This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you to week 18 of our look through the book of Matthew. Hi,
this is Pastor Tom, and we're going to be looking at chapter 16 this week. This
is our first day of looking at that chapter.

And as we begin this week, begin the chapter, I want you to listen with me to
this exchange between Jesus and his disciples in verses 1 to 12. It begins with
a conversation with the Pharisees, and it leads to a conversation with the
disciples that reveals why we sometimes miss what Jesus is saying. Listen to
what happens beginning in verse 1.

The Pharisees and Sadducees came to Jesus and tested him by asking him to show
them a sign from heaven. He replied, "When evening comes, you say, 'It will be
fair weather, for the sky is red. ' And in the morning, today it will be stormy,
for the sky is red and overcast.

" You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret
the signs of the times. A wicked and adulterous generation looks for a
miraculous sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah. Jesus then
left them and went away.

When they went across the lake, the disciples forgot to take bread. "Be
careful," Jesus said to them, "be on your guard against the yeast of the
Pharisees and Sadducees. " They discussed among themselves and said, "Is it
because we didn't bring bread?

" Jesus asked, "You of little faith, why are you talking among yourselves about
having no bread? Do you still not understand? Don't you remember the five loaves
for the 5,000 and how many basketfuls you gathered?

Or the seven loaves for the 4,000 and how many basketfuls you gathered? How is
it that you do not understand that I was not talking to you about bread? But be
on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

" Then they understood that it was not telling them to guard against the yeast
used in bread, but against the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees. To me,
this exchange between Jesus and his disciples is amazing and also very revealing
of why sometimes I, sometimes you, miss what Jesus is saying. This question they
ask, "Is it because we didn't bring any bread that Jesus is saying this?

" It is so revealing of our hearts. They forgot bread, and maybe we're feeling
bad about it. So they heard Jesus' words through the filter of their feeling
that they made a mistake.

We often hear Jesus' words through a filter. In this very passage, we see a
couple of the filters that often messes up when we're trying to hear Jesus'
words. Sometimes we hear through the filter of our guilt.

Because of our guilt, what we hear is not what Jesus is saying. There's this
famous story with the writer of Sherlock Holmes or Arthur Conan Doyle about
writing a friend, supposedly a very pure person, and saying, "All is discovered,
flee at once," and seeing that the person left town and never came back again.
There's a lot of forms of that story over the years.

We laugh every time because we know the truth of it. If you sent that note to
eight people, 10 people, 12 people, how many of them would leave town if you
said, "All is discovered, flee at once"? They'd hear the note through the filter
of their guilt.

When you and I have something bad happen to us, and our first thought is, "God
must be punishing me," we're hearing through the filter of our guilt. Because
the scripture tells us very clearly, God doesn't punish his children. He
disciplines us so that we can grow.

He does not punish us. Sometimes we hear through the filter of our guilt.
Sometimes we hear through the filter of our mistakes.

They'd made a mistake. They hadn't brought bread. Because of that, everything
that Jesus said, they heard through their bad feelings about that mistake.

This can happen to you and I. You make a mistake at work. The next day you walk
in and you feel like everyone is looking at you.

Maybe the mistake you made, maybe they are. I have to admit that. Most of the
time, the truth is, they're not looking at you.

They're not thinking about you. You begin to think that every comment is
directed at you. You begin to hear things behind what people are saying that
they're not really even saying.

Because we're going through difficulties in our own life, we hear it all through
that filter. Let me just say to this to you very clearly. As you walk through
life and have experiences, are you hearing that God somehow is angry with you as
his child?

If you're hearing that, you're hearing through the wrong filter. Because God
loves his children. His wrath against us, his anger against us, it's done.

It's done at the cross of Jesus. So if you feel somehow that God is angry with
you as his child, you're hearing through the wrong filter. The filter of your
guilt or your mistakes or your past or whatever.

Are you hearing maybe that you're worthless? Sometimes because of our mistakes,
we can feel very inadequate, insecure, and we start to see the worthlessness in
our lives. If you start feeling like I'm worthless, I'm worthless, I'm nothing,
I'm nothing, I could never be used of God, you're not hearing from God.

