Pharisaism: Alive and Well in the Church
Introduction: Please turn in your Bibles to Luke 11:37-54:
When Jesus had finished speaking, a Pharisee invited him to eat with him; so he went in and reclined at the table. But the Pharisee, noticing that Jesus did not first wash before the meal, was surprised.
Then the Lord said to him, “Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? But give what is inside the dish to the poor, and everything will be clean for you.
“Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone.
“Woe to you Pharisees, because you love the most important seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces.
“Woe to you, because you are like unmarked graves, which men walk over without knowing it.”
One of the experts in the law answered him, “Teacher, when you say these things, you insult us also.”
Jesus replied, “And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.
“Woe to you, because you build tombs for the prophets, and it was your forefathers who killed them. So you testify that you approve of what your forefathers did; they killed the prophets, and you build their tombs. Because of this, God in his wisdom said, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and others they will persecute.’ Therefore this generation will be held responsible for the blood of all the prophets that has been shed since the beginning of the world, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, this generation will be held responsible for it all.
“Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering.”
When Jesus left there, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law began to oppose him fiercely and to besiege him with questions, waiting to catch him in something he might say.
When we think of sin, we almost instinctively think of high crimes and misdemeanors—crimes like murder, adultery, grand larceny, and misdemeanors like drunkenness, gambling, and speeding. I do not mean to minimize these as sins, but I think it is worthy of note that the New Testament pays far more attention to sins of the heart and attitude than it does to the external sins previously mentioned.
Not surprisingly, the greatest opposition to Jesus came not from the criminal element or the radicals in society; it came from the religious leaders of his day—the scribes and the Pharisees. The same is probably true today, 20 centuries later. I am quite confident that the strongest, most persistent antagonism to biblical Christianity comes not from our prisons, nor even from our godless universities. It comes instead from religious leaders, seminaries, and denominations that have substituted their own notions of morality and truth for what Jesus taught.
In keeping with this state of affairs, it is not surprising that Jesus reserved his harshest words, not for the murderers, adulterers, and thieves of his day, but for the self-righteous and the hypocrites, people whom he called “blind guides for the blind.” (Matthew 23:16) The same would be true today, I believe, for Pharisaism is by no means dead.
Our text opens with Jesus being invited to a Pharisee’s home. The Pharisees were a religious party with major political overtones, much like the Puritans in 17th century England or the Moral Majority in the 1980’s. Their name came from the Hebrew word meaning “to separate,” because they separated themselves from common people by means of a host of religious and legal scruples they observed. Their basic beliefs were fairly orthodox, but they allowed themselves to be caught up in the bondage of legalism. That is, they measured righteousness by one’s conformity to a long list of external rules and regulations.
What this particular Pharisee’s motive was for inviting Jesus to his home, we do not know, but we are told that he is surprised when Jesus fails to wash his hands before dinner. Now please understand that this is not a matter of hygiene. This Pharisee is not concerned about hepatitis A or even simple germs. The issue at stake is religious tradition. Listen as William Barclay describes the situation:
The law (not God’s law, but man’s additions to it) laid it down that before a man ate he must wash his hands in a certain way, and that he must also wash them between the courses. As usual every littlest detail was worked out. Large stone vessels of water were specially kept for the purpose because ordinary water might be unclean; the amount of water used must be at least a quarter of a log, that is enough to fill one and a half egg-shells. First the water must be poured over the hands beginning at the tips of the fingers and running right up to the wrist. Then the palm of each hand must be cleansed by rubbing the fist of the other into it. Finally, water must again be poured over the hand, this time beginning at the wrist and running down to the fingertips. To the Pharisee to omit the slightest detail of this was to sin.[i]
Don’t think for a moment that Jesus was unaware of these regulations. He ignored them on purposeto make a point. When he saw the shock on the Pharisee’s face, he used the reaction as an opportunity to expose six major sins in the heart of his host and the hearts of those in attendance at the dinner. But he also exposes these sins in our hearts, for these are sins to which all people, and religious people in particular, are susceptible. These sins won’t land you in jail, but they may land you in hell. The first is this:
The religious hypocrite pays more attention to external rules than he does to internal attitudes.
The Pharisaical regulations regarding how one must wash his hands before a meal did not come out of the Old Testament. They came from the interpretations and commentaries on the Old Testament that were written by religious “experts.” Over time these interpretations became almost more sacred that the Scripture text itself, just as in our day some theological systems have become a sort of “Bible to the second power.” If the Bible doesn’t fit into our system, we massage it until it does. The Pharisees were experts at this sort of thing.
