We’ll be reading both the section before and the section after those verses that are listed in your bulletin, but we will be focusing on those, verses 14 through 21. A few weeks ago, David Strain taught from Leviticus 2 and in that passage he explained how the Israelites were not to use leaven and honey in their grain offerings, their grain offerings to the Lord. And this was to picture for the Israelites to show them a picture that sin and unbelief spreads throughout like leaven. It ferments throughout the whole lump. It’s not isolated; it grows and it affects the entire person. And just like leaven affects the entire lump of dough, a sinner cannot offer a holy offering because a sinner is affected by that sin. And that’s why God prescribes for Israel these pictures of what a holy offering looks like. Each of them, ultimately pointing to Jesus Christ, the perfect offering in some way. And in today’s passage, we’ll see how Jesus uses that same metaphor of leaven to warn His disciples that they are in danger. Let’s pray before we read. Please pray with me.
Heavenly Father, we are sick. Like Your disciples in Mark chapter 8, we are in danger. And without Your Spirit we cannot even see the things of the kingdom of heaven. Would You help us this morning? By Your Spirit, give us eyes to see and ears to hear. It’s in the name of Jesus Christ we pray, amen.
Let’s read Mark chapter 8, starting in verse 11:
“The Pharisees came and began to question Jesus. To test him, they asked him for a sign from heaven. He sighed deeply and said, ‘Why does this generation ask for a sign? Truly I tell you, no sign will be given to it.’ Then he left them, got back into the boat and crossed to the other side.
The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, except for one loaf they had with them in the boat. ‘Be careful,’ Jesus warned them. ‘Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod.’
They discussed this with one another and said, ‘It is because we have no bread.’
Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked them: ‘Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don’t you remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?’
‘Twelve,’ they replied.
‘And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?’
They answered, ‘Seven.’
He said to them, ‘Do still not understand?’
They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, ‘Do you see anything?’
He looked up and said, ‘I see people; they look like trees walking around.’
Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. Jesus sent him home, saying, ‘Don’t even go into the village.’”
This is God’s Word.
My older brother, Conner, he’s about two years older than me, became very ill his senior year of high school. He was unable to go to college normally; he couldn’t get out and do much. He was eventually diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease. And he went to multiple doctors who prescribed many medicines, and none of those helped much and some even made things worse. And for a while, Conner was somewhat hopeless. He had nowhere to go. And I think during that time it became obvious to him that for him, the remedy was not going to be following the normal protocol. He needed something very specific. He needed very special treatment. And I’m still fascinated by his determination and effort but he figured it out himself. It took years of trial and error, radical diet changes, incredibly detailed research, supplement regimes, but Conner would say it was healing his microbiome, his gut bacteria, changing his gut bacteria that solved the problem. And eventually he was not only cured, his Crohn’s in remission, but he’s probably the healthiest person I know. And that experience shaped his life. It shaped his career. He’s now a biochemist in Oklahoma City running a lab. Sounds like a boring job to me too, but he likes it!
But here’s the point – he needed a very specific treatment, an indepth and precise nature of the problem so he could get to the root of the issue. You have probably heard Jesus described as the Great Physician. He calls Himself a Physician a couple of times in Scripture, but the name “the Great Physician,” comes from the early church describing how He heals both the physical and the spiritual. In this passage, we see that Great Physician in action. We see Him recognizing symptoms – that will be our first point. We see Him diagnose the issue and we see Him give the remedy. And so here’s the overarching thought this morning. If you see that you are sick, run to Jesus for treatment. If you see that you are sick, run to Jesus for treatment.
So let’s first look at the symptoms the disciples are presenting. Look at verses 14 to 16. After the argument with the Pharisees, Jesus gets in the boat with His disciples. They have forgotten to bring enough bread for everyone, and then Jesus who is obviously still thinking about the Pharisees just before demanding a sign from Him, gives them a warning about leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod. And we’ll talk a little bit more about what that means in a minute. And then look, verse 16, it’s like they completely ignore Him. They discuss or argue with one another about the fact that they have no bread. Jesus isn’t warning them saying that the Pharisees baked some nasty sourdough. But you would think that if you look at the disciples’ response. They initially think He is talking about literal leaven and literal bread.
