11The Pharisees came and began to question Jesus. To test him, they asked him for a sign from heaven. 12He sighed deeply and said, "Why does this generation ask for a miraculous sign? I tell you the truth, no sign will be given to it." 13Then he left them, got back into the boat and crossed to the other side.
The Yeast of the Pharisees and Herod
14The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, except for one loaf they had with them in the boat. 15"Be careful," Jesus warned them. "Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod."
16They discussed this with one another and said, "It is because we have no bread."
17Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked them: "Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? 18Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don't you remember? 19When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?"
"Twelve," they replied.
20"And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?"
They answered, "Seven."
21He said to them, "Do you still not understand?"
BACKGROUND READING:
Jeremiah 5
Dig Deeper
Mark clearly includes this brief exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees in order to set up the following passage which contains a pivotal conversation between him and his apostles. Things were beginning to move quickly now, and were getting serious. The Pharisees demand that Jesus give them a sign of his authority, as if he hadn’t been doing that all along. That’s the real point of their question. It wasn’t that Jesus hadn’t been performing signs that would demonstrate that he was the true Messiah, it was that they weren’t the type of signs that they wanted the Messiah to perform.
Jesus’ responds to their request for a sign as a sign, of sorts, in itself. It is representative of the Jews of that generation. They were determined not to hear the message of the kingdom that Jesus was announcing. They didn’t want his version of the kingdom; they were still clinging to the vision that they had of what it would be and how it would come. Jesus was operating in the belief that his vocation was to announce the kingdom through the signs that he was performing. They were refusing that kind of kingdom, and thus, were in reality, refusing God’s kingdom itself.
Picking up from there, Mark brings us into one of those great, very human moments that help make the gospels so authentic and personal. The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, and evidently, this fact reminds Jesus of the Pharisees and their yeast that is oozing through the whole society. They think that Jesus is upset about the bread, but that’s not his point at all. Jesus wants them to watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod. In other words, he wants them to be careful that they don’t buy into the kingdom vision that the Pharisees preferred, or the one that Herod is trying to pass off. This is the kingdom that is brought about by getting rid of the sinners in their society, in holding harshly to the law; the one that will exalt Israel and the Temple above all nations, and get rid of Israel’s enemies, namely Rome. In warning his disciples about this, Jesus implies (and of course Mark wants us to see) that they have not fully grasped what his kingdom message is all about. If they did, there would be no need for his warning.
It is becoming increasingly urgent that they understand what they are a part of, yet it is still of such a nature that it is something they must discover on their own, with the help of the Holy Spirit (every good teacher knows that a student must discover truths for themselves in order to really grasp the material). Word is clearly leaking out about what Jesus is doing, which means the situation is about to get more dangerous. The more the authorities know about his mission, the more dangerous it becomes. The time is drawing near, when they will they will accompany him to Jerusalem with a mission, not of feeding and healing, but of challenging the very system itself. They will only be willing and able to come if they can understand that he is more than a healer or prophet, but that he is much more than that. The time of intense confrontation between Jesus and his rivals is coming fast and the disciples need to be ready.
Jesus then quotes from Jeremiah 5:21. His point is not that he is frustrated at how blind they are, the point is that they do not understand (again, Mark draws a parallel between seeing and understanding) and are in danger of going down the same path that the Jews in Jeremiah’s day did. They were so distracted with their own concerns that they forgot about injustice and evil in their society. God had little alternative but to abandon them to their fate in the hands of pagan nations. They had worshiped things other than God, and gave those things the power in their lives. In the same way, most Jews had come to put their own version of God and his kingdom in place of the real God, and so it had become a stumbling block.
Jesus then asks them about the significance of the fact that there was twelve and then seven baskets of bread left over after his miraculous feedings. He seems to have expected that they should have known what those signs meant. Some scholars have put forth the idea that perhaps the 12 baskets represent Jesus’ ministry to the Jewish world (with its 12 tribes), while the seven baskets left over represent his promise to the Gentile world (according to Jewish idioms, the rest of the world contained 70 nations). Perhaps this is it, or one of the other viable theories that have been put forth. What we ultimately are left with, however, is the need for humility and to admit that, like the disciples, we might not fully understand the meaning of the left over bread either.
Devotional Thought
Many Jews made the mistake of limiting God and his kingdom to the perceptions that they had of what it was and how it would work. As a result most of them missed out on the kingdom altogether. God wasn’t working outside of the Scriptures, they had simply missed the point of the Scriptures due to preconceived notions. Is it possible that we, too, tend to limit God and put his kingdom in a box with our preconceived notions? Make a determination today to approach the Scriptures and to approach God, with a fresh and humble approach and see if you have been limiting his power and how he desires to work in your life.
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