Are you a Pharisee?

Prayer. 

Mike Westner Joke. Lawyer/Pharisee.

Good morning! How are you all doing? It is great to be here this morning and to share with you what God has placed in my heart over the last few weeks. May I share an awesome story with you?

Well a few weeks back I was getting ready to make a trip up to Monterey to visit a really close college friend of mine. We have known each other for years and went to college together. He is a youth pastor in Monterey and I was to be a groomsman at his wedding that weekend. So I had everything planned out and was ready to go. I was supposed to wake up at 6am that morning but those of you who know me will know that I have a hard time getting up in the morning. And so I woke up at 8am instead, only to be totally in a panic because I had to be there at 1:45 for our tee off time at the country club.

So I threw all my things in a bag jumped in the car without breakfast and raced on down to Monterey . At 1:44 I arrived at the golf course with my clubs in hand and teed off at 1:45.

But… After an awesome weekend and an amazing wedding. I decided I was not going to risk life and limb on my way back home. So I decided that I would get all my things ready and leave by 11am that Sunday. So I gassed my car got everything packed and casually hit the road. I made sure that I would drive no faster than 70 miles per hour. I was cruising along listening to my sermons on my I-pod being a good citizen when all of a sudden I noticed a police officer approaching with his lights on. I was bummed out! I was trying to figure out what I had done wrong, it wasn’t speeding and I had been signaling before lane changes. Feeling anxious because I had never been pulled over before I proceeded to do things “right” and so I put my signal lights on and slowed down moderately before pulling over on the left side of the highway.

Yes you heard me, the left side of the highway – big mistake.

Now in my head, the whole time I believed I was doing the right thing. I was not speeding, listening to my sermons; I even slowed down carefully and signaled before doing so. I then decided I would do all the correct things. I had my window down, my stereo off, and both hands on the steering wheel. I wanted to do things right! But the police officer came over and said, “do you have a CA drivers license?” I responded, yes sir!” To which he asked, “what does your drivers theory say about what you should do when you see an officer behind you with their lights on?” I said, “You should pull over sir.”

He was angry and told me that I should have yielded to the right and that I could have killed both of us by pulling over on the left. At that point he said, “Have a nice day, I am responding to this accident here on the other side of the highway.” He then got in his car and crossed the grass strip separating the highways. I could see this accident that must have just happened with two cars smashed up on the other highway.

What did I do wrong in this picture? The problem is that I thought I was doing everything right. I was confident and doubted that I had done anything wrong. No today we are going to look at how the Pharisees in Jesus’ time were guilty of the same thing. They believed they were doing it all right, when in actual fact they were doing it wrong.

Please open your Bibles to the book of Luke chapter 11:42.   

Luke 11:42

“What sorrow awaits you Pharisees! For you are careful to tithe even the tiniest income from your herb gardens, but you ignore justice and the love of God. You should tithe, yes, but do not neglect the more important things.”

Many Pharisees were scribes and experts in the law. They had to endure a one-year probationary period where they had to prove their ability to observe the rituals and keep the laws as recorded in the Old Testament scriptures. Pharisees were also known as the teachers of the law and were committed to holy living. [But the very name Pharisee means “the separate ones”.]

One of the religious practices of Jesus' day was giving one-tenth of all one had back to God for the temple and its ministers, known as the tithe had Old Testament roots (Lev 27:30; Deut 14:22).

Leviticus 27:30

30 One tenth of the produce of the land, whether grain from the fields or fruit from the trees, belongs to the Lord and must be set apart to him as holy.

Deuteronomy 14:22

22 You must set aside a tithe of your crops—one-tenth of all the crops you harvest each year.

Do the Old Testament passages say anything about giving one tenth of your spices back to God? NO!

You see, the Pharisees tithed and were legendary tithers; they even gave more than was required. They would actually give one mint leaf for every 10 and one piece of cumin for every 10, and for dill it was the same. They did this even though the scriptures do not command it. So basically, they were meticulously following the law. Even though they were excellent tithers and observed the laws specifically, they were inward failures.

What this passage tells us theologically is that it is possible to observe all the details of the law but still be disobedient to God. It is very possible for a person to follow the tiny doctrines of a religion and forget its moral principles. In my story I was following all the smaller rules and making sure that I was doing everything right but I had forgotten something more important, that pulling over on the left side of the highway was totally wrong and potentially fatal. There was something more important I should have thought of first. 

