Beware the Yeast (Mark #27)

Happy Valentine’s Day.

On a day when our world celebrates romantic love, I hope you’ll grasp how much God loves you — that he is not fickle the way a romantic partner can be, but consistent, faithful, and committed to the end.

A lot of churches will talk about love today. We sort of will — but not the way most will, because we’ve been talking about love for weeks already.

Three weeks ago on Vision Sunday I shared that our vision for this year is to be a church marked by God’s love — because what our world desperately needs right now is to see the love of Christ. That kicked off our email series on how to love. We’ve looked at loving humbly and loving selflessly, working through how Jesus loved so we can carry that out into the world.

Two weeks ago we watched Jesus show love to a desperate mother by healing her daughter. Last week we saw his uniquely personal love as he healed a deaf man and a blind man.

Today we’ll see him show love on a mass scale — to four thousand people.

But We’re Going Somewhere Else

Rather than take the predictable route and talk about love at that scale, today we’re going to look at a warning.

Jesus doesn’t issue warnings often. And my concern is that if we took the traditional route today, we’d miss something genuinely important — because this warning exists to protect you.

If you ignore it, it will affect how you experience God’s love, and it will build barriers between you and other people that keep you from showing them that love.

Four Thousand People

Mark 8 opens with a great crowd gathered and nothing to eat. Jesus calls his disciples and says he has compassion on them, because they’ve been with him three days with no food — and if he sends them home hungry they’ll collapse on the way, since some have come from far off.

The disciples ask how anyone could feed these people in such a desolate place. He asks how many loaves they have. Seven.

He has the crowd sit, takes the loaves, gives thanks, breaks them, and hands them to the disciples to distribute. They also have a few small fish, which he blesses and has set before the people.

They eat and are satisfied — and they collect seven baskets of leftovers. About four thousand people.

Haven’t We Done This Already?

If you’ve been with us a while you may be thinking we already studied this. Sort of.

Back in chapter 6 we looked at the feeding of the five thousand. This is the feeding of the four thousand.

There are enough similarities that some scholars believe it’s one story told twice. But as we’ll see by the end of today’s passage, there were genuinely two feedings — and there are meaningful differences.

At the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus and his disciples were trying to get away. Jesus was grieving the death of his cousin John the Baptist. The disciples had just returned exhausted from traveling and preaching. So they set out for the hills to rest and mourn and talk.

And when they arrived, a crowd was already waiting. Mark 6:34 says Jesus saw them as sheep without a shepherd — and rather than slip past them into isolation, he set aside his own needs and ministered. He healed. He taught. He fed them.

The lesson there was that love is rarely convenient — that loving like Jesus loved sometimes means setting aside our own desires to meet the needs in front of us.

This Time Is Different

Here they aren’t retreating. The crowd has found them and gathered — and Jesus says they’ve been with him three days.

Picture a conference: four thousand attendees, Jesus on the main stage.

But consider what that says about his draw. These people are sleeping outside. There’s nowhere to stay — they’re out in the wilderness. And Jesus is compelling enough that they simply forget to eat.

They likely packed a day’s worth of food. The most prepared might have brought two days. Nobody brought three, and they had no way to keep anything cold. So some haven’t eaten in a day, some in two, and some who brought nothing haven’t eaten in three.

That’s how badly they wanted to be near him. They were willing to go without food.

So Jesus decides it’s time to send them home — but if he does, some will faint from hunger, and some might die. So he wants to send them off with a parting gift.

You’d Think They’d Remember

Given what happened in chapter 6, you’d expect the disciples to say: “Jesus, here are seven loaves — do the thing you did last time.”

They don’t. They ask how anyone could possibly find enough food out here.

It’s as though they’ve forgotten entirely what he just did.

Then the Pharisees Demand a Sign

After the feeding, Jesus and the disciples get in a boat, and the Pharisees come and begin arguing with him, demanding a sign from heaven to test him.

He sighs deeply and asks why this generation seeks a sign — and says no sign will be given to it.

Then he leaves, gets back in the boat, and crosses to the other side.

The Warning in the Boat

And here’s where the warning comes. That conversation with the Pharisees is clearly still turning over in Jesus’s mind, because he says: Watch out. Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.

And the disciples immediately start discussing the fact that they have no bread.

Jesus, aware of it, asks why they’re talking about bread. Do they still not perceive or understand? Are their hearts hardened? Having eyes, do they not see? Having ears, do they not hear?

Don’t you remember? When I broke five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets of pieces did you collect?

Twelve.

And the seven for the four thousand?

Seven.

Do you not yet understand?

Why They Panicked About Bread

“Leaven” simply means yeast. And the disciples know you need yeast to make bread — and they’re hungry.

