CHAP. 8:11-21
(continued)
THE DANGER OF LEAVEN IN THE KINGDOM
The Lord thereupon turned away from the representatives of the “wicked and adulterous generation,” and left them (solemn action!) in their obstinate unbelief, crossing again the Sea of Galilee. He then uttered one of His profound sayings to the apostles, bidding them to “beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod.” If the King was rejected, what would befall the kingdom? The influence of the Pharisees and of Herod aroused violent and insidious opposition to the spread of the ministry of Christ Himself; what a powerful and inimical influence would they not subsequently exercise upon the ministry of His servants? He bade them beware of these corrupting influences.
Looking back, the disciples might have remembered that before leaving the opposite shores they witnessed an example of the power of Pharisaism to befog the heart and prevent the acceptance of the Lord whom they loved and revered as the Messiah of Israel. Looking still further back, they might have recollected that terrible exhibition of the power of Herod when John, the prophet and forerunner, was murdered in circumstances of horrible barbarity. These forces of religious hypocrisy and of civil government at work in these typical instances were proved to be alike antagonistic to the progress of the truth, and the Lord had turned away in avoidance of both. For the future guidance of His followers, the Lord now warned them against these sources of contamination and corruption. The time had come when the children of the kingdom must break away from those who professed to be teachers of the law and who sat in Moses' seat.
The Pharisees were unreal pietists, and the Herodians were political time-servers. It behooved the disciples in the exercise of such power and authority as the Lord had given them as His apostles to take heed lest empty formalism and the fear of or undue subservience to worldly power should enter and vitiate the kingdom of God. Love of self and love of the world would, if allowed, work insidiously, like leaven, to the corruption of the followers of Christ, as it had already done in the Jewish nation. The warning of the Lord was uttered with a full knowledge of the coming menace, and, we find, historically, that evil afterward crept into the churches of Galatia and Corinth, and is alluded to under this figure of leaven (Gal. 5:9; 1 Cor. 5:7, 8).
When the Lord was with His disciples it was, as it were, the days of unleavened bread, for He Himself was the Bread of God come down from heaven to give life to the world. But in the succession of Jewish feasts, the feast of wave-loaves followed that of the unleavened bread and the first fruits, and it was provided from the time of institution that the two wave-loaves should be baked with leaven (Lev. 23:17). So the results of the public and united testimony of the Lord's followers, which would immediately succeed His own pure and untainted witness, would be leavened in character; and counseling them in view of His own absence, and of the coming dangers of corrupting influences, He bade them “beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod.”
Dullness Of Hearing
But the disciples did not apprehend the meaning of these cautionary words of our Lord. They did not, in the scriptural sense, “hear His word,” and therefore they did not understand His phraseology (John 8:43). “Leaven” was the key-word to help them to the true explanation of the utterance, but, forgetting that their Master's kingdom was not of this world, they assigned to the word a physical not a spiritual significance: an error similar to that made by Nicodemus in a different connection ( John 3:4).
The disciples could think only of their own negligence in stocking the food-baskets of the company. Their hearts had not yet grasped the inner purpose of His teaching, and, therefore, His figurative expression concerning leaven was of the nature of a parable to them. It was a “hard word” to them (cp. John 6:60, New Tr.). “And they reasoned among themselves, saying, It is because we have no bread.”
Why were they so dull? Truly the words of the Lord were spirit and life, while the Great Teacher was skilful and wise in utterance, and spoke to the disciples as they were “able to hear” (Mark 4:33). They however failed to use rightly those “ears to hear” which they possessed as those born anew for the kingdom. They were engrossed with earthly or secondary matters, and missed the heavenly harmonies of His words. When the Lord warned against certain sources of leaven, their thoughts at once flew to food for the body. They had had but one loaf with them in the boat, and their conscience charged them with negligence in providing an adequate supply on reaching the other side (Matt. 16:5). No doubt they were the more concerned when they recalled the previous poverty of their stock on each occasion when the Lord inquired on behalf of the hungry multitude.
But if it was a good thing for the disciples to recall their former failures, it would have been better still for them to have remembered the Lord's teaching. For He had already in one of the parables which He specially explained to them, associated leaven with the kingdom of the heavens, and showed how its surreptitious introduction resulted in the leavening of the whole mass (Matt. 13:33). The three measures of meal affected as a whole by the foreign element brought into it was set forth as a figure of the new religious organization which was about to be established in the place of Judaism.
The Lord taught thereby that the kingdom in its coming phase was not the ideal one. When the great city, the holy Jerusalem, shall have come down out of heaven from God, and become the seat of government in the earth for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb, the kingdom will then assume its incorruptible form, for “there shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie” (Rev. 21:27). But until the dawning of that day of glory, the kingdom of God in the earth will not be homogeneous, but leavened by the presence of evil.
