Discernment, Priorities - Knowing and Trusting Your Bible, Matthew 16:1-10

We are going to look at some things in this passage related to discernment, priorities, and knowing and trusting the Bible. I make a distinction there because there are a lot of folks who may know their Bible but they don't trust it very much. They may trust it theoretically but they don't trust it everyday; they don't trust it practically. This is a great temptation and a common test we all face: do we really trust the Word exclusively or are we really just looking at the Word as a tool, along with other tools, to handle the adversities, the circumstances and the difficulties in our life?

We come to this section where Jesus is giving another lesson to His disciples, as well as to us. One of the lessons they need to learn—as we all need to learn—is the lesson in terms of spiritual perception and understanding. The focus here is on the issue of spiritual discernment and perception in these two examples. The first deals with the deception and spiritual darkness of the Pharisees and the Sadducees; the second relates to the lack of spiritual perception on the part of the disciples. The difference is that the darkness of the Pharisees and Sadducees is deadly and destructive and diabolical. The lack of understanding on the part of the disciples, we will see, is gradually removed over the coming months and years as they grow spiritually. Nevertheless, they are warned that they can succumb to the teaching of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, which can have a destructive effect on their spiritual life. It won’t cause them to lose their salvation but it can severely hinder their spiritual growth and damage their spiritual life because they get involved with false teaching and false doctrine.

Jesus is warning them, and us, to beware of false teaching that would lead souls away from an exclusive and radical dependence upon God. That is really the focus that we see here. And in this section as Christ teaches the disciples we are going to also see an interesting thread that goes back into chapter fourteen. Just as a reminder of what has happened here is that they started off in the area north of Bethsaida where Jesus feeds the 5000. So there is the focus of feeding, the focus of multiplying the loaves and fishes, and the emphasis is on the fact that Jesus is the one who supplies their need. Jesus takes the loaves and multiplies them miraculously, and the feeding of the 5000 is mediated through the disciples. He is teaching them that He will provide the nourishment and that it will be sufficient, and it is their responsibility to take that and use it to feed God's people. That is the first miracle.

Then there is the situation where they head back across the Sea of Galilee at night and encounter a storm, and in the tempest and turbulence of the storm Jesus is going to come to them walking on the water at night, demonstrating that when we face the tempests and turbulence of life Jesus has the power to handle them if we have faith in Him and focus upon Him, which was the issue with Peter learning to walk on the water. When he took his focus off the Lord then he began to sink beneath the waves. So it was emphasizing the sufficiency of the power of God to handle all the problems that we face in life.

The Pharisees challenged Him as He came to the western shore. These were those who had come up now from Jerusalem. They challenged Him about His disciples not washing their hands and Jesus taught that it wasn't the externals or the trappings of religion that counted but the internal reality of the heart. It was not lip service but service that came from the soul, from those who were completely devoted to God.

Then they headed north to the territory of Tyre and Sidon and encountered the Gentile woman who was called by Matthew a Canaanite, bringing up the image of those who were the enemies of Israel and those who had brought paganism and the horrible idolatry of the fertility cults into Israel. She comes to Him demonstrating great doctrinal understanding, and says, "Yes, it is right that you feed the children [Israel] but that we too have a right to the crumbs, just as the dog in the house. She recognized the priority; she recognize that Jesus was the Son of David, the Messiah, and she asked Him to heal her daughter who was demon possessed. She pled with Him at a very personal level. It is the grace of God that is not restricted to one people but goes out to the Gentiles. That was reinforced when Jesus returned and instead of going back into the territory of Herod Antipas He went further to the east into the territory of the ten cities, the Decapolis, and there He fed the four thousand. The feeding of the four thousand is also related to teaching the sufficiency of God's grace, but not just to Israel but to also to the Gentiles, and that there is an abundance left over—which means that God's grace is more than enough to satisfy the needs of our life, the hungerings of our soul, so that we can face and handle any problem in life.

He now moves back across the Sea of Galilee to the western shore where He is met by the Pharisees, and now also by the Sadducees.

Matthew 16:1 ^NASB "The Pharisees and Sadducees came up, and testing Jesus, they asked Him to show them a sign from heaven." So a new group opposed to Jesus has appeared on the scene. The last time we saw the Sadducees mentioned was back in chapter three when they were coming down to evaluate John the Baptist, and so they have been in the background. The Sadducees were the party of the priests, the party of the temple, and they predominately operated in Jerusalem. It was somewhat rare for them to be in Galilee. The Pharisees operated in the area of Jerusalem as well as in Galilee, and it has primarily been the Pharisees that Matthew has focused on, but he actually mentions the Sadducees as opponents of Jesus more than any of the other Gospel writers. John doesn't mention the Sadducees at all; Mark and Luke only mention the Sadducees in relation to the tests that they bring to Jesus during that last week before He goes to the cross.

