Luke 13 - The House,
the Tree and the Leaven
… Everything God provided for man's
enjoyment had been perverted until it became an intolerable burden. These intolerable burdens then become a
religious system, signified by the tree, which bind people and make them
vulnerable to Satan's oppression. You
know things are bad when you can no longer be a normal human being…
Luke 13
ends with a striking verse. Speaking of
"Behold, your house is left to you desolate. And truly, I say to you, you
will not see Me again until you say, blessed is He who comes in the name of the
Lord."
Notice
the words, “your house.” This is meaningful. The house should be the Lord's,
but somehow it has become "your house." What caused this change?
What occurred so He now calls it "your" house? In this Chapter, the
Lord spoke two parables that explain the nature of the change that has taken
place. In verses 18 -21, He said that the
The Parable of the Mustard Seed
Concerning
the mustard seed, it should have grown to produce a small plant. However,
something changed and instead it became a great tree with the birds lodging in
its branches. Many interpret this
parable to mean that with God’s blessing, great things can happen from small
things. Jesus did say that if we had
faith size of a mustard seed, even mountains would obey us (Mt 17:20, Lk 17:6). However, in the context of this chapter, the
development into a great tree is not positive at all. The Lord also referred to this great tree in
Matthew 13 and Mark 4. In these chapters
He gave us an important interpretation regarding the birds lodging in its
branches. He said that these birds are Satan and his angels (see Matthew
13:4,19.) The fact that these birds are
lodging in the tree indicates that this “miracle” is not a positive
development. God's intention in planting the mustard seed was not to create a
great tree, but a small bush, providing food. Somehow by becoming the great
tree, it became a lodging place for things that should not be there. The first
parable shows us that somehow what God started has been changed and has become
something else.
The Parable of the Hidden Leaven
The
second parable concerning the hidden leaven also speaks of a negative
change. The woman hid the leaven in
three measures of meal. In the Bible, three measures of meal refers to the
fellowship offering. The meal signifies the pure Christ for God and man to
enjoy together. Leaven is also a significant item in the Bible. Leaven is
negative, and is used as a picture of pride, politics, malice, sin, hypocrisy
and false teaching. In the Old Testament, the Israelites were charged to keep
the feast of unleavened bread. This
was a picture of a fellowship with Christ without any mixture of the evil
things signified by the leaven. For the woman to hide the leaven in with the
meal means that evil was mixed in with the pure. The interesting thing about leaven is that
whatever it touches, it changes.
Eventually the Lord said that the whole meal became leaven due to this
corrupting influence. How discouraging!
According
to the Lord, this is what had happened to Jerusalem. It was the Lord's House,
dedicated to Him, but evil things crept in and had changed its nature. God had intended to plant something small and
satisfying for His garden, but now there was a great tree, with many evil
things lodging in its branches. The essence and the form were both changed, and
now He said, “Behold your
house is left to you desolate.”
The Lord
spoke these things in reaction to something that He had just witnessed in the
synagogue. According to the chapter,
Jesus was in the synagogue on the Sabbath. There was a woman there who had been
bowed down under a "spirit of infirmity" for 18 years and could not
stand up straight. The Lord healed her, and the Pharisees were angry because he
had done it on the Sabbath day when no man should work. He rebuked them for
their hypocrisy. They would have rescued
their ox if it had fallen in a ditch on the Sabbath. Here was a lady that was
bound by Satan for so many years. Wasn't it only right that He should care for
her?
This
event occurred because the concept of the Sabbath had been leavened. God gave
man the Sabbath as a reminder that God had invited man into His rest, to enjoy
what He had provided. Not working on the Sabbath was not a rule to restrict man
or burden him. It was to signify that
God wanted to provide everything for man. Yet somewhere along the line,
"leaven" had come in to pervert this teaching. This leaven caused what was intended for
man's rest and enjoyment to become a burden that no one could bear.
This
leavened teaching of the Sabbath was only one example. The nature of the leaven
is that it pollutes everything until everything has become leavened. That means
every truth, and everything God provided for man's enjoyment has been perverted. Leaven makes bread taste better. However, in spiritual things, leaven
eventually brings us under the weight of intolerable burdens. These intolerable
burdens then become a religious system, signified by the tree, which bind
people and make them vulnerable to Satan's oppression.
Leaven is
a dangerous thing. When a teaching is leavened it works to change our basic
concepts about who God is and who we are. Leaven eventually damages us as human
beings. You know things are bad when you
can no longer be a normal human being. A normal human being would have been
moved to pity that poor bound woman. But
in this environment, saturated with leaven, the religious people they resented
the Lord for healing her. When things reach this stage, the Lord moves out, and
works to call His people out with Him, like he had to do with the disciples. At
that time this was the situation in Jerusalem, and everyone was suffering like
that poor woman, in their own ways, yet thought this suffering was the will of
the Lord.
Throughout
history this pattern has repeated itself over and over. God initiates something
through His planting, the enemy through religious concepts leavens it.
Eventually an intolerable situation develops where neither God or man have any
enjoyment. God must move to call people
out, leaving the "house" to its owners. There is nothing we can do
about this leaven until the Lord comes back.
The Lord spoke these parables so that we would understand that this is
the nature of things. But Paul said in 1
Corinthians 5:7, “Purge out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, even as you are unleavened, for Christ
our Passover has also been sacrificed.”
We can be influenced by leaven, but we ourselves cannot be leavened. We
are unleavened, because of Christ’s sacrifice.
We can be a new lump. But we can
stay with the Lord and ask His mercy that we ourselves would be purged of any
religious leaven so that we could remain in contact with Him, enjoying Him.
When He moves, we will go with Him, and we will not be comfortable in anything
that doesn't match His nature.