"They were so zealous they were making up rules to implement the rules, and then they needed rules for those rules to ensure they remembered the rules from before."
[This sermon is one of a series entitled "Sermon on the Mount, Concentrating on the Beatitudes," which is being preached on Sunday mornings byPastor Tim Senter.]
When we studied verses 18 and 19 of Matthew 5, we found that our Savior is not only concerned (that would put it too mildly) but also passionate about fulfilling all the law. We considered the letter of the law itself, and the salvation wrought by the Savior. In the letter of the law, we found that the Savior was interested in fulfilling every minute portion that is provided in the scriptures. He will complete everything down to the last detail. Whether we understand these things or not, Jesus will complete them. When we look at scriptures such as Isaiah 11, we will discover the whole truth of these passages.
We should note that these attitudes about the Law and the fulfillment of it give us an idea of the true commitment of the Savior to the will of the Father. When we read these strong words saying that every piece, no matter the size, of the law will be fulfilled, we can see the true dedication of the Son of God to do whatever it takes to complete the law. As the Jews would find, and the disciples did discover, this includes giving His life to ensure the salvation of the world. This salvation was essential because a just God must judge, and He will judge all those who sin against Him, His law, and His kingdom.
Today we turn to examine some people that Jesus dealt with during His life here on earth.
Matthew chapter 5 and verse 20 is our focus for today. As you consider this verse, I want you to attempt as best you can to discard any notion that the Pharisees were all evil men, bent upon power. Many were good Jews bent upon pleasing God – they just had the “how” wrong. I wonder if they ever really understood verses like Psalms 51:16-17 or 1 Samuel 15:22, or Isaiah 57:15. All of these passages tell of the submissive heart, which God prefers over the sacrifice of animals.
How many of you have thought, “He or she just doesn’t get it,” with reference to a certain concept, idea, or plan. I have fallen prey to this accusation a few times myself. I envision that this is just what the Lord Jesus is saying about the Pharisees – they just do not get it.
Normally when people keep coming back at me with the same concept, and I repeat back something to them, I do so to indicate I understand. There are times when I have done this and once again, I receive the same concept only described differently. I just did not get it. Honestly, it has nothing to do with my trying not to get it, either. It normally has nothing to do with my trying to involve my own ideas and concepts. I just do not get it. Either I have been trained to think differently, or I am not grasping the concept, or I just do not understand. In any case, I just do not get it. Okay – so you get it, these people just do not get it. Got it?
To me, this is the Pharisee and Scribe of the first century. They just do not get it. The issue is the object of the worship, not what you do to worship Him. How you keep the law is different from who you do it for. In addition, the law itself was given for a purpose and reason – to help us glorify God. The Pharisees had lost sight of that.
Your attitude must also be balanced – balanced on the whole counsel of God. Truthfully, any over-zealous attitude can be dangerous. Equally, an attitude that does not involve itself enough is just as dangerous. Now I know that can get you in trouble when taken too far. It is thoughts like this that have born out our current rock culture in Christianity. I think this is a pure, sad distortion of the truth of these types of scriptural lessons. There still are rules; you just have to have the right heart in implementing them. “If ye love me”…. that is the right heart. Keep MY commandment…that is the rule or law. By the way, we should always keep in mind they are His commandments for us to keep, not His commands for us to manage. He gives us allowances in His commandments where He sees the need. For instance, in the Old Testament, grain offerings are accepted when animals cannot be afforded. It is not incumbent upon us to take liberty where we choose. It is not for us to take liberty with His commandments and claim some pseudo Christian liberty. It is for Him to give exceptions or grant liberty. Outside of that, we had better stick pretty close to the Book. The over zealous claim to Christian liberty is where, I believe, our contemporary evangelical culture falls into the clutches of Satan.
Back to our text here – Pharisees and Scribes were adding to the rules. This may not seem to be too bad, initially. However, the problem is that it can explode (and did) into some giant albatross of a plan that is impossible to implement. God’s law is already impossible for man to implement; we should not strive to make it super-impossible. This is exactly what the Pharisees and Scribes had done. They thought they were trying to help, and they just made it harder and harder for the Israelites. The plain truth is that, “It is not the law you keep, but why you keep it and who you keep it for that counts.” I believe this verse is here specifically to address why, “We always ask, what do I need to do; Jesus always answers, I already did it.”
