The Signs of the Times - Matthew 16:1-12

If you’ve ever had food poisoning, you know it’s not something you ever want to have again. One minute you feel fine, then suddenly you are violently ill. Later you realize it was from food you thought was safe to eat, when in fact it was actually poison.

Food poisoning can happen in a lot of different ways. It is often the result of improperly prepared food, or using ingredients that were tainted or had gone bad. This is why those who prepare food for others take all sorts of precautions (like handwashing, avoiding cross-contamination, making sure food is cooked and stored properly, and using only good ingredients) to make sure the food they serve doesn’t become poison and make people sick.

In our passage this morning Jesus warns his disciples to guard against bad yeast. He wasn’t really talking about food, but just like in cooking, it’s important to take every precaution to make sure our spiritual diet is beneficial and good—or else we run the risk of spiritual food poisoning.

The Religious Leaders

Our passage this morning records two interactions with Jesus. The first interaction takes place with the religious leaders and is found in verses 1-4,

One day the Pharisees and Sadducees came to test Jesus, demanding that he show them a miraculous sign from heaven to prove his authority.

2 He replied, “You know the saying, ‘Red sky at night means fair weather tomorrow; 3 red sky in the morning means foul weather all day.’ You know how to interpret the weather signs in the sky, but you don’t know how to interpret the signs of the times! 4 Only an evil, adulterous generation would demand a miraculous sign, but the only sign I will give them is the sign of the prophet Jonah.” Then Jesus left them and went away. (Matthew 16:1-4, NLT)

The Pharisees and Sadducees came to test Jesus. It’s easy for us to gloss over this statement because we don’t understand what it means. But if we look a little deeper, we see there’s more than meets the eye.

First, it is significant that the Pharisees and Sadducees came to test Jesus together. We’ve touched a little bit on who these two groups of people were before, but let me give you a refresher. The Pharisees were essentially the religious conservatives of their day. They rigorously sought to obey the scriptures, even following an even larger list of rules designed to keep them from breaking the rules in scripture. They opposed anyone who seemed to compromise on their faith. They believed in a resurrection and that one day they would answer for the way they had acted in this life.

The Sadducees were also religious leaders, but their beliefs were markedly different. They did not believe in a resurrection, so they believed that this life was all there is. They felt it was important to obey God, but they were not nearly as rigorous in their devotion as the Pharisees were. They tended to tolerate and befriend anyone who might help them get ahead. As a result, the Sadducees were generally powerful and wealthy, and good friends with Rome, which the Pharisees despised.

These two groups generally did not think highly of one another, but here they were working together. They had decided that they may not agree on much, but they did agree that Jesus was a problem.

We are told they came out to test Jesus. The word “test” makes it seem like they wanted to examine Jesus and evaluate whether he was the Messiah or not. But that probably isn’t what was going on. More likely they were trying to look for a way to discredit Jesus under the spiritual guise of “testing” this teacher.

With these things in mind, we see the story unfold. They asked Jesus for a miraculous sign to show them his authority. Now if you’ve been paying attention to the book of Matthew so far, you’ve seen Jesus has performed plenty of miracles. He has healed the sick, cast out demons, and taken a small amount of bread and fish and made it feed thousands (on two separate occasions!) For the religious leaders to now come and demand a miracle from Jesus seems odd—had these guys been living under a rock?

The Pharisees and Sadducees were surely familiar with the miracles Jesus had performed, but they come to Jesus and ask him for something bigger. They were asking him to do something that would prove he was the Messiah. The problem was that no matter what Jesus did, they would try to use it against him. If he refused, they would say it was because he couldn’t do it, and if he did it, they would dismiss it as evil power, or a simple trick.

Jesus knew this, so instead of performing a miracle He rebuked them, saying they knew how to interpret the signs of the weather, but not the spiritual signs all around them.

Instead, Jesus told them the only sign they would receive was the sign of Jonah. If you remember back to the Old Testament, Jonah was a prophet of God who was sent to Nineveh. Nineveh was a Gentile city and the people were exceedingly evil. God told Jonah to go there and command the people to repent. Jonah didn’t want to do that because he wanted to see Nineveh destroyed, so he got on a boat and sailed in the opposite direction. When a storm threatened to sink the ship, Jonah told the men to throw him into the sea for their own safety, at which point Jonah was swallowed by a great fish. He spent the next three days inside this fish until being vomited back up on land, where God gave Jonah another chance. This time Jonah went to Nineveh and preached the message God had given him. As a result, the people repented and were spared the destruction God had promised.

