HOW TO BE A BAD CHRISTIAN:THE MAKING OF A PHARISEE
Preached by Gregory W. Lee
20 May 2007
I. Introduction
-- turn in Bibles to Matthew 23
-- this morning, we are continuing in our series on how to be a bad Christian -- by the time that we are done, we should be proficient at being able to keep people from really coming to Christ and getting to know the Lord in a close and personal way
-- in this series, we have been working through this passage in Matthew 23 and observing the different failings of the Pharisees that Jesus pointed out to His disciples
-- so far, we have covered three ways to be a bad Christian
-- first, make Christianity burdensome by adding all kinds of rules and traditions and rituals that no one could ever keep -- second, serve others only to be seen -- in other words, make it about you and serve others only so you get the glory and recognition -- third, shut the door of grace to those wanting to come to Christ -- don't let people in who are sinners or who are different from you and keep people from growing more knowledgeable or more committed to the Lord than you
-- this morning, we are looking at the fourth way to be a bad Christian -- namely, by following the letter of the law and not the spirit of the law
-- so, if you would, look down now and follow along or listen as I read vs. 15-22
15. "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.
16. "Woe to you, blind guides! You say, `If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.'
17. You blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred?
18. You also say, `If anyone swears by the altar, it means nothing; but if anyone swears by the gift on it, he is bound by his oath.'
19. You blind men! Which is greater: the gift, or the altar that makes the gift sacred?
20. Therefore, he who swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it.
21. And he who swears by the temple swears by it and by the one who dwells in it.
22. And he who swears by heaven swears by God's throne and by the one who sits on it.
-- in her book, "A Practical Guide to Living in Shanghai," Kathleen Lau relates the story about a friend of hers who was traveling around China by train -- one day, her friend finds himself in a remote town in the interior of China -- with his limited Chinese, he goes up to a counter at the train station and asks the clerk, "Do you have a ticket to Shanghai?" -- the clerk replied, "No"
-- in China, there is a law that won't let them sell tickets in advance -- so her friend assumed that all the tickets to Shanghai for that day were sold out -- so the next day, he goes back and asks the clerk, "Do you have a ticket to Shanghai?" -- the clerk replied again, "No" -- so her friend left and came back and the exact same thing happened again on the third day
-- by now, Kathleen's friend realizes that something is wrong, so he asks the clerk, "Why don't you have a ticket for Shanghai?" -- the clerk replied, "They sell tickets to Shanghai at the next window"
-- now, it is obvious to us that when the man went to the window and asked for a ticket to Shanghai, he actually wanted a ticket -- he didn't care who sold it to him or what window he had to go to -- so, why do you think the clerk wasn't more helpful and didn't direct the man to the other window?
-- you see, in China, the Government forces people to follow the letter of the law and to do no more -- Kathleen's friend didn't ask the clerk where he could get a ticket -- he just asked the clerk if he had a ticket to Shanghai -- the clerk followed the letter of the law and only answered the man's question -- that was all that was expected of him and that was all that he was going to do
-- if Kathleen's friend had reported the ticket clerk for bad customer service, he probably would not have even been reprimanded because he had done exactly what his boss had told him to do
-- we understand why Kathleen's friend was upset -- living here in America, we have been taught that the spirit of the law is more important than following the letter of the law -- in other words, it is the intent behind our actions that is more important than the act itself
-- for example, it is illegal for anyone in here to kill or harass or harm a bald eagle -- it is protected by the Endangered Species Act -- but, let's say that on the way home today, we see a car hit a bald eagle and wound it -- it's laying there in the middle of the road, and we know that if another car comes along, it is going to get killed -- so, I imagine that most of us would break the law and pick up the eagle and take it to a vet
-- the letter of the law says you can't pick up a bald eagle -- but the intent of the law -- the reason the law was written -- was to protect the bald eagle from being harmed -- so, even though you might not be following the letter of the law if you pick up the eagle -- you are following the spirit of the law
-- in this passage, Jesus makes the same point to His disciples and the Pharisees -- yes, the Pharisees were totally obeying the letter of the law -- they were doing everything that God required in the commandments and were not failing to do anything that He told them -- but, they were missing the intent of the commandment -- they were missing the heart of God's law
-- they were so concerned with following the letter of the law that they missed the spirit of the law -- the ultimate reason why God gave us the commandment in the first place
-- so, let's spend a few minutes and look at this passage together
II. Scripture Lesson
-- verse 15
15. "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.
