Our text for this morning is Matthew 16 verses 1 to 12. Then the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and testing him, asked that he would show them a sign from heaven. He answered and said to them, When it is evening you say, It will be fair weather for the sky is red, and in the morning it will be foul weather today for the sky is red and threatening. Ivocrites, You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times. A wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the Prophet Jonah.

And he left them and departed. Now when his disciples had come to the other side, they had forgotten to take bread. Then Jesus said to them, Take eat and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. And they reasoned among themselves, saying, It is because we have taken no bread.� But Jesus, being aware of it, said to them, �O you of little faith, why do you reason among yourselves because you have brought no bread? Do you not yet understand, or remember, the five loaves of the five thousand and how many baskets you took up, nor the seven loaves of the four thousand and how many large baskets you took up.

How is it that you do not understand that I did not speak to you concerning bread, but to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Then they understood that He did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Heavenly Father, open our ears, reach into our hearts and preach to us from Your Word today. Please be when Scott slips as he brings us wonderful things out of Your law. In Jesus' name, Amen.

This text has so many wonderful qualities too. One of the things I love about it the most is that it begins with hard-hearted people who've seen a lot of signs and they don't understand. And they don't understand. But the text ends in verse 12 with something so wonderful and that is that you end up with understanding. The disciples understand.

And you have in your hands a book that is full of signs. There are signs everywhere. And every part of it has meaning. There are rocks, there are fires, there are clouds, there are millstones, there are staffs, There are so many pictures, there are so many signs in the Scriptures. And they are given to us for our help so that we would understand.

Now, in the text here today, the Sadducees and the Pharisees do not understand the signs, but The real problem is not really so much an intellectual problem. It's that they actually hate the Lord Jesus Christ, and they want to create something better than the signs that they've been given. And so, what we have here in this passage are the Pharisees who want to add to the Gospel, the Sadducees who want to take away from it. But the whole meaning I think falls down to verse 12. And you get the key to the entire text in verse 12, then they understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but the doctrine of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

So what the Lord is revealing to us here is that all of these physical signs that we see in Scripture, they're not just about physical things. They're about spiritual things. Why do the lame walk? Why are the blind eyes opened up? Why are ears unstopped?

Why is there a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire? Why is there a river? Why is there a mountain? Why is there anything in Scripture? It's to declare the glory of God.

It's there as a sign to show us how the world has been wired and how mankind might glorify God. So it's such a rich treasure of a book. And this is why it's just such a wonderful resource when you're raising your children, because it's just chock full of signs and all of them have meaning. And so here we're before a passage of scripture that has, as its subject, signs. And The passage opens up, though, in verse 1, with the Pharisees and the Sadducees testing the Lord Jesus Christ.

Then the Pharisees and Sadducees came and testing Him, asked that he would show them a sign from heaven. Now, we just departed the story of the disciples on a mountain with their Lord. And they were there with the multitude and they were there to learn, they were there to hear. But here now the Pharisees and the Sadducees have a completely different disposition. They've come to test, not to hear at all.

And what they want is something beyond what has been given. And this is the basis of most sin. Sin is always crouching at the door. And very often, sin is crouching at the door with a longing for something that God has not given. This is the basis of so many of our problems.

We long for something that God has not given. We're dissatisfied with what He has given us. And as a result, we fall into all kinds of disorder. It's because our hearts are not satisfied with what God has given as in anything in life, whether it's a sign or whether it's a wife or a child or a job, we tend to somehow despise what God has given because we want to replace it with something of our own invention. And here the Pharisees are of that kind of ilk.

Now, one of the things that we should recognize here about this passage is that what the Lord said, He's already said before. And we read about it already in Matthew chapter 12. So here the Lord is repeating something again. Remember the Lord has just fed 4, 000 when previously he had fed 5, 000. Now he's going to address a question with the same answer that he used back in Chapter 12 of Matthew.

And So this is the second time that He says this. And again, we're just reminded of how important it is to embrace the beauty of the repetition that God gives us in His Word. And here He is repeating things to us. He does that because of our forgetfulness. He does that because we might repent of something one day and then ten days later find that we need to repent of that same thing again, and we need to recall that same truth that we learned those earlier days.

