Yeast (leaven) = sin?

Metaphor or simile is a linguistic device usually using something simple or familiar and comparing it to something more complex or unfamiliar. The two things share characteristics and the metaphor or simile highlights those common characteristics to help understand the more complex or unfamiliar thing. Different metaphors or similes using the same familiar thing like leaven, may highlight the same characteristic about it or it may be highlighting a different characteristic.

I believe the metaphors and similes in the bible using leaven highlight the same characteristic about it.

Leaven is something used to bake with. One puts a tiny bit of leaven into flour and through a bit of kneading, it mixes rapidly into the flour and changes the flour into something that rises when baked instead of a flat bread.

Things that are used in comparisons to leaven in the bible such as the teaching of the Pharisees and the Kingdom of Heaven are those things that start off very small and unoticeable but rapidly pervade through the whole and changes it to something else. This can be bad things to beware of like the teaching of the Pharisees or it can be good things to look forward to, like the Kingdom of Heaven.

 

So, what, when and where (do y'all think) is the Kingdom of Heaven?

 

It's a movie staring Orlando Bloom, from a couple of years ago, that you can probably get at Blockbuster...

I see you are from VA, me too (originally). I grew up in Roanoke/Bedford area. Sorry about the movie joke but I could not help myself.

 

I think it relates. If you consider "the kingdom of heaven" to be in Heaven rather than on earth then I understand your point. I can also understand your point if you consider it to be the millennial kingdom.

If you consider the kingdom of heaven to be the body of believers in the present age then I don't understand an objection based on the idea of our doctrine (or conduct) being an admixture of good and bad. In that case it is only a question of the specific meaning of the particular passage.

 

"Sour" can also have a similar negative meaning. My mother would say that a smelly dish cloth had "soured".

Other than the passage in question (or a parallel passage) can you find an instance where Jesus used "leaven" in a good sense?

 

No.

But it is like a bad thing mixed with a good thing.

 

I take "like" to mean: similar in some aspect but not identical to.

 

I am sorry but I don't see your point regarding the leaven of the Pharisees. To say it is only a "changing agent" seems a bit of a stretch in that case.

I am assuming that Jesus was consistent in his symbolic use of the word in much the same way he was with (say) wheat and sheep.




I wish I had the time to discuss this more. I think it is extremely interesting.

I find myself using the "I" word too much.

God Bless,
A.F.

 

This is probably off base so keep in mind that it is my opinion only and may not make sense to anyone else.

I think leaven must be used in context for each verse.

When I think of the Kingdom of Heaven, I think of my salvation.

I asked a simple 'little' question. I asked for Jesus to come into my heart.

He came into my heart and, like a little leaven, the Holy Spirt eventually expanded my heart and my whole being and made me a new creature.

Just like leaven changes things, God changed me.

So I believe leaven can be good and it can be bad, depending on what it means in each separate verse. This is one of those words that cannot mean the same thing all the time (i.e. bad or good). Just like 'wine' has two different meanings in Scripture, so does 'leaven'.

It can also mean that we can expand to change the whole world for good, thus we have missionaries. God's Word expands once it is spoken. Bread expands once the leaven (yeast) is activated.

Lev 23:17 Ye shall bring out of your habitations two wave loaves of two tenth deals: they shall be of fine flour; they shall be baken with leaven; [they are] the firstfruits unto the LORD.

Mat 16:11 How is it that ye do not understand that I spake [it] not to you concerning bread, that ye should beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees?

 

Another nail squarely driven. Just a few more and this whole 'leaven is always bad' thing may be properly coffined and ready to be laid to rest.:laugh:

 

Hardly.

It should not be understood that leaven is always bad in food.

I think it is well demonstrated that "leaven" is alwas used figuratively in a bad sense in the NT. That is, beyond the case in question.

The context doesn't demand that leaven be taken in the good sense here. The converse may be true. The context includes the parable of the wheat and tares. In that parable we have the mixture of the "children of the kingdom" with the "children of the wicked one" in this world. The tares and the wheat seem to be parallel (though not identical!) with the leaven and the meal (wheat flour).