Kingdom Secrets

Kingdom Secrets #1

       I.            Intro: Secret Codes

    II.            Explain Series: Kingdom Secrets: A Study of the Parables of Jesus

 III.            Big Idea: Why did Jesus Speak in Parables?

 IV.            Read Text: Matthew 13:10-17

    V.            What is a Parable?

a.       Parabolē (parable) is a compound word made up of a form of the verb ballō (to throw, lay, or place) and the prefix para (meaning alongside of). The idea is that of placing, or laying, something alongside of something else for the purpose of comparison.[1] (Macarthur)

b.      A parable is a story from real life or a real life situation from which a moral or spriritual truth is drawn.[2]

c.       Understanding parables is important because “parables make up approximately 35 percent of his recorded sayings”[3]

d.      Biblical examples of parables:

                                                              i.      In the OT: 2 Samuel 12:1-7(read)

                                                            ii.      Jesus spoke parables

                                                          iii.      James spoke in parables- the tongue

 VI.            What were the parables about?

a.      Kingdom of Heaven

                                                              i.      This has two aspects:  His reign over all in heaven and His reign on the earth

                                                            ii.      Macarthur breaks this phrase down for us,” One title emphasizes the King (God) and the other emphasizes the sphere of His reign (heaven). Of this kingdom the Old Testament gives only limited and incomplete glimpses. Most messianic prophecies in the Old Testament point to Christ’s second coming and the establishment of His earthly millennial kingdom and His subsequent eternal kingdom. Only hints are given about His present earthly kingdom, that began with His rejection and crucifixion and will continue until He returns. This is the kingdom that exists spiritually in the hearts of His people while the King is physically absent from the earth. He is present with believers, but He is not visible or evident to the world, except as revealed through their lives and testimony.[4]

                                                          iii.      Those on this earth that serve Christ, we are the ones who facilitate the Kingdom of Heaven through our actions and our attitude.  We represent this kingdom to the world.  That is why Paul illustrates Christians as aliens to this world and citizens to heaven.

VII.            BIG IDEA: Why did Jesus teach on the Kingdom of Heaven in Parables?

a.       The answer: To reveal truth and to conceal truth!

                                                              i.      Vs. 10-13

b.      Some have access and some do not!

                                                              i.      Illustration: Bank manager- I had access to the vault to count the money and order more money if needed.  I had the combination to the vault door, to the money vault and I could unlock any safe deposit box in the bank.  I had that access because of my commitment at that bank as a branch manager.

c.       Jesus explains the access to this truth of the kingdom is based on two commitments:

                                                              i.      Rejection of Christ v.14-16

1.      Isaiah prophesied this many years before and it already came true once when Israel was captured by the Babylonians and sent into exile from Jerusalem.  He tells them that they had received the clear message to turn toward the Lord and away from their sin, but they rejected that.  So he concealed the message in secret code like the parables which could not be understood without interpretation.  They could get the truth if they sought after the truth, like the Ethiopian Eunuch who read the Scriptures and sought out an answer to its meaning. 

2.      The scriptures say those that reject Christ would have:

a.       A thick heart: the NT language says that they reject Christ because they have  a thick heart or a calloused heart.  This is a spiritual metaphor for the truth of Scripture unable to penetrate the heart because of its harness.

                                                                                                                                      i.      What hardens the heart?  In Romans, Paul shows us the progression of sin that hardens the heart:

1.      Romans 1:18-32

b.      Heavy ears: this means that the people stopped listening to the truth spoken by God.  They refused to listen to claim ignorance, or they hear it so much, it has no effect on them.  Regardless, it is a deliberate action.

                                                                                                                                      i.       Zechariah 7:8-12 (ESV)8 And the word of the Lord came to Zechariah, saying, 9 “Thus says the Lord of hosts, Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another, 10 do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart.” 11 But they refused to pay attention and turned a stubborn shoulder and stopped their ears that they might not hear. 12 They made their hearts diamond-hard lest they should hear the law and the words that the Lord of hosts had sent by his Spirit through the former prophets. Therefore great anger came from the Lord of hosts.

c.       Eyes sewn shut: the y were not willing to see the divine being in front of them.  Jesus did miracles before their eyes and they ultimately denied he was the Son of God. 

