The Wind of the Spirit - by Jim Tharp, 2014

The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit. (John 3:8).

The distinguished Jewish theologian could no longer deny the miraculous power of God at work in the life and ministry of the Galilean. Nor could he quench his thirst to meet Jesus face to face. So, humbling himself and putting his reputation on the line, Nicodemus went one night to confess that Jesus was from God and inquire of Him the way of salvation.

Jesus responded to Israel’s prominent thinker by making an issue of the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit. No one can enter the kingdom of God without a spiritual transformation, Jesus explained, and this requires the Spirit of God to bring about the miracle of regeneration. Just as a natural birth is necessary for one to enter and become aware of the human family, we must be born again, born of the Spirit—in order to grasp the reality and relationships of the kingdom of God. Furthermore, admission to the kingdom of God is never by the proud prerogative of race, status, nation, class, or gender. It is certainly not by heredity! All who enter the kingdom of God must be born into it by the Spirit. This spiritual birth is an act of God.

Jesus was faithful to explain to Nicodemus the one simple condition for being born again: believing in God’s one and only Son who was lifted up (crucified) for our sins (John 3:14-21). The evidence that one has truly believed (come into the light), Jesus said, is that he lives by the truth (John 3:21).

 

The Leaven of the Pharisees - by Jim tharp, 1998

Then Jesus said to them, "Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees." (Matthew 16:6)

Both Matthew and Mark record that Jesus used the metaphor of "leaven" (yeast) to warn the disciples against the teachings of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Leaven was a common symbol for evil in Jesus' day, and could therefore be applied to many kinds of wickedness with the thought that even a small amount could go a long way and have an insidious effect.

Jesus brought a serious charge against His disciples when He said, "O you of little faith, why do you reason among yourselves because you have brought no bread? Do you not yet understand, or remember the five loaves of the five thousand and how many baskets you took up? How is it that you do not understand that I did not speak to you concerning bread? -- but to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees?" (vv. 8-11).

Manipulation or Obedience

We do not have to guess at those erroneous teachings with which Jesus took issue with the Pharisees and Sadducees. He had denounced them for their demand of manipulative signs instead of believing in the abundant evidence He had already supplied concerning who He was. But now the disciples are perilously close to the same unbelief as to the person of Jesus and His miracles. The Lord sought to train His men to think deeply about the revelation He was giving them. He was grieved that their tiny faith brought them to such an unimaginative conclusion. To follow the thinking of the Pharisees and Sadducees would cause them to miss the truth that Jesus was Himself "the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matt. 16:18). To follow their thinking would be to seek to restrict and control the very Messiah whom they claimed to believe in.

Scripture or Tradition

The Pharisees were the more prominent Jewish group in Jesus' day. Descendants of the Hasidim (pious ones), they believed fanatically in a righteousness which comes by law. They actually became so obsessed in seeking to render explicit what was implicit in the law that they resorted to artificial means of exegesis. Their devotion to an external holiness prompted rigid codes for dress and diet. The Pharisees stubbornly held to a number of inherited traditions, which, although not found in the written law, they held as a part of the law given to Moses on the Mount. So they proposed two parallel divine revelations: the written law and the oral tradition, and they taught that these were equally important and equally authoritative.