Jesus said the only sign he would give was the sign of Jonah. Was he saying that he was going to be swallowed by a great fish? Not at all, Jesus may have been making a couple of connections between himself and Jonah.

First, just as Jonah was as good as dead for three days, only to show up again alive and well, the same thing would happen to Jesus. In the very near future, Jesus would be dead for three days and then rise again—it would be (and continues to be) the greatest evidence of Jesus being the promised Messiah.

Second, Jonah declared that the people would be destroyed if they didn’t turn from their wicked ways. Jesus is basically saying the same thing. He was saying, “If you persist in going your own way and refuse to turn to me, you will be destroyed.”

Jesus’ response seems harsh, but it really wasn’t. These men weren’t searching for the truth—they had already hardened their hearts toward Jesus. Their issue wasn’t a lack of evidence (there was plenty of evidence to show that Jesus was the Messiah) their issue was an unwillingness to accept it.

I encounter people today who make similar claims. They say, “I just can’t believe in Christianity because there’s not enough evidence.” Sometimes these people are genuinely unaware of the evidence for Christianity, but many of these people are familiar with our reasons for belief, they just reject them. To those people I ask: What would be enough evidence for you? The response is often something like, “If God would just give me a sign, or speak to me audibly, then maybe I could believe.” But if God did something miraculous right then they still wouldn’t be convinced, because they’d try to explain it away with a natural explanation. And if God spoke to them do you think they’d believe He exists? No! They’d believe they were going crazy! No amount of evidence would convince them because their unbelief isn’t really about a lack of evidence. They don’t believe because they don’t want to.

That was the case with the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and Jesus knew it. They had already made up their minds about who Jesus was and no amount of evidence would convince them otherwise. Let me caution you not to make the same mistake. God has given us more than enough reason to trust and follow Him. We have the Bible, the person of Jesus, the resurrection, and many other evidences that are compelling—at least for those willing to see them. Don’t allow your heart to become hard like these religious leaders. They were unable to see what was right in front of them. Open your eyes and genuinely seek the Lord—if you do, I guarantee you will find Him.

The Disciples

Shortly after this encounter with the Pharisees and Sadducees, Jesus got back on a boat with his disciples and crossed the Sea of Galilee. The disciples had surely seen this encounter, so Jesus seized upon this opportunity for a teachable moment.

5 Later, after they crossed to the other side of the lake, the disciples discovered they had forgotten to bring any bread. 6 “Watch out!” Jesus warned them. “Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”

7 At this they began to argue with each other because they hadn’t brought any bread. 8 Jesus knew what they were saying, so he said, “You have so little faith! Why are you arguing with each other about having no bread? 9 Don’t you understand even yet? Don’t you remember the 5,000 I fed with five loaves, and the baskets of leftovers you picked up? 10 Or the 4,000 I fed with seven loaves, and the large baskets of leftovers you picked up? 11 Why can’t you understand that I’m not talking about bread? So again I say, ‘Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.’ ”

12 Then at last they understood that he wasn’t speaking about the yeast in bread, but about the deceptive teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees. (Matthew 16:5-12, NLT)

Jesus told his disciples to beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees. He was speaking symbolically, but that’s not how the disciples heard his warning. All they could think about was the fact that they had forgotten to bring bread with them. So when Jesus told them to be on guard against yeast, their minds immediately went to their empty stomachs.

Imagine Jesus’ frustration with them as he rebuked them. In essence, he told them, “Why are you so worried about food? Haven’t you seen that I’ll take care of your physical needs? You just watched me feed thousands of people with next to nothing! I’m telling you to beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees—but that warning is about something far more important than food!”

After this rebuke, the disciples realized that he was speaking figuratively. He wasn’t speaking about actual yeast, but he was warning them about the deceptive teaching of these men.

The question we must ask is: what specifically was Jesus warning them about? The Pharisees and Sadducees taught things that were diametrically opposed to one another. So what teaching was he warning the disciples to be on guard against?

I think Jesus was warning them to be on guard against the two equal and opposite mistakes of the Pharisees and Sadducees. The Pharisees had fallen into the trap of self-righteousness. Jesus’ chief complaint against the Pharisees was that they looked really good on the outside, but inside they were dead. They had dotted all their I’s and crossed all their T’s, but they had missed the point. They had become self-righteous and prideful, rather than becoming submissive to God.

We must guard against this same temptation. This is a big trap for “religious” people. It’s tempting to think that because we go to church, or volunteer our time for others, or because we don’t sin like some other people that we are better than everyone else, and God should be pleased with us. It’s the same trap many in our society fall into as well.