We need to note a few things about the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Both operated together in the governing body of Judea, which was called the Sanhedrin, but they differed very greatly in their doctrine and their understanding of Scripture. And it is important to understand their understanding of Scripture and their view of ultimate authority in religious matters in order to understand what Jesus is talking about when He gets into verse 6 and talks about the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Both sat on the Sanhedrin but were opposed to each other, just about as much as Nancy Pelosi would be opposed to Ted Cruz! They weren't going to get together on any topic; they couldn't agree on anything; they were very much opposed to each other. In terms of their theology the Pharisees emphasized the whole of the Old Testament but they added to it. That would be the key thing to think about when we think about the Pharisees and the Sadducees. They Pharisees add to the Scripture; the Sadducees take away from the Scripture. The Pharisees are like a lot of religious legalists in that they are adding something to that which God has revealed, whereas the Sadducees are like a lot of religious liberals in that they don't really trust all of the Scripture and they take away a lot from the Scripture, and they pick and choose exactly what it is that they are going to think is a part of God's Word.

The Pharisees emphasized the whole of the Old Testament but they added to it the oral tradition, the Oral Law. Ultimately whenever you add anything to Scripture that takes authority over Scripture. So the Oral Law became the only authoritative way to interpret the Old Testament. In contrast, the Sadducees restricted the Old Testament to only the Pentateuch. They virtually ignored the former and the latter Prophets and the Writings. They also derived more of their authority from education and from reason. They were the rationalists, and so they rejected certain things related to the supernatural. They rejected the existence of angels; they rejected the eternality of the soul and a future life after death in terms of resurrection. The Pharisees, on the other hand, believed in the eternal nature of the soul as well as a future judgment and a resurrection, and then a destiny of heaven or hell. The Pharisees emphasized the sovereignty of God to the point of determinism and almost fatalism, whereas the Sadducees went to the other extreme and emphasized human autonomy and freedom of will to the exclusion of the authority of God.

The centerpiece was really the view of resurrection, and Paul used that wisely in Acts chapter twenty-three when he was brought before the Sanhedrin to stand trial and he perceived this difference between the Pharisees and the Sadducees. When it came time for him to talk he announced that he was there and on trial for the resurrection of the dead. That immediately got the two sides arguing with each other, and they became so angry that Roman troops had to come in and pull Paul out of there and rescue him lest he be done physical harm. So they had this exceptionally vitriolic relationship; they were extremely polarized.

When these groups unite, as we have here (the Pharisees and Sadducees in the Greek are governed by one article, which can have different significances but in this case it indicates the close unity between the groups) they may be opposed to one another on many different points but they agree on one thing: that Jesus of Nazareth cannot possibly be the Messiah. They come now to test Jesus.

This is also an interesting word that we find here. They come to test Him: which means to examine Him, to evaluate Him, and in some cases it even means to tempt (but not here). It is interesting that this one word has only been used one previous time in the Gospel of Matthew, and you would never imagine who was involved in that testing. Matthew 4:1, 3 ^NASB "Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted [tested] by the devil…And the tempter came and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.” So the only person who has previously tested the Lord is Satan. So there is a sub-text here that the Pharisees and Sadducees are doing the devil's work in terms of their opposition to Jesus as the Messiah.

They asked if He would show them a sign from heaven. This could be understood a couple of different ways. The genitive here is a little ambiguous and it has been interpreted in one of two ways. One could be that they wanted a sign in the heavens. This would be something like what we have in the Old Testament during the time of Joshua when the sun stood still, or in the time of Hezekiah when the shadow reversed itself going up the stairs. In this interpretation they were looking for some sort of special event that would take place in the heavens. On the other hand, they could have been asking for a sign that could be coming from heaven, i.e. from God, and they wanted incontrovertible evidence that Jesus was who he claimed to be. But in either case it is disingenuous; they are just trying to trap Him.

