leaven – The Core of the Bible

Always speaking the truth from a renewed heart

Truthfulness among the people of God is a quality that God desires his children to represent in this world.

Core of the Bible podcast #100 – Always speaking the truth from a renewed heart

Today we will be looking at the core Bible principle of the Kingdom of God, and how the establishment of the Kingdom is dependent on the truthfulness of its population. This was represented by the simplest of commands among the Ten Commandments that God spoke from Sinai.

Exodus 20:16 – You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

As I have mentioned many times before, when God set the Hebrew people apart as a people for himself, he provided them a basic set of community rules, the Ten Commandments, to maintain order within their new society. I believe these rules were the baseline of God’s expectations for all humans that would become evident in the continual outworking of his Kingdom throughout all history for all time.

As such, this specific commandment about bearing false witness includes the restriction against telling an intentional falsehood for the purpose of causing a neighbor harm. To bear false witness against someone is to misrepresent the truth of a situation that one has personal knowledge of to the detriment of someone else. It is intentional deception for the purpose of vengeance or personal gain. Simply stated, falsehood is the simplest way to subvert any relationship or institution. Jealousy and selfish ambition lie at the root of deception. Recognizing this, and knowing the tendency of men to preserve themselves at all costs, God built in to the kingdom charter, the Ten Commandments, a specific command about the necessity of not bearing a false witness against another.

Not only did God provide the clear instruction against bearing false witness, but he also knew that this was an unfortunate reality that would have to be dealt with. So in his wisdom, God also provided a definitive way of handling offenders of this commandment once a falsehood was found out by judges who would be overseeing the civil life of the community. One of the corroborating safeguards against arriving at an incorrect conclusion in a matter of judgment was to ensure that there was always more that one witness to bear record of what had occurred.

Deuteronomy 19:15 – “One witness cannot establish any iniquity or sin against a person, whatever that person has done. A fact must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.

This helped to overcome the potential for a single person to willfully or maliciously bring down someone else through false testimony. Unless there was some sort of collusion between all parties, the fact that there would have to have been multiple witnesses agreeing to the same course of events was in fact a type of safeguard for the rights of the accused, a practice still in place in our civil courts to this day.

This process is outlined further in the book of Deuteronomy.

Deuteronomy 19:16-21 – “If a malicious witness comes forward and accuses someone of a crime, then both the accuser and accused must appear before Yahweh by coming to the priests and judges in office at that time. The judges must investigate the case thoroughly. If the accuser has brought false charges against his fellow Israelite, you must impose on the accuser the sentence he intended for the other person. In this way, you will purge such evil from among you. Then the rest of the people will hear about it and be afraid to do such an evil thing. Do not show pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, and foot for foot.

This ancient principle of “eye for an eye” has been known in old Latin as the Lex Talionis, or the law of retaliation. So the punishment for the crime of falsifying a report (that is, bearing false witness) was to apply to the deceiver the same action he intended for the other, and to do so publicly. In this way, a deterrent to falsification would be established within the community.

In reviewing other ancient near Eastern cultures of the time, there are few surviving examples of legal codes of these early civilizations. However, there are a few of them which have been found in archeological digs, and they even pre-date the law of Moses. These ancient legal codes also speak about the necessity of truthful witnesses.

For example, the Code of Ur-Nammu of Mesopotamia, ca. 2100 BC:

If a man appeared as a witness, and was shown to be a perjurer, he must pay fifteen shekels of silver.
If a man appears as a witness, but withdraws his oath, he must make payment, to the extent of the value in litigation of the case.

So, at least during the reign of Ur-Nammu, there was at a minimum a type of financial accountability for those who would provide false witnesses.

There was also the famous Code of Hammurabi of Babylon, ca. 1750 BC. Interestingly, this code begins with the necessity of having a truthful witness as its very first legal determination. However, the penalty under the reign of Hammurabi in most cases was much more severe than getting fined: his penalty was death for the false witness.

If a man bring an accusation against a man, and charge him with a (capital) crime, but cannot prove it, he, the accuser, shall be put to death.
If a man, in a case (pending judgment), bear false (threatening) witness, or does not establish the testimony that he has given, if that case be a case involving life, that man shall be put to death.

