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Steven Lee
Pastor for Preaching & Vision

0:18Let's pray and go to the Lord. Father in heaven, would you incline our hearts to you and to your word this morning? Open our eyes so that we might see wondrous things about your son Jesus, in and through this text, unite our hearts to fear your name and then satisfy us with your steadfast love. This morning, we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. As a kid, there were lots of slogans thrown around in the early nineties that often did not make sense to me. Uh, they were, they were warnings like, don't talk to strangers or don't open the door to strangers. I remember one time friends of my parents had come to the door.

1:12My parents were not home, I was young, my brother was in the bathroom. And these friends I sort of recognized, but I didn't really recognize that I was hearing don't open the door to strangers. So I opened the door, we had the gate and they said, you know, we're friends of your parents. We're here to visit them. You know, I think they're not home yet. And I said, well, I can't open the door to you. And so I closed the door and they waited in the car until my parents got home. But I was confused like, are they strangers? Are they friends? Or the slogan just say no. Referring to drugs. Have many of you maybe heard that growing up and it's like, is Tylenol okay?

1:51Or just the other drugs that you're thinking of? Or the saying, if your friend, if your friends jumped off a bridge, would you maybe you've said that to your own children. And it's sort of the answer to that is like, well, it depends how high the bridge is maybe. And is there water underneath? And are we wearing life jackets? And all of these warnings were very pithy, but they left a 10-year-old often confused and maybe you can relate. And in our passage this morning, we get this pithy warning from Jesus to his disciples that largely leave them confused. Beware of the 11 of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

2:33He repeats it twice, verse six, and then again in verse 11. And they take it literally rather than metaphorically. They're talking about lunch. And Jesus is talking about something much more significant. And so in classic fashion, Jesus then goes to ask five questions, five rhetorical questions to help them understand the warning. But the bigger problem that we see in our text is that these disciples are of little faith. You see that in the text and this phrase reappears from the deadly storm that appeared in Matthew 14. So these disciples are not fully learning the lessons that Jesus wants them to learn.

3:19They're concerned with bread when Jesus wants them to see something much more significant. And this failure to understand is building towards the climax of what we'll see in next week's passage. Pastor Nowlan is gonna preach on that where we see Peter's confession and we'll see that the disciples ultimately go from ignorance to understanding. But the main warning of our text this morning, the main warning is to beware of false teaching that rejects Jesus as the Messiah and the Lord beware of the false teaching that rejects Jesus as the Messiah and as the Lord. Last week's warning was against testing Jesus.

4:05This week's warning is denying who he is. And so this false teaching is going to spread and infiltrate like leaven. And so we are to beware. And what this text is calling for Christians to do this morning is to be more discerning, to be discerning, to be vigilant against false teaching that is to creep in to the church. So what we're gonna do is look at this text, we're gonna walk through it and we're gonna look at the warning and then the teaching and then move towards understanding. So the warning in verses five to seven, the teaching in verses eight to 11, and then understanding in verse 12.

4:49And this is going to set the stage for the divine revelation that comes in next week's passage. So first we come to see the warning. Look with me at verses five to seven, when the disciples reached the other side, they had forgotten to bring any bread. And Jesus said to them, watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. And they began discussing it among themselves saying, we bought no bread. So they've eaten all of their leftovers from the feeding of the 4,000. They forget to bring food on the journey. In Mark's gospel, it says they had only one loaf left in the boat. And so Jesus issues this warning, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

5:33He's using the lack of bread to be a teaching kind of a teachable moment to warn them of something else. Now if you bake sourdough, you know the idea of leave or yeast, right? This ancient baking practice, fermented dough just a little bit is mixed into a much larger amount of dough. And then it becomes sort of embedded within it infiltrates all of it. It becomes pervasive. And earlier in Matthew chapter 13, Jesus used the same metaphor. He says that the kingdom of heaven is like Levin. So he uses it positively there. That's Matthew 1333. The kingdom of heaven covertly permeates the whole earth, but more often than not, leaven has this negative connotation in the Old Testament.

