The Trouble With The Pharisees

It is, I think, almost impossible for us to fully appreciate the impact these words of Jesus
in Matthew 5.20 would have had upon the listeners of his day.
I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses or exceeds that of the Pharisees and
the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.
Now you need to remember that the Pharisees and the teachers of the law were the most
religious people of their day and they were held up as a model of righteousness, a peragon
of virtue. The word Pharisee actually means separatist and they prided themselves
and being part of a religious sect that separated itself from sin.
They made a virtue of keeping the commandments of God and they did so better than anybody
else.
And the teachers of the law here really were scribes that is to say their job was to copy
the sacred scriptures not only but to study them and then by extension also to teach them
to the people of Israel.
And so if there was anybody in Israel in those days that was being held up as a model
of virtuous righteousness, it was described in the Pharisees as a matter of fact in those
days they had a saying that if in the whole world there were only two people that could
make it to heaven, certainly one would be a scribe and the other would be a Pharisee.
That's the kind of people these people were and that was their reputation.
So you can all imagine that along comes Jesus and he says to his disciples, unless your
righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly
not enter the kingdom of heaven.
He says, "You want to make it into God's kingdom?
You want to go to heaven after you die?
You want to be part of the new creation that God is making?"
Well he says, "Your righteousness better exceed that of the most religiously observant
people of your day."
And so that immediately raises the question then, what in the world was wrong with the
religiosity of these Pharisees and these religious teachers?
Why does Jesus rock not only everybody else's religious understanding of what is right and
wrong, but why does he so publicly blast the scribes and the Pharisees, not only in
this passage, but if you've ever read the gospels you will know that he does it consistently
throughout his ministry.
Well the answer is that in trying to obtain righteousness they did so based on law as opposed
to grace.
That is to say, instead of depending on God's power to enable them to be holy and righteous,
they looked inside themselves and they thought that by their own efforts they could measure
up to the standards that God had placed before them.
That is a problem that religious people particularly are extremely prone to.
And whenever we fall back under that kind of self-righteousness under the law as opposed
to living by divine grace, there are four things that I can almost guarantee you will
happen.
Let me walk you through those in the time that we have, first of all, your obedience
will tend to the external rather than the internal.
That is to say, you will concentrate more on the outside appearance of your religion than
on what lives in the heart.
And the reason for that is not hard to figure out because when it comes to measuring up to
God's law and being the kind of righteous and holy person that He wants you to be, it's
a lot easier to exercise a measure of control over your outward behavior than it is about
your inward attitude and your thought life.
It's easier to drag a cow to the temple and make a sacrifice to God than it is to humble
yourself under His mighty hand and obey Him with all of your heart.
It's a lot easier to dig into your checkbook and to pass out arms to the poor than it is
to take the poor into your heart or into your home.
It's easier to control your outward sexual behavior than it is to control your inner thoughts
and your inner feelings.
It is far easier to look good on the outside and to campaign for justice halfway around
the world than to exercise justice in your own heart and in your own home.
That's the nature of trying to be righteous by your own efforts under the law.
And the Pharisees were experts at this and so were the scribes outwardly they looked good
but inwardly they were far removed from anything that God was looking for.
Here's how Jesus put it in Matthew chapter 23.
He says, "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees.
You hypocrites, you clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full
of greed and self-indulgence.
"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites.
You are like white washed tombs which look beautiful on the outside but inside they're
full of dead men's bones and everything unclean.
In the same way on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you
are full of hypocrisy and wickedness."
This is the powerful word pictures Jesus uses to describe them.
As I said a few moments ago, it's no wonder ultimately they nailed him to the cross.
He said, "Outside you make sure the cup is cleansed but inside it's full of dirt and
that doesn't bother you at all."
And then he says, "You're like white washed tombs.
You look beautifully white on the outside but inside your full of dead men's bones."
And he says, "Outwardly to people you appear like you've got it together.
But inwardly your life is a mess.
You are filled with hypocrisy and wickedness."
Now to be a hypocrite is to be something other than what you really are.
