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by Joel Davis
If you’re reading Matthew 13 along with us, which I encourage you to be doing, you might be asking, what on earth are we doing separating these two 1-verse parables into two different weeks? Didn’t we kind of get the point last week with the mustard seed?
Well, before we even get to the leaven this week, I want to start out with a warning and an encouragement to you. It is encouragement. It is words of warning. It is recounting the faithfulness of our Father through the sacrifice of His Son and the ministry of the Holy Spirit. But one thing it NEVER is is redundant! So statements like this should be red flags for us:
- Didn’t we already read this?
- I kind of already understand this…
- This is so repetitive…
The Bible itself gives us a very different picture of how we should be interacting with each chapter and verse. Psalm 1:2 says this,
“His delight is in the Lord’s instruction,
and he meditates on it day and night.”
That word for “meditate” in the Hebrew is the word hagah. And you’re supposed to sound like you’re chewing a tasty bite of a savory meal when you pronounce it. [Think of the phrase, “nom nom nom.”] And that makes it very easy to remember because that is the picture we’re supposed to have. The Bible’s view of meditating on its words is the picture of a cow chewing its cud or a lion growling or murmuring over a meal it’s about to devour. We’re supposed to chew on the Scripture, turn them over and over again in our minds, get every last drop out of God’s Word, let it go deep down into our bones.
So I encourage you, don’t presume you’ve got it figured out with phrases like, “Haven’t I already read this?” Instead, I would suggest you ask some of these questions first, before you move on from a passage that seems repetitive:
- What nugget have I not sifted from this passage yet?
- What treasures and truths are waiting to be revealed if I will focus on this verse and allow the Spirit of God to speak to me?
So on the surface, this is another parable about a small thing that has an outsized effect on its surroundings. But let’s ruminate on this, let’s chew the cud for a bit on the parable of the leaven, and ask what new revelation our Father might have for us in this text.
“He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and mixed into fifty pounds of flour until all of it was leavened.” —Matthew 13:33
If you’ve never heard that word leaven before, we’re talking about yeast. Yeast are tiny little cells, technically a fungus, that we put into our bread to make it rise. I still remember as a kid, baking homemade bread in this giant bread maker. I never understood how something so tiny, so insignificant, could make or break the outcome of our baking project.
The thing we need to notice is, while the mustard seed grows in size, the leaven grows in influence. The mustard seed is going to become extremely large, while the yeast is instead going to affect something that is extremely large.
We celebrate the growth in SIZE of the Kingdom when the unreached are hearing the good news that Jesus is the saving King. We see the growth in SIZE of the Kingdom when disciples multiply disciples and there is a generational lineage of Jesus followers in our churches and community groups. But what does it look like when the Kingdom grows in INFLUENCE?
In the parable of the leaven, the thing that is so large isn’t the Kingdom—it’s actually the world! Notice that it’s a massive amount of dough, fifteen pounds, that the woman has to work the leaven into. So we recognize that the Kingdom of God grows in its INFLUENCE not by multiplying its numbers, but by affecting the nature of the thing it inhabits. In bread making, fermentation happens, change happens, when the yeast breaks down sugar in the dough. Likewise, a change happens in the culture when sons and daughters of our Father live the Overflow life in an attractive way to those around them.
You’ve probably never heard the name of my sixth grade Sunday school teachers, Tom and Liz Williams. Mr. Williams worked in construction, but he was a giant in the Kingdom. Every year, for over 20 years, Mr. and Mrs. Williams taught sixth grade boys and girls how to memorize Scripture, how to have a quiet time, and how to make God’s Word an indispensable part of their lives. Mr. Williams passed away when I was in college, and his funeral was filled and overflowing with decades worth of Sunday school students whom he had impacted. There wasn’t even room in the sanctuary, it was standing room only. That is Kingdom influence.
Similarly, you and I don’t have to build an organization that is recognized worldwide or do something that is written about in the history books. It can be as simple as daily walking in the abundant life of the Lord Jesus Christ, asking what it is that our Father would have us do, walking in step with the Spirit, and watching the leaven of our lives affect our families, churches, and neighborhoods for the glory of God.
Do you ever lose hope that this vision for cultural change is possible? There’s a lot of adversarial language out there in our news and headlines. But Paul writes this about followers of Jesus who also had very little cultural values in common with their Roman neighbors:
“For to God we are the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.” —2 Corinthians 2:15
The FRAGRANCE! Our lives are a sweet aroma, a pleasant effect on those around us. People who are far from Jesus in the way they live their lives are still wooed, still compelled by the Kingdom way of living.
They see your love for your kids.
They see the way you live with integrity at your job.
They see the grace you offer at the store or driving on the highway.
You are, through the strength and power of the Spirit moving in you, a leavening effect on everyone you touch today. So may you walk in the freedom and the excitement of being the leavening agent, the sweet aroma of Christ, to everyone around you. And may our Father grace you as you watch the invisible impact take hold as you overflow with His love to all those you encounter.