6:24All grain sacrifices were to be of unleavened bread. In Luke 12, one, Jesus warns of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is their hypocrisy. Or Paul says in one Corinthians, your boasting is not good. Do you not know that? A little leaven leavens the whole lump. And so leaven was common, commonly the symbol of evil that it spreads and kind of takes over. Verse seven shows that the disciples just don't get it. We brought no bread. Uh, they're concerned with their failure to bring bread rather than what Jesus is trying to teach them. This is their kind of Amelia bed moment, right? Uh, they take it literally to a fault.

7:10Uh, the major question then is what is it that the disciples think that Jesus is warning them against? If Jesus just gave him a warning, what is it that they think he's warning them against? What are they to be aware of? Well, I think in Jesus' day, Jews had to often be careful in who they bought bread from because of its preparation. This is according to the Old Testament law. And so they had to kind of examine, would the person who's selling this bread, would the kitchen be exposed to unclean food? It's a little bit like buying food that's kosher or halal today. And the disciples likely stayed away from gentile bread bakers.

7:55And maybe they thought Jesus was forbidding them from buying bread from those sold from households of Pharisees or even Sadducees. But in addition to that, they were trying to figure out whose fault is it who was supposed to bring the bread? And so they're probably all pointing fingers at one another. Well, I told you to grab them. No, I I said you were supposed to get it right and they're discussing it amongst themselves. So we turn from this warning now to Jesus teaching here. We get these five questions in verses eight to 11. But Jesus aware of this said, oh, you of little faith. Why are you discussing among yourselves the fact that you have no bread?

8:36Do you not yet perceive? Do you not remember the five loaves for the 5,000 or how many baskets you gathered or the seven loaves for the 4,000 and how many baskets you gathered? How is it that you failed to understand that I did not speak about bread? Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. So first we get this rebuke, oh, you of little faith. This is the fourth of five times in which Jesus will call them you of little faith. And uh, and I think this is the fourth of fifth there is gonna show up again in chapter 17, but I think the disciples are slowly going from those of little faith to those of a true and growing faith.

9:24So it's building again towards next week's passage of Peter's confession. But here the first question, why are you discussing among yourselves the fact that you have no bread? What Jesus is doing is he is implying you guys are concerned about the wrong thing. Yes, we have no bread, but that's not the warning that I'm giving you. It's a little bit like if a pregnant wife says to her husband, honey, my water broke. And he replies, well, the floor isn't gonna mop itself. I know that would be rude, but put that aside for a moment. He's missing the point. It's time to gather our things and go to the hospital.

10:08How often then are we like these disciples this morning? And I think Jesus is calling out their consumption. They're consumed with things of a more mundane matter, and they're missing these spiritual realities that Jesus is trying to draw their eyes up to. How often are we thinking about food and material needs and busy schedules and to-do lists? And we leave things of eternal matters on the bookshelf? We forget that everyone we interact with has a soul that will spend eternity either with the Lord or apart from him. And so this text is this kind of gentle reminder from the Savior to not be like these disciples.

11:00They're trying to figure out who to blame for the fact that they have no bread. And meanwhile, Jesus wants them to see more of who he is and what he's doing in the world. And the same can be true of us. We're consumed with interpersonal drama when we should be loving and serving others in our body. We're too busy criticizing or judging others when we should be devoting ourselves to love and service and prayer. We can be distracted by unimportant things and lose sight of the glorious things that God is doing in and through us. I remember often I had to be reminded when we had young children in the home that we were raising children and not trying to keep a clean house.

11:52A a messy house meant life was happening. Dirty dishes meant a meal was being enjoyed. Dirty diapers meant that bodies were working. These are the signs of life. And so how often we can get caught up with, well, I, I gotta get things clean when we actually have greater priorities. It's like even here at the North Church sometimes we can lament the lack of parking. If you came late, you parked way up there and it's a long walk. And I was right about second winter, wasn't I? So we can lament about lack of parking or crowded hallways, but I will take those problems any day of the week over an empty sanctuary and plenty of parking.