The word hypocrite comes from a Greek word which ultimately came to stand for actors or
pretenders.
And if you know anything at all about early Greek drama because all the dramatic characters
were men, they all carried masks to picture the different individuals.
And the word hypocrisy has come to represent appearing something else to the outside than
what you are on the inside.
And the Pharisees and the scribes had made a fine art out of hypocrisy.
They were in just people who accidentally fell into pretending to be one thing on the
outside and another thing on the inside.
No, they had made a scientific study, if you will.
They had carefully calculated how to live this way and they taught how to live other people
that way.
And it's a fascinating thing in Scripture people.
It's a fascinating thing in Scripture that whereas Jesus has no trouble getting along
with sinners and graciously forgives them and takes them into his presence, the one category
of people that he always singles out are people who are religiously hypocritical.
Not only because they keep themselves out of the kingdom of God, but they present a stumbling
block to other people, under the law we become one thing on the outside and another thing
on the inside.
And it's easy to point fingers at the Pharisees, it's easy to point fingers at the teachers
of the law, but you know there isn't a one of us in this room today that ultimately
is immune to that danger.
You can sit here, sing all the songs we sing, do all the things that we do as part of
corporate worship, and you know as well as I do that our hearts and our minds can be
filled with rebellion towards God and in fact far removed from His Lordship.
We can put our money in the offering plate for the poor and yet be more concerned about
ourselves than we are about others.
We can outwardly be sweetest pie to our neighbor, have a wonderfully smiling face while inwardly
every time we see them, our gut wrenches and we could wish them dead.
Isaiah put it this way many years ago, Jesus quotes him in Matthew chapter 15, "These people
honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me."
God's not only interested in how we look on the outside, as we'll see later on in Christ,
He's very much interested in having us righteous on the inside.
You're still with me and you're still glad you came to church today.
Good, I'm happy to hear that.
Obedience tends towards the external not only, but obedience tends to be partial or selective.
That is to say, like a smorgasbord, we begin to pick and choose those commandments that
we feel like we can honor.
See, if you've ever taken seriously the commandment to love God above all and your neighbor
as yourself and have started trying to live that way, you will discover that the bar is
set pretty high, wouldn't you agree?
I mean, who of us in this place would ever have the courage to say, "Yes, I love God.
First and foremost, all the time in my life and I love my neighbor more than I love myself."
I mean, it just isn't within us, which is precisely why we need Jesus and why God drives us
by the law to our knees, but when you don't understand grace, when all you hear are the
demands of the law, then there are two things that you and I tend towards.
The first is we become strivers.
That is to say, we try to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, we hear how a Christian
ought to live and how a Christian ought to behave, and then we set our minds to doing that.
This often happens to new Christians.
They have repented of their old ways and they have given their lives to Jesus and now
they're discovering, "This is what God wants for me sexually.
This is what God wants for me in my relationships with my spouse.
This is what God wants with me in terms of my honesty and my integrity."
A lot of us discover pretty quickly that it's a very heavy load because the bar is really
set high, wouldn't you agree?
We strive, but get discouraged and fail in our striving because it's simply too big.
So now what do you do?
Now you're living with a standard up here and a behavior down here and nobody can live
that way for very long before you go crazy because you cannot live with a gap between what
you know is required of you and what you are doing without feeling guilty and under condemnation
all the time.
And so under the law here is what a lot of people do next, we become selective in our obedience.
That is to say we pick and choose those commandments that we're comfortable with and that we have
some aptitude towards and we elevate them in importance over everything else.
And so if I am an orderly person then keeping my personal life in order becomes a high value
for me.
If I have a streak of honesty within me and that is a high value then being honest and treating
other people honestly becomes a very significant value in my life and you can go on and on that
way and if I'm a clean person then stay in clean and keeping my family clean becomes
a terribly important thing.
And that's not also bad but what happens when you're selective under the law is that even
while you're concentrating on the areas that you're good at you are neglecting conveniently
the areas that you're not so good at.
And so your righteousness becomes very selective and it becomes another way of bringing the
standards of God down to the level that you're comfortable with.
