Sermon Tone Analysis

There is a principle of Bible study (called the law of first mention) that says, "The first time a thing—a word, or a phrase—is mentioned in the Bible influences how it should be interpreted throughout the scriptures."

Light/day are always interpreted as good/positive in the scriptures, whereas darkness/night are interpreted as bad/negative in the scriptures.

God did His creative work in six days and rested on the seventh.

Those seven days represent our week, months and years.

A day consists of 24 hours from either evening to morning or morning too evening.

How do you get 3 days and 3 nights from Friday afternoon to Sunday morning as Jesus said He would be in the heart of the earth?

[Mt.

12:40, Luke 11:29, Mark 8:12]

This morning as we look at the scriptures I want you to keep in mind “the law of first mention” as we listen to Jesus charge his disciples “Beware of the Leaven.”

Text; Mark 8:14-21

Jesus warns the disciples of the leaven of Pharisees and Herod

Leaven- [Yeast] Any substance that produces fermentation when added to dough.

Leaven may signify the dough already infected by leaven, which was put into the flour so that the leaven could pass through the entire mass before baking, or it may refer to dough that had risen through the influence of the leaven.

Fermentation- turmoil, chaos, unrest, disruption

Leaven is used 39 times in the scriptures and every time it is in a negative/bad way.

Let’s use the “law of first mention”.

1.

Take Heed, Beware of the Leaven; 15

Jesus “charged” them to “take heed/beware” of the leaven of the Pharisees, Herod and the Sadducees [Mt.

16:6]

Disciples misunderstood and thought that Jesus was rebuking them for not bringing enough bread for their journey, or that they shouldn’t eat with these groups of people.

Jesus warned them to not be so gullible to the ways of these people.

Leaven of the Pharisees- hypocrisy, deception and play acting in their doctrines and teachings.

They fermented and soured everyone they came in contact with.

They added rules and regulations, rituals and ceremonies which put undue restrictions and burdens upon the people.

[Religious]

Leaven of Herod- depravity, immoral behavior, secular influence, worldliness.

Remember Herod Antipas was nothing but a puppet of Rome.

He liked to hear the preaching of John the Baptist but not enough to repent and change and therefore took his head in a drunken party he threw for himself.

[World leaders]

Leaven of Sadducees- skepticism of spiritual and supernatural things such as angels, miracles, resurrection from the dead.

[Mix of both]

This is a double warning that Jesus gives.

It stressed the supreme importance of guarding against the leaven of both religionists and world leaders.

2. The Power of Leaven;

The significant thing about leaven is its power.

It only takes a small amount of leaven, or yeast, to work through and affect an entire batch of dough.

Paul warns about the leaven of sexual fornication in the church

Paul encourages believers to stand against the leaven of false teachers of Gentiles needing to be circumcised to obey the law

It only takes a small amount of leaven/yeast to make a batch of bread rise, so the evil teachings and hypocrisy of the religious and political leaders could permeate and contaminate the entire society.

Lets use the law of first mention with the phrase “three measures of meal”

Here, "three measures of meal" is used in the context of a fellowship meal—giving hospitality, in this case, to God—so it has a spiritual connotation.

With this example in mind, we can understand that Christ's use of this phrase would have made His Jewish audience think immediately of the meal offering in Leviticus 2 and they would have been absolutely shocked out of their sandals to find that someone had the audacity, to put leaven in a meal offering!

It simply was not done!

A person who did so could expect to be killed by the next lightning bolt out of heaven.

What, then would the normal Jew have thought?

He would have understood immediately that the Kingdom of Heaven would be subverted.

Something good had been corrupted.

[Pastor Claude Alexander AOG]

In the Scriptures leaven represents wrong or evil teaching; it never means the gospel.

One of the fallacious things that is being taught today is that leaven represents the gospel in the parable of the woman who hid leaven in three measures of meal (Matt.

13:33).

The meal symbolizes the gospel, and the leaven, which represents wrong teaching, was hidden in it.

It is the process of making something taste good to the natural man.

Actually, what is liberalism?

It all came into existence by the pulpit trying to please the unsaved church members.

And today we have a lot of men trying to please the congregation, even when they are unsaved.

And that, may I say, is putting leaven in—that is, mixing wrong teaching with the truth of the gospel.

The only kind of bread they will eat is that which has leaven because leaven makes bread taste good.

I was brought up on hot biscuits, friend, and the natural man likes them.

Leaven is the evil that is put in.

And here Jesus is warning them about the wrong teaching of the Pharisees and Herod.

McGee, J. V. (1991).

Thru the Bible commentary: The Gospels (Mark) (electronic ed., Vol.

36, p. 99).

Nashville: Thomas Nelson.

Leaven is the church accepting homosexuality as a alternative lifestyle, abortion as a choice, gay marriage as everybody has a right to marry who they want, shacking up as making sure before you marry, women in the pulpit as equality, and so on and on and on!

Close;

The just of this message is not about leaven, but for one to Beware of the Leaven.

The real issue here is the lack of faith among the people of God.

Just as the disciples didn’t understand and first, there are many today that don’t understand.

We see and we hear, but we do not comprehend.

We read His Word, but we don’t fully believe it.

We have experienced His power, but it hasn’t convinced us that we can trust Him completely.