“It is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour until it was all leavened.” Luke 13:21 ESV1
Read Matthew 13:33 & Luke 13:20-21
“A mutualistic relationship is when two organisms of different species ‘work together,’ each benefiting from the relationship. One example of a mutualistic relationship is that of the oxpecker (a kind of bird) and the rhinoceros or zebra. Oxpeckers land on rhinos or zebras and eat ticks and other parasites that live on their skin. The oxpeckers get food and the beasts get pest control. Also, when there is danger, the oxpeckers fly upward and scream a warning, which helps the symbiont (a name for the other partner in a relationship).”2 Another example of a mutualistic relationship is the flower and the bee; while the bee gathers nectar from flowers to make its food, the flowers get pollinated. Jesus used this concept of mutualistic relationships in one of His parables.
It was a concise parable about an expansive subject that went like this: “‘And again, He said, ‘To what shall I compare the Kingdom of God? It is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour until it was all leavened’” (Luke 13:20-21). When it comes to making bread, the yeast feeds on the sugar and the oxygen in the dough. This makes more yeast and creates carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide makes the dough rise. This produces bread that is soft and airy. Thus, the mutualistic relationship. But Jesus wasn’t teaching about bread baking; He was drawing His audience’s attention to a far more important mutualistic relationship.
In all of Jesus’ Kingdom of Heaven parables, He taught some aspect of God’s relationship with humans. “When [Jesus] was demanded of the Pharisees, when the Kingdom of God should come, He answered them and said, ‘The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, “Lo here!” or, “Lo there!” for, behold, the Kingdom of God is within you’” (Luke 17:20-21 KJV3, emphasis mine). Jesus told this parable to illustrate how God works in and through Believers.
“The Kingdom of Heaven is like leaven …” (Matthew 13:33)
Leaven is “a substance, as yeast … that causes fermentation and expansion of dough or batter … [or] an element that produces an altering or transforming influence.”4 Typically, in Scripture, the leavening power of yeast carries a negative connotation. During Passover, nothing with yeast was to be eaten; in fact, the Jews were commanded to remove all yeast and yeast containing products from their homes. When it came to sacrifices, anything containing yeast was forbidden to be offered with blood or with a meat offering. Yeast was used to illustrate false doctrine and ungodly teachers and as a picture of the diffusive power of sin.
But here Jesus used leaven in a positive context likening it to the Kingdom of Heaven. Keep in mind, when Jesus spoke of the Kingdom of Heaven, He was not teaching about some far-off realm that His Followers would go to after they died. Though it is true that the Kingdom of Heaven is an awesome place that Believers will enter someday, it is primarily an amazing Person we can know right now. The Kingdom of Heaven is a future inheritance but it is also an ever-present intimacy. For a Christian, eternal life doesn’t begin the moment he/she dies; it begins the moment he/she is saved.
Jesus, speaking about us, in a prayer to the Father, said, “‘This is eternal life, that they know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent’” (John 17:3). Know is this verse does not mean simply taking in knowledge; is the Greek word ginosko which means to know intimately. Having a close personal connection with God Almighty is what eternal life is all about.
So, how is yeast similar to an intimate relationship with God? To answer that question, we must begin in Leviticus. Mixed in among all of the rules and regulations concerning sacrifices and all the requirements for observing specific festivals, we find that yeast isn’t always considered bad. There are two times, in two different kinds of offerings, where bread containing yeast was the prescribed sacrifice. First, was in a thank-offering: “With the sacrifice of his peace offerings for thanksgiving, he shall bring his offering with loaves of leavened bread” (Leviticus 7:13). Second, was with the first fruits of the wheat harvest: “You shall bring from your dwelling places two loaves of bread to be waved, made of two-tenths of an ephah. They shall be of fine flour, and they shall be baked with leaven, as firstfruits to the Lord” (Leviticus 23:17).
It is in considering the second kind of offering that we will find the answer to the above question. The offering of the first fruits of the wheat harvest coincided with the Feast of Weeks.