Jesus exposes this sinful tendency by means of an analogy: “You Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness.” This is similar to what he taught in Matthew 15:19-20: “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man ‘unclean’; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him ‘unclean.’”
The Pharisees were far more concerned with what a man did than with what he was. But Jesus calls them fools for this: “You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? But give what is inside the dish to the poor, and everything will be clean for you.” Jesus’ point here is not that the one who gives to the poor earns salvation. I think rather he is stressing the importance of a right inward state whenever we do something outwardly. We must give of ourselves first, or our money is an empty gesture.
I am reminded of what the Lord said to the prophet Samuel when he was trying to figure out which of the sons of Jesse God had chosen to be King of Israel. Samuel thought several of the older sons were excellent candidates, but God had his eye on the youngest son, a mere shepherd boy named David. Here’s what the Lord said: “The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7) The point is not that God doesn’t see the outside, for certainly he does; but he is far more concerned about the inside.
What is your heart like, friend? Did we give more attention to preparing our bodies for church this morning than we did to preparing our hearts? If so, perhaps God is fingering a bit of Pharisaism in our lives.
The religious hypocrite majors on the minor and ignores the most important principles.
“Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God.” Tithing was a big deal to the Pharisees, actually much more important than it ought to have been. True, it was commanded in the Law of Moses, but it was meant to be a joyful offering of love. The Pharisees, however, turned it into a burdensome mockery. They even went out to their gardens and counted each stalk and each leaf and made sure they gave one out of ten to the temple.
Friends, when we concentrate on the trivial, we are almost certain to overlook the important. One only has so much spiritual and emotional energy to employ. If it is devoted to counting stalks, it can’t be devoted to loving God or one’s neighbor. Now Jesus doesn’t tell them their tithing is wrong; in fact, he tells them they should tithe, though not the way they are doing it. Their focus is wrong, their priorities are wrong, their heart attitudes are wrong.
All of us have known Christians who are very scrupulous about their church attendance, their tithing, and their abstinence from such things as alcohol and tobacco—yet these same people can nevertheless cut a Christian brother to shreds for some perceived deficiency. All of us have also known Christians who are quick to speak a word for Christ at a church meeting, but out in the work world their word is not worth the breath used to utter it, and their employees complain bitterly of being treated unjustly. They are the kind of people about whom I occasionally hear someone say, “I’d rather do business with an unbeliever than with that professing Christian.”
James speaks of such people in the first chapter of his epistle, verse 26: “If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless.” Those are pretty strong words. Is he saying you can be a devoutly religious person and yet your religion be worthless? Yes, that is exactly what he’s saying, and he’s not saying it to Hindus or Buddhists or Muslims. He’s saying it to those who profess to be Christians.
Friends, the answer isn’t to quit going to church or quit giving or quit testifying. That’s what some people do in the face of rampant hypocrisy. They say, “If there are hypocrites in the church, I don’t want to have anything to do with the church.” Well, let me tell you a little secret, there are hypocrites everywhere—no more, and probably no fewer, in the church than in the country club or in politics or in the PTA. Unless you drop out of society entirely, you can’t escape them. Even if you do drop out, you’ll still probably have to deal with one hypocrite, namely yourself. The best response is to refocus your own life and make sure that the most important issues of morality and integrity do not take a back seat to religious observances.
The religious hypocrite loves attention-getting places of honor and defiles his followers.
I’m combining the next two “woes” in verse 43 and 44: “Woe to you, Pharisees, because you love the most important seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces. Woe to you, because you are like unmarked graves, which men walk over without knowing it.” The advantage of the front seats in the synagogue is that they faced the others and those who sat there could be seen by all. To sit there marked you off as a person of distinction. That’s why they wore special robes, too, because they could be easily recognized as men of the cloth and they would be treated with special deference in the marketplace.
I didn’t realize how true this was until I had a unique personal experience about 9 years ago. Here at the church we went through the 50-Day Spiritual Adventure during lent in 1989. The theme that year was welcoming Christ to the workplace. One Sunday I was going to preach on the value of work, so we asked everyone to wear their work clothes to church. Some came in nurses’ uniforms, some in surgical scrubs, some in janitorial uniforms, Tony Kinney came in his moon suit (he worked in environmental protection). It was great.