                                                            ii.      Accepting Christ: vs. 15b-16

1.      Jesus then explains that if they would have accepted and followed Him, they would understand the truths of his teachings and eventually his parables. 

2.      First of all, this acceptance of Jesus is truly accepting a life of slavery toward Christ.  We so often times water down the gospel promising people that if they pray a recited prayer that will constitute them a place in heaven.  But this week at a  pastor’s conference I went to, I was reminded a an important truth:  We were created by God, yet to slaves to sin, but when we accept Christ, we go from slave to sin to slave to God.  That is what a commitment to Christ means.  That is why in Matt. 12, Jesus rebukes the Pharisees for saying he did miracles in the power of Satan.  He says that real fruit trees will bear fruit and if we have submitted to being a slave to Christ, then our actions will prove that.  Many of you say Christ is your Lord and Savior but I do not see that fruit in your lives. 

3.      Only as Christians will be understand the mysteries of God and so I challenge you before we begin this series that if you are not a true slave of Christ, then these parables will be “an interesting but pointless story conveying no revelation of divine truth.” [5] If you are true slave to Christ, then the truth of the parables will open your eyes to the function of the Kingdom of Heaven and your spiritual understanding will grow. 

Kingdom Secrets #2- The Seeds for the Heart

1.      Introduction-

2.      The seed is our focus tonight as we embark upon the Kingdom Secrets sermon series.  We call this sermon series, the Kingdom secrets because the parables that Jesus proclaimed about the Kingdom were meant for everyone to hear, but only those who believed could understand the true meaning.  That true meaning was to teach the disciples about the Kingdom of Heaven.  This Kingdom would exist fully in Heaven but until then it existed through the lives of all believers in the world.  They made up this Kingdom while upon the earth and they were being taught the ways that this Kingdom operated. 

3.      So tonight we will look at the first parable of Jesus found in Matthew 13:1-9.  It is the parable of the Sower.  Please stand as we read.

4.      READ MATTHEW 13:1-3

5.      I want to teach you a good way to understand the parables for yourselves.  We are looking for a single truth to take away from these parables that teach us about the Kingdom of God.  But as we read parables, it is helpful for you to extract the characters of story and decipher their true meaning. Let us do that now.

a.       Positive Characters:

                                                              i.      Sower- God

                                                            ii.      Seeds- God’s Word or truth

b.      Negative Characters:

                                                              i.      Birds- Evil Ones

                                                            ii.      Sun- persecution

                                                          iii.      Thorns- worldly desires

c.       Soils of the Heart

                                                              i.      The path- prohibits growth and exposes to evil consuming

1.      Palestine, especially the highly productive Galilee region, was crisscrossed with fields, and road here refers primarily to the narrow paths that separated one field from another. Farmers used the paths to walk between the fields, and travelers walked on them as they went from one part of the country to another. It was along such a road through a grain field that Jesus and His disciples were traveling one Sabbath as they picked grain to eat (Matt. 12:1).

                                                            ii.      The rocky ground- stuns growth and does not allow nourishment or security

1.      Rocky does not refer to loose rocks, because the farmer always removed all rocks, sticks, and other such objects from his field before planting. It rather refers to underlying beds of solid rock deeper than the plow reached, mostly limestone, which did not have much soil covering them. The seeds that fell on such ground immediately … sprang up, because they had no depth of soil. When the seed began to germinate, its roots could not penetrate the rock that was just below the surface, and the little plant would instead start to spring up above ground much faster than it normally would.

a.       For a brief period these plants would look healthier and hardier than those in good soil, because more of them showed above ground and they grew faster. But when the sun had risen, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. Lack of roots prevented the plants from reaching and absorbing moisture or nourishment. After the sun had risen in the morning, the plants that looked so promising were scorched and quickly withered away.

