Spiritual Pharisees, Luke 16:14-18

As we have been looking at the last few chapters, we have noticed a steady downward progression in the attitude of the scribes and Pharisees towards Jesus and His gospel which He has been preaching.  At first, there was a curiosity on the part of the Pharisees towards Jesus.  They heard great crowds were following Him.  They heard that He was supposed to be a great teacher.  They heard about some of the miracles that He was doing.  And so they had a certain curiosity to see what He was doing.

Then that curiosity progressed to the point of becoming offended by Him.  When they got past the novelty of Him and His preaching they began to understand that often He was condemning them as well.  That was an uncomfortable position to be in. They were used to having people compliment them because of how religious they were.  They were used to people noticing their good works.  And so when Jesus lumps them into the same territory as all the rest of the sinners they were offended.

In this case, it says in verse 14 that they were offended because they were lovers of money.  That means that they loved the currency of the world.  They were living to satisfy their carnal desires with the things that money could buy and yet putting up a religious veneer of self righteousness before men.

Soon that offended attitude morphed into an attitude of finding fault.  They began to try to pick at His message.  They found fault with His disciples.  They tried to find something that He was doing wrong so that they could justify themselves.  His message made them feel guilty, so they tried to find fault with Him so they could feel better about themselves.

And then by the time we get to the last chapter, 15:2, you read that they began to grumble about Him.  That means they began to vocalize their irritation.  They began to complain, to talk about Him behind His back.  They tried to tear down His reputation.  They tried to influence others to turn away from Him by speaking ill of Him.

Now today, as we look at this passage, we see that their grumbling has turned to scorn.  They began to scoff at Him.   That means they began to openly ridicule Him.  Their attitude towards Him was worsening.  It was a growing hatred that began to come out in open, public ridicule.  The Pharisees had rejected His message, they had rejected that He was the Messiah, and they are on the way to full blown hatred.

And as we continue in this gospel, we will see their hatred worsen until they reach the point of plotting His murder.  And as you know, that culminates in actually carrying out the plan to murder the Son of God by having Rome hang Him on a cross.

Listen, this should illustrate the danger of rejecting the gospel.  The danger is that as Jesus Himself said, “you are either for Me or against Me.”  It says in 1 Samuel 15 that rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft.  Jesus also recognized rebellion as a manifestation of the works of Satan.  That’s why He said to the Pharisees in John 8:44, “You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him.”  The rejection of the truth and believing a lie results in the attitude of a murderer.  And in the case of the Pharisees, they eventually act on that murderous attitude.

What a warning that should be for all of us.  In today’s relativistic society, we don’t want to believe in absolute truth.  Nothing makes the agnostic or atheist more mad than to be told that there is a God in heaven that has given us His word and that His word is absolute truth.  The world hates Christians because we believe that there is absolute truth and that truth condemns their sin.

But listen, there is another danger, and that is to put this attitude at arms length and see it as a fault of others, or see it as something that really only applies in a historical context to an extinct type of religious zealots called Pharisees, and so therefore find ourselves excused.  The danger is in thinking that this doesn’t apply to you.  But let me assure you that there are still Pharisees today in the spiritual sense of the word.  The Pharisees were much more like you and I than we would care to admit.  They believed in God.  They went to the temple regularly.  They tithed.  They fasted.  They prayed a lot, especially in public.  They read the scriptures regularly.  They even memorized large sections of it.  They were very moral people.  They kept the ten commandments.  And they participated in philanthropic events.   They did good deeds.

And yet they rejected God’s word and that rebellion grew into a hatred that eventually conspired to kill the Son of God.  Now I’m telling you that there are spiritual Pharisees alive and well in the church today.  Even in so called evangelical Christianity there is a large cross section of the church that fits the description of a Pharisee.  They believe in God.  They go to church regularly.  They tithe occasionally.  They fast on Lent.  They like to pray in public.  They even read the scriptures now and then.  They love to champion a particular religious themed book or movie.  They are considered good moral people in the community.  They appear to keep the ten commandments.  They participate in philanthropic events.  They do good deeds.  And yet I tell you that they are as rebellious Pharisees.  They are carnal and love the mammon of this world.  And in order to satisfy their desires they have rejected the complete truth of the gospel for a partial gospel, and they are in danger of having that rebellion against the truth escalate into grumbling, into scorn, and even outright hatred for the absolute truth of God’s word and His messengers.

