In Luke 13:20-21 Jesus shares the parable of the yeast. He says,
“What else is the Kingdom of God like? It is like the yeast a woman used in making bread. Even though she put only a little yeast in three measures of flour, it permeated every part of the dough.”
Just a little bit of yeast worked into the dough impacts the whole batch. This is what the kingdom of heaven is like. All you need is a little bit. That little bit cultivated works its way through the whole person.
Jesus warned the disciples in Mark 8:15, “Be careful,” Jesus warned them. “Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod.”
Yeast represents influence. Influence is the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something, or the effect itself. Jesus says, “Watch out for the teachings, the thoughts, attitudes, the actions and motivations of the Pharisees and of Herod.
The environment you keep on a regular basis, is the environment you feed off of and are nourished by. You conform to whatever you are influenced by. Whatever you are influenced by is what you are continually nourished by.
Jesus said it like this in Luke 11:34-36,
“Your eye is like a lamp that provides light for your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is filled with light. But when it is unhealthy, your body is filled with darkness. Make sure that the light you think you have is not actually darkness. If you are filled with light, with no dark corners, then your whole life will be radiant, as though a floodlight were filling you with light.”
“Make sure that the light you think you have is not actually darkness.” Wow. Meaning it’s possible to be deceived. There are a lot of fine sounding arguments out there that speak about our identity, purpose, and the image of God that are actually distorted and misrepresented. These are not ideas you want to be conformed to.
This is why Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10:3-5
“For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God.” Come on somebody! The more mature we become in the true knowledge of God the more aware we become of what is falsely called knowledge.