Jesus and the Pharisees

7/03/22

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Sermon Transcript

Good morning. Please open your Bibles to Matthew chapter 23. Matthew chapter 23. You know, one of the most wonderful and remarkable things we learn about Jesus from the gospel accounts of his life is the gentleness with which he dealt with people. Isaiah had foretold that of him long before in Isaiah 42:2-3, “He shall not cry nor lift up nor cause his voice to be heard in the street, to bruised reed shall he not break, the smoking flack shall he not quench.” It had foretold that the Messiah, Christ, would be gentle. In Matthew 11:29, Jesus said, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls.” Paul mentioned the meekness and the gentleness of Christ in 2 Corinthians 10:1. Jesus left us many great examples to follow, but one of the most wonderful and most challenging is his example of gentleness.

And one thing we know for certain about Jesus is that he never made any mistakes in how he dealt with people. Whether he was speaking to a multitude or to an individual one-on-one, Jesus always said exactly the right thing. Jesus always took exactly the right approach. He always said whatever was most likely to do the most good. He always said whatever would most likely draw out of that person something good. Jesus saw possibilities of goodness in people where very often none others saw it. But Jesus could see it. He would try to draw that out. Jesus made people want to be better people, and he still does that today.

And yet in all of Scripture, in looking at the gentleness of Christ, there seems to be one exception with how Jesus dealt with people, and that apparent exception is remarkable in how it has such an extraordinary contrast with how we see Jesus dealing with all the others. Jesus’s language to the Pharisees and to their cohorts, the scribes, is unlike his language to anybody else. All we have to do is read, for example, Matthew 23 to see the difference.

We heard some of it read earlier today. Here it is starting in verse 27. “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. Even so, you also outwardly appear righteous unto man, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you build the tombs of the prophets and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, and say, if we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore you be witnesses unto yourselves that you are children of them which killed the prophets. Fill ye up, then, the measures of your fathers. You serpents, you generation of vipers, how can you escape the damnation of hell?” Matthew 23 has been called the rolling thunder of God’s wrath. When you read it, you see why. Jesus’ language to the Pharisees stands alone. It’s without parallel. To the Pharisees, Jesus’ language was a stern and terrible denunciation.

At least on the surface, it doesn’t seem that to the Pharisees, Jesus spoke words that would likely draw them to himself. Jesus never said a word even to the most degraded sinner that would cause that person to despise themselves or to make them think that Christ despised them. But to the Pharisees, at least on the surface, it seems that he does. Who could misunderstand these words? “You serpents, you generation of vipers, how can you escape the damnation of hell? You shut up the kingdom of heaven against men. You don’t go in yourselves. You don’t let others go in. You compass sea and land to make one proselyte and when he is made you make him two-fold the child of hell as yourselves.”

How strange those words sound when we compare them with what Jesus said to the woman caught up in adultery or to the woman of the well in Samaria who is living in sin or to the rich young ruler who turned his back on Christ. Jesus did not even speak to Satan the way he spoke to the Pharisees. Yet as strange as Jesus’s words may sound to us, we who know the real character of the Pharisees, his words must have sounded so much more strange to those who first heard them. We need to remember we know the Pharisees because the Pharisees have been exposed to us by Christ. Today the word Pharisee is a term of derision, a term of reproach, but that was not always the case. Instead, at this time when Christ was saying this, the title of Pharisee was an honored and respected name. As Jesus told them in Matthew 6:2, “you have your reward,” and that reward was the praise of men and men did praise them.

The Pharisees were seen as the strength of the synagogue. They were seen as dependable and never failing and faithful in worship and fasting and giving. Most people in that day believed if anyone was right with God it was the Pharisees. And Yet it was to the same highly respected and strictly religious Pharisees that Jesus said, “you Generation of vipers, how can you escape the damnation of hell?” No wonder that Jesus’s message for the Pharisees must have seemed incomprehensible to those who first heard it. Wouldn’t we have expected Jesus to publicly denounce those who were open flagrant sinners and who were recognized as all by all as such, who would we expect Jesus instead to denounce? These men of religious character who were viewed by men as standing so high in the kingdom? To which group would we expect Jesus to say, “Come unto me and I will give you rest”? To which group would we expect Jesus to say, “You are full of hypocrisy and iniquity”?