Since there was nothing to distinguish my work clothes from anyone else’s, I went to my friend Don Wilkinson, the rector of the Church of the Epiphany at Ballas and Dougherty Ferry, and asked if I could borrow a clerical collar. And that Sunday I headed for church wearing a black shirt and white collar. On my way I stopped by White Castle, as I always did, for a cup of coffee (I don’t eat their belly bombers, but they do make good coffee!). I had forgotten what I was wearing until the young girl behind the counter said, “Good morning, Father!” It kind of shocked me, but when she said the coffee was free, I began to think, “Maybe I need to get a collar of my own!”
Now by sharing that illustration, I don’t mean to imply that everyone who wears a clerical collar or robe is seeking the praise of men (or free coffee), but listen to what Jesus says in Luke 20:46:
“Beware of the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and love to be greeted in the marketplaces and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. They devour widows’ houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. Such men will be punished most severely.”
I think that one verse should give a pastor some pause before donning clerical vestments. There are, of course, many other ways to seek the praise of men. I knew an evangelical minister who has never worn a collar, but his office wall was lined with photographs of him with various Christian celebrities: Billy Graham, Mark Hatfield, Tom Landry, famous athletes, so on. Knowing the man well, I would say he suffered from a serious inferiority complex, but probably also from an advanced case of Pharisaism.
Does this syndrome affect only ministers? Obviously not. Some lay people want instant recognition when they do a good deed. Many years ago a parishioner of mine gave a very large gift to a Christian college. The college recognized him by naming a new building after him, but because I failed to draw attention to his gift at church, he became bitter and quit supporting the church. I think that’s also Pharisaism.
The reference to unmarked graves in verse 44 is strange to us until we understand that ceremonial defilement occurred whenever a Jew came into contact with a dead body. Numbers 19:16 reads, “Anyone out in the open who touches someone who has been killed with a sword or someone who has died a natural death, or anyone who touches a human bone or a grave, will be unclean for seven days.” This regulation probably had both hygienic and ceremonial purposes, but the Pharisees extended the defilement even to the case where an unwary traveler walked over an unmarked grave. That’s why at Passover time the Jews would whitewash all the graves so that the pilgrims traveling in from outlying areas wouldn’t accidentally step on a grave and end up being excluded from the temple worship. Jesus used this tradition to say, in essence, that just as those who stepped on unmarked graves were “ceremonially defiled,” so those who walked in the teaching and ways of the Pharisees became morally defiled.
Now there’s an interesting interlude between the third and fourth sins of the religious hypocrite spelled out in this passage. Luke says in verse 45, “One of the experts in the law answered him …” By the way, these “experts in the law,” often called “scribes,” were Israel’s theologians. Many of them were also Pharisees. That’s probably why one of them pipes up and says to Jesus, “Teacher, when you say these nasty things about the Pharisees, you insult us theologians too.” He’s trying to give Jesus an opportunity to exempt the scribes from his scathing criticism. But instead Jesus says, “You think I’ve insulted you, too? Well that’s exactly what I meant to do. In fact, I have some special condemnation for you,” and then he proceeds to enumerate three more sins of the religious hypocrite, starting with this one:
The religious hypocrite is quick to condemn but slow to help.
“You load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.” What kind of burdens is he talking about? Well, instead of explaining God’s law in such a way that it helped and encouraged people, they applied it by means of a myriad of legalistic requirements. For example, while the Old Testament commanded people not to work on the Sabbath so they could worship and rest, they elaborated on that simple principle and taught that a man may not carry a burden “in his right hand or in his left hand, in his bosom or on his shoulder.” But he could carry it “on the back of his hand, or with his foot or with his mouth or with his elbow, or in his ear or in his hair or in his wallet if the opening was downward,” etc., etc.
Multiply this kind of nonsense by the 613 laws in the Old Testament, and obviously no one but a professional could possibly know how to manage the resulting burden. The scribes themselves knew all the loopholes, so they could essentially do whatever they wanted. The average person, however, was in bondage to all this legalism, and the scribes were happy to leave them there, for that left themin a position of power.
The religious hypocrite finds it easier to honor dead saints than living ones.
I think that is what Jesus is saying in verses 47 and following: “Woe to you, because you build tombs for the prophets, and it was your forefathers who killed them. So you testify that you approve of what your forefathers did; they killed the prophets, and you build their tombs.” The scribes wanted the people to think that by building or rebuilding the tombs of the prophets they were honoring the prophets! However, the only real way to honor the prophets is to regulate one’s life according to their teaching.
