(Text and Audio)
Title: The Pharisee You Know
In last week’s sermon we went to great lengths to demonstrate and illustrate the dangers of placing one’s personal conviction upon another as a binding law. Today what we will do is look at just how dangerous such attitude and behavior can be.
The Quote
The scathing quote that Jesus uses in Isaiah 29:13, and it’s an except from a larger quote from Isaiah about a theme that we’ve been studying in our time together in the Gospel of Matthew.
That theme? Certain people simply to not have ears to hear and eyes to see the Truth that lies directly in front of them. This quote seems scathing enough, but it grows even more so when we consider the quote in it’s full context of Isaiah 29:9-16.
If you have your Scriptures, turn their with me for a moment.
(Read Isaiah 29:9-16)
And how do we know, how can we be sure that what Isaiah is talking about is indeed about the Pharisees, the Scribes, the future spiritual “leaders” of Israel? Two reasons:
- Jesus says it’s about them.
- It comes true! (Just as they cannot see the Messiah standing right in front of him, the prophecy of Isaiah is coming true with every word, every thought, every accusation that these groups selfishly make against Jesus. In other words, everything outlined in that passage applies accurately to the failings of Israel’s leadership!
Analysis and Parallels
So let’s break down what is said about these groups and see if we can find parallels.
Statement 1: “These people draw near to me with their mouth, and honor me with their lips.”
They pray. They call out to God. They say all the right things. They look the part. Their outward appearance is that of a holy and devout person. Their behavior is what you’d expect from a spiritual leader.
Statement 2: “But their heart is far from me.”
The thing that makes our relationship with anything truly legitimate is our heart. Do we believe what we say? Or do we say it out of expectation, pressure from others, or because we just don’t know any other way?
What Jesus reminds us of here is that legitimacy does not lie in what something appears to be. But rather, what something is.
Parallel: Obviously, the parallels are vast. There are many within the church, both leader and lay, that look the part of the Christian. They attend the worship services, they attend the meetings, they wear the appropriate clothes, respond in the appropriate way. But it is well within the realm of possibility that, despite all these outward signs, they simply do not know, and therefore, cannot believe in, the risen Christ.
Result: “And in vain they worship me.”
The result is tragic. Jesus tells us that all their efforts, all the trappings of their holiness, all their outward actions and signs, mean nothing because their hearts are what counts and their hearts are still far from God.
Why (Specifically): “Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.”
In this case Jesus specifically draws a distinct connection between the action and the types of people that perform that action. He says that people who do this, people who teach their own laws as being God’s laws are the people who do not know him, who’s hearts are far from him.
Now, does this apply to everyone who holds a conviction over someone else as law? No, but the point is that same as it was last week: it’s dangerous to take your personal conviction and make it binding to someone else. It’s even more dangerous to write those convictions down and hold believers accountable to it.
Why?
Because of many of the same reasons we discussed last week: it causes you to rely on your commandments instead of God’s. It causes you to defend your creed and not scripture.
If someone has a rule in their life that they think I should be following I ask one simple question: “Is that your rule, or is that God’s rule?”
If it’s God’s rule, then yes, we are all covenantally bound to it.
If it’s your rule, you may be bound to it, inasmuch as I may not be bound to it.
Close:
Why is this so important to me? Why, of all the worthwhile teaching in scripture to I get so impassioned about this topic?
Two reasons:
- We train young believers and young families at this church, and many of them are with us for a season, and then they go down the road aways and find another church. I want them to find excellent churches. Rarely a week goes by when I don’t get an email, phone call, or text from a former HBCer who is picking my brain about a theological or church issue. I feel it is essential to teach a proper understanding of the difference between God’s Law and Man’s Law.
- I think sometimes we forget that there are Pharisees all around us. The were not just Biblical figures, but representations of what man has always struggled with: the need to define ourselves by our own terms. And, our terms are not always God’s terms. Things like church covenants or creeds in an of themselves are not necessarily problematic, but if we see them as binding they can lead us to Landmarkism (believing our church or our denomination is the only truly saved church.) It can also lead to splits between denominations and churches over secondary and tertiary issues. It can lead to splits within the church. It can lead to arrogance.
And if I were to describe for you a person who wrote their own convictional laws, made others adhere to them to be part of the group, looked down on other professing believers who did not subscribe to these laws, and separated and judged those who didn’t share with them, I could be describing a Christian in 2013 in Ashland, Ohio as easily as I could be describing one of the Pharisees or Scribes that Jesus rebuked in this passage almost 2000 years ago.