Jesus Warns Us Not to be Legalistic
Matthew 16
The religious leaders never gave Jesus a break. Those Pharisees and Sadducees followed Him
everywhere He went and criticized his every move. We read in Scripture that on one occasion the
religious leaders followed Jesus to the town of Magdala Magdala
are but they believe it was a town near the Sea of Galilee .
Anyway, Scripture says that the Pharisees and the Sadducees
came together and found Jesus in Magdala.(Matt.16:1) They came to test Him and trick Him if they
could. The Pharisees and the Sadducees
were enemies and usually had nothing to do with one another, but this time they
joined together because of their common hatred of Jesus. And when they found Jesus, the angry Pharisees
and Sadducees stormed up to Him and demanded that He show them a sign from
heaven in order to prove to them that He was from God.
For several years now Jesus had been healing thousands of
people all over Israel
On several occasions Jesus had fed thousands of people with
just several loaves of bread and fish. Twice
crowds had followed Jesus into the wilderness to listen to his teachings and
watch him heal the sick. And each time when
the crowds had gotten hungry Jesus would pray and bless several loaves of bread
and fish that He or the disciples found and somehow the few pieces of bread and
fish seemed to gradually grow or multiply.
Then as the disciples would be passing out these few pieces to the
hungry people, the food would just never run out! There would always be enough
to feed the thousands and with leftovers! .No one ever needed to worry about
going hungry when they were with Jesus.
But did the religious
leaders stop and wonder if possibly God could be with Jesus since He always fed
the hungry? No, instead the religious
leaders criticized Jesus because they caught Him healing and feeding people on
the Sabbath! He had broken their laws.
Jesus told the religious leaders that they were very good at
forecasting the weather. The religious
leaders had learned how to tell from the appearance of the sky what the weather
would be like in the near future. But then Jesus told them that they had never
learned how to interpret the signs of the times. I think Jesus was saying that if they had
learned how to interpret the Scriptures then they would have known to look for
their coming Messiah. If only the religious
leaders had been as good at recognizing the signs pointing to their coming
Savior as they were at recognizing the signs in the skies pointing to a coming
storm!
But if the religious leaders had learned to interpret the
prophecies in Scripture that pointed the way to their coming Savior, they would
have had to change their ways. And the strict Pharisees were set in their ways
and were not about to change! Why should
they? They had it all –they were so
pious –so holy –so proud - with their many laws and rituals and burdens and
traditions and fasts and ceremonies. Their
religion was so much hard work. And they
held so much power over the people –laying burdens on them in the name of God -
and why should they give any of that up?
No wonder they refused to see their Savior even when He was right before
their eyes!
The hypocritical Pharisees were determined to keep all of
their forms and ceremonies and fasts exactly the same forever. This was their way of approaching God. What more was there? And this Jesus was messing up all of
that! So they did not recognize their
Messiah because they did not want to recognize their Messiah! They stood there
hunching over Jesus fuming and fussing and again ordered Him to immediately
produce a spectacular sign in the skies to prove to them that He was from God.
So Jesus turned to the angry Pharisees and Sadducees and quietly
answered that He would not give them a sign.
Jesus would never do anything to show off. He told the religious leaders that the only
sign they would have would be the sign of Jonah. This was the great sign to which Jesus always
pointed to when He was pressed.
(Jn.2:18-22, Mt. 12:38-40.) Jonah
was in the stomach of the whale for three days and nights and then came out
alive and Jesus would be in the grave for three days and nights before He rose
from the dead. So Jesus was referring to
his bodily resurrection when He told the religious leaders that they would be
given the “sign of Jonah”.
Jesus left the religious leaders and hurried to catch up
with his disciples. The disciples were
traveling on foot and when Jesus re-joined them they had just realized that
they had forgotten to bring bread along for their trip! What would they do? As they walked along they were upset and grumbling
about having no bread and at the same time Jesus was walking along with them
still thinking about his run in with the religious leaders.
So Jesus spoke up and
warned the disciples to “Watch out for the leaven of the Pharisees and the
Sadducees.” (Matthew 16:6) Since the disciples were still worrying about
bread and how hungry they would get on the trip, they figured when Jesus
mentioned the word “leaven” that since leaven is a part of bread that He was
talking about bread! It was a crazy mix
up!
