“No Bread?” – FBC Morning Light (10/28/2024)

Jesus Warns About the Leaven of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Herod

Well, good Monday morning to you. I hope you had a good weekend and gathered with God's people yesterday and are ready to take on the new week in serving of the Lord. Well, today in our Bible reading, we're in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, reading some parallel passages in each of those gospel accounts, Matthew 15, 16, Mark 7 and 8, and then a few verses in Luke 9.

I want to zero in on this account of Jesus telling the disciples in Matthew, he says, Matthew 16, to take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and in Mark's account, he says, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.

When you put the accounts together, Jesus was warning them, telling them to take heed, to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and Herod, the Herodians. When all is said and done, they come to understand that he was talking about the teaching of these three groups.

You could think about the teaching of the three groups in this way. The teaching of the Pharisees would be that of legalism, the teaching of the Sadducees would be that of liberalism, because they denied the supernatural, and the teaching of the Herodians would be that of worldliness, of secularism.

The Disciples Mistake Jesus’ Warning for a Comment About Bread

But that's not what I wanted to focus on. What I wanted to focus on is how the disciples responded to that exhortation. Listen to what it says. In Mark's Gospel, Mark's account, he gives us a little detail that Matthew's Gospel doesn't include, but it gives us some insight into how much more disappointing, perhaps, their response actually is.

We're reading in Mark 8, verse 14, it says, they got into a boat to depart to the other side, and it says, the disciples had forgotten to take bread, and they did not have more than one loaf with them in the boat.

And then Jesus charged them to take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod. And the disciples, hearing that, they reasoned among themselves, saying it's because we have no bread.

They heard the exhortation about leaven, and thought that Jesus was kind of rebuking them for not bringing bread. But Jesus clarified, he says he's aware of that, and he says to them, why do you reason because you have no bread?

Do you not yet perceive nor understand? Don't your eyes see? Is your heart still hardened? Is the heart hard? Now what's he getting at? Well, think about what's just happened in the recent past with these disciples.

Jesus says, having eyes do you not see? Having ears do you not hear? And do you not remember? Well, remember what? Then Jesus continues, he says, when I broke the five loaves for the 5 ,000, how many baskets full of fragments did you take up?

And you could hear the disciples kind of hanging their head a little bit, see them hanging their head a little bit, and just kind of mumbling, what, 12? And he says also, when I broke the seven for the 4 ,000, how many large baskets full of fragments did you take up?

And again, you see him kind of sheepishly saying, well, seven. And then Jesus says, so how is it you do not understand? Now, what they failed to understand was what Jesus' main point really was. Matthew tells us what that main point was.

He says, then they understood that he did not tell them to be aware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. So they finally get the point. But here's the thing in between the initial statement of, take heed, and their coming to understand the point.

They had a loaf of bread with them, and their interpretation of Jesus' take heed was, oh, you know, we're in trouble because we don't have enough bread for everybody to have some bread. You get the thing?

You get it now? That's why Jesus rebukes them. He says, you saw me take a few loaves of bread and a few fishes and feed 5 ,000. You saw me do the same thing with 4 ,000. Why is it that you're worried about not having any bread?

The thing is, they actually had a loaf of bread. They had a loaf of bread, which in the hands of Jesus is more than enough to feed those few disciples, and yet they lacked the faith. They lacked the faith to trust in Jesus for such a mundane thing, and therefore completely missed the point that he was trying to make.

Trusting Jesus for the Small Things

I wonder how often we do that same kind of thing. Am I really any different? I get so zoned in on one need or one trivial thing, and I miss what Jesus is trying to do, what Jesus is wanting me to learn in the encounter with his Word or in the situation that he's bringing me through in life.

I see the situation. I see the passage of Scripture, but I'm so distracted thinking about this one thing that's really irrelevant and in the grand scheme of things unimportant, and I miss the point. It's blinded my eyes.

It has hardened my heart to see and believe and receive that which Jesus has for me. How important it is that we keep our eyes fixed on him, that we nurture our faith, that we learn, what's the songwriter say?

Oh for grace to trust him more. Oh for faith to trust him more. Our Father and our God, I pray that you would increase our faith, you would grow us in grace and knowledge of Christ so that we do not become so consumed with inconsequential trivialities that we miss what you're really trying to teach us, we pray.

We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. All right, listen, I hope your week gets off to a great start today. Good day.