Tag: Yeast

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Religious brand of yeast.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

“Later, after they crossed to the other side of the lake, the disciples discovered they had forgotten to bring any bread. “Watch out!” Jesus warned them. “Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”” ‭‭Matthew‬ ‭16‬:‭5‬-‭6‬ ‭NLT‬‬

I am told that yeast has some pretty unique, if not plain freaky properties. IT’S ALIVE! I’m not a baker nor a microbiologist, studying eukaryotes (fungi), so my only experience with “leaven” is eating it in pizza or sourdough bread (yum). When I’m told that it can live forever, if properly fed and tended to, it’s pretty creepy. The fact that yeast has to eat and grows and spreads rapidly gives us the perfect object lesson from the most common household ingredient.

The subject of Biblical leaven is spoken of all through the gospels – zýmē, leaven (yeast); (figuratively) the spreading influence of what is typically concealed (but still very dramatic). Leaven is generally a symbol of the spreading nature of evil. Jesus gave multiple warnings about a particular brand of yeast – the religious brand, known as the Pharisee and Sadducee brand. You could pick it up everywhere that people gathered – water-cooler (city gates), church (temple), and grocery stores (marketplace). By the way, the Jews were only allowed to eat Jewish leavened bread, NOT Gentile’s bread. A simple synopsis, given by a Bible Commentary, highlights the beliefs of these two religious groups: “The doctrines the Pharisees taught were the commandments and inventions of men, the traditions of the elders, and justification by the works of the law: the doctrine of the Sadducees was, that there was no resurrection of the dead, nor angels, nor spirits: now because they sought secretly and artfully to infuse their notions into the minds of men; and which, when imbibed, spread their infection, and made men sour, morose, rigid, and ill natured, and swelled and puffed them up with pride and vanity.”

So there’s the brand of yeast, the mother – the starter! The real beauty of Jesus’ illustrations isn’t just the content of the yeast (the arrogant traditions), it was the insidious spreading of these beliefs that so quickly infected others. Its “mother” is traced back to the garden of eden when the choice was made to believe a lie over the truth. God told the first humans not eat because He himself was to teach them about good and evil. The tree was a shortcut to get the “knowledge” sooner, faster and satisfy their own desires as quickly as possible.

This starter brand of yeast was the choice to sin, and the religious zealots peddled it everywhere they went. The argument about who forgot the bread (while traveling WITH the bread of life) was a sure sign of Pharisee’s and Sadducee’s recipe. Jesus smelled the rising aroma of religious yeast, the division and lack of spiritual awareness, then warned his friends TWICE. Can you smell it?

If we could only smell the difference between the wonderful aroma of unity and spiritual perception rather than the attractive fumes of bitterness, division and solely physical experiences! The rising yeast of one is very different than the other. Jesus’ warning wasn’t that the religious bread stunk and could be identified by a putrid smell. Contrarily, it smelled like human desire, pungent and looking delicious to quickly take it and eat it. BEWARE He said. Maybe a modern axiom would be, “if it smells TOO good to be true.”

Prayer

Dad,
I don’t want to eat or promote the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees! I want to know, carry and share the aroma and bread of life – Your gospel – THE truth. Help us see and smell the difference through our thoughts, attitudes and behaviors. I noticed it showed up in how the disciples reacted to a problem and then turned to blame each other. Is this how it works? Give us wisdom in these last days to love one another and stay clear of sin’s religious yeast.

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Am I a fungus infected sin activist?

Reading Time: 3 minutes 
“Meanwhile, the crowds grew until thousands were milling about and stepping on each other. Jesus turned first to his disciples and warned them, “Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees—their hypocrisy. The time is coming when everything that is covered up will be revealed, and all that is secret will be made known to all. Whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be shouted from the housetops for all to hear!” Luke‬ ‭12:1-3‬ ‭NLT‬‬

​Crowds as thick as a rock concert in Central Park. Did I ever notice that Jesus was looking over the throngs of people when he delivered this famous passage? No. He sees thousands out there and says, watch out for “leaven infection.” Sure, leaven is yeast as New Living Translation says, but I can’t use that word coupled with infection!

Yeasts are single-celled microorganisms classified as members of the fungus kingdom! YIKES 🤢. Let’s just stick to its properties in food.

Yeast is used in baking as a leavening agent, where it converts the food/fermentable sugars present in dough into the gas carbon dioxide. This causes the dough to expand or rise as gas forms pockets or bubbles. When the dough is baked, the yeast dies and the air pockets “set”, giving the baked product a soft and spongy texture. Yeast also rapidly reproduces, effectively permeating every cell of the dough.

Why was yeast (leaven) associated with sin? First, on a practical level, the Israelites had to be ready to leave Egypt at a moment’s notice and thus they couldn’t wait for the dough to rise. Second, leaven in the Bible is symbolic of sin and deceit. Leaven, a picture of sin, makes the bread inflate. The visual is that sin makes one prideful and puffed-up. Plus, it only takes a very small amount of fermented dough to make new dough rise (Gal 5:9), thus the idea that fermentation implies a process of corruption. Yeast or leaven is NOT sin! It’s just an object lesson.

Jesus looks over this massive crowd and finds a few Pharisees among them. Effectively saying, “it only takes one” bad 🍎 to infect this entire crowd. The Pharisees message of weaponizing the Law of God to keep people from God is a deadly fungus that kills! Plus the fact that people that say they believe one thing but practice another are a hypocritical joke.

Yes, everyone at some point is a hypocrite, but no one should be an activist about it. Jesus warns – ALL SECRETS will be known! God will pull back the cover of darkness over all humankind and expose everything. I can’t, you can’t hide sin forever 😬. So what’s Jesus point? Well, the biggest one is don’t be a SIN ACTIVIST, publicly parading about proudly mocking God himself. You’d just be behaving like a fungus, socially infecting everyone around you. Two, the light of world, Jesus, will shine on every human heart and expose everything.

Prayer

Dad,
Whoa, I see what you did here with the Pharisees, religious leaders of the day. I understand that I could easily see you exposes their thoughts and deeds and just be happy for a bit of justice for all the misery they (and those like them today) have caused. But I know how this works. I also need to see myself. My heart. My deeds. And when I think of all the times I try to get away with sin by being sneaky, or covering up, leaving no bodies to be found – that I’ve “gotten away with it,” the Holy Spirit arrests me on the spot! I then confess, repent, and turn from my sin. I WANT my sin covered, not by darkness but by the blood of Jesus that cleans me and makes me whole!