Some years ago, when we were still on Hamilton Road, I had forgotten to check the supply of communion cups. When our quarterly communion Lord's Day came around, all of a sudden - there were none on hand. So, I hurried three doors down the street and picked up a supply of paper cups. In my explanation, I simply announced my mistake and said that we were going to have a Southern Presbyterian communion with Dixie Cups! Another time, before we appointed a communion stewardess, the traditional recipe was not baked and there was no frozen backup in the freezer. So - again we substituted a common product for our more specialized requirements.

After last week's communion accident,

I do appreciate the ongoing attitude of the saints here present - that the spiritual presence of the Lord may be admitted even when our preparations and administration are less than perfect. Believe me I have known instances within the extended Christian family where any of the three events described would have caused some people to break fellowship with their church. One elder that I respected in my home church - left in a huff one Lord's Day morning when communion preparations were less than adequate. He never returned to that church again.

We see in the passage before us that the disciples were very much like us in all respects. Here they were, onboard ship, traveling across the lake and no one had thought to bring bread for the meal. One loaf only amongst the dozen. And so the problem of ill preparation caused a slight commotion.

"Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod." Jesus observes directly to the real heart of their problem. But the disciples are confused, they are still living in their material world, thinking of missing the next meal all because everyone forgot to prepare ahead of time. The disciples here are a lot like the lost generation in the desert, who followed Moses out of the land of Egypt, into the wilderness on their way to the promised land. There too, the Lord had provided for a daily bread - in just as a miraculous method as we have seen reported twice in this Gospel already.

Under questioning, the disciples admit to Jesus that He does indeed have the ability to provide for their human needs. Twice, thousands were fed and the leftovers were enough to feed the small band of followers. But just like the dense crowd that followed Moses, the whole point of the miracles are missed. In the case of Jesus, here was One greater than Moses. In the exodus case, there too One greater than Moses accompanied the tribes in that pillar of cloud of something, as the Hebrew text describes it. Very many in that earlier example were fed by the Manna, they saw and heard the various miracles which testified to the power of the One True God. But as the scripture reports, when the God of heaven spoke, some only thought there was thunder in a cloudless sky. Dense, we would call them. So many are lost forever because they are just plain stupid. In this scene, Jesus challenges the disciples to see beyond their mere material world.

"Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod," we hear the voice of the Master exclaim! And people still wonder at just what He means with that expression.

"Leaven" here is simply another term for yeast. And as Dr Keener explains, "Yeast is used to represent various things in the Bible."

Unleavened bread in

Exodus 12: 15-17 represents haste,

Matthew 13: 33 the kingdom,

1 Corinthians 5: 6-7 someone's sin

"The point here seems to be that it is something that spreads ... Both Pharisaic piety and Herod as an agent of political power are corrupting influences."

Yeast was once used by the families to raise bread for baking. Yeast exists in the natural world and is borne about by the winds. If you wanted to bake bread and had no yeast, you would simply put the moist bread dough out in the open and hope that you captured a friendly yeast. Some yeasts would spoil the whole loaf, others would have a better influence on the process. Up in the wilds of the Yukon Territory, one settler captured the Sour Dough Yeast and it has passed pinch by pinch throughout the whole civilized world. Cultured yeasts have been the mainstay for most of the last century or so. And I can still remember stocking little blocks of yeast when I worked the dairy aisle twenty years ago. The yeast "infects" the bread so to speak and causes the dough to expand, otherwise the bread would be tougher and more condense as is our communion bread, whose recipe is reminiscent of the yeastless bread prepared for the Exodus night so many many centuries ago.

"Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod." So what Jesus is saying here by way of admonition is that false religion of the Pharisees and the political intrigue of Herod have a corrupting influence upon the minds and hearts of the residents of Palestine. Well can we appreciate the corruption passed along by the first pervert upon our younger and even older generations. Equally well can we understand the absolute depravity of the mainstream religiosity in this country that takes no account of the One True God and His only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Harry Uprichard in his excellent commentary on the Gospel of Mark, heralds the true distinction of the problem in the hearts of the Old Covenant Professors.