Because we're always being brought back to something that's true, that contradicts something that we are all about. And so the Lord is doing that. Now, he's bringing this again to the disciples to remind them. One of the things that J.C. Ryle points out about this repetition pattern that we see here in the Gospels is that it shows us that we really don't have to harmonize every narrative.

Because the Lord seems to say some of the same things over and over again. In other words, we don't have to make Him say exactly what he said before. There's some that say, well, he said it differently. Here, it must be contradictory. No, that's not true at all.

It should help us to understand the way that God has given scripture to us. If we see something different, it means that it happened differently. He might have said it. He said it differently, and maybe in different circumstances. So because the same phrase appears in a different circumstance doesn't mean that a redactor or an editor added this later on.

It means that the Lord Jesus Christ is a good shepherd and He repeats things in different places, in different ways. So here we have the Lord doing that in this passage of Scripture. And the Pharisees come to him, and it seems so astonishing that they would say what they say here. They asked that he would show them a sign from heaven. I wish I could have seen the looks on the disciples' faces.

He's been healing all of these people. The lame are walking. The blind are seeing. It's astonishing what's happening. He's going to some places and He's healing everyone of every disease.

And the Pharisees are now coming up and saying, could you please show us a sign? And it's such a...it seems so out of place to me. But let's recognize how amazing unbelief is. I mean, What would it take for you to really believe? What did it take for you to believe?

But you might be asking this question yourself even this morning. What would it take for me to really believe? What kind of sign, what kind of evidence would I have to have to somehow believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Well this situation is so amazing to me because they are asking for another sign. And the truth is that the reason that they are asking for a sign is that they hate the Lord Jesus Christ.

That's why they're asking for a sign. It's not really a genuine question. You know, they're a little bit like the French philosopher Voltaire, you know, who is known for his incisive wit. He could just shred you in an argument. People hated to get in a debate with him because he would just lacerate them, because he was so bright.

But Voltaire, even when considering the whole matter of miracles, he said, even if a miracle should be wrought in the open marketplace before a thousand sober witnesses, I would rather mistrust my senses than admit a miracle." Well, that's just the same kind of hardness of heart that we see in the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Now, there are these two groups, so says the tax that came, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. And it's interesting because they're both at odds. On the one hand, the Pharisees had forsaken the commandment of God for the sake of their traditions. And on the other hand, the Sadducees had forsaken the Scripture because of their opinions.

They actually just preferred their own thinking rather than Scripture. And so it was a very similar kind of sin, but it worked out really to be the same basic issue. Now, the Pharisees were a religious group, they were a political group, they had a teaching function. And the information on the Pharisees is pretty concentrated in the Bible. You can find it in Matthew 15, 16, and 23.

That's where you get most of your instruction. If you want to learn something about the Pharisees, almost everything that in Scripture about them is said in those three chapters So they make a fairly easy study, but we we know that they They attacked the Lord Jesus many times because he ate with tax collectors and sinners, because they believe that the disciples were breaking the Sabbath because they were breaking the traditions of man. And here now, they're attacking him because they want him to give them a sign from heaven. But the Lord really exposed who they really were. They were the blind leaders of the blind.

He says, beware of their doctrine. He calls them hypocrites. And he says that they teach one thing, but they do another. And that they do what they do, that their works might be seen by men, and that they love the greetings in the marketplaces, and that they're actually preventing others from finding the kingdom of heaven. That's what Jesus says about them.

And while The Lord had many things to say about them. He never faulted them for their desire to strictly keep the law itself. He said, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments. But they were the working class people. They were conservative.

They were fundamental separatists. They were obedient to the law of Moses. They believed in the supernatural. They held to the rabbinic tradition higher than the Word of God. That was their big problem.

On the other hand, the Sadducees had rejected the doctrines of the supernatural nature of life. They didn't believe in angels, they didn't believe in the resurrection or the eternal state. They were just like the Pharisees. They wanted something beyond what God had given. They weren't satisfied with the signs that God had given necessarily.

They wanted something different. So they wanted to create their own version of spirituality. Now they really were strange bedfellows, were the Pharisees and the Sadducees. And they were at enmity with one another, but yet Christ here gives them an excuse to do something together, and that is to attack Christ. It was kind of like you know in World War II when when the United States aligned with Russia to go after Nazi Germany.