Someone was presumably in charge of provisions and got distracted, because they’ve boarded the boat with a single loaf.

And I used to picture that as a proper loaf — fourteen or sixteen inches, maybe a long Italian loaf. Theirs were roughly six inches across and an inch or two thick. Split thirteen ways, that isn’t a meal. It’s barely a snack.

So they’re anxious. And here’s Jesus, still stewing over the Pharisees, suddenly talking about yeast — and they conclude he must be annoyed that they forgot the bread.

And Jesus just shakes his head. Guys — don’t you remember? I took five loaves and fed five thousand. I took seven and fed four thousand.

Without saying it outright, he’s asking: don’t you think I could take that one loaf, multiply it as though it were full of yeast, feed all of you, and have enough left over to feed the ducks?

Stop worrying about the bread.

What He Actually Meant

Jesus is using yeast as a word picture.

Yeast is a microscopic organism that spreads invisibly through dough until the whole batch rises. And Jesus is saying there is something about the mentality — the worldview, the philosophy, the teaching — of both the Pharisees and Herod that, if you let it into your life, will spread through everything.

Only instead of producing excellent bread, it will ruin you.

And both types of yeast concern the same thing: misplaced and misused power.

The Yeast of the Pharisees: Religious Power

The Pharisees were strict and zealous adherents to the Old Testament law — and that strictness led straight into legalism.

Legalism takes the smallest detail of the rules and holds to it by the strictest possible definition — and insists you must satisfy every fraction of it to prove to God that you’re worthy of heaven, or prove to others how holy you are, or prove to yourself that you’re good enough and in control.

In other words: I have power over myself. I have power over others. I have power even before God.

We glimpsed this in chapter 7, when Pharisees objected that Jesus’s disciples hadn’t washed their hands correctly. We noted that the ritual accomplished no actual cleansing — it was purely ceremonial. And yet they questioned the disciples’ faith over it.

Same with washing pots a particular way — frequently only the outside, never the inside. Not hygiene. Worship rules. And if you didn’t perform it their way, they doubted whether you knew God at all, and whether God even loved you.

And it extended everywhere: what you ate, what you wore, how you worshiped, how you rested. Deviate on any point and you were outside the box — outside the temple, or outside God’s favor entirely.

By teaching that extreme legalism, they controlled people. It was always about power.

And It Reaches Us

It’s easy to say that was then. But that yeast has spread into our own day.

When I was more active on social media, I came across an account that did nothing but post clips of a particular style of preaching. And watching a few, a theme emerged quickly. These men preached against everything — against pastors wearing certain clothes, against women wearing their hair a certain way, against particular movies. Pounding the pulpit, insisting this is the only way — and if you didn’t do it their way, you were out.

You might say that’s a small corner of Christianity. But notice: Jesus doesn’t say “watch out for those Pharisees over there.” He says beware of their yeast — because it could get into you. He’s warning his own disciples in the boat. Which means he’s warning us.

How It Could Creep In Here

Let me give an example from my own habits.

Every week I tell you to open your Bible, and I say that opening it on Sunday makes it easier to open on Monday — because I genuinely want you reading Scripture daily.

And there’s real wisdom in that. We live in a world preaching at us constantly — through media, advertising, the conversation in the break room. So sitting down daily to hear from God’s voice helps you navigate all of it.

But legalism takes that wisdom and twists it — into the idea that if you don’t read every day, God is displeased with you. That if you don’t read a certain quantity, he might not let you in.

That is a lie. When you stand before God he will not produce a log and say, “Let’s see — you came up a few minutes short. Sorry.”

Your standing before God comes through Jesus alone.

Because here’s the thing: if legalism worked, Jesus didn’t have to die. The fact that he went to the cross proves we cannot save ourselves. Legalism always falls short.

So you could read your Bible daily, wear the right clothes, listen to the right music, avoid the right things — and God will not be standing there impressed. The first thing he wants to know is whether you placed your faith in his Son.

This doesn’t mean stop reading your Bible. It means the motivation must change. The Pharisees were trying to prove something — to God, to others, to themselves. When the gospel motivates you instead, you stop trying to prove anything, because you already know God loves you.

The Second Half of Their Yeast: Demanding Signs

Look back at verse 11, where the Pharisees demand a sign.

I’ve done that to God. You probably have too.

Maybe you were reading something in Scripture that made you uncomfortable, and you demanded a sign to confirm God really meant it. Or you sensed God saying to help that neighbor, or start that ministry, or give that amount — and thought, I don’t know, I was going to use that money for something else, and I don’t especially like that neighbor. God, if that’s really you, give me a sign.

If you know the story of Gideon, God called him to a task and he balked and laid out a fleece — make the ground wet and the fleece dry. And God did it. Then make the fleece wet and the ground dry. And God did that too.