You're not hearing from God. You're hearing through the wrong filter. So what do
you do when you hear through the wrong filter?

You do what Jesus did with these disciples. You go back to what Jesus said. Not
to what you thought about what Jesus said, and then what you said about what you
thought about what Jesus said, and then what another person said about what you
said about what you thought about what Jesus said.

Go all the way away from that and all the way back. This is what Jesus did for
his disciples. He repeated it.

He said, "Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees. " Now, in this
case, what's Jesus saying? He's saying, "Watch out for those who have rules and
religion, but no relationship with God.

" You see, as you study through the Old Testament and New Testament, it's very
clear this picture between rules and relationship. In the Old Testament, there's
a lot of rules that the people had to keep, but the relationship with God,
except in a few cases, was not good. They felt far from God.

They spent time away from God. In the New Testament, there's not a lot of rules.
In fact, the Bible says in the New Testament, the whole law can be summed up in
the command to love one another, to love God.

Jesus said, "Love God and love your neighbor. " So there's not a lot of rules,
but the relationship, the rich relationship that we have with him. The truth of
the matter is, the stronger the relationship, the less rules you need.

The deeper the relationship, the less rules you need. When your children are
real young, they have to have a lot of rules. They better have a lot of rules.

When they become adults, you shouldn't have to have a lot of rules. If you do,
the relationship isn't good. In a marriage, when the marriage first starts, a
lot of times you have a lot of rules.

You have to do this with the towels, fold them exactly like this. You have to do
this with the wash and do it exactly like this. But as you grow together and
maybe learn to follow the rules, but also learn to get closer to each other,
there's less rules.

The stronger the relationship, the less the rules. And so Jesus is saying,
"Watch out for those who have rules and religion, but no relationship. " And
he's also saying, "Watch out for those who speak confidently, but who don't
speak the truth.

" Many times we think that because somebody is speaking with confidence, they
must be telling the truth. We look at ourselves and we think, "I couldn't speak
that confidently if I wasn't telling the truth. " But the truth is, there are a
lot of people who speak confidently, but they're not telling the truth.

We know it's true with advertising. We know it's true with advertising and
material things. But it's also true with people who are promoting spiritual
things.

So Jesus says, "Watch out. Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and
Sadducees. " This picture of yeast is, if you let it in, it's going to permeate
through the entire organization, the entire church, the entire small group.

So be very, very careful of those whose teaching is built on rules, of those
whose teaching is built on confident speech, but not the Word of God, not going
back to the Word of God. Now, as we end today, I want to go back to what we
started with. Jesus is teaching them about this yeast and be careful of it.

But I want to go back to the fact that they missed what he was saying, because
they were so caught up in their own mistakes. They were so caught up in their
own guilt. And there's a moment of humility in my life, in your life, where we
need to admit that can happen to us.

In fact, it does happen to us. And the answer is to go back to what Jesus is
saying. So if there's some area of your life where you're hearing that God is
angry, you're hearing that you're no good, you're hearing that God must not have
a plan for your life, I want to invite you today, as we talk together in prayer,
to think about going back to what Jesus says about you.

God so loved the world, he so loved you that he gave his only Son. Go back to
what Jesus says about you, that he came to give you peace, he came to give you
his, he came to give you his love in an incredible, powerful way. Let's take a
minute to pray together.

And Jesus says we pray, I pray that we'd hear through the filter of your love,
that the guilt that we have, you would set that aside in our minds, the mistakes
that we've made in the past, you'd set that aside in our minds, and you'd help
us to hear your voice, the voice of love, the voice of power, the voice that can
invite us into a new relationship with you. Lord, we don't want to live a life
of rules and regulations. We want to live in relationship with you and to let
the changes in our lives not be the result of trying to keep some rules, but be
instead the result of living the life you've given us to live.

And so Jesus, we come to you and we pray that you help us to hear you. Let all
the other stuff just fade into the background. Help us to go back to what you're
saying, we pray.

In your name, amen. Tomorrow we're going to look together at Peter's Great
Confession of Faith.