Think about the most spiritually serious person you know. Not the most entertaining. Not the most popular. The most serious. The one who knows the Bible better than almost anyone in the room. Who fasts. Who gives. Who guards his doctrine carefully and does not apologize for it. Who holds the line when everyone else is compromising.

Now imagine Jesus looking at that man and saying: beware of him.

Not “learn from him.” Not “admire his commitment.” Beware. Like you would beware of a false teacher. Like you would beware of something that could get into you and spread.

That is exactly what Jesus said about the Pharisees. And the Pharisees were the most serious, most committed, most doctrinally precise religious men of their age. If you had asked any first-century Jew who was paying the highest price for their faith, they would have pointed to a Pharisee.

And Jesus said: beware.

That warning is not buried in the first century. It rises wherever serious religious people gather and forget to watch their own hearts. It can rise in a Bible-preaching church. It can rise in this church.

The Sign Seekers (Mark 8:10–13)

“And the Pharisees came out and began to argue with Him, seeking from Him a sign from heaven, testing Him.” Mark 8:11 (LSB)

They were not coming to learn. They were coming to test. They wanted something from the sky, fire maybe, a display of divine power they could stand back and evaluate on their own terms. And they had already watched this man heal the sick, cast out demons, and feed thousands with a handful of loaves. None of that was enough. They wanted more.

Notice what Jesus does in verse 12. He sighs deeply in His spirit. That phrase is worth sitting with. This is not irritation. This is grief. He looked at men who had been given so much, the Scriptures, the covenants, the Law, the promises of God, and they were using all of it to demand more evidence instead of believe what was standing right in front of them.

The parallel passage in Matthew fills in what He meant. He told them the only sign they would receive was the sign of Jonah. Three days and three nights in the earth, then resurrection. The greatest sign in all of human history was coming, and these men were going to miss it. The Ninevites repented at the preaching of Jonah. Something greater than Jonah was standing in the room. And they wanted a sky show.

“For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” 1 Corinthians 1:22–24 (LSB)

Sign seekers are still out there. They want the experience. They want something to move them. What they need is the gospel. We have that. We don’t need a rock band going on here. We have the Word of God and the risen Christ, and that is enough.

The Forgotten Lesson (Mark 8:14–21)

Jesus left the Pharisees on the shore and got back in the boat. And what He said next to His disciples, they almost entirely missed.

“And He was giving orders to them, saying, ‘Watch out! Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.’ And they began to discuss with one another the fact that they had no bread.” Mark 8:15–16 (LSB)

They missed it completely. Jesus is issuing a solemn spiritual warning, and the disciples are murmuring about the fact that nobody packed lunch. As if bread was going to be a problem. For Jesus. After what they had seen Him do twice.

He came back at them hard. Do you not yet perceive or understand? Do you have a hardened heart? Having eyes, do you not see? Having ears, do you not hear? That language is loaded. It is the language of the prophets describing Israel when she had seen the works of God and still refused to trust Him. Jesus is using it on His own disciples, in the boat, while they are worrying about groceries.

They had watched Him take five loaves and feed five thousand men. Twelve baskets left over. They had watched Him take seven loaves and feed four thousand. Seven large baskets left over. And now they were in the same boat with that same man, fretting about one loaf.

How soon they forgot. How soon we forget.

Think about it this way. A man gets a diagnosis that shakes him. He prays. His church prays. God brings him through. Two years later, life gets hard in a different way, and that same man is sick with worry, as if God had never done the first thing. We have twelve baskets of evidence and we still reach for the antacids.

The warning Jesus was giving had nothing to do with bread. He was pointing back to the shore. He was saying: that spirit you just watched working through the Pharisees, that proud, demanding, performance-driven religion, don’t let it into you. It is leaven. It starts small and it spreads.

The Leaven Identified

So what exactly was the leaven Jesus was warning against? He named it directly in Luke’s Gospel.

“Be on your guard for the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.” Luke 12:1 (LSB)

There it is. The leaven is hypocrisy. But we need to understand who the Pharisees actually were before we pick too hard at them. If we picture them as obvious villains everyone could see through, we have already missed the warning. Nobody warns you about something that looks like a threat. The leaven is dangerous because it doesn’t smell like danger.

Larry Osborne makes this point well in his book Accidental Pharisees. In Jesus’ day, being called a Pharisee was a badge of honor. They excelled in everything serious religious people admire. They were zealous for God, masters of the biblical text, and careful about even the obscure commands. Their beliefs were closer to Christianity than anything the Sadducees held. The Sadducees were the liberals: they denied the resurrection, denied the spirit world, denied the existence of angels. John MacArthur notes that Scripture records the conversion of Pharisees, in Acts 15:5 and Nicodemus in John 3, but not a single Sadducee conversion. As Tom Ross rightly observed, the Pharisees have not died out. They are alive and well in professing Christendom.

