Note: The devotion below
is drawn from last Sunday’s sermon on Luke 13:11-21.
“And again he said, Whereunto shall I liken the kingdom of God?”
(Luke 13:20).
Luke tells us that just after Jesus heals the woman who had
been bowed down with a “spirit of infirmity” (v. 11) for eighteen years, he begins
to teach, using parables to describe the kingdom of God (vv. 18-21).
He uses two analogies.
First in v. 19 he says that the kingdom is like a mustard seed (sinapis nigra). This seed is as small as dust in one’s
hand. But Jesus says that in spite of
its small and insignificant size it produces a great tree (or bush, which they
say could grow to 10-12 feet in height) in whose branches the fowl of the air
might come to nest. Most commentators
note that the image of birds nesting in branches is drawn from the Old Testament
(cf. Ezekiel 17:22-23; 31:6; Daniel 4:12, 21).
So, the kingdom from small and seemingly insignificant
beginnings eventually flourishes into a great instrument of blessing for all
the nations.
In v. 20 Jesus draws a second analogy, that of leaven (v.
21). Leaven is of course that element
added to bread that makes the whole to rise.
Leaven often has a negative symbolism in Christ’s teaching. He urges his disciples to avoid the leaven of
the Pharisees (Luke 12:1: “Beware ye of
the leaven of the Pharisees which is hypocrisy”). Paul can say in 1 Corinthians 5:6 that a
little leaven of self-glorifying can leaven the whole lump. Here, however, Jesus uses the figure
positively. He describes a woman who
mixes a little leaven into three measures of meal till the whole is
leavened. The point is that a very
little can have an impact out of all proportion to its size and seeming lack of
significance.
It has sometimes been pointed out that for the leaven to have
its influence it must be worked into the whole mass. It cannot do its work from
outside, but it must be mixed within.
So, believers cannot escape to the monastery or cloister or compound but
must be in the world but not of it.
Do you see how the kingdom works? It comes in small ways like a mustard seed
and like leaven, but it has an influence out of all proportion to its relative
small size and significance. This should
spur us on and encourage us not to be discouraged. Zechariah 4:10: “For who hath despised the day of small
things?”
What do we learn if we
meditate on these parables coming just after the healing of this woman? God had worked supernaturally in gloriously
liberating one woman from spiritual darkness.
What is one person in the vast sea of all humanity? One bent over woman is as small as a seed, as
insignificant to the eye as leaven. But this is how the kingdom is built. The Christian movement (the kingdom of God)
does not grow by the sword, by mass conversions of whole populaces. It comes through one broken life being mended
at a time.
Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff
Riddle
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