While tithing is important in the life and growth of the church our obedience and our worship should not stop there. Where we can help we should help. Where they went wrong was they focused on their outward appearance and neglected the inner condition of their hearts. People do the same when they serve out of the motivation to be seen rather than from a pure heart full of love. The warning from Jesus is simple – “don’t be an outward Christian only!”

I would argue that what you need to ask yourself, and what this scripture challenges us to ask is, “are you good at looking good?” Because if you are, maybe you are being a Pharisee. What God is telling us through this scripture this morning is that if you spend all your time on looking good and you neglect cleaning up your heart, you have missed the boat.

Instead of being prim and proper and nice looking on the outside God wants us to be prim and proper and good looking on the inside. He wants us to show mercy and love, justice, and faith. It is no mistake that preceding this passage we are studying this morning we find in Luke 10 a teacher of the law coming to Jesus asking the question, “teacher what must I do to inherit eternal life?” The answer is to love God with all ones heart, soul, mind, and strength, and ones neighbor as self.”

What Jesus calls the “more important things” should be our priority. In the parallel scripture passage in Matthew 23 we read about the same story. Woe to you Jesus says to the Pharisees, you hypocrites because they had ignored three important relational imperatives – justice, mercy, and faithfulness.

Now if we go back to the preceding verses in 37-41 you will notice that there is a Pharisee who asked Jesus to dine with him. Let me read you these verses from Luke 11.

As Jesus was speaking, one of the Pharisees invited him home for a meal. So he went in and took his place at the table. His host was amazed to see that he sat down to eat without first performing the hand-washing ceremony required by Jewish custom. Then the Lord said to him, “You Pharisees are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are filthy—full of greed and wickedness! Fools! Didn’t God make the inside as well as the outside? So clean the inside by giving gifts to the poor, and you will be clean all over.

Now the scripture says that the Pharisee was surprised when he noticed that Jesus did not wash his hands before eating. This was not a matter of cleanliness but one of the ceremonial law. Jewish Custom. According to Pharisees you would be living in sin if you did not wash your hands before a meal and during a meal. The law stated that before a man ate he had to wash his hands a certain way to ensure that he was ceremonially clean. They had to use just the right amount of water and had to wash between courses.

According to a Pharisee, to ignore even the smallest detail would be considered sinful. You have to understand that the Pharisees were only concerned about the externals and not the internals. They could have had the blackest hearts and lived bad, bad lives, but still considered themselves as righteous and worthy because they followed the laws exactly and practiced them at the right times.

Lets take a look at this short clip that illustrates this for us.

How this translates into our lives is that we too may be clean on the outside but filthy on the inside. We too may only be concerned about externals like showing up weekly to church and being a good student of the Bible. Some of us might be real friendly and might be generous givers, but if we show no justice and charity to people around us and are dishonest in our relationships, we might be Pharisees.

In the passage Jesus talks about how the Pharisees are filled with greed and wickedness on the inside, while their exterior is clean.

As God’s people we should pay attention to the “more important things” [this is just speaking not me] and we should look out and be advocates of love and justice in this world. I know that God is a God who cares about those who are in need, God cares for the hurting, the lonely, the tired, and the oppressed. I am certain that we have people around us who are in need, who are sick, who are struggling, lonely, tired, hurting and yet we also have people who are good at looking good. Don’t be a Pharisee, the living God is calling you to think of the “more important things” and to show love and justice and care for these people.

What do we do about the Pharisees??? My mom gave me some awesome advice when we talked about this last week. She said, we need to love them and support them and accept them as well.

What I have noticed since moving to America is that we are a time orientated, task orientated people. Everything we do is about the product or the goal in mind and this is what motivates us. And so when we look at the great commission in Matthew 28 we see it as GO instead of BE. And so we live our Christian lives with this goal in mind. What Jesus teaches however is that the Christian life is about being, it’s a process, and it’s the process that’s important.

As I close this morning I want you to be honest with yourself. I want to give you the opportunity to experience God and to look past the minor details of the law. Let me read you a few verses from Psalm 139 in closing… 

Psalms 139:23-24

Search me, O God,

and know my heart;

test me and know my anxious thoughts.

Point out anything in me that offends you,

and lead me along the path of everlasting life.

Amen.

Let us stand and sing Hymn 563 together – “Lord I want to be a Christian.”

Benediction

And as you go out this morning may you be what God has intended you to be, a living sacrifice who is focused on looking good on the inside. Go in His peace that surpasses all understanding as you build the kingdom.

Amen.