Nice & Wavy
Well-Known Member
This topic is important for us to ponder upon
Be blessed, sisters!
Pharisees:
They were the most meticulous Jewish students of the Mosiac law and the most rigorous enforcers of it's details. The tradition had grown up that there were 246 positive commandments in the Law (the first five books of the Bible) and 365 prohibitions. Getting these right and keeping them meticulously was the vocation of the Pharisees...
Pharisees... there was no group that awakened anger and aching in the heart of Jesus like they did. (Matt. 23)
But Jesus still longed for them to know him - Matt. 23:37 - this longing for the Pharisees was also expressed in the parable of the prodigal son. The elder brother represents the Pharisees and scribes - for they had grumbled that Jesus had eaten with sinners and he told this parable of the prodigal in response to them...
The point of the parable was that Jesus' eating with sinners was not God's complicity with sin but God's pursuit of sinners.
But at the end of the parable Jesus reaches out to the Pharisee -- He describes the father (who represents God) as coming out and entreating the pharisaic older son to join the celebration of his lost brother's being back home.
In other words, this part of the parable is a merciful offer to the Pharisees to join the celebration of grace in Jesus' life and ministry.
But the brother would not leave his position of self-righteousness "servant" to join the joyful position of being a son. He sees himself as a deserving servant, not a freely loved son.
God loves mercy.
He not only extended it through this parable to the "sinner" but to those who thought they were not the "sinner" - he extended an invitation of grace. The parable is open-ended...
The Pharisees who are listening should hear an invitation to them: Jesus will welcome them into the celebration of grace and salvation if they will lay down their judgmental self-righteousness and delight in mercy.
But very few of the Pharisees, as far as we know, made that move.
The Pharisees - consumed with legalism, judgmentalism, their own servanthood - their good deeds and good name - were entrenched in enmity towards Jesus to the end. They continued to create rules and preserve traditions to appease their consciences and receive the praise of men. The reward they sought for what they did was not the enjoyment of God's fellowship and praising Him for His mercy and then extending that to others - but for the admiration of others.
This love affair with the praise of men made GENUINE faith in the self-sacrificing Christ impossible.
So Jesus said to them:
"How can you believe, when you receive GLORY FROM ONE ANOTHER and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?" (Jn. 5:44)
What made the Pharisees and their idolatry so ugly to Jesus was that it all came in religious clothing.
This was the essence of what He called hypocrisy ...
"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence..." (Matt. 23:25)
Cleaning the outside of the cup refers to using the law of God to conceal the rejection of God. This made Jesus more angry than anything else.
"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanliness. So you outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy..." (Matt. 23:27-28)
These are strong words: greed, self-indulgence, dead bones, unclean, hypocrisy, and lawlessness.
ALL OF THIS CLOAKED WITH LAW-KEEPING EXACTITUDE.
"For I tell you that unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven..." Matt. 5:20
The "righteousness" of the Pharisees was their own. Jesus shows us through the parable of the prodigal - that it is the righteousness and the mercy of God that covers the lost son -- not his own righteousness that saves him and brings him into fellowship with the father, but the love and compassion and the mercy of the father who celebrates in the salvation of his lost son.
What does Jesus mean that our righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees? it's talking about CLEANING THE INSIDE OF THE CUP.
The Pharisees majored on the minors of righteousness.
Jesus calls us to major on the heart. The inside.
The Pharisaic heart majors on the minors - this kind of heart protects and provides for itself by LOOKING "righteous" on the outside...
for example...
-It is easier to say God is faithful than it is to trust Him in your heart.
-It is easier to smile and look happy than to not hold contempt against those who don't do as you like.
-It is easier to eat "the right foods" than to have true self denial in your heart.
-It is easier to look good as a family than actually have a patient and loving heart as a mother.
-It is easier to dress a certain way that may appear more righteous than to not judge others in your heart.
-It is easier to not get involved with someone maybe that we shouldn't than it is to be pure in our hearts (impure is anything that takes God's place or lessons the degree of our faith in and our love for God and those we are called to be faithful to.)
-It is easier to tithe than to love justice and mercy.
-It is easier to listen to only certain kinds of music than to pray without ceasing.
-It is easier to do all sorts of outward things then clean up the inside of the cup!
The outside is easy -- saying all the right things, wearing the right things, living a certain way -- having a clean outside of the cup and plate. When we major on the minors, we become blind to any sense of spiritual proportions.
"You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!" (Matt. 23:24) is how Jesus describes this.
What makes matters worse: when the blind become "guides", other people are hurt, even destroyed.
When the blind become guides, their spiritual blindness and deadness is both suicidal to their own spiritual life, and murderous to others. They are destroying themselves and others.
"Woe to you Pharisees! Jesus warned. "For you are like unmarked graves, and people walk over them without knowing it."
