RECOGNIZING MODERN-DAY PHARISEES ‘HIDING’ IN PLAIN SIGHT ~ EXPOSING HYPOCRISY ~ Part 36

‘Pharisees and scribes’—do they exist today? Who are they, and what do they look like? We tend to think of them as those religious elite who give others a bad taste in their mouths for ‘religion’. They are those who get pointed to as the greatest of all hypocrites. The mere phrase, ‘religious elite’, may immediately conjure up objectionable or offensive images in your mind that connote hypocrisy of some sort. But what if modern-day Pharisees aren’t just those flaunting themselves as leaders in the church? What if you happen to live with a modern-day Pharisee? What if the reflection you see staring back at you in the mirror each morning God sees as pharisaical?

Do YOU have a pharisaical heart? This could be a danger for those who seem to fit the old adage of having too much ‘head knowledge but no heart knowledge’ and sometimes even for those described as ‘so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good’. But what do these cliches even mean? For example, it’s good to have knowledge, and one cannot be too heavenly minded. Instead of camping upon worldly cliches, we need to get our definitions from Scripture alone.

Truth must always be balanced with love—even that concept must be clarified. If you are out of balance on the side of love, perhaps you have never really understood why Jesus was so harsh in His repeated diatribes against the Pharisees and scribes. You don’t understand why it would ever be loving to call out false teachers or why it matters so much that heretical doctrine be exposed. By today’s worldly standards, Jesus was intolerant and unloving!

 

Maybe you have re-defined a more palatable Jesus. “The Jesus I serve would never do that! My Jesus is loving towards all people and lets everyone come to Him just as they are, never demanding exclusive allegiance.” You even use Ephesians 4:15—speaking the truth in love—to justify your claims.

 

Ephesians 4:15, in the context of church unity and spiritual maturity, says that we must always speak the truth in love. Why? So that the Body of Christ can grow in maturity. A good parent speaks hard truths to correct false thinking that leads to bad behavior—even giving hard lessons to their children out of heart of love—so that their children will grow up to be mature, responsible citizens. Maturity will protect them from many dangers in this world. New believers, easily deceived, are also to be trained in the truths of God’s Word so they can grow up spiritually to be mature, responsible citizens of God’s kingdom.

 

The motivation by mature believers to come alongside those new to the faith is love for Christ as much as love for that new babe who belongs to Him. This love is intended to build up, not to tear down. The mature in the faith—who disciple those weaker in the faith—are held to the same standards in Christ. That ultimate standard is the righteousness of Christ. The mature believer and the younger believer alike are both still growing, still being sanctified (progressively made more like Christ). Just like parents make mistakes with their children, no Christian will ever ‘have arrived’ while living in this world. Continually putting off falsehood, speaking truth to their neighbor, putting off their old self— which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires—and being made new in the attitude of their minds, they teach the younger to do the same while extending grace in allowing for room to grow according to one’s age. In humility, all believers are to be continually putting on the new self which has been created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

On the other hand, the proud man is deceptive and defrauds others through lies. This pride cannot be built up but must be torn down! The Pharisees and scribes, in one word, can be characterized as proud, all the while believing they are truly humble people. The proud, however, hide their shortcomings, weaknesses, and failures—their sin—from others in an effort to make themselves look good in their eyes. All the while, God sees their hearts. Dishonesty is not only unloving; it is abusive! Making others believe that to be true and right which is false and wrong is the heart of deception. Deceivers can do no other because they are under delusion themselves. It has been said that the worst victims of delusion are those who attempt to delude others.

As Christians, we are called even to love our enemies. We are called to love those who do not know Christ. While modern-day Pharisees claim to know Christ, their character and their actions prove otherwise. How does a Christian show love to any unbeliever? Is it exclusively or primarily by first meeting physical needs, as the world would have us believe? Is meeting the physical or material needs of unbelievers to be the primary focus of the Christians responsibility in loving those in the world? No. It is to share with them the truth of the gospel. There is no higher need of man. A homeless man may die tomorrow with a full belly, and his body covered in a king’s attire; but if he is spiritually bankrupt, hungry, and naked, he will spend all eternity in the judgment of Hell’s fires. Are we to focus on making sure people live their best lives now or focus on their greatest need which will affect their eternity?

