Theme: SOME PARABLES OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST
Text: “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.
Comment: According to some good dictionaries, a leaven is “a substance, typically yeast that is used in dough to make it rise”. Others say, “it is a pervasive influence that modifies something or transforms it for the better”. Writing about the leaven, Albert Barnes, a renowned Bible scholar offered this commentary, “leaven, or yeast, though hidden in the flour, and though deposited only in one place, works silently till all the mass is brought under its influence”.
Jesus Christ used this short story to illustrate the small beginnings, perhaps, the unnoticed existence of the kingdom of God that would start in a little way but it would gradually exert its influence round the world, as yeast does to bread. Yeast “is microscopic in size, and only little is kneaded into the dough. Yet, given time, the yeast will spread through all the dough”. Just as the leaven is unnoticed in the mixed flour, so would the Kingdom have a quiet start till it will attain unimaginable heights in the whole world.
Another angle to this parable is that as the yeast modifies and transforms anything it comes in contact with, so too the gospel message of Christ is a change agent for those who believe in him. When a person humbles himself to accept the truth, God will open his heart to understand the wholesome words contained in the Scriptures, which would lead to the reformation of his character. – John 15:3; John 17:17.