Beware the leavening of the Pharisees

 

Your glorying is not good.  Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?  Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you are truly unleavened.  For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us.  Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.  --1 Corinthians 5:6-8

I love sourdough bread.  Some of my most cherished memories were when my mother would make homemade sourdough bread when I was growing up.  I remember it was pretty labor intensive, and could not be done without a lot of time, patience, and forethought.  First, you had to have some sourdough starter, which is a live, fermented culture which acts as a leavening agent.  Second, you must make sure that the starter does not die.  It must be "fed" with equal amounts of flour and water daily.  Third, when you use some of it to bake into delicious bread, you must remember not to use all of it.  You must leave some to continue to ferment, and to be fed, until you are ready to bake some more.

When we read about "the leaven of malice and wickedness" in Paul's first letter to the Church of Corinth,  some of the same principles can apply.  Malice is defined as the intent or desire to inflict injury, harm, or suffering on another, either because of a hostile impulse or out of deep seated meanness.  Such wickedness must have a genesis, a starting point; it must be fed daily or it will die; and it must not be culled completely out at any one time, but some must be left for later for it to live on.

As we continue our narrative from Mark chapter 8, we see that the disciples had bread on their minds.  They were still thinking about the two miraculous events they had just witnessed, the feeding of the 5000 and the feeding of the 4000, when Jesus is approached by the Pharisees, the religious leaders of the day.

Then the Pharisees came out and began to dispute with Him, seeking from Him a sign from heaven, testing Him.  But He sighed deeply in His spirit, and said, "Why does this generation seek a sign?  Assuredly, I say to you, no sign shall be given to this generation.  --Mark 8:11-12

Jesus exercised some magnificent restraint here, I think.  Having just called them "blind leaders of the blind" who were in danger of "falling into a ditch" and their followers with them (Matthew 15:14, a corollary to Mark 7), the Pharisees did not really know what they were talking about.  They certainly did not want Jesus to call down fire sent from heaven to consume them (see Genesis 19, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah; also see 1 Kings 18, the story of Elijah calling down fire from heaven to destroy the prophets of Ba'al.)  This would have been a true sign from God, and probably one they would have recognized as authentic if only the fire had consumed someone else. They were blinded by their own importance, or perhaps by their jealousy of Him.  Had they not seen the signs and miracles of the lame walking, the blind seeing, and the dead brought back to life?  Show us a sign, indeed!

Unfortunately, the disciples were blind, as well.

And He left them, and getting into the boat again, departed to the other side.  Now the disciples had forgotten to take bread, and they did not have more than one loaf with them in the boat.  Then He charged them, saying, "Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod."  And they reasoned among themselves, saying, "It is because we have no bread."  But Jesus, being aware of it, said to them, "Why do you reason because you have no bread?  Do you not yet perceive or understand?  Is your heart still hardened?  Having eyes, do you not see?  And having ears, do you not hear?  And do you not remember?  When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of fragments did you take up?"  They said to Him, "Twelve."  "Also, when I broke the seven for the four thousand, how many large baskets full of fragments did you take up?"  And they said, "Seven."  So He said to them, "How is it you do not understand?"  --Mark 8: 13-21

The lesson here was not about bread.  Bread was everywhere--they had so much bread they had to throw away the leftovers.  Jesus is the Bread of Life, yes, and He will supply all their needs, including their daily bread.  But we're not talking bread here, we're talking leaven.

Leaven is defined as an agent, such as yeast, that causes batter or dough to rise, especially by fermentation. It is also an element, influence, or agent that works subtly to lighten, enliven, or modify a whole.  Leaven is spoken of in Scripture to refer to sin.  God is light; there is no need for an outside agent to lighten.  God breathes life into us; there is no other source of enlivenment needed.  God's word is all that is needed; there is no need to modify the Word with human traditions or man's laws. 

There was a Jewish Feast of Unleavened Bread that commemorated the Passover, the deliverance of the Jews from Egypt.  In Exodus 12, God told Moses to instruct the people to roast an unblemished lamb on an open fire, but not to break it's bones or disfigure it in any way--they were not to take the time.  In the same way, they were to make flat bread to go with the lamb, but they were not to put any leavening agent in the bread dough, because they could not give it time to rise.  Any person who put leaven in their bread was being disobedient to God's direct instruction for them to prepare the meal with haste, because the next morning they were to begin their exodus out of Egypt and their march toward the Promised Land.  This Feast was to be an annual commemoration of their obedience to God.

There are different kinds of leavening agents, just as there are different kinds of sin.  I saw a meme this week that said something like, "A Christian who makes just one or two compromises in the name of inclusion soon looks just like the world they were called out of."  Certainly we do not want to compromise with sin, else we may find ourselves in compromising positions.  We are to be in the world, not of the world.  This type of leaven or yeast is easy to see--when pastors and church leaders are caught in sexual sin like adultery, it makes headlines.  

A more pernicious leaven or sin is for church leaders, like the Pharisees, to add to the requirements set forth in Scripture.  This is what Jesus was addressing as leaven to be avoided, as well.  Unfortunately, this sin has been with us from the beginning, and pre-dates the Fall.  In the book of Genesis, God instructed Adam and Even not to eat of the tree of Knowledge; He did not say they could not enjoy its shade.  Yet when the Serpent came to tempt the woman by saying, "Did God really say not to eat it?", Eve added her own addition to the law: "We cannot eat of it, neither can we touch it, lest we die."  There are other examples of people adding to God's word throughout the Bible.

In the book of Job, we see that God allowed Job to suffer, but when his friends came, they spoke to Job as if he were receiving the punishment of God.  Not knowing God's heart at all, they presumed to speak for Him in condemning Job of sin.  When God finally spoke, He rebuked Job's friends and made them offer sacrifices and ask Job to pray for them (Job 42:7-9).

Mark 7, which we studied not long ago (if you have been following this blog series), tells of the Pharisees who had made a sacrament such things as hand washing, accusing those who failed to do so of not just being unclean, but sinful.  Jesus rebuked them, too.

In the 15th chapter of Acts, we see a debate among early Church leaders.  One camp, called Judaizers, wanted people to become Jews and to follow Jewish laws like circumcision before they could be considered true Christians.  The other camp, made up mostly of Gentile Christians, disputed this added requirement, saying that God's grace was sufficient.

When I think of Scripture warning us to stay away from the leaven of sin, I think of avoiding yeast; avoid sinful acts that do not conform to Scripture or glorify God.  But as any good baker knows that yeast is not the only leavening agent.  Sourdough bread is not made with any yeast at all.  When I think of the leavening of sourdough, I think of the requirements that some add to Scripture, to make it more difficult (if not impossible) for men to receive grace.  In order to be completely obedient to God's command, all leaven must be purged from our lives.  Like the sourdough starter, we must let it die--don't feed it, don't water it, and purge it completely out of our lives.  "Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 6:11).

"For I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book; and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Book of Life, from the holy city, and from the things that are written in this book." --Revelation 22:18-19.