The Parable of the Leaven by Lewis Kiger

Do you make homemade bread? It’s not something we do around our home regularly. But in preparing to preach this parable at the church I pastor, I asked my two teenage daughters to help me with an illustration. Together we mixed all the ingredients to make two separate loaves of bread. We followed the recipe exactly and did everything the same except, in one loaf, we did not add any yeast.

The outcome was quite instructive.

The lump of dough with yeast rose nicely, about 4 times its original size, and cooked up wonderfully. We enjoyed eating it. However, the other loaf without yeast looked pitiful. It never expanded, never enlarged itself. Actually, it remained the same size and shape as it was when put it in the cooking pan. Needless to say, we didn’t eat that loaf.

 

Baking the Bread by Anders Zorn

In Matthew 13:33 Jesus compares His Kingdom to yeast mixed into a large ball of dough. He says these words, “The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.”

There is much conjecture as to what Christ meant by this. Would you believe that while studying this parable, I found at least 17 different interpretations as to what the parable “actually meant?”  This is what happens when Bible students complicate the simple. Unfortunately, well-meaning individuals (and some of them preachers) make nonsense out of common sense.

Christ is using a simple and relatable illustration to help clarify a truth. During that time period, daily life consisted of baking bread. Every child had observed their mother in the kitchen with a wood stove making bread from scratch.

It was customary, after mixing the dough and allowing it to rise, the cook would pinch off one small portion of it and put it in a cool, dry place for the morrow. That little piece was already leavened (contained yeast) and the next day, when it was mixed with a new batch of dough, the yeast would spread and cause that batch to rise. Once it had risen, she would pinch off a little ball of it, and keep it for the next day. And so on.

This was a common practice in every Jewish home. In fact, this little ball of leavened bread was often given as a cherished wedding gift from mother to daughter.

Christ is simply using something they were familiar with to teach His disciples a lesson. He is teaching them (and us) that His kingdom will grow. It will increase just like a lump of dough when leaven is added to it.

Like the spread of yeast through the dough, it is invisible to the naked eye, but it is spreading. It will not happen all at once, but His kingdom is going to increase. The glorious kingdom of Christ cannot be stopped. Once leaven is mixed in dough, the chemical process begins and cannot be stopped.

Such is the kingdom of Christ. It spreads through contact.

This is vitally important to understand.

Yeast that never comes into contact with dough, cannot affect it one bit. In order for Christ’s kingdom to grow, we must be willing to follow the example of Jesus, and become a friend of sinners. We must reach out to them with the life-changing message of the Gospel.  We must invest time and effort into touching the lives of unbelievers with the message of a true and lasting hope for eternity.

One of the reasons why we have seen such a decrease in the spread of Christ’s kingdom in America today is that we are not doing our job of reaching the lost with the Gospel. Sadly, statistics and experience tells us that the average confessed Christian does not share his/her faith on a regular basis.

Too readily do we rely on others to do the work for us. But the kingdom does not spread by proxy. It spreads by the Christian coming into contact with the lost world around them with Good News of salvation by grace alone.

Like yeast, Christ’s kingdom is a living and thriving organism and it should be our earnest desire to be used by our God to help spread this kingdom.

Has your life been touched by the Gospel’s pervasive power? If it has, then you have been called to be in contact with lost sinners to spread the Good News of Christ’s kingdom.

Lewis Kiger
Memorial Heights Baptist Church

svdbygrace2@roadrunner.com