351st Post Jesus On Harsh Words for the Religious System Con't. - Matthew 16: 8 - 11.

Matthew 16: 8 - 11.
O you of little faith, why do you reason among yourselves because you have brought no bread? Do you not understand, or remember the five loaves of the five thousand and how many baskets you took up? Nor the seven loaves of the four thousand and how many large baskets you took up? How is it you do not understand that I did not speak to you concerning bread? - but to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
This was spoken by Jesus about 1.1/2 - 2 years into His earthly Ministry. Jesus had just performed the miracle of feeding the four thousand. The Pharisees and Sadducees had just demanded another sign from Jesus. This passage takes place the next day after the feeding, and the Disciples and Jesus were in a boat going across the Sea of Galilee. The disciples were thinking among themselves they had brought no bread with them. Jesus tells the disciples to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The disciples thought of physical bread, Jesus was talking about Spiritual Leaven. The Leaven Jesus was talking about was unbelief. Unbelief like faith, does not take very much to affect the whole lump or batch. The people Jesus had reached through His miracles, had little knowledge to go with that faith, and because of that were very fragile and could either strengthen or weaken because of the force of unbelief. The new believer's needed to be protected from the unbelievers until they could receive more teaching to make them strong to stand on their own. I believe this is a big problem in our Church's today. We turn new believer's into workers too quickly, and then we stop feeding them, and we justify it by saying we gave them the tools to feed themselves. Providing the tools, and not providing the instruction in how to use the tools is worthless!! This is shown by the huge turnover provided by our so called new believers, when put into a leadership or teaching role.