Listen folks, you cannot separate God from His word.  You cannot pick and choose the character attributes of God that you prefer and discard the rest.  You cannot carve out a God of your own design without resulting in idol worship.  To reject the truth of God is to reject God Himself and by extension to crucify Jesus Christ.  

Please understand the truth of the gospel. The truth of the gospel starts with the law.  You cannot separate the God of justice from the God of love.  Everyone wants the God of love.  But as modern day evangelicals we recoil at the thought of the God of justice, of holiness and of righteousness that cannot tolerate sin. But when we reject the God of justice and extract those passages from scripture that sustain our doctrine of love, then actually we are rejecting the God of the Bible.

I know that it seems as though the doctrine of justice and the doctrine of love are polar opposites.  We would like to discard God’s justice and just focus on love.  But God cannot and will not be divided.  God’s love and God’s justice were met together at the cross.  That is where the justice and the wrath of God was poured out upon His only Son, so that we might be shown the love of God which results in salvation.  But one cannot exist without the other.  And any so called gospel which denies the one in favor of the other is to hold to the standards of the Pharisees.  And there are many today that are spiritual Pharisees.  Holding to a form of religion, but denying the power of it.  Denying the truth of the gospel while trying to hold on to part of it.

And that is why a lot of people have come to this church for a while, curious, intrigued by the novelty of being on the beach, having some interest in worshipping God.  But having that interest tempered by their own image of God which they have formed according to their own desires, that they might satisfy the lusts of the flesh without guilt.  And that is why so many have come and gone.  That is why some people’s attitudes have progressed from curiosity to becoming offended by my preaching concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.  And that is why their attitude has degenerated to the point of grumbling and outright scorn and ridicule and even hatred.

So there is still today a type of spiritual Pharisee in the church.  And in addressing this attitude of the Pharisees which has progressed to open scoffing and derision of the gospel,  Jesus presents a couple of principles and then an illustration which characterize spiritual Pharisees.

The first principle is spiritual Pharisees justify themselves to men, but  not to God. Vs. 15, “And He said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of men, but God knows your hearts; for that which is highly esteemed among men is detestable in the sight of God.”  Paul spoke of this same principle in 2Cor. 10:12
“For we are not bold to class or compare ourselves with some of those who commend themselves; but when they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are without understanding.”  

The problem is that spiritual Pharisees have a wrong standard; they measure themselves by themselves.  They compare themselves to one another, to the guy down the street.  They see themselves as better than others because they are using the wrong standard.  That is the standard  of relativism.  That’s the standard of the culture.  It’s the standard of what seems right in their own eyes.  The standard of what they think should be important or not important to God.

This standard is not based on the word of God, it’s not based on God’s standard, but it’s based on what they collectively have extracted or redacted from the word of God to produce their own version of the truth.  Paul says such people lack understanding.  He says in Romans 10:3 “For not knowing about God’s righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God.”

God established the standard of righteousness in the Law.  That is where the attributes of a holy God are established.  The law is where the standards of righteousness are established.  The law is the beginning of the gospel.  It shows us our sinfulness and causes the repentant to fly unto Christ as His Savior.  But the spiritual Pharisee has either eliminated the law altogether or altered it to meet his own specifications.  He refuses to accept God’s standard, and so he is without understanding of who God is, and actually ends up rebelling against God, scoffing at God’s standards.

Such an attitude may justify you in the sight of men.  People may think you are really religious as they observe your rituals.  They may think you are really spiritual as they witness your external veneer of religion.  But Jesus says, “But God knows your hearts.”  God knows if you have really repented or not.  He knows when you refuse to bow the knee to God because you want to hold on to your sin.  Such was the case with the Pharisees.  They had altered the law.  They had lawyers work out the extent of the law so that they could appear to be keeping it, but in fact work it to their advantage.  But God knows the hearts.  He knows the motivation.  As Jesus preached in the Sermon on the Mount, if you hate your brother you are guilty of murder.  If you lust for a woman in your heart you are guilty of adultery.  God knows your heart.  He knows your motives.  He knows your thoughts.

