Good morning.
Before I really get started, I just want to share a story with you. My family and I went out to eat yesterday for lunch, and Paul, the little almost-four-year-old, had been eating a lot of chicken nuggets and French fries. He leaned back in his chair, rubbing his tummy, and said, “I’m almost fat like Daddy.”
Anyway, after he said that, and after I got over the initial shock of it, I thought, “Lord, what are You trying to say here?” It came to me this morning what the Lord was trying to say.
I think the Lord has put something in each of us that makes us want to be like him—like our father, both our earthly father and, once we know Him, our heavenly Father.
So, as we come to the ministry today, as we come to opening the Word, I pray that what I have to share would help us all become more conformed to the image of Christ.
Father, we just thank You, Lord, that You have loved us. Lord, You still love us, and You have captured us, Lord—released us from the captivity of the law of sin and brought us into Your captivity, Lord: captivity to life and to one another.
Father, I just pray that You would allow me to say this morning just what You would have me say. I pray in Christ’s name. Amen.
Well, today I want to talk about a couple of stories that are very familiar to all of us. I have read these stories probably hundreds of times, and I have read them to my children probably hundreds of times.
But it was not until just recently, when I was reading these stories in my quiet time, that the Lord revealed something new to me in them. That is what I want to share with you today.
The stories are the feeding of the five thousand and the feeding of the four thousand. Usually, when I read these stories, I never saw them as really related to one another. But there is a third story that follows them, where Christ brings these two stories together. He makes a point that is very applicable to us today.
First, I want to consider the stories of the feeding of the five thousand and the four thousand. Then we will consider what they lead to: the subject of leaven. Christ gives a somewhat cryptic challenge and answer concerning leaven, and that is what we are going to talk about today.
I know that sounds pretty confusing. Herb is rolling his eyes already. But hopefully, by the end of the morning, we will have a little more clarity on this. Since we are not having lunch today, I feel free to talk until about two o’clock or so on this matter. Not really—just kidding.
Let us start by reading part of the story of the feeding of the five thousand. The version I want to read is in the Gospel of Mark, beginning in Mark 6:34.
And when Jesus went ashore, He saw a great multitude, and He had compassion on them, because they were as sheep not having a shepherd; and He began to teach them many things.
And when the day was now far spent, His disciples came unto Him, and said, This is a desert place, and the time is already past;
send them away, that they may go into the country and villages round about, and buy themselves somewhat to eat.
But He answered and said unto them, Give ye them to eat.
And they say unto Him, Shall we go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread, and give them to eat?
And He saith unto them, How many loaves have ye? Go and see.
And when they knew, they say, Five, and two fishes.—Mark 6:34-38
I will skip down to Mark 6:42.
And they all ate, and were filled.
And they took up broken pieces, twelve basketfuls, and also of the fishes.
And they that ate the loaves were five thousand men.—Mark 6:42-44
Now let us consider the feeding of the four thousand. This is found in Mark 8:1.
In those days, when there was again a great multitude, and they had nothing to eat, Jesus called unto Him His disciples, and saith unto them,
I have compassion on the multitude, because they continue with Me now three days, and have nothing to eat;
and if I send them away fasting to their home, they will faint on the way; and some of them are come from far.
And His disciples answered Him, Whence shall one be able to fill these men with bread here in a desert place?
And He asked them, How many loaves have ye? And they said, Seven.
And He commanded the multitude to sit down on the ground; and He took the seven loaves, and having given thanks, He brake, and gave to His disciples to set before them; and they set them before the multitude.
And they had a few small fishes; and having blessed them, He commanded to set these also before them.
And they ate, and were filled; and they took up, of broken pieces that remained over, seven baskets.
And they were about four thousand; and He sent them away.—Mark 8:1-9
Now let us skip down a couple of verses to this third story, where Jesus ties these two feedings together. Beginning in Mark 8:13:
And He left them, and again entering into the boat departed to the other side.
And they forgot to take bread; and they had not in the boat with them more than one loaf.
And He charged them, saying, Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.
And they reasoned one with another, saying, We have no bread.
And Jesus perceiving it saith unto them, Why reason ye, because ye have no bread? Do ye not yet perceive, neither understand? Have ye your heart hardened?