                                                          iii.      The thorns- stun growth and overpower growth

1.      After this ground had been cultivated, it looked perfectly good, but when the grain began to sprout, so did the thorns. These tough, thistle-bearing weeds came up and choked … out the good plants by taking most of the space, moisture, nourishment, and sunlight for themselves.

                                                          iv.      The good soil- allows growth and security

1.      In Palestine during New Testament times, the average ratio of harvested grain seeds to those that were planted is said to have been less than eight to one. Even a tenfold crop would have been well above average; and the yields of which Jesus speaks were truly phenomenal

6.      So normally, we would take this parable and try to understand the hidden meaning of the Kingdom.  But the disciples, like us today, were still growing in their faith, still walking through their sanctification and so they did not quite understand.  So they went to Jesus and asked what this meant and he explained it for us. 

7.      READ MATTHEW 13:19-23

8.      So it is from this explanation that we learn the truth of this parable tonight and it is this:

a.      The seed of God’s Word is disbursed to the entire world but only those with a right heart will receive the Word and experience salvation in Jesus Christ.

9.      Through metaphoric illustration, Jesus uncovers four types of soils where the seed of God’s Word falls and that soil represents the condition of the heart who hears the Word.  Let’s look at those Soils of the heart now. 

a.       The Hard Heart- The path

                                                              i.      This is a bad condition to have.  This person’s heart is callous and hard.  Nothing from the Word of God can penetrate its hard exterior shell.  That turtle shell that surrounds this person’s heart has fallen deep into sin and the deeper that person falls into their sin, the more they cannot hear the voices or truth of God. 

                                                            ii.      Notice what happens to the seeds, when they are thrown onto the path.  The birds devour them.  Matthew wrote this in this way, the birds “snatch up” the seeds.  This word snatch up is the same word used when Jesus comes to take his Christians home to heaven.  They will be “snatched up” into the sky.  This word illustrates the immediacy of those seeds being taken by the birds.  Satan immediately tries to thwart the plans of God.  He does not hesitate, he is there trying to knock us off the path that God has laid before us.  So not only does sin put us in jeopardy of a hard heart, but Satan attacks us as well.

                                                          iii.      Read Romans 1:18

                                                          iv.      Cardiologists are always looking for ways to clear clogged arteries in the heart caused by plague buildup.  They tried using lasers to burn the plague away.  They experimented with rotating burrs to grind away the plague.  They even tried tiny rotating knives to the plague away.  Nothing worked. 

In 1993, researchers reported a new method that might actually work.  This device was like a tiny jackhammer inside the arteries busting up the plague.  One writer said “the device is inserted into the coronary arteries via a tiny wire called a catheter.  There it emits a low-frequency ultrasound energy, vibrating the jackhammer device at 19,500 times a second, about one-thousandth of an inch back and forth each time. 

                                                            v.      Even though, this is a medical condition, a spiritual condition exists like this as well.  Hardness of the heart repels the Word of God and a person with this condition will be devoured by the Evil one. 

b.      The Shallow Heart- the Rocky ground

                                                              i.      This person is the one I see most in churches today.  This is the person who has the emotional experience with God.  They walk the aisle, they pray the prayer and they attend every bible study, church fellowship, prayer meeting they can.  They are happy in their new life but then something happens. Troubles come and life tests their faith.  What do they do, they revert back to their old lifestyle and turn away from God.  Their roots of faith never God deep because there was not room to grow. So immediately they may look and act like a Christian but the trials and persecution that they are PROMISED to face, they fall away. 

                                                            ii.      Jesus used an interesting word when he said they “fall away”.  The Greek word is scandilizo where we get the English word scandal or scandalous.  The word is used in the NT times in reference to a trap closing shut.  It makes sense that these people with the shallow heart cannot receive the Word of God and thus they are caught in the trap of self deception and they fall away. 