 

It is the world that would view ‘speaking the truth in love’ as simply speaking pleasantries and having a gentle demeanor. Because the world does not know the Truth, it can never define what ‘speaking the truth in love’ is from a biblical perspective. It is true that 1 Peter 3:15 says, “We must always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks us to give the reason for the hope that we have with gentleness and respect.” We share the truth of the Gospel—with all its hard truths—because we love the people for whom Christ died. Biblical love demands that we speak God’s truth clearly and unapologetically based on truth.

 

Where do legalists come from? We were all born legalists. We were all born believing we could earn or that we deserve heaven. We were all born resisting grace. We all grew up with the underlying false belief that we were better than we really are in God’s eyes and even in the eyes of the world. Grace confronts us by letting us know this vital, urgent truth—we are wretched sinners who can never do anything to save ourselves. John Piper says that legalism is “the conviction that law-keeping is the ground for our acceptance with God—it is a failure to be amazed at grace.” We believe we are ‘good enough’ to go to heaven. This is heard in the response of people who are asked if they believe they will go to heaven when they die with, “I believe I’m a good person. I hope I’m good enough.” This is a faulty foundation to stand upon. It is a sinking sand lie. We can never be good enough!

 

True believers grow in their wisdom and knowledge of God unto righteousness. The more we know Christ, the more our focus will be on the object of our soul’s greatest affection. When deceiving hypocrites come along, they will quickly be seen for what they are. Believers grow in their righteousness, and 2 Timothy 3:13 says that “evil people and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.” Barnes says that the general law of depravity is that if men are not converted, they are always growing worse, and sinking deeper into iniquity. The context of the passage in 2 Timothy is that believers are to expect persecution because evil people will continue in their wicked ways.

 

Pharisees have assuaged their guilt and fears by padding themselves with layers of knowledge, morality, and religion. 1 Corinthians 8:1 says: “Knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies.” Having biblically defined love is the proof of knowing God, not knowledge. Unfortunately, for the Pharisee, what one sees on the outside of their cup is not on the inside. When someone is around the Pharisee long enough, their hypocrisy will spill out of their pristinely polished cups. Someone has said that while we are all born legalists, the Pharisee is an informed legalist! He has the knowledge of ‘religion’, but no love for God or His people.

 

To the Pharisee, grace is appalling. That he or she is in the same category as rapists, prostitutes, and murderers—those Christ came to save—is a preposterous concept. The same grace that saves the ‘lowest dregs of society’ could never apply to someone who stands on his own morals and righteousness.

 

So, while we can draw a line from the Pharisees and scribes in Jesus’ day to leaders who set themselves up as the ‘religious elite’, we can also see that line extending to many parishioners sitting in the pews with the same proud, independent hearts. Censorious, they are quick to point out and criticize what they deem as sin in others but not so quick to acknowledge or repent of their own real sin. Whether seating themselves in the chair of authority as a leader in the church or sitting in the pew, Pharisees’ motives are impure. Their façade is meant to deceive. Practicing their faith strictly to be seen by others, they crave admiration and want to be highly thought of by their followers. The question we must all ask ourselves is: Is my focus to be known and loved by men or to know Christ?  

 

Pharisees drive people away from Jesus rather than drawing them to Him when they witness the grace He has poured out on others. They appeal to man’s sense of pride rather than helping him see his true wretchedness. Others should be able to look at our lives and be amazed by God’s grace. True believers don’t pretend to be someone or something they are not. They are real, exposed, and vulnerable. They are not embarrassed by their weakness knowing it is the platform on which the ultimate proof that Christ alone is strong in them and more than sufficient to carry their burdens can be displayed. True believers are not covering their sin and hiding their needs; their lives are testimonies reflecting their dependency on Christ for everything. Christians don’t want glory they know they don’t deserve. The truth is there is not a human being who has ever lived that deserved anything but eternal death in hell except the Lord Jesus Christ. But the grace of God who saves sinners…

 

As we think back to Babel, we see the pharisaical spirit in Nimrod, the people who followed him in rebellion, and those down through the ages who have chosen to harden their proud hearts before God instead of choosing to humble and submit themselves in obedience to God who is able to mold them into the image of Christ. Building up what only seem to be lofty towers of truth upon foundations of their own convictions and traditions, the reality is their weak pillars support nothing but lies that will crumble on the day of judgment when they come face to face with the Cornerstone of all Truth.