12:34So the disciples are overly concerned about the wrong things and, and I think there's a word for us this morning, are we focused in on the things that have no consequence when, when there's other things that the Lord wants us to pay attention to this morning? And yet God is so patient? Look at the next three questions that Jesus asks. He says, do you not yet perceive? Do you not remember the five loaves for the 5,000 how many baskets you gathered or the seven loaves for the 4,000 and how many baskets you gathered? The disciples have forgotten the lesson of the feeding miracles Jesus can provide.

13:17Jesus can meet all of your needs. He has limitless power. He will not let his disciples or his people starve to death. He will care for them. And how often are we like these disciples? How often are we like Israel? Israel was in the wilderness. They were getting bred from heaven, manna every single day sufficient for the day except for on the sixth day so that they would get a double portion and it would be enough for the seventh day. And yet, despite bread from heaven for 40 years, they grumbled and they forgot that we serve a God who provides. That's what Jesus is saying. Do you not remember how, how from just a little bit of bread, I've fed thousands, twice and you gathered more leftovers than the food we began with He, he's trying to show them that his provision is lavish.

14:16It's like in the Exodus, if you remember Exodus 16, God commands Moses to keep an omer of manna. It was like two liter. They were to keep it in a jar and it was to be a perpetual reminder that God has provided bread for them. It would not spoil and they were to remember it. They would actually keep it so that all the days they could remember God provides for us. So what Jesus is saying is, look at my past faithfulness so that it would inspire your present trust. Past faithfulness enables our present trust and our future faith. Trust me, because I have been faithful in the past. We actually just sang the same words, nearly worthy he has been and so worthy.

15:07He will be faithful. He has been faithful, he will be. That's Jesus' point. Do you not see all the miracles and let that help you see beyond the moment, but to who I am and what I'm going to do for an eternity. That's what Jesus wants his disciples to see, that he's generous, that he's not stingy, that we can trust him, that he will provide. And in the same way, we need to look back and remember that he has been faithful, that he's worthy of our trust. So that when we look forward to uncertainty, to trials, to challenges, to suffering, to hardships, we can say faithful, he will be. And the Lord teaches us sometimes he meets our needs miraculously.

16:00Sometimes he meets our needs through the church. Sometimes he teaches us contentment so that we go without, and other times he gives us an abundance so that we can be a blessing to others. Now look at the fifth and final question. He says, how is it that you fail to understand that I did not speak about bread? And so saying it it it's not about the bread. And then he again repeats, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. So he gives that second word to drive home the lesson, which we'll see in the next verse. So look with me at verse 12, then they understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

16:49So the disciples finally understand that Jesus is warning them against false teaching. They're gaining insight, they're growing in their understanding. And so the critical question for us then is what is the false teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees that we are to be aware of? What is the false teaching that Jesus has in mind of the Pharisees and the Sadducees that he's warning his disciples to be aware of? Now, if you were here last week, you'll remember that the Pharisees and the Sadducees were two different groups, two different sects. They had two, two different set of beliefs even. And the Pharisees were known for their extra biblical traditions that made the law kind of impossibly hard to keep.

17:41Whereas the Sadducees, the most prominent thing we know about them is that they denied the resurrection. And so they've taught different things that would sort of undermine or contradict what Jesus was teaching. And they both probably had some things they agreed on as well. And they probably got some things right as well. I think what Jesus is referring to, the false teaching is what shows up in verses one through four of last week's passage. It's this attitude of unbelief where they demanded signs and they ignored the things that Jesus had already done. They were unable to recognize that Jesus was the Messiah.

18:22They were denying that plain reality. They were testing him, they were misattributing his miracles to demonic powers. They were blind that Jesus is God, that Jesus is the Messiah, he's the Christ. And I think that's why in the following passage, next week's passage, Jesus says, well, who do you say that I am? And he confesses you are the Christ. And that this was divine revelation. Let just look ahead Chapter 16 verse 17, flesh and blood has not revealed this to you. It's not signs that have done it, but my Father who is in heaven. Now some would feel some tension because if Jesus is warning against the teaching of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, is he warning against all of their teaching?

