Many of the Pharisees and Sadducees came to the place where John was baptizing people. When John saw them, he said, “You are snakes! Who warned you to run away from God’s coming punishment?
Then the followers understood that Jesus was not telling them to beware of the yeast used in bread but to beware of the teaching of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
So many thousands of people had gathered that they were stepping on each other. Jesus spoke first to his followers, saying, “Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees, because they are hypocrites.