It was a strange alliance. It was sort of a foreboding alliance even at that time. Well, this is a foreboding alliance as well. Now, in the Book of Acts, the apostle Paul takes advantage of their hatred toward one another because he's dragged before the Sanhedrin. And the Pharisees and the Sadducees are there.

And the Apostle Paul, in just a moment of divine brilliance, he says, I'm on trial for the resurrection of the dead. And then the Pharisees and the Sadducees just ate each other alive like dogs. And the Apostle Paul was able to go his way. So they hated one another, but they were united in their hatred for the Lord Jesus. And that's what you see here in this passage.

But their objective was to test, to examine, to catch him in a mistake. And they just simply were not satisfied with the signs that they had been given. They want something beyond what is given. They want a new kind of leaven. They want something else that will grow, something else that will take authority in the human soul, something better than God.

It wasn't enough to have sign after sign on the earth. The healings of the multitudes, the water turned into wine. It was never enough. They wanted something more real than what already had been given. Because, you know, the unbeliever is never satisfied.

No matter what you give them, it's never enough. That's why the Apostle Paul in 1st Corinthians 10, when he speaks about what was happening in the wilderness and what it means for us, what the law means for us and what those narratives actually mean for us. He says, nor let us tempt Christ as some of them also tempted and were destroyed by servants, nor complain as some of them also." And they were destroyed by the destroyer. Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages has come. So they've come testing him.

And then in verse 2, the Lord answers their question. And It's interesting that Mark tells us that when they finish speaking, that the Lord Jesus sighed deeply in His Spirit and said, why does this generation seek for a sign? They want something more than has been given. God is not enough for them. They want some greater experience rather than what he's provided through the signs that he has already given.

And then the Lord, in his answer, he gives an illustration from the weather. He says to them, When it is evening, you say it will be fair weather, for the sky is red. In the morning it will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and threatening hypocrites. You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times. And so the Lord is saying, you know, it's so easy to understand the signs.

You see even the signs of the weather. You know how to do that. It's no different than that. It's no different than looking at the sky in the morning and having a warning of a storm. It's no different than looking at the sky in the evening and find comfort that there won't be a storm.

And he was referring to just a natural phenomenon that people still use today. You've heard the old saying, red sky at night, sailors delight, red sky at morning, sailors take warning. It's because the weather patterns tend to run eastward and when there's bad weather, there's low pressure and the pressure pushes the part particulates down and concentrates them so that when the sun is shining on them, they're refracting against one another and It's red. So when you see that at night, when you see a red sky at night, the storm is probably moving away from you. When you see it in the morning, the storm is that there's a low pressure system and it's coming toward you.

That's the whole thing. The Lord is just speaking of the same phenomenon. But the Lord is giving them an illustration that they understand that There are just certain ways that things work. They're obvious signs. They mean something.

And of course, He's comparing their longing for a sign with the signs that He's already given. And then The Lord exposes the reason why they're asking the question. And the reason is spiritual adultery. That's why they're asking the question. A wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, verse 4.

And so, when Jesus calls them an adulterous generation, the Pharisees and the Sadducees would immediately understand what he's talking about. He's referring to spiritual adultery, which is a big subject in the Old Testament. An entire book of the Old Testament, Hosea, is written on this matter of spiritual adultery, but it's mentioned all over the prophets. And Israel would play the harlot, and God would punish them for their harlotry. And so they understood what he was talking about, and he called them an adulterous generation.

Now when you're speaking to people who seem to hate the Lord Jesus Christ, they often do it in such a winsome way. They ask a question that just seems like such a profound question that you should answer. But often, you need to recognize where the question is really coming from. The question is not really the issue. And it wasn't with the Pharisees either.

And here the Lord is, I think, just helping us to understand how to speak to people who are contrary to the Gospel. He's showing us how to see through the sham and to be calm and collected and confident and not rattled by their questions. Because there's always something underneath the question. And here with the Pharisees, it was spiritual adultery that was beneath the question. So he addresses them at the point of their real issue, not at the point of their outward question.

