Sneaky Yeast
Notes
Transcript
The religious elite again try to test/tempt Jesus by asking for a “sign from heaven” - presumably to denounce his magic tricks as coming from “the other place.” Jesus again refuses and offers the “sign of Jonah” - a veiled hint to his coming death and resurrection in three days. He then warns his disciples, who will be leaders of his church, against the sneaky-but-powerful yeast of the religious elite: hypocrisy. Performative righteousness is the easiest and most natural outcome of religious communities… and Jesus hates it. Let us purge it with the “with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”
Jesus Hates Actors
Jesus Hates Actors
I’m offended by that. I loved my own time acting, I love the theater and movies… and sometimes TV.
What does Jesus have against actors?
Half a dozen sermons I’ve said something about Jesus hating Actors.
This is a beautiful thing about preaching through the Word of God. I don’t just bring up my favorite topics or spend time on only the things I think are important. There can be a time for that, but it runs the risk of reflecting my own misconceptions about what is important.
When we walk through a book, like Matthew, we spend time on exactly what Jesus spent his time and attention on. What Matthew the Apostle draws our attention to in the life of Jesus.
So if it seems like this keeps coming up, that should tell us something about how important Jesus thought this was.
Back to the House of Israel
Back to the House of Israel
From serving the Gentiles, Tyre and Sidon, then the Decapolis, now it’s back to the House of Israel. Let’s see for just how long.
39 And after sending away the crowds, he got into the boat and went to the region of Magadan.
Don’t know exactly where Magadan is… but somewhere back near his usual haunts, and populated by Pharisees and Sadducees.
1 And the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and to test him they asked him to show them a sign from heaven.
Pharisees and Sadducees
Pharisees and Sadducees
We have heard a lot from the Pharisees… and they were a pretty numerous party. They believe in the Law AND the Prophets AND the Writings, all the books that Jesus quotes as authoritative, the Pharisees agree.
The Pharisees believe in the Resurrection from the Dead, actually a lot in common with Jesus, it would seem.
The Sadducees were a much smaller group, numerically, but centered around the capital, Jerusalem, and wielding major influence in the temple. Small but mighty.
They only accept the Torah as authoritative. They don’t believe in the Resurrection of the Dead… so they were sad, you see? So good.
So both of these groups coming together, it’s like saying the “Republicans and the Democrats” came to Jesus. Opposed parties coming together, this is in total the religious elite of the House of Israel. What can the opposing parties agree on? Jesus is a threat. Jesus is a problem.
So they ask “to test him.”
Whenever we see “test” in the New Testament, we should ask if this is a “test” or “trial” or a “temptation.” Same word in Greek… the difference is in intention. Do they want Jesus to succeed or fail?
They are trying to tempt him, trip him up, show him to be a failure. And the “sign from heaven” is part of it.
Sign from Heaven
Sign from Heaven
Recall they have already accused Jesus of working miracles by the power of Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies. Jesus has done so many signs, so why specifically a “sign from heaven?”
Matthew, Mark and Luke use this same phrase… and they clearly mean something they don’t think Jesus can do. They clearly intend it as a trap.
And Jesus knows it. He answers them, in some ways taking “sign from heaven” in a totally different way.
2 He answered them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’
3 And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.
These are people who live near the lake, people near water have discovered this wisdom as long as we can remember. We have phrases like:
Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning,
Red sky at night, sailors' delight
Because the color of the sky can reflect a high pressure system (more air, more color) and storms tend to move from West to East. High pressure in the West means stable air coming. High pressure in the East means, possibly, the good weather has past already, low pressure to the West and storm incoming.
Obvious signs in the heavens… but not what they meant.
But there’s another sign they are missing. The “signs of the times.”
(The magi?)
Signs of the Times
Signs of the Times
This is not a common phrase in Scripture, though it has become a common phrase in the church world. It comes from here, and not really anywhere else.
The Magi saw “signs of the times” in the actual heavens. Faithful prophets and prophetesses saw “signs of the times” and recognized the Messiah as a baby. But the vast majority of people, even with Jesus right in front of them, don’t see their Messiah, their Savior, their God incarnate.
When this came up in Matthew 12 Jesus decried this whole generation for not seeing the Messiah right in front of them, again when Pharisees sought a sign.
4 An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.” So he left them and departed.
Sign of Jonah
Sign of Jonah
He doesn’t explain what the Sign of Jonah is, but Jesus did give more detail back in Matthew 12.
40 For just 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.
It is the death and resurrection of Jesus that will be the ultimate sign from heaven. And some of those Pharisees and Sadducees will believe. Acts tells us many in the temple did, and they would be distributed amongst these parties.
“So he left them and departed.”
So Jesus made it how long in Judea? Reads like a few minutes. Back across to the “other side” of the lake again.
But this conversation seems like it sits with Jesus. It bothers him deeply. And after however long it takes them to travel across the lake, presumably hours, he brings it up again.
5 When the disciples reached the other side, they had forgotten to bring any bread.
6 Jesus said to them, “Watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”
I picture them discussing the “bread situation” amongst themselves and Jesus chiming in. And maybe it’s the non-sequiter, they aren’t thinking about the Pharisees and Sadducees anymore, so it’s got to be about the bread, right?
7 And they began discussing it among themselves, saying, “We brought no bread.”
Amazing.
8 But Jesus, aware of this, said, “O you of little faith, why are you discussing among yourselves the fact that you have no bread?
