Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

Today's episode may not be suited for young years, so use your own discretion as you

listen.

After rebuking the Pharisees and Sadducees, two groups of leaders in the religious community, Jesus turns the experience

into a teaching tool for his disciples. As he often does, Jesus uses the things around them as

metaphors, but sometimes, like today, it can be confusing for the disciples because they think

he's talking about the physical thing, not the spiritual thing.

Jesus compares the teachings of the Pharisees and the Sadducees to Levin.

For those of us who don't spend much time in the kitchen or on the

cooking channel, here's a quick leaven lesson. It makes bread rise and a tiny

amount leavens the whole loaf. The Jews have a long-standing tie to unleavened bread and they even have a feast that features it.

The Feast of Unleavened Bread, also known as Passover.

Back to the illustration. Jesus says the teaching of the Pharisees and Sages is like Levin.

In other words, just getting a little bit of their teaching mixed in with what you believe will

impact the way everything pans out.

These two groups have some major differences with each other and we'll link to a short article

about those differences in the show notes today, but the thing they have in common is that their

teachings are primarily focused on morality. You can probably see how this could have the veneer of religion but without

the heart behind it and you can probably also see how that would impact every area of your life,

like Jesus points out. The minute morality becomes the goal, we start to fix our eyes on our actions instead of on the saving action of Christ.

When we focus too much on being good people, whatever that means, it can actually begin to negatively impact the way we view

others and treat others. We can become self-righteous, looking down on others who haven't gotten

...