Now, the Pharisees were masters of outwardness. They were portraying themselves in a certain way so that they might have glory for men, as the Lord told us in the in the Sermon on the Mount. They pray that way, they fast that way, that they might have glory for men. That's where all of their questions are coming from. And the root of it is spiritual adultery.

And he says here that the whole generation is like this. You have a whole apostate generation when the Lord Jesus comes. He comes at a time of great spiritual declension where there's such a falling away, where there's no satisfaction for the signs that God has given, where the religious leaders have become inventors and they want to create something different than what God has given. And they have so professionalized it that the whole generation has been affected by it. And later the Lord is going to say that it's leavened, and it has just been expanding, and it's written such great proportions that it seems to have like engulfed the entire generation.

That can happen. You might ask, has that happened to us in our generation? Well, it certainly did in this generation. I don't know how to gauge whether our generation is worse than another generation or not. I don't know.

I... There are so many fruits of the Gospel that still exist in our country. And all you have to do is travel to other nations to see how different this place is. And so I'm not ready to say that this is the worst place on the planet. I don't think it is.

But apostasy does have its degrees. Here, The Lord says that this whole generation had become this way. And they're seeking after a sign. A whole generation seeking after a sign. A whole generation not satisfied with what God has said, the signs he has delivered, and the ways that he's established for them.

They want something more. They want something different. An entire generation completely lost in their own emotions, their own desire for something different than God. And so it characterized the whole generation. And the term seeks, seeks after a sign.

Seeking is the striving of the heart, a longing for signs. And I think that you can see that in your own heart. I think that you can see that by degrees in various genres of Christianity. There are some genres of Christianity that spend all of their time trying to produce signs. And they will actually teach you how to produce them, you know.

To train you how to produce the phenomenon that will make everyone excited. And so they try to create this atmosphere of longing for signs. And in the same way that you know this happened in the Jewish church, it can happen in your church. It can happen in your heart. It can happen among the religious people that you know as well.

There can be such a seeking after a sign. You know, Pentecostals are quite well known for desiring signs. You know, most of the books on eschatology that sold well in the last 40 years were all about signs. When we were at Bible study, I think it was Dan that mentioned the book 88 Reasons Christ Will Come in 1988. People want a sign.

And then the Lord identifies an adequate sign in verse 4. And no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. Now you've gotten to an adequate sign. Now you've gotten to something that you can really rest your whole soul on. The sign of Jonah.

And here our Lord expresses his confidence in the Old Testament and in this sign of Jonah. And he's, Of course, he's obviously, you know, hearkening back to this great story. And again, this is the second time the Lord has spoken of this sign of Jonah. In chapter 12, verse 40, He says, for as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. And of course, the Lord, in that last time He swore to Him, He said, and the men of Minima are going to rise up and judge this generation.

And the Queen of the South, the Queen of Sheba, is also going to rise up in the resurrection and judge that generation for longing for a sign and not being satisfied with the signs that God gave them. And so this is all about the resurrection. You know, Jonah was three days and three nights, in the belly of the fish, and our Lord was in the grave three days and three nights. So Jonah is a prophecy of the death and the burial and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, this is one of the most wonderful stories that God has given to us.

You know, Jonah is called to Nineveh. He gets on a boat going in the opposite direction of Nineveh. And a storm arises. The crew begins to jettison the cargo. And then Jonah comes and he admits his sin.

They throw him overboard. A large fish swallows him and belches him on the beach in Nineveh. You know, from the boat to the belly to the beach to preach the gospel. It's a remarkable story. And I don't know if you knew this.

Nineveh means fish town. Did you know that? Because the Assyrian legends maintained that the Assyrian art and science actually came from a half fish, half man named Wanis, O-A-N-N-E-S, in the Greek language. And so Fishtown got a big fish that belched up a prophet to come and preach the gospel to them. It's an absolutely fantastic story.

But the Pharisees were not regarding it as highly as they ought to have regarded. They wanted something different. They wanted something more because of the hardness of their hearts. Now it's really interesting to consider that the Lord here uses this language for this whole situation because Muslims used this story of Jonah to prove that Jesus Christ never died and was resurrected. One of the characteristics of Islam is that Jesus was not crucified, nor did He die.