19:10Didn't they get some things right? Some would turn to Matthew 23 verses two and three. You can turn there, you can listen. Matthew 23, 2 and three. This is Jesus speaking. And it says the Scribes and the Pharisees. So different groups, but the Pharisees are the consistent one here, the scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat the seat of authority. So do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do for they preach, but they do not practice. So some would see that as Jesus saying, do as they say, not as they do that some of their teaching's, right? But their actions don't live it out.

19:47And so they see maybe this tension of, well, Jesus is telling the people to do what the Pharisees at least teach, but here he's warning them against their teaching. So which is it? Well, I I think there's no contradiction between what we see here in Matthew 23 because the rest of Matthew 23 is the scathing rebuke of the Pharisees, uh, of their legalism, of their harmful teaching, of their hypocrisy, of their neglect, of true purity. So while they got some things right, they missed the most important thing, they missed Jesus. And that is Jesus' ultimate point here. It doesn't matter if you understand some nuances of theology and the various debates, if you don't come to Jesus for the forgiveness of sins and for salvation, then you've missed it all.

20:43It doesn't matter what you get right, if you don't get Jesus right, that's what Jesus is trying to show them. So beware of the attitude of the scribes and Pharisees that denies Jesus as the Messiah because it doesn't matter what else they get, right when they've missed the only thing that matters or the main thing that matters. So beware of false teaching that denies the centrality of Jesus as the Messiah, as the Lord, as the Christ, and as the Son of God. So our main point is to beware of false teaching that rejects Jesus as Messiah. And Lord, if you get Jesus wrong, it doesn't matter what you get, right?

21:30If you get Jesus wrong, if there's no forgiveness of sins, no salvation, no cleansing, it doesn't matter what else. You understand it, you get the main thing totally off. And so Jesus is the litmus test. It's very black and white. One John five 12 puts it this way, one John five 12, whoever has the son has life. Whoever does not have the son of God, does not have life. I don't think it can get any more black and white than that. If you have Jesus, if you know Jesus, if you see Jesus in all this His glory, then you have life. And if you don't have the Son, there's no life, it's death. And the Pharisees and the Sadducees knew just enough, got just enough, right?

22:29And yet they were entirely blind to Jesus, which was damning. So what I wanna do is I wanna look at two applications flowing out of this text. The first one we're gonna take a lot of time with. The second one will be brief, two applications that come out of this text. And the first one is to beware a false teaching that gets Jesus wrong. Beware a false teaching that gets Jesus wrong or to put it with more words. Beware the insidious false teaching that's like leaven that would minimize, distort or deny anything about Jesus and then ends up spreading and permeating the church. And so there's so much false teaching at work in the world.

23:18Uh, I can't possibly cover it all. One commentator said there's probably 10,000 cults, uh, that stem off of Christianity, and half of them are in the us so we won't cover all those. Uh, but let me give some broad categories of falsehood for us to be warned of. The first is Trinity denying false teaching. Trinity denying false teaching. This is the false teaching that denies that God is one in three persons. So one God in three persons, the triune God, the Trinity. And many of these groups deny either Jesus full deity or his full humanity. This would be like the Jehovah Witnesses, the deny the ge deity of Jesus, and they deny the Trinity or Mormons believe that God was a man who became God and that humans can become gods.

24:13And that the Trinity is three distinct beings. And that's not even getting yet to the Book of Mormon, which they think is authoritative or oneness. Pentecostals teach modalism that the father and the Son and the Spirit are not distinct persons, but they're different modes of God. And yet the scriptures are clear that there is one God and he exists in three persons God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. There's the prosperity gospel, the false teaching of the prosperity gospel that promises financial success and that teaches that if you experience any suffering here in this life, it is 'cause of a failure of your faith or of your prayer life.

