In our new members’ class, I start the class with those who may be interested in membership at Cornerstone by arguing why people should join a local church. And in the course of that argument, I claim that one of the most important reasons that a believers need to be members of a local church is for the preservation of their souls. That is, they need to join a local church for the salvation of their souls.
Now, immediately I begin explaining what I don’t mean by that. I don’t mean that we are saved by being a member of a local church, as if this work of joining somehow merits Christ’s righteousness being applied to us. We are saved by faith alone in the finished work of the crucified and risen Lord alone. But what I do mean is that one of the means that the Lord uses to preserve our souls comes through being a part of a local church, hearing the preaching of the Word, having people involved in your life, and being in covenant with brothers and sisters who will run after you if you are running toward sin and rebellion.
And in order to ground that claim in the Scripture, I bring up Hebrews 3:12-14, where the author of Hebrews writes, “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.”
Now, if you take that text and consider it in detail, it makes a startling claim. First, it’s written to professing believers. The author says, “Take care, brothers.” Then, he considers the reality that they might fall away from the living God, abandoning their profession of faith and proving that they never really shared in Christ because that is proven only if we “hold our original confidence firm to the end.”
So, what is it, then, that the author sees as taking a professing believer (“brother”) to the point that they have abandoned any profession of faith in Christ (“leading you to fall away from the living God”)? The answer is “an evil, unbelieving heart.”
In the new members’ class I point out the means the Lord envisions for keeping us steadfast in the faith is having brothers and sisters exhorting us daily so that our hearts aren’t hardened, and I argue that this is why you need to be bound to a local church in membership, so that brothers and sisters know and feel their covenant responsibility to exhort you, pray for you, encourage you, rebuke you, and instruct you so that you may hold fast to the faith and not walk away from Christ.
But this morning I want to consider the previous detail, namely, an unbelieving heart because according to this text, the great threat to my soul and yours isn’t from terrorist organizations who might seek our lives, a government that might take away our religious liberties, or economic hardship that might keep us from providing for ourselves. No, our great threat is unbelief, a lack of faith and trust in our Lord and his Word.
But the good news is that the text we’re looking at this morning addresses this very thing. It is like a weapon given to us to fight against unbelief and for faith. This text is a reminder that the Lord knows our struggles against unbelief and distrust and has seen fit to address it in Scripture so that we might be helped and aided in our struggle.
Now, at first glance, Matthew 16:1-12 might not look like a text that’s supposed to aid us in our fight against unbelief or distrust in the Lord. After all, it begins with another confrontation between Jesus and the religious leaders of the day (this time, the Pharisees and Sadducees) wherein they once more demand a sign and once more get the same answer (as we saw in Matthew 12:38-42). But there is one difference here that should grab our attention. Whereas in Matthew 12 the confrontation ends and Jesus simply continues teaching the crowds, here we see that he gets in a boat with his disciples, goes to the other side of the water, gets to the other side, and (apparently, having been thinking about the nature of the unbelief of the Pharisees and Sadducees) decides to bring up these religious leaders and warn his disciples about the unbelief their teaching represents.
That is to say, Jesus wants his disciples (and us by extension) to know that the Pharisees and Sadducees represent something we need to be on guard against. Then, in the conversation that follows from that warning, the conversation turns directly to issues of faith and trust. Therefore, this morning, I want to give us a few warning or exhortations from this text that I pray might be the very means the Lord uses to keep your heart turned toward faith and trust in the Lord. The first of these exhortation is:
Let me show you why I think this is the exhortation that we need to hear from this encounter Jesus has with the Pharisees and Sadducees. We already know that Jesus is going to warn the disciples in verses 5-12 to “watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees” (v. 6), by which he means “the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees” (v. 12).
So, what specific teaching does Jesus have in mind? Well, answering the question is perhaps made more complicated and easier by considering that the Pharisees and Sadducees were almost constantly at odds with each other in their theological and political teaching. They disagreed on issues ranging from interpreting Old Testament laws in detail to whether or not there was a resurrection. And at times, Jesus sided with the Sadducees against the teaching of the Pharisees and at other times he sided with the Pharisees against the Sadducees. So, Jesus cannot mean simply disregard every detail of their teaching. On some points, one group or the other would actually align with the teaching of Jesus himself.
What then could Jesus mean? Well, I think he means that his disciples need to beware of the destructive thinking that brought these odd bedfellows together, namely, their refusal to believe in Jesus. You see, the only thing that brought these two groups together was that they had a common enemy. They both refused to believe that Jesus is who he was claiming and showing himself to be.
