Be On Guard

Matthew 16:⁶ “Watch out!” Jesus warned them. “Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”

This is the second day of the sixth month of the year. The question is, what has God done in your life since the beginning of this year? What has God done for you in the last twelve months? We are not talking about the miracles that happened in the time of your great-grandfather or ten years ago. As a church, God has done amazing things for us. At the last God Will Do It Again service, for example, the testimonies were amazing. I am sitting down with God, and I am saying, “God, thank You! You are amazing!” From January till today, remember the miracles and the things that God has done and is doing. God expects you to remember and link it up to your current situation and know without a doubt that God Will Do It Again.

Matthew 16:^11-12 “Why can’t you understand that I’m not talking about bread? So again I say, ‘Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.’” Then at last they understood that he wasn’t speaking about the yeast in bread, but about the deceptive teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” (emphasis added). This was Jesus bringing them to what He was teaching them before they went off on another tangent because of their lack of faith. There are certain teachings that, when people get them into their system, they begin to struggle for the rest of their lives. Their faith in God takes a hit. I have seen people who God has worked miracles through read just one book, and it messed up their walk with God completely.

Kenneth Hagin, a great man of faith, was a man given to books and reading. He shared that whenever he visits his friend in a particular state, though his friend has a big house and a guest room for him, he always sleeps in his friend’s library because his friend had a lot of books. So, he will always go to the library and read until he falls asleep. He said that on one of such days, he picked up a book from the library, and his friend had a sad look on his face. Then his friend said that he loved Kenneth Hagin’s faith and that his walk with God is very enviable. Kenneth Hagin responded and said, “Why? You have a great walk with God, too.” And his friend said that he wished he hadn’t read certain books he had in his library because they messed up his mind.

They were the leaven of evil, the leaven of the Pharisees. They sound good, but they are leaven. And the way leaven (yeast) works is that a little affects the whole lump of dough. If you put a small amount of yeast (percentagewise compared to the volume of the dough) in the dough, it will take charge of the entire lump. God is saying, Be careful and do not bite that bait!

Prayer: Father, help me guard my life against deceitful teachings, in the Name of Jesus. Amen!