Beware of the Leaven

[Espaid]

Matthew 16:

5. And when his disciples were come to the other side, they had forgotten to take bread.
6. Then Jesus said unto them, Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees.

“Leaven” From the 1828 Dictionary: Any thing which makes a general change in the mass. It generally means something which corrupts or depraves that with which it is mixed.

The idea is that leaven “passes secretly and silently through the mass of dough.”

Jesus was instructing his disciples to be on guard when hearing the doctrines of the Pharisees and Sadducees, who espoused the inventions/traditions of men and lacked the spiritual sense of the Scriptures. He compares their doctrine to leaven because they sought secretly to “infuse their notions into the minds of men; and which, when imbibed, spread their infection, and made men sour, morose, rigid, and ill-natured, and swelled and puffed them up with pride and vanity” (Gill’s Exposition of the Bible). He advises his disciples to look about them, to watch, lest they should be infected with them.

What a great lesson to be watchful of the pervasive and secret workings of animal magnetism. The disciples at first did not understand his meaning.

[MaryBeth]

Wow! Excellent. Thank you!!

[Michael Pupko]

Thank you for this post and thankfully Christ Jesus gives the antidote in Luke 13:20 And again he said, Where­ unto shall I liken the kingdom of God?
21 It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three mea­sures of meal, till the whole was
leavened.

Mary Baker Eddy explains this in Science and Health; 117:29-5 Jesus bade his disciples beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees, which he de­fined as human doctrines. His parable of the “leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened,” impels the infer­ence that the spiritual leaven signifies the Science of Christ and its spiritual interpretation, — an inference far above the merely ecclesiastical and formal applications of the
illustration.

118:11-25 In their spiritual significance, Science, Theology, and Medicine are means of divine thought, which include spirit­ual laws emanating from the invisible and in­finite power and grace. The parable may import that these spiritual laws, perverted by a perverse material sense of law, are metaphysically pre­sented as three measures of meal, — that is, three modes of mortal thought. In all mortal forms of thought, dust is dignified as the natural status of men and things, and modes of material motion are honored with the name of laws. This continues until the leaven of Spirit changes the whole of mortal thought, as yeast changes the chemical properties of meal.

“as yeast changes the chemical properties of meal.” is a beautiful idea to me because it implies the material is no more and the conversion to the spiritual, prefect, child of God.

[Espaid]

Thank you for bringing MBE’s explanation to this!

[Author]

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