Matthew tells us that when the Pharisees and Sadducees came to Jesus, asking him to show them a sign from heaven, it was “to test him” (v. 1). That is to say, they weren’t interested in believing. They weren’t saying, “Jesus, we want to believe, just make it clear to us.” They were set in their unbelief and demanded that Jesus do more than he had done in order to prove himself worthy of their faith and trust.
Jesus, therefore, rebukes them, noting that there were so many signs around him that should be sufficient, but they cannot interpret these signs. They can interpret the signs that dictate good weather or bad weather in coming, but they’re missing the obvious signs that Jesus has given, making clear that he is God’s promised Messiah.
Therefore Jesus tells them that he won’t give in to their demand for a sign, and the only sign they’re going to be given is the sign that was typified in Jonah, referring, of course, to when he will be raised from the dead on the third day. That will be sufficient proof, but even then, he knows, they will not believe.
The Pharisees and Sadducees are not, then, an illustration of someone saying, “Lord, just give me a sign that confirms I’m doing the right thing because I want to obey you.” That is God-honoring. They’re, rather, an illustration of someone saying, “I refuse to believe unless you do more to prove yourself and earn my faith and trust.” And that is the kind of destructive thinking that Jesus warns his disciples against. It’s the kind of destructive thinking that we must be on guard against as well. You and I need to guard against thinking that somehow Jesus hasn’t done enough to prove himself worthy of our faith and trust.
And if that sounds simple and easily avoidable, as if no one would fall prey to that kind of destructive thinking, then we are simply being naïve. In fact, I would dare say that we could fill this room with individuals we know who have walked away from the faith because at some point in their lives they’ve said to the Lord, “If you don’t change my spouse (or give me a child, or heal my child, or take away my pain, or whatever), then I’m done.” You can probably think of individuals like this in your life who perhaps grew up in church hearing the gospel, professed faith, walked well for a while, and then grew disillusioned with the Lord because he didn’t do what they thought he should do.
This pattern is exactly what we see played out here with the Pharisees and Sadducees and the example that Jesus warns against. It says to the Lord, “Unless you prove you are worthy of my faith and trust by doing precisely what I demand of you, then I will not follow you in faith and trust.”
And you and I must be on guard against that kind of temptation. You may be there right now, in your heart demanding that the Lord do something or you’re done. And I just want to exhort you to turn your heart away from that demanding stance and humble yourself before the Lord.
But how do you keep from getting to that point, or how do you fight to turn back from that stance that mirrors what the Pharisees and Sadducees were doing, demanding that Jesus do what they ask or refuse to believe? I think verses 5-12 give us two answers there. The first of these two is that:
As the story continues, Jesus leaves the Pharisees and Sadducees and crosses the water with his disciples. Considering the position in which these religious leaders stand, he decides to warn his disciples to beware of their teaching. But instead of saying, “Beware of their teaching,” Jesus says, “Watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees” (v. 6). That is, Jesus uses a metaphor.
Now, I’m not sure why he used this metaphor of “leaven” to represent the unbelief and wicked-hearted teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees. It is a common metaphor in Scripture for wickedness. Paul will later say to the Corinthians that a little leaven will leaven the whole bunch as a metaphor for saying that unaddressed sin will end up spreading to the whole congregation. But by using this metaphor of leaven, he led the disciples to think about bread, not a lack of faith.
Then again, this may be the very reason Jesus used this metaphor of leaven. It may be that he wanted the disciples to consider the unbelief of the Pharisees and Sadducees by recognizing the unbelief (or lack of faith) in their own hearts, and the means to expose their unbelief was by bringing up what was troubling them, and what was troubling them was that they’d forgotten to bring bread.
Therefore, they take Jesus’ warning and begin to discuss among themselves, saying, “We brought no bread” (v. 7). And Jesus, knowing their discussion, began to rebuke them, noting their lack of faith concerning bread when he just fed the 5,000 and the 4,000 with baskets leftover, and now they’re worried about bread.
But note what he says at the beginning of verse 9. After asking them why they’re discussing the fact that they don’t have bread, he begins verse 9 asking, “Do you not yet perceive?” (v. 9).