Nevertheless, the introduction of the leaven was the work of the enemies not of the faithful friends of the kingdom. Indeed, the faithful in the midst of a tainted assembly were held responsible for its presence, and exhorted to purge out the old leaven, and to “keep the feast, not with the old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Cor. 5:7, 8).
Seeing, then, that our Lord had delivered this parable of the leavened meal in the course of His public ministry, and interpreted its significance to the disciples privately (Mark 4:34), they possessed a key to the meaning of His words on this occasion. But as they had forgotten the first miracle of the loaves when the necessity for a second arose, so they forgot the parable of the leaven when the Lord used the figure to warn them against the evil influences of the spirit of Pharisaism and Herodianism—of insidious corruption, religious and political.
THE SEVEN-FOLD INTERROGATORY
The Lord corrected His disciples by a series of questions which gave them the opportunity for self-conviction and self-condemnation. The gentle and forbearing manner in which He dealt with them is instructive too. We see in the Prophetic Servant a perfect exemplification of those qualities afterward enjoined by the apostle Paul upon his dear son Timothy: “the servant of the Lord must not strive: but he must be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, forbearing, patient” (2 Tim. 2:24).
Let us proceed to inquire what was the cause of the erroneous thoughts of the disciples, and why they failed to profit by the Lord's teaching. It was needful for them that the true source of their dullness should be exposed, in order that their eventual spiritual progress might be secured.
The stumblingblock to their understanding could not lie in the matter nor in the manner of the Lord's instruction; for, with regard to the subject of His teaching, He taught them such things as they were able to bear (Mark 4:33; John 16:12), and, with regard to His method of teaching, His representation of His subject to His hearers could not but be perfect: “as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things” (John 8:28).
The fault and the failure to apprehend the meaning of the Lord's words therefore lay with the apostles themselves. They failed most of all in that they were not sufficiently appreciative of the incomparable worth of the One who was their Instructor, in whom were “hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” It was then, though they did not fully realize it, the day of their visitation. The Dayspring from on high was with them, but they did not set such store by His presence as they might have done. They slighted the Lord's testimonies, they disobeyed His precepts, and they forgot His wonderful works. The nature of the Lord's questions seems to imply that they were guilty of neglect, and that this was the real cause of their want of progress in divine things.
The skilful Physician of their souls by this exposure laid before them the inward cause of their weakness and spiritual backwardness. If they confessed their errors, as they were given opportunity to do, they would be forgiven and cleansed from their secret faults. For it is written, “If we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged” (1 Cor. 11:31).
To bring before the disciples the truth concerning their hearts the Lord made use of the interrogative method, and His questions imply censure. It was by a similar but more extended “cross-examination” that Job's self-conceit was broken down. Jehovah's series of questions to the patriarch from the whirlwind is recorded in four lengthy chapters (Job 38-41), and, in result, Job confessed, “I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”
We may observe a sevenfold succession in the questions put by our Lord to the disciples. They all imply condemnation, and “work wedge-like to the proof.” The series may be set out in the following order, and the implied charge is suggested for consideration in each case.
(1) Why reason ye because ye have no bread? implying a lack of confidence in the Lord on the part of the apostles.
(2) Do ye not yet perceive (νοεω)? implying lack of observation during their recent experiences.
(3) Do ye not yet understand (συνίημι)? implying an absence of due reflection upon the Lord's words and acts.
(4) Have ye your heart hardened? implying a lack of sensitiveness to divine things.
(5) Having eyes, see ye not? implying the nonuse of their spiritual faculties in relation to the Lord's doings.
(6) Having ears, hear ye not? implying the non-use of their spiritual faculties upon the Lord's words.
(7) Do ye not yet remember? implying a lack of spiritual intelligence, and specifying their forgetfulness of the two recent food-miracles, especially of the bountiful supply of broken pieces over and above the amount required.
This series of seven is followed by another question, which is separately introduced, in the narrative, viz., Do ye not yet understand (συνίημι)? This is in a sense a summary of the foregoing series, and it will be considered in its due order.
While considering this display of the dullness of the disciples, it is well to recall that there were many matters which the apostles were incompetent to understand until the Lord was glorified, and the Holy Spirit was bestowed upon them at Pentecost (cp. Luke 18:34; John 12:16). But their incapacity in some respects did not exonerate them from their slackness in others. And the Lord dealt with their responsibility to make good use of their exceptional privileges as special eye-witnesses and ear-witnesses of His ministry as the Great Prophet of the kingdom of God. They were apostles; should not they, as such, display some intelligence of their Master's ways? It was written in the law concerning the whole nation: “then is none that understandeth” (Rom. 3:11). If the same indictment was true in any degree of the twelve, after their special opportunities, were they not the more blameworthy?
W. J. H.