Tag Archives: Yeast

God’s Base Language

December 11, 2024 Tom Vander Well 2 Comments

Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked them: “Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear?”
Mark 8:17-18 (NIV)

I’ve recently begun listening to a brilliant and fascinating podcast series about what “mountains” represent throughout the Great Story. It reminds me a lot of three messages I gave a year or so ago as part of a series exploring the seven “I Am” statements that Jesus made (e.g. “I am the gate,” “I am the bread of life,” “I am the resurrection and the life”). With each of those messages, I unpacked that the metaphors Jesus was using (bread, gate, resurrection) were metaphors that are woven throughout the entire Great Story from Genesis to Revelation. To understand the power and completeness of what Jesus was claiming with those statements, I have to understand each metaphor in the context of the entire Great Story.

Those who have followed this blog for any length of time are probably sick of me saying this, but God’s base language is metaphor. A metaphor is simply something that represents something else. In his letter to the followers of Jesus in Rome, Paul explains that creation itself is a metaphor of who God is, it is an expression of God’s very person. How often did Jesus use creation and every day pieces of life as a teaching device? Mustard seeds, weather, pearls, sheep, sons, gates, shepherds, wine, debt, and bread.

In today’s chapter, Jesus makes a simple statement to His disciples in telling them to watch out for the “yeast” of the Pharisees and of Herod. Remember, it’s become plain to the disciples through their recent experiences that the Pharisees are actively working against Jesus, and they all know that Herod had recently executed Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist, at the whim of his step-daughter. The disciples, however, are perplexed. They think Jesus’ is somehow upset with them for forgetting to buy enough bread for their cruise across the Sea of Galilee.

I picture Jesus rolling His eyes and slapping His forehead in frustration.

These are good Jewish boys who have been brought up in the Hebrew tradition and learning the Law of Moses. The Law of Moses is repeatedly clear about eating unleavened bread, bread made without yeast. It’s an important part of the most important ritual in the Jewish tradition: the Passover seder. Jesus had also used yeast in His teaching. Why?

It’s so simple it’s profound. Anyone who has baked bread knows that you take this tiny amount of yeast in order to get a large amount of dough to rise. I get it that most readers today may have never baked bread, but for Jesus and the disciples, the act of baking bread was as daily a routine as brewing coffee or tea is today. They all knew the concept that a little bit of yeast spreads to a whole lot of dough. So, the “yeast” of the Pharisees and of Herod was their hard hearts, their refusal to repent, their clinging to the things of this world like wealth and power, and the resulting outcomes of each of their forms of evil. It was the same evil but wore the different cloaks of human government and religion.

The disciples were struggling to understand that to get at who God is and what God is about, one must learn and know God’s base language of metaphor.

In the quiet this morning, I’m grateful for the dawn of this new day, which is a daily metaphor of resurrection. I’m also grateful for my warm office and my Pella windows as I hear the icy winter wind howling against them right behind me, which is a metaphor of God’s provision and protection. That icy wind of winter is an annual metaphor of death which is a natural part of life, what Jesus called me to in today’s chapter, and what physically awaits me at the end of this earthly journey. Along this life journey, I’ve learned that God is speaking to me everywhere, every day, through every thing. It’s all connected. I just had to learn to hear and interpret the language God speaks everywhere, every day, at all times.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

These chapter-a-day blog posts are also available via podcast on all major podcast platforms including Apple, Google, and Spotify! Simply go to your podcast platform and search for “Wayfarer Tom Vander Well.” If it’s not on your platform, please let me know!

Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day Acts 5

April 27, 2012 Tom Vander Well 2 Comments

Then Peter said, “Ananias, why have you let Satan fill your heart? You lied to the Holy Spirit, and you kept some of the money for yourself. The property was yours to sell or not sell, as you wished. And after selling it, the money was also yours to give away. How could you do a thing like this? You weren’t lying to us but to God!”
Acts 5:3-4 (NLT)

I have found that most of the world views their own eternal standing in terms of balance:

“I do some good things, and I also do some bad things. I therefore look at life like a set of Justice’s scales. I weigh my good against my bad and try to maintain a good to bad ratio that favors the good. If, at the end of my life, the scale tips to the good then I’m golden. God’s going to let me in to heaven.”

The premise of this thinking, is that our salvation is ultimately determined by what we do and that God will ultimately judge us based on how the scale reads at the end of our life. God’s Message, however, reveals a completely different picture.

Jesus said that the little bit of bad we do is like yeast in bread dough. It’s the smallest of ingredients, yet it taints the entire loaf. Once the yeast is in the dough you can’t reverse its effect. In the same way, even the “little white lies” that we tell, like Ananias and Sapphira in today’s chapter, taint our entire soul. There is no amount of good that we can do to negate and purify us from the effects of the bad that we have done. Salvation is not determined by what we do because no amount of effort can eradicate it from our hearts and lives. Sin is a lethal, spiritual super virus. Once it’s in our system (and it’s in all of us) there is no regimen, no matter how rigorous, that can flush it out.

Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day Leviticus 2

April 29, 2011 Tom Vander Well 1 Comment

Gold Medal Flour at Dot's Cafe — Image by ChicagoGeek via Flickr

When you present a Grain-Offering of oven-baked loaves, use fine flour, mixed with oil but no yeast. Or present wafers made without yeast and spread with oil. Leviticus 2:4 (MSG)

When my children were still babies, I made a habit of having them close their eyes, bow their heads and hold hands while we thanked God for their food. At bedtime I would read Bible stories and we would act them out together in little bed-top improvisations. On Memorial Day, grandma would pick them up each year to help her plant flowers on the graves of loved ones. These repetitious rituals are word pictures and reminders of thankfulness, offering, obedience, and honor that, hopefully, stick with children as they grown into adolescence and adulthood.

When I read Leviticus I often picture mankind and human society in its infancy. The sacrifices, rules and offerings are ritualistic word pictures prescribed by a Father to his people, who are just a toddler society beginning to understand their place in the world.

Today, two things struck me in the word picture of the grain offerings:

First, fine flour was to be used. When we give, to others and especially to God, we should give the best we have. It reminds me of the lyric to David’s song (which we know as Psalm 112) which says “Good will come to him who is generous and lends freely.” Am I giving God and my neighbors the fine stuff or the white elephant stuff on my basement shelf?

Second, the bread offering was not to contain yeast. God uses a word picture out of what was a daily chore at that time: the baking of bread. We bake a lot of bread in our house and the last ingredient you put in to the breadmaker is the yeast. It always amazes me how a little teaspoon of yeast makes such a HUGE difference in the outcome of the bread. That’s why God used it as a word picture for sin. A little sin taints the whole person the way a little yeast taints the whole loaf. You can’t bake a loaf that’s half leavened (with yeast) and half unleavened (without yeast). Once the yeast is added, the entire loaf is tainted. We often want to think of sin as this isolated part of our person. We’re mostly “good” people who have this hidden little sin problem back in our closet. By requiring bread without yeast as an offering, God was telling us “I demand a sinless sacrifice. A pinch of sin affects the whole person, and that’s a problem.”