The Kingdom of Heaven is at Hand—The Book of Matthew · Pastor Adam Wood · Matthew 16:6, 12 · October 12, 2025

Transcript:
All right, let's go and return back to Matthew chapter 16. This evening we're gonna look just at two verses as our main text tonight. And I'd like you to also look at Matthew chapter 13 as well. So we're gonna be mostly in Matthew 16, although we're gonna go a few other places as well. But to begin we'll be in Matthew 16 and also we'll take a peek at Matthew 13 as well. So let's go to 16. And we will begin reading verse number six. And we read of course this passage this morning but we're gonna look at something different in the passage. Matthew 16 verse number six. The Bible says this, and then Jesus said unto them, take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees. And they reasoned among themselves saying, it is because we have taken no bread, which when Jesus perceived, he said unto them, oh ye of little faith, why reason ye among yourselves because ye have brought no bread? Do ye not yet understand, neither remember, the five loaves of the 5,000 and how many baskets ye took up, neither the seven loaves of the 4,000 and how many baskets ye took up? How is it that ye do not understand that I spake it not to you concerning bread that ye should be aware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees? Verse 12, so we're looking at verse six tonight and verse 12. Then understood they how that he bade them not beware of the leaven of bread but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees. All right, let's pray together and then we'll look at Matthew 13. Thank you Lord for the opportunity to meet again together and for the assurance that where two or three are gathered together, there you will be in the midst. And Lord, we trust you, though we know that now you are invisible to us. One day you will come, we will see you visibly. But now we trust in your promise that you are here present with us, not only in us but among us, as we meet together as the saints of God. We once again want to commit the time to you where we are studying your word and let it be profitable to us. Help us to grow by it as we look at the scriptures and see what you have spoken in Jesus' name, amen. All right, Matthew 13. The reason I wanna read Matthew 13 is that what we're covering tonight, we covered not too very long ago, actually in, let's see, July 13th. We had an afternoon service. I look back in the record and July 13th, we covered this same passage in the Matthew 13. But I wanna go ahead and read it again because it is actually just one verse. It's in the midst of the parables, of course, and it overlaps a little bit with what we want to talk about tonight, but not entirely. So I wanna kind of build off of what I said in Matthew 13 in verse number 33. Another parable spake he unto them. The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till the whole was leaven. Now you'll remember that when we looked at this verse, we kind of paired it with the parable of the, I just lost my train of thought here, the parable in verse 31 and 32, which is the mustard seed. And the idea here is that the lump, that is the dough, is unleavened because of course that's the picture, that's the symbology from the Old Testament. Of course the Jews had developed or had developed a negative view of leaven due to the fact that during the feast of unleavened bread and Passover, they would have put it out. So it was considered to be, not that they couldn't eat bread that was leavened, but it had a negative connotation as far as in prophecy and things like that and their laws. And so we saw that in this parable, the woman took the leaven and the Bible says she hid it in three measures of meal. And then of course that leaven spread. And we saw how that the leaven represents a certain kind of evil, that it starts small and then it spreads throughout the lump and it corrupts the entire thing, though it starts small. And so we saw that. So go back if you would to Matthew 16 and we're gonna build off of that because we did talk about the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees in July. And we also referenced chapter 16, which is what we're looking at in detail, more detail tonight. So Matthew 13 has the first mention of leaven in the New Testament and the first mention in Matthew. And then what we're looking at tonight is the second mention of leaven in the Bible. So you have this idea of leaven, or rather in Matthew. You have this idea of leaven is symbolic of corruption. And the lump refers to the people of God and the idea is corruption is spreading through the people of God. And we looked at all kinds of references, especially in the epistles where Paul talks about and he foretells that as we approach the coming of the Lord, so Christianity, we saw it in scripture where Christianity will become more and more corrupted with false teachers and false doctrine. And so that's what the Lord tells us is going to happen within the church. I hate that term, but you know what I mean when I say that, within Christendom. And that's actually what we observe happening. And so here though, there's a little bit more detail and I wanna look at a few other verses based upon this. Look at verse number six again. The Bible says, and Jesus said unto them, take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees. So notice there are two groups mentioned here. You have the Pharisees, the leaven of the Pharisees, and you also have the leaven of the Sadducees. Then in verse 12, then understood they how that he bade them not beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees. So you got two categories, but when we refer to leaven, we're talking about doctrine. Now don't misunderstand. Doctrine, although it includes the things that are written on a doctrinal statement, that is not the sum total of doctrine. Doctrine includes a body of faith that we believe, truths that we hold as scripturally accurate, yes. But doctrine also includes any kind of teaching. It's just a word that means teaching. It's sometimes translated the same way, teaching and doctrine. The idea is something that someone teaches. And so what you have here is you kinda wanna pull back the Lord is referring to the characteristic elements and features that were taught by the Pharisees and that were taught by the Sadducees. And there's one other group. So I wanna put forth to you that there's three categories of leaven. Now we did cover this in July, but we're gonna dig a little bit deeper. There are three categories of leaven in scripture used in this symbolic way, this corruption, this false or erroneous doctrine. The first one, if you would look at Luke chapter 12, it's already, it's here as well, but Luke 12 gives us a little bit more information. This is a parallel passage to our text here tonight. Luke 12 verse one. Look at Luke 12, if you would, and verse one. The first one we're gonna look at is the leaven of the Pharisees. Verse one says this, in the meantime, when there were gathered together an innumerable multitude of people, insomuch that they trod one upon another, he began to say unto his disciples, first of all, notice he's speaking to his disciples here and also in Matthew 16. He's speaking to his disciples. At the end, I'm gonna come back to that, okay? But just keep that in mind. Here's what he says, the Lord says, beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees. Now notice, he doesn't mention Sadducees, he doesn't mention anything else. He only mentions Pharisees and he defines it, which is hypocrisy. So when the Lord said, going back to Matthew 16, when the Lord says beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, he's referring to a specific thing about the Pharisees. Here's what you have to understand. The Pharisees on paper were doctrinally sound. They would have checked all the...