But what is His warning? What is the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod? What exactly is Jesus warning them about here? Leaven is an agent, yeast for example, that spreads throughout the whole lump of dough and causes it to rise. In the other gospels, the parallel passages of this event, give us a bit of a clue about what Jesus might mean. In Matthew, the leaven of the Pharisees is their teaching. In Luke, the leaven of the Pharisees is hypocrisy. And so there’s something that’s not straightforward about precisely what it is and theologians disagree on exactly what it is. J.C. Ryle says the leaven of the Pharisees is a religious formalism and their self righteousness and the leaven of Herod is worldliness and skepticism.
And I think all of those things are wrapped up together, all of those things have some merit in thinking about what the leaven is. Religious formalism and hypocrisy certainly characterize the teaching of the Pharisees. They went through the motions of religion externally. And let me be clear, Jesus isn’t criticizing. He isn’t critiquing religion. I heard someone say once that they aren’t very religious but they’re very spiritual. And I had sirens going off in my head – “Okay, let’s talk about this!” Jesus commands religion. He commands the external. He was religious. The critique, like is so often emphasized in the Sermon on the Mount, is against religion being merely or only external. It doesn’t penetrate to the heart. That’s why it’s hypocrisy. It’s not real, but an exercise in religion.
If you are going through the motions of religion, if you are showing up on Sunday, blandly singing hymns, zoning out through the whole of prayers, waiting for the sermon to be over and never thinking about it again or applying it to your life, Jesus’ warning is for you this morning. He’s saying that that grows into something that is much worse. That spreads throughout. And the same is true for worldliness or skepticism if that’s what the leaven of Herod is. Although I don’t see as sharp of a distinction as J.C. Ryle does between Herod and the Pharisees here, because the Pharisees were worldly, and verse 11, they were skeptical – demanding a sign. But think with me about how worldliness spreads like leaven. Maybe this is a question that primarily youth pastors think about, but I’m sure that all parents in the room have thought about this to some extent. “What is the reason for so many people leaving the faith when they get to college?” Why does that happen? Well the theological reason is right here. They didn’t watch out for the leaven of the Pharisees and Herod. They let it grow; they let it spread throughout. You see, worldliness can catch the eye of someone who is under their parents’ roof, for example, and then it can become a waiting game. They get out there on their own and they live out that worldly plan. “This is what life is about. I’ve been waiting for this. I’ve been waiting for this freedom.” The worldliness that caught their eye grows.
And it’s not just students. It’s all of us that have this danger. Jesus says we have to take drastic measures against sin. If our right hand causes us to sin, cut it off. Is there some worldly desire, some appetite for things of the world, that you are letting fester in your life? But notice this as well. The whole narrative section of Mark, this whole section, is filled with irony because the Pharisees are demanding signs on the one hand but Jesus is performing miracles on the other. He says in verse 12, “No sign will be given to this generation,” but isn’t He performing miracles? Well that’s the irony. He’s performing miracles and the Pharisees will not trust Him. They won’t put their faith in Him. They won’t confess Him to be the Messiah as Peter does just a little bit later in Mark. They are demanding a sign like the parting of the Red Sea. They are demanding a sign, in other words, they will only trust Jesus if it’s on their terms. There’s no faith in them. “Jesus, if You do it this way, well then I’ll trust You.” It’s flipping faith and trust in God and Jesus Christ into a self centeredness. It’s like the question, “How could I trust a God who allowed these things to happen or those things to happen? Allowed it to happen this way or that?” How can you trust that God? Because God doesn’t do things on our terms. He calls us to trust Him no matter how things look to us in the moment.
