Beware the Leaven of the Pharisees !

Beware the Leaven of the Pharisees!

Jesus warned us twice in a single paragraph of the New Testament; he said, “…beware of the leaven of the Pharisees…” (Matthew 16). Watch out for the leaven of the Pharisees. Now we all know that leaven is like yeast and it’s something that gets into a lump of dough. I want you to see something about the Pharisees that I think will help you understand why Jesus was warning us about them.

In the 9^th chapter of John Jesus healed a man who was born blind. After the man had been healed, he was brought to the Pharisees, who then interviewed him stridently. The man’s answers really were pretty simple. He said, “I don’t know; I just know that once I was blind and now I can see!” The man really got them very upset when he said, “Why are you asking me all these questions? Do you want to become his disciples too?” With that, they threw him out. He met Jesus after the Pharisees threw him out. As they were speaking, the Pharisees also came out and overheard the conversation.

The Pharisees understood the implication of what was being said and they became absolutely furious! They said “WHAT! Are you suggesting that we are blind too?” Then Jesus gave them two answers. The first was self-evident. He said, “If you were blind I could heal you.” He’d already proven that he could do that because he had already healed the man who was born blind. The second answer he gave was this: “…because you say that you can see, your sin remains with you.”

“Because you say that you can see, your sin remains with you.” Upon hearing his answer to the Pharisees, we can understand that Jesus wanted to warn us about something in our lives that would cause our sin to remain with us, rather than being cleansed by his blood.

“Because you say that you can see, your sin remains with you.” Being certain that they already knew the truth, the Pharisees were unable to receive the revelation that Jesus had come to bring.  Be careful about believing in your own ability to see things. Recognize the real risks involved with thinking that you already know what God wants to show you.  None of us has ever seen the revelation of Himself that He wants to give each of us today.

Turning back to the 6^th chapter of John, we find a story about Jesus feeding the five thousand. He crossed the lake and showed up in Capernaum. When he arrived, the Pharisees came out and greeted him very respectfully. In essence, he replied, “You’re not talking so nicely to me because you saw the miracles. You’re talking nicely because I gave you a free lunch.”  You can always get a crowd if you offer a free lunch. We’ve got so many church organizations that are working at being seeker friendly. You can always get people to come if you give them what they want.

These Pharisees challenged him to present them with a sign so that they could believe in him. Jesus said, “the bread of heaven is he that has come down and brings life.”(John 6:33)

“Feed us this bread” responded the Pharisees.” Jesus capped the conversation by saying, “I am the bread of life.” Why did they not receive that idea?  Because, they already had a clear, certain understanding of what the Bread of Life was. It was what Moses fed their fathers in the wilderness for forty years. They could cite Scripture proof texts on point. They were standing face to face with the one person who was the revelation of God, the very bread of life that came down from heaven, but they could not recognize him. They could not accept him because he didn’t fit their scriptural model of the bread of life from heaven. They could not receive this revelation because they already knew otherwise!

As Pharisees, we believe that we can see and that our understanding is correct because we have scriptural proof-texts to support what we see. Yet the Spirit of God is moving among us to show us revelation after revelation, if we will only allow him to challenge our traditional belief systems. However, he cannot show us a more profound truth as long as we believe that we already see. God wants to show you some things. He wants to show you things at a depth that goes well beyond what you already envision. As we proceed, avoid the pitfall of weighing and evaluating everything against previously established conventional beliefs.