Having eyes, see ye not? And having ears, hear ye not? And do ye not remember?
When I brake the five loaves among the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces took ye up? They say unto Him, Twelve.
And when the seven among the four thousand, how many basketfuls of broken pieces took ye up? And they say unto Him, Seven.
And He said unto them, Do ye not yet understand?—Mark 8:13-21
That little phrase in Mark 8:15 was what jumped out at me when I read these stories this time: “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.”
I guess when I had read these stories before, I had kind of skimmed over that verse because, on the surface, it seems out of place. If you leave out Mark 8:15, this passage simply becomes a story about Christ reprimanding His disciples for not having faith that He could feed them.
That is kind of the message I had always seen in these stories. But I think that without Mark 8:15, we miss some of the meaning. We do not fully delve into what Christ is saying here.
When you add Mark 8:15 back into the story, it sounds like Christ is challenging His disciples to examine themselves—to see why they do not have a simple, relaxed trust in what Christ can do.
He tells them, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and beware of the leaven of Herod.” Then He gives them a somewhat cryptic answer concerning how to beware, or how to deal with this leaven. That answer was two numbers: seven and twelve.
We will get to what I think Christ means by that, and what the Lord has shown me. But first, I want to consider the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod, and how they relate to our lives today.
First, let us talk about leaven. Leaven is found throughout Scripture, and most uses of it have a common theme.
A good way to discover the common theme of a word, person, or number in Scripture is to look at the first time it is mentioned. This is called the rule of first mention. Typically, the first time something is mentioned sets the tone for that word throughout Scripture.
Can anyone under the age of twenty-one tell me where the first mention of leaven is? Anybody? Anybody? Bueller?
Okay. I do not know. Yeah, close—close. About a couple of weeks late there. Actually, a couple of weeks late from the second mention. You will see.
Genesis 19:3 is the first mention of unleavened bread in Scripture. It is where Lot was in Sodom, and the angels came to visit him. Lot prepared a meal for the angels:
And he urged them greatly; and they turned in unto him, and entered into his house; and he made them a feast, and did bake unleavened bread, and they did eat.
—Genesis 19:3
It is a very short passage, a very short story, but it implies that unleavened bread—the lack of leaven—is suitable for those who are set apart for the purpose of God. These angels who came down to visit Lot were set apart for God’s purpose.
When you look at the second mention of leaven, which is a fuller and more complete mention, it reinforces that view. The second mention is at Passover, in Exodus 12. Let us read Exodus 12:15.
Seven days shall ye eat unleavened bread; even the first day ye shall put away leaven out of your houses: for whosoever eateth leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that soul shall be cut off from Israel.
And in the first day there shall be to you a holy convocation, and in the seventh day a holy convocation; no manner of work shall be done in them, save that which every man must eat, that only may be done by you.
And ye shall observe the feast of unleavened bread; for in this selfsame day have I brought your hosts out of the land of Egypt: therefore shall ye observe this day throughout your generations by an ordinance forever.
In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at evening, ye shall eat unleavened bread, until the one and twentieth day of the month at evening.
Seven days shall there be no leaven found in your houses: for whosoever eateth that which is leavened, that soul shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he be a sojourner, or one that is born in the land.
Ye shall eat nothing leavened; in all your habitations shall ye eat unleavened bread.—Exodus 12:15-20
What can we learn about leaven from this passage in Exodus? I think, to understand leaven, we need to understand Passover, because this was part of their Passover observance.
In the Old Testament, in the Judaic view of Passover, it is a remembrance of God’s deliverance of the nation of Israel out of captivity. God did this through the people of Israel sacrificing a spotless lamb and putting the blood of the lamb over their doorposts.
Convert that to a new-covenant view, and Passover is a picture of God freeing us from captivity—much like David talked about this morning in the opening. He frees us from our captivity, not by the sacrifice of a farm animal, but by the sacrifice of His spotless Son.
In the Judaic observance, they observe Passover once a year for a week. They remove all leaven from their homes. There is no leavened bread, no leavening at all. That is how they observe the historical Passover.
But for the new-covenant Passover—the Passover applicable to us as believers—we observe that Passover continually. Every week, we remember that the Lord has set us free through the blood of His Lamb.
