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Tuesday Morning Epistles
Welcome to "Tuesday Morning"—a great read to begin any
day of the week.
In the motion picture, "Field of Dreams," a young farmer
in Iowa heard a voice from the sky that said to him,
"Build it and they will come." He pursued the "voice"
from Iowa to Boston and points in between and
subsequently returned to his farm where he followed the
directions of the voice to plow under part of his corn
field and turn it into a baseball field, where "ghosts
of baseball past" showed up to play on the field. While
the injunction to build was not biblical, some in
ministry over the years have followed the concept of
"the field" and translated it into "the church." This is
not a new "dream." Starting from about 200 AD, churches
began building places of worship, eventually convincing
themselves that cathedral building was part of the Great
Commission. It wasn't, of course, but dreamers have
followed that dream for nearly 1800 years.
If you travel in England and Europe (as well as some
cities in America), you will be amazed at the
architecture of cathedrals in cities small and large.
People built their "houses of worship" to exceed by many
times the value of their own homes. But walk through any
of those enormous cathedrals today, and the vast
majority of "bodies" present are buried somewhere on
church grounds. Few show up on Sundays to worship God.
Somebody did indeed "build it," but people didn't show
up—at least over the past eight centuries or so. To the
majority of people today, "church" is first of all a
building, and second of all a gathering place for
believers. The "church" is very visible. But the New
Testament concept of "church" had to do with people, not
buildings. The Book of Acts tells the story of the
"invisible" church and how it expanded through the Roman
Empire.
Today's epistle is entitled "Invisible Growth of the
Kingdom." I like to think of it as "The Church without
Walls." The concept comes from one of the shortest
parables taught by Jesus—the parable of the leaven. It
is attached below. Read on whenever you are ready to
learn more about the "invisible" growth of the Kingdom
of Heaven. What you read may surprise you. Have an
outstanding week.
Tom Barnard
An Old Encourager
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Invisible Growth of the Kingdom Dr. Tom Barnard
“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 13:31-33 KJV)
In the New Testament, the
word “leaven” was used to describe either negative or
positive influences. Jesus warned the disciples about
the “leaven of the Pharisees”
(Mark
In the gospels of Matthew and Luke the parable of the leaven immediately follows the parable of the mustard seed. The point of the mustard-seed parable was small beginnings can have huge endings. The theme was “little becomes much.” The emphasis of mustard-seed growth focused on how the growth of the Kingdom results from factors outside the seeds—soil, water, and sunlight primarily. The emphasis of the parable of the leaven focuses on how the growth of the Kingdom results from factors inside a lump of dough. This type of growth is a secret kind of growth—silent, invisible, but very complete and thorough.
Jesus knew that if his followers were to fulfill his vision for them, their lives must have a disturbing influence in the world of their day. Nothing in his teachings suggests that he expected them to be passive in an evil world. They were to be change agents in their world. When Jesus challenged his men to “go into the entire world and preach the gospel,” he didn’t expect them to build cathedrals, but to be to the world what leaven was to a lump of dough—a permeating, powerful influence for God and good.
What did Jesus expect his disciples to learn (and apply to their lives) from this simple story?
· Jesus expected his followers to grow the kingdom everywhere they went. This was not a “bumper-sticker” influence, but an earth-shaking influence. He wanted the gospel to be spread wherever people lived—not just along the back roads and in rural areas of the world, but in cities and towns and villages everywhere. He was not calling for a subtle influence, but a dramatic and dynamic one. · Jesus expected his followers to disturb the status quo of society. Just as no part of the dough was to be unleavened, so no part of society was to be avoided. He expected his followers to disturb society from being what it was to something it definitely was not! Do you think Jesus would be comfortable for Christians to wink at sin or compromise with evil in any corner of society? Do you think he is comfortable with Christians being silent when moral issues are at stake, at home or around the world? · Jesus expected his followers to change their world, not coexist with it. In baking bread, before any growth (or rising) took place, the leaven needed to be folded into the dough. Just sitting next to the dough will accomplish nothing. It needs to invade the dough. Only then can change take place.
I believe there is another
truth that needs to be said. In the kitchen, even while
the change comes to the dough from inside out, no change
can happen at all until that which was outside
the dough (the leaven) is folded inside the
dough. The dough cannot change anything on its own
without the leaven! In a similar way, we have no
power to change anything in our own strength. But when
the Holy Spirit is invited into our lives, enormous
changes take place. This change not only affects us
individually, but collectively. The Church in
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