What is the leaven of the Pharisees?

In the first place He warned them against the hypocrisy, which He had just been unmasking in the Pharisees. It is indeed a "leaven;" that is, a type of evil which, if unjudged, ferments and grows. The hypocrite aims at having things "covered" from God in the first place, and then from the eyes of his fellows. Everything however is coming into the light, so that in the long run hypocrisy is futile. Still, while it exists, it is absolutely fatal to the soul having to do with God in any way. Hence from a moral point of view the warning against it must come in the first place. For the disciple of Christ there must be no covering of anything from the eyes of the Lord.

There are three forms of leaven of which our Lord speaks: (1) the leaven of the Pharisees, — hypocrisy, or false worship, 12:17; (2) that common to Pharisees and Sadducees, false doctrine, Matt. 16:6; (3) the leaven common to Pharisees and Herodians, — false conduct, Mark 8:15.

But deeper than any such question was this fact: the truth of God had been presented in every possible form, with all possible outward vouchers and tokens and seals, to awaken, arrest, and attract the chosen people. There was no lack of signs; it was faith they wanted. Accordingly, the Lord, when He goes to the other side, charges the disciples to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, and of the leaven of Herod. The omission of the Sadducees is to be noticed in this place. Sadduceeism, no doubt, is a withering evil, but it is not the most dangerous. The leaven of the Pharisees, if not that of Herod also, may have a worse character and be a greater hindrance in the confession of Christ. For what is the leaven of the Pharisees? It is the cleaving to outward religious forms of any kind, which practically hide the Lord and His Christ. It is the effect of traditional influence, and may be orthodox in much; but it is religion — self — that is worshipped, rather than the true and living God known in His Son. The next is the leaven of Herod — that is, worldliness, the desire of what will give present reputation or keep up conformity to this world. These are two of the great perils Christians have to watch against. The disciples did not understand the Lord. They thought it was a question of loaves! "They reasoned with one another [saying], [It is] because we have no bread."78 Sometimes we wonder at such stupidity in the disciples, but if we reflect on our own history, can we not discern our own dulness in understanding the Word of God, our own slowness in following and walking in His will? ["Saying"]: as ACLN and later copies, nearly all cursives, Syr. Arm. Memph. Goth. Æth. Edd. omit, after ℵBD.

Alas! it is too true a picture of our own hitches and difficulties. It all arises from a want of perception of the truth, and grace, and glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, and this, again, is because we walk in such feeble self-judgment. It is our own undiscerned will that makes His mind in Scripture dark to us. If our eye were but single, if we walked in a spirit of lowly dependence, to do nothing but follow the Lord, we should find nine-tenths of our difficulties at an end. But we have an old as well as a new nature, which we do well to judge unsparingly. Through the mercy of God we are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit; but the old man seeks to intrude and get the upper hand, and so hinders the believer from following Christ simply and fully. This was at work among the disciples. They thought the Pharisees a respectable sort of people, and they were not prepared for their Master's sweeping condemnation. There is no deliverance from any of these obstacles and snares but in Christ; and there is no possibility of practically walking in the power of Christ unless the flesh is judged. Our Lord rebukes the disciples very decidedly: "Why reason ye, because ye have no bread? Perceive ye not yet, neither understand? Have ye your heart [yet] hardened?" It was really so. Our Lord all through treats it as an affair of the heart, and not as an intellectual mistake. It is important that we should accustom ourselves to judge things from their moral roots. If we pursue a wrong course, let us beware of excusing ourselves; if we do, we never get either profit by the way or victory in the end. We must discover that which caused the mistake. What was its source? What exposed us to it? Christ was not our only motive. I believe we never do a wrong thing where Christ is the one object before us. It is not that the flesh is not in us, but it is the Holy Ghost, and not the flesh, that has power in us where Christ is the single actuating spring of the heart. What is self-indulgence or the world's esteem to a man who is filled with Christ? This is what the Apostle so earnestly sought for the Ephesian saints — "that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith." (Eph. 3:17.) It was not that they might merely have Christ as their Saviour, nor only even that they might obey Christ as their Lord, but that they might have Him dwelling in their hearts by faith. It is the soul occupied with Christ to the exclusion of other objects — Christ abiding as the treasure of the heart; and what power to discern and to act according to Christ where this is so! And what is the effect of an unjudged will? Children of light though we be, light now in the Lord, yet the light is only in Him for us, and we see it not, if we think, or speak, or act far from the Lord practically. Thus it is we neither remember His ways nor understand Himself.79 ["Yet"]: as AX, etc., 69, Amiat. Syr. Edd. omit, with ℵBCDL, etc., 1, 33, Memph.

From these men the Lord turned to His disciples with words of warning. They were to beware of their "leaven." This warning the disciples took in a material sense at first, their misunderstanding being helped on by their omission to take bread. Yet they should not have had any thought on that score in the light of the feeding of the five thousand and the four thousand. At last they understood that by "leaven" the Lord meant "doctrine." It is evident therefore that though the true disciple could never be either Pharisee or Sadducee, he may be leavened by their doctrines — by either or by both.