The leaven in this Passover seems to have the connotation of some kind of corruption, pollution, or dilution. It needs to be removed from their homes: something that should not be mixed in, something that should not be polluting their environment.
So, as we commemorate our spiritual Passover and remember our being set free, the picture of leaven is one of removing corruption, mixture, or pollution from our lives.
Because our Passover is continual, our observance of it should be continual. The spiritual reality behind this picture of no leaven is that we have a freed life and a freed nature. This freed life and nature need to be free from pollution, mixture, and corruption.
Now, keep in mind that there is nothing wrong with leavened bread. There is nothing wrong with a good loaf of Wonder Bread for us today. But the picture of leaven is a spiritual picture of spiritual corruption and spiritual pollution in our lives.
So, when Christ warned the disciples in Mark 8:15, what did He mean? He said, “Watch out and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.”
I do not think He was warning His disciples that they would immediately become like the Pharisees or like Herod. The disciples had enough insight to know that Herod was wrong and that the Pharisees were very wrong. They knew that they should not be like either one of them.
But I think Christ was warning them about something much more subtle. He was warning them about taking into their mindset little parts of what the Pharisees believed, and maybe little parts of how Herod was.
These little things are like leaven. They come in, and you may not even be able to see them at first. They are so tiny, but they start to reproduce and multiply. The next thing you know, the leaven becomes the most prominent thing in the loaf.
The path to being a Pharisee, or the path to being like Herod, is not taken in one big step. It is taken in little baby steps, usually beginning with something that seems good. You take a little baby step, and the next thing you know, you are pretty far away from the Lord. You are doing things the way of the Pharisees, the way of Herod, and you are even condemning those who are trying to follow the Lord.
Christ was warning His disciples about taking these small, tiny things into their lives—things that are barely visible but will grow, multiply, and corrupt.
Christ is the bread of life. He says that in Scripture. He has brought us into this loaf that He is, and there is no leaven needed for the life of Christ to be complete.
Christ warned the people about two types of leaven: the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod. I want to talk about what these two leavens may look like, beginning with the leaven of the Pharisees.
I want to look at the feeding of the five thousand. I think the order and placement of these stories correspond to Christ’s warning about the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod. The feeding of the five thousand came first, followed by the feeding of the four thousand.
There are other things in these stories that correlate the leaven of the Pharisees to the feeding of the five thousand. I think there is a key verse in the story that illustrates what the leaven of the Pharisees is: Mark 6:37.
After Christ asked them to feed the five thousand, the disciples said, “Shall we go and spend two hundred denarii on bread and give them something to eat?”
When I was meditating on this story, I went back and read that again, and I saw something new that I had not seen before. Usually, I had seen this as the disciples scoffing at Christ: “You are asking us to do something crazy.” But I do not think that is what the disciples were doing at this point.
I think the disciples were asking how to get it done. Christ had told them to feed the five thousand, and they were going to go off and do it. They were asking permission to spend the two hundred denarii to feed those five thousand people.
They were standing right next to the Creator of the universe, and they were not going to turn to Him to get it done. They were going to go out and spend the money to do it themselves.
Two hundred denarii was about two hundred days’ wages to feed that many people. Put another way, they were going to rely on their own strength and their own resources to get this impossible task done.
They had Christ with them, but they were going to depend on themselves to do it. Another way to say it is, “I am going to do this myself. It may cost me a lot, but I am going to do it myself.”
There are other clues in Scripture about the leaven of the Pharisees. If we look at the lifestyle, behavior, and character of the Pharisees, we see this same attitude permeating their whole system.
The Pharisees had neglected faith in the Jewish faith. They had completely gotten rid of the faith aspect of it. They had constructed a very large set of rules that covered every aspect of life.
By doing that, there was really no faith involved in being a Jewish person. They had a huge rule book. I think you can still buy the Torah, but it is like this giant stack of books about how to live the Jewish life—all the rules, all the things you must do to be a good Jew, to satisfy God, and to avoid offending God by crossing one of His commandments.
They had the whole thing documented, spelled out, and written down to a T. It was foolproof—so foolproof that they did not even need a Messiah when He came, because they already had it all figured out.
