My wife and I love to watch baking competitions on television. While not a baker myself, I find these competitions extremely fascinating. The delicate balance between creativity and precise measurement is exciting to watch.
My favorite episodes are when the competitors must bake bread. Baking bread is an intricate process of kneading, proofing, resting, and rising. The competitors engage in a complex routine of slapping the dough onto the table and then stretching it out to examine the gluten.
The dough is then proofed once, maybe twice, before being placed in the oven. The more a competitor varies from this precise formula, the more disastrous the result may be.
In describing the nature of God’s presence and activity, Jesus employed stories and images that would be familiar to everyone. Thus, when it came to reflecting life in the realm of God, Jesus pictured it as a rising loaf of bread.
Matthew records this parable, “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough” (Matthew 13:33). Obviously, the unstated purpose of working the yeast into the flour was to produce a risen loaf of bread.
Jesus puts forward this parable to illustrate the nature of God’s work in human life. The parable illuminates how we are to receive God’s kingdom into our lives and the change it is to bring about in us.
If we wish to receive the kingdom of heaven, as Jesus describes it, here are three important truths we must understand.
1. The Kingdom of God Is an Active and Living Force
It is common knowledge that yeast is alive. Yeast is a single-celled micro-organism that, when activated, causes the dough to become the loaf it is intended to be. Without this active agent, the loaf of bread will not rise.
In a similar way, the kingdom of heaven is the living force of God in the world. While we sometimes talk of heaven as place of eternal residence, Jesus makes clear that the “kingdom of heaven” is not a place.
In the parable, Jesus is not referring to some celestial realm above the clouds. The kingdom of heaven is the dynamic activity of God in our lives.
One of the radical things about this parable is that Jesus turns the common depiction of yeast on its head. In the first-century world, to say that something was like “yeast” was to say that it was rotten or worthless.
Yeast was made by allowing bread to dry out and rot. After the bread had rotten, the leaven was extracted in small quantities to be used in baking.
This process was well-known to all of Jesus’ hearers. This is why Jesus says to the disciples, “Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees” (Matthew 16:6). In the first-century world, yeast was a negative image that conveyed rot or decay.
In this parable, however, Jesus flips this image. Jesus uses the image of yeast to covey life, not death, growth, not decay. In doing so, Jesus illustrates that living as followers of Jesus is different than living according to the world’s principles.
By transforming the image of yeast, Jesus highlights the life-producing quality of God’s Kingdom. As the woman in the parable works yeast into the dough, so Jesus works abundant life into all who come to him in faith (John 10:10).
2. The Kingdom of God Is Worked into Every-Day Life
If the kingdom of heaven is nothing more than a distant land we enter upon our death or a mere theological concept we ponder, then it remains completely disconnected from our everyday lives.
Yet, this is not how Jesus speaks of the kingdom of heaven. The parable describes a woman diligently mixing, kneading, stretching, and pounding the yeast until it was worked into the whole dough. Every part of the dough is touched by the yeast.
Trying to bake a loaf of bread while keeping the yeast away from a certain portion of the flour is an exercise in futility. You cannot have one part of the flour untouched.
Yeast is worked into the flour entirely. In a similar way, the kingdom of heaven is to be worked into every corner and crack of our lives. Nothing is to be withheld.
Like a woman kneading yeast into flour, the kingdom of heaven is to be worked into us. Our lives are not to be compartmentalized. There is no distinction between the sacred and the secular.
Living in the kingdom of God necessitates that we invite the Lord’s influence into all aspects of our lives. There is no place where Jesus does not hold reign. There is nothing in us that God’s activity does not address.
God’s rule and sovereignty pertains to our relationships, our health, our employment, and our struggles. In all times and circumstances, we can attend to Christ’s presence and follow his will.
Of course, this means we need to be honest with our struggles and our sins. We need to dethrone destructive habits and patterns of living that move us away from God’s presence.
Yet if the kingdom of heaven is to have effect in our lives, we must allow the living and active force of God into every part of our lives. All must be brought under Christ’s Lordship.
3. The Kingdom of God Is Transformational
The parables of Jesus always have a singular focus. In the parable of the yeast, the point Jesus makes is that the kingdom of heaven brings about transformation. The purpose of yeast is to transform the flour into something new, namely a loaf of bread.
Yeast isn’t flavoring added to spice up the dough, nor is it a coloring agent used to decorate it; yeast is a transforming agent.
Similarly, God doesn’t want to simply spice up our lives or be a decorative addition to our daily activities. God’s longs to transform us. As we work the kingdom into all areas of our lives, we rise to a new way of life in this world.
We cannot miss the fact that the transformation of bread comes by way of a “rising.” As bread is proofed, the yeast leavens the dough, giving both height and volume. The bread rises to its new state.
In this way, Jesus makes another reference to his upcoming resurrection. Transformation comes by way of rising to the new life in Christ. As we participate in Christ’s resurrection, we are made new.
Paul echoes this when he writes, “If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation, the old is gone and the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
As the people of God, the life and activity of the Spirit produce new life within us. Just as the rising of a loaf testifies to the activity of the yeast, so, too, our own transformation displays the presence of God in our lives.
What Does This Mean?
This parable serves as an invitation for us to accept the strong and unshakable kingdom of God. With the tenacity, focus, and diligence needed to bake bread, let us lay hold of God’s kingdom and consciously work it into every part of our lives.
Let us not stop until we are transformed into reflections of God’s presence. This is the point of the parable, and the life that Jesus invites us into.
For further reading:
Why Is Leavened Bread Forbidden During Passover?
What Is a Parable in the Bible? Meaning and 10 Examples
What Were the Parables of Jesus?
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