Hello All,
(This is just a general disclaimer that I must insert here at the beginning. I am but a lay person, like most of you. These weekly “thoughts” are but my own. Not the definitive word on any topic. Just my own conclusions derived from my own study and faith in our Father. The greatest hope I have for these weekly “thoughts” is to have them be a springboard for further study on your part. Not to be a weekly treatise to be blindly accepted. So, please read them with this intent, this motive in mind).
This week’s lesson from “The Adult Sabbath School Study Guide” is titled “Inside Out”. Once again, it is a look at various “stories (that) contain great lessons about the meaning and practice of religious life” (quarterly for Sabbath). For this week, I would like to look at our Thursday’s lesson, particularly the account of the disciples’ confusion/ misunderstanding as recorded in Mark 8:14-21. In this account, there is almost a comical repartee between Christ and the disciples. But no… there is a deadly serious element to it. Let’s look at this account and the complimentary account in Matthew 15:32 – 16:12.
The story really starts with Mark 8:1-13/ Matthew 15:32-16:4. In this account we see Christ’s miracle of feeding the 4,000. After that feeding, “getting into the boat again, (they) departed to the other side. Now the disciples had forgotten to take bread, and they did not have more than one loaf with them in the boat. Then He charged them, saying, ‘Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod’. And they reasoned among themselves, saying, ‘It is because there is no bread’.” As I said, it is almost comical. The disciples’ clueless response elicited an in-depth questioning from Jesus. His questions march the disciples through the details of the two feeding-of-the-multitudes. Questions which they perfectly answered. They knew how many “baskets full of fragments” (Mark 8:19, 20) were left over after the feedings. “So, He said to them, ‘How is it you do not understand?’” (Mark 8:21).
This highlights two things. First, the reason for the misunderstanding of the disciples… and the cause of our misunderstandings, too. The disciples, like us, are so full of care about today’s bread that we cannot think with simplicity about anything else. The mere mention of leaven threw them floundering in unbelief. When the Lord reminded them of what their eyes had seen… of what He was and of the foolishness of their care… then they began to see what the former words of the Lord meant. Their minds grew clear enough to receive and contemplate in some measure the meaning of Christ’s words.
Secondly, what is this “leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod?” (op. cit.). The account in Luke 12:1 tells us… “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees which is hypocrisy”. Oh. So true. Remember the account of Herod around the birth of Jesus? “Then Herod, when he had secretly called the wise men, determined from them what time the star appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, ‘Go forth and search carefully for the Young Child, and when you have found Him, bring back word to me, that I may come and worship Him, also” (Matthew 2: 7-8). Herod is surely a hypocrite.
What of the Pharisees? “Then Jesus spoke to the multitudes and to His disciples, saying: ‘The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses seat. Therefore, whatever they tell you to observe, that observe and do, but do not do according to their works, for they say and do not do… But all their works they do to be seen by men… (they) devour widows houses and for a pretense make long prayers… (they) are like white-washed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness’” (Matthew 23: 1-3,5,14,27).
Hypocrisy is not merely being disingenuous. It is to act under a pretend part, trying to assert that pretend part as true. Oooooo. Am I a hypocrite? Are you? Do we act a part? This is the issue with hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is so very deadly. It leads us to make-believe in order to project an image that is not true. And the worst part of it, hypocrisy can lead us to believe the make-believe pretense. This is why Christ councils the Laodiceans to “anoint your eyes with eye-salve, that you may see” (Revelation 3; 18). Hypocrisy blinds us to our own condition. The eye-salve is something we need to “buy from (Christ)” (Revelation 3: 18). “Buy” meaning to give up something in order to gain. We need to give-up our phoniness and stand naked and real before our God of love. And we will only do this when we know we are so wonderfully loved by Him who already knows us. This is why letting God love us is the beginning of all our healing. Until then, we will pretend, we will strive to be our own god… because we do not have God as God. Love alone leads us to be willing to be real, authentic, and honest. Until then, we “say, ‘We see’. Therefore, (our) blindness remains” (John 9:41).
With brotherly love,
Jim