In all their effort to define what a good, faithful, God-pleasing life was, they forgot that they were sinful. They forgot that there was no way they could please God and no amount of effort they could put into it to satisfy the Father.
The Pharisees could not see that God had the power to fulfill the Law and the Prophets, not them. But they took it upon themselves to try to fulfill the Law and the Prophets in their own strength.
In a nutshell, the leaven of the Pharisees is seeing Christ but not seeing, and maybe not believing, His ability to justify us before the Father. We may see Christ. We may see Him with us. But maybe we do not see Him as the complete solution for our spiritual failings.
That is the leaven of the Pharisees. What characterizes the leaven of Herod?
If you look at the feeding of the four thousand, I think that story corresponds to the leaven of Herod. There is also a key verse in that story that helps clarify what this leaven is.
But first, which Herod are we talking about? There are about a half-dozen Herods in the New Testament. This particular one, I believe, is Herod Antipas. He was the Herod who had John the Baptist beheaded, and he was the Herod who presided over the trial of Jesus. He was not the Herod who killed the babies in Bethlehem.
There were several Herods, and they all had much the same spirit. They were all much the same type of person. But in this case, I think Christ was more specifically talking about Herod Antipas, though you can apply this to any Herod you happen to meet.
I think the key clue in Mark 8, in the feeding of the four thousand, is again the disciples’ response to Christ’s request that they feed the four thousand. It is found in Mark 8:4:
And His disciples answered Him, Whence shall one be able to fill these men with bread here in a desert place?
—Mark 8:4
“Where will anyone be able to find enough bread?” Instead of charging ahead in their own power and strength to feed the four thousand, the disciples immediately questioned the feasibility of actually being able to do it.
Just a couple of chapters earlier, they had seen Christ feed five thousand people, but it did not occur to them that He could feed four thousand people. They had forgotten that Christ had done it, but they remembered that they could not do it.
They had gotten half the picture from the first feeding. They had gotten the “I can’t,” but they had forgotten that Christ can.
There are other places in Scripture where we can find clues about the nature of Herod and get a glimpse of what makes him tick. One is a chilling passage in Luke 9:9.
This story occurs after Christ had sent out His twelve disciples. They were going out through the land, doing all kinds of miracles and causing quite a stir. Herod was wondering who Christ was.
And Herod said, John I beheaded: but who is this, about whom I hear such things? And he sought to see Him.
—Luke 9:9
The thing that really chilled me was that little phrase at the end: “He sought to see Him.” How many of you want to see Jesus? Yes, you raise your hand. Well, so did Herod.
I want to see Jesus. So did Herod. It kind of makes you stop and think. It is not just a desire to see Jesus.
What was stopping Herod from seeing Christ? It seems like everybody else in the land had no trouble seeing Christ. Even the blind people were seeing Christ, and Herod could not see Him.
Christ was all over the place—healing people, being in the temple, speaking publicly, and generally being available. But for some reason, Herod could not see Him. He wanted to see Him, but it was not happening.
We will talk a little later about why Herod could not see Christ. First, let us look at another characteristic of Herod: the time Herod actually did see Christ. This is toward the end of Luke, during Jesus’ trial, when Pilate sent Jesus over to Herod.
Now Herod was exceeding glad when he saw Jesus: for he had desired to see Him of a long time, because he had heard concerning Him; and he hoped to see some miracle done by Him.
And he questioned Him in many words; but He answered him nothing.
And the chief priests and the scribes stood, vehemently accusing Him.
And Herod with his soldiers set Him at nought, and mocked Him, and arraying Him in gorgeous apparel sent Him back to Pilate.
And Herod and Pilate became friends with each other that very day: for before they were at enmity between themselves.—Luke 23:8-12
Finally, Herod was able to see Jesus, and he was glad. But he was not glad because he wanted to confer with the King of kings, ask His advice, or seek His knowledge. He wanted Jesus to do some parlor trick for him and his court.
When Christ would not fulfill Herod’s desire for Him to be a trick pony, Herod mocked Him and sent Him back to Pilate.
The thing to note is that Herod was not really interested in Christ Himself. He was interested in leveraging Christ for his own advantage, to move his own career forward. Christ was nothing but a tool to Herod, to be used to make his life better.