And so all of that to say, whether the leaven precisely is sin or unbelief or religious formalism or worldliness, commentators agree on this – the result of the leaven is the same. The result of the leaven is a growing opposition of and rejection of the Lord Jesus Christ. When you let these things fester, you become dissatisfied with Jesus Christ. You become dissatisfied with His Law. The Pharisees and Herod had that in common. They wanted to kill Jesus.
When I was a freshman in college, I got my first migraine. I probably get them once or twice a year now, so not that often, but I remember I was walking back to my dorm room after a last night biology lab – you know, one of those that lasts from 7 to 9pm, a terrible class to schedule – and I started seeing lights in my eyes. And I don’t know if this is true for everyone who gets migraines, I’m not a doctor, but that’s always the first warning sign for me. I don’t get a headache first. Parts of my vision start to blur. And if I get that warning sign, I know what I have to do. I know I need to quit all my work, I need to get somewhere dark, I need to take an ibuprofen, and I need to lie down. I need to try to sleep. And if I ignore that warning sign, it gets much, much worse. That’s what the leaven is like. If you ignore it, the final result is opposition to Jesus, not finding any meaning in His person and work, not trusting Him. And so Jesus sees these symptoms in the disciples. Do you see them in your life? If you see that you are sick, run to Jesus for treatment.
He not only recognizes the symptoms, He diagnoses the problem. This is point two. Look at verse 17 with me. I guess we’ll call this a pastoral diagnosis because He provides it by asking questions. “Why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread?” Jesus’ primary concern was spiritual as He was contemplating how the Pharisees and Herod got to their particularly potent form of unbelief. The disciples’ concern – what is it? It’s temporal. It’s about what they are about to eat. It’s about not having enough bread. And here’s the scary thing about all this. Jesus sees the same seeds of unbelief in His disciples that manifest themselves in the Pharisees. These are believers He is talking to. They’ve just seen Him perform two feeding miracles – the feeding of the five thousand and the feeding of the four thousand and they’re worried about not having enough bread. They’ve seen those miracles and they don’t fully see the person behind them. They don’t yet see the implications of the person of Jesus.
Lack of perception can be attributed to ignorance, but this next question in verse 17 is a harsher rebuke. He said, “Are your hearts hardened?” Jonathan Edwards said this about it. “Only a knowing heart can harden itself and that is why those closest to Jesus, the Pharisees and the disciples, stand in the gravest danger.” You see, we are the ones that are in danger here. Jesus drives it home further in verse 18 where He recalls Isaiah 6:9. And in Isaiah, those who have eyes but don’t see and ears but don’t hear are the outsiders. Jesus is saying the disciples are in danger of being cut off, of becoming outsiders, of failing to listen to His voice.
We’ve been teaching through the Sermon on the Mount in our senior high large group on Sunday nights, and one of the things that I’ve been trying to emphasize is how the structure of the passage matters. So treating every new heading as a new and separate thought is not the right way to treat it. Jesus isn’t just randomly bringing up the next thing that comes to His mind in the Sermon on the Mount. It has order and purpose. And the same is true for this passage. Just a little bit before, Jesus healed a physically deaf man. Right after this episode, we read He physically heals a blind man. And what’s sandwiched between those? What’s the diagnosis right in the middle of that? Just like these men lacked physical awareness, their senses, the disciples lack spiritual awareness. Just like a deaf person can’t hear, the disciples can’t hear the content of His warning. Just like a blind man could only, the blind man that we saw healed could only partially see his vision before being fully restored, the disciples, save one, are true believers but their vision is blurry.
And that’s where the hope is in Jesus’ rebuke. That’s where the hope is in His diagnosis of their lack of spiritual awareness. It doesn’t sound super hopeful, does it, but did you notice in verse 17 that little word in verse 21? “Do you not yet perceive? Do you not yet understand?” There is still opportunity to respond to Jesus. Spiritual awareness, spiritual vision comes gradually for the Christian. You notice my sermon title on your bulletin. It’s a terrible sermon title, but I had to submit it before this sermon was really ready! But this is what I was going for – they are so concerned with their appetite, and Jesus’ appetite, His desire is totally different. They’re concerned with what they have to eat and if they are going to have enough, and He is hungering and thirsting for righteousness. He is concerned with them. Their appetite is facing inward and He is focused on spiritual things. He is facing outward.
