Verses 1 through 21, and it's found in your order of worship as well. Gospel of Mark, chapter 8, beginning at verse 1. During those days, another large crowd gathered, since they had nothing to eat, Jesus called His disciples to Him and said, I have compassion for these people. They've already been with me three days and have nothing to eat. If I send them home hungry, they will collapse on the way because some of them have come along distance. His disciples answered, but where in this remote place can anyone get enough bread to feed them? How many loaves do you have, Jesus asked? Seven they replied, he told the crowd to sit down on the ground. When he had taken the seven loaves and given things, he broke them and gave them to his disciples to sit before the people and they did so. They had a few small fish as well. He gave thanks for them also and told the disciples to distribute them. The people ate and were satisfied and afterward, the disciples picked up seven basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. About 40,000 men were present and having sent them away, he got into the boat with his disciples and went to the region of Dalmanatha. The Pharisees came and began to question Jesus. To test Him, they asked Him for a sign from heaven. He sighed deeply and said, why does this generation ask for a miraculous sign? I tell you the truth, no sign will be given to it. Then He left them, got back into the boat and crossed to the other side. The disciples had forgotten to bring bread. Except for one loaves they had with them in the boat. Be careful, Jesus warned them. Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod. They discussed this with one another and said it because we have no bread. Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked them, why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes that fail to see and ears that fail to hear? And don't you remember, when I broke the five loaves for the 5,000, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up? Twelve, they replied. And when I broke the seven loaves for the 4,000, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up? They answered seven. He said to them, do you still not understand? Let's pray. Father, we come before you now as those who have physical eyes, but Lord, deeply aware of our need for spiritual eyes. Give us hearing as well, Lord, in the depths of our soul, that the bread from heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ, might be manifest in a truthful and experiential way at each one of our lives. And we pray that you would do this now as we talk about these things together. In Jesus' name, amen. Please be seated. Well, the scene is that Jesus is in a boat, as he is often with his disciples that are crossing the sea of Galilee, and he recognizes that the disciples are frustrated about something. He picks up on their discussion, and so they don't have any bread. Well, he's got one loaf of bread, but they didn't bring enough supplies to feed themselves. And you can imagine that they would at least catch the hue of it, given the context, because they had just witnessed the feeding of 4,000. And you need to note, it's 4,000 men as Mark records, which means they were women and children, no doubt, in addition to that. So it's a much larger number than 4,000. And this comes on the heels of a very similar experience, where 5,000 men, plus women and children, were fed from just a few pieces of bread and fish. And so it's kind of this repetitive thing we've talked about, that one of the great rules of teaching is repetition. And Jesus gives these examples and repetition to drive home spiritual truths. And you would have thought at least the disciples would have caught the irony if not the humor of the moment, but they didn't. They were anxious. They were frustrated. They were taking it out on one another. And Jesus said, be careful. Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod. And of course, they still didn't catch it. They saw it only in the physical, rather than a metaphysical realm. And so they assume he's talking about bread. And Jesus, the creative teacher that he was, was simply using their circumstance, their circumstance that was causing anxiety to show them the truth. Because he understood that in order to make abstract truth in the spiritual realm real, it's best shown forth in a concrete way. And that's one of the great truths that we need to see in this story this morning. He says, there's a real problem with yeast. A real problem with yeast. Now, the problem of yeast, of course, is that it's very small, incredibly small, and yet it's influence is pervasive, it's widespread, it's powerful. And he mentions two different problems or two different yeast. It's the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod. And I think they represent two different problems, two different hurdles in the spiritual realm. What are they? Well, we don't see it here in the Gospel of Mark, but in the Gospel of Matthew where you see a little bit more detail, Matthew tells us that what Jesus meant by the yeast of the Pharisees was the teaching of the Pharisees. But they