Mark 8:21

Can you hear the intense displeasure in his voice? For nowhere else does he appear to have rebuked them so strongly. Why now? In order to cast out their prejudices about clean foods. … For not everywhere is permissiveness a good thing. As he earlier had allowed them to speak freely, now he reproves them.… He even reminds them of the specific numbers of loaves and of persons fed, both to bring them to recall the past, and to make them more attentive to the future.

And he said unto them,....

Even the different kind of baskets used at the two miraculous feedings, so carefully noted in the two narratives, are here also referred to; the one smaller, of which there were twelve, the other much larger, of which there were seven.

Let us notice the solemn warning which our Lord gives to His disciples at the beginning of this passage. He says, "Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the leaven of Herod." We are not left to conjecture the meaning of this warning. This is made clear by the parallel passage in Matthew's Gospel. We there read that Jesus did not mean the leaven of "bread," but the leaven of "doctrine." The self-righteousness and formalism of the Pharisees — the worldliness and skepticism of the courtiers of Herod, were the object of our Lord's caution. Against both He bids His disciples be on their guard. Such warnings are of deep importance. It would be well for the Church of Christ, if they had been more remembered. The assaults of persecution from without have never done half so much harm to the Church, as the rise of false doctrines within. False prophets and false teachers within the camp have done far more mischief in Christendom than all the bloody persecutions of the emperors of Rome. The sword of the foe has never done such damage to the cause of truth as the tongue and the pen. The doctrines which our Lord specifies, are precisely those which have always been found to inflict most injury on the cause of Christianity. Formalism on the one hand, and skepticism on the other, have been chronic diseases in the professing Church of Christ. In every age multitudes of Christians have been infected by them. In every age men need to watch against them, and be on their guard. The expression used by our Lord in speaking of false doctrine is singularly forcible and appropriate. He calls it "leaven." No word more suitable could have been employed. It exactly describes the small beginnings of false doctrine — the subtle quiet way in which it insensibly pervades a man's religion — the deadly power with which it changes the whole character of his Christianity.

THE disciples had come on board the vessel and had forgotten to bring bread with them—good men's memories sometimes fail them. For that reason they were greatly disturbed in mind and they supposed that Jesus was also disquieted and that He had shaped His speech so as to give them an indirect rebuke when He mentioned the leaven of the Pharisees. How little they understood His mind, though they had been so long a time with Him! His thoughts were not occupied about bread for Himself and neither was there any carking care in His heart about bread for them. His mind was at perfect rest about all secular things and, even as to all spiritual things, He was by no means tossed about. Notwithstanding all His trials and His sorrows, I suppose that there never was a serener mind than that of Jesus Christ our Lord. His heart was great as an ocean and though visited with terrible tempests, yet it was the Pacific Ocean, still. They might be troubled about bread, but He was resting about that and all things else. The winds which tossed the little lakes of their little minds into boiling cauldrons did not suffice to create a ripple upon the surface of His mighty soul! Is it not well for us at this hour that it is so? We are fluttered and dismayed, but the mind of our great Lord is fearless and undisturbed. "He will not fail nor be discouraged." The child cries because the ship rolls, but his father at the helm smiles at the storm—and what a mercy it is for the child that father can smile, for if the captain were weak, where would the vessel be? If the father's heart failed him, where would his boy look for comfort? Calm face of Jesus, we look up to You and we are quieted! The Master wishing to comfort His servants had them consider what they already knew and review what they had already seen.