Islam has the Lord Jesus on the way with a cross on His back, giving it to someone else, and then being taken by Allah to Heaven. And he was never crucified, and he never died. So, Muslims go back to this statement, and they say the Lord Jesus is resting the entire argument that Jonah was in the whale, and he was alive. So, Jesus Christ was alive, and he never died. That's what the Muslims say.

And so they point, if you're ever in conversation with Muslims, you'll often end up in Matthew chapter 16. And they'll try to prove to you that Jesus Christ was never crucified. Because the only sign that will be given is the sign of Jonah. And what they'll say to you is, see, Jesus puts all of his eggs in this one basket. Why don't you?

That's what they say. So while Muslims believe in miracles, they pray to the Lord Jesus, they believe he was a great prophet, they do not believe that he died and rose again. Of course, the Bible does say that Jesus was crucified and that he died and that he rose again. So it's easy to refute their argument. If you turn to 1 Corinthians 15, verse 3, you'll read, For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures." I don't know how much plainer anyone would want to get.

You could go to Hebrews chapter 12 verse 2. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." In other words, he was on the cross and he went into the grave and he arose to the throne of God. Or you could turn to Revelation chapter 5 verse 9 where they sang a new song that goes like this, you are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals because you were slain and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation." So he was slain, he was in the grave, he was on the cross, and he did rise again. So don't use Matthew 16 to try to legitimize a ridiculous Islamic argument, which is easily refuted by dozens of passages of Scripture. So the Lord is saying the only sign that they'll be given is the prophecy of Jonah.

They don't need any more. And the problem is that they just don't trust the Scriptures alone. That's really their problem. The human heart craves for a sign. Now, The source of the craving for a sign among the scribes and the Pharisees was unbelief.

So we know what their craving for a sign was. But I want to take this quality of human nature and I want to apply it to a different kind of craving for a different kind of sign. And you might think this is a little bit of a rabbit trail. But I want us to consider that there's another category of seeking for a sign that actual Christians whose hearts are bent toward the Lord sometimes have and sometimes are afflicted by. And there is a tendency to over-exalt signs in your salvation.

For example, whenever you repent of your sins, You might ask, was it deep enough? And you might say, no, it wasn't deep enough. And then you might repent again and again and say, no, it wasn't deep enough then either. And you're looking for some sign of getting somehow when you've gotten to the bottom of everything. You've gotten to the bottom of everything.

You've gotten to the bottom of your sins. You finally repented of everything, and now everything is done. And you somehow want to have this assurance that you did get to the bottom of everything. You never get to the bottom of everything in your repentance. I don't believe anyone has ever repented deeply enough, because God is continuing to work in your heart to deepen it even more.

And if you're looking back to a repentance for your salvation as a sign, you should reconsider it. Because It wasn't the human act of a repentance that saved you. It was something far greater than that. God does call us to repent, absolutely. But it's a mistake to make that the sign.

You might look to your emotions and say, it wasn't strong enough. My tears weren't enough. Like, for example, I have a friend who was saved and he cried all morning. I didn't cry at all. Maybe I didn't repent.

Maybe my repentance wasn't true because I didn't cry enough. Or maybe my repentance wasn't true because I'm not godly enough. As if your salvation rests upon your godliness and the outward evidences of your faith. Your faith does not rest on the outward evidences of your faith. It doesn't rest on how long you cried or how deep you repented.

Your faith cannot rest on that. It simply is not enough. It's not an adequate sign. And so your salvation is not dependent upon some outward sign. The depth of your repentance, the strength of your emotions, the volume of your tears, or the godliness of your lives.

Those are not the signs. They may be some outward indications, but you cannot rest your faith on that. You have faith on that. The proof of your salvation rests upon the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And your faith, your belief in the resurrection and in the justification of the Lord Jesus Christ.

It is only the substitutionary, atoning work of Jesus Christ that says, not your opinion, not your tears, not your repentance. It's not an experience. It's something far beyond that. While it does include experience, It may include all the things that I just listed. And it must include repentance.

The Apostle Paul in Acts chapter 20 verse 21 states so clearly in such a helpful and summary manner, what salvation is about, where he says that he was testifying to both Jews and Greeks repentance toward God and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ. Those are the two things. And there are other... That is the only foundation and sign of faith, is the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so the question is, do you have repentance toward God?