 

Even when they stand upon the platform of helping those who are weak and needy, Pharisees lack love for the people who flock to them. God sees the difficulty with which they mask their disdain and distaste for those in need. Their sole purpose in every philanthropic endeavor is only to be seen as ‘saviors’ to weak people, never intending to actually help. Literally, they see themselves as God’s gifts to the world. Desirous of praise for any ‘good works’ they have accomplished, they disregard the notion that these works might be in God’s sight filthy rags deserving only condemnation.

 

In love with themselves, they cover their own sin instead of confessing and repenting of it. After all, they see no need to be held accountable by others for ‘God alone’ holds them accountable. After all, how could anyone hold them accountable when everyone else is beneath them? A law unto themselves, they are their own ‘god’, making their own rules and laws that can easily be rationalized for ‘their greater good’. In one thing they are right: God will hold them accountable!

 

This series of blog posts has been entitled, Exposing Hypocrisy. Pharisees know all the right things to say. They speak fluent “Christianese” that they might deceive others…but their lives do not measure up against what they preach. It is only those who stand firmly upon the foundation of Scripture who will not be tossed to and fro by their every wind of doctrine.  

 

Before we move on to the fourth woman of the Apocalypse, I want to backtrack just a bit to where my thoughts originally began in this study. Some reading this blog series may have wondered why I focused so much on the Roman Catholic Church. On February 23, I posted ‘My Journey’ on the blog. I had converted to Roman Catholicism from what I had originally believed was true Christianity in the late 80’s. Then, in the early 90’s, the Lord began to draw me to His Word (and away from the Roman Catholic Church) giving me a hunger for truth that was insatiable.

My main focus of study at that time was eschatology, so I studied a lot of passages from the Old Testament prophets. I began to follow the teaching of a man who taught the Bible from a converted Jew’s perspective. It fascinated me because I could see how a converted Jew understood texts that might be more difficult for the one without that background. The Gospel of Matthew was a book he often taught from. Matthew 23 literally jumped off the page at me the first time I studied it. I couldn’t help but see the similarities between first century Judaism and Roman Catholicism now that I had my own perspective on Roman Catholicism. At the time, I didn’t see how they were tied together, but I began to ask a lot of questions.

We saw how Israel worshipped pagan idols all throughout her history in the Old Testament. The prophets continued to faithfully call her to repentance; refusing, she was eventually taken into captivity. Once her time in captivity was complete, God brought her back to Israel. But Judaism was apostate, as evidenced by the obvious hatred of its leaders (the scribes and the Pharisees) for Christ and His followers—as recorded in their many encounters with them. I could clearly see from my own studies in the Scriptures that Roman Catholicism did not resemble in any way the early church of the New Testament. So, was what caused the Jews to depart from the only religion God ordained the same thing that caused apostates to depart from the only Church Christ established? Yes!

When religious leaders replace God’s authority with that of their own, it is a fatal error. Corruption is the end result when the absolute supreme authority of Scripture is rejected and replaced with the dogmas of man. As we shall see in Matthew 23, the Pharisees seat themselves in the Chair of Moses to distort God’s Word and render their own traditions in its place. The Roman Catholic Church uses the Chair of Peter to do the same thing. John MacArthur, preaching through the Gospel of Luke, focused a great deal on the Pharisees of first century Judaism. It was eye-opening to see just how much the Catholic clergy resemble the Pharisees of that day.

Matthew 23 is a most scathing rebuke by Jesus of the Pharisees. Imagine, if you will, Jesus going into St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome and directing this diatribe against the Pontiff (‘the Vicar of Christ’) and his bishops. I have little doubt Jesus’ condemnation of the hypocritical Pharisees would apply to the Catholic clergy today. The end result of refusing to submit to God’s authority alone led the Pharisees to reject Jesus, their Messiah. The Catholic Church rejects Christ as their all-sufficient Savior. He is still hanging on every crucifix in every church and being offered up as a literal sacrifice at every Mass. (Even though He said, “It is finished!”) The application we will all be able to glean from this portion of Scripture is a warning against following false shepherds instead of the true Shepherd and tips on how to easily spot them.

Before we tackle Matthew 23, I want us to take a glance at Jeremiah 23 and Ezekiel 34—also talking about false shepherds. It would be helpful for you to spend some time in these chapters by yourself before the next blog. I will pick up there in the next blog.