So we’re faced with a question here this morning. Why does Jesus direct towards this group of people alone of all the groups he dealt with? Why to this group alone does Jesus direct words so strangely different from what we see with the others? Well, Jesus himself answers that question for us or Jesus gives us enough so that we can discern the answer to that question. And he does that in Luke chapter 18. Luke chapter 18, where we find the parable of the Pharisee and the publican, starting in verse 9 of Luke chapter 18. "And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were and despised others. Two men went up into the temple to pray, the one a Pharisee and the other a Republican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, “God I thank thee that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week. I give tithes of all that I possess and the publican standing afar off would not lift up so much as his eyes into heaven but smote upon his breast saying God be merciful to me a sinner I tell you this man went down to his house justified rather than the other for everyone that exalted himself shall be a base and he that humble himself shall be exalted.”

The key verse in that parable is the opening verse because it tells us who Jesus was talking about here. He spoke this parable into certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others. The Pharisees trusted in themselves that they were righteous. In fact, they thought they’d made God their debtor. Some of the Pharisees, we are told, even kept a list of all the good things that they did so that when the time came, they could show them to God so that God would know how much he owed them. And not only did the Pharisees trust in themselves, but they despised others. And that so often goes along with trusting in your own righteousness because no one else measures up. I’m sure this Pharisee felt that no one could be as righteous as he was and so he despised all others and in fact the original Greek here means he treated all others as nothing, what it means and so this parable is directed to the Pharisees but the Pharisees are not the only group we find here.

We find someone else. We find a publican. Not a Republican. Publican. Who were the publicans? Well, the publicans were Jews who had sold their soul to the Romans. They had decided that they would be tax collectors for the hated Roman oppressors and so they would go to their fellow Jews and collect taxes and usually they collected a lot more than was owed so that they could keep all the excess. Publicans, tax collectors, in the eyes of Jesus’s listeners the publicans were social outcasts and no one could be lower than the publican. They didn’t have any character to lose. No one expected anything of them. They were so low. Who, who could ever dream of comparing the Pharisees with the publicans? Who could compare the most religious with the most immoral? They stood on wholly different planes.

It seemed to be no point at which they met and could be compared. One seemed like his whole life was centered on sacred things. The other had sold his soul for money. But Jesus does compare them. And incredibly, the judgment of Christ is in the favor of the hated publican. How could Jesus’ listeners have been so wrong about them? How could they have understood the situation so completely backwards? How could Jesus’ listeners have seen the worst people as the best and the best as the worst? Simple. They were judging things by external appearances. They saw only what was on the outside and when looked at from the outside those Pharisees looked pretty good. In fact, this Pharisee was likely telling the truth about himself here. He probably hadn’t done those things that were bad. He probably had done those things that were good. In fact, the Pharisees wanted everyone to see these things. So we see elsewhere in the Bible where Jesus talks about them doing this in public so that everyone could see them give, everyone could see them fast, everyone could see them pray.

But looks can be deceiving. In this parable Jesus cuts through that fog. How? By And how does Jesus do that? Jesus lets us see these two men at their prayers before God. If you wanna know what a person is really like, you need to see them in their prayer before God. You know, we don’t know too much about Jacob’s public life, but what we do know, it just, we have to wonder why someone who was so seemingly weak could be so honored by God. But then we read Jacob’s prayer life. “I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies of all the truth which you have showed unto your servant,” he prays in Genesis 32. You know, we read about the life of David, we see what David did in his public life, and again, it’s sometimes hard for us to understand how God viewed David. But then we read David’s prayers and we understand. “Against thee and thee only have I sinned,” he prayed in Psalm 51. If we really wanna understand this Pharisee, we really wanna understand this publican, we need to see them in their prayers, and that’s exactly how Jesus shows them to us, in their prayers before God.

