Reflective Bible Study

As we continue looking at Jesus’ parables, we arrive at another very short parable. In this parable, we discover another subtle theme that broadens our picture of God’s kingdom. While many of the early parables we looked at so far this year did not deal with God’s kingdom, it is as though Jesus shifted His focus part way through His ministry and increased the number of parables aimed at teaching people about God’s kingdom.

Similar to the parable we focused on in our last episode, and the next two parables we will look at, this parable is very short, but also very powerful. This parable also includes a subtle change of wording that draws our attention onto a significant truth. Let’s read what Jesus taught about God’s kingdom in this parable. Our parable and passage is found in Luke’s gospel, chapter 13, and we will read from the New Century Version of the Bible. Starting in verse 20:

²⁰ Jesus said again, “What can I compare God’s kingdom with? ²¹ It is like yeast that a woman took and hid in a large tub of flour until it made all the dough rise.”

While this parable is also included in Matthew’s gospel, Luke’s gospel simply ends here. Luke continues in the following verses by describing how Jesus continued traveling through the cities and villages in the region. Matthew’s gospel also has Jesus finish teaching with this short parable, but Matthew stays with the perspective of the disciples, who then ask Jesus for further clarification on an earlier parable before hearing more parables.

But before we dive into the other parables, we still have this parable about yeast to focus in on. While other parables focus on subjects that are less familiar to me, I happen to enjoy baking, and I understand the role of a little bit of yeast added to dough. While I have no idea how or why yeast causes dough to rise, I certainly appreciate this characteristic whenever I make pizza dough, or cinnamon buns. When yeast is present and working, what would have been flat and dense becomes large, light, and fluffy.

However, I find this parable one of the most fascinating comparisons Jesus could make with God’s kingdom. This is because so much of the Old Testament sacrifices and ceremonies were centered on eating bread that had been baked without yeast added. This bread is called Unleavened bread, and it even had a festival celebration called after it, though this festival was also known as the Passover.

I find this comparison also fascinating because Jesus warned His followers and those in the crowds at least twice to beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and religious teachers. Just a chapter before the parable we are focusing in on, Jesus told the disciples in Luke 12, verse 1 to “Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees, because they are hypocrites.” Other translations indicate that the yeast of the Pharisees was actually hypocrisy and not simply avoiding the Pharisees’ teachings because the Pharisees were hypocrites.

Overall, we discover that yeast is presented negatively more times than positively throughout the Bible, and even with this detail in His mind, Jesus compares God’s kingdom to yeast.

I believe this is because of the characteristic we see Jesus focus our attention on in this parable. In our parable about yeast, once the woman had hidden the yeast in the flour, the yeast was present but not visible. I wonder if it would even be possible to separate the yeast from the flour after this point. This detail is important, because when we have God’s Word hidden in our hearts and memorized in our minds, then it will be with us whenever we need it even though its presence might be invisible.

In this parable, we discover that God’s kingdom, hidden within a small location, has a way of growing and affecting the entire area, whether this is a church, a community, a region, or even a country. When God has people placed in certain locations, it is because He knows that they can positively impact lives in that location. From previous parables, we learned that our responsibility is to plant seeds, and we are to let God grow the seeds.

Just like I have no idea how yeast works when it causes dough to rise, we don’t know all the details about how God grows His kingdom in a region or territory. But we know that with the Holy Spirit, a tiny batch of spiritual yeast transformed the first century world.

With this positive picture of yeast, why then does God seem to speak so harshly about it?

In my mind, this is because there are spiritual forces at war in our world today. These forces want to grow wherever they can, and these forces want especially to grow in our hearts. While there are positive forces that can grow us into being mature believers and disciples of Jesus, negative forces can also grow causing us to doubt, to be cruel or mean to others, to tear people down, and to be anything and everything opposed to God’s character of love and selflessness.

It doesn’t take long to look at the world today and see people being confronted about their negative choices. However, someone’s negative choice only happened because they let a negative spiritual yeast grow in their lives.

Yeast’s nature is to grow, and when we talk about hidden growth, yeast is the perfect example. Just a tiny amount of pride, doubt, or cynicism can break down an otherwise solid spiritual wall against evil. However, just a tiny speck of selflessness, of genuine love, or of the Holy Spirit’s blessing can do the same with a solid spiritual wall against God.

In our parable about yeast, it was hidden in the large tub of flour, and while the yeast became invisible at that point, there was no denying that once the flour had been turned into dough, that there was yeast present!

When we talk about the metaphor of yeast, we are reminded that we must be intentional and diligent with whatever side of the spiritual war we are on, because just a little piece of unchecked yeast can cause us to switch sides. We should be extra intentional that we let God’s kingdom grow in our hearts like yeast, and to actively root out Satan’s yeast of doubt, hostility, and pride from our hearts!

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As always, be sure to intentionally seek God first in your life and let the yeast of His kingdom grow in your heart and your life. Diligently work to eliminate all the negative forms of yeast from your heart as you purposefully grow spiritually with God.

Also, continue praying and studying the Bible for yourself to learn and grow through the reading and study of His Word. Personal Prayer and Bible study are the best ways to build a solid spiritual foundation in our lives. While hearing about the Bible from other people is okay, it is best to study out the Bible’s truths for yourself. Eternity is too important to let it depend on someone else’s interpretation or bias.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or fall away from where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

In our last podcast episode, we stopped before finishing a longer challenge Jesus gives to the crowd of people who found Him following the feeding of the 5,000 and Jesus walking to the disciples’ boat as they were struggling to cross the lake.

In Jesus’ challenge, He begins by emphasizing what God wants most from His people. After the crowd challenges Jesus to give them a sign, which tells us something about the character of this crowd since they just experienced a sign when Jesus fed them in the wilderness, Jesus shifts to talking about the bread God gives, and how He is the Bread of Life.