Let me give you an example.
I had a good friend a good many years ago in whose life keeping the Sabbath or keeping
Sunday holy was a very high value and when he discovered one of his fellow Christians
cutting their lawn on Sunday he was absolutely incensed couldn't understand couldn't believe
that you can call yourself a Christian and cut your grass on Sunday and he may know
bones about speaking that out but see I knew this fellow pretty well he was a good friend
actually for a number of years one of the elders in one of the churches I served and I
knew that he had a wicked temper and I knew that every time we try to confront him with
his temper he just brushed it off because he knew that was an area that he couldn't get
under control and because it was an area that he couldn't get under control not only didn't
he want to be reminded of his temper he just wanted to minimize it and so here he is
elevating the importance of not working on Sunday but completely minimizing the commandment
to love his neighbor and not skewer them with his wicked anger and with his temper.
Now without trying to get into a discussion of what you ought to do or what you ought not
to do on Sunday from God's point of view what do you think is a worse scene cutting your
grass on Sunday or killing your neighbor with your bad attitude and your bad temper.
See under the law we become extremely selective and we pride ourselves in our virtue a virtue
as we'll see it a few moments that enables us to look down our noses at everybody else
who isn't quite as good as we are who doesn't have it together in the same way.
Here's how Jesus put it again in Matthew chapter 23 to the Pharisees and the teachers of
the law who had this refined to a fine art, who do you teachers of the law and the Pharisees
you hypocrites.
You give a tenth of your spices mint, dill and Cuban that is to say they took the
law of tithing extremely seriously to the point of even tithing their spices.
That's better than most of us do.
But you haven't neglected the more important matters of the law.
Just as mercy and faithfulness you should have practiced the latter without neglecting
the former, you blind guides, you strain out a nap, but you swallow a camel.
Let me ask you this morning how many times have you strained out the smallest of flies,
but you have swallowed a camel to the degree to which we live under the law.
Our obedience will tend to be external.
Our obedience will tend to be partial and we will most likely become judgmental.
That is to say we will get puffed up with pride because we're so good in our chosen
areas of expertise and we will be able to look down our noses at those poor souls that
can measure up to our standards and to our law.
Because you see if you take God's law seriously and you're really strive to love him with
all of your heart, soul, strength and mind and your neighbor as yourself, you know what
you discover? You discover that whether you're a church goer or have been raised on the
wrong side of the tracks, totally outside of the kingdom, all have sinned and fallen
short of the glory of God.
Now as Jesus goes on to point out on the rest of this chapter and we'll just touch on it
later this morning and look at it in more detail of the Lord willing at a future point.
But as Jesus goes on to point out the only difference between the guy that sits in jail
because he is a mass murderer and one of us sitting here wanting to scoot to the opposite
side of the church because somebody irritates us is one of degree and not of kind.
And the only difference between the person who runs around and his wife or her husband
and the person who just wanders in his thought life is one of degree and not of kind.
And if you're really take seriously the righteousness that God is requiring of your life and of
my life, there is in room for pride in any of our lives because we know that but for
the grace of God we wouldn't be any different for the person who is homeless or the person
who's been married five times over or the person who can get his drug habit or his alcohol
habit under control.
Given the same circumstances of life, you and I might well make the same choices and
if you think that could have never happened to you then folks you don't know your own heart
and you are deceiving yourself because it's only the grace of God that we are what
we are.
And so when you no longer go by God's standards but you start creating your own standard of
righteousness, if your own sense of honesty is what you measure everybody else by or your
own sense of cleanliness, your own sense of righteousness, your own sense of Sabbath
observances which you measure everybody else by, then inevitably you're going to look
down your noses at other people and you say why don't they get it together?
If they worked as hard as I do they wouldn't be in debt.
If they manage their family better, their kids wouldn't be given them the kind of trouble
that they're experiencing and if they worked harder, why they could enjoy all the good
things in North American life could also yield to them.