“Described in Leviticus 23, The Feast of Weeks is the second of the three ‘solemn feasts’ that all Jewish males were required to travel to Jerusalem to attend (Exodus 23:14–17; 34:22–23; Deuteronomy 16:16). This important feast gets its name from the fact that it starts seven full weeks, or exactly 50 days, after the Feast of Firstfruits. Since it takes place exactly 50 days after the previous feast, this feast is also known as ‘Pentecost’ (Acts 2:1), which means ‘fifty.’ … Since the Feast of Weeks was one of the ‘harvest feasts,’ the Jews were commanded to ‘present an offering of new grain to the Lord’ (Leviticus 23:16). This offering was to be ‘two wave loaves of two-tenths of an ephah’ which were made ‘of fine flour … baked with leaven.’ …
Like other Jewish feasts, the Feast of Weeks is important in that it foreshadows the coming Messiah and His ministry. Each and every one of the seven Jewish Feasts signifies an important aspect of God’s plan of redemption through Jesus Christ. Jesus was crucified as the ‘Passover Lamb’ and rose from the grave at the Feast of Firstfruits. Following His resurrection, Jesus spent the next 40 days teaching His disciples before ascending to Heaven (Acts 1). Fifty days after His resurrection and after ascending to Heaven to sit at the right hand of God, Jesus sent the Holy Spirit as promised (John 14:16–17) to indwell the disciples and empower them for ministry. The promised Holy Spirit arrived on the Day of Pentecost, which is another name for the Feast of Weeks.”5
The aspect of the intimate relationship between God and humans that Jesus taught in this parable was the way the Holy Spirit powerfully acts within Believers. Leaven isn’t only a noun; it is also a verb. As a verb, leaven is “to add leaven to (dough or batter) and cause to rise [or] to permeate with an altering or transforming element.”4 After salvation, when the Holy Spirit enters a Believer’s life, He permeates, alters, and transforms the human in whose heart He dwells.
Remember Peter; right before Passover, he was so afraid in the presence of a questioning slave girl that He denied Christ (see Luke 22:54-62). Fifty some days later, Peter boldly confronted the religious leaders accusing them of killing the Messiah. He spoke with passion and explained prophecy with knowledge, “and with many … words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, ‘Save yourselves from this crooked generation’” (Acts 2:40). “When [Peter’s audience] heard this, they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’ And Peter said to them, ‘Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit …’ So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls” (Acts 2:37-38 & 41).
This amazing display of the Holy Spirit’s power was on Pentecost, the day that bread with yeast was to be offered. Like the power of yeast to cause bread dough to rise so that it can be baked into fluffy, delicious, satisfying bread, the Holy Spirit has the ability to take what is relatively small and flat and turn it into something that is beautiful, powerful, and effective. Peter had been an impetuous but fearful disciple who kept some distance between himself and Jesus when following closely could mean trouble (see Matthew 26:58). The Holy Spirit permeated Peter and transformed him into a bold and competent preacher who held nothing back and refused to deny the One he loved even in the presence of those who hated Him. The Holy Spirit permeated the crowd and altered some of those who had, just weeks before, been seething with hatred of Jesus into repentant, dedicated followers of Christ. Only the Holy Spirit can do such a thing!
“that a woman …” (Matthew 13:33)
This is one of a few of Jesus’ parables in which a woman is the main character. This parable immediately follows a similar parable where a man takes a mustard seed and plants it; the result is a huge mustard tree. As you can see, in both of these parables, something seemingly insignificant was placed into something else. That small thing grew into something large or caused something to greatly expand. We have discovered that the Thing which has the power to alter that in which it is placed is the Holy Spirit.
Jesus told this second parable including a woman and a job that traditionally belonged to women to make a point. That point is: The Holy Spirit is available for everyone. In the patriarchal and exclusive Jewish society, this idea may have been difficult to accept. Not only was this concept hard for the Jews to understand but the Gentiles as well. To the Galatians who struggled with this idea, Apostle Paul wrote, “In Christ Jesus, you are all [children] of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:26-28).
Jesus told this parable and its companion in reply to the religious leader’s response to a miracle He had performed. Immediately before Jesus told this parable and the one similar to it, Jesus had just healed a woman who was “bent over and could not fully straighten herself” by releasing her from the bondage of Satan (see Luke 13:11-13). The Pharisees were upset that Jesus performed this healing because it was conducted on the Sabbath. At this, Jesus chastised them saying, “‘You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it away to water it? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day’” (Luke 13:15-16)?
In a society where women were often considered less-than, I have got to imagine watching Jesus heal a handicapped woman, seeing Him defend her before the religious elite, and then to hear Him speak using something from a woman’s experience had to particularly bless the women in the crowd. The females in Jesus’ audience would begin to realize just how precious they too were in God’s eyes.