So, what is the leaven of Herod? I think it is seeing Christ as not effectual, or as not having any impact on this life.
We see the requirements of the Father, but we do not see Christ as being effectual to meet those requirements. So we logically reduce them. We say, “Well, God is not going to ask us to do something impossible, so we are going to bring it down to something that we can do.”
It is not striving in our own exertion to meet God’s requirements. Rather, it is reducing the requirements and saying, “This is what God requires of us, but we are going to dumb it down to something we can do.”
Herod thought Christ was fascinating. He was interested in Christ, but not interested enough to leave his palace. He wanted to see Christ, but he did not want to leave his palace to go see Him. He wanted Christ to come to him, on Herod’s own terms.
That is why he never saw Christ until the trial.
For me, I had to ask myself: Do I think enough of Christ to leave my palace to go see Him? Or am I going to wait until I see Him at a trial?
I think we need to ask ourselves whether we are willing to get out of a comfortable position, a comfortable place, to go see Christ. If He is somewhere and He is calling us, are we going to go there, or are we going to stay in our palace?
Herod completely missed who Christ is. We see that same kind of missing it when the disciples did not think that anybody could feed the four thousand. They completely missed the power of Christ.
They were questioning whether that task could actually be done. They reduced the requirements of the Father, or of Christ, down to something they thought they could do. “Can anybody do this?”
So, the leaven of Herod is taking the requirements of faith—the requirements of Christ and the Father—and reducing them down to something that we can do in our own strength.
Both of these leavens have very different outlooks on pleasing the Father. One is to do it ourselves, and the other is to reduce it to something we can do. But they both have a common theme, a common root cause.
That root is that we are not seeing Christ as the solution. We are not seeing Christ as the One who can completely satisfy the Father and completely satisfy our needs in this life today.
When we understand what the Father wants, we realize that this is not just a free pass from going to hell. It is not just a heavenly salvation. It is an earthly walk that is required. He wants us to walk like Him, to be like Him, and to abide in Him.
You look at that and think, “That is impossible.” When we see that, there are three different reactions we can have to being faced with this impossible task.
Getting back into the boat: after the feeding of the five thousand and the feeding of the four thousand, the disciples realized that they had only one loaf of bread. Christ warned them about the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.
He gives them the answer for how to deal with these leavens. This answer had always confused me until I started studying and meditating on it. Now I am no longer confused. I may be totally wrong, but I am not confused.
The antidote for these leavens is in two numbers from the mass feedings. The first number was the number of baskets left over from the first feeding. What was that number? Twelve. The second number was the number of baskets left over from the second feeding. What was that number? Seven. All right. Yeah, we are listening.
So, now do you see the answer? Nineteen is not the answer.
The answer actually is in the numbers twelve and seven. I have always been hesitant to delve into numerology because you can take any sufficiently large number and make it mean anything you want.
As I was studying this, there was one commentary or author that said the number seven is special because seven is used 392 times in Scripture. As you all know, 392 is the result of cubing seven and adding seven squared. That is true mathematically, but when I searched it, there were 405 instances of seven in Scripture.
So anyway, that is numerology for you. You can kind of get out of it anything you want to. But I feel comfortable in this case using these numbers because Christ used them: seven and twelve.
In Scripture, the number twelve has the connotation of heavenly perfection or heavenly completion. It is also used throughout Scripture to connote government and authority from a heavenly perspective: twelve tribes, twelve elders, and that kind of thing.
Seven usually indicates earthly perfection or earthly completion. It also connotes rest or Sabbath. God rested on the seventh day when things were complete.
So, when you look at heavenly completion and earthly completion, what does this mean in the context of leaven?
After meditating on everything, I boiled it down to one sentence—which I could have read about forty minutes ago and gotten this whole thing over with.
Jesus Christ is the bread of life that needs no leaven to provide us complete heavenly life and to complete us before the eyes of the Father. This bread of life also needs no leaven to provide completion in the earthly life we are living today.
Jesus Christ is the bread of life that needs no leaven to provide us complete heavenly life and to complete us before the eyes of the Father. This bread of life needs no leaven to provide completion in this life that we are living today.