                                                          iii.      Before the breakup of the Soviet Union, Christians were routinely persecuted for their faith by the Communist regime. We have many inspiring stories of courageous Christians behind the Iron Curtain who were willing to die for their faith during this difficult period in world history.

One such story involves a house church in a city in the former Soviet Union. The small group of believers who gathered there were afraid to carry Bibles, so they memorized large sections of the New Testament and recited Scripture to each other.

Each week they would arrive at the house at different times, to avoid arousing the suspicions of KGB informers. On one particular Sunday the church members were all safely inside the building, with the windows closed and doors locked. They began the service by softly singing a hymn and praying.

Suddenly, the door burst open and two soldiers armed with automatic weapons walked in. One shouted, “All right, everybody up against the wall. If you wish to renounce your faith in Jesus Christ, you can leave now and no harm will come to you.”

Two or three church members left, then another.“This is your last chance!” the other soldier warned. “Either turn your back on this Jesus of yours or stay and suffer the consequences!”

Another member left. Two more covered their faces in shame and slipped out into the night. No one else moved. Parents with small children trembling beside them looked down reassuringly. They fully expected to be gunned down on the spot—or, at the very least, imprisoned.

After a few moments of silence, the soldiers closed the door and looked back at the church members left standing against the wall. One of them said, “Keep your hands up—but this time in praise to our Lord Jesus Christ, brothers and sisters. We, too, are Christians. We were sent to another house church several weeks ago to arrest a group of believers. But instead, we were converted.”

The other soldier added, “We are sorry to have frightened those who left, but we have learned that unless people are willing to die for their faith, they cannot be fully trusted.”

                                                          iv.      Those with a shallow heart will not take root in the foundation of Jesus Christ and they will fall away and not experience the Kingdom of God.

c.       The Choked Heart- the Thorny ground

                                                              i.      This person is a person who cannot rid themselves of the cares of worldly pleasures enough to surrender to the slavery that Jesus Christ demands as a believer.  Notice that the seeds fell to the ground and then the thorns grew up.  The ground seemed rich in nutrients to the eye, but underneath, the thorns were growing and they outgrow the tiny plant and overcome it. 

                                                            ii.      This is a great problem in our church today.  As we go out, we spread the Word of God but it falls on ears that are tuned in to the culture and not into the Word.  The Word opposes the pleasures of the world and vice versa.  Jesus told the rich young ruler that in order for him to obtain eternal life; he must sell all his possessions.  Jesus does not desire us to be poor, but we must rid ourselves of those possessions that we have a tighter hold on than we do our own relationship with Christ.

                                                          iii.      A heart that holds tightly to the cares of this world like fame, riches, success, sex, freedom cannot understand the Word of God nor His Kingdom.

d.      The Receptive Heart- Good soil

                                                              i.      This person will receive the Word of God because their heart was open to find the truth.  I have always challenged those who look for answers in life, to truly study the claims of Christ with openness in their heart; always committing to themselves “ if my study of Christ points to truth, I will accept him.”  Those who are open will see that Christ is real, accept him and bear much fruit.  Jesus says that some will produce more fruit than others, but they will bear some sort of fruit.  And that is how we know who is truly saved and truly a Christian, because they bear fruit in their lives that prove they are a Christian. 

                                                            ii.      The first three types of people: those with a hard heart, a shallow heart and a choked heart cannot bear fruit because they did not receive the Word of God and thus were not saved.

e.       That is the truth of this parable: The seed of God’s Word is disbursed to the entire world but only those with a right heart will receive the Word and experience salvation in Jesus Christ.

f.       What kind of heart do you have?  One of these people I described tonight, may be exactly what you see in your own life?  Maybe you were thinking- I have the choked heart or the shallow heart.  Let me tell you, only one can accept the things of God- the open heart.  Maybe tonight, you need to turn from your sin and turn toward Jesus as Savior.  If you want to be saved from the sin that consumes you tonight, I will give you that chance in just a minute. 

g.      To those of us as Christians, how does this apply to us?  Why was Jesus telling his disciples this privately, if they were Christians?   Well, one was not and that became evident later, but it prepares us as we take this message of God to the world.  We know what to expect.  We know if we experience one of these 3 hearts toward the message of God, we should not lose heart.  Jesus just told us it would happen. 