There are also several other laws in the code that relate to truthful witnesses in regard to transactions involving goods and property, not all of which end in death for the perjurer. However, from these few examples, it is clear that having truthful witnesses was a standard measure of determining civil legal issues in the ancient world.

While some Bible detractors might point to these ancient examples and say, “See, Moses didn’t bring anything new to the world. Civilizations always recognized the need for some sort of legal code.” I don’t disagree. However, to my way of thinking, what distinguishes the commandments of God from these other cultures is how simple and direct they are. Yes, the bulk of the Code of Moses is very similar to some of these ancient documents, but the Ten Commandments stand apart as the firmest of foundations for any type of societal structure.

We have to remember that while Ur-Nammu or Hammurabi crafted their codes through their leaders and officials, the Ten Commandments were not just made up by Moses and some hand-picked officials but were delivered directly from God to not only Moses, but to an entire assembled multitude at Sinai.

Exodus 19:17-18 – Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Mount Sinai was completely enveloped in smoke because the LORD came down on it in fire. Its smoke went up like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain shook violently.

There was not just one witness, Moses, to God’s provision of these commands, but an entire nation of people saw the display of fire on the mountain and all of them personally heard the direct words of God himself. In fact, they became so fearful that they asked Moses to intercede for them, since they were so frightened to hear God himself speak to them.

Deuteronomy 4:33, 35-36 – “Has a people heard God’s voice speaking from the fire as you have, and lived? … “You were shown these things so that you would know that Yahweh is God; there is no other besides him. “He let you hear his voice from heaven to instruct you. He showed you his great fire on earth, and you heard his words from the fire.
Deuteronomy 5:22 – “Yahweh spoke these commands in a loud voice to your entire assembly from the fire, cloud, and total darkness on the mountain; he added nothing more. He wrote them on two stone tablets and gave them to me.

To the Bible believer, this requires faith to believe that God himself delivered the Ten Commandments to his fledgling earthly Kingdom. But we can become more firmly established by recognizing that he did so by providing not just one, two, or three witnesses, but a multitude of thousands of witnesses to corroborate the story. This is why I believe that, since the ancient times of the legal codes of past civilizations, the words that Moses recorded have been spread wider and farther than those of Ur-Nammu or Hammurabi. There has always been an underlying reliability within the biblical records themselves that demonstrate the faithfulness of God in providing a firm foundation for his eternal kingdom.

So with this simple foundational principle against bearing false witness revealed for all at Sinai, God’s Kingdom could now begin its upward trajectory to encompassing the world. But before that could become a reality, it would need to transcend every earthly nation or community to do so. This, as we shall see, was to occur during the ministry of Yeshua and his disciples.

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Now that we have looked at the ancient evidences for the necessity of truthful witnesses, how is all of this interpreted and put into practice within the context of the Kingdom during the time of Yeshua and his disciples?

In determining the truth of a matter between individuals, Yeshua taught to approach an offender on a personal basis, and seek to be reconciled. If that was ineffective, then one was to bring several others who also could corroborate the offense to confront the offender. These additional witnesses would be bearing the truth of the situation to bring additional weight of truth to the one who is unrelenting.

Matthew 18:15-16 – “If your brother sins [against you], go and rebuke him in private. If he listens to you, you have won your brother. But if he won’t listen, take one or two others with you, so that by the testimony of two or three witnesses every fact may be established.

This direction of having multiple witnesses to establish the truth of a matter is based squarely on the instruction of Moses.

Yeshua further teaches that lying is an indication of a larger issue that can affect all of one’s mode of life. In a confrontation with Jews who were conspiring to kill him, he responds to them by equating lying with that which is spawned of the devil, which is to equate lying with all that is adversarial to God in all things.

John 8:43-44 – “Why don’t you understand what I say? Because you cannot hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he speaks from his own nature, because he is a liar and the father of lies.

Yeshua taught that a liar, a falsifier who misrepresents, distorts facts, or misleads others (for that is what the word means) has an innate tendency to do so. They cannot be trusted in anything because the ability to lie and spread falsehood can be present in anything they say. He uses the representative word picture of being born of that which is adversarial to God, and it is therefore within their nature, just as the child has the representative traits of the parent. Once one is consigned to lies, misrepresentations and distortions come more easily as new situations arise, and unfortunately they then spiral into layers of falsehoods piled one on top of another.

