On Leaven and Bread

Last week, I explained that mark 8 builds to the climax of the Gospel, and as we build to that climax, we see more tumult and development. In verses 11-13, we saw Jesus deal again with the Pharisees in their hardheartedness and disbelief. This conflict led to a verdict – Jesus would no longer give them any signs. From that point on, Jesus would go on to do miracles, but only for his disciples and small groups, never again for the religious leaders. Our passage today picks up in the aftermath of that conflict. Jesus, apparently still deeply troubled by the hardheartedness of the Jewish people, gives a warning to his disciples and rebukes their continued dullness. To see that, let’s read Mark 8:14-21. From this passage, see two points: the Leaven of the Pharisees and the Low View of the Disciples.

First, from verses 14-15, see the leaven of the Pharisees. After his conflict and judgment of the Pharisees, Jesus immediately got in a boat with his disciples and left to the other side. There was no prep time for this, so the disciples, I imagine, hurriedly grabbed what provisions they could and jumped in the boat with Jesus. As they get out to sea, they are taking an inventory of what they have, and they realize that they left without any bread. All they have is one loaf. As they are debating this, Jesus, out of nowhere, makes this warning – “Watch out; beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Herod.” This statement confuses the disciples. Is it a rebuke of them because they had no bread? Is it a warning not to eat the bread they do have because it came from the Pharisees? What could he possibly mean? As they always do, the disciples are looking at their immediate, physical need and failing to recognize both the spiritual significance of what Jesus is saying or the evidence of Jesus’s ability to provide. 

So, what exactly does Jesus mean here? To understand it, we must grasp the symbolic significance of leaven (or yeast) in the life of the Jewish people. Leaven had a significant place in the rituals of Israel. Every year, on the first full moon after the spring equinox (March 20), the Jews would observe the Passover. In that meal, they could not eat any bread that was leavened. Before the meal they would go through a ritual of cleansing the house of any leaven, and they’d then prepare the matzoh (bread) without it. Then, for seven days, they would observe the feast of unleavened bread, in which they could not eat any leavened bread. At the end of that feast, they would start the year with new leaven that had nothing to do with the old they’d thrown out. Additionally, when making a grain offering to the Lord, you could not offer bread that had been made with leaven. You might be wondering what the Lord has against leaven? Well, nothing at all, actually. In fact, in the feast of Pentecost, leavened bread was waved before the Lord as a sign of God’s blessing and inclusion of the Gentiles. In Matt. 13:33, Jesus tells the parable of the leavened bread, in which leaven is compared to the kingdom of God and how it spreads. So, obviously, there is more going on here than a problem with a material substance.

There are two reasons God had the Israelites remove leaven in the Passover and grain offerings. First, leaven serves as an analogy for how sin works. As I’ve told before, I love to make bread. The process is therapeutic, and the results are rewarding. If you make bread, you understand this fact entirely – a little leaven goes a long way. You can use a teaspoon of yeast and make a loaf that will feed a family. And, if you leave that dough in a cool dark place it will continue to rise, doubling in size about every two hours. The reason it does this is because the yeast is fermenting inside the dough. It is converting the proteins in the bread into CO2 gas, and the combination of that restructuring of the protein and the release of the gas is what makes the bread rise. It is the same exact process that happens with beer, which is why old-timers called beer “liquid bread.” This fermentation is symbolic of the corruption of sin. Flour and water without yeast is flat and simple, but flour and water with yeast grows into something totally different. It totally transforms the nature of the bread. In the same way, just a little sin spreads until it takes over the whole of a person.

Along with this analogy is the symbolism of God’s deliverance of his people from captivity in Egypt. When the Israelites cleaned out the cupboards every spring, it was a reminder of the new life that God had brought them through the Exodus. This deliverance is symbolic of the new life that we receive in Christ, as we are set free from our bondage to sin. So, if we are set free, then we should cleanse ourselves of impurity just as the Israelites cleaned their houses of leaven.

So, with that understood, what does Jesus mean by the “leaven of the Pharisees” and the “leaven of Herod”? If Leaven is symbolic of the corruption of sin, we can understand what he means by thinking of the particular sins of these groups. First, what were the sins of the Pharisees? For one, they were hardhearted in their rejection of Jesus. They were also hypocrites, creating rules and regulations they could keep while their heart was far from God. And, they were also false teachers; legalists whom Jesus said had put up stumbling blocks for those who would come to him. But, were they always this way? Did Gamaliel, the great rabbi of the Pharisees, start out as a hardhearted, hypocritical legalist? No, he probably started out as a sincere young man who wanted to study the Torah as deeply as he could. In the process, he found fame, power, and influence to be more alluring than a relationship with his Creator. His sin started small, like a teaspoon of yeast, but with every hour that passed, it fermented and expanded until his heart was set against the Messiah. Galatians 5:9 warns against accepting the teachings of legalists who had come into the church saying that a Gentile must accept Christ but also follow the OT rituals. It says, “A little leaven leavens the whole lump.” In other words, playing around with false teaching and hypocrisy will only lead to more of both.

