Sermon Tone Analysis

We’ve come to chapter number 16 in Matthew’s gospel this morning, and we’re really getting into exciting times here in the study of Matthew.

We’ve just come off some of Jesus’ most famous miracles - His walking on water and feeding of 5000 and 4000 people.

Right here in chapter 16 we will soon see Peter’s great confession about Jesus at Cesarea Phillipi, that He is the Christ, the Son of the Living God.

In chapter 17 we will see one of the most marvelous and mind-boggling scenes that we have in the Gospels, and that is the transfiguration of Jesus where the glory of the godhead shone through and Moses and Elijah make an appearance.

At the end of chapter 17, Jesus will clearly foretell his death and resurrection, and by the beginning of chapter 19 Jesus will leave Galilee for the final time and then it will be a steady march to Jerusalem toward the events of his passion.

I hope that gives you a little picture of where we are in the book, and where we will be headed.

After Jesus’ feeding of the 4000, it tells us that he got into a boat and wend into Magadon - across the lake from where the crowd had gathered.

Now, last time Jesus’ fed a large group of people and went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, he was met by the Pharisees from Jerusalem who challenged him about his disciples’ breaking of the traditions.

Well, this time Jesus feeds a large group of people, gets into a boat to go to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, and who do you think meets him there?

The Pharisees, and this time with them, the Sadducees.

Jesus’ interaction with the group is short - but the message that comes through in these first 12 verses is a very simple one - beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

Since Jesus’ first interaction with the Pharisees, we have seen them as examples of what not to do, essentially.

There are many things we could say about them, many summary statements could be made.

Jesus himself speaks boldly against them, and as we continue through Matthew we will see him speak even more boldly.

But of all the things that the Pharisees represent in terms of negative, anti-gospel and anti-kingdom things, I think three stick out most dramatically.

Legalism - we saw this in the last chapter, where the Pharisees from Jerusalem met Jesus and challenged him concerning the Traditions.

The Traditions, in pharisaical Judaism, had become the law - and the law was, in their eyes, the only way to be justified and made clean.

Jesus has challenged this one many accounts, but the Pharisees legalism stands.

Another that we see is the mark of Hypocrisy.

This is not the only time that Jesus speaks of the Pharisees in terms of leaven, and in one place where Luke records it, Jesus explains that the leaven of the Pharisees is hypocrisy.

In Matthew 23, that will be a major denunciation by Jesus of the Pharisees as well.

Jesus says that the pharisees are the classic example of not practicing what they preach.

Hypocrisy marked them generally, and they may have been blind to it, or so used to it that it didn’t bother them, but Jesus denounced it sharply.

But of all the things that we can say are most consistent, that comes up again and again with the Pharisees, and also with the Sadducees who we see in this passage, it is the example of unbelief.

We saw unbelief in chapter 12, when, seeing Jesus cast out a Demon, the Pharisees refused to believe and in stead accused him of working by the power of Satan.

We saw unbelief in chapter 12 again when they asked for a sign, and Jesus told them that they would not believe even if they saw a sign of the magnitude of the porphet Jonah - and he said the men of Nineveh who repented at Jonah’s preaching would rise up to condemn them, because they would not believe, no matter what they saw.

Well, here again in chapter 16, we see Pharisees coming with their unbelief, asking for a sign.

Now, these three things, Legalism, Hypocrisy, and Unbelief, are deadly spiritual poisons.

Legalism is deadly because it leads you to believe you can find life in something that has no power to produce it, and transformation in something that has no power to transform.

Hypocrisy is deadly because it is life only on the surface, but rotting and decay on the inside.

As Jesus will say of these men, they are like whited tombs on the outside but full of dead bones inside.

And the worse part of hypocrisy, is that eventually you believe the lie yourself and believe that your outward appearance and put-on behavior is the important part of your life.

Unbelief is deadly because it is the simple and greatest statement against Jesus, against the Kingdom, and against His Gospel.

Unbelief, in its greatest forms, displays a hardness of heart like we saw in the parable of the seeds.