Coming in contact with the dead was viewed as defiling in that day. Ironically, in all the Pharisees efforts to remain "clean" through their "righteousness" they proved to be not only dead themselves but hurtful to others in their deadness.
Amazingly, the Pharisees did not care. As is regularly the case with self-righteous hypocrites, their attitudes to others is mercilessly DEMANDING. In otherwords, their use of the law is MERCILESS.
Once my husband approached someone who had grossly misjudged us. He encouraged him to take a look at what the Bible says about judging others, to which the casual reply was basically, "Well, it's not just you, we judge everyone we come in contact with."
In otherwords, we can't help the fact that we find ourselves always seeing what we think is wrong with someone on the outside - it's not that big of deal, it's just apart of life.
And that's true - it can become a part of life, a way of life, a habit - a blindness... I have been guilty!
Some of you like myself, might have once been, or are under, a blind guide that is mercilessly demanding in regards to a set of laws either man-made or derived from Scriptures. Maybe even rejected or cast out because you didn't go with a particular way that the "outside of the cup" was to be cleaned according to that blind guide. . .
Maybe there has been hurt by merciless demands - constant judgments made over the minors, by those who found looking righteous on the outside something quite rehearsed and habitual -- though the inside of their cup was filled with idolatry, self-righteousness, judgments, self-love, feasting on the praise of men. Continually cleaning the outside, but blind to what was coming out of their own heart.
The ONLY external behavior that counts with Jesus is what grows out of the transformed heart.
And that external behavior is generated by the Holy Spirit - not others, not man made lists of rules and such. He is the Helper. As we are in fellowship with Jesus, as we pursue Him and cleaning the inside of the cup - He will guide us and lead us - and He will clean the outside of the cup.
The righteousness which is pleasing to God is an inward righteousness of mind and motive. Of course this true righteousness will have external visible expression in life. What is often confusing to me is all the telling of what this visible expression is to look like - with the same attitude of the Pharisees.
Have you been guided by a blind judgmental guide to believe that external righteousness can only look a certain way? Do you judge folks by the way they do this or that that is different than you on the outside of the cup?
Any of us can fall into the "older brother" category - the Pharisee, the scribes, the blind guides. The righteousness that EXCEEDS the Pharisees' righteousness is the heart that trusts in Jesus and treasures Him above money, praise, sex, and everything else in the world.
...When our hearts do not treasure Jesus in this way, we focus on the outside of our cup, and the outside of other people's cup.
Be blessed, sisters!
Pharisees:
They were the most meticulous Jewish students of the Mosiac law and the most rigorous enforcers of it's details. The tradition had grown up that there were 246 positive commandments in the Law (the first five books of the Bible) and 365 prohibitions. Getting these right and keeping them meticulously was the vocation of the Pharisees...
Pharisees... there was no group that awakened anger and aching in the heart of Jesus like they did. (Matt. 23)
But Jesus still longed for them to know him - Matt. 23:37 - this longing for the Pharisees was also expressed in the parable of the prodigal son. The elder brother represents the Pharisees and scribes - for they had grumbled that Jesus had eaten with sinners and he told this parable of the prodigal in response to them...
The point of the parable was that Jesus' eating with sinners was not God's complicity with sin but God's pursuit of sinners.
But at the end of the parable Jesus reaches out to the Pharisee -- He describes the father (who represents God) as coming out and entreating the pharisaic older son to join the celebration of his lost brother's being back home.
In other words, this part of the parable is a merciful offer to the Pharisees to join the celebration of grace in Jesus' life and ministry.
But the brother would not leave his position of self-righteousness "servant" to join the joyful position of being a son. He sees himself as a deserving servant, not a freely loved son.
God loves mercy.
He not only extended it through this parable to the "sinner" but to those who thought they were not the "sinner" - he extended an invitation of grace. The parable is open-ended...
The Pharisees who are listening should hear an invitation to them: Jesus will welcome them into the celebration of grace and salvation if they will lay down their judgmental self-righteousness and delight in mercy.
But very few of the Pharisees, as far as we know, made that move.
The Pharisees - consumed with legalism, judgmentalism, their own servanthood - their good deeds and good name - were entrenched in enmity towards Jesus to the end. They continued to create rules and preserve traditions to appease their consciences and receive the praise of men. The reward they sought for what they did was not the enjoyment of God's fellowship and praising Him for His mercy and then extending that to others - but for the admiration of others.
This love affair with the praise of men made GENUINE faith in the self-sacrificing Christ impossible.
So Jesus said to them:
"How can you believe, when you receive GLORY FROM ONE ANOTHER and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?" (Jn. 5:44)
What made the Pharisees and their idolatry so ugly to Jesus was that it all came in religious clothing.
This was the essence of what He called hypocrisy ...