And don't say, well, was it deep enough or wide enough? It'll never be deep enough or wide enough. Now the true Christian desires it to be all the way deep. But then he finds out that it wasn't quite as deep as he thought. Because God is doing a progressive work of sanctification in him.

And he's progressively showing him his sins. He doesn't just leave him where he is. He saves him, he's dead at his trespasses, and then He puts him on the upward call of God. It is an upward call. But his faith is not in the repentance and how thorough and careful it was.

His faith is in the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ accepts the true repentance of a saint. Peter said, for you know it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish and defect. So our salvation, if it's true salvation, can only rest on one foundation, Jesus Christ and His sacrifice on the cross, whose grace is greater than all of your sins. You might say, well, I'm going through a bad period. I must not be a Christian.

Well, that may be true. But it's not always true. But for anyone to rest their faith on anything but the shed blood of Jesus Christ, then they have rested their faith on a faulty foundation. And so what we should ask is, do I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God? Do I Have faith in His death and resurrection.

Do I hate my sin and am I repenting of it? The foundation of one's salvation is not your tears. It's not the measure in your own mind of your repentance. Repentance. It is the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish and without defect.

That's why the Apostle Paul said that we are justified by faith, not by works. So we should always consider whether the sign that we have in our mind is the right sign. I don't want anyone to hear me say, and I think you know me well enough to know, that I'm not advocating an unrepentant life. That would be ridiculous. I hope no one is thinking I'm saying that it doesn't matter how you live.

I think you've been around here long enough to know that But the phenomenon that rests at the bottom of our salvation is the resurrected Lord. That's the foundation. So the Pharisees wanted something different. They did not want the sign of Jonah. They did not want the death and the resurrection of Christ.

They wanted something else. But then in verse 4, the Lord just leaves. He departs quickly. And they're now gone. And then the disciples are with him.

And in verses 5 through 12, we come now to the second section. And the disciples are with the Lord. And it says in verse 5 that they had forgotten to take bread. They had no food. Somebody dropped the ball.

There was forgetfulness in the boat. The disciples messed up. And then Jesus says to them, take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. So it's kind of a strange response. They've forgotten the bread.

And it says so that they're discussing it among themselves. They're actually arguing. Matthew uses the same word that he uses when the disciples are arguing about who's the greatest. They were having an argument. So here you have the Lord's disciples.

They're arguing and they're forgetful. And here again is just another picture of the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ. He's walking with His disciples. And his disciples are like these disciples here, all of us together. We're forgetful and we often bicker with one another, like we should not, but we do.

And here the Lord is with these kinds of disciples. And he says, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. And so, you know, what is the leaven? And so he mentions two kinds of leaven. There's the leaven of the Pharisees, that's one kind.

And then there's the leaven of the Sadducees, that's another kind. Now, if you short-circuit over to the Gospel of Mark, Mark talks about the leaven of Herod, over there. So, there are at least three kinds of leaven that the Lord is dealing with here. And the leaven of the Pharisees is the traditions of man are exalted. The commandments of God are nullified for the sake of their tradition.

They even dishonor their father and mother for the sake of their tradition. Their heart is far away from God. The Lord says this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. Their heart trusts in observances and things that are outward. And so they were much better at managing their outward life than they were managing the inward life.

It was so easy for them to clean the outside of the cup. So what is the leaven of the Pharisees? You have to ask that question. It was probably a number of things, but the leaven of the Pharisees is the accumulation of man-made laws that are designed to show people that they're clean. Outward manifestations that are contrary and additional to scripture.

And so they taught that outward things made you clean inwardly. And so our Lord here in diagnosing the problems of man and how man tries to reconcile himself to God through outward appearances is identifying the Pharisees as the teachers of that kind of leaven. And because They believe that the defilement came from without. Jesus said it comes from within. That the heart represents who we are.

There's only one solution to the real pollution that we have. And so, but the Pharisees want something beyond what has been given. It's a leaven of outward performance. And he's saying, beware of the leaven of outward performance. And then there's the leaven of the Sadducees.

Now the leaven of the Sadducees is a little bit different. It comes out of the same well. But it's liberalism. It's anti-supernaturalism. These were the aristocratic, powerful deal makers.