“took and hid in three measures of flour” (Matthew 13:33)
Three measures, or translated elsewhere as seahs, of flour is equal to one ephah. The measure, the seah, and the ephah are Hebrew measurements. Though my research didn’t give a definitive answer, an ephah seems to be roughly between 3/5 to a full English bushel. Even with the most conservative measurement, Jesus’ parable mentions an astounding amount of flour! Three-fifths of a bushel is 264 cups; a full bushel is 444 cups. My bread recipe calls for three cups of flour per loaf of bread. If my math is correct, an ephah of flour could make from 88 to 148 loaves of bread. I’m not talking oyster crackers or even dinner rolls, I am talking full-sized loaves. That is a lot of bread.
Using my recipe, a ten-pound bag of flour will yield about a dozen loaves of bread. That means 7 to 12 ten-pound bags of flour would be needed for this one baking. I can’t imagine how much effort it would take to evenly work yeast into that much flour. And the labor wouldn’t have stopped there. To make scrumptious bread, the woman in Jesus’ parable would have had to shape, roll, and punch down the dough. She would have had to patiently wait while the dough adequately rose. Then she would have to wait again while it baked and while it cooled before she and her family could consume it. It would have taken much time, effort, and skill before her bread baking could be considered a success.
Admittedly, my research on the measurement of the Hebrew ephah is inconclusive. If my findings are correct, then it would mean that the two loaves of bread that were presented as a wave offering before the LORD during the Feast of Weeks would each have to have been the size of 8 to 15 loaves of the bread with which we are familiar. Though it is possible that God required such gigantic loaves to be waved before Him, I can’t imagine the process was easy. So, I admit, my research or my math could be totally wrong, but what I do know is that three measures is a significant figure. Jesus specifically chose to mention this amount of flour in His parable for reason.
This isn’t the only time in Scripture that this amount of flour is mentioned. Interestingly, three seahs of flour is the exact amount Sarah used to make the bread that Abraham offered to the LORD and the angels with Him the day the LORD shared with Abraham that Sarah would soon conceive a son (see Genesis 18:6). An ephah is the exact amount of flour Gideon used to make bread for the LORD the day He showed up and called Gideon to deliver the Israelites from their enemies, the Midianites (see Judges 6:18-19). And three measures is the exact amount of flour Hannah took with her to the temple the day she dedicated her young son, Samuel, to the LORD and left him at the temple to serve the LORD (see 1 Samuel 1:24). This amount of flour appears to be the amount one offers when he/she meets God. Using three measures seems to be synonymous with offering one’s very best.
Like the sacrifices mentioned above, Christianity requires an exchange. When one gives his/her best—all of him/herself and all he/she possesses—to God, he/she receives back God’s best. Abraham, Gideon, and Hannah got way more from God in their exchange than they sacrificed. New Covenant Christians get an even better deal; when we give our all to Jesus; we get the Holy Spirit. Jesus called this abiding. “‘I am the Vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in Me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing’” (John 15:5). When one receives Jesus, he/she is in Christ; when one receives the Holy Spirit, Christ is in the Believer.
The Holy Spirit works in and through Christ-followers and accomplishes what is impossible in human strength. Maybe that is why Jesus told this parable including the stunningly surprising amount of flour. Even if my conclusions about the quantity of flour are off, we are still talking a lot of flour. It would require more than the power of one human to take that much flour and work in the necessary amount of leaven.6 Extra strength would have been necessary to knead and punch down that much dough. Average bowls would be inadequate to hold the mix. A normal number of pans could not hold the formed loaves. An ordinary kitchen wouldn’t have room to set out the pans. Regular ovens could not bake all that bread. Standard pantries could not store that much bread. And typical families could not consume that much before it went bad.
Though comparisons can be made, nothing in this world can adequately describe what the Holy Spirit can do through a people wholly dependent upon God. God gave His all to make a way for all people to have the opportunity to give their all back to Him. Though God gave way more than humans will ever be able to return, the relationship between God and His Children is mutualistic; both are blessed in the connection.
For more about this mutualistic relationship, check out my blog posts entitled, The Treasure and The Treasured.
1 Scripture quotations marked with ESV are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV), copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All Scriptures are taken from the ESV unless otherwise noted. To aid in understanding, I have capitalized references to God.
2 https://necsi.edu/mutualistic-relationships
3 Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the Holy Bible, King James Version.
4 https://www.dictionary.com/browse/leaven?s=t
5 https://www.gotquestions.org/Feast-of-Weeks.html
6 Note: Sarah and Gideon made unleavened bread and Hannah offered just the flour.