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Battle Creek Tabernacle SDA Church

Chris Holland

Leaven, Pharisees, and the Great Solution

And he left them and getting into the boat again departed to the other side.

Now the disciples had forgotten to take bread and they did not have more than 1 loaf with them in the boat.

Then he charged them saying, take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.

And they reasoned among themselves saying is it because we have no bread?

But Jesus being aware of it said to them, why do you reason because you have no bread?

And having ears do you not hear and do you not remember when I broke the 5 loaves for the 5000 how many baskets full of fragments did you take up and they said to him 12 also when I broke 7 for the 4000, how many large baskets full of fragments did you take up?" And they said, 7.

So he said to them, how is it you do not understand.

Just previous to the recording of this event, Jesus had just had a confrontation, a confrontation with Pharisees and the Sadducees over the issue of him performing a sign.

They wanted a sign from heaven demonstrating who he said he was, was a reality.

But Jesus challenged the Pharisees and Sadducees on their lack of belief.

And then Jesus and his disciples departed by boat.

The record of this event, as it is recorded in the book of Matthew, says that when they reached the other side, they realized something.

The disciples began to look at each other and they realized they only had 1 loaf of bread.

It is a circumstance that they had been in before.

But while their minds were focused on the issue of not having a loaf of bread and physical food, Jesus' mind was undoubtedly still fixed on the interaction that he had had with the Sadducees and with the Pharisees.

He was processing all of that and its application to life, belief, and practice.

And so while the disciples' focus of attention was on their physical food, Jesus was focused on spiritual life.

And in that moment, he utilized the disciples' distracted focus to teach them a valuable lesson.

And in verse 15 of Mark chapter 8, The Bible says, he charged them saying, take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.

It is an interesting combination of words used in the original language.

In fact, both words, take heed and beware, come from a word that means to see, but 2 different words.

The phrase take heed is the Greek word orao.

It literally is translated to look, to watch, to pay attention, to perceive, to behold, but it is often used in the context of spiritual perception.

It is 1 of the most common words used in the New Testament for seeing.

But then Jesus says, beware, or the word is translated beware, it is the Greek word blepo, which also means to see, but it is translated take notice, take heed, or watch out.

And when this word is used, it places a stronger emphasis on the actual function of the physical eye.

And this word blepo is often used with the Greek word akua, which means to hear.

And when you put those 2 together, that combination is regarded as the most important instruments of spiritual perception.

And so if we were going to translate this into a bit more modern vernacular, Jesus was saying this, listen, listen to me.

This was not something to be taken lightly, and frankly, everything that Jesus taught was not to be regarded lightly, but Jesus placed a special emphasis on what he was about to say.

Jesus began with these words to demonstrate to the disciples that there was extraordinary serious danger.

And what was that serious and present danger?

The leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.

When Matthew recorded these events, he recorded it as the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of the Sadducees.

In the Bible, yeast is often used in a negative context.

It is seen as something corruptible, which brings about further corruption.

You'll remember that during the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, every believer's home was to be searched and every bit of leaven was to be removed from the home.

This symbolically represented the removing of sin from the literal home and also representative of removing sin from your life.

In recent years, I have become very interested in bread making and pizza making.

The amazing thing about bread and pizza dough is you only need just a few ingredients.

In fact, in a moment of frustration as I was at the store purchasing bread 1 time, with the list of ingredients longer than the instructions on how to rebuild an engine, I in frustration told my wife, there are 4 things you need for bread.

Now the amazing thing was is that Christmas my wife bought me a book and the title of the book, flour, water, yeast, Salt.

And my illustration is dangerous as we approach the noon hour, that you might become more focused on bread rather than on the teaching.

If you want to make 4 12-inch classic pizza crusts, how much yeast do you need?

To make it in the most classic of ways, you need 1 third of a teaspoon of yeast, Or 1 and a half grams.

But you must allow it to rise, you must allow it time.

Then you're ready to start baking that pizza.

To make 2 large loaves of crusty artisan bread, just 4 grams of yeast, and it raises the whole thing over the course of 7 hours, powerful, just a little bit, makes an extraordinary difference.

Now in the time of Jesus, they didn't have instant dry yeast.

They couldn't go down to Apple Valley, they couldn't go down to the Something Better Natural Foods and purchase a block of yeast.

Rather, what they would do is they would allow the yeast of the air, so to speak, to create a yeast in the dough, and that dough would rise, and in order to not have to do that process over and over again, they would take off a portion of that dough, They would dry it, and when they went to make bread again, they would rehydrate it.

That method, that piece of dough could become easily corrupted and spoil and preserve bacteria that you really don't want in your bread.

And then when you would take that portion and rehydrate it and put it in your dough, not only would you multiply the yeast that you want, but you would multiply the pollutants, thus making the bread poisonous.

Leaven is powerful because it permeates the entirety.

Jesus warned against leaven, but not just any leaven.

The leaven of the Pharisees, the leaven of Herod, and the leaven of the Sadducees.

The Pharisees were 1 of the movements within Judaism.

They had their roots to the time of the exile when the children of Israel returned from Babylon back to the Holy Land.

It is at that time believed that the Pharisees were noted for their exact observance of the Jewish religion.

They were thought to be the ones that had preserved and gone back to the original Judaism.

They were known for their accurate exposition of the law.

They were known for their handing down of customs and traditions, customs and traditions that were outside of the Bible.

They were known for their belief of the interplay of fate and free will, and their belief in the coming resurrection, and their belief in angels.

And while we often speak of the Pharisees in Christian circles in a very negative sense, at the time of Jesus, the Pharisees were actually some of the most respected religious leaders.

When we read the ancient literature, both the Bible and outside of the Bible, it is interesting because the Pharisees are not only equated as being a religious group, but they are also characterized as a political party, a philosophical school, a scholarly class of individuals.

But the word Pharisee in its original language is derived from a Hebrew word which literally means the separated ones.

During the time of Jesus, the temple was essentially run by the Sadducees.

However, it was the Pharisees and their influence and teaching that influenced the common people.

He founded the capital, the city Tiberias as his capital city and he did so in honor of the Roman Emperor Tiberias.

He became enamored with his own niece Herodias.

She was the wife of his half-brother Herod II, also known as Philip.

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Leaven, Pharisees, and the Great Solution

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