taught their approach to life and spirituality. You know, what was the problem with the Pharisees? But in this particular passage, it's that they wanted a sign. Now, you also see the irony there. I mean, these are bright individuals. These are people within our day, you know, have PhDs in the like. And these are bright individuals. They have just seen and no doubt heard numerous testimonies as well of this miracle Jesus had performed. And they're asking for a sign. They're asking for Jesus to show them in an unquestioned way that he was who he said he claimed to be, the Messiah. And Jesus said, I'm not going to give you a sign. Why? Because this is the real problem of the Pharisees. The Pharisees had adopted an entire system of teaching that smothered reality. We talked about this before if you've been with us, but their approach to religion began with the Bible, but then used the Bible really as an outline that they simply added to extensively. And they constructed this large book of rules and traditions and things that, boy, if you followed them to the tea and you really obeyed them, then God would love and accept you. If you're a good person, if you stick with it, then God's on your side is the message of the Pharisees. And yet, the problem with that is it misses spiritual reality. It missed something as obvious and blatant as this miracle, this sign of Jesus. Now, the yeast of Herod is very different. If the yeast of the Pharisees is the yeast of religion, how religion of all things can get in the way of you really connecting with God, then the yeast of Herod is the yeast of religion. If the yeast of the Pharisees is the yeast of morality, be good and God will love you, then the yeast of Herod is the yeast of immorality. If the yeast of the Pharisees is teaching, just follow this code and you'll find God, then the yeast of Herod is the yeast of experience. Just experience life and pleasure. Now, if you've been reading through the Gospel of Mark, you know that Jesus and Mark himself, as the author, have already talked about Herod. And it was the instance, of course, where Mark was trying to tell us whatever happened to John the Baptist, who was the forerunner of Jesus Christ. John the Baptist had his head taken away by the act of Herod, but it was a curious situation, you may remember. Herod lived for pleasure. I mean, he lived a party down, and he had a great party one night where his wife's daughter, and he had taken his brother, Philip's wife, Herodius, her daughter is now performing what amounts to really what we would think of as a barroom dance, strip, tease, dance, very seductive, erotic dance in front of him, and he is just so taken away, so consumed and controlled by pleasure, and that sensory erotic experience that he makes something as ridiculous as a statement that I'll give you whatever you want, young lady, even up to half of my kingdom. Just ask it right here, and for all my friends, I'll give it to you, and she looks over to her mother, and her mother had been looking for the opportunity to kill John the Baptist for what he had done, scandalized him in front of all the people, and she says, I want the head of John the Baptist on a platter right now. One of Herod's other problems was that he feared people. I mean, because he had no inner core, no foundation to him, no ethic, except the latest experience, he feared people, and now he had to face the facts, that either he loses face before all of his friends, or he kills John the Baptist, whom he feared, and he gave in John's head on the platter. The use of the Pharisees is follow this teaching, and be good enough, and God will love you. And the yeast of Herod is just live, enjoy life, follow the latest experience, and pleasure, and emotion, and you will find life. Oh, you'll miss God, but God's really irrelevant in that paradigm. But don't you see that they have a common underlying thing. Yeast that appears so small has such an influence in terms of leaving God out of your life. Leaving more precisely out the necessity for you to submit to God. That's really what's at issue here. Jesus referred to it to his disciples as a hardened heart. You think of the heart, the physical organ of the heart. Of course, he was talking more about the inner person, but even the physical organ of the heart, it's beating, it's flashy, it's alive, and he said, when you follow either one of these paths, either the use of the Pharisees, or the use of the Herod, it ends up with a hardened heart. It doesn't beat, it isn't alive, it is functionally dead. And both of these people, I think, were kind of miserable. The Pharisees, the quintessential self-righteous, smug, religious person, moralist, they've figured it out, and everyone else has messed up, that person's miserable. The reason they're such a wretch to be around is because their system and approach to life has smothered them too. And for Herod is so obvious that he's just driven by every impulse and fear and pleasure and emotion, and he has no such inner and core to his being, and he also is miserable. Both of these paths lead to an uncontrollable enslaved existence, and I know that none