Reading a few of the last verses from our previous episode to give this episode’s passage some context, let’s pick back up where we left off in our last episode. Our passage is found in John’s gospel, chapter 6, and we will read it from the New International Version of the Bible. Starting in verse 47, Jesus continued speaking, saying:

⁴⁷ “Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life. ⁴⁸ I am the bread of life. ⁴⁹ Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. ⁵⁰ But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. ⁵¹ I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

⁵² Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

⁵³ Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. ⁵⁴ Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. ⁵⁵ For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. ⁵⁶ Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. ⁵⁷ Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. ⁵⁸ This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” ⁵⁹ He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.

Let’s pause reading here. What Jesus has just described is one of the most challenging things He says in the entire Bible, and on the surface, it sounds like Jesus is telling His followers to become cannibals.

However, the only way these verses about eating Jesus’ flesh and drinking Jesus’ blood make sense is when we understand them spiritually. In a literal sense, no one has eaten Jesus’ flesh or drank His blood. The single opportunity that people would have had would have been as He was being taken off the cross and buried, but nothing like this is even hinted at in any of the gospels. While Jesus was dying, most of the disciples were hiding for their lives, and it is only after Jesus is raised from the dead that they begin to venture out. After Jesus was raised from the dead, there was no way the disciples could literally eat His flesh or drink His blood because He appeared and disappeared at will.

Instead, the spiritual truth Jesus teaches His closest followers later on during His ministry, when they are eating the Last Supper together on the night Jesus was betrayed and arrested. In this Passover meal, Jesus takes bread and symbolically equates it to His body, and He takes wine and symbolically equates it to His blood.

However, at this earlier point in Jesus’ ministry while He is teaching this crowd, we don’t have any hint at this symbolism, only a strange literal-sounding declaration about becoming cannibals. Because of this, when we continue reading in verse 60, we see the response of the crowd. John tells us:

⁶⁰ On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?”

⁶¹ Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, “Does this offend you? ⁶² Then what if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! ⁶³ The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life. ⁶⁴ Yet there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. ⁶⁵ He went on to say, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them.”

⁶⁶ From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.

⁶⁷ “You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve.

⁶⁸ Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. ⁶⁹ We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”

⁷⁰ Then Jesus replied, “Have I not chosen you, the Twelve? Yet one of you is a devil!” ⁷¹ (He meant Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, who, though one of the Twelve, was later to betray him.)

In this passage, and in its conclusion, we discover that Jesus subtly reemphasizes the spiritual nature of what He shared with these followers by saying in verse 63, “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life.”

This is the biggest clue that Jesus is speaking in a spiritual, symbolic sense, rather than literally. Remember eating Jesus’ flesh doesn’t make sense when Jesus tells us directly that the flesh counts for nothing.

So a better question for us to ask is why would Jesus press this crowd with this truth?

When I look at the broad event, I suspect that Jesus understood something that we did not. I suspect that Jesus understood that the larger the crowds were that followed Him, the greater the danger that this crowd would derail His mission into this world. This specific crowd presents an interesting challenge of its own. This crowd, prompted by emotion, had wanted to make Jesus their earthly king following His miracle of food multiplication, but this same crowd then demanded more signs from Jesus to prove He was from God.

This crowd reflects a decent portion of humanity who are ruled by their emotions, while claiming to be ruled by logic. This crowd was self-serving, only interested in Jesus for what He could do for them, and they likely would not have been satisfied for long with any miracle or sign Jesus would have provided to prove that He was from God. Less than 48 hours after an amazing miracle they were a clear part of, we see them demanding another sign. This crowd discounted every reason they were given to believe in Jesus, while claiming they wanted Jesus to give them reasons for them to believe.

Because of this crowd’s overtly self-serving attitude and focus on bread from God, I believe Jesus took this theme and pushed it to its extreme. Jesus did not lie, but Jesus shared a spiritual truth that was deeper and more direct than any of these people were willing to accept. Jesus shared how He was God’s manna from heaven, and how the manna foreshadowed His coming into the world.

This spiritual truth was so challenging, that it prompted many of His followers who were disciples to desert Him. While we think of disciples as the twelve men Jesus chose, John uses this term to describe a bigger group of regular followers of Jesus, and John describes the twelve closest followers in this passage as simply “the Twelve”. From how this passage frames the aftermath of Jesus’ message, it appears like Jesus took this huge crowd and pushed every person away until He was left with only the Twelve disciples. The bigger the crowds following Jesus got, the harder Jesus pushed them with spiritual truth.

However, while Jesus pushed those in the first century with hard spiritual truth, we are called to believe Jesus’ words, because Jesus’ words bring life and Jesus’ life brings eternal life. God has promised that those who believe and trust in Jesus will be given eternal life. Even if Jesus challenges us with some very difficult to accept challenges, His perspective is bigger than our own, and even when we don’t understand, we are called to believe and look forward to the day when all our questions will be answered when Jesus returns to bring us home.

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, intentionally seek God first in your life and choose to trust in Jesus even when He says some challenging words. Study into the challenging messages Jesus shares to discover some amazing spiritual truth that is worth applying into our lives. Remember, through Jesus, we are promised eternal life, and because of what Jesus did for us, we have the assurance of salvation.

Also, as I always challenge you to do, intentionally pray and study the Bible for yourself to learn and grow from God’s Word. God has preserved the Bible for thousands of years, and it has the power to transform lives when we let the Holy Spirit speak through it. No other book or collection of writing has the Holy Spirit behind it like the Bible. We can trust the Bible will give us an accurate picture of God when we look at it holistically and in context.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or fall away from where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!