To really know who is right with God and who is not, we need to see into their hearts. And Jesus opens them for us to look inside and see these two men. On the outside, no one looked more religious than the Pharisee. They could often be seen at prayer in the temple. And so what were these highly religious Pharisees praying for? They could be seen in their prayers all the time in the corners of the temple. What were they praying for? What great virtues were they striving after? What terrible sins were they asking God to forgive? Jesus lifts the curtain. Jesus discloses the secret. And here’s what the Pharisee was praying. “God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week. I get pithes of all I possess.” And that was it. No matter how lengthy the prayer may have been, no matter how repetitive it might have been, it all boiled down to that. In Luke 18:11, Jesus tells us this Pharisee prayed thus with himself. And boy, there’s a volume in that phrase, isn’t there? This man was not praying with God. This man was praying with himself and we can see that from the text of the prayer.

He had no sense of sin. He saw nothing of which to repent. He uttered no cry for pardon. He accused himself of no fault, great or small. He mentioned nothing he’d left undone. He mentioned nothing that he should have done. What we find in this prayer from this Pharisee is someone who was perfectly satisfied with himself and I’m sure he felt that God must be perfectly satisfied with him as well. And if God were not perfectly satisfied with him, it must just be because God didn’t know all the wonderful things he’d done. So let me remind him. And God goes about, and this Pharisee goes about reminding God of all the good he’d done and all the evil he’d not done. Don’t you see the pride of this Pharisee before God. If ever God had had a perfect servant, it must be this Pharisee, he thought.

This Pharisee was comfortable with himself, and he was comfortable with God, and that is so different from what we see elsewhere in the Bible with the faithful servants of God. When Isaiah saw the vision of God in the temple in Isaiah 6, he trembled with fear and he cried, “Woe is me, for I am undone, I am a man of unclean lips.” When Peter witnessed the Lord’s miraculous power in Luke 5, he cried, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” But this Pharisee had no such fear. This Pharisee was more at ease with God Almighty than was Isaiah or Peter. How could he repent? He wasn’t conscious of anything he’d done that needed repentance. How could he grow? He wasn’t conscious of any higher standard required of him that he had not already attained. What need had this Pharisee for God’s mercy or for God’s grace? I’m sure he thought he was as pleasant an object for God to observe as he was for himself to observe in the mirror each day. How possibly grasp the idea of a savior or of a redeemer. He wasn’t conscious of a need for either.

As long as there’s a sting of conscience, as long as there’s a voice of self-condemnation, and there’s a hope for recovery and growth. But this Pharisee had none of that. This Pharisee had no voice of self-condemnation. All he had was a voice of self-commendation. And that’s what the Pharisees were like. That’s what they were like on the inside, no matter what they look like on the outside. Jesus has shown us what they were like on the inside. Just as he told him in Matthew 23, “Outwardly you’re like a whited supplicant, appears beautiful outward, but within you are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.” Jesus let the secret out about the Pharisees. Yes, they were hypocrites. Yes, they relied on themselves rather than on God. Yes, they despised others. But you know what? We have not yet reached the depth of their sin. We need to look a little bit further to understand what they were really like, and we need to look a little bit further to understand why Jesus spoke to them like he did.

What have we seen about them so far? The Pharisees thought they were at peace with God. The Pharisees thought that God must be looking upon them with complete approval. The Pharisees had no thought of their own failure, their own sin. They didn’t think they had any. They thought they were the perfect example for others to follow. So here’s our next question. Were the Pharisees unique in having those thoughts about themselves or was there anybody else who had that thought about themselves? And the answer is there is one other example in the Bible of someone who was at peace with God. There is one other example in the Bible of someone else who believed and thought that God looked upon him with complete approval. There is one other example in the Bible of someone who had no thought of his own sin, no thought of his own failure. One other example in the Bible of someone who saw himself as the perfect example for others to follow. Each of those descriptions is true of Christ. In the life of Christ, there was never once even the slightest trace of a consciousness of sin or failure. Why? Because there was no sin. There was no failure in Christ.