25:01And so what this does is it undermines the saving work, the sanctifying work of Jesus. The gospel does not guarantee financial success. It it teaches, yes, hard work often bears fruit and God blesses his people. But suffering in the Christian life is not only normal, but it's one of the ways in which God uses to sanctify us and to produce in us fruits of the spirit. Third category, we can get false teachings on specific doctrines. So there's false teaching of workspace, salvation, which believes that we can earn our salvation through our works or we get saved by grace. But we have to do those works in order to stay saved.

25:46They fail to see that we're saved by grace through faith in Jesus and Jesus alone, that the works, the good works that we do, are the fruits of true conversion or regeneration. There's the false teaching of universalism that supposes that all will be saved regardless of faith or repentance. And so again, this makes Jesus out to be a liar, undermines his work, all who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ will be saved. There are significant doctrinal errors in the Roman Catholic Church such as elevating tradition as interpreted by the Pope to the same authority as the Bible. We believe in something called Sola scripture, meaning that the Bible is the final infallible authority for our life.

26:40Did you hear it in the member covenant? It was the very first one. It says that the Bible is our final authority and not, not tradition, not what someone in Rome says, or the same is true of Eastern orthodoxy, which rejects sola scripture as well. They give authority to tradition, church tradition or ecumenical councils or the consensus of the church fathers. The the fourth category is liberal progressivism. This is probably what we see most here in North America. These liberal theological movements that have departed from the Bible's authority and deny or reinterpret kind of core Christian teachings such as the bodily resurrection of Christ or substitutionary atonement or biblical authority.

27:37And so there's whole swaths of so-called Christians in North America today who are trying to improve upon Jesus' compassion and love while ignoring ideas of holiness and sin. They want to elevate unity over truth. And so many churches will explicitly affirm the sexual revolution, endorsing LGBTQ plus teaching and veil their false teachings in slogans like, all Are welcome here. And Jesus loves all. And while those slogans sound good and have some truth to them, the way that they have twisted them is going to leave many not knowing their sin or what it means to be saved by Christ. The problem is that all of these teachings are insidious like leaven spreading, permeating, infiltrating the whole.

28:37And we can sadly see this in mainline denominations that have abandoned orthodox teaching on sexuality. They raise the rainbow flag in their churches to endorse the very sins that the Bible condemns. So at this point, some may be thinking, well pastor, this doesn't seem very loving. This sounds really combative. Don't we want to be known for what we're for rather than for what we're against? And to that, I would say absolutely we wanna be known for what we're for and to celebrate the wonder of the gospel and how salvation is found in Jesus and Jesus alone. Amen. And yet Paul instructs Titus that elders are to give instruction in sound doctrine and to rebuke those who contradict it to expose the deeds of darkness.

29:32One other thing, equally insidious problem is not just the large scale false teaching and cults that are sort of out there, but false teaching often in often originates from within. Paul tells Timothy, avoid irreverent Babel that will spread like gangrene. This is second Timothy two. He's talking about the church that Timothy is overseeing. False teaching is from within. Doctrinal errors are like sailing a boat where you're one degree off on something, but after a lifetime you find that you're way off the mark. And so we've departed from the clear teachings of the Bible. So we must not only be aware of major movements of false teaching out there, but we need to be aware of the subtle false teaching that would twist or overemphasize or underemphasize or skew certain truths from God's word.

30:34We need to be discerning when we're listening to podcasts or reading books or listening to online personalities. And so the question is, well, how do we then grow in this discernment? How do we become more discerning? And as we've mentioned, we wanna measure everything according to this book. This is our final authority for life and doctrine. And we wanna wrestle with things in community. So talk in your small groups and gather with others and say, well, I'm, I'm hearing this and I'm feeling pressed about this. And so-and-so at work is saying this and my, my relatives feel this, and how should I think about these things?

31:16Wrestle together with others. You can talk with the elders or the pastors. Just even this week at our pastoral staff meeting, we had a question come up and, and we just had to wrestle with, okay, what does the Bible say about this? Well, the Bible doesn't get really explicit about this particular thing. Well, what, what kind of principles can we apply? You know, what kind of ethical issues are here so that we can then wrestle together to understand? And the, the challenge is that false teaching will cloak itself under the guise of something good and right very often. So the phrase love is love sounds non-controversial, doesn't it?