Jesus condemns this kind of self justification in Matt. 23:25.  “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside they are full of robbery and self-indulgence.  You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and of the dish, so that the outside of it may become clean also.”  This is where spiritual Pharisees go wrong.  They  seek justification from men before justification before God.  And so they go about cleaning the exterior, doing good works, cleaning up their act, turning over a new leaf, quitting drinking, etc., but they have never been cleansed from within.  Jesus said clean the inside first, and then the outside may become clean also.  And the only way to be clean on the inside is by repentance of your sins and completely humbling yourself before God by faith in Christ, resulting in forgiveness.  Then when the inside is clean, the outside can become clean.  That is the process of sanctification where by the Spirit of God working in you conforms you to the image of Jesus Christ.  Don’t be deceived, God desires good works.  That is why we are saved. Eph. 2:10, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”  But good deeds is a result of working out your salvation, not the means of working for your salvation.  The inside must be  supernaturally cleaned first.

The second principle of a spiritual Pharisee is they are unwilling to pay the price of becoming a disciple.  Now this principle is couched in a rather obscure statement that Jesus made concerning the law in vs. 16; “The Law and the Prophets were proclaimed until John; since that time the gospel of the kingdom of God has been preached, and everyone is forcing his way into it.” Here is the way to understand this verse.  Remember He is addressing the Pharisees.  They believed they were accepted by God because of their nationality.  The Law and the Prophets refers to the Old Testament covenant which was given to the Jews.  It was given to the children of Abraham through Moses to the Israelites at Mt. Sinai.  And so there was a degree of entitlement that these Pharisees had because they traced their lineage back to Abraham. They thought they were born into the kingdom of God.  They were true Jews and everyone else was in their eyes considered a sinner.   Furthermore, they thought that they were entitled to the kingdom because they were circumcised.  This was probably the most important law of all in their minds.  You could not even enter the temple grounds unless you had been circumcised.  The rabbis actually taught that Father Abraham stood at the gates of Hades and checked to make sure that no circumcised Jews entered into hell.

So these were the two pillars of Judaism that the Pharisees rested upon. Their nationality and their circumcision.  Both of them outward, external signs of their self righteousness.  And thirdly, there was the keeping of the rest of the law.  However, they had added volumes to the law in writings called the Mishna which on the surface had the appearance of being fastidious in keeping the law, but in reality had limited the law, and provided ways of getting around the law of God.  But in their minds at least, and in the minds of others, they thought they were keeping the law.  The bottom line was that the Pharisees rejected the gospel, because they saw no need for repentance. They thought they were in the kingdom. It was theirs by right, by virtue of keeping certain requirements of the covenant.  That’s why Jesus tells a leader of the Pharisees named Nicodemus that in order to enter the kingdom of God he needed to born all over again.  His nationality counted for nothing.

So Jesus contrasts that attitude of entitlement with the gospel of repentance.  He says the old covenant was taught until John the Baptist, but since then the gospel of repentance has been preached, and those that heeded that call to repentance are rushing to it.  The idea is that while Pharisees rejected the gospel in their self righteousness, meanwhile sinners were forcing their way into the kingdom out of their desperation.  

This principle is found in chapter 15 when Jesus gave three parables; the lost sheep, the lost coin and the prodigal son.  In each case, the one that was lost was accepted back into the house, in other words accepted into the kingdom with great celebration and rejoicing.  Jesus said that heaven rejoiced over one sinner that repents rather than those 9 or 99 or the one brother who needed no repentance.  Because the door to the kingdom of heaven is none other than Jesus Christ, and you enter that door by faith in His ability to pay for your sins and repentance from your sins.  That is why Jesus said He came to seek and to save those that were lost.  Quite simply, you cannot be saved unless you first realize you are lost.  It doesn’t matter what kind of external  actions you have done which justify you in the sight of other men.  What justifies you before God is a broken and contrite heart that throws oneself in desperation at the feet of Jesus and begs for forgiveness.  That person that is willing to count the cost of leaving the world, leaving the lusts of the world, forsaking the pride of life, the pursuit of money, the pursuit of career, in total surrender, in desperation coming to Christ for forgiveness.  That is who the kingdom of God belongs to.

The principle goes back even to chapter 14:27 when Jesus said, “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.”  It refers to vs. 33 when Jesus said, “So then, none of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions.” It goes back to vs. 26 when Jesus said, “If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.”  Those that are willing to do whatever it takes, to surrender everything, those are the ones that are forcing their way into the kingdom, while the self righteous, the complacent, and the self justified are unwilling to surrender everything and so are outside.

