The Rule of Heaven Will Divide Between the Evil and the Good, Between the Leaven and the Unleavened Bread
Now just a word about this that Paul has to say. In 1 Corinthians, chapter five, you have it. Something happened in the church in Corinth. A man had committed fornication, and by his fornication he had brought evil into the church, and the church had not done anything about it. The church had not taken account of this evil as represented by this man. They let him stay there. They even let him come to the Lord's Table. A man whose background of life was evil. Now Paul wrote to the church about that man. And he said to the church, "You must judge this thing, and you must put that man out and forbid him the Lord's Table until he repents, because he is leaven, and he defiles the whole church by his presence, and the presence of that evil is robbing the church of its spiritual power." So Paul says, "Purge out the old leaven." Fornication and uncleanness must not come into the house of God. and, it certainly must not come to the Lord's Table. And Paul says the church is responsible for dealing with that thing. While the church allows that, the church is defiled, God's blessing cannot be upon it. It will, therefore, lose its spiritual life and its spiritual strength. Purge out the old leaven, all that sort of thing is just the working of evil in the church.
Now we must gather this up and come to a close. In the parable of the leaven, Jesus is saying that right through this present age until He comes again, this thing will be in the world. Evil will spread everywhere like leaven. But as in the other parables, Jesus said about the sower and the seed, that while three parts of it would be bad, there would be a fourth part that would be good. As in the parable of tares, there was the work of the evil one, but there were also the children of the Kingdom. So in this parable, He says, there will be leaven, there will be corruption and defilement everywhere, but the teaching of the New Testament is" Keep yourselves pure. See that your garments are not spotted. Walk in this sinful world as those who do not belong to its nature. Although there is leaven everywhere, you be the unleavened bread. But, the world may not like you, the world will not like unleavened bread. It does not please the flesh, but the bread which is pure is pleasing to God. And in the end, He will gather out all that which offends. He will gather out the offending leaven, and He will burn it with unquenchable fire; but the children of the Kingdom, the unleavened bread of God, the pure in heart and in life, He will gather into His eternal Kingdom.
The Rule of Heaven will divide between the evil and the good, between the leavened and the unleavened bread. I think you will agree that this is the right interpretation of the parable. Because it is true to the Bible, it is true to history, it is true to what we see in the world; but it carries the warning, let us offer to God that which has none
of this leaven in it.
The Holy Spirit Came Especially for the Purpose of Creating a Spiritual Order of Things.
We now come to what I feel to be one of the most important messages that we have been giving. We have been seeing that the Letter to the Galatians is a concentration of the great change which took place with the coming of the Lord Jesus. That is, that the coming of Christ into this world changed the dispensations, and changed the whole nature of things. So that Christ stands as the dividing of two whole systems. The whole system of Judaism which had existed up to the time of His coming was set aside when He came. From that time, as He said, a new order was introduced, and that is represented by His repeated phrase, "The hour cometh and now is."
Now, we are going to consider the essential nature of that great divide. How the new dispensation and the new order differs from the old. This is a matter of supreme importance for us here this morning, and for all Christians if only they would accept it, because Christianity as we know it has been largely constituted on the old dispensation. The great difference between the old and the new has not been fully recognized. So let us get to business and try to understand the difference between the old dispensation and the new dispensation.
The obvious nature of the old Jewish dispensation was that it was all in the realm of the natural senses. Firstly, it was in the realm of physical senses. Everything was a matter of seeing with the physical eye, of hearing with the physical ear, of feeling with the physical hand. It was something that could be touched, something that was tangible, something that you could put your hand upon. And then it was a matter of physical smelling. You see, the offering and the incense were a matter of physical smelling. They could smell the sweet incense. And then it was a matter of physical tasting. All the feasts of the Jews were a matter of tasting. That needs no argument; that is perfectly clear and simple. To begin with, their whole system rests upon the physical senses.
But it did not stay there, it also went into the realm of the soul. We understand the soul to be composed of three things: reason and emotion and will; that which appeals to the natural reason, and that which appeals to the natural feeling, and that which appeals to the natural will. So you see that body and soul governed everything. God gave them a tabernacle that they could see and handle; God gave them the incense that they could smell; God gave them the feasts that they could tastes; however, they were blind to the meaning of these things. In brief, that was the nature of everything in the old Jewish system.
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 12 (the meaning of the new spiritual order)
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