Again and again, we are admitted into Jesus’s prayer life to see his prayers to God the Father. And never once do we see a hint of imperfection or any kind of failure or sin. Why? Because there was none. As Brent reminded us earlier, Christ had no sin. He knew no sin. Never once from the mouth of Christ do we hear a prayer for forgiveness or a cry for deliverance. Why? Because He needed no forgiveness. He needed no deliverance. Instead what we see from Christ is the most calm serene unbroken self approval Combined with the certainty that God approved of him as well. God the Father, Jesus and the Pharisees are alike in having those thoughts. Of course, they were true only of Christ. They were not true of the Pharisees but they both had those thoughts about themselves and so perhaps the greatest sin of this Pharisee was that he had put himself in the place of the Son of God. This Pharisee wanted the people to see himself rather than Christ as the perfect example of righteousness, the perfect example of moral purity. This Pharisee wanted others to take their eyes off of Christ and instead to look at him, the Pharisee, as the example of righteousness and that I think was their greatest sin and I think that then helps us go back to our original question.

Why did Jesus direct such harsh words to these Pharisees, words he used with no one else? Was it because Jesus did not love the Pharisees? We know that’s not the reason. Jesus came into this world because of God’s love for the whole world and that included every Pharisee that ever lived. Jesus came to seek and save the lost and that included the Pharisees and everybody else. We read a portion of Matthew 23 earlier, the rolling thunder of God’s wrath, but if we keep reading we’ll get to Matthew 23:37 where Jesus looks out upon the city of Jerusalem and with a broken heart says how often would I’ve gathered thy children together Even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings and you would not. Jesus loved the Pharisees. Jesus died on the cross for the Pharisees and on that cross Jesus prayed to God for the forgiveness of the Pharisees and that forgiveness was made available to them in Acts chapter 2 when Peter proclaimed the gospel to those who had crucified Christ. Jesus loved the Pharisees. So one thing we know with certainty is that his harsh words to the Pharisees were motivated by his love for them and his concern for their eternal welfare.

Well, then why not just tell the Pharisees to go and sin no more? Because they didn’t think they’d sinned at all. They thought Jesus was the sinner. How can you escape the damnation of hell? How indeed when you have no consciousness of sin? When you think you don’t need a Redeemer? When you consider yourself more pure in God’s sight than God’s own Son? Jesus knew their hearts. Jesus knew these Pharisees would be immune to the appeals that melted the hearts of others. The Pharisees were in truth not like other men, as this Pharisee boasted to himself. Why? Because they were much more hopelessly irreclaimable than other men. They were thanking God for things they ought to have been ashamed of. They were trying to push Jesus aside and put themselves in a favored position. I’m sure the Pharisees thought that if God spoke directly to them, God would have said, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Hear ye him.” In fact, some of these Pharisees had even witnessed the miracles of Christ and had ascribed them to Satan, and that’s something that Jesus told them in Mark 3 was not forgivable.

These ultra religious observers of the law were as far from the kingdom as anyone could be, and so what they needed was a harsh message to wake them up from their stupor, their spiritual stupor. As always, Jesus told his listeners exactly what they needed to hear and he told them in the way they needed to hear it. The way that was most likely to cause them to do what was right, to wake them up to their true condition. And Jesus told them these things because he loved them. It’s not his desire that anyone should perish and that includes the Pharisees.

We can learn a lot from Jesus’s example here, can’t we? Yes, we are to speak the word in love, Ephesians 4:15, but love of what? I love how R.L. Whiteside answered that. He said, “Much is said about preaching the truth in love and so it should be preached, but in love of what? The preacher should so love the truth that he will not sacrifice any of it or pervert it, and he should so love the people that he will not withhold from them even one unpleasant truth. He that does either of these things loves neither the truth nor the people.” We must preach the word in love, but in love of God in love of God’s word, in love of the lost. And we must preach the whole counsel of God. And the first step in showing our love for the lost is to make sure they understand their condition apart from Christ. That is preaching the word in love. Do you know what the most unloving thing is I could ever do? If I tried to think up the most unloving thing I could ever do, what would it be? And I think it would be this, to make someone think they are right with God when they are not. I can’t think of anything more unloving that I could ever do than that.