-- Rowland Croucher, an evangelist in Australia, preached a Sunday night service one time to a very small conservative congregation in rural Australia -- he started off by asking them what they knew about the Pharisees
-- now, we all know that Jesus was constantly being berated by the Pharisees for not following the law -- and we know that He saved some of His harshest rebukes for this sect of legalistic Jews -- but Croucher wanted to know whether there was anything good about them -- so he asked the congregation to list out the good things about Pharisees and he wrote them down on a chalkboard at the front of the church
-- this congregation pointed out that the Pharisees knew their Bibles -- they were men who really had studied and memorized the Word of God -- they were disciplined in prayer -- they fasted twice a week -- they did more than tithe, they gave about a third of their income to their church
-- they were moral upstanding people and followed God's law to the letter -- they were the very epitome of holiness -- many had been martyred for their faith -- they attended 'church' regularly -- they were evangelical and orthodox, believing in a literal interpretation of Scripture -- and they were evangelistic -- they were dedicated to sharing their faith with others -- right here in this verse, Jesus said they'd even cross the ocean - a fearful thing for Jews - to win a convert
-- when Croucher finished writing all of that on the board, the people in the church got silent -- he pointed to one of the leaders of the church on the front row and said, "What's wrong?" -- the leader responded, "That's us -- we're Pharisees"
-- Croucher responded, "Then you've got a problem: Jesus said these sorts of people are children of the devil!" -- "What's so wrong with this list of admirable qualities of the Pharisees? -- Short answer: it omits what was most important for Jesus"
-- The Pharisee is concerned about law -- about how they can fulfill the law and do it right --Now on the surface, there's nothing wrong with that as it stands -- Except for one thing: you can keep the law and in the process destroy persons
-- the Pharisees were dedicated and committed, but they were dedicated and committed to the wrong thing -- they worshiped the law and not the One who gave them the law -- and so, when they went out and evangelized -- when they witnessed to other people and converted someone to their sect, Jesus says they made them twice as much a son of Hell as they -- because they weren't teaching them to follow the One who made the law -- but to follow the law to the letter at the expense of a relationship with the Father
-- as one writer put it, "If we teach mere conformity to a Christian cultural standard, rather than allowing God to effect inward conviction and renewing of the mind, then we set people on the path of outward, artificial righteousness"
-- verse 16
16. "Woe to you, blind guides! You say, `If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.'
17. You blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred?
18. You also say, `If anyone swears by the altar, it means nothing; but if anyone swears by the gift on it, he is bound by his oath.'
-- Jesus gives the Pharisees an example of what they were doing wrong -- in Numbers 30:2, it says, "When a man makes a vow to the LORD or takes an oath to obligate himself by a pledge, he must not break his word but must do everything he said." -- in other words, "don't break your oath, but keep the oaths that you made to the Lord"
-- God takes oaths very seriously -- they are binding -- and for that reason, Jesus taught in Matthew 5 that we should not make oaths to God or anything else -- but here, we see that the Pharisees have taken the letter of the law even further -- they began looking for loopholes in the law -- for ways to do exactly what God said while still doing what they wanted
-- not only were they making oaths to God -- they were also allowing people to make oaths to the temple and the altar -- to man-made objects that were intended to point people to God -- not to be worshiped themselves
-- and so they interpreted the letter of the law to make it say that oaths made to the things the Pharisees considered important -- the gold in the treasury of the temple and the gift on the altar -- these oaths were binding, but the others were not
-- so Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for this practice -- verse 19