Many signs had already been given to them but they are just ignoring them. For example, if they are talking about signs in the heavens, something meteorological or astronomical, there was the star that appeared over the house where the Magi came to worship Jesus. The public also heard the voice of God when Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist and out of the heavens came the voice saying: "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased". On the other hand there had been numerous miracles, various healing miracles, which previous to this the rabbis thought would be unique distinguishing signs of the Messiah. He has healed lepers, the blind, those who were crippled and maimed, and He has cast out demons; but they have rejected all of those things and so basically they are not asking for another sign, they just want Him to do something so that they can trap Him. If He doesn't do anything they are going to say He is a fraud and a fake; if He does do something they are going to accuse Him of performing magic or sorcery, or something like that.

So Jesus, as He does so many times, is very sophisticated in the way He gets out of these little traps that they set for Him. They ask Him for a sign from heaven and He is going to address that, but He sidesteps it a little bit.

We get a little insight here into the way our Lord Jesus Christ is handling the opposition when we look at Mark 8:12 ^NASB "Sighing deeply in His spirit, He said, 'Why does this generation seek for a sign? Truly I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation'.” We see that Jesus is getting a little exasperated with His opponents. He "sighed deeply in His spirit". Jesus is thinking, "Here we go again, one more time". We get this idea that if only our witnessing could be confirmed by a miracle people that we love would see something miraculous and somehow this would have an impact upon their thinking. And that is completely fallacious because there were many people in Israel who saw incredible miracles but did not accept Jesus as the Messiah, because the issue isn't related to evidence. Evidence is important, it confirms the veracity of Scripture, and in many cases the study of Christian evidence is important for believers because it strengthens their case. But it is not ultimately that which convinces unbelievers because the issue is more than a rational or an empirical issue; the issue is volition. Volition is what lies behind their very actions and deeds.

Jesus responds in an extremely interesting manner. He refers to a proverbial understanding among the people. They understand the meteorological events that take place around them so that they can have a somewhat rudimentary way of predicting weather. In other words, they have become experts in understanding natural phenomena. But these religious leaders are not experts, and not only are they not experts but they are ignorant of the signs of the times.

Matthew 16:2, 3 ^NASB "But He replied to them, 'When it is evening, you say, ‘{It will be} fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘{There will be} a storm today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ Do you know how to discern the appearance of the sky, but cannot {discern} the signs of the times?'" It is interesting that this phrase "the signs of the times" is bandied about so much today. It is only used one time referring to the first advent, not the Second Advent. Here Jesus confronts them with the fact that they have not paid attention to Scripture.

The saying that He alludes to here is one that is common among sailors: "Red sky at morning, sailors take warning; red sky at night; sailors delight". What this indicates is in the morning, if you are out on the sea, and you see the sunrise with the dawn and it has been filtered through the clouds it is very likely that those clouds are going to come your way and you are going to face inclement weather during the day. But if the sun is setting in the west and is illuminating clouds in the heavens to the west then it is very likely that those clouds have already gone on in the other direction and are not going to come to bother you.

They have come to study and to understand a lot of natural phenomena and in many areas of life they may be experts. But the area in which they should be experts is in the Word of God. Jesus is confronting them and says, "But you don't recognize the signs that the Messiah was coming and that God would send His Messiah at this particular time." He is basically saying that they don't recognize the timetable that Daniel laid out in Daniel 9:25, 26, and so they don't know that this is the right time. The sub-text here would be that even Simeon, who showed up when Mary and Joseph was bringing Jesus to the temple for His dedication eight days after His birth, knows that this is the Messiah. Jesus is saying that they are not as smart as Simeon. He is saying that they don't recognize that the kingdom of God would be offered and they don't perceive what God is doing right now on earth. He is saying they are spiritually deaf and blind and ignorant.

The sad thing is that today we have a lot of Christians who are not much different from them. They are experts in areas of politics, on the stock markets, and on economics and sports. The trouble is, they don't know the Word of God. They can't tell you who the twelve tribes of Israel are, who the twelve disciples were. They can't tell you what the major events were structuring Old Testament history, or the major events or the chronology of the life of Christ; they can't tell you about the three journeys of the apostle Paul, or give an outline of future prophecy. They are willfully ignorant of these things because they are distracted by all the details of life. The only thing that we are going to be able to take into eternity is our knowledge and understanding of the Word.

I know people who are very well informed about the things that are happening politically. But they find it very difficult to read through their Bible in a year; and that only takes about nine or ten minutes a day. Not only that but they just don't have an understanding of framework or the structure of the Scripture. And they get so busy that they don't have time to get to Bible class; they don't have time to make that the priority of their life, and we know that of we don't spend time in the Word then that is going to have disastrous consequences in the spiritual life. We have our priorities wrong.