Kingdom Secrets #3-

Wheat-Americans consume 36% of the total U.S. wheat crop. Another 50% is exported. Ten percent is used for livestock, and the remaining 4% is saved for seed. 60-63 million acres of wheat are harvested each year, an amount 1/3 the size of Texas.

Characters of the parable  (vs. 37-39)

·         Sower- Son of Man (Jesus)

·         Field- world

·         Seeds- Believers

·         Weeds (Darnel)- Unbelievers

·         Enemy- Devil

·         Reapers- angels

·         Harvest- end of the age

THE TRUTH:  God’s children must face evil until Christ returns

1.      Satan’s Attacks are Deceptive

a.      Enemy came v.25

                                                              i.      Satan attacks-1 Peter 5:8 (NKJV)
8 Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour

1.      Father of Evil- Satan

a.        “Satan” is the personal name of the head of the demons. This name is mentioned in Job 1:6, where “the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them” (see also Job 1:7–2:7).

b.      Satan is the originator of sin- 1 John 3:8
8 He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.

c.       Satan attempts to thwart God’s work on earth2 Corinthians 4:4 (ESV)
4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

2.      The world is dispersed with both believers and non-believers,

a.      Wheat and tares-v. 26

                                                              i.      Tares

1.      Darnel- a somewhat poisonous weed looking very much like wheat during its earliest stages. As a result of the resemblance, early separation from wheat is nearly impossible. This is further complicated by the fact that the roots of the two intertwine (Matt. 13:29).

2.      Represent the Sons of Evil- 1 John 3:10 (ESV) 10 By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.

a.       Sons of evil are not demons, but unbelievers

b.      John Macarthur,” All human beings are either spiritual children of God and sons of the kingdom through faith in His Son or they are spiritual sons of the evil one, simply by virtue of their sinful nature and unbelief”

                                                            ii.      Wheat-

1.      The Lord plants His people in the world as His witnesses, to grow and become fruitful plants of righteousness. The sons of the kingdom are faithful to the King and reflect His will and His standards before a wicked, corrupt, unbelieving world. Christians are not left in the world by accident but are placed there on divine assignment from their Lord.

3.      The world will face the judgment of Christ

a.      Christ will judge the world, not us.  –

                                                              i.      On commentator writes, “Christians are not qualified to infallibly distinguish between true and false believers. Every time the church has presumed to do that it has produced an ungodly bloodbath. When the fourth-century Roman emperor Constantine required every person to make a profession of faith in Christ on pain of death, he succeeded in killing many true believers who refused to submit to his spurious brand of Christianity..

                                                            ii.      While on earth, the Lord Himself would not lift a finger against His enemies. To Judas, who betrayed Him to His death, He offered the first sop at the Last Supper as a gesture of love and a final appeal for belief (John 13:26). For those who falsely accused Him and sent Him to the cross, He asked forgiveness (Luke 23:34). How, then, can His followers consider themselves ever justified in taking the role of judge or avenger and executioner? In the present age, believers are not God’s instruments of judgment and destruction but of truth and grace.

                                                          iii.      Possibility of uprooting wrong plant.  It was hard to distinguish from the tares and the wheat.  At first it looked identical, but over time, the wheat can easily be distinguished from the weeds.  Time in the same way is the evidence of true Christians and those who are not.  If you know someone who has fallen away from their faith and they will not return, it is possible they were not truly saved.  But we will never know for sure.  Only God knows. 

b.      The tares will be separated from the wheat

                                                              i.      All causes of sin and lawbreakers-

1.      Causes of sin-skandalon (σκάνδαλον, 4625) originally was “the name of the part of a trap to which the bait is attached, hence, the trap or snare itself,

2.      Lawbreakers- means those who continually violate the Divine law

                                                            ii.      The tares are gathered and burned

1.      2 Thessalonians 1:7-10 (ESV)7 and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels 8 in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. 9 They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, 10 when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed.