I’m afraid that spiritual Pharisees are still taking that attitude even today in the church.  They have an attitude of entitlement.  We have a version of the gospel that is prevalent today among many evangelicals which is that as Americans we are the recipients of God’s grace.  We call ourselves a Christian nation.  We think that God owes us an upper middle class version of the prosperity gospel.  It’s too bad for the poor Christians being martyred for their faith in other parts of the world like the Middle East or Far East.  But we are the favored ones.  We have an inside track with God and if you just claim some sort of relationship to God based on feelings or good works or whatever then God is obligated to make all your dreams come true.  It’s not that different than what the Pharisees believed.  Spiritual Pharisees are not willing to pay any price of carnality for the kingdom of God.  They want their heaven on earth and eternity too.  But Jesus makes it clear that you can’t have both, you can’t serve God and mammon.

Then Jesus adds the statement found in vs. 17 which is a segue to the following illustration.  He says in vs. 17, “But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one stroke of a letter of the Law to fail.”  I heard one linguist expert say it like this;  not one little stroke (jot or tittle) of a letter refers to something like the difference between the capital letter F and the capital letter E.  That one little stroke that distinguishes a capital F from a capital E.  It would be easier in the sight of God for all the heavens, all the sun, moon and stars to be swept away into oblivion than to eliminate one little part of just one letter of the law.

Now that should give us a glimpse of how important God considers His law.  As I said earlier, the law presents the standard of God.  It’s unattainable.  It’s beyond our reach.  The law condemns us and shows us our need for a Savior.  Jesus said in Matt. 5:17, “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.”

Listen, what Jesus is teaching in this passage is that yes, the old covenant taught the law and the prophets, and then since John the gospel of Christ is preached, but God hasn’t stopped counting sin.  God hasn’t stopped counting trespasses.  God just counts them against Jesus Christ.  For those that come to Him in repentance and faith, surrendering everything to follow Him, God counts our sins upon Jesus and transfers His righteousness upon us.  Jesus didn’t do away with the Law.  Jesus kept the law perfectly.  He was the only person to ever do so.  And He did it as a man, that we might be saved through faith in Him.  2Cor. 5: 21 says, “God made Him (that is Jesus) who knew no sin, to become sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.”

Then finally, Jesus gives an illustration of the statement that He made concerning the law; that not even the smallest part of the law can be annulled or done away with.  And this illustration must have hit these Pharisees pretty hard, because it was an illustration of exactly the way that the Pharisees had adjusted the law to accommodate their lusts.

Jesus says in vs. 18, “Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries one who is divorced from a husband commits adultery.”  Jesus is referencing the law concerning divorce found in Duet. 24.  And though the law had required that the penalty for adultery was to be death, yet the rabbis had used a contingency of Moses to change the law to say that you could divorce your wife for basically anything that you felt she had done wrong.  Literally the rabbis taught that if your wife burned your breakfast that was grounds for divorce.

In Matthew 19 some Pharisees asked Jesus about divorce.  They said, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?”  And Jesus quoted from Genesis which says, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning MADE THEM MALE AND FEMALE, and said, ‘FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH’? “So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.” They said to Him, “Why then did Moses command to GIVE HER A CERTIFICATE OF DIVORCE AND SEND her AWAY?” He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.  And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

In Mal. Chapter 2 it says clearly that God hates divorce.  And yet they had changed the law to accommodate their carnal desires.  And still they claimed that they were keepers of the law.  In fact they were adulterers and were guilty of the punishment of death according to the law.

Spiritual Pharisees today change the law for the sake of accommodating their desires as well. Under the claim of grace they have thrown the moral laws of God under the bus. Divorce rates are as high in Christian churches as it is in the world. But please understand that God’s standard of sin hasn’t changed.  God’s standard of righteousness hasn’t changed.  And God’s standard of justice hasn’t changed either.  God will judge all unrighteousness.  God will hold everyone accountable for what he has done. 2Cor. 5:10 says, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.”

Listen, the only hope for all of us is to throw ourselves before the throne of God and ask for forgiveness of our sins.  As it says in Isaiah 53, we need to recognize that all we like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned everyone to his own way.  And that the only way for us to be made right before God is for  the LORD to cause the iniquity of us all to fall on Christ.  If we are going to be acceptable to God, to enter into the kingdom of God, then  Christ’s righteousness is the only way.  And the only way we can appropriate salvation is to turn from our sin in repentance and throw ourselves upon the mercy of God and ask for forgiveness.

I will close with Isaiah 55:6 which says, “Seek the LORD while He may be found; Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way And the unrighteous man his thoughts; And let him return to the LORD, And He will have compassion on him, And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon.”