So, what of Herod? Jesus, no doubt, is referring to the whole of the Herodian dynasty here (some translations even say, “the leaven of the Herodians”). The Herodians were a vile bunch. We’ve already studied of Herod Antipas, who had an affair with his sister-in-law, enticed his step-daughter to dance erotically for his birthday party, and then had John the Baptist beheaded because he continued to speak against his sins. The Leaven of Herod is the corruption of worldly appetites. Again, no one starts out as depraved as Herod. Rather, we toy with sin, telling ourselves it’s OK to try just a little more, to push the envelope a little further. My dad is an accomplished trapper. He’s trapped just about anything you can imagine. He tells of how easy it is to trap a raccoon because of their innate curiosity. He says that all you have to do is take a foothold trap and put it just in the edge of the water where raccoon will come to clean himself. On the trigger, you put a little piece of tin foil. When the raccoon sees that shiny piece of foil, he cannot resist swiping at it, and when he does, the trap snaps over his arm. He can fight all he wants, but the more he fights, the more pain it will cause him. All he can do is sit and wait on the trapper to come with his club. The allurement of sex and alcohol and drugs and pornography and money and power… they are all like shiny pieces of tin foil, like leaven that corrupts the whole loaf. In 1 Corinthians, Paul writes to the church to warn them against their lax attitude towards sin. The church had allowed a young man to have an open sexual relationship with his step-mother. In fact, they’d even celebrated it. Paul writes, in 1 Cor. 5, that they are to cast this man out of the church for his sin. He says, in verse 6, “Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleans out the old leaven.” The sin of this young man was a stain on the church because it held on to the old, sinful ways that Jesus had delivered them from. They were to cleanse out the leaven of their old lives and start new in Christ.

Now that we’ve understood those warnings, let’s consider my second point: the low view of the disciples. In verse 16 we are told of the disciples’ confusion over this statement. They think that Jesus is complaining that they don’t have any bread, so they set to trying to remedy that. I’m not sure what they thought they were going to do on a boat in the middle of the sea! Jesus sees them fussing and asks, “Why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread?” We know exactly where he’s going to go with this before he says the next sentence. Just 15 verses before this, and probably a few days prior to this conversation, they’d witnessed Jesus feed 4000 men with seven loaves of bread. And, before that, they’d seen him freed 5000 men with give loaves. So what should they have thought when they found just one loaf on the boat? They should have thought, “Oh, we are good because Jesus is here.” But instead, for the third time, they are met with an unsolvable need and their first reaction is not to go to Jesus but to quibble over the technicalities and the blame. Jesus, in frustration over their hard, faithless hearts, asks, “Do you not yet understand? How many people did I feed with five loaves? Or how many did I feed with seven? And how much did we have left over?”  Here is the problem: the disciples were in the same peril of the Pharisees and the Herodians. They were in danger of allowing a little doubt, a little disbelief, spread into full-blown faithlessness. They are like the children of Israel, who escaped bondage in Egypt by God’s miraculous deliverance and immediately began complaining and asking to go back. They were like the nation of Judah, who saw God’s deliverance through righteous kings and then immediately turned back to their idolatry. They were like the remnant of Israel, returning to rebuild the temple, only to marry pagan women and dishonor the Sabbath. They are like us, so often faithless and doubtful. But Jesus is a gracious savior, who in that moment, warns them of their blindness and patiently calls them to see an all-important truth: if Jesus is in the boat, you have everything you need, because Jesus is the Messiah. He has proven it in feeding thousands of people. He has proven it in calming storms and casting out demons and raising the dead. And, he ultimately proved it by rising from the grave himself.

Brothers and sisters, the warning of Jesus to his disciples is our warning, too. This warning is a challenge to cleanse ourselves of the influences of sin. For some of us, this is a desire to use power and rules and influence to build our reputation and position. For others, this is a temptation to toy with worldly appetites. Hear the warning of Jesus and Paul – a little leaven leavens the whole lump.

Jesus also reminds us that as long as we have him, we have all we need. Whether we have much or very little, Jesus is enough. Instead of trusting in our own reputation or seeking gratification from what the world might give us, we should find our all in him.