As an example of this, in an attempt to protect his disciples from the false and hypocritical teaching of the religious leaders, Yeshua used an analogy of bread dough and the effects of yeast or leavening.

Matthew 16:6-7, 11-12 – Then Yeshua told them, “Watch out and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” They were discussing among themselves, “We didn’t bring any bread.” … “Why is it you don’t understand that when I told you, ‘Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees,’ it wasn’t about bread? ” Then they understood that he had not told them to beware of the leaven in bread, but of the false teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

The apostle Paul also emphasizes that same principle in teaching the Galatians about their own confusion over some doctrinal issues.

Galatians 5:7-9 – You were running well. Who prevented you from obeying the truth? This persuasion does not come from the one who calls you. A little leaven leavens the whole batch of dough.

Paul here states that falsehoods, misrepresentation, and bad character are like a leavening agent. Once they become manifest in a person’s life, they continue to spread like yeast working its way through an entire batch of dough. This appears to have been a proverb that he quoted regularly:

1 Corinthians 5:6-8 – Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little leaven leavens the whole batch of dough? Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new unleavened batch, as indeed you are. For Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us observe the feast, not with old leaven or with the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

Notice the opposite of leaven is expressed as the positive, “unleavened” principles of sincerity and truth. During this time while God’s Kingdom was moving from the natural to the spiritual, Yeshua and his disciples taught that it was even more critical that truthfulness be the bedrock within the community of believers. Rather than always having to rely on external judges to decide the truth of the matter, however, the emphasis was on the arbiter moving from the external judges’ seat to a place within the heart of every believer, as had been prophesied by Jeremiah and Ezekiel.

Jeremiah 31:33 – “Instead, this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days” – Yahweh declares. “I will put my teaching within them and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.”
Ezekiel 36:26-27 – And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart. And I will put my Spirit in you so that you will follow my decrees and be careful to obey my regulations.

This is why James could speak so harshly to the remnant about the corrupting influences that could disrupt the community of God.

James 3:13-16 – If you are wise and understand God’s ways, prove it by living an honorable life, doing good works with the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you are bitterly jealous and there is selfish ambition in your heart, don’t cover up the truth with boasting and lying. For jealousy and selfishness are not God’s kind of wisdom. Such things are earthly, unspiritual, and demonic. For wherever there is jealousy and selfish ambition, there you will find disorder and evil of every kind.

James relates that selfish boasting and lying could be used to hide the truth, and had the potential result of causing “disorder and evil of every kind.” This was the end result of the leaven working its way through the entire batch of dough.

Paul used the analogous contrast of the “old man” and the “new man” of the heart. As believers’ hearts were renewed, it was as if there was a new person who could only do what was right, and who would stand in judgment of the practices of the old man.

Ephesians 4:22-25 – …that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness. Therefore, putting away lying, “[Let] each one [of you] speak truth with his neighbor,” for we are members of one another.

The encouragement to truthful dealings within the community was to be based on this newness of righteousness and holiness of heart. Because of this community in which all were “members of one another,” that is, parts of an integral body, they were to always provide a truthful and honest example in everything, with everyone, in all of their words and actions.

So, we can see that from the initial Sinai revelation against false witness, the necessity of truthfulness among the people of God is a quality that God desires his children to represent in this world. The simplicity of this aspiration is realized in the words of the commandment, but the effectiveness of God’s desire is realized when the heart has been renewed in the likeness of its Creator to always be truthful.

Today, all who consider themselves believers in Messiah, who was the embodiment of truth, should have this virtue imbedded deeply within their hearts. Instead of deception and falsehood should come forth righteousness and truth for the good of the entire community within the Kingdom of God.

If you enjoy these articles, be sure to visit the growing archive of the Core of the Bible podcast. Each week we take a more in-depth look at one of the various topics presented in the archived blog. You can view the podcast archive on our Podcast Page, at Core of the Bible on Simplecast, or your favorite podcast streaming service.

Questions or comments? Feel free to email me at coreofthebible@gmail.com.

