But today the religious leaders are busy plotting to have Jesus executed. They are struggling with a dilemma - they need to move as quickly as possible because Jesus' following is growing rapidly, but they also need to wait until the Passover crowd departs Jerusalem to minimize the potential "backlash".
Think about it: those to whom God has entrusted His truth are busy working in direct opposition to God's plan and purpose. This is a scary thought (oops, be anxious for NUTTIN!), especially given the rich spiritual heritage of these men. Consider the Pharisees as an example.
The Pharisees started as a group of middle-class artisans who...
- Studied scripture diligently and tried to follow it for daily living,
- Stressed God's Holiness and His authority to direct their paths,
- Believed in life after death, rewards and resurrection,
- Named themselves from an Aramaic word that means "separate", and
- Emphasized staying clean, tithing, and corporate worship.
By the time the much-awaited Messiah arrive on the scene, how were the Pharisees doing spiritually? They were characterized as men who:
- "shut off the kingdom of heaven from men" (Matt 23:13)
- "tithe...and neglect the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness" (Matt 23:23)
- "clean the outside fo the cup and of the dish, but inside they are full of robbery and self-indulgence" (Matt 23:25)
- "outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness" (Matt 23:28)
- "clean the outside of the cup and of the platter; but inside of you, you are full of robbery and wickedness." (Luke 11:39)
- "love the chief seats in the synagogues and the respectful greetings in the market places." (Luke 11:43)
- "weigh men down with burdens hard to bear, while you yourselves will not even touch the burdens with one of your fingers". (Luke 11:46)
I have no interest in bashing the Pharisees, but I am deeply interested in avoiding a finish like theirs. What can we learn from their experience to improve our chances of finishing strong?
It seems that the Pharisees started wtih solid principles that, over time, became a religious systems full of distortion, as illustrated below:
- Obedience to scripture became a public show
- Passing along truth via tradition became a preference for tradition rather than truth
- Scripture as a means to know God became scripture as an end in itself
- Separatism became Isolationism
- Being an example to others became looking good in spite of sickness
A pathological and hypothetical example may help illustrate ow distortion can happen. The original emphasis on obedience to scripture would produce good works that would be inevitably noticed by others. The resulting approbation is a powerful narcotic, and there could be a desire for more. Suddenly a new motive (desire for approbation) could replace the original motive to simply obey scripture. So what is outwardly reported to be obedience to scripture could inwardly be a quest for human approbation. Tom Hovestol calls the resulting hypocrisy the "greatest show on earth". Jesus assessment in the above passages makes it clear that avoiding this problem requires focus on the "inside" versus the "outside".
Learning from the Pharisees creates in me a deep desire to avoid religious hypocrisy, but I know when I look in the mirror I see a lot of "pharisee". Only the supernatural work of God in my heart can really solve this problem, as Oswald Chambers says so well:
"The characteristic of a disciple is not that he does good things, but that he is good in his motives, having been made good by the supernatural grace of God. The only thing that exceeds right-doing is right-being. Jesus Christ came to place within anyone that would let Him a new heredity that would have a righteousness exceeding that of the scribes and the Pharisees. The purity that God demands is impossible unless I can be remade within and that is exactly what Jesus has undertaken to do" (My Utmost for His Highest, July 24)
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