of us want to be there. So what remedy does Jesus give to us? Well, let's look. Jesus tells His disciples, first of all, to be careful, to be careful and watch out. Be very careful. Now why? Why do we need to be very careful? Well, because of the problem of yeast, yeast appears so small, it appears so innocuous, and yet it is so pervasive and powerful. So you don't have to be the most smug self-righteous person in the world to have the yeast of the Pharisees in you. It can come in subtle ways where you look down your nose on people who aren't like you or don't behave quite as well as you. There's any number of ways that the yeast of the Pharisees can infect and poison your life. The yeast of Herod is similar. You don't have to be Hugh Hefner, okay? It's the yeast of worldliness. It's that poison of love for the world that comes where the senses of your being spiritually are always tuned to the next pleasure, to the next material possession. And as soon as you get your car that you've been lasting for, you look around and notice that the guy sitting next to you has got a little bit better car. A little bigger house, a little bit more money in the bank account, a little bit better looking spouse, or kinder spouse, or spouse. It's worldliness. And the problem is you can sit in church with even one of these yeast, you can go through the motions. And because these two approaches, irreligion and religion, control your life, you really do not worship and connect with God who is there, who is real. And so the end result is you lead God out of your life functionally. If you follow any of the health and wellness movement, you may know that physicians, many physicians in this sphere of the medical world today say that yeast, when you get too much of it in your body, it actually begins to shut down your immune system. It begins to poison you. I want to suggest that exactly what happens in the spiritual realm. Over time, there's a cumulative effect. Oh, I'll be at its subtle in most cases. There's a cumulative effect. It begins to shut down your spiritual system and poison you. And Jesus says, you've got to be very careful. You've got to be watching. You cannot be passive. You've got to have people in your life that are asking you questions that help you to stay in check on all these areas because none of us are exempt from this. Now, just the example of this, of course, is the disciples. You think of all the people in the whole world who should have been able to stay tuned to the right frequency spiritually. It was the disciples, but they clearly missed it. And in such a contrasting way here, where they see this amazing miracle, and this is just one of many Jesus has been performing, and they weren't even attuned spiritually. And what does Jesus say to him? He says, he says, do you have eyes that fail to see and ears that fail to hear? Do you not understand? What's the problem? Why don't you function at a sensory level like you're supposed to? And that's because you and I, you and I naturally in this world are being poisoned. And so our system is shutting down, and we need to recognize that and admit it and be very, very careful. So, what do we need to be careful about? We need to be careful about both of these potential errors that begin to shut down our systems. On the one hand, it is teaching. Christianity is all about teaching, and I want you to hear that loud and clear from my lips. There's no such thing as growing spiritually where you are not pouring your life into this book, and seizing opportunities to get together with other people and delve deeper into the truth of God's word. Christianity is about truth, but a truth that is disconnected from the heart or a truth that is added upon with human rules and regulations. Is not just a sub-truth, is not just a sub-Christian message. It is, as Brian Chappell will say in a couple of weeks, an anti-Christian message. You and I must see the central focus of Scripture is Jesus Christ and Him alone to point us to it every turn in the Bible that we are frail people, made new in Jesus Christ. And we must feed on Him. He is our bread that we must feed on every single day. It's truth, but the real truth, and it's truth that is accompanied with experience. You see, the problem of Herod was not that he believed in experiences. Life is about experience. God made us with a sensory capacity so that the greatest truth in all the world, Jesus Christ, who is the way the truth in the life, should be a truth that is deeply experienced. So the yeast of Herod is not that he followed experience, but that he followed experience apart from the truth. The two must go together. They must be sown to get admitted to the fabric of our being, and that's really how we grow. There's an ancient philosopher that said experience is the mother of illusion. Let me say that again, experience is the mother of illusion. What's the point there? Well, that when you and I have our senses stimulated, we begin to see things, feel things, touch things, taste things. We seem to be, what, real? They speak to us of reality, and one of the real problems that I think we face as Christians