Sometimes, out of sheer mercy and love, God grants that kind of confirmation.

But he does not have to. He’s God. He doesn’t owe your demand an answer — because he has already given you the greatest sign you will ever receive.

Jesus went to a cross and rose from the dead. What more do you need?

And here’s the danger: if you go to God demanding a sign and he declines — because he’s God and knows what’s best — you’ll walk away concluding you’re a failure, or that God doesn’t love you. And all of that is nonsense. He loves you completely, and he demonstrated it at the cross.

What Legalism Actually Costs You

If you give in to this, it builds a barrier between you and God — and you will stop being able to feel and sense his love.

And it builds barriers between you and other people. Either they aren’t performing as well as you, so you’re better than them — or someone appears to be performing better, and you feel like a failure.

And the ground at the cross is completely level.

The Yeast of Herod: Political Power

We discussed Herod last fall when we studied the death of John the Baptist. There were several rulers by that name. This one was Herod Antipas — son of Herod the Great, who was ruling when Jesus was born.

When Herod the Great died, remember that Israel sat under Roman rule, so the actual king was Caesar. Caesar divided the region among three of Herod’s sons, and Antipas received one portion.

Scripture calls these men “King Herod.” But they weren’t kings. They were semi-autonomous regional rulers under an empire — the accurate title is tetrarch, or in modern terms, something like a governor. Real authority within a region, but always under someone else.

So why insist on being called king?

Because of the pull of political power.

We Watch This Yeast Spread

Every four years we watch candidates tell us what they’ll do, hoping to secure the vote that puts them in power.

It used to be that candidates laid out a plan and argued why theirs was better — a comparison of proposals.

What’s happened more recently is a shift from their plan is worse to their plan is evil. Not merely wrong. Not merely different. Evil — and if it’s enacted, the nation is finished, so you cannot vote for them.

And the result is that we stop portraying fellow Americans as people who think differently and start portraying them as the enemy, to be defeated.

No wonder our politics are so divided.

And we keep taking the bait — believing that if this person holds that office, everything will finally be right. So half the country ends up elated and half ends up furious, and the gap widens.

It Doesn’t Stay National

What I’ve watched is this yeast working down from the national level to the state level, to the community level — and into churches.

I could tell you about churches that collapsed over power grabs. Nothing to do with Jesus. Nothing to do with the gospel. Nothing to do with loving people. Purely power.

Things like that are exactly why, as I grew up sensing a call to ministry, I did not want to work in a church. To me the church was nothing but politics, and I have no aptitude for those games and no appetite for them.

I would gladly have served as an overseas missionary. I would happily have worked for a parachurch organization. It took God completely reshaping my heart before I could say yes to working in a church — because I had seen what that yeast does when it gets into this arena.

Legalism will damage your relationship with God and with others. But if you want to do it faster, get on the political track — it wrecks both even more quickly.

Now, I’m not saying ignore politics as though it’s all corrupt. We need followers of Jesus in that arena being salt. But we cannot swallow the lie that our problems will be solved if we simply install the right person in office.

Why He Warned Them

Jesus warns against both because he knew our true joy is in neither place — and that both would corrode our relationship with God and with people.

To give us life and give it fully, he had to show us that power works in an entirely different direction.

Because the cross exposes the emptiness of legalism. Legalism insists you can reach God on your own. The cross says you cannot.

And Jesus — the King, who holds authority over death itself — what did he do with that power?

He healed. He fed. He taught. He pointed people to God. He called people to repentance.

And eventually he went to a cross and died.

Herod would never have died for the people. The Pharisees would never have laid down their rules for anything.

Jesus laid down his life.

So on Valentine’s Day

That’s what you do with power. You lay it down for others. And in laying it down, you help people find connection with God and with each other.

You want to talk about love? Lay down your power. Give it up. Because in doing so you point people to a God who loves them completely.

Father, make us a church that loves in such a way that we don’t grasp at power but lay it down. Protect us from the pull of legalism — from imagining that the right music or the right translation or the right clothes or enough good deeds will make you more impressed with us, or bring us closer, or prove something to ourselves and others.

Bring us instead to complete brokenness — to knowing we can do nothing on our own and that we need you. Which is why we say thank you, Jesus. You held all power and all authority, and you laid down your life. You were the only person who never sinned, and you died in a sinner’s place.

Protect us. Draw us to you. Make us people who live like you and love like you, so we can bring your grace to a world that desperately needs you — a world chasing joy through legalism, through politics, through everything else, and being corrupted by that yeast.

Refine us first. Change us from the inside out. And then use us to carry that refining to others, so they can see that their legalism doesn’t work, that politics will not solve the world’s brokenness, and that only in Christ will they find what they have actually been looking for. Amen.