The kingdom growing until it fills all

Believers in Messiah are part of a chain that is thousands of years old.

Believers in Messiah are part of a chain that is thousands of years old, and one that will continue until it fills the earth.

Luke 13:18-21 – He said, therefore, “What is the kingdom of God like, and what can I compare it to? It’s like a mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds of the sky nested in its branches.
Again he said, “What can I compare the kingdom of God to? It’s like leaven that a woman took and mixed into fifty pounds of flour until all of it was leavened.”

If we want to know what the Kingdom of God looks like, we need only to review the parables of Yeshua, since this is where he laid out definitions of the Kingdom for those who were willing to hear. Now, we know that we can’t necessarily just take a surface reading of the parables, because the parables were designed to allow those who wanted to hear the teaching to understand it, and those who were not willing to listen to not understand it.

Luke 8:9-10 – Then his disciples asked him, “What does this parable mean? ” So he said, “The secrets of the kingdom of God have been given for you to know, but to the rest it is in parables, so that ‘Looking they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.'”

The parable of the mustard seed illustrates how the Kingdom would be something that starts extremely small and would grow until it was large enough to support a wildlife habitat. This would be a contrary understanding of the Kingdom to the Jewish ear of Yeshua’s day, because they had the understanding the Kingdom would come in triumphantly and God’s Messiah would rule over all kingdoms immediately, similar to many Christians’ expectation of Messiah’s return in our day.

However, we find Yeshua’s illustration perfectly described the actual working out of God’s Kingdom on the earth: it would start small (Yeshua and the twelve disciples), grow into a larger group (the first-century remnant of Israel), and then spread to become a tree large enough to support its own habitat (illustrated by all believers in Messiah up through our day).

The secondary parable of the leaven carries the same message: the kingdom would start small like the small bit of leaven, but once mixed in with the rest of the dough would end up working its way throughout the entire batch until all of the dough had been affected by the leaven.

Both of these parable explain the same dynamic: the Kingdom starts small, but comes to grow throughout the entirety of the world. While not what the Jews of the day were expecting, it was, however, prophesied in the book of Daniel to do this very thing.

When Daniel was interpreting King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of an image made of gold, silver, bronze, and clay mixed with iron, Daniel explained that God had granted Nebuchadnezzar a vision of the future, and that each of these metals represented a kingdom, ending in what was to become the Roman Empire; the iron mixed with clay.

Daniel 2:34-35 – “As you were watching, a stone broke off without a hand touching it, struck the statue on its feet of iron and fired clay, and crushed them. Then the iron, the fired clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were shattered and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors. The wind carried them away, and not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.”

Daniel described that a stone struck the statue in its feet (which ended up occurring during the Roman empire through the message and teaching of Yeshua) and it became a mountain that filled the whole earth. This growth language is very similar to Yeshua’s parables of the mustard seed and the leaven. Daniel then provides a further explanation by saying to the king:

Daniel 2:43-45 – “You saw the iron mixed with clay – the peoples will mix with one another but will not hold together, just as iron does not mix with fired clay. In the days of those kings, the God of the heavens will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, and this kingdom will not be left to another people. It will crush all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, but will itself endure forever. You saw a stone break off from the mountain without a hand touching it, and it crushed the iron, bronze, fired clay, silver, and gold. The great God has told the king what will happen in the future. The dream is certain, and its interpretation reliable.”

The kingdom that God was to set up “in the days of those kings” was indeed the Kingdom of God, ushered in by Messiah, that would be eternal and bring all other kingdoms to an end. Even to this day, the branches continue to extend and the leaven continues to cause the dough to rise. It will not stop until it “fills the earth,” as Daniel predicted.

This is the kingdom we are privileged to be a part of, and one in which we can have a part in its continued expansion. As we live out its principles, we begin to influence those around us with its righteous standards and others can be drawn to Yahweh and his Messiah through our faithfulness. Our obedience to the principles of God’s Word, his Torah, is the catalyst, the leaven, that can cause hearts to forsake the kingdoms of this world and surrender to the Lordship of Messiah.

If you enjoy these daily blog posts, be sure to visit the growing archive of the Core of the Bible podcast. Each week we take a more in-depth look at one of the various topics presented in the daily blog. You can view the podcast archive on our Podcast Page, at Core of the Bible on Simplecast, or your favorite podcast streaming service.