Jesus was surprised that his disciples were still worrying
about running out of bread and going hungry. And He was concerned that they
still had so little faith. The disciples had been with Jesus several times when
Jesus had blessed a few small loaves of bread and these loaves had expanded and
grown to feed thousands of people. Didn’t
they remember these times? Jesus asked
his disciples why they worried about bread when He was with them. He challenged his disciples to learn to trust
Him more –encouraged them to have more faith.
And Jesus would also challenge us to learn to trust Him more and to have
more faith. Especially when He promises
to always be with us all along our way.
And then Jesus warned his disciples again to “Watch out for
the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.” (Matt. 16:11) Their “work your way to heaven” lifestyle
never failed to anger Jesus. What was it
that Jesus was warning his disciples (and us) against? What is this “leaven of the Pharisees and
Sadducees” anyway that we should stay away from?
The Pharisees were into tradition (some of their traditions
invalidated God’s laws) (Mark 7:12) and they were proud of themselves for being
purer and more pious than others. In
Jesus’ time they controlled the synagogues and schools and were revered by the
masses. A Pharisee believed his prayers were more
pious – more effective-more special - than the prayers of ordinary people. .So it
would seem that pride and traditionalism were part of the “leaven” that Jesus
warned against.
And the Sadducees were
rationalists and materialists who did not believe in life after death or in the
existence of anything that cannot be explained naturally. (Acts: 23:8)
In Jesus’ time the Sadducees were made up of a small group of wealthy
aristocratic families who controlled the temple. (Acts 4:1)
Many did not believe that God cared whether humans were evil or good and
many did not believe what their prophets wrote in Scripture.
The Sadducees refused
to believe in anything that they could not see, touch or explain. They prided themselves on being sophisticated
and worldly and smart enough not to believe the Scriptures. They laughed at all the people who weren’t as
bright as they were -- all those people who believed in life after death.. There
are Sadducees in the Christian church today who are too intellectual to believe
that the Bible is the Word of God. They
will tell you that they believe in Christ even though they don’t believe the
Bible is worth much. Jesus would warn us
today, as He did his disciples back then, to stay away from their “leaven”.
Part of this dangerous “leaven” is legalism and a judgmental
spirit. The Pharisees had hundreds of
little man made laws they burdened the people with in the name of God. Legalistic religion is an enemy of the loving
“life” quality of the kingdom
of God
Another part of the “leaven” of the Pharisees and Sadducees
was their heightened sense of ambitious pride, which kept them from recognizing
their Messiah. Scripture says that
“Pride comes before a fall.” (Proverbs 16:18) Jesus calls us, his followers, to be humble –
to deny ourselves and take up our cross and follow Him. (Matthew 16:24) The Holy Spirit will lead us into humility
but we will need to follow. And then we
will be able to “see” spiritual truths that we could not have been able to see
until we put on the spirit of humility.
Recently Pope Francis preached a sermon calling for all Christians
to obey Christ and follow in the ways of peace.
The words sound nice – they have a good ring to them - but they are
harder to follow than you might think! It
can be difficult to follow in the ways of peace because in this world we are carefully
taught to argue and pick fights. Before
we are very old we learn how to show the world that we are in the right and the
other person is in the wrong. We are
“good” and the other person is “bad”. It
almost seems to come naturally to fight - to battle –and to go to war. Part of the leaven of the religious leaders
who hated Jesus was their ability to fight religious battles with one another
and to judge one another.
But Jesus calls us to leave all of that and learn to be
gentle and kind. Gentleness is one of
the gifts of the Holy Spirit. We are to love
and pray for those who dislike or hate us.
Our Lord insists that we forgive one another, turn the other cheek,
never retaliate and reconcile with those who disagree with us, if we possibly
can. He commands us to give up our anger
and stop having to be right. And to go
about building good relationships.
We will need to make a break with the prejudices we have
been taught and with the fighting spirit that comes so naturally. And we will need to keep on breaking our
habits of putting others down and not forgiving them. Keep turning our backs on legalism and hate
again and again. Keep on giving up our
rights to be right. And learn to deny
ourselves and take up our cross if we are to follow Jesus. We have been given the Spirit to show us the
way, to help us along, but we alone will have to decide. Can we do it?
.
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