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What was wrong with the Pharisees?
What was it that brought forth the anger of Jesus against them? (See our
article on
THE PHARISEES.) Simply put, it was the MERIT SYSTEM. If you
are going to have a law of commands that you must keep, if you are going to
have a system of “fences” you must obey to keep you from breaking those
commands, then you will move into what we are calling the MERIT SYSTEM.
That is, this person has done such a good job of keeping the rules that he
feels God must now like him. God surely will accept him because he has
merited it.
Then that leads to something else.
This merit system leads to PRIDE, because when the Pharisee looks at
other people and sees that they are not keeping the rules like he is, then
he becomes very proud by comparing himself with them. He might even enjoy
meeting lowly people because it makes him look so good. He swells with
PRIDE.
This doesn’t just point back to the
Pharisees. People today will say that they have a special revelation from
God. They say they have seen something. They say they have received
something and other people don’t have it. They have the rules and others
don’t seem to know they exist. So they see themselves as special. “God,
I thank Thee that I am not as other men are.” Luke 18:11
When a Pharisee stood to pray, his
opening sentence was always the same: “I thank Thee that I am not as other
men. I have it.” This same foul spirit can be seen among believers today.
They say with pride, “I have a revelation of God that others do not have.”
Then they proceed to make that “revelation” their idol. What they teach
can even be true, but it is not the truth that is offensive. It is the
spirit of those who claim to have that truth that is offensive. They do not
manifest the Spirit of Christ. When we love the truth in such a way that
our love for the people to whom we minister that truth is obscured,
something is terribly wrong.
What God is saying is “love”.
Love and contempt cannot live together. So the moment I look down my nose
at someone I am beginning to move away from a true walk with God, lost in a
world of self-made rules. The word “religion” in Latin comes from a root
word that means “a return to bondage.” This false way is recognized by the
way a person is chained to all their rules and regulations. It produces
prejudice and a desire to have others in the same bondage.
A man from Michigan called me the
other day to say that he was thankful for our ministry. He told me that he
had been in religious bondage for many, many years. The Lord used our
articles to help him. He has since listened to many of our tapes. It is
very unusual for a person to find deliverance from this religious bondage
because it is a kind of blindness and thus, turns into “blind
leaders of the blind.” This man was obviously regenerated by the
Holy Spirit, being brought into the truth to experience this wonderful
deliverance from his religious yoke.
This man said that awhile back his
sister told him she was now a Christian. He said at the time he felt such
conflict. On the one hand, he was glad she was a Christian; but on the
other hand, he said he was grieved that now she would be in the same bondage
that he had been for so long. That’s how miserable he was under the yoke of
bondage. You can imagine my delight in hearing his discovery through our
ministry that “it was for freedom that Christ
set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a
yoke of slavery.” Galatians 5:1
Now the person who loves this yoke
of bondage and wants others to be where he is, feels that those people, who
are not as “informed” as he is, are excluded. To the farthest extreme, they
could even think those who oppose them must be killed. It would be to the
glory of God, you see. Perhaps it would be like people who bomb abortion
clinics. Of course, it is because of their love of “the truth.” They would
at least hate those who oppose them, even though the Word tells us,
“He that saith he is in the light, and hateth
his brother, is in darkness even until now.” “Whosoever
hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer
hath eternal life abiding in him.” “If
a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he
that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he
hath not seen?” Pharisees love to talk of how they love God, but
never mention their love for people.
According to them, if you do not see
things as “perfectly” as they do, you must be removed. They have to get rid
of you. This is Pharisee-ism. It is very much among us. They are saying,
“I thank God that I am not as other men. I’ve got it. I see it.” And if
you don’t “see it” their way, you are out. This UN-love among “believers”
was what made Jesus angry. He seemed to have no tolerance for them at all.
(Read Matthew 23)
Look at the black mark on the
history of the church in the time of the Crusades. They slaughtered people
and it was all “in the Name of God.” They were against the “heathen” that
defiled the earth, so they killed them. Why did Saul of Tarsus go
everywhere to put Christians in prison? He said, “I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee” and “I
persecuted this way unto the death, binding and delivering into prisons both
men and women” and “I punished
them oft in every synagogue, and compelled them to blaspheme; and being
exceedingly mad against them, I persecuted them even unto strange cities”
and “beyond measure I persecuted the church
of God, and wasted it.” He said that he thought he was serving
God when he did all those things and so say the “Pharisees” of today.
Remember when Jesus went to eat at
the house of a Pharisee? Somehow a certain woman of ill repute made her way
into the house. “And, behold, a woman in the
city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the
Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, and stood at his
feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe
them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with
the ointment.”
The Pharisee thought, “This
man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman
this is that toucheth him: for she is a sinner.” I just
wonder how she knew her way around his house. It was as if she had been
there many times. It makes me wonder, but he certainly considered her “a
sinner.”
Also, remember the reason for Jesus’
parable in Luke 18:9: “And he spake this
parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous,
and despised others: Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one
a Pharisee, and the other a tax collector.” They said that Jesus
was “a friend of tax collectors and sinners!”
and “This man receiveth sinners, and eateth
with them” and “when the scribes
and Pharisees saw him eat with tax collectors and sinners, they said unto
his disciples, how is it that he eateth and drinketh with tax collectors and
sinners?”