They were the political collaborators. They were pragmatists. They made a lot of money off the sacrificial system. But they cared nothing for the scriptures. This world was all they had.

And they rejected the traditions of the elders. I think today's Sadducees are sort of the intellectuals who have a little of the Bible. They accept some of the words of Jesus, but not the others. They're kind of like Thomas Jefferson, you know, who got his scissors and cut out the parts that didn't seem to appeal to him very well. They're the people that reject the virgin birth and the creation of the world, the way that it's stated literally in the Bible.

And then there's the leaven of Herod. Now, the leaven of Herod, while the Pharisees wanted to add to the Gospel, while the Sadducees wanted to take away from the Gospel, Herod wanted nothing to do with the Gospel at all. His God was his belly. And because of it, he was afraid of everyone. He was afraid of the people.

He was afraid of his peers. He was afraid of his wife. He was just completely driven by fear, because he did not believe that God controlled everything. He felt like he could manipulate everything. The leaven of Herod is the fear that comes from worldliness and sensuality and brutality and insecurity.

That's the leaven of Herod. So Jesus' warning of these three different kinds of leaven. And so in verse 7, the disciples are reasoning among themselves, saying, it's because we've taken no bread. They're not thinking about the spirituality of the signs. They're not thinking about how deep the signs are.

It's escaping them that all of these signs are meant for them. The lame walking, the blind, the rock, the river, The fish, the beach, the Ninevites, everything that God has given is a sign. But they're not thinking spiritually. They're only thinking about physical things. They've been affected by this whole leaven of the Pharisees.

Jesus was speaking about spiritual things when He fed the 5, 000. They thought He was just feeding 5, 000, and it was miraculous and wonderful. But no, He had something far more in the feeding of the five and the four thousand than just giving bread. It was a sign that meant something more wonderful than just it did on the outside. So they're reasoning among themselves, they're arguing.

Now you might say, well how can they be so dull? And you know, on the one hand you see them, you know, godly, and then you see them like this. You know, how could they be at the same time righteous and sinful? Because that's what the disciples of the Lord Jesus are. And their forgetfulness, their poor treatment of one another, their blaming one another, is all part of their flesh.

And then the Lord asks three questions. The first question is about their conversation about the bread. He says, he's aware of it and he said to them, oh you of little faith, why do you reason among yourselves because you've brought no bread. So he's speaking to them about their lack of faith. Now notice it was not no faith, it was little faith.

It wasn't that they had no faith. They were believers, they were disciples of Jesus Christ. But they had little faith, but not no faith. It's possible that your little faith can look like no faith from outward appearances. But here it was little faith, not no faith.

Sometimes disciples have little faith. It doesn't mean that they're not saved when they have little faith. It can mean that they have no faith. But here we have an example of the patience and the mercy of Jesus Christ with those who have little faith. It's the strength of His blood sacrifice on the cross that justifies sinners, not the greatness of their faith.

But it says that their hearts were actually hardened back in the previous narrative about this. The Lord in Mark chapter 6 comes they think they think he's a ghost walking across the water And he says take courage in his eye and their hearts were hardened There can even be some level of hardness of heart in a disciple. And then the second question is, do you remember the loaves? Don't you understand? Remember the five loaves and the 5, 000?

How many baskets you took up? Nor the seven loaves and the 4, 000 and how many large baskets you took up? And then the third question is, why didn't you understand it? How is it that you do not understand that I did not speak to you concerning bread, but to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees? And then that beautiful line in verse 12, they understood.

Then they understood. They understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and the Sadducees." You know, it took a long time, didn't it? It took two feedings of thousands of people, lots of instruction in between, and now, Finally, they understand. Can you possibly relate with that? About things that are so obvious in Scripture, they don't occur to you instantaneously.

But with instruction and the patience of your Master, then you come to what God is saying to you. That's what it means to walk with Jesus Christ. And so the feeding of the five thousand was just an example, it was just a sign. It wasn't about the food. It was about spiritual things.

He was feeding them to show them a spiritual thing, not to feed their bellies. It was about what you feed your soul with. It's about what kind of leaven is in you and growing in you. It's about, is it the leaven of the Pharisees? Is it the leaven of the Sadducees?

