Yeast

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Yeast

August 19th, 2011 Ben

He spoke another parable to them, “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three pecks of flour until it was all leavened.”

Matthew 13:33

“It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three pecks of flour until it was all leavened.”

Luke 13:21

Yeast is an invisible, yet active agent, acting and working throughout an otherwise inert lump of dough. In various places in the Old Testament, it depicted the nature of evil within a body, either a single person or a group of people. Hence, the phrase, “A little leaven leavens the whole lump” was used to indicate much the same thing that a phrase like “one bad apple spoils the bunch” does.

Sin and false teaching work like this. It “infects” a body and spreads throughout the entire lump of dough until the entire thing is changed from it’s original condition. It was this metaphor that Jesus chose, yet which many people interpret to mean something else.

The same idea of the Kingdom is actually told in several other ways in other parables throughout the Gospels. Consider this:

He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches.”

Matthew 13:31-32

And He was saying, “The kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon the soil; and he goes to bed at night and gets up by day, and the seed sprouts and grows—how, he himself does not know. “The soil produces crops by itself; first the blade, then the head, then the mature grain in the head. “But when the crop permits, he immediately puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”

Mark 4:26-28

These passages convey this same basic truth. The introduction of the true seed of the Kingdom produces the correct fruit automatically. This is actually an awesome thing. Simply introduce the true seed, and the true Kingdom will grow forth in its entirety, with some conditions.

Don’t forget how Jesus started out this set of parables. He described four types of soil upon which the soil fell, and only on one of those soil types was there a harvest. If we are not seeing the desired harvest, perhaps we could give more attention to what soil our seed is falling upon. From the teachings of Jesus, this is the only limitation on whether fruit is produced or not, the soil.

Some might argue that leaven, or yeast, is only used as a type of sin in the Old Testament and hence, Jesus couldn’t possibly have meant it as a GOOD thing when He said the Kingdom was like it. Well, consider these quick thoughts. Jesus also said that unless you eat His Flesh and drink His Blood, you have no life in you. He didn’t seem to mind that it offended them then! Also consider the Kingdom itself. Jesus said in John 3, talking to Nicodemus, that unless one was born again, born of water and the spirit, they could not see nor enter the Kingdom. This means, in the true Kingdom, there are only born-again people. In the Kingdom, there is no mixture, no compromise, and no other entrance.

Now let us consider the parable of the two types of seeds sown, one by God, the other by the enemy (the second parable in Matthew 13). There is not a hybridization going on here. There is GOOD seed, and there is BAD seed. The bad seed is intermingled amidst the good seed, but the good is still good, and the bad is still bad. The current state of the Kingdom, until the end of the age, is to have the truly true, and the grossly false. A cursory examination may not be able to tell them apart, but they are as different as, well, wheat and tares.

Clearly, even from looking at the other parables, Jesus intended exactly what it sounded like. The Kingdom is like leaven. But how is this so? Isn’t leaven only a type of evil in the Old Testament? Isn’t that why they have the Feast of Unleavened Bread?

Not completely. There were two instances where leaven was actually required by God. The Fellowship Offering and Pentecost. If we can now understand what Jesus was casting out of people with a single word, we have a better picture of the leaven we needed to remove. In the Gospels, the things cast out were active, unseen agents that were permitted entrance into the body through sin, and which caused a corruption, a change through not only one member, but infected an entire community. However, now with the fulfillment of the Feast of Pentecost, we have something unique happen, that had never happened in the Old Covenant, a New Spirit was poured out. A new “leaven”, a new yeast.

For the first time now, a new, living, active agent was working within men. Clearly, yeast in the Old Covenant could NEVER indicate sin or evil of any kind, as it was the perfect Law. Everything about it had to be perfect, because it was before the introduction of the Grace of God through the blood of Jesus Christ. But, rather, it indicates the permission of the inhabiting of individuals with a new living, fermenting, and spreading agent. While it might not go out and leaven the entire world just by putting it into one lump, it can certainly be introduced within some place in your members, and will affect those on your right and on your left.

It really is the same image as all the others, when referring to the Kingdom. If you let in the truth, and give up all your hardness and other interests, He will take you over and make you what He wants. It truly is the leaven of the Kingdom, that seed of truth, that if you let it grow and have its full course, it will possess your soul completely with its goodness, purpose, and holiness, for the sake of Christ’s Kingdom.

If your life clear of the other leavens, the other agents and their teaching, and keep yourself from being one of the non-productive soil types, it is He that works in you both to will and to do according to all His good purpose (Philippians 2:13).

New Testament verses concerning leaven: