16 Then the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and testing Him asked that He would show them a sign from heaven. 2 He answered and said to 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 foul weather today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ Hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times. 4 A wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.” And He left them and departed.
5 Now when His disciples had come to the other side, they had forgotten to take bread. 6 Then Jesus said to them, “Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.”
7 And they reasoned among themselves, saying, “It is because we have taken no bread.”
8 But Jesus, being aware of it, said to them, “O you of little faith, why do you reason among yourselves because you have brought no bread? 9 Do you not yet understand, or remember the five loaves of the five thousand and how many baskets you took up? 10 Nor the seven loaves of the four thousand and how many large baskets you took up? 11 How is it you do not understand that I did not speak to you concerning bread?—but to 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 doctrine of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
Introduction
In our previous chapter, Jesus spends time ministering to Gentiles, now He has returned to His people and is, yet again, confronted by the Pharisees. Jesus does battle with them, then leaves joining His disciples. There Jesus tests them over food. This might seem like a pretty simple straightforward passage. Jesus fights with the Pharisees and Sadducees and then tells His disciples to watch out for those guys. But there is much more going on in this passage than a confrontation with the bad guys and Jesus telling His disciples “those are the bad guys.”
Israel’s Rulers, United Against Jesus (v. 1-4)
Who are these guys, the Pharisees and Sadducees? They are the two main religious parties in Israel. Jesus has already done battle several times with Pharisees, but now the Sadducees arrive on the scene as well. These two groups actually stood opposed to one another. The Pharisees were the conservatives. They upheld tradition and their main difference between themselves and the Sadducees was that the Pharisees believed in the resurrection. The Sadducees were liberals, they were happy to change traditions when they encountered things like Greek thought and culture. Because of the influence of the Greeks, they denied things like the resurrection. These two groups normally did not get along. When we read verse one we should see something like “Then the Republicans and Democrats came…” When the Apostle Paul is being the Sanhedrin in Acts 23, he claims he is being charged because of his status as a Pharisee, for believing in the resurrection, and a riot between the Pharisees and Sadducees breaks out. These people normally did not get along. So when representatives of both parties in the religious elite, who absolutely hate each other’s guts join together in apparent opposition to Jesus, that tells you quite a bit about the nature of Israel’s relationship with Jesus. These two groups are willing to set aside their significant disagreements in order to reject Jesus together. That is what their request for a sign from Heaven was. They are like the Israelites, after God shows ten powerful signs to the whole world in His destruction of Egypt, demand He show them yet another sign at the Red Sea, when they have no water, and when they have no bread, and when they have no meat. Each time they grumble against Him. Now their God, Yahweh, has taken on human flesh and come right to their doorstep to minister to them, and do exactly the same thing their fathers have done. I can think of few better reasons to believe the Bible is true and trustworthy beyond this: it describes human beings how they actually are. If you were making it up, and God appears in the flesh before men, you would have them recognize Him as God and worship Him. If you were making it up, you would have the people who knew this God best, the people He has chosen among all the nations of the world, the priests who minister in His temple and teach His law, all of them would have had an easy time identifying Him as their God. Instead they absolutely refused Him. Any God but Him. We’ll serve the Caesar who we hate before we would serve Him.
And to this, Jesus tells them that He will show this wicked and adulterous generation a sign. The sign of Jonah. And what does that mean. If you remember back to Chapter 12, the sign of Jonah isn’t just that He will be raised on the third day. What was it that Jonah was angry about? Why did Jonah refuse to go to Nineveh? Not because he was scared, not because he thought the Ninevites were nasty guys. It was because God had made promises to Israel. One of those promises that God made was that when Israel’s rejection of Him was complete, what would happen? God would abandon them and go over to other nations that did not know Him. And Israel would be horribly judged, with war, famine, disease, and destruction.
That is why Jonah did not want to go to Nineveh. If God was going to save the Assyrians, it meant bad news for his people. It is not at all a coincidence that Matthew brings the Sign of Jonah back up immediately after Jesus did what? After Jesus spent time ministering to the Gentiles. Jesus’ treatment of the Canaanite woman is almost Jonah-like, isn’t it? He doesn’t want to help her, but He eventually gives in. Jesus tells the disciples why He is behaving this way, His mission in to Israel, not to the Gentiles. Nevertheless, what does He do? He cares for them, heals them, and feeds them. The previous chapter is a preview of what? Of the Sign of Jonah. God going over to the Gentiles is great news for all the nations of the world, but it is bad news for Israel.
A Biblical Theology of Leaven (v. 5-12)
After this, Jesus joins back up with His disciples. They had forgotten to bring bread along for their journey. This is a big deal because, in the ancient world, if you were going on a long journey, there were no Kwik Trips to stop at on the way for you to get something to eat. It seems like a minor detail because we are used to a very different form of travel, but for them going on a journey and not having food packed was something that would stay on the front of your mind. And as this is on the front of their mind Jesus says something strange to them. “Beware the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” This is something of a familiar idiom to us that we don’t think about it. But to a group of men, already thinking about bread because they are hungry and forget theirs, they immediately think that is what that statement is about. But Jesus says, no, it’s not about that. He even calls them “o you of little faith.” He expects them to understand meaning behind things. There is deeper, symbolic meaning to the stuff going on, and Jesus expects the disciples to be able to discern the meaning of them. Jesus begins to make a symbolic, numerological point that He expects the disciples to figure out. 5 loaves for 5,000 with how many left over baskets? [12] and 7 loaves for 4,000 with how many leftover baskets? [7] Jesus doesn’t point out these numbers as random or meaningless. He is pointing out they have significance and it is for the disciples to understand by faith. We have discussed before some of the symbolic meaning to those numbers, how the 12 represents Israel or the 7 represents the whole creation, and not coincidentally the first feeding was of Israel and the second of Gentiles. Jesus expects the disciples (and us) to figure that out. The Bible is a divine book, full of incredibly rich and complex symbolism and we are supposed to figure out what the Bible means.
And Jesus is displeased that the disciples do not understand He is speaking figuratively. They finally understand that leaven is not the leaven of bread but the leaven of teaching. It is at this point that we have to back up. What is this leaven stuff all about anyway. In the pre-modern world, you didn’t bake bread the same way we do now. You didn’t go out and buy a package of Fleichmann’s Dry Yeast. You had to get leaven from the air. You had to let the dough ferment. All leavened bread was basically sourdough. There was a time last year, right after the toilet paper panic, that many women started baking bread for the first time at home. You couldn’t find yeast anywhere and so they made sourdough. They’d let the flour and water sit in a jar and gather spores from the air. And this would leaven the bread. You’d take most of it out to use as leaven for the bread but leave a little and feed it to produce more leaven. These can keep going on for years. There are actually some bakeries in places like France that have sourdough mothers that are hundreds of years old which people will pay a lot of money to buy part of, because the older it is, the more complex the flavor is. This is one of the meanings of leaven in the Bible, that of continuity. This is why Israel did not leaven their bread at Passover. They were breaking off the continuity of Egypt. They were not taking the leaven of Egypt with them. They were starting anew. This is also, not coincidentally, why bread with yeast is perfectly fine for communion. Bread with yeast is just risen, unleavened bread. There is no continuity from week-to-week. Sourdough, bread that is actually leavened, is not.
There is also another meaning to leaven, the one that Jesus uses in the parable of the leaven. Leaven grows and expands and gets into everything. In the context of the Kingdom of Heaven, it is good. But in the context of the unbelieving leaders of Israel, it is very bad. Jesus says to beware their leaven, with both symbolic meanings. The continuity of the Pharisees teaching must no longer be passed down to them, and it must not get into and infect the loaf of the new Israel Jesus is kneading.
Conclusion
You are that loaf. The church is Jesus’ loaf that He has prepared and kneaded. It is His leaven that is introduced to you. The Apostle Paul makes this very symbolic point in 1 Corinthians 5. You are a new loaf. The old leaven of malice and envy has to be cut off. You are a new loaf that does not carry over the old leaven. The ways of sin, of obedience to those things that God hates, we are to be cut off from. But implicit in this is that unleavened bread doesn’t stay unleavened for long. That leftover dough after Passover is retained and used to leaven the next batch. The leaven of the new loaf spreads and grows. That leaven is the Spirit of God working in your life. It is God breaking you, and using you to feed others. That is what the leaven means. That is what the bread means. You are incorporated into Christ’s body. You are His loaf. It is you that He uses to feed the world. So, understand that your life has been given to you to live like Jesus Christ: to freely give that life as food for the world. In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen!
"This is also, not coincidentally, why bread with yeast is perfectly fine for communion. Bread with yeast is just risen, unleavened bread. There is no continuity from week-to-week."
I'm not sure I follow, is there any teaching that gives strictures as to leaven in communion bread? Or are we pulling that forward from the scriptures about passover and applying it to communion?
My church is extremely loosey goosey about communion so I haven't really been introduced to any serious studies on the topic. If you have further reading you'd recommend, I'd be interested to see it.