I believe there is a subtle, unspoken reference here to the fact that there is a Prophet in their midst whom they are failing to honor, even though all the Old Testament prophets looked forward to Him. The scribes admired the dead prophets, but when they met a living one they tried to kill him. They honored the dead prophets with tombs and memorials, but they “honored” the living ones with persecution and death.
Jesus goes on to say in verse 50 that his generation would be held liable for the blood of all the prophets who had been martyred from the beginning of the world. This is because the prophets had a unified message, culminating in the one speaking to them. By the way, the phrase in verse 51, “from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah,” is Jesus’ way of saying, “from Genesis to Revelation,” for the killing of Abel is recorded in the first book of the Old Testament, while the execution of Zechariah is recorded in the last book of the Hebrew Old Testament.
Friends, is there any sense in which we today try to honor dead saints while ignoring the truths they taught? I think of the praise that was heaped upon Mother Teresa by religious and political leaders who espouse abortion on demand and even support partial-birth abortion—actions for which she publicly rebuked them. We evangelicals have our own saints—Luther, Calvin, Spurgeon, Moody. We quote them and praise them, but do we honor the truths they taught?
The religious hypocrite thinks he has the key to knowledge but is actually an obstacle to truth.
“Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering.” I believe this one verse is a terrible condemnation of the liberal church in the United States. For decades now the mainline churches as a whole (there are a few notable exceptions) have professed to be religious guides, but they are actually what Jesus called “blind guides.” They have turned people away from the Bible to political and social issues, they have scoffed at the need to be born again in favor of the need to reform one’s life, they have called evil good and good evil. In essence they have not entered the kingdom of heaven themselves and have become obstacles to those who were trying to find God. What a terrible position to be in at the Judgment Day!
But it is possible that even we in the conservative branch of Christianity can be obstacles to the truth—discouraging people from coming to Christ because of self-righteous attitudes or legalistic requirements or just plain lack of love and acceptance. We can even be obstacles by our preaching. I have been in evangelical churches where the pastor’s interpretations of Scripture are so esoteric and so sprinkled with Greek and Hebrew words that the ordinary person throws up his hands in despair at ever understanding the Bible on his own. The Bible becomes a book of riddles solvable only by the “experts.”
Conclusion: Friends, Pharisaism is alive and well in the church today. There are many who believe that so long as the externals of religion are carried out, that is all that matters. Their hearts might be a black as hell; they might be utterly lacking in charity and even justice; but so long as they go through the correct motions at the correct time, they consider themselves OK in the eyes of God.
I’ll never forget the gripping scene from the movie, “The Godfather” where Michael Corleone is attending the christening of his baby son and the priest asks him, “Do you renounce Satan and all his works?” As he answers in the affirmative, and while the organ music is still heard in the background, the camera moves to the brutal assassination of a whole string of his enemies that he has ordered simultaneous with the baptism.
That level of hypocrisy is not likely to be a temptation for many here. But hypocrisy is an insidious disease that blinds the perpetrator to its very presence. We may be in church every Sunday; we may be diligent students of the Bible; we may be generous in our giving; but if pride and contempt are in our hearts, if we have no love in our dealings with our neighbors, if we are unjust to our employees or dishonest to our employers, then we are as guilty as the scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ day. Barclay writes, “No man is a Christian when he meticulously observes the conventions of religion and forgets the realities.”[ii]
As I close, I want to quote Jesus from his Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 5:20 he says, “For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.” This is not a call for greater separatism than the Pharisees practiced. It is certainly not a call for more stringent legalism than the scribes practiced. It is actually a call to abandon human righteousness altogether and to rely on a completely different kind of righteousness. Listen to Romans 3, beginning in verse 20:
No one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin. But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus (Romans 3:20-24).
God saves all those who turn from their sin and even from their own righteousness, and instead put their faith in Christ and Christ alone.
Luke 11 ends with these words from verses 53, 54: “When Jesus left there, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law began to oppose him fiercely and to besiege him with questions, waiting to catch him in something he might say.” Instead of repenting, they took offense and intensified their opposition. What will we do with His words?
Tags:
Pharisee
Hypocrisy
[i] William Barclay, The Gospel of Luke, 158.
[ii] Barclay, 160.