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Questions or comments? Feel free to email me directly at coreofthebible@gmail.com.

The transforming nature of the kingdom

The heart of a nation can only be transformed from within.

He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and mixed into fifty pounds of flour until all of it was leavened.”
Matthew 13:33

This is one of the briefest parables of Yeshua, and yet it is rich with meaning and purpose.

In his parables about the Kingdom of God, Yeshua always likens an aspect of the kingdom that he is teaching about with some earthly counterpart; “The kingdom of heaven is like…” The simplicity of this method of teaching belies the profundity of its power. In a very direct way, these little “truth-bombs” summarize volumes of doctrine that explode into new areas of understanding and wisdom.

When studying the parables, we must also keep in mind that the parabolic style of teaching that Yeshua adopts was for a reason: so that the religious leaders would be given the message of the kingdom but they would also be confounded by it. This was a fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah.

Matthew 13:10-15 Then the disciples came up and asked him, “Why are you speaking to them in parables? ” He answered, “Because the secrets of the kingdom of heaven have been given for you to know, but it has not been given to them. “For whoever has, more will be given to him, and he will have more than enough; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. “That is why I speak to them in parables, because looking they do not see, and hearing they do not listen or understand. “Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled in them, which says: You will listen and listen, but never understand; you will look and look, but never perceive. “For this people’s heart has grown callous; their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes; otherwise they might see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn back — and I would heal them.

This is why we have to keep in mind that the parables always revolve around the centrality of Israel, both as a nation and a religious standard.

Viewed from this perspective, the simple message of the woman and the leaven was a direct challenge to the traditions and exclusivity that the religious leaders had assigned to their religion of Judaism. Yeshua explains that “the kingdom of heaven is like leaven.” While it is small and unseen, once the leaven is mixed into the dough, eventually the entire batch of dough will become leavened. Once underway, the process cannot be stopped. The good news of the kingdom was ultimately to consume and overrun the stale traditions and practices of the corrupt and dying religiosity of the nation.

If we view the message of the kingdom as the leaven, and the batch of dough as the nation of Israel, Yeshua is intimating that the kingdom message, though small and insignificant to start, will grow among the people until it transforms the nation completely.

That the nation is equated with bread can be shown by the pattern of the tabernacle. Within the tabernacle (and later the Temple), there was always to remain twelve loaves within the presence of God; hence the “bread of the Presence.” Each small loaf was arranged in rows on the table of show bread and represented one of the tribes of Israel.

Exodus 25:30 “Put the Bread of the Presence on the table before me at all times.
2 Chronicles 2:4 Now I am building a temple for the name of the LORD my God in order to dedicate it to him for burning fragrant incense before him, for displaying the rows of the Bread of the Presence continuously, and for sacrificing burnt offerings for the morning and the evening, the Sabbaths and the New Moons, and the appointed festivals of the LORD our God…

Yeshua’s message implies that the leaven was already at work. As it was being mixed into the dough (the nation of Israel), the process of leavening was already underway. Typically, the bread of the Presence would be removed and replaced week after week with fresh bread. However, Yeshua is implying that the bread dough was not to simply be removed and replaced by fresh loaves, but was itself to be transformed into a different type of bread entirely.

This is how the kingdom would come: through individual transformation working its way through the whole batch of dough. This is also why Yeshua instructed his disciples to spread the message to every town in Israel first.

Matthew 10:5-7 Jesus sent out these twelve after giving them instructions: “Don’t take the road that leads to the Gentiles, and don’t enter any Samaritan town. “Instead, go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. “As you go, proclaim: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’

All of Israel would have an opportunity to hear and believe the message. Those who received the “leaven” of the message would be transformed. This was how the kingdom was to come: by transforming individual lives until everything in their lives became new. And as the message continued to spread, it would ultimately transform the entire nation into the bread of life for the world.

If you enjoy these daily blog posts, be sure to visit the growing archive of the Core of the Bible podcast. Each week we take a more in-depth look at one of the various topics presented in the daily blog. You can view the podcast archive here. Questions or comments? Feel free to email me directly at coreofthebible@gmail.com.