The leaven of the Pharisee was that type of religious hypocrisy that lays all the stress on things outward and ceremonial. The leaven of the Sadducee was pride of intellect which elevates human reason into the place of sole judge, and waves aside God's revelation and faith. How much Christendom is leavened by both these things is sadly apparent today. Ritualism is rampant on the one hand, and rationalism, or "modernism," on the other, and not infrequently both are blended and the rationalistic ritualist is the product. The Lord's warning against them is supplemented by the Apostle Paul in Colossians 2. In verse 8 of that chapter we find his warning against rationalism, and in verses 16, 18, 20-22, against ritualism in various forms, and we are shown how these things divert us from Christ and prevent us from "holding the Head."

The question embodied a charge of reprehensible dullness How could they think that the Lord feared that He might have to make use of the bread of the Pharisees? Matthew, who does not record the sevenfold series, states the final question in a fuller form, "How is it that ye do not perceive that I spake not to you concerning bread? But beware of the leaven of Pharisees and Sadducees" (Matt. 16. 2 ). Did they suppose that the Lord who had taught them not to be anxious about what they should eat and drink was Himself anxious lest He and His disciples should be compelled to eat the bread of the Pharisees and the Sadducees?

We also learn from the same Evangelist that after these words light dawned on the hearts of the disciples: "Then understood (suniemi) they how that he bade them not beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees" (Matt. 16:12). Their rabbis had leavened the holy bread of the law as it was given originally by the introduction of the leaven of the precepts of men (Mark 7:7). Their teaching was permeated by the traditions of the elders, and thus the unleavened bread of the scripture was spoiled for the children of the kingdom by the leaven of hypocrisy and formalism, making the word of God of none effect, as it did, by their tradition.

It is interesting and of great importance to note that before bringing out the truth of the Church for the first time in His ministry to them, He warned them against these two leavens. The leaven of the Pharisees is Ritualism, and the leaven of the Sadducees is Rationalism. The pure truth of the Church has been corrupted all down the centuries by one or other, or both these leavens, and was never more so than today. It is the enemy's work, and he knows that no one can know the blessedness of the truth of what the Lord speaks of as "My Church" who is under the influence of the doctrines of the Pharisees or the Sadducees.

Or again, the leaven of the Pharisee is religious pride, that which seeks a place, not in the world, but amongst the saints of God; that which would exalt in a religious way, and surely there is nothing so terrible in the eyes of God as to take the Church of God — that which cost the life-blood of His own beloved Son — and use it as a platform for the exaltation of man in the flesh. It is easy to see the havoc wrought by this in the profession of Christianity, but none of us is immune from this deadly poison. The root error of the Pharisees was their love for tradition. Our Lord's comment on this may be lead in Mark 7:1-13. It produces first of all, spiritual blindness, secondly, an exaggerated idea of ourselves; and lastly, the tradition of the elders has a greater place with us than the pure Word of God, which, where it commands, only brings forth lowliness, meekness, long-suffering, and forbearance in love.

Hypocrisy is linked by the Lord with the Pharisees (Lk. 12:1) and could therefore be called 'religious leaven,' the doctrine of Pharisaism (Mt. 16:12). Their outward appearance of piety was a leavened, inflated form of religious flesh, legalism, party spirit, self-righteousness, and 'show off godliness. The Lord condemned these elements (Lk. 18:9-14; Mt. 5:20; 6:1-5; 23:1-7). We also need to do so in unsparing self-judgment.

But, besides the outward power, our Lord compares the kingdom to "leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal until the whole was leavened." The man is the figure of the agent in what is done publicly, the woman of the resulting condition of what is done hiddenly. Hence Babylon is compared to the woman in Revelation. There is the spread of doctrine, of creed, of a mere verbal confession which does not suppose faith. It is not only that there is that which, rising from the least beginning, becomes a great and towering power in the earth; but there is also a doctrinal system spread over a defined space (Christendom) which affects men's minds and feelings. This is compared to leaven, and leaven in Scripture is never the symbol of what is good. The leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees was their doctrine, which differed in each, but was far from good.

We may derive important instruction in God's ways from all this. There are in scripture several applications of leaven. The Lord speaks of the leaven of the Pharisees, of the Sadducees, and of Herod. The Holy Ghost uses the expression "a little leaven" twice in the Epistles of Paul. From this we do not well to allow the thought that they are merely parallels. Each has its own force, though there is of course a common character. But as to all such passages, apt to be loosely huddled together, it is well that we should seek to discriminate. True wisdom is not manifested, as one of our sages says, by seeing resemblances in things which differ, but by discerning the real difference among those which resemble one another. We need to cultivate a sound judgment; but it is never got by hunting up so-called parallel passages.

It is written then that "a little leaven leavens the whole lump." Hence to many, as the same words appear in two different passages, the too rapid inference is that they point to the same thing. So far is this from being true that the application is wholly different. What then is the bearing of each? Pay attention to the principle, that, if we wish to understand any verse of scripture we must always interpret it by its context. In 1 Cor. 5 leaven represents what is unclean, corrupting, and manifestly immoral. They were not to allow "the wicked person" in their midst, for evil spreads; and ever so little leaven, if allowed, defiles the whole lump. In Galatia evil was taking what we may call a religious or legal form (Gal. 5:9). The Christians there were observing days, months, times, and years. They were crying up circumcision as a desirable supplement to faith. This was the Pharisaic leaven, as in Corinth was the Sadducean. The leaven of the Sadducees was the evil of free thought and licentious action. The leaven of the Pharisees was that of rigorous legalism and human tradition, as that of Herod was worldly time-serving.