It is a gradual change for us. Just like it was for the blind man, when you grow as a Christian you start to see better. You start to hear His voice better. Your concerns align more and more with the concerns of Jesus. You are less worried about temporal matters and more focused on the matters of the kingdom. And you see His last question there in verse 18. “And do you not remember?” Your recall gets better too. Your recall of His provision and goodness and the ways that He has carried you through again and again.
And some of you might be thinking, “Okay, Stephen, we’re reformed. We believe that once you are saved, you are always saved. So why do we need this warning? Why do we need to beware of the leaven? Why do we need this diagnosis?” Well let me illustrate why. As the youth minister, I have had many experiences where I was astounded by the lack of social awareness of a student. For instance, why is this student standing six inches in front of me, telling me about his fantasy football team? Why is he so close? Why do I feel spit on my face as he is telling me? I’m interested in what he has to say, but could he say it from three feet, even two feet away would be fine! But just as social awareness isn’t naturally the strength of teenagers, spiritual awareness is not naturally any of our strength.
But what does it take to be more socially aware? It takes your parents teaching you. It takes them warning you, asking questions in astonishment like, “How did you not see that person you just ran into?” And they learn from those situations. The same is true for us. Yes, once saved, always saved. “He who began a good work in you will surely bring it to completion.” He not only restored the blind man’s sight, He fully restored the blind man’s sight. But Jesus uses warnings. He uses rebuking questions. Jesus is talking to all of us here. This is how He keeps His people. This is how it’s once saved, always saved. And so do you hear Him? Do you hear His warning? Do you see His diagnosis? If you see that you are sick, run to Jesus for treatment.
He identifies the symptoms. They are being focused on the temporal rather than the spiritual, not concerned with the leaven that He is talking about. He gives the diagnosis – this lack of spiritual awareness, this spiritually blind eyes and rocky hearts. But last, He shows them the remedy. He shows them the remedy. Look at verse 19. Jesus rehearses to them the two miraculous feedings of the multitudes. And they demonstrate, they saw with their eyes and they actually have recall of the situation, of the facts. They remember how many baskets were left over after each – twelve and seven. They answer right away. But they’ve missed the spiritual meaning. They’ve missed the Messiah. And we’re shown they missed Him because of the symptom of worrying about bread. You see, Jesus is the remedy. He’s the remedy. Not only to having physical provision but spiritual provision. All provision. Everything that you need.
Some commentators don’t see much significance in the numbers given here, so I’m disagreeing with some very smart people when I say this, but I don’t think the Bible gives these very specific details like this without meaning. Verse 19, there are twelve baskets left after the feeding of the five thousand. Twelve and multiples of twelve in Scripture are symbolic of the people of God. Twelve tribes of Israel. Twelve apostles. One hundred forty-four thousand in Revelation. The point here is that the people of God will always have what they need. There’s provision leftover. The people of God will always have what they need. And that’s not true for those who are not in the people of God. Verse 20, they say there are seven baskets left over in the second feeding. Many think of this in Scripture, the number seven, is the number of completion. I think a better term for this is a number of fullness, but I’m not going to get into why because it’s nerdy! Seven days of creation week. Fullness. So the teaching is this – the people of God, relying on Jesus by faith, will have the fullness of what they need and nothing less. The fullness of what they need and nothing less. And like I said earlier and said in this passage, the structure of the whole narrative is important and we see this same teaching in the Sermon on the Mount.