Sometimes what people need the most is just to wake up. As Paul wrote in Romans 13:11, “knowing the time that now it is high time to awake out of sleep.” The first thing the lost need to do is wake up and understand their condition. And we can see here how Jesus did that with the Pharisees. But wait, some might say. Where are there any Pharisees around here today? I don’t see any Pharisees, they might say. Does this parable have any message for us today? Well, look at Luke 18:11 again. “He spoke this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others.” The world is full of Pharisees. We’re surrounded by people today who have no concept of sin, no concept of a need for a Redeemer, no thought that they’ve ever done anything wrong. We’re surrounded today by people who think they’re the masters of their fate and the captain of their soul. We’re surrounded by people who are trusting in themselves that they are righteous, with no thought of God, with no thought of others. Pharisees hadn’t gone anywhere.

And what do such people need? They need an alarm clock. They need to wake up. They need to understand their condition, their peril apart from Christ. And if we don’t tell them who will. We’re the body of Christ. And that means we have a responsibility to do the work of Christ as his body on this earth. And I shouldn’t just be on the lookout for Pharisees and others, I should be on the lookout for a Pharisee and myself. You know, if I read Luke chapter 18 and I put it down and walk away and say, “Boy, God, I’m thankful I’m not like that Pharisee.” I’ve missed the whole point. The Pharisees were not the only people in history who ever trusted in their own righteousness and with no thought of others. Yes, they can change, but they must wake up to their condition. And the world is full of people in that condition today, and we need to be the ones waking them up to it.

This Pharisee thought he was the best person in the world, but God’s opinion of him was different. This Pharisee and this publican, they’d come to the same place at the same time for the same purpose. But that is where the similarity ends. Pharisee had confessed nothing, asked nothing, and received nothing. His prayerless prayer was nothing like the prayer of that publican. The key difference was that this publican was capable of rising. This Pharisee was not. The publican knew his condition. The Pharisee did not. And as with the Pharisee, Jesus reveals to us the inner life of this despised publican. “Standing afar off, he would not lift up so much as his eyes to heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”” And the point here is not that the Pharisees were bad and the publican was good. The point is that they’re both bad. But the publican knew he was bad. All have sinned, and the publican knew that included him.

This publican’s life had been very bad, as we’ve said, motivated by the root of all evil, the love of money, driven him to dishonesty and treachery against his own people. And the publican seemed to know this because literally in the Greek he says, “God be merciful to me, the sinner.” Just as that Pharisee was focused on himself, so was this publican focused on himself. But the publican was focused on his own sin and to him that sin was so bad that he referred to himself as the sinner as though there’s no one as bad as I am. And yes from a human point of view his case must have seemed hopeless. It did to all his fellow Jews but his case was not hopeless. As we as he stands and prays before God, we can see three redeeming qualities in his prayer. One, he knew his condition. There’s no self-deception in that prayer. He calls himself by a proper name, the sinner. Second, he wanted to be different. He was not satisfied with his life. He was not looking on himself with self-approval. He was miserable in his sin. He wanted things to be different. He wanted things to change. And third, he turned to God for help. That is the starting point of all who turn to God and obey the gospel. Not to tell God what I have done, not to tell God what I haven’t done, but instead to know that I’m a sinner, to want to be different and to cry out to God for help.

And if that is your cry, the good news of the gospel is that you can leave here today in a right relationship with God. If you obey the gospel of Christ by hearing it as you are today, by believing it, having faith in Him, by repenting of your sins, by confessing His name before men, by being baptized for the remission of your sins, then he will add you to the body of his son, the body of the saved, to the church, to the Lord’s church. If you have wandered away, then Jesus is watching for your return. And he has been watching and waiting and longing for your from the day you first wandered away and the angels will rejoice when you return to him and we will rejoice with you as well if we can help in any way this morning please come while we stand while we sing.