today, is that we live in a culture that has sensory overwhelm, like no culture is ever known. So even when the truth of Jesus Christ is there, it tends to be back here in the recesses of our being rather than here and here. And Jesus remains abstract. He remains maybe simply a historical figure, though he certainly was. But he doesn't seem to be alive and visible to me in my own experience. See us, Lewis, in his fantastic book, The Street Tape Letters, which you may know is sort of a series of imaginary letters that a general in the Devil's Army is writing to his little nephew, teaching him how to torment Christians. I've said this very, I mean, this is written back by World War II, okay? Way back before the technological revelation, before television took over, before videos, before email, before internet, listen to what he said, about how to torment a Christian. Even if a particular train of thought, truth, can be twisted so as to end in our favor, you'll find that you have been strengthening in your patience that fatal habit of attending to universal issues. And with drawing his attention from, please listen, the stream of immediate sense experiences. Your business is to fix his attention on the stream, teach him to call it real life, and then don't let him ask what he means by real, the stream that you and I face from the moment we wake up until the moment we go to sleep each and every day. This is a screen to our psyche. This is reality. This is concrete. All that other Christian stuff is, oh, it's nice. See the yeast of the devil is not so much to tell you that Jesus is bad and rotten and foul and stay away from him. To give you and me such a ciphensary overload that we don't even realize that Jesus is no longer real to us. So read the Bible all day. Make up all your rules. Go to church. Do all those things. Just don't combine them with authentic heart experience. Don't feel Jesus. Don't taste him when you come for the Lord's separate. Don't see him and don't hear him. Now, very quickly, before I close, what are you and I need to do? We need to do all those things. We need to. And notice what he tells the disciples. He says, why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand? Do you have eyes that fail to see? Do you have ears that fail to hear? What do we need to do? We need to take God's word and ask the Holy Spirit to speak to us through God's word, which is His chosen means, and speak really truly to where I hear the shout of the Bible over that string. And notice how Jesus asked them a flurry of questions. That's another great teaching device, just asking a lot of questions. You and I on a regular basis, as in daily, need to sit down with God's word, prayerfully asking ourselves questions. You need to talk to yourself, ask your soul questions, and you and I need friends in our lives that are asking us the questions that pertain to depth and reality, the real reality. And we need to beg God as we pour ourselves into this book to help us to see Himself. Now, I don't mean physically because we don't see God, He's spirit, and so that's not the point. It's the senses. It's meditating, thinking, pondering, treasuring this book to the point where it begins to shove the other stuff into the recesses. That the yeast of Herod in all its worldliness will be less loud and visible than Jesus. That the illusion of the world begins to fade and the reality of Christ begins to move forward. This is what worship services are for. They should move you and me from information to sensation, and that's what your personal time with the Lord should do as well. The Psalmist King David said this, one thing I seek, one thing I seek, and one thing I pour my life into and give myself entirely, entirely to, is to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord. There is something in your life right now that is more beautiful to you than Jesus Christ. Now, you probably wouldn't admit it and maybe you're even denying it right now. But if I know my own heart and therefore can have some insight into human nature as a whole, there is something that's capturing the affections of your life right now and is beautiful beyond measure. You and I give ourselves to that which we treasure and think is beautiful. Jesus is saying, don't you see, do you still not understand? Come to me, for I've given my life for you. I've lived my life of perfection for you that the yeast of the Pharisees could never satisfy, and all of the beauty that the world has to offer in the yeast of Herod is nothing in comparison to the matchless beauty that I hold for. Come to me and truly understand. Let's pray. Oh Lord, you are the way, the truth, and the life. Grant, Lord Jesus, that we might, that the power of your spirit, combine the truth of who you are in every page of your scriptures with the experience of our hearts that we might truly seek to gaze upon your beauty and to love you and treasure you on a moment by moment basis. Far above, far above anything in this life. Thank you, Jesus, that the ability to do that comes by grace through your life given to us, for you are a friend to sinners just like us Lord. We praise you.