Lets not give Pharisees and Scribes a completely bad rap. There were good and evil ones, just as there are in every group of people. The good ones though were attempting to serve God, they just went about it all wrong.
I. Their Dedication
There were rules for washing hands and feet before eating in order to maintain the sanitary laws in God’s Word. There were rules for over-exaggerated fasting, two and three times a week, to help remind the Jews of the requirement to fast once a year. The Pharisees and Scribes added rules for many things, even temple worship rituals, and other very specific requirements. Ladies and gentlemen, do not underestimate the dedication of the Pharisee and Scribe who truly sought God’s heart. They wanted to do what was in the Law. They wanted to be godly men. They wanted to minister to others and teach them the ways of God. They were dedicated to the point of persecuting others in order to bring them back to the Jewish ways. We heard about this in our scripture reading this morning in Philippians 3 where Paul claims in verses 4b-6:
“If any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more: Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; Concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.”
You can sense the old Pharisee pride in these verses. Paul was proud of his life, of his dedication, and of his faith. What does Paul say immediately after this though?
“ But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ.”
You have no birthright that is going to get you into heaven. There is no work that is going to get you into heaven, no matter how zealously you perform it. This Pharisee, Paul of Tarsus, knew this very, very well. These men were dedicated to God, and Jesus knew it. They were so zealous they were making up rules to implement the rules, and then they needed rules for those rules to ensure they remembered the rules from before. These were all safeguards to protect themselves from violating the Law of God. However, God did not want man to do this. God provided for this in the sacrifices, and, ultimately, in the Messiah.
Some folks today say that we do this very thing when we would say alcohol is not condoned in scripture. If you take the bare bones words of scripture and apply them to what constitutes wine today, sure, you can make a very strong case in favor of drinking wine. However, if you take the actual use of wine in scripture and apply it to the real wine of the time scripture was written, not the enhanced alcoholic content that we find in wine today, you get a more accurate picture. To put it simply, wine in the first century was not enhanced by adding sugars to boost the alcoholic content. Moreover, wine was drunk diluted in the authorized forms. The strong drink mentioned in scripture is pure wine, which is never condoned. A simple history lesson tells us strong drink is not whiskey, as many think. Distillation, the ability required to make whiskey, was not invented until 1,100 years after Christ walked the earth. Did Jesus turn water into wine? You bet He did – the best wine anyone had ever tasted – and the best water for it to be mixed with that anyone had ever tasted. Some call these “No Alcohol” rules that church organizations have (including Baptists) extra-biblical and on par with the Pharisees and Scribes. I call this type of analysis a pure historical, grammatical, and contextual understanding of scripture.
The Christian contemporary Rock movement claims the same message – Christian liberty. I actually had an individual one time tell me we are practicing a “keep it safe” religion. However, they use this liberty as a deception – they attempt to deceive. They seem to say, “Come in, listen to the music you want to, you don’t have to change, you just have to believe.” The thing is, if you do believe, you will change. Jesus will change you, the Holy Spirit will change you, and your desires will change as the renewing of your mind changes you. Your wants change as you hunger and thirst for that which is righteous. Your attitudes and aptitudes will change as you grow to despise the world and the things of the world. Those people, in order to stay locked into their music patterns, stay locked into their old relationships and friendships with unbelievers. People who do not seek the righteousness of God are not changing to be like Him, seeking to be like Him, striving to be like Him. I will let you in on a little secret. I used to play drums. I used to play rock music. I played drums in Junior High school and went through peddle after peddle on my bass drum. The straps kept breaking. I had to cut up soda pop cans into strips and screw the metal into place to have something strong enough. I played and played and played. I played all kinds of Rock and Roll music on my drums before I was saved. I played in a quiet room on a Navy base in Sasebo, Japan once that I found out was not so quiet. After I had played for a time (I lost track and do not know how long), I looked up and found about 15 guys watching. I was embarrassed and immediately quit. I did all sorts of things. I was an OK drummer. Chris and I used to listen to rock music. We liked the popular groups of our youth, and some groups that are still popular today. Some of our music is now making a comeback, I have noticed – and not just as elevator or phone music. After I was saved though, we thought carefully about what the Lord would have us listen to. We gave away all our vinyl records and CD’s that did not honor Christ. We considered classical music, and we even like some. I have played in bands that played classical music and played a variety of percussion instruments (I was not just a set drummer). Ultimately, we found that the changes that Christ was making in our lives were changing our hearts to enjoy different things, different music. We are not “playing it safe” – we are enjoying the Spirit within us. That Spirit is holy and pure, and it changes you.