19. You blind men! Which is greater: the gift, or the altar that makes the gift sacred?
20. Therefore, he who swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it.
21. And he who swears by the temple swears by it and by the one who dwells in it.
22. And he who swears by heaven swears by God's throne and by the one who sits on it.
-- the temple and the altar -- the gold in the treasury and the gift on the altar -- these things were dedicated to the Lord -- they pointed to Him -- so, while the letter of the law allowed loopholes that changed the binding of oaths, Jesus said that the intent of the law -- the spirit of the law -- was that oaths made to the Lord were always binding and should be kept and not broken
-- the Pharisees kept the law, but missed the purpose -- in Matthew 12, we see a passage where this contrast between keeping the letter of the law but missing the spirit and the purpose of the law is brought out sharply -- we don't have time to go into this passage in detail, so let me encourage you to look it up for yourself later this week -- let me just give you a synopsis of what happened
-- one time, Jesus and His disciples were walking through a grain field on the Sabbath -- His disciples were hungry and they began to pick some of the heads of grain and to eat them -- the Pharisees became livid and they approached Jesus -- "Why are you letting your disciples do what is unlawful on the Sabbath?"
-- later on, they rebuked Jesus for healing a man whose hand was shriveled on the Sabbath
-- now, we all know that the Sabbath is to be a day of rest and faith -- it is a day when there is to be no work -- in the eyes of the Pharisees -- in keeping with the letter of the law -- the disciples, by picking the grain, were working on the Sabbath and breaking the law -- and Jesus, by healing the man with the shriveled hand, was working on the Sabbath and breaking the law
-- so Jesus points out the heart of the matter -- the purpose of the Sabbath was not to make it a day to be worshiped -- but to make it a day that man could rest from his labors and worship God -- as He said, "The Sabbath was made for man -- not man for the Sabbath"
-- by following the letter of the law, the Pharisees were making the Sabbath day more important than the God who made it
-- I like the way Eugene Peterson translates Jesus' response to the Pharisees about their tendency to worry about the letter of the law instead of the spirit of the law -- 'There is far more at stake than religion. If you had any idea what this Scripture meant - "I prefer a flexible heart to an inflexible ritual" - you wouldn't be nitpicking like this.'
-- as David wrote in Psalm 51:16-17, "You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings -- The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise."
-- in other words, it's not so much about doing the right things or following the law to the letter -- but meeting the intent and purpose of the law -- which is always to bring us closer to the heart of God and to share God's love with all we meet
-- so, if you want to be a bad Christian, make sure that you follow the letter of the law exactly and do no more
-- if the law says that you have to be at church on Sunday, don't stop to help a person broken down on the side of the road if it means you'll be late or you might miss the worship service altogether -- and don't even think about skipping Bible study to help the single mother in your neighborhood mow her grass -- that would be wrong
-- if the law says to not be judgemental about others and to love your neighbor as yourself, find a loophole and gossip about someone with the excuse that you are just lifting them up in prayer -- "Now normally, I would never dream of telling you what so-and-so did, but I just want you to pray for them" -- don't consider bearing their burdens with them and lifting them up before God and not man
-- if the law says don't work on the Sabbath, then make sure you don't cook Sunday dinner because that would be working -- but go out to eat instead and then condemn the waitress and the cook in the restaurant for working on Sunday -- and don't give them any more than 15% for a tip, because that's all that's required, even if they are working on Sunday to help support their family
-- if the law says give God your tithes and your firstfruits, spend countless hours trying to calculate 10% of your income and question whether God should get a tithe from your gross or your net -- and never think about giving more than what the law demands
-- and, if the law says that worship is on Sunday and Sunday only, then don't consider doing ministry or having worship services on any other day -- why, that might make it possible for law-breakers to come to church and get to know the Lord
-- as we close now, I am going to ask you to consider ways in your life and in the life of this church that we might be more intent on keeping the letter of the law instead of the spirit of the law -- let's pray that we always look at all situations in the light of God's grace and will and purpose and that we do not become modern-day Pharisees in our own right
-- let's pray
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