Is it the leaven of Herod? What leaven is growing in you? And He's giving you bread to eat His bread. And of course, He's saying, eat My bread. Drink my cup.

I am the vine and you are the branches. I mean, come to my table. That's what he's been... We're so odd about the feeding of the 5, 000. How could you not be?

That wasn't even what he meant about it. He meant to talk. He meant it. That there's something that you take into your soul. There's a kind of leaven that you take that will grow.

It's a silent killer that will expand in your soul. Don't eat that bread. Eat my bread. He wasn't talking about diet. He was talking about spiritual things.

There's a lot of yeast out there in the world. You can eat it, but you better know what's going to happen when you eat it. It's going to grow. But there's the bread of life out there. And you better know what happens when you eat that bread.

It nourishes. It satisfies. It's enough. Okay, I'm going to give you some applications. Number one, beware of the invisible warfare of leaven in your soul.

Beware of the invisible leaven, the warfare of that leaven in your soul. Now, a lot of us have imbibed a bunch of bad leaven. I read a really interesting book last week called Undercover Revolution by Ian Murray, How Fiction Changed Britain. He's talking, His whole proposition of the book is that it wasn't the scientific writers of the 19th century that had the most influence on bringing the whole moral character of the British people down to the dregs. He says that it was fiction writers, not the scientific writers.

And he tells this whole story of how literature is developing in England in the 19th century and how in 1870 the majority of the books were religious. Fiction was number five on the list. Sixteen years later, fiction is number one, and everybody is drinking in. These fictional writers, all of them are at war with God, is what he says. He says this, words are powerful things, and none can be more injurious than those found in fiction." That's Ian Murray.

And he goes on to tell that these writers, these fiction writers, were saying they were presenting something better than the Christian life something that did not need God a life that didn't require prayer a life that didn't require repentance it didn't require salvation at all in many ways it was a sunny life offered by these authors, but it was a life that had no God in it. And it was a portrayal of real life instead of what life should be. I'm just quoting from him. He said it was literature where of no authority, no punishments, no taboos, no God, no country, no family, more play, less work. Do as you please.

He says it's that kind of fiction writing that destroyed Britain. It's the leaven of Herod Beware of the leaven of Herod Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees the outward religion beware of the critical anti supernaturalistic worldview of the Sadducees This is a war of leaven growth going on in your soul. Number two, beware of your own inventions. Calvin said this, hints, it follows that leaven is the name given to every foreign admixture, as Paul also tells us, that faith is rendered spurious as soon as we are drawn aside from the simplicity of Christ. Again, I just want to take us back that man is justified by faith alone, not by works.

The simplicity of Christ. That is the simplicity of Christ. Do you trust the simplicity of Christ? I don't mean to comfort anyone in their state of rebellion. I don't want to comfort anyone in their lostness and how they have duped themselves to think that they're saved I'm not I don't want to do that But I but I do want to urge us as a church to cast all of our lives on the shed blood of Jesus Christ alone.

You cannot cry your way enough. You can't repent your way enough. You can't do good enough to save you. You can't. Number three.

The Lord did speak about bread and his sufficiency. Stop worrying about everyday life issues. Your income, your future, your food, stop worrying about it. These are just earthly things. They're not the reason that you're alive anyway.

God will take care of you. Do what God has given you to do with all of your heart and stop worrying about your bread. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Number four, we see the failings of the disciples, and we see the sufficiency of His grace. So here we are in another passage of Scripture with some astonishing pictures, signs for us.

And we learn again that the miracles are meant to impart a spiritual lesson, that they're not strictly physical in nature. And the spiritual hunger, the spiritual blindness, the spiritual mute, the spiritual lame is met by the Lord Jesus Christ. And man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And I hope that we have a vision here somehow today of how shriveled and pinched and truncated we become when we have forgotten the bread of life and we are in the leaven of this world and calling it righteous. And calling it righteous.

Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Would you pray with me? Lord, we pray you would help us to understand your will to trust in Your great work of redemption, in the sending of Your Son as the foundation of our faith. I pray You'd make us a repentant and humble people. I pray that You would help us to trust completely in Your mercy.

I pray, Father, that we would be careful and discern the meaning of the leaven in our lives. Amen. Thanks for watching!