Matthew 16:4 ^NASB 'An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign; and a sign will not be given it, except the sign of Jonah.' And He left them and went away." They are evil, not because they are not nice people, not because they are not moral people; they are evil because they have replaced the worship of God with the worship of their idolatrous thought systems—whether it is the religious idolatry of the Pharisees or the rationalistic idolatry of the Sadducees. Remember, the Pharisees are adding to Scripture and the Sadducees are taking away from Scripture, but the end result is basically the same. When you add to Scripture it is going to destroy your understanding of who Jesus is. Think about the various cults that have developed over the years that have added to Scripture. The Mormons added the Book of Mormon to Scripture. They do lip service to the authority of the Bible but ultimately the Bible has to be understood in light of the Book of Mormon. Look at the Christian Scientists, the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Watchtower. Their additional authoritative books supplant the authority of Scripture. They give lip service to the authority of Scripture but the Bible is going to be interpreted on the basis of their religious books. Whenever you add something you are going to destroy the authority of the 66 books of the Bible.

When you take away, of course you are going to destroy the authority of Scripture because you are going to use your reason, like Thomas Jefferson, and take a razor blade and cut out every miracle, every supernatural event in the Bible, because according to the authority of his reason it couldn't really have happened that way. Whether you are taking away from Scripture or adding to Scripture the bottom line is that when you come to Jesus of Nazareth you won't correctly identify Him as the Messiah of the Old Testament, the Messiah of the Bible.

So they are called evil because when you take away the hope of eternal salvation from people it dooms them to eternal condemnation, and that is evil. Idolatry is evil. They are spiritual adulterers because they replace the worship of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob with the God of the Mosaic Law, Yahweh the God of creation, with something else. Every one of us does that at times. Paul says greed is idolatry. We create mental idols all the time where we idolize our work, our pursuit of money, entertainment, relaxation, family, children; we put all of these things before God, and when do that we have created an idol of those details of life. And when we do that we have committed spiritual adultery.

Spiritual adultery doesn't mean you are listening to somebody other than your pastor teach you the Bible. That is hogwash. A lot of people have been taught that and you need to flush that out of your mind; that is not spiritual adultery. The Bible clearly defines it. All throughout the Old Testament God would accuse Israel of being an adulterous people, not because they listened to another Bible teacher but because they replaced Him as the ultimate focus in their lives. That is spiritual adultery.

What is the solution to this? First of all, we need to evaluate our priorities. We need to evaluate how we spend our time. We need to set aside time every day to really, truly read the Bible. And not just to skim it, not to just read the words without eyes while our mind is thinking about something else, but maybe take out a pen or a piece of paper and jot down our thoughts as we are reading through the Bible, so that the Bible can have an impact on our thinking.

Second, we need to take time to study the Scripture under a pastor who truly understands the Word, a pastor who if he doesn't know the original languages, takes the time to study under somebody who does or to use many of the remarkable computer tools that we have today in order to delve into the original languages of Scripture. We need to take the time, and that means more than just Sunday morning. The world is pressuring us 24/7 to conform to it and the only way we can fight that is through the Word of God, and if we are spending 30 minutes or an hour, or even three hours a week in the Word, it is not enough. We are not giving it enough, we are letting the world dominate and conform us and we are barely giving God the opportunity to do anything. This is why a lot of Christians think, "Well the Bible really doesn't work; I know it says it will, and there are some people it has had a transformative effect on but the Bible doesn't really seem to work in my life". That is because you really haven't given it a chance. You have to immerse yourself into Scripture.

Third, we need to memorize Scripture. David said: "Thy Word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against you". Part of the solution to sin is hiding God's Word in our life so that God the Holy Spirit can use it.

Fourth, we need to take time to fellowship around the Word of God with other believers—coming together in corporate worship and in Bible study.

Jesus confronts the Pharisees and the Sadducees and calls them wicked because of their idolatry, their rejection of God's Word. He has called them adulterous because in their worship of something else they are being spiritually unfaithful, and He said people like this seek after a sign. They just want to have their feelings stimulated, their emotions stimulated, by seeing something exciting. But signs and wonders had a place as a confirmation of the authority of Jesus and the apostles but they were not the primary convincing agent in understanding the truth of God's Word.

Jesus said: "An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign; and a sign will not be given it, except the sign of Jonah." And He left them and went away.