2.      God’s judgment is casting all unbelievers into eternal hell for punishment for sin

3.      What is hell like?

a.      In the New Testament there are three words which relate to the doctrine of hell. Hades is the equivalent to Sheol and is the place where unsaved people go when they die to await their resurrection and judgment at the great white throne. Hades is temporary in that it will be cast into the lake of fire. Tartaros (2 Pe 2:4) occurs only one time and describes the place where certain fallen angels are confined. Gehenna (2 Ki 23:10 and Mt 10:28) was a common refuse dump and a place of perpetual fire and loathsomeness, and the valley in Jerusalem illustrates the fire and awfulness of the lake of fire. Hell is conceived of as a place of outer darkness (Mt 8:12), eternal torment, and punishment (Rev 14:10–11).[6]

b.      Fire causes the greatest pain known to man, and the furnace of fire into which the sinners are cast represents the excruciating torment of hell, which is the destiny of every unbeliever. This fire of hell is unquenchable (Mark 9:44), eternal (Matt. 25:41), and is pictured finally as a great “lake of fire which burns with brimstone” (Rev. 19:20). The punishment is so fearsome that in that place there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.Hell will not be a place, as some jokingly envision, where the ungodly will continue to do their thing while the godly do theirs in heaven. Hell will have no friendships, no fellowship, no camaraderie, no comfort. It will not even have the debauched pleasures in which the ungodly love to revel on earth. There will be no pleasure in hell of any kind or degree-only torment, “day and night forever and ever” (Rev. 20:10)[7]

Kingdom Secrets #4-

MENTOS AND COKE:

According to the myth busters, “it's a process called "nucleation," in which the particular chemistry of the Mentos candy interacts with the chemistry of the carbonated Diet Coke, causing the carbon dioxide gas, or CO2, to suddenly come out of suspension in the liquid and make a break for freedom.”

Text: Matthew 13:31-33

Background

THE BIG IDEA: Christians are a part of the Kingdom of Heaven which started small but it is a continuously increasing and influential aspect of the world.

4 features of this growing kingdom:

THE PATH OF THE KINGDOM

·         It started small vs. 31-32a

a.       Mustard seed

                                                                                      i.      Faith like a mustard seed- Matt. 17:20

b.      Jesus was born

                                                                                      i.      Privately – Luke 2- Jesus was born in Bethlehem, “when Jesus was born there, Bethlehem was only a village[8]”

                                                                                    ii.      Lowly- Main announcement was to lonely shepherds, the downcast group in society of this time in history.

                                                                                  iii.      Quietly- Jesus explained on another occasion; “nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or, ‘There it is!’ For behold, the kingdom of God is in your midst” (Luke 17:20–21).

c.       I have spending a lot of my time reading up on church planting.  It is the process where you go into an area and plant a church from scratch. Every church is a part of being planted in some fashion.  There is one of the largest churches in the world called the Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul, South Korea and its membership is close to 1,000,000 members.  On May 15, 1958, a worship service was held in the home of Choi Ja-shil. Apart from the two pastors, only Choi Ja-shil's three daughters and one elderly woman, who had come in to escape from the rain, attended the first service.  It started small, but grew in the last 50 years to almost 1 million people. 

·         It will grow to dominate all things vs. 32a

a.       Kingdom established on earth through church

                                                                                      i.      The growth of the church was humble, meek.  The Jews expected a mighty dominance but Jesus taught principles of meekness and servitude. 

b.      The Kingdom Grows rapidly

                                                                                      i.      Acts 2:40, 4:4, 5:14; 6:1,7, 9:31

c.       The Kingdom will take in

                                                                                      i.      Rev. 11:15

d.      If you watch LOST on ABC, you know that throughout every episode they flashback to the different paths of the characters on the island and the means to which they made it onto Flight 815.  But at the end of last season, they caught everyone off guard by flashing forward into to future.  All the sudden, you knew there were 6 people who escaped from the island. It changed our reason for watching.  You knew it was going to happen and so you are motivated in a new way. 

e.       The church age will one day end when Christ returns and He will establish his Kingdom here on earth.  There will be no more churches, the world will be one big church.  There will be no more church services, life will be a one big church service. 

