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 ears, 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 leaven. 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 leavened 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 Sadducees is like leaven.

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 their act together like we have. When we're primarily concerned with looking like good,

upstanding citizens, then it's offensive to be confronted with the truth that we're actually

sinners in need of a savior. You can see how morality can easily hijack the gospel while wearing the same Sunday suit.

So Jesus warns his disciples to watch out for that teaching and that mentality

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