This is the same thing He said earlier in Matthew chapter twelve. After the Pharisees had accused Him of performing His miracles in the power of Satan, they and the scribes came to Him (v. 38) asking for a sign, and in v. 39 He said: "An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah." Jonah was the prophet in the Old Testament to whom God appeared and sent him to take the gospel to Nineveh, the capital of the archenemy of Israel, the Assyrian empire. They were immersed in paganism and were the enemy just much enemy of the United States as the Russian empire and the Iranian empire. Jonah recognized that the Assyrians were enemies and he hated them with every ounce of his being. When God said take the gospel to the Assyrians Jonah said not a chance. He went down to Joppa and caught a ship. A storm came up and put the pressure on the sailors of the ship, and finally Jonah had to admit that all of this was his fault. He told them to throw him into the water and then they would survive. At least we see that he had a measure of integrity, recognizing that it was better for him to perish than all of the others. They threw him in the water and this huge fish God had prepared swallowed him. For three days and three nights he was in the belly of the fish until he repented—that means he changed his mind, and said it was better for him to go to Nineveh than to sit in this stinking, smelly belly. The fish then gave him a one-way ticket to the nearest beach and vomited him out on to the sands.

There have been instances in history where fishermen have been swallowed by various fish. After this has happened and been rescued they survived it was found that the stomach acids had whitened them. This would really have made Jonah stand out when he walked through the gates of Nineveh. He would have gained a lot of attention just from his presence, and he preached. The point of this is that it was as if he was dead, and after this time in the belly of the fish it was as if he were resurrected and came back to life. So that is the pattern that speaks of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The resurrection would be the ultimate evidence of the veracity of who Jesus was as the eternal Son of God.

But resurrection isn't necessarily going to convince everybody. We are told in Luke chapter sixteen about Lazarus, who is a beggar, and the rich man. Lazarus is begging outside the gate of the rich man's house and one day he dies. Lazarus was a believer and goes to Abraham's bosom, but the rich man was not a believer and when he died he went to torments. He is in fiery torments and he looks across the great gulf to see Lazarus on the other side and realizes that he had wasted his life in disobedience to God and had never trusted in the gospel to believe in God's provision of salvation through the Messiah, and because of that he was going to spend eternity in torments. He wanted to rescue his brothers so he pled with Abraham: "Please allow Lazarus to come back from the dead so that he can go and warn my brothers and my family". Abraham said one of the most significant things in Scripture: "If your brothers don't believe Moses and the prophets they won't believe somebody who comes back from the dead".

That is phenomenal, because we often think that if people could just see a miracle then they will believe. But if they don't believe the Scripture … that is the power of God, it is the Word of God that has power in transforming people and changing people's lives. It is the Word of God that is transformative, and the Word of God alone. It emphasizes the sufficiency of God's grace.

What happens as a result of this is that we see we have two options: the Bible plus, which is the Pharisees (adding to the Bible)—what we see today is adding other revelation, and they add psychology, philosophy, and adding other religious books or mystical claims; and the Sadducees who represent the Bible minus crowd, those who hold to various forms of rationalism, religious liberalism and skepticism, and they subtract from the Bible; they reject inerrancy, infallibility and the sufficiency of God's grace. Jesus' response at the end of verse 4: "He left them and departed". They don't want to know the truth, they have made their decision; they have rejected the truth.

Then we have a short little episode with the disciples. Matthew 16:5 ^NASB "And the disciples came to the other side {of the sea,} but they had forgotten to bring {any} bread." They are not focused on their stomachs until they get there and are hungry. Mark tells us that they had one loaf that they had brought with them but that is not nearly enough to continue to feed these twelve men plus Jesus. They have crossed back over to Bethsaida and then they are going to head north to Caesarea Philippi.

Matthew 16:6 ^NASB "And Jesus said to them, 'Watch out and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees'.” He said this just out of the blue. He focuses on this but they don't understand it. [7] "They began to discuss {this} among themselves, saying, '{He said that} because we did not bring {any} bread'.” Their response was, well He is talking about the fact that we don't have any bread. When we are so focused on the details of life that we haven't taken the time to understand the Word, then when we hear the Word being taught it doesn't make any sense to us. That is because our focus is on the wrong thing; it is on something else, not on the Word. When He starts talking to them about spiritual truth what happens is they don't know what He is talking about, and they misunderstand. That is so true in the life of so many believers.

