I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Matthew 15-17.

    There is something I noticed for the first time about the first story in this passage. Some Pharisees and religious teachers came from Jerusalem to listen to Jesus, then they challenged Him about some of His teachings. There are a couple of interesting things about this. Their attitude suggests that they acknowledged that Jesus’ teachings were part of their tradition. They found little in His teachings which they could take issue with. However, they wanted to make sure that He understood that He had to stay in line with the “home office”. They were from Jerusalem after all, the center of all learning and authority concerning the worship of God. They chose carefully when they challenged Jesus. They chose a tradition which was not at all objectionable, even useful. It was a subtle, but not very subtle, attempt to establish their authority over Jesus’ teachings. However, Jesus was having none of that. He immediately confronted them about another tradition. One which was directly contrary to biblical commands. There are really three parts to this story: Jesus rejecting the authority of Jerusalem and tradition, Jesus establishing that God and Scripture are the final authority, and Jesus teaching that how we speak to and treat others matters more than following the correct ritual.

    There is a lot more that spoke to me this morning as I read this passage, but I am going to conclude by commenting on two more of the stories recounted here. The first is the feeding of the four thousand. It has only been a short time since the disciples witnessed Jesus’ feeding five thousand people from a small amount of food and yet they still questioned how He expected them to feed this crowd. Actually, now that I have written that I realize I am going to touch on a third story in this section. The story about the boy whom the disciples were unable to heal gives us an insight into their lack of faith(and ours) as well. We rarely, if ever, see miracles today like those Jesus performed and the answer given here is that this clearly demonstrates our lack of faith. I think that Jesus’ illustration about moving a mountain is instructive about our failure in faith. There are two elements to that instruction. If we believe that it is important to God’s plans that that mountain be over there, we will grab a shovel and a wheelbarrow and start moving it. That is, we will do what is within our power to move that mountain, even if the task seems overwhelming. In addition to that, we will plan and act as if, when the time comes that it matters, the mountain will be where we need it to be.
    The other story I want to touch on is Jesus telling the disciples to watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus had compared our faith to yeast in a positive way. Now here He is comparing the teachings of the Pharisees and Sadducees to yeast in a negative way. How does this work? The answer is an important one. Seeking to serve God and follow Jesus can have a positive influence on those around us, causing those who have no interest in God or doing His will to behave better than they otherwise would. However, the reverse can also be true, especially when it comes to ideas and teachings. It is easy to allow an innocuous seeming idea or teaching enter into our thinking and gradually undermine those teachings and ideas that we know are important.