"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence..." (Matt. 23:25)
Cleaning the outside of the cup refers to using the law of God to conceal the rejection of God. This made Jesus more angry than anything else.
"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanliness. So you outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy..." (Matt. 23:27-28)
These are strong words: greed, self-indulgence, dead bones, unclean, hypocrisy, and lawlessness.
ALL OF THIS CLOAKED WITH LAW-KEEPING EXACTITUDE.
"For I tell you that unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven..." Matt. 5:20
The "righteousness" of the Pharisees was their own. Jesus shows us through the parable of the prodigal - that it is the righteousness and the mercy of God that covers the lost son -- not his own righteousness that saves him and brings him into fellowship with the father, but the love and compassion and the mercy of the father who celebrates in the salvation of his lost son.
What does Jesus mean that our righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees? it's talking about CLEANING THE INSIDE OF THE CUP.
The Pharisees majored on the minors of righteousness.
Jesus calls us to major on the heart. The inside.
The Pharisaic heart majors on the minors - this kind of heart protects and provides for itself by LOOKING "righteous" on the outside...
for example...
-It is easier to say God is faithful than it is to trust Him in your heart.
-It is easier to smile and look happy than to not hold contempt against those who don't do as you like.
-It is easier to eat "the right foods" than to have true self denial in your heart.
-It is easier to look good as a family than actually have a patient and loving heart as a mother.
-It is easier to dress a certain way that may appear more righteous than to not judge others in your heart.
-It is easier to not get involved with someone maybe that we shouldn't than it is to be pure in our hearts (impure is anything that takes God's place or lessons the degree of our faith in and our love for God and those we are called to be faithful to.)
-It is easier to tithe than to love justice and mercy.
-It is easier to listen to only certain kinds of music than to pray without ceasing.
-It is easier to do all sorts of outward things then clean up the inside of the cup!
The outside is easy -- saying all the right things, wearing the right things, living a certain way -- having a clean outside of the cup and plate. When we major on the minors, we become blind to any sense of spiritual proportions.
"You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!" (Matt. 23:24) is how Jesus describes this.
What makes matters worse: when the blind become "guides", other people are hurt, even destroyed.
When the blind become guides, their spiritual blindness and deadness is both suicidal to their own spiritual life, and murderous to others. They are destroying themselves and others.
"Woe to you Pharisees! Jesus warned. "For you are like unmarked graves, and people walk over them without knowing it."
Coming in contact with the dead was viewed as defiling in that day. Ironically, in all the Pharisees efforts to remain "clean" through their "righteousness" they proved to be not only dead themselves but hurtful to others in their deadness.
Amazingly, the Pharisees did not care. As is regularly the case with self-righteous hypocrites, their attitudes to others is mercilessly DEMANDING. In otherwords, their use of the law is MERCILESS.
Once my husband approached someone who had grossly misjudged us. He encouraged him to take a look at what the Bible says about judging others, to which the casual reply was basically, "Well, it's not just you, we judge everyone we come in contact with."
In otherwords, we can't help the fact that we find ourselves always seeing what we think is wrong with someone on the outside - it's not that big of deal, it's just apart of life.
And that's true - it can become a part of life, a way of life, a habit - a blindness... I have been guilty!
Some of you like myself, might have once been, or are under, a blind guide that is mercilessly demanding in regards to a set of laws either man-made or derived from Scriptures. Maybe even rejected or cast out because you didn't go with a particular way that the "outside of the cup" was to be cleaned according to that blind guide. . .
Maybe there has been hurt by merciless demands - constant judgments made over the minors, by those who found looking righteous on the outside something quite rehearsed and habitual -- though the inside of their cup was filled with idolatry, self-righteousness, judgments, self-love, feasting on the praise of men. Continually cleaning the outside, but blind to what was coming out of their own heart.
The ONLY external behavior that counts with Jesus is what grows out of the transformed heart.
And that external behavior is generated by the Holy Spirit - not others, not man made lists of rules and such. He is the Helper. As we are in fellowship with Jesus, as we pursue Him and cleaning the inside of the cup - He will guide us and lead us - and He will clean the outside of the cup.
The righteousness which is pleasing to God is an inward righteousness of mind and motive. Of course this true righteousness will have external visible expression in life. What is often confusing to me is all the telling of what this visible expression is to look like - with the same attitude of the Pharisees.
Have you been guided by a blind judgmental guide to believe that external righteousness can only look a certain way? Do you judge folks by the way they do this or that that is different than you on the outside of the cup?
Any of us can fall into the "older brother" category - the Pharisee, the scribes, the blind guides. The righteousness that EXCEEDS the Pharisees' righteousness is the heart that trusts in Jesus and treasures Him above money, praise, sex, and everything else in the world.
...When our hearts do not treasure Jesus in this way, we focus on the outside of our cup, and the outside of other people's cup.