If you ask the average person if they think they’ll go to heaven when they die, most will say yes. If you ask them why, they will usually respond that they are a good person. They look at their lives and conclude that they mostly do good things and the bad things they do aren’t that bad, so God is surely pleased with them.

The Pharisees were essentially teaching that you can earn your way to heaven. Jesus warns us not to fall into that same trap. No matter how many good things you do, or how many rules you follow, you can never be good enough. No amount of good deeds can erase our sin. Only Jesus can do that. So instead of focusing on ourselves, we should focus on the Lord.

The Sadducees fell into a similar, but different trap. They chose to ignore the parts of the Bible that got in the way of them living how they wanted. This temptation is equally as insidious, and is pervasive in our culture and in our churches.

I had a friend who had a million dollar idea. He called it the “Cut and Paste Bible.” He said you could set up a website where people could basically create their own bibles, including the parts they liked and leaving out the parts they didn’t. Once you decided what parts of the Bible you wanted included, they’d bind it up and send it to you, so you’d have your very own bible that taught what you thought it should.

Now my friend said this tongue-in-cheek—he never actually sold books like this. But the fact is that this is what much of our society does today. While we may never actually cut out of our Bible the parts that we don’t like, many of us might as well! Our Bible may contain those same words, but we act like they don’t exist. We simply ignore the parts we don’t like.

Look at the way people use the Bible. Even non-Christian people will quote the Bible as somewhat authoritative when it seems to validate their opinion. But sadly, Christians are often not much different. We tend to form our beliefs apart from what God’s Word says. If what we believe agrees with what God says, then we love those parts of the Bible and use it as ammunition to support our cause. But if what the Bible says contradicts what we believe, then we simply ignore it. For many, the Bible is simply a tool we use to bolster our own beliefs instead of the source of our beliefs. The Sadducees valued their opinions and beliefs over God’s Word—we must not fall into the same trap.

Jesus warned the disciples to be on guard against these twin temptations of self-righteousness and disregard for God’s Word, because both can be destructive as they begin to spread through our lives, our families, our churches, and our society. Like yeast, these attitudes spread and grow unless you do something to stop it. This is why Jesus tells us to guard against it.

So how do we do that?

We guard against self righteousness by clinging to the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are sinners who desperately need a savior. No matter how many good things we do, we can never erase our sin. We must never forget that we are saved by trusting in Jesus, not by being good enough.

We need to read the Bible so we know what it says. You can’t recognize false teaching if you don’t familiarize yourself with the truth.

We need to look to the Bible for our beliefs rather than society, philosophy, or our own desires. We can rationalize anything, and our idea of what is right and wrong and good and bad changes depending on the situation, our mood, the weather, and all sorts of other things. The only way we can be certain of the truth is to look to the Word of God, which doesn’t change.

We need to be careful what we allow to influence us. The books and articles we read, the TV shows and movies we watch, the news outlets we choose to listen to, and the company we keep all influence what we believe. We need to be discerning about these things instead of simply absorbing whatever is around us.

We need to sit under good teaching. It bothers me when people say they are looking for a church or a Bible study group that makes them feel at home, or makes them feel fulfilled. The reason it bothers me is because often that means we find people who tell us what we want to hear, rather than telling us the truth. Seek out teachers who explain what the Bible says, whether it is popular or not. Those are the churches we should flock to, the classes we should attend, and the books we should read. Good teaching will help us guard against bad yeast.

Conclusion

Jesus reminds us that if we are not careful, our hearts can become as hardened to the truth as the Pharisees and Sadducees. They had come to trust their own judgments and their own beliefs so much that they were completely blind to what God was doing right in front of them. They thought of themselves as people who diligently worshiped God, when in fact they were really worshiping themselves.

Be on guard against that temptation in your own life. Take an inventory of your decision making, your attitudes, and your heart. Are you a person who bases your life and your decisions on what God says, or do you value your own opinion more? Do you think of yourself as a good person, a person deserving of heaven, or are you someone who is wholly reliant on what Jesus did for you? Are you someone whose confidence lies in your list of good deeds, or is your confidence in what Jesus did on the cross? The answers to these questions are important because they help you see the condition of your heart.

In cooking, if you aren’t diligent in making sure your food is safe, there’s a good chance you’re going to make people sick. The same is true in our spiritual life. If we aren’t diligent in making sure we hold to the truth, we will be spiritually sick. Food poisoning is unpleasant, and we all try to avoid it—and yet our spiritual health is even more important. Don’t allow yourself to get spiritual food poisoning—examine your diet and make any changes you need to before it’s too late.