William Burkitt Notes and Observations - Mark 8:14 - 8:14

Online Resource Library

Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | Download

William Burkitt Notes and Observations - Mark 8:14 - 8:14


(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)

This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

Observe here, 1. How dull the disciples of Christ were under Christ's own teaching, and how apt to put a carnal sense upon his words. They apprehended he had spoken to them of the leaven of bread, what he intended of the leaven of the Pharisees doctrine.

Observe, 2. The rebuke our Saviour gives his disciples for not understanding the sense and signification of what he spake. Christ is much offended with his own people, when he discerns blindness and ignorance in them, after more than ordinary means of knowledge enjoyed by them: How is it that ye do not yet understand?

Observe, 3. The metaphor by which Christ sets forth the corrupt doctrines of the Pharisees and Herodians. He compares it to leaven; partly for its sourness, and partly for its diffusiveness. Now the leaven of Herod, or the Herodians, is supposed to be this: That because Herod was made king of the Jews, and lived at the time when the Messiah was expected, there were those that maintained the opinion that he was the promised Messiah; which opinion Christ compares to leaven, because as that diffuses itself into the whole mass or lump of bread with which it is mixed, so false doctrine was not only evil and corrupt in itself, but apt to spread its contagion farther and farther, to the infecting of others with it.

Learn thence, That error is as damnable as vice; and persons erroneous in judgment to be avoided, as well as those that are wicked in conversation; and he, that has a due care of his soul's salvation, will be as much afraid of erroneous principles, as he is of debauched practices.

Observe, 4. Our Saviour does not command his disciples to separate from communion with the Pharisees, and oblige them not to hear their doctrine but only beware of their errors; which they mixed with their doctrine. We may and ought to hold communion with a church, though erroneous in judgment, if not fundamentally erroneous. For separation from a church is not justifiable upon any other grounds than that which makes a separation between God and that church, which is either apostasy into gross idolatry, or in point of doctrine, into damnable heresy.

Observe, 5. The fault observed by our Saviour in his disciples, hardness of heart; Have ye your hearts yet hardened? There may be, and oft-times is, some degree of hardness of heart in sincere Christians; but this is not a total hardness; it is lamented and humbled for, not indulged and delighted in. As Christ is grieved for the hardness of heart in sincere Christians; but this is not a total hardness; it is lamented and humbled for, not indulged and delighted in. As Christ is grieved for the hardness of his people's hearts, so are they grieved also; it is both bitter and burdensome to them.