32:00And yet it promotes unbiblical and disorder definitions of love, it redefines love according to feelings rather than truth. It's not love. If I love or pursue a woman that's not my wife, that's actually the opposite of love and it's sin or the slogan, live your truth. Just live your truth. It detaches truth from reality so that if you disagree with me, your oppressing me because my truth is my truth. Or follow your heart. That sounds like good advice except for Jeremiah 17, nine. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick or judge, not lest you be judged. That comes from the very words of Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount.

32:48How can you guys be so judge judgmental? And then Jesus goes on to teach that we're to judge according to his righteous standard, to examine our own hearts, to take out the log that's in our own eyes, to be discerning, to identify false prophets and to examine the fruit of faith. So it's not, don't judge, it's just use the right standard of judgment. Or today the ideal of tolerance or the idea of tolerance, used to mean disagreement without disparagement. Like we can agree to disagree. And today, if you do not affirm and accommodate everything I believe, or my deviant lifestyle, your refusal to go along is violence.

33:33And so we can restate the first application of beware, of insidious false teaching that minimizes distorts or denies anything about Jesus or anything that he commands. Uh, I think we need to have that category because many will want to claim Jesus as their mascot. Well, didn't Jesus and then just fill in the blank and well, yeah, he did, but that's not all that he did. Second application, set your minds on things above. So this is maybe the other side of the coin, if you will. In addition to training our discernment against false teaching, were to set our minds on things above. Jesus told his disciples, you're thinking about the wrong things.

34:21It's not about the bread, it's about me and who I am and all that I've accomplished. Don't you see all the miracles? All the leftover bread was pointing to a greater reality, not just that I can create bread, but I'm God, I'm the Messiah, I'm the Christ. Believe and put your trust in me. And that's what Jesus is calling us to this morning. Stop stressing about low level provision when God is calling you to follow him as a disciple. Colossians three, two says, set your mind on things that are above, not on things of earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. I think the second half of that verse, verse three is he saying, don't, don't set your mind on things below, uh, things of the earth, but things above and what things that you've died that your life is hidden with Christ in God.

35:16These are those greater glorious realities that because we have died to ourselves, we now live. It's Galatians two 20. I've been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. And that the life that I now live, I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me. We can ponder those realities for a lifetime and never exhaust them. That's what Jesus is calling us to or Paul's words in Philippians four, eight. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just whatever is pure, whatever's lovely, whatever's commendable, if there's any, if there's any excellence, if there's anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

36:05These are the things that are to characterize our minds and hearts and lives. And so this is not just the suggestion, but this is one of the primary ways that we grow in our likeness to Christ thinking about who he is and what he's accomplished. And so the warning of our texts is to be aware of all the different false teaching that is to creep in and to permeate and to infiltrate the church, our minds and our hearts so that our thinking becomes skewed and distorted, but rather think upon Christ. And so even though false teaching can have 11 like effect, Jesus back in Matthew 1333 said, the kingdom of heaven is like Levin.

36:59And in that metaphor, the kingdom of heaven continues to advance the glory of Christ and the truth of the gospel infiltrate every corner of the earth to save sinners. Darkness will be turned to light. The gospel will go to the very ends of the earth. Think of the most unlikely crevices of the world where the gospel is finding difficulty infiltrating criminal, underworlds, tribal people, groups, closed or restricted nations, urban centers or secular academic strongholds. Next week's passage will tell us the gates of hell even shall not prevail or be able to withstand the steady advance of Christ kingdom.

37:47So Jesus is doing a work and he's come and he's going to come again to bring about his rule and reign so that we might see more of him. Let's pray. Father, come now in power. Help us to see more of your son and to delight ourselves in who you are and all that you've accomplished. And then help us beware of the various false teachings that assault our minds and hearts so that we would cleave solely to Jesus and Jesus alone. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Sermon Text

Matthew 16:5-12

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