And once you become judgmental you create a barrier that will never bring them to Jesus
and again you know the Pharisees are an incredible example of that Jesus in Luke chapter 18 tells
the parable of the Pharisee and the text collector in the temple maybe you remember the story.
And he says the Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself, God I thank you that I am not
like other men, robbers, evildoers, adulterers or even like this text collector.
I fast twice a week and I give a 10th of all I get.
Now here's what's interesting about this Pharisee.
He's absolutely right about what he is saying.
He is not like a robber, he's not like a thief, he fasts twice a week interestingly enough
nowhere in the Bible does it say you ought to fast twice a week doesn't even say you ought
to fast once a week for the people of Israel all they had to do was fast once a year but
if you're going to be a good Pharisee you've got to make sure you get your pointee.
And so once a year becomes once a week now becomes twice a week and you're that much
better than everybody else.
But what the Pharisees says about himself is absolutely true he's got all of these virtues
and yet if you know the story in the end it is the publican the text collector who walks
away justified before God and accepted by him and out the self-righteous Pharisee why.
Because the publican knows he is seen and he is need for God's grace and God's forgiveness
he doesn't even dare look up he bows his head and he cries out and he says oh God be merciful
to me a sinner and the Pharisee in the other hand he's strutting around because he thinks
he's so good but he forgets that no matter how he excels in the areas where he is excelling
his heart is far removed from the humility of faith that God is looking for and you know
what God is looking for in the church is a community of people who've come to know their
own sin, who've come to know the saving power of Jesus who learn to look on the hearts
of people rather than what lives in the inside or what they look like on the outside and
who can create a culture and an environment where sinners from all walks of life can
come and find healing and restoration through faith in Jesus Christ unfortunately sometimes
churches become self-righteous sometimes we become holier than now and the windsomeness
of Jesus that enabled sinners to come, repent of their sins, be cleansed and renewed is
sometimes missing in Christian communities and that becomes an obstacle then to the
saving grace of God in Christ.
Philippiansi in his book what's so amazing about grace begins chapter 1 with a story that
he also relates in his previous book the Jesus I never knew.
It's a true story that was told him by a friend of his who works with the Down and Outers
in the city of Chicago and here is the story as his friend related it to him.
It's pretty graphic so bear with me.
His friends as a prostitute came to me in wretched straits homeless sick unable to buy food
for her two-year-old daughter through sobs and tears she told me she had been renting
out her daughter two years old to men interested in kinky sex.
She made more money renting out her daughter for an hour and she could earn on her own
in a night. She had to do it she said to support her own drug habit I could hardly bear hearing
her sorted story says the friend for one thing it made me legally liable I'm required to report
cases of child abuse I had no idea he says what to say to this woman but then at last I
asked if she had ever thought of going to a church for help and he says I will never
forget the look of pure naive shock that crossed her face church she cried why would I ever
want to go there I was already feeling terrible about myself they just make me feel worse.
And the answer he goes on to say what struck me about my friend's story is that women much
like this prostitute fled towards Jesus not away from him the worse a person felt about
herself the more likely she saw Jesus as a refuge has the church lost that gift evidently the
down on the out of flock to Jesus when he lived on earth no longer feel welcome among his followers
what has happened I'm glad to report that a church like this by the grace of God
while I'm sure we're not perfect is often a place where people like that from every walk of life
can come and find Jesus and find hold us and how incredibly important that instead of erecting barriers
of self-made righteousness we look beyond the superficialities we look beyond the behavior
we look upon the heart God said the prophet Samuel concerning David many years ago does not look
upon the outward appearance but looks upon the heart and I've discovered over the years and I
bet you you have too that under all the injury the pain the filth the confusion of broken lives
there often lies a treasured heart that is incredibly precious in the sight of God and that Jesus
died for that it could be redeemed so that it could be you know a diamond in his crown of righteousness
in glory there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repents than over 99 oh have no need
of repentance are you hearing me judgmentalism erects barriers that keep people out of the kingdom
Jesus says in another place concerning the Pharisees you travel all over the world to make one
single convert and he says then you make the more children of hell than you are yourself
so under the law our obedience tends to external it tends to be partial we easily become judgmental
and then very quickly on this our obedience easily becomes self-serving that is to say