One of the men that Jesus called to
be His disciple was Matthew, a tax collector. That started something.
After He called Matthew, Jesus was always invited to the parties of the tax
collectors. One day He insisted on going to the house of Zacchaeus, a tax
collector. When Zacchaeus repented and Jesus said, “This
day is salvation come to this house,” Jesus added, “the
Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.”
Nicodemus was a Pharisee and he changed. The Pharisee, Saul of Tarsus,
became Paul the Apostle. So Pharisees are not beyond the saving power of
God. Praise His Name!
But Jesus did say that the “sinners”
would come to salvation before the Pharisees would. Jesus told the
Pharisees, “John came unto you in the way of
righteousness, and ye believed him not: but the tax collectors and
the harlots believed him: and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not
afterward, that ye might believe him.” Earlier Jesus told the
Pharisees “the tax collectors and the harlots
go into the kingdom of God before you.”
Jesus went out of His way to offend
the Pharisees, especially by ignoring their “fence” laws. One time his
disciples were quite concerned about how Jesus was offending the Pharisees:
“Then came his disciples, and said unto him,
Knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended, after they heard this
saying? But he answered and said, every plant, which my heavenly Father hath
not planted, shall be rooted up.”
You may know a “Pharisee” or two.
What should you do about them? As far as what we are to do
about the Pharisees, Jesus continues, “Let
them alone: they be blind leaders of
the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.”
These blind Pharisees will pick up followers and some of them will be other
blind people. Still others may be true Christians, but God will deliver
them, even as he delivered the man I mentioned above who called me from
Michigan.
If you compare John chapter three
with chapter four, you will see a great difference in Jesus’ dealings with a
Pharisee compared to His dealings with an ungodly woman. The Pharisee He
reprimanded, “Art thou a master of Israel,
and knowest not these things?”
But He spoke kindly to the woman at
the well, “If thou knewest the gift of God,
and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked
of him, and he would have given thee living water.” The contrast
is so obvious, one was a Pharisee and the other was a lowly woman. Jesus’
compassion was greater than all religious public opinion.
The Pharisees always called these
people “sinners.” Pharisees, not Jesus, used this word consistently. I am
not saying they were not sinners, but somehow when you say it the way the
Pharisees said it, there is a despising and contempt that colors the word.
Jesus never directed this word at them.
The Pharisee actually would say that
when one of these “sinners” dies, there is rejoicing in Heaven as he drops
into hell. Now you can understand why Jesus said at the end of every
parable in Luke 15, “Likewise, I say unto
you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner
that repenteth.” As was His custom, Jesus took their own
words and turned them around.
“Lost” was the word Jesus
used to describe these people. “I have found
my sheep which was lost” and “I
have found the coin which I had lost” and “for
this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is
found.” A sheep is very valuable to the shepherd. That is why
he goes to find the sheep. The coin had value. The son had value. As
Jesus said to Zacchaeus, “For the Son of man
is come to seek and to save that which was lost.”
Jesus did not condone the lost
person’s sin. Matthew stopped what he had been doing once he began to
follow Jesus. Jesus sat with Zaccheus, stayed in his home. Jesus never
condoned what Zaccheus did, but Zaccheus stopped what he had been doing as a
result Jesus being in his life. When he gave half his goods to the poor and
used the other half to restore what he had stolen, his actions proved Jesus’
method of dealing with Zaccheus was effective. No, Jesus does not condone
sin in order to save the lost, but the lost had the comfort of “no
condemnation” when they were around Him. They felt safe. They were
receptive to Him Who loved them. That represents an effective ministry to
the lowly when led by the Spirit.
We all have a tendency to be afraid
of anything that is different. I recently saw a commercial that showed a
man sleeping on his back in his bed. Suddenly a big skunk appeared and
leaped upon the bed. The skunk slowly moved beside the man sleeping. The
skunk then laid on the man’s chest and the man slept on. Then the camera
pans over to the nightstand beside the bed and focuses on a picture of the
man and his family. In the picture of the family is their pet … a skunk.
The viewer’s prejudice against skunks became obvious at that moment.
To sit with the sinner or to walk
with the sinner is not to condone the sinner’s sin. If you have ever found
a lost animal, you know that sometimes the animal is so frightened and
scared that it will fight you and bite you. The lost are often so afraid
and so threatened that when you treat them as “sinners,” it makes them
angry. The “sinner,” not sensing that you appreciate his value, sometimes
feels how superior this religious person must think himself to be, while
considering the “sinner” to be worthless.
But if you as a Christian have the “mind
of Christ” toward the lowly, the lost, that person can tell that
you know they have value and worth. They know they must have value for
Jesus to show them such grace. “For ye know
the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your
sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich.”
Would you dare to go where the lost
are, walk with the lost, feel what they feel, understand what they
understand, joining them where they are in every way without entering into
their sin, leaving the comfort of your “heaven” to come to their “poverty”
that they may be “rich” as you are in Christ? Then and only then will you
have THE MIND OF CHRIST TOWARD THE LOWLY.
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