What is it Jesus is asking here? What does he expect them to perceive in these two feeding miracles? I think Jesus is asking them, “Do you not perceive yet who I am?” The Pharisees and Sadducees chose to reject what the evidence of these miracles were telling them about who Jesus was. The disciples were not rejecting it, but they weren’t yet seeing it. This is the promised Messiah. He is God the Son who has come to them to save his people from their sins.
This is instructive for us. Jesus sees that the disciples have a lack of faith. He even addresses them as “O you of little faith.” And he is warning them that their unbelief could become even greater so that they get to a place where they follow the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees, shaking their fist at heaven, demanding God do what they ask or else they’re done, so he warns them. And one reason they need this warning is because they’ve not yet stopped and recognized who Jesus is (something that will happen in our next section of text—16:13-20).
The point for us is that we fight against unbelief by pausing and realizing who Jesus is. Before we get to the point of demanding that the Lord do more if we’re going to follow him, it would do us well to pause and consider who he has shown us he is. He’s the one who loved us enough to come and lay down his life for us when we were his enemies. He’s the one who laid down his life for those who hated him. He’s the one about whom Paul says, “He loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20) and whom Revelation 1:5 describes as the one who “loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood.”
At times in our lives, when we look around and don’t have what we wish we had or our lives are nothing like we wish they were, we can begin to think that God must not love us or be good because he’s not worked the way we wish he would, but in those times we must look clearly at who we know he is.
In C. S. Lewis’s book The Magician’s Nephew, the main character is a boy named Digory, and the Christ figure is a lion named Aslan. Digory’s mom is dying, and he’s asked Aslan to heal her, but Aslan has done nothing to do so. Finally, as the boy is again before Aslan, seeing that Aslan is doing nothing to heal his mother, Lewis writes:
Up until then he had been looking at the Lion’s great feet and the huge claws on them; now, in despair, he looked up at its face. What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life. For the tawny face was bent down near his own and (wonder of wonders) great shining tears stood in the Lion’s eyes. They were such big, bright tears compared with Digory’s own that for a moment he felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his mother than he was himself."1
That’s a great picture of our God who loves us more than we can imagine. And periodically we need to stop in our wondering at why he’s not moved his hand to do a certain thing and look at him instead, amazed at how he has loved us and amazed as who he is. We need to focus ourselves on who the Lord is. And, finally,
After asking the disciples, “Do you not yet perceive [who I am]?” Jesus asks, “Do you not remember …?” They’re fretting about having no bread when Jesus has just fed tens of thousands of people with only a few loaves. How can they be fretting about not having bread of all things?
In Exodus 14, the Israelites watch the waters of the Red Sea part, walk through it on dry ground, and see the waters come back together, drowning Pharaoh’s army. One chapter later they’re grumbling and fretting about having no water, saying to Moses, “What shall we drink” (Ex 15:24).
But I try not to judge them too harshly. From 2008-2010, I watched the Lord provide us money for every adoption payment, hotel bill, flight, etc. in order to bring our son to us from Russia, to the tune of about $55,000. And I could spend the rest of the day telling you amazing, miraculous stories of the Lord’s provision, often to the very penny at the very second we needed it. But even more amazing is my admission that I’m still tempted to fret about finances at times.
One of the ways that we give ourselves over to unbelief and a lack of trust in the Lord, both of which are necessary to living God-honoring, obedient lives is that we fail to remember all the things he’s done for us. My dad once told me that you want to journal about pain more than provision, and ironically it’ll be much easier to recall the pain than the Lord’s provision. Sadly, he’s right. Perhaps you’ve latched on to remembering a handful of occasions in life where you wish the Lord had met your needs differently while ignoring the provision he’s regularly given.
When we forget the Lord’s provision and remove our eyes from looking at who he is, then we condition our hearts for unbelief, perhaps an unbelief that can make our hearts so hard that we, like the Pharisees and Sadducees, raise our fist to heaven and say, “Unless you do what I demand, I’m done with you,” or, in the word of Hebrews 3:12-14, have unbelieving hearts that lead us to fall away from the living God.
Therefore, we must remember who he is and what he has done for us. And there’s no greater reminder of who he is and what he has done than what this table represents. In a bit, we’ll eat together and drink together the bread and the juice, symbolizing Christ’s body and blood and reminding us of what we sang at the beginning of our service: this is our God! He loved us and sent his Son who gave himself for us. And every reminder of his love and provision in life, though numerous they are, are all second to this example. Therefore, let us fight against unbelief and fight for our own souls as we turn our eyes upon Jesus and remember his provision for us as we come to the table. Amen.