I taught on this a few weeks ago in large group where Jesus tells the people to ask. “Ask and you will receive. Knock and it will be open. Seek and you will find.” And right after promising that He will not hold back good gifts from His children, the Father does not hold back good gifts from His children, Jesus goes into the golden rule. “Do to others what you wish would be done to you.” Why are those two next to each other? What does asking and seeking and knocking have to do with the golden rule? Well here’s the implication. Relying on Jesus, you will have everything you need. You will. He is the inexhaustible resource. He doesn’t run out of provision for His people. And if you really believed that, if you really lean into that, you can give of yourself. You can give of yourself in loving others. You can be like Jesus in that way who gave Himself.
Think about it. If I have everything I need, why can’t I radically pour myself out in kingdom ministry? Why can’t I give of myself? The remedy is Jesus. The remedy is the cross. He went to the cross knowing it wasn’t going to be easy, dreading having to go through it, asking the Father to take the cup of wrath from Him. We prayed in the prayer of confession that God would not impute our sins to us. And the only reason we can pray that is because if your faith is in Christ your sins were imputed to Him on the cross. He trusted that He would have everything He needed, even in the face of death, and so He gave Himself. If you have faith in Him and His work, then He has already paid the penalty for your sin. He is renewing your vision this morning. He is the remedy for our lack of spiritual awareness. Only He can soften the hard heart. You must be born again to see the kingdom of heaven, to perceive it.
The youth staff recently got done reading Richard Sibbes’ book, The Bruised Reed. And there is a section where Sibbes is talking about how we harden our hearts. He says that if you see sin in your life and you know it’s sin, but you just don’t really have much of a desire to deal with it, then that’s a hard heart you’re dealing with. And this was his solution. He says, “Get on your knees and beg.” Beg God, Beg Jesus to help you deal with it, to see it for what it is – deadly leaven that will spread throughout. Leaven that grows into a disdain for Jesus, a dullness to His teaching. Beg Him to give you eyes to see that you may see things as He sees them. Do you trust that His mercy is more powerful than your hard heart? Remember the words of the hymn, “Thy mercy is more than a match for my heart, which wonders to feel its own hardness depart. Dissolved by Thy goodness I fall to the ground, and weep to the praise of the mercy I’ve found.”
Many of you have been praying – which I’m very thankful for and encouraged by regularly – but many of you have been praying for Laura Katherine and I as you know about our baby due in December. So this isn’t news to many of you but we found out a while ago that our baby has a heart defect. And it’s possible that this can change, but right now they’re thinking that they’ll have to do a full heart transplant shortly after birth. And Jesus is saying in the midst of this passage, in the Sermon on the Mount, “We’re going to have everything we need. That His plan is best. Relying on Him, we will have everything we need.” And I believe that. But I have to wonder, what will God do with it? Maybe we’ll witness to doctors and nurses. Maybe it’s modeling faith for others who will go through something similar. But whatever it is, whatever you are going through, seek to see your situation through the lens of Scripture. Seek to see it through the eyes of Jesus. What would He have you do? When we realize that we have everything we need in union with Christ, we can focus on kingdom matters. That’s where the healing takes us.
We’ll end with this. Jesus’ last question in verse 21. “Do you not yet understand?” He says in John 10, “My sheep hear My voice and I know them and they follow Me. I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My sheep hear My voice. I know them. They follow Me.” Do you hear His voice? This morning, right now, do you hear His voice? His sheep do. And just like Jesus didn’t leave the blind man with blurry vision, He will not leave you where you are. If you hear His voice, if you see that you are sick, run to Jesus for treatment.
Let’s pray. Father, without You we don’t have eyes to see, we don’t have ears to hear, our hearts are hard, and we focus on little things like, “Am I going to have what I need? Am I going to have the bread that I need?” And Lord, we ask this morning that You would help us to realize that connected to You, in union with You, we won’t be needful of anything. You are inexhaustible. You are infinite. You are eternal. And Lord, You are wise. Lord, help us to trust. Give us a greater measure of faith as we go out into this week. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.