"In Mark's picture of Christ as the controversial Teacher, Jesus condemns the religion of the scribes and Pharisees as outward in form, human in origin and wrong in interpretation. Traditionalism produces ritualists, hypocrites and mere professors of religion. Jesus cuts through the sham of traditionalism, and shows that God's law is inward and spiritual in content and divine in power. ... The old world of Jewish ceremonialism has gone for ever, fulfilled and abolished in Christ."

Calvin would agree in substance, but in the difficult times of the Reformation is more earnest and stident in his commentary:

"The disciples, after having been reproved by our Lord, came at length to understand that he had charged them to be on their guard against certain doctrine. It was plainly, therefore, the intention of Christ to fortify them against prevailing abuses, by which they were attacked on all sides. The Pharisees and Sadducees were expressly named, because those two sects maintained at that time a tyrannical sway in the Church, and held opinions so utterly subversive of the doctrine of the Law and the Prophets, that almost nothing remained pure and entire."

I just want to let you know that whenever I report on what Luther or Calvin say about the calamitous times in which they risked their lives for the sake of the Gospel, I do not always share their observations on the state of the Roman Church in their century. Neither do I usually mention specific bodies today that have departed from the faith once given to the saints. Last week was a rare exception for specific mentions - because like the earlier Reformers I was personally attacked for the sake of the Gospel itself. However, we can well see a common problem of human institutions - in that they do forsake the essentials of the faith over time and must periodically be cleansed, reformed and revived by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The problem of the disciples and the spiritual leaven of the time is still the same for the Reformers and for us today as well. The main line churches that fell away because of false shepherds speaking lies are only being followed all the more hastily by the evangelicals whose worship habits more rapidly decline the Church than the liberal menace that took a hundred and some years to degrade their particular organizations.

Thanks to the godly influence of C.S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer and the Covenanters I was able to weed and prune my intellectual garden somewhat in the decade that I spent in the wilderness between callings. But still in the context of this chapter, an essential lesson to be learned is that while the world does indeed infect and afflict our intellect, emotions and soul - still we could and would be left in that condition had not the Lord or all the earth came to us bodily in Christ and spiritually in the third person of the Trinity.

One last issue here before we close for the day. And that is the political leaven of Herod the so called King. Calvin describes Herod's yeastiness in these terms:

"But Herod did not in any way profess to teach; and a question arises, why does Mark class him with false teachers?"

"Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod."

"I reply: he was half a Jew, was mean and treacherous, and availed himself of every contrivance that was within his reach to draw the people to his side; for it is customary with all apostates to contrive some mixture, for the purpose of establishing a new religion by which the former may be abolished. It was because he was laboring craftily to subvert the principles of true and ancient piety, and thus to give currency to a religion that would be exceedingly adapted to his tyranny, or rather because he was endeavoring to introduce some new form of Judaism, that our Lord most properly charged them to beware of his leaven. From the temple of God the scribes disseminated their errors, and the court of Herod was another workshop of Satan, in which errors of a different kind were manufactured."

Today, we would call it the cult of Herod, which Nero, Hitler, Iddi Ammean, the mad man of Baghdad and even the first couple who would have us adore them according to their lackeys in the media.

"How is it you do not understand?" Jesus asks the disciples pointedly. They have seen the miracles and even the person of Christ. Gently and firmer He challenges them to think, act and work according to the spiritual revelation that is unfolding in the new Kingdom of Heaven that will be instituted in the formation of Christ's own Church. The disciples still have lots to learn, and so do we. My first sermon was preached at a SonRise Service on Resurrection Sunday in 1963. That was thirty-seven years ago and while I have learned a lot, and forgotten more - the Scriptures are still as fresh as a spring breeze - holding forth the promise of an earthly paradise after a cold hard winter.

It is good to see that the disciples were slow learners even as we are - else we could and would think to highly of our own intellect and abilities like the yeasty, worldly powers that would still make their own heaven on earth. May the Lord teach us true humility as the disciples were taught and so let us learn to leave behind the worldly wisdom that would charm us and adorn us with heresy. Let us look faithfully to Christ alone for spiritual food and life everlasting. Amen.