Mark 8:17 Commentary and Bible Study

It is hard to heartedness that makes us so slow to grasp spiritual things. ‘Perceive ye not yet?’ There are vital words here. The Greek says, do you not use your mind?, literally. You have got to think, as Christians. ‘Neither understand?’ The Greek word translated ‘understand’ literally means, do you not put things together?, put two and two together, compare and contrast. ‘Have ye your heart yet hardened?’ Are you not open to the spiritual explanation of the words of Christ? Perceive; understand; avoid hardening of the heart; remember what God has done even for you – four principles. The yeast of the Pharisees must be understood as referring to something about the Pharisees themselves. It cannot be taken as a warning about the bread that they sell as if this presented any real danger to the disciples. Matthew records that in addition Christ said to them, ‘O ye of little faith, why reason ye among yourselves, because ye have brought no bread?’ Faith would have reasoned differently. It would have brought extra factors which only faith could bring into their reasoning processes. It would have remembered what he had done before – twice now – and only recently, and it would have said, what he has done before he can do again. He cannot be telling us to take care about literal bread, because it that was the problem, he could create food at a word and the problem would be solved. This warning is about something more serious and something which is a real threat to us. He does not give warnings for nothing, and in saying this there is something for us to do.The leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees is their teaching. Once you start to think like they do, it affects your whole understanding. If you have got the teaching of the Pharisees and the Sadducees in you, the outcome will be a completely twisted, distorted understanding of everything. What then is the teaching of the Pharisees and the Sadducees? Certainly, they had their differences. The Sadducees didn't believe in the resurrection or the afterlife, the Pharisees did. The Sadducees concentrated on the temple worship. They believed very strongly in what we call the five books of Moses – In those days it was one book – and pretty well nothing else, whereas the Pharisees believed too much. They said they believed in the books of Moses and the prophets, the Old Testament Scriptures, but they also believed in the oral record, and the oral teaching of the Jews, and all its nonsense and accretions. But they had in common that they didn't understand about a personal relationship with God, and they didn't seek it. They didn't understand that sin could only be forgiven by an act of God, as an act of grace. You repent and seek his pardon and give your life to him, and he changes you and washes you clean: it is by grace; it is undeserved, unearned. They were proud people who thought because they carried out the minute ceremonies of the law, then God would be pleased with them, and they didn't watch their lives at all. They weren't interested in holiness. In fact, the Sadducees: they had a doctrine of free will by which they said, God is not even interested in your personal life. He takes no notice of your personal life.