it becomes away in which we can carve out our reputation and our place if we can't be anything
else in the world maybe in the church I can be honored for my dedication for my self-righteousness
and for the way that I know how to operate within the system Jesus put it this way about the Pharisees
he says watch out for the teachers of the law they like to they like to walk around in flowing
robes and be greeted in the marketplaces and have the most important seats in the synagogue
and the places of honor and banquets they devour widow's houses and for a show
make lengthy prayers religion and religious observance can become our way of trying to carve out
our own place and again there isn't a one of us in this place today that outside of the grace
of Jesus Christ is totally and completely immune to it my father used to tell the story
back when he was a young man when the church would be without a pastor they would have elders
do reading sermons and that is sermons prepared by other pastors that would be read then by the elders
and in his day there were two streams of sermons that were available for reading
one by the old timers that was considered more orthodox and more conservative
and one that was a newer strain that didn't always pass the mustard for those who were particularly
a critical or traditional and the difference between the two was that the the old style
had a bigger booklet than the younger or the newer and so there was this man in the congregation
who was one of these watchmen on the walls of Zion you know the kind
they're always in the watch for heresy and they're always trying to you know a little bit like
the Pharisees looking for somebody to cross the line and every time one of these newer sermons
was read that man by his posture and by his behavior made it very very clear that he was in total
disapproval of what was happening you know body language all that sort of thing so there was this
young elder who had to read a sermon and he didn't really like these long lengthy convoluted old
ones and he wanted to read one of the newer ones that was in his estimation much more contemporary
and much more current but he was afraid of this man's reaction so he said to himself I know how to
fix his little red wagon and he took that smaller booklet pasted it inside the bigger booklet
if you can picture this read the sermon and wouldn't you know his critics out there
paying full attention obviously in full agreement with all that was being read because he was
not discerning enough to hear the difference between the one and the other now as this elder
did that out of wisdom and you know to really be able to communicate the gospel for all the
right reasons that would be okay I think maybe but if he did it out of the fear of man
if he did it out of the fear of man then he was using religion as a way of securing his own place
and being a Pharisee and being a teacher of the law very easily moves you into a direction where
you're doing things simply for the approval of man and when you start doing things for the
approval of man then you have already fallen far short of the great commitment which is to love
God above all so how do we sum this up? Jesus says if you live under the law as do the Pharisees
and the teachers of the law your righteousness is not going to pass the standard that God has created
it'll be external it'll be incomplete it'll be filled with judgment and it will ultimately
become extremely self-serving it won't be about God it won't be about other people it'll be
all about you and he says God the Father isn't interested just in having us observe the
letter of the law he wants us to observe the spirit of the law and so then he goes on in the
rest of this chapter to describe for us six illustrations of what is the righteousness
that God is looking for and maybe you can take some time in the course of this next week
to look at the remaining verses of this chapter and then when we come back to it probably Lord
Willie next Sunday morning we're going to see that it isn't good enough not to murder somebody
you can't even carry hate in your heart it's not good enough not to run around in your spouse
you mustn't even lust after another relationship it's not good enough not to swear an oath
your yay must be yay and your name must be nay and it's not good enough to love your friend and
to hate your enemy God wants you to love your enemy even as he loves his enemies and when you and
I begin to understand that that's the purpose and the function of the law then it will drive us
to our knees and it will drive us to Jesus who alone can forgive us for the many times we fail
and who alone can come and live within us by the power of the Holy Spirit so that more and
more we become the children of God that in Christ we already are
we came to die so we be reconciled we came to rise to show his power and my death that's why we
praise him that's why we sing that's why we offer him everything that's why we bow down and
worship this game because he gave his every day because he gave his every day
we came to live again in us we came to be our congregating and friend we came to him and show
the last one says love we came to go prepare a place for us and that's why we praise him
that's why we sing that's why we offer him our everything that's why we bow down and
worship this game because he gave his every day because he gave his every day
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, that's why we say.
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah.
Because He gave His everything.