33 He told them still another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough." 34Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. 35 So was fulfilled what was spoken through the prophet: "I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world."I really appreciated what Tom wrote yesterday concerning the parable of the mustard seed. In that parable, Jesus shows how the kingdom starts small, but it grows, and Tom shared how in his own life, God has used a little seed of faith to grow into a healthier spiritual life. That's how the kingdom works--God takes something small and causes it to grow.
The message of the parable of the yeast is basically the same as with the mustard seed. Just as an itty-bitty mustard seed grows into a large plant, just a pinch of yeast causes an entire loaf of bread to rise. It doesn't take much. A little yeast goes a long way. And in the same way, the kingdom of God might start small. It might look insignificant. But then it spreads. It can't be contained in one little corner of the globe. By its very nature, it spreads.
These two parables--the mustard seed and the yeast--are coupled together, and what they show is this: God can do a lot with a little.
We see it happen over and again throughout the Bible. In Genesis 6-7, God sees that the people of the world had become wicked, and he became grieved that he had made man. But there was one righteous man. Out of all the people in the world, there was one guy who obeyed God--Noah. So when God wipes out mankind with a flood, he uses one man and his family to preserve the human race. God can do a lot with a little.
Later on, God speaks to Abraham and tells him that he would make him into a great nation. But there is a problem. Abraham is old, and his wife is old. They have no children, and at this point in life, they're in the market for walkers, not baby strollers. Even though no one would have expected it, God gives Abraham and Sarah a son. God uses one man to turn the impossible into a reality. God can do a lot with a little.
After a few hundred years, Abraham's descendants find themselves in slavery in Egypt. They don't look like the mighty nation that Abraham had probably envisioned when God made a covenant with him. But God appears to Moses, and he takes this reluctant man with a stuttering problem to lead the Israelites out of slavery. And when they finally get to the promised land, they aren't as numerous or mighty as the native inhabitants, but God drives out the Canaanites and gives the land to Israel. God can do a lot with a little.
After the Israelites get settled in, some of the other nations start to oppress them because of their constant disobedience. On one occasion, the Midianites take charge, and the Israelites cry out to God to deliver them. So God appears to Gideon, who protests, "My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family!" (Jdg. 6:15). When Gideon does get an army together, God tells him that he has too many men, so God dwindles the army down from 32,000 men to just 300! And with those 300 men, God defeats the massive Midianite army and rescues Israel. God can do a lot with a little.
And all of this just takes us up to the book of Judges! We could look at a lot of other Scriptural examples. God takes a shepherd boy named David, the youngest son in his family, and makes him into the greatest king in Israel's history and an ancestor of Jesus himself. If we look in the New Testament, we see Jesus taking a few loves of bread and a couple fish and multiplying them into a meal that feeds thousands. God takes a ragtag group of twelve men--none of whom are the movers and shakers of society--and within just a few decades he uses them to spread the church throughout the world. He also takes Saul/Paul--a man who had persecuted the church, a man who called himself "the worst of sinners"--and he uses him to take the gospel to the Gentiles and to have perhaps a greater impact on the church than anyone else other than Jesus.
Even in history since the time of the Bible, God has continued to do a lot with a little. He used a German monk named Martin Luther to remind the church that grace is a gift that we can't earn with our good behavior. He used a nun named Mother Teresa to minister to the broken and the sick in India for almost fifty years and to inspire millions of people globally. He used a college minister named Roy Weece to baptize over 10,000 people into the family of God. God really can do a lot with a little.
So how can God use us? How can he use a little church in southwest Missouri to impact the world for Christ? How can he use your family to minister to an entire neighborhood? How can he use you share his love with your coworkers and friends?
Sometimes we might feel like God can't use us. We might say, "I'm just too old / young / shy / uneducated / poor / untalented / insignificant to be used by God." But over and over again, God has shown what he can do with people who have no other qualifications other than their willingness to be used by him. So our job is to be a mustard seed in the hand of the planter. It's to be yeast in the hand of the baker. It's too be the kid who brings his sack lunch to Jesus so he can use it to feed the crowds. Because God can do a lot with a little.
David Heffren
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