Matthew 13:12 "Then they understood that He was not telling them to guard against the yeast used in bread, but against the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees."
This historical incident recorded for us in Matthew has some wonderful spiritual application teaching at the heart of it that is worthy of explaining and sharing. Jesus makes this statement to His disciples because they have misunderstood what He told them. I wonder how often that happens to us. You know, how we just miss the boat completely about what God is showing us or revealing to us.
The context of this statement happens following one of their many boat trips across the lake, which they took quite often. The Bible tells us that on this particular day, the disciples somehow forgot to bring any bread. They are seriously self-conscious about this and Jesus tells them something totally unrelated to what they are obsessed with, that is far more important when He says, "Be careful. Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees" He is referring to the lies and distortions and false teachings of the teachers of the law that so misleads the people and traps them into legalism. The disciples think Jesus is making a comment about bread and their lack of attention to detail. You know the temptation to make everything you hear about what you are worrying about? Yep, happens right here in the Bible. Jesus then reminds them that bread is obviously not a problem because He fed thousands with just a few loaves and more than once too.
Jesus could have made the comment here that he made later saying, "You strain at gnats and miss camels." This means you are missing the big points. Don't major on the minors or minor on the majors, major on the majors and minor on the minors. He questions their faith and then warns them again about the yeast or 'action agent' in bread which is a real problem when the yeast is bad. The disciples then have a giant 'Aha!!' moment which brings us to verse 12 that tells us that the disciples finally got it. They understood.
We are so like this. We worry about things that are not important really and stress about things that are inconsequential or less important, even unimportant. We strain at gnats and miss camels. We shoo the fly out of our living rooms and ignore the elephant. (Hey, maybe the elephant is attracting flies, ya think?) Anyway, the point of this devotional is that we need to take the time to truly listen to God's truth and apply it appropriately. It is probably not a lack of truth that is our biggest problem these days as much as it is how many lies we believe. 'In with the good air' only works well when we are also doing the 'out with the bad air' part.
For example, if in your heart you believe that God loves you and you simultaneously are counteracting that with some low self-esteem script from your childhood, you aren't going to make much progress. We seriously need to do both. We must breathe in lots of good air of truth and hope and faith and love and peace and joy and at the same time blow out all the nonsense and lies about being worthless, hopeless, unloved, conflicted and depressed. See my point? The world out there is selling us a crock of baloney every day and we must beware and be careful as Jesus would say. Just like a little yeast is all it takes to make bread rise, only a little untruth, perversion, bad counsel or evil can corrupt us quickly. We must protect ourselves from so much false teaching even as we seek the truth.
In His Word,
Pastor Fred
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