If we are going to be like any of these groups, it will be the Pharisees.

So what was wrong with them? Jesus said it plainly in Matthew 23.

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. In this way, you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.” Matthew 23:27–28 (LSB)

Whitewashed tombs. Gleaming on the outside. Death on the inside.

The word hypocrite is borrowed from the Greek. In the classical world it meant an actor, a stage performer who wore a mask and played a part. The Pharisees were masters of the performance. They could spot a fault in anyone, but they refused to hold Scripture up like a mirror. They used it like a pair of binoculars, always aimed outward. When you use Scripture that way, to measure everyone else and excuse yourself, it will not produce righteousness. It will produce pride, then contempt, and contempt is the leaven.

Jesus raised the bar in the Sermon on the Mount so high that every last hope of a self-made righteousness collapsed.

“For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5:20 (LSB)

He was not raising the bar to encourage them. He was removing every exit. There is no getting in on the merit of your own performance. Not even for a Pharisee. Especially not for a Pharisee. Then He gave them a picture of it.

“Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and was praying these things to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his chest, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other, for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.” Luke 18:11–14 (LSB)

Write it in the margin: beware of the leaven of the Pharisees.

Osborne asks a question worth putting to yourself: Do you have a “Thank God I am not like them” list? Maybe it’s charismatic churches. Maybe it’s the fundamentalists. Maybe it’s the Baptist church down the road that is just a little different than you are but you exaggerate the differences to make them look bad. Maybe it’s that family that left your church three years ago. Get rid of that list. Don’t set it aside somewhere. Destroy it before it destroys you. And this church.

The Warning for the Church

Hear me now. If Sovereign Grace Baptists are not careful, we will end up being more like the Pharisees of the New Testament than we are like the churches of the New Testament.

Can a true, Bible-believing, properly organized church of the Lord Jesus become a Pharisee church? Absolutely.

“Because you say, ‘I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,’ and you do not know that you are wretched and pitiable and poor and blind and naked… Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.” Revelation 3:17, 20 (LSB)

The church at Laodicea had a boast. They were the Lord’s church. They were rich. They were organized properly. Everything was being done decently and in order. But they were lukewarm. And Jesus was outside. Knocking.

Think about a cemetery. Every headstone properly maintained. The paperwork neat in an office. The grounds clean and well-kept. Everything decent and in order. But everything is dead. And so it is with churches. People can become so proud of a dead and decaying church because everything is so orderly. Yet there is no life. Jesus knocking on the outside. All the while they look down on everyone else.

Churches do not die overnight. It is a slow process. It is leaven working quietly through the whole lump. First the pride, then the contempt for everyone outside, then the self-congratulation, then the spiritual dullness, until one day the most lively thing happening in the building is the argument about who belongs and who doesn’t. And Jesus is on the outside.

“to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.” Ephesians 3:21 (LSB)

That is not a guarantee. Our Lord does not receive glory in a church full of the leaven of the Pharisees. He does not receive glory in a church where He is outside knocking while the members congratulate each other on how sound they are.

Search your own heart in the light of Scripture. Search this church’s heart. Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees.

The Gospel

If there is anyone reading this who has been working to earn your standing before God, keeping the right rules, staying cleaner than the people around you, the parable of the two men in the temple was written for you.

The Pharisee went home from the temple that day and he was not justified. He had done everything right on the outside. It was not enough. It will never be enough.

The man who went home justified was the one who couldn’t even lift his eyes to heaven. Who beat his chest. Who had nothing to offer except the acknowledgment of what he was: a sinner who needed mercy.

That is the gospel. Not a righteousness you build. A righteousness you receive. Jesus Christ kept the law perfectly, the law the Pharisees tried and failed to keep. He did not die because He had failed. He died in the place of people who had. And He rose again. That is the sign of Jonah. Three days in the earth, then out. Death swallowed Him and could not hold Him.

If you are trusting in your own religious performance today, hear this plainly: that road does not go where you think it goes. The tax collector had nothing to bring. No record, no righteousness, no leverage. He simply cried out for mercy, and he went home justified. That is what God does with a broken sinner who has nowhere else to turn. If the Spirit of God is pressing this truth on your heart right now, do not harden yourself against it. Repent of your sin and trust in Jesus Christ. Not because of anything you have done, but because of everything He has done.

And if you are in Christ: He does not love you because your outside is clean. He loves you because He purchased you with His own blood, and no amount of Pharisee leaven in your heart changes His commitment to you. But it grieves Him. Repent. And go home justified.