No matter the truth, no matter the message, no matter the greatness of the sign, the heart remains impenetrable and the Word of God has no effect, leaving a dead soul dead and blinded eyes darkened.

Now, as we read through this passage, I also want to note that we will see not only the leaven of the pharisees and Sadducees, but also we will see two kinds of spiritual blindness as well.

We see the blindness of the Pharisees, which would seemingly never be remedied,

but we also see a kind of spiritual blindness in the disciples - and in that there are great applications for us.

The legalism, hypocrisy, and unbelief of the Pharisees and Sadducees are things that followers of Jesus are warned to beware of even today.

Read Matthew 12:1-12

Demanding - Vs. 1-4

We pick up the narrative in verse 1 where matthew tells us that “Pharisees and Sadducees came, to test him...”

Now, the main part of the story is the testing - the reason they came, but we cannot ignore something here.

That pharisees and sadducees were working together on something is a remarkable thing, for they were essentially non-combative enemies.

That is, they would never pick up physical weapons against each other, but ideaologically and socially they were at odds with one another.

The Pharisees we know - they are traditionalists, staunch keepers of the laws of Moses and also the oral laws of the rabbis.

The Sadducees, on the other hand, were something of the progressives of their day.

They did not accept the traditions of the Elders as law, and in fact, they only generally believed the 5 books of Moses were applicable scriptures, whereas the Pharisees believed the entirety of what we call the Old Testament.

Socially, while the Pharisees were certainly set apart by their rituals, behavior, and appearance, they were a bit more common-class.

The Sadducees were, on the other hand, upper class.

In fact, the high priest for many many years came from the Sadducees.

They also differed on another major front - miracles.

The Pharisees believed in the supernatural, they believed the miracles of the prophets.

They believed that people could be raised from the dead.

But the Sadducees did not - they were, you could say, naturalists.

All these elements together made it so that these groups rarely interacted, but interestingly they were able to put differences aside for the sake of Jesus.

But not in a good way.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and that was displayed most vividly here.

This does show the depth and seriousness of unbelief, because that is the one character trait these groups shared - their equal unbelief in Jesus as Messiah.

How far will one go to confirm their unbelief?

Well, much like we saw in chapter 12, they ask for a sign.

A sign from heaven.

And they ask in order to test Jesus, so Matthew is already giving us a clue that they weren’t really interested in being proved wrong - they were interested in something that would trip Jesus up, something that would confirm their hatred and unbelief.

Red-Sky at night, sailors’ delight.

Red-sky in morning, sailors take warning.

Jesus is using that little well-known bit of wisdom to show them their blindness.

They can see the obvious signs of the weather, but they cannot see the signs that show the Kingdom is here?

Have they not seen or heard of these signs?

They wanted a sign from heaven - Jesus is the sign from heaven.

He did what nobody else could do.

He taught like nobody else could teach.

He had a birth like nobody else had.

He had righteousness like nobody else could show or offer.

Jesus was the sign, but they would not believe.

And Jesus says, again, no sign will be given to this evil and adulterous generation, except the sign of Jonah.

There will be one major sign given - the resurrection of Jesus.

But would they believe then?

No, they wouldn’t.

Jesus has given a multitude of signs.

The signs of his birth.

The signs of his teaching.

The signs of his miracles.

The sign of his death, and his resurrection.

The sign of his return to the Father.

What more can we ask for?

What more can you ask for?

Missing - Vs. 5-10

Well, we are told that Jesus left them - in fact, Mark tells us that he left them with a sigh - as if to imply his frustration and sadness at their hardness of heart.

We pick up now again with the disciples.

Now, the next few verses, I have to admit, provided me with some comic relief in my study this week.

There are several ways you could imagine the scene.

One, I could imagine them thinking - “we forgot bread - what is he going to say?

I told you we should have stocked up on bread after the last feeding!”

“Oh no! He’s talking about leaven!

See, I knew he’d find out we didn’t bring bread!”

Or, I like to imagine it like this.

“Hey, did you hear what Jesus said about the leaven of the Pharisees?

Do you have any idea what he meant?

No

Yeah, me either - Oh man!