a lawless squatter. The world belongs to God, and He
has designated it as our inheritance. But we are told to subdue it, to
lease it back from God by demonstrating our commitment to the terms of His
peace treaty with us. We conquer by the preaching of the gospel. Our sword is
the sword of the gospel. It is still our assignment to subdue the earth,
and by the sword of the gospel we will conquer.