Let us parse this out. Jesus Christ is the bread of life. He said that, and we can all agree on that.
Our heavenly Father requires us to have holiness—to be holy—in order to be in His presence. Christ’s life is all the life we need to satisfy those heavenly requirements.
If we do not see His life as enough, then we start to add things in. We start to leaven things into His life. We try to add our own effort in to meet the Father’s requirements.
When His life is leavened with our life, it will not satisfy the Lord.
Our heavenly Father has set down guidelines for our life in this body, in this earthly life. His life provides all that we need to live the life the Father wants us to live.
We can leaven His life in two ways. First, we can try to satisfy the Father in our own strength. Or, we can adopt a compromise position that reduces what the Father wants in this life.
We try to convince ourselves that it is okay, that it is enough for the Father.
This whole thing of leavening is done by adopting, perhaps in tiny incremental ways we do not even see, the belief that His life is either not available or not enough to satisfy the Father.
It is also the belief that His life is not available or not enough to get us through this day or tomorrow.
That is kind of the heavy-duty spiritual side of things. Let us talk about some application. I want to make this applicable to our lives today.
The leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod can creep into our individual lives, and they can also creep into our church life. We need to be aware and conscious that we can be leavened.
How do we know? How can we tell if we have some leaven? What are some of the symptoms that His life has been diluted and that we may not be considering His life sufficient?
A couple of things came to mind for each type of leaven. There are several clues that can help us tell whether we have adopted some leaven or whether some leaven has been brought into our lives.
The first clue of the Pharisee brand of leavening—I do not think Kroger’s carries the Pharisee brand of leaven, do they? Okay.
Clue number one: Is the Christian life a burden? Do you feel weighed down and burdened by having to live the Christian life? Is it no longer a joy?
Maybe we have taken in some leaven of the Pharisees. When we try to live the Christian life and satisfy the Father in our own strength, it becomes quite a burden because we are doing it in our own strength rather than in the strength of Christ.
Clue number two: Do we feel like there are more things we cannot do than things we can do? Then maybe we have been leavened with the Pharisee brand of leaven.
If we are living by a set of rules, if we have the Torah here—this rule book of all the things we cannot do—then maybe we are living in our own strength rather than living in the life of Christ.
Clue number three: Is there a lack of joy in our daily life? Then maybe we have been leavened.
Do not confuse joy with happiness. There are going to be times of sorrow and sadness, but I think there will always be an underlying current and foundation of joy if we are following the Lord.
I have found that this joy is present when I have a clear and open channel of communication with the Father. All kinds of things can be going wrong, but there is still joy there. I may not be happy. I may be stressed. But there is joy.
When I know that it is not I who live, but Christ living within me, then I can have joy.
Those are three clues I came up with for the Pharisees’ leaven. For Herod’s leaven, there are also some clues that we may have been leavened with the Herod brand of leaven.
Clue number one: Do we start excusing sin in our lives? We say to ourselves, “I just cannot do any better,” or, “It is just a problem that I have.”
Then maybe we have adopted some of Herod’s leaven. Whatever problem you may have, whatever temptation or sin you fall back into and struggle with, yes, that is a problem you have. But you know what? It is not a problem that Christ has.
When we accept or excuse sin as inevitable in our lives or in our assembly, then we are adopting the leaven of Herod, because we have reduced and dumbed down what the Father wants from us.
Clue number two: Is our life indistinguishable from the world? Then maybe we have adopted some of Herod’s leaven.
Once we have reduced the standards to which Christ has called us to live, reduced them to standards we can achieve, our life begins to look a whole lot like the world’s life. We are quickly no different from the world.
Clue number three: Do we feel awkward in the world and not know what to do about it?
Sometimes in times past, I have had a lingering awkwardness with the world. I know I am a Christian, and I know my life is not really distinguishable from the world’s life, but I have this ongoing awkwardness.
I am awkward with things that go on at work and conversations that happen at work. I know they are not really perfect, but I am kind of awkward with it. I do not really know what to do with it. I do not have the courage to do anything about it.