The Pharisees had the desire to change all they were to ensure they kept God’s commandments. Oh, that we could be like them, as dedicated to changing our person, attitudes, our aptitudes, and ourselves in order to glorify God. The problem was that instead of glorifying God, they began to glorify only themselves. This is the root problem with most of the Pharisaical law, and with our hearts as well – it worshiped another God.
II. Their god
The Pharisees and Scribes were seen as individuals who concentrated upon themselves. They thought that they were always concentrating upon God, but in reality, it was their own person that was their concern. They had no concern for God, and no concern for others. They were concerned for themselves. Like the Pharisee who stepped into the temple and prayed saying, “I thank God that I am not like this publican” – that Pharisee was not praising God for making him a Pharisee. He was praising himself for being better than another person. That is wicked, and the height of pride and arrogance.
The Pharisees were known to fast in public and make a big deal about it. This was not to teach the people that they needed to be more holy. This only brought attention upon the individual who was bragging about the fasting. The god they served was the god of self.
We do this too. We have noted it in messages from this pulpit. How many times have you sat in the pew and said to yourself – “Man, I am glad such and such is here, they needed to hear what this preacher is saying.” That, folks, is saying you are better than the other person is, because you do not think you need to hear it. In fact, you have had your eye on that other person and have been judgmental about their activities. Get brave. If they are so unbiblical in their life, go to them and accuse them. If that still does not cut it, take someone else. However, you had better pray about it before you come get the pastor. I know that I will pray, and we will talk, and we will open the scriptures together to discover the truths in it. Being judgmental in this way is just as the Pharisee saying, “Man, I’m glad I don’t have to listen to that message. It could really convict me if I were actually guilty of that kind of sin.” That is the long version of “I’m glad I’m not like that publican.”
When man is in sin in his own life, he always finds a way to point the finger elsewhere. The Pharisees were no different. They were so external in their faith that they could push off on others all the righteousness they could muster and inside, behind closed doors they had some of the most heinous sins there are, such as not caring for their own families. They used tithing as an excuse to get out of caring for their own families (Matt 23:23).
We have Pharisees of another kind around us here, too. Pharisees who would say they better worship God by going out into His creation and getting closer to Him. They are better at worship than we are because they are not relegated to a building. They get out in His creation and worship Him where He is close-by. I had a man once tell me that his grandfather (I believe) told him “I never found god in a building.” I told that man he had never been to our church because there are some very dear saints here who shine with the Holy Spirit of God to see people, to greet people, to fellowship with people, and to love people. God is here, He is at work, and He is here in all three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
No folks, it is not you, it is not what you do, it is not what you can do, it is not what you think, it is not what you want, and if church were a place you wanted to be, you would be a saint in heaven because no saint on earth wants to come to church every Sunday. It is simply that you do it, worship, listen to good, God-honoring music, change your life to conform to Him, and seek only to please Him and forget about pleasing yourself or others. You do this because you see the sacrifices His Son has given for your wickedness. That displays a broken and contrite heart. Further, that you do it with the zeal of the Scribe or Pharisee who would sacrifice all for what they thought God wanted. That is exceeding the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees.
What we find today then are a series of Pharisees in our society, and within ourselves. Instead of implementing more rules to please God, they attempt to find new liberties to worship their god the way they desire. Christian Liberty leans heavily upon God’s grace almost to the point of taking it for granted. This gives them pleasure, just as it gave the Pharisees and Scribes pleasure to point at the masses and say, in essence, “I’m better than you, I’m of the Pharisees – if you want to please God, do what I do; and if you cannot do what I do, you cannot please God.”
We have taken a very brief look at this section of scripture today. The fact of the matter is that it is not faith and it is not works. Focusing inappropriately on either or both can lead to error. It is not about works, but about a faith that is verified as genuine through works. Works show themselves through faith, which testifies of the saved soul.
Works are wrought by the individual striving to please Christ by a meek, mourning, pure heart that hungers and thirsts after righteousness. This heart is a peacemaker for all mankind, and because of its true purity, it draws to it persecution. This, dear ones, is true righteousness that is above that of the Pharisees.
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