9 Do you not yet perceive? Do you not remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many baskets you gathered?
10 Or the seven loaves for the four thousand, and how many baskets you gathered?
If I want bread, I can make bread!
11 How is it that you fail to understand that I did not speak about bread? Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”
12 Then they understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
Oh, then they understood exactly what he’d already said.
Leaven
Leaven
So what is this leaven all about?
“Leaven” is yeast.
We encountered “leaven” recently as a sign of the Kingdom of God, the smallest bit can be powerful. This is the rare case where leaven is a good thing.
The most common reference is to Passover, coming next week. As part of the Exodus, they left Egypt so fast they didn’t have time to let the bread rise (Exod 12:39), they had not prepared any provisions.
So, as part of the preparation for Passover, they cleaned the whole house to be sure there wasn’t any leaven whatsoever in the house. Seven days of crackers (Deut 16:3). No leaven in all the territory.
But MOST of the time in Scripture, leaven is used as a metaphor for sin. It isn’t allowed in any of the offerings or sacrifices to God.
Leaven infects the whole batch, it changes the whole thing, this time in a bad way. It is sneaky, just a tiny bit can change and transform it all. Leaven grows and spreads, yeast multiplies and soon the whole loaf is rising.
So what is it about the Pharisees and Sadducees “teaching” that is “leaven?” They don’t even have that much in common, they disagree about most things, what do they agree on?
We don’t have to guess, Luke records Jesus laying it out clearly:
1 In the meantime, when so many thousands of the people had gathered together that they were trampling one another, he began to say to his disciples first, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.
Consistently Jesus’ phrase for the Pharisees and now the Sadducees. “Hypocrisy.” A word Jesus gave a new meaning to. In Greek, it just means “actor” but Jesus consistently points at the performative righteousness of the religious, an outward showing and faking of righteousness, concealing their inner sin and thoughts.
It’s a performance.
Hypocrisy
Hypocrisy
This weighs so powerfully on Jesus. It bothers him.
This word has shown up a few times. First back in the Sermon on the Mount. Either judging and condemning others for their sin: a speck in their eye while ignoring the plank in your own. Or for your good deeds to be seen by men: giving alms.
Hypocrites. Virtue Signaling. It deeply bothers Jesus.
It’s incredible when you think how much sin he must see around him every day, but this offends him. Bothers him all across the lake. And he gets Old Testament on it.
In his most Old Testament prophetic moment, Jesus calls down Seven Woes upon the Scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 23… and it’s all about this hypocrisy. Specific examples of it.
3 so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice.
And then words like this:
13 “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.
Religious Hypocrisy: Performative Righteousness
Religious Hypocrisy: Performative Righteousness
Let’s think about how this happens.
I think this is the most natural thing in the world in a religious context.
Maybe you’ve been serious about religion for awhile. Pharisee… or Christian. You should be growing, getting better, right? You’ve been going to “church” for 10, 20 years. At this point it’s embarrassing to admit that you’re having a hard time.
Or struggling with temptation.
Trapped in Anger. Still.
Battling depression. Still.
Fell back into a cycle of sin. Gluttony. Pornography. Slander. Gossip.
So it’s hard to admit. It’s hard to be honest. It’s hard to be real.
So, just pretend. Pretend to have it together one week. And then the next. Pretend it’s not a problem.
Even better if you can deflect to someone else’s problem. Point the finger so no one points at you.
Best if you can make “their” sins worse than your sins. So far Jesus has saved his harshest words for hypocrisy, not anything on my list of “worse sins.” And the rest of the New Testament has slander and gluttony right up there with sexual immorality.
So it seems incredibly natural to deflect, to hide. We get rewarded in the eyes of men and hopefully can make it “right with God” on the back end.
It’s natural. But it’s the sneaky yeast, the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
Beware, Jesus says. There could be nothing further from “Christianity.”
Passover is Coming
Passover is Coming
What is the antidote to hypocrisy? The antidote to performative righteous?
One is Service. Simple, subtle, humble service. We will talk about that Spiritual Discipline after lunch today. Not the big performance of service, the simple and practical, the menial, the task stuff. More about that later.
But Scripture gives us another antidote to hypocrisy.
Truth. Sincerity.
Pure and simple.
Confess your sins to one another.
To say “I am a Christian" should be to say “I am a sinner saved by grace.” A beggar telling others where to buy bread.
Church should be more like AA… and that means Christians have to be more like Alcoholics. That's tarts, first, step 1, with “I have a problem”, I am a sinner saved by grace.
Some of our most beautiful moments, most real, most Christian moments come in the mess here at the mic. Others, in the mess over coffee, or dinner.
What does this have to do with Passover?
Why do I connect Passover with Hypocrisy? Because Paul does.
6 Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?
7 Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.
8 Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
In a special way, this next week, we have opportunity to do this. In Passover we remember the Exodus. We, our adopted grafted family, we had a problem, we were helpless to fix it alone… God saved us by the blood of the lamb.
We remember Jesus, the Passover Lamb. We were in slavery to sin and death. We were helpless to fix it on our own. He saved us by the blood of the Lamb.
NOT ignoring the sin. Certainly not boasting in it, that’s the context of the rest of chapter 5. Taking it seriously, confessing sin as sin, and humbly coming to the Passover Lamb who takes away the sins of the world… and the sins of me.
This is the antidote to hypocrisy, truth at the foot of the cross.
