Luke 13:20-21 (NIV) Again he asked, “What shall I compare the kingdom of God to? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough.

Jesus again draws a comparison between the natural world and the kingdom. And this time, He uses the imagery of yeast, or leaven. In Jesus’ day the workings of yeast in dough was a mystery to people. They didn’t know how it worked; they only knew that it did work. Today we know how it works, and the increased knowledge actually adds to the understanding of Jesus’ point.

In Jesus day there was no instant or powdered yeast. Instead, a woman would take a small piece of leavened dough from the previous day’s batch and set it aside. When she was preparing the next day’s dough, she would knead that set aside piece in with the new batch of dough. Then, as the dough rested in the warmth of the cooking area, the yeast in that small piece of dough would spread throughout the whole loaf, until the whole thing was light and fluffy.

Today we know that yeast is actually a single-cell fungus that eats carbohydrates, excretes carbon dioxide, and then divides. The carbon dioxide bubbles are what makes the dough light and fluffy. But it is the rapid multiplication of the yeast that enables a small piece of leavened dough to be able to effectively leaven fifty pounds of flour.

This is a very good picture of how the kingdom of God operates. As each Christian is supplied with the power of the Holy Spirit (the spiritual food for disciples), and then uses that power and energy to multiply, by reaching out to those outside the kingdom and bringing them inside, the character of the society in which those Christians are living is transformed. And, as the process continues, the multiplication becomes exponential.

Of course, without food, yeast goes into a quiescent state, a kind of hibernation, and no multiplication takes place. But when food and moisture is added, the yeast wakes up and begins to multiply as it does its work.

In the same way, the reason that the Church is not powerfully multiplying in so many places in the world today is that many of the people who go by the name of Christian have fallen asleep spiritually. They have cut themselves off from the food of Holy Spirit power through disobedience to God’s commands, carelessness, busyness, or compromise with the world. And without the power that comes from the Holy Spirit, we become spiritually quiescent; we hibernate, waiting for God to somehow act and revive us.

What is needed is not for God to act. What is actually necessary is for God’s people, the people of the kingdom, to repent, to remember the height from which (we) have fallen (Revelation 2:5 NIV), to quit compromising with the world, to quit being lukewarm and instead be filled with the fire of the Spirit. Then the power of the Holy Spirit can work powerfully to feed all of God’s people, and to enable us to multiply and fill the earth with righteousness in preparation for the coming of Jesus.

Father, this is a more powerful illustration than I imagined! Even the simplest organisms on the face of the earth illustrate Your glory and Your ways. Father, help us, Your people, to really repent, to get rid of the idols of compromise and busyness, and really become the yeast of Your kingdom to spread Your righteousness all across our land. Amen.