And he charged them, saying, Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, and of the leaven of Herod.

Mark 8:15

Jesus gives a two-fold warning, to beware of two types of teaching.  While many have speculated as to what these are, Jesus says plainly what the leaven, or yeast, of the Pharisees is.

Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.

Luke 12:1 (portion)

This warning is like a warning to watch out for the “ditch on either side of the road”.  We have clearly identified the one error (which is an error in teaching or doctrine), which is hypocrisy.  This religious error stems from pride.  The Pharisees claimed to keep the law, to be righteous legalists, but as the encounter with the woman caught in adultery proved (John 8:1-11), none of them truly were.  For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  Romans 3:23.  In claiming to be righteous, even though each one of them knew themselves not to be, they were “actors” (the real meaning of hypocrite).  While pretending to be righteous, they were each one of them filled with “dead men’s bones” (Matthew 23:27), just as we all are without Christ.

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The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.

John 1:9

Man, the carnal man, lives in darkness.  All mankind has turned aside from the truth, the true light, and has gone to corruption.  There is nothing wholesome about man, and nothing good in what he can do.  Ever.

The Spiritual Man, however, as Paul described, has died to it.  He has died to himself, to the world with all its desires, and has died to himself.  The case is so edged that Paul states that he is crucified to the world and the world is crucified to himself (Galatians 6:14).

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[H]im that filleth all in all.

Ephesians 1:23, portion, edited

Him that is all deserves our all.  He that is everything demands our everything.

No portion of this life is worth comparing with His.  No piece of this preparation is on equal with that which is to be revealed, and is here now.

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I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.

Luke 13:5

Take an apple, cut it open, and put it on the counter.  Leave it there, say, for a week, or a month, and you will notice something. The apple is no longer the apple you left it as, but it is now destroyed.  Further, there is no repairing that apple to it’s original golden deliciousness.  It is now, if you leave it long enough, brown slime, and food for the bees.

This world, like that apple, is broken like that apple.  And, in fact, it was God that broke it for His own justice at the beginning, when the man fell.

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He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.

Mark 16:16 KJV

Lest we forget our place, let us remember Jesus words.  He did not come to condemn, because He didn’t have to.  We already were, all of us (John 3:17, Romans 3:23).  Lest we lose our moorings, let us remember the foundations of our faith.  One of the foundations upon which all else is built upon is Eternal Punishment (Hebrews 6:2).  Without these things, we are in error, and we cannot grow into maturity in the things of faith.

None of us can boast about our place in God, for no one is righteous on their own merit.  Paul wrote, “Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded.” Romans 3:27.  Even in evangelism, while it is true that we have what everyone else is looking for, and we must not get into fruitless debates, it remains upon the finished works of the cross.  We tell others that they are sinners and condemned to hell, not because we are righteous in our own merit, but because of the very hope we preach.

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But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

Acts 1:8

The demonstration of the Kingdom of Heaven is in power.  With respect to those who have gone before, who have had only their level of revelation from the scriptures, remembering that we, too, only see the portion of the words of Jesus that have been entrusted to us, unless the Kingdom of God is demonstrated with power, we have not fully preached the Gospel (Romans 15:19).

And this power is founded upon a Kingdom, whose throne is righteousness and justice (Psalm 89:14).  It is always in the context of exercising authority, while being under the authority of another (Matthew 8:9).  A servant that is proven unfaithful to the will of the master, who goes around saying, “In the name of my master, whom I serve”, while not serving Him, will have that power taken away, and given to another.

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A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.

Matthew 7:18

That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit (John 3:6).  The physical body and the physical soul are not evil creations.  In the beginning, God created them, and He called them good (Genesis 1:31).  Yet, fallen man is completely incapable of pleasing God on his own (Romans 3:11).  It takes Faith to please God (Hebrews 11:6), and this is given (Romans 12:3).

The life of the Christian is marked by ‘baptisms’ (plural, see Hebrews 6:1).  We are baptized (immersion, you go down into it) into Christ, and we are baptized (immersion, you come underneath it) into the Holy Spirit.  This was depicted in the wilderness by the Israelites being baptized into the Red sea (water baptism) and the cloud (the Holy Spirit) (1 Corinthians 10:2).

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And his lord, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him.  My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart.

Matthew 18:34-35

Jesus has commanded that we love one another, and in order to do this, we must be willing to forgive.  Total forgiveness may begin with an act of the will, but always must proceed to the depths of the heart.  Forgiveness is being willing to live with the consequences of another’s actions.

In order to forgive, you must first be willing to say, “that was wrong.” When there is no attributable wrong, how can there be forgiveness?  If you cannot say it was wrong, what are you forgiving?  What forgiveness is not is trying to minimize the hurt so that no offense can take root.  This may seem profitable in the short run, but lacks the integrity to go the distance.  No, rather, when someone does something wrong, it is important to acknowledge that what was done was wrong.  It is from this place that all forgiveness can happen.

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For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.  For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.  He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.  For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.  But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.

John 3:16-21

This seems to me one of the most commonly referenced and the littlest truly studied passages in the Bible.  It is one of the best tools for evangelism, for it sums up the entirety of the message of Jesus in one little place.  It may be that it is just this writer’s perception that it is one of the littlest studied passages, it maybe that so few people do much in depths studies in the Gospels or otherwise, or, it may just be that it seems that this section is so commonly understood, it must, of course, be understood already.  When we come to think over these words, we can wrongly assume we understand them all.  Yet, as there is no shadow of turning in God, it stands to reason, that if we could plumb the depths of any passage, without taking it grossly out of context, and know the fullness of the weight of the words in the realm of Heaven, we would know Him much better than we know now.  Suffice to say, these words are spirit, and they are life.

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Now there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Romans 8:1

And according to the Law, one may almost say, all things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.

Hebrews 9:22

There is no condemnation for a believer.  For the sinner, condemnation is assured (John 3:18), but for those who are justified by faith, we live in the freedom of Christ (Galatians 5:1).

So we have a distress.  We find that we do sin.  And, this may bring guilt, pain, shame, regret.  Yet, these are not the right of the New Testament believer.  We come to a conjunction, a crossroads of choice.  Do I believe the Scriptures, or do I believe the pain of the shame, the guilt, and the condemnation.

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