Reflective Bible Study

During one of the times that the Pharisees challenged Jesus and His disciples, the issue was over food and hand-washing. While this may seem trivial for us today, imagine the person in your life who is the most obsessive about following the rules, and then multiply them by ten to get an idea of what these Pharisees were like. Not only did these Pharisees love rule following, they loved making up and carrying rules forward.

One such rule was washing your hands before you eat. On the surface, this sounds like a very practical and sanitary rule, but the Pharisees had elevated the idea of hand-washing and turned it into a salvation issue.

In Jesus’ response, He first challenges the foundation and the way these Pharisees were thinking before then dealing with the specific issue at hand. Jesus draws them to His main point by concluding with, “The food that you put into your mouth doesn’t make you unclean and unfit to worship God. The bad words that come out of your mouth are what make you unclean.” (v. 15-16)

This response shifts the focus away from physical food that goes into our mouths and towards what we let come out of our mouths. What we consume as a part of our diet is less important than our character and the attitude we display.

Our diets are important for our health, but they are not as important for our salvation. Instead, our salvation is based on God working in us and through us in ways that our food cannot do. Our diets simply help us live better and healthier in our current life.

God wants our attitude towards Him and others to be genuine, loving, helpful, and thoughtful – and all this has to do with what comes out of our mouths more than the food we put into our mouths.

Of all the parables Jesus shared about the kingdom of God, one of the shortest contains one of the most powerful insights into God’s kingdom working in our lives than any other one. In the parable of the yeast, we can learn insights into God’s kingdom from something as simple as baking bread – a process that hasn’t changed significantly since the time when Jesus shared these words.

Luke’s gospel tells us that immediately following the parable of the mustard seed, Jesus continues by saying, “What can I compare God’s kingdom with? It is like yeast that a woman took and hid in a large tub of flour until it made all the dough rise.” (v. 20-21)

Like with other kingdom parables, whenever Jesus shares something that describes God’s kingdom, God is one of the characters present. In this short parable, there are only three things that are shared, and really only one candidate for God’s character: the woman.

God’s kingdom is like God taking and hiding yeast in a large tub of flour. I’m guessing that moisture/water is also within this tub of flour because the “flour” becomes “dough” that rises.

With an understanding that God is the one hiding the yeast, what would the yeast represent in this context?

In other places, Jesus warns the disciples about the Pharisees having yeast, and in that context, yeast refers to the Pharisees’ teachings and beliefs about God. If yeast in that case represented teachings and beliefs, then in Jesus’ parable here, yeast could also refer to a person’s teachings and beliefs.

What we have been taught and what we believe is not directly seen from looking at us from the outside. If you had a lineup of people, with each person wearing different types of clothing, we might get an impression of what someone might believe, but at best it would only be a stereotype conclusion and not a true picture of what each person knows or believes. In this way, a person’s beliefs, unless they display them through their actions, is hidden within their lives like yeast hides in a ball of dough.

But yeast’s primary characteristic is that it grows. Yeast starts small, only a teaspoon or less in many cases, but it ultimately affects the whole ball of dough. In our lives, the ideas we hold onto will grow. The beliefs we have will expand. What we focus on will become a lens for our reality. What might have begun as a small, simple idea may just transform our life.

The Pharisees used logic and questions to plant seeds of doubt in the minds of others. They did this to bring people over to their way of thinking. In contrast, Jesus planted seeds of hope and love through stories that showed God, His character, and His kingdom.

We have the choice of whose yeast we will pay attention to. Will we pay attention to the ideas and beliefs in this world that grow into doubt, or will we pay attention to the ideas and beliefs that support a loving God who cares about humanity enough to sacrifice Himself for us?

There are a lot of great ideas in this passage that we could choose to highlight, but for this journal entry, I will focus on an idea that is a little baffling to me. It is found in Jesus’ words as this passage opens:

Once the Pharisees asked Jesus when God’s kingdom would come. He replied, “The coming of God’s kingdom is not something you can see just by watching for it carefully. People will not say, ‘Here it is.’ Or, ‘There it is.’ God’s kingdom is among you.” (v. 20-21)

“God’s kingdom is among you.” This phrase can be baffling if we think about it long enough. The Pharisees are expecting a coming kingdom, but instead they are faced with an already present kingdom – one that they don’t see.

In other places, John the Baptist, Jesus’ disciples, and even Jesus preach that God’s kingdom is “coming”, but here we read in Jesus’ response that it is already here. At least to me, this makes me wonder if one way of defining God’s kingdom is simply anywhere where “Jesus” is. Perhaps we could broaden it to be anywhere that “God” is – so that it includes God the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.

We also could broaden this approach even further, since Paul calls the church “the Body of Christ”. (1 Corinthians 12:27)

With this framework, I could easily wonder: Do I miss seeing God’s kingdom around me as I live life? Do I ever miss opportunities to be a part of God’s kingdom because I am not paying attention to what God is doing? Would I live any differently knowing that I can be a part of God’s kingdom today?

During one of the many trips Jesus took with His disciples, one stands out as significant because of something Jesus asked the disciples. While Jesus leads with a question about who the crowd believes Him to be, I think this question is more of a setup question for what He really wants to ask the disciples.

After the disciples respond to Jesus’ first question by sharing all the rumors about Him, Jesus then draws them into His real question: “But what about you? Who do you say I am?” (v. 15)

Jesus had just received what the general belief about Him was, and now He wants to know what His closest followers think. Do they believe similarly to the crowd, or are they closer to the truth?

I would love to know if there was a long awkward pause before Peter speaks up or if Peter’s reply was instant and without hesitation. My imagination could go either way with this one, and I don’t see any clues given in the passage to help point me to how quickly Peter responded.

But when Peter does respond, he answers by saying, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” (v. 16)

This response appears to be the one Jesus is looking for, because Jesus replies to Peter saying, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven.” (v. 17)

While Jesus continues with a thought provoking teaching, it is easy to miss the profoundness of this first statement in His response. Jesus tells Peter and all of us that only God the Father in heaven can reveal who Jesus is to someone. While the truth about Jesus can be shared (which is something Jesus tells the disciples not to do yet), the only way for Simon Peter to have known the correct answer is because God the Father, through the Holy Spirit, revealed this truth to him.

It is the same with us today. While we can share with others what Jesus has done for us and who we believe Him to be, only God and the Holy Spirit can take the knowledge about Jesus and turn it into real faith. Only the Holy Spirit can take Jesus from being a significant historical figure in one’s mind and turn Him into the Personal Saviour who lives in our hearts.