Let us understand the focus here. Leaven is yeast. Whenever you are making bread you take your water and flour and a little bit of sugar and salt, and you make the dough; but the dough won't rise unless you introduce a little bit of yeast into it. As you kneed that into the dough it permeates the dough, and this is an illustration about how just a little bit of evil can permeate the whole group. Leaven in Scripture usually refers to evil, and here it is the doctrine of the Sadducees and the Pharisees and their view that Jesus isn't really God, Jesus isn't the Messiah, Jesus isn't the savior; this is just a fraud and a fake, and He is just someone who is going to distract you from life. So Jesus warns them, and warns us, to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. What is that leaven? It is adding to or subtracting from Scripture. That is the core issue: not trusting the sufficiency of God's grace.

Matthew 16:8 ^NASB "But Jesus, aware of this, said, 'You men of little faith, why do you discuss among yourselves that you have no bread? [That is not the issue] [9] Do you not yet understand or remember the five loaves of the five thousand, and how many baskets {full} you picked up?" What was the lesson there? It was the sufficiency of God's provision. He is able to provide the spiritual nourishment you need to really have life. [10] “Or the seven loaves of the four thousand, and how many large baskets {full} you picked up?" They haven't caught the principle yet that God and God alone can supply their needs.

So what we have here is the fact that they—because they don't yet understand the Scripture, they don't understand the sufficiency of God's grace—are vulnerable to the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees who seek to either take away from the Word of God or add to the Word of God, but in both scenarios they destroy the Word of God.

Matthew 16:11 ^NASB “How is it that you do not understand that I did not speak to you concerning bread? But beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” I am not talking literally; I am talking figuratively and using a metaphor here for you to understand. They finally understand, and so we see that transition. As we are growing in Scripture, finally and slowly as we accumulate enough Scripture we develop our perspicacity and discernment of the truth. They realize that Jesus is warning them against the doctrine, the teaching of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

I want to end with two anecdotes. The first comes out of a book I have read recently that is the biography and the conversion Rosaria Champaign Butterfield, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert. She came out of the gay and lesbian community in which she was involved as an unbeliever. I asked the question: what made the difference between her and the others? It was that she immersed herself in the Word of God and the Word of God immersed itself in her. That is the transformative power. It wasn't five minutes a day or ten minutes a day or reading a little devotional book a page at a time, it was full-bore immersion into the Word. There was no room for compromise. She had to change completely from her previous worldview to a biblical worldview. That is a great testimony to the sufficiency of the Scripture, the sufficiency of God's grace, and how it really demands a full bore immersion into the Word of God.

We need to be people of the Book. It is not just a matter of showing up in Bible class once or twice a week. The Word of God needs to get into our souls.

This is an example from my own life and I am going to change up some of the details because I don't want anyone to know where this happened. Many years ago I was involved in a church for a short while and one thing that perturbed me was the fact that the pastor had compromised with psychology and he was influenced by the wife of one of the deacons in the church. This deacon and a couple of other deacons influenced him and after a while he changed his views and gave the congregation basically permission to get involved in psychology and counseling to work out the problems in their life. It so happened that one day not long after this I got the opportunity to have lunch with this deacon and his wife and the pastor and a few other people, and over the course of the lunch this pastor's wife was asked how she came to be a counselor. She had a flourishing counseling practice at that time and she talked about the fact that though she had grown up in a Bible believing church and had been taught the Bible and a lot of doctrine, she struggled with some emotional problems, struggled with some issues related to diet, eating disorders, and she never could deal with any of this. It didn't seem that doctrine really worked. She didn't put it that way but that is basically what she was saying. She went back to school to get a masters in social work at her neighborhood university, at which time she was exposed to psychology and counseling. After spending some time in counseling, lo and behold, she finally was able to deal with these problems in her life. At which time I interrupted and said, very nicely and very gently: "So let me understand. What you are basically saying with all the years of doctrine that you had, it didn't work. The only thing that gave you a solution to your problems was psychology." At which point the pastor who immediately recognized the issue brought the conversation to an end, never looked back, and changed his view back to what it had been originally.

The fallout was that the leaven of that Bible plus mentality had so permeated different people in that congregation that a lot of people ended up leaving that congregation and going in various different directions. When you let the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees permeate your life it is destructive to your spiritual life. And the Scripture is clear: the Word of God is sufficient; the grace of God is sufficient; the cross of Christ is sufficient. There is no problem God didn't know about in eternity past; there is no problem He fails to address in the Scripture. He is sufficient to solve the eternal problem of sin at the cross, by faith alone in Christ alone; and He is sufficient to change you and me from whatever the problem is with our sin nature, and to transform us. The grace of God is transformative.

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