THE PLUS OF THE KINGDOM

·         It provides refuge v. 32b

a.       Make nest- Nesting carries the idea of protection, safety, refuge, and sanctuary, which the mother bird provides for her young.[9]

THE POWER OF THE KINGDOM

·         It is influential in the world v. 33

a.       Leaven-As always, Jesus constructed the parable out of the common experiences of His hearers. In every household the woman responsible for baking would save a piece of leavened dough from a risen batch just before it was baked. When the next batch of dough was mixed, she took 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.

b.      Leaven is used of evil in Scripture-

                                                                                      i.      1 Cor. 5:6- Paul is talking of church members whose evil ways could corrupt the church

                                                                                    ii.      But Jesus said that the “kingdom was like leaven”  surely Jesus is not calling the his father’s kingdom evil.  But instead, we take the meaning from this parable and not from ever parable.  In the previous Parable of the soils, the birds eating the seeds were representative of evil forces, but these birds earlier who nest in the trees of the kingdom do not portray an evil but instead a wholesome message. 

c.       I asked myself “why did she hide the leaven?”  It is obvious that the principles of the church are contained deep within us.  If we the church are going to represent the Kingdom of God, then those teachings we learn in Scripture must not be lightly dusted on our surface but hidden deep within.  John Macarthur says “

                                                                                      i.      Christians are not to be of the world, but we are to be in the world, because that is the only way the gospel can reach and affect the world (John 17:14–16). Christ sends His people into the world just as the Father sent Him into the world (v.18). The supreme purpose of the church is to “go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation” (Mark 16:15)[10]

·         That is the purpose that Christ had for the church today, that we so influence those around us for the better.  That people around us see the joy of Christ and the love of the Father in us that they cannot help but catch that same joy and love.  We are called to be influential. 

·         So now you know that Jesus tells his KINGDOM SERCRETS to the disciples that the Kingdom of Heaven will eventually influence the whole world.  It must make you stop and think, if I know the end of the story and Jesus and His Kingdom will rule the world, then you must ask yourself, how can I get involved in this?  How will you help in this projected goal?  Will you sit ideally by and watch the Kingdom grow or will you get up and assist in the process.  It is going to happen as sure as Jesus rose from the grave, but you have to choose if you will be involved. 

·         Looking back, the disciples in Acts 2 who heard this parable from Jesus, could have given up when persecution and hard times arose for the church but they did not.  Over 2,000 years ago the church started a handful of with 2,000 to 3,000 people being saved.  It is now estimated at around 2.1 billion people.  That is amazing growth. 

·         How can you get involved?  ASK STUDENTS

a.       

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[1]MacArthur, John: Matthew. Chicago : Moody Press, 1989, S. 345

[2] Boice p230

[3]Elwell, Walter A. ; Comfort, Philip Wesley: Tyndale Bible Dictionary. Wheaton, Ill. : Tyndale House Publishers, 2001 (Tyndale Reference Library), S. 988

[4]MacArthur, John: Matthew. Chicago : Moody Press, 1989, S. 352

[5] Boice, p 230

[6]Ryrie, Charles Caldwell: A Survey of Bible Doctrine. Chicago : Moody Press, 1995, c1972

[7]MacArthur, John: Matthew. Chicago : Moody Press, 1989, S. 381

[8]Elwell, Walter A. ; Comfort, Philip Wesley: Tyndale Bible Dictionary. Wheaton, Ill. : Tyndale House Publishers, 2001 (Tyndale Reference Library), S. 165

[9]MacArthur, John: Matthew. Chicago : Moody Press, 1989, S. 372

v. verse

[10]MacArthur, John: Matthew. Chicago : Moody Press, 1989, S. 375