We want to fit in. Deep in our hearts, we know that we do not fit in and that we never will fit in. We feel awkward about how we may dress. We may dress more modestly than other people. We do not want to look weird, but deep in our spirit, we know that we are weird—and there is nothing we can do about it.
We want to keep up to date with what is going on in the world, but we know in our spirit that there is really nothing worth keeping up with. Yet there is that tension of wanting to be like the world while also wanting to be like Christ.
I think that is a sign that we have adopted some of Herod’s leaven.
If you look at yourself and say, “I have adopted some of these. I see these things in my life,” what do you do? How do you unleaven bread?
Unleavening bread is impossible. There is not even a word for unleavening. I just made that up. It is not in the dictionary.
Bread cannot be unleavened once leaven gets in there. There is no getting it out. But thankfully, our God is the same God who can get a camel through the eye of a needle. He can unleaven bread.
Nothing—nothing—is impossible with Him. So, what do we do if we find leaven in our lives?
I think we seek the Lord and ask Him to make us aware of when we have adopted leaven, when we see this leaven in our lives. “Make us aware of that, Lord.”
Then we can confess it to Him and say, “Lord, this is a problem. This is a sin.” As 1 John 1:9 says, He will cleanse us from all unrighteousness. He will remove that from us.
His removing of that leaven may come in unexpected ways, but He will get it out. He will unleaven us.
For me, I have found that continually being conscious that it is not I who live, but Christ who lives within me, has helped me be aware that it is not me but Him.
When things come up, when things seem too hard—like the past several weeks, every Wednesday I ended up working a very long day, a couple of twelve-hour days—I think, “I should go to prayer meeting. Oh, I just cannot do it. I have worked so much already this week. I just cannot get up and do one more thing.”
But it is not really me who needs to do it. It is Christ who needs to get up and go to that prayer meeting. Just take my body along with Him.
There is a funny saying that the Lord has given me recently, in the past six or eight months, about this issue of living in His life and not living in my life.
This saying, not surprisingly, does not come from Star Trek. It comes from another movie: The Matrix. Now, do not go out and watch the movie because I mentioned it. It is not appropriate to watch.
But there is a scene in that movie. The main character has been living a life that is a complete illusion. The life he thought was real was completely fake. He wakes up to that fact, and he has a teacher, a mentor, who is training him to tell the difference between his real life and his fake life.
In one scene, they are sparring. They are fighting in a room, and the student is getting thrown all over the room and beaten up all over the place.
The sparring pauses. The character is sitting on the floor, breathing really hard because he has been doing all this exertion. But it is all imaginary exertion, because he has actually been lying on a chair the whole time. He has been fighting in his mind.
His teacher looks at him and says, “Is that air you’re breathing?”
It is a reminder that what you are experiencing is not really real. It is not the real reality that is going on. You think you are all tired, but you are not really tired. You are just lying there. Your mind makes you think you are tired.
The Lord has used that little saying, “Is that air you’re breathing?” to remind me that it is not I who live, but Christ who lives within me.
When things are tough, when I am tired, that little phrase comes to mind: “Is that air you’re breathing?” It becomes a reminder: “Lord, I have stepped out of Your life, and I am doing this on my own.”
If we ask Him, He will show us where we have leaven. He will show us so that we can confess it and turn it back to Him, and He will cleanse us because He does not want it there either.
He wants it gone more than we want it gone.
To wrap things up, let us heed Christ’s warning about the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.
Let us seek Him and ask Him whether we have let these leavens creep into our lives and begin to pollute His life and mix into His life. Let Him show us so that we can confess it, and so that He can remove the leaven from us.
Let us not dilute His life, but live completely in His life. His life needs nothing added to it to satisfy the Father.
We need to remove nothing from His standards to satisfy Him. His life is enough to live up to the standards the Father wants us to live by.
Father, we just thank You, Lord, that Your life is complete. Your life is all-sufficient. There is nothing lacking. There is nothing that we need to add, and there is nothing that we need to take away. Lord, Your life is everything that we need.
Father, I just pray that You would show us, Lord, where we have brought in our own strength or removed Your standards, Lord, just so that we can meet them.
Be merciful to us, Lord. We want to be pleasing to You, Lord, in every way. We want to live in Your life, Lord. I pray this in Christ’s name.