Passion Week: Beware the Scribes and Pharisees (Mark 12:38-44)

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You are listening to When We Understand the

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Text. Welcome to Passion Week. Each day we'll be hearing a sermon about an event that happened in the life of Christ during the week leading up to His death on the cross and the resurrection from the grave.

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These short sermons are delivered by our elders at First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.

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Here's today's message from Pastor Gabe Hughes. So we come back again now to Mark 12, verse 38.

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In His teaching, Jesus said, beware of the scribes who like to walk around in long robes and like greetings in the marketplaces.

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Who are the scribes? And for that matter, who are the Pharisees and the

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Sadducees? Some of those Pharisees were the scribes. So when we're talking about scribes, we're talking about those who were part of the

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Sanhedrin. And whenever we see these temple authorities mentioned in the

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Gospels, you might notice something. The first time the Pharisees are even mentioned, it's in the book of Matthew.

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There is no mention of a Pharisee or a Sadducee in the Old Testament. So how is it that we come into the

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New Testament and suddenly we start seeing these temple positions of Pharisee and Sadducee, and the first time you see them mentioned, which is in Matthew chapter 3, and it's when

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John the Baptist is arguing with them. When he rebukes the Pharisees. And anybody who had been reading the biblical narrative up to that point, you get to Matthew 3 and you're going, hang on a second, we've got some characters being added here.

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I don't understand who these people are. If Matthew, Mark, and Luke were writing something that would be like a novel of some kind, you would have called them bad writers.

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For now, they're introducing characters and haven't given us any backstory into these characters or foreshadowing into their presence whatsoever.

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So who are these Pharisees and these Sadducees, and who are the scribes for that matter?

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Scribes we kind of take for granted. We would understand who that person is. It was obviously somebody who writes, that's what a scribe is.

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But who are they among the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and why are these people spoken about in this sort of way?

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We would automatically know who they are. And when it comes down to it, the writers of the

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Gospels do write with certain presuppositions. And Matthew, Mark, and Luke are writing their

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Gospels, and even John also, writing their Gospels with certain understandings that you know the things that they are talking about.

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In fact, when you read through John, John will, for example, make a reference to Judas and then in parentheses it will put, not

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Iscariot, you know. So you know who Judas Iscariot is. This is the other disciple named

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Judas who is not as well known as Judas Iscariot. So there's obviously presupposition that's written into the

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Gospels. And even in Matthew, he presupposes that you already know who the

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Pharisees and the Sadducees are. But we who might be uneducated in the ways of the

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Hebrews, of the Jews, we get to this modern era, 2 ,000 years later, and we're looking at this text going,

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I don't get it. I don't know who the Pharisees and the Sadducees are. And none of the Gospel writers even give us any sort of description or a definition of what those words mean.

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The Pharisees and the Sadducees made up the gathering of the judges that were known as the

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Sanhedrin. And there were two Sanhedrins, well, two kinds of Sanhedrins. There was the greater

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Sanhedrin, and that's the Sanhedrin of Jerusalem. It was made up of 70 Pharisees and Sadducees.

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But really, all things considered, there were 71 for the high priest also presided over the

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Sanhedrin. So 71 judges that decided the law and the execution of the

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Hebraic law in Jerusalem. But all the other Jewish towns around Jerusalem had their own

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Sanhedrins, and they were referred to as the lesser Sanhedrin. While the greater Sanhedrin had 71 authorities, the lesser

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Sanhedrins had 23. So anytime you read about the

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Apostle Paul, for example, going into a city and there's a synagogue in that city, even in a

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Greek or Roman city, he would go into the synagogue, he would teach there first, and when they would not receive the

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Gospel that he came preaching, almost always that would be the case, he would go from there out into the public to then share the

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Gospel with the Gentiles. So who was it in those cities that was opposing

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Paul's message? It would have been the lesser Sanhedrin. It was that council of ruling elders in the synagogues in that respective town that would have been made up of Pharisees and Sadducees.

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Now this collection of judges that are called by those particular names,

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Pharisee and Sadducee, they don't come about until a few centuries before Jesus.

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So all things considered, the Sanhedrin is a fairly new institution.

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It's not something that had existed throughout the history of the Jews. Now we do read about in the

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Pentateuch about how Moses appointed respective judges to handle certain cases among the

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Israelites. As a matter of fact, this was at the suggestion of Moses' father -in -law, Jethro.

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Moses, you can't do this all by yourself. You need to appoint some other judges who can kind of oversee all these other trivial matters in groups and set these judges over these respective tribes so that you can focus on the bigger things.

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And so that's what Moses did, and that's how you came up with the judges. And so you get to the second temple period, which is the period in which we are in.

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The temple has been reconstructed after the Babylonian exile.

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And once you get to about 300 to 400 BC, you no longer have any prophets in the temple who are revealing to the people of God the

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Word of God. This period of time that is referred to as the Silent Age, for there were no prophets that were revealing

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God's Word. No new word was coming. The Jews were waiting for this promised

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Messiah to show up. So in this period of silence, they assembled this council of elders, this council of judges that we know as the

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Sanhedrin that was made up of Pharisees and Sadducees. And the

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Pharisees and Sadducees, kind of like Congress made up of Republicans and Democrats, they did not get along.

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The Pharisees and Sadducees did not get along. In fact, in the New Testament, there's only one thing that we ever see the

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Pharisees and Sadducees agree on. That's the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

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That is the only thing that they can come to an agreement on. In the Sanhedrin, the majority of those authorities were

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Sadducees. And the Sadducees were aristocrats. They were upper -class people.

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They had a lot of money, mainly concerned with politics. They were not concerned with religion.

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So they were concerned with the law of God being followed, and really, so that they could keep their positions of authority, so that they could keep their positions of power and influence over the people.

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They believed in the written Word of God, but there were aspects of the Word of God that they did not believe.

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For example, they denied that God had any involvement in everyday life.

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So in that sense, they were kind of deists. They believed that God had indeed given this law.

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It was given to Moses. Moses gave it to the people. It's been taught by the prophets ever since, but it's not something that God continues to enact upon His people.

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He kind of gave it to us, and then He took His hands off of it, and now we are responsible for following that law and carrying these things out on our own.

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The Sadducees also denied the resurrection of the dead or any kind of afterlife.

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And this was the joke that Dave made. They did not believe in the resurrection of the dead, which is why they were sad, you see.

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They denied the existence of the spiritual world altogether. The Sadducees did not believe in demons.

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They did not believe in angels. They did not believe that a person was possessed, had any kind of demonic possession.

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So you'll notice that whenever Jesus rebukes a demon or an evil spirit and it's cast out of a person, it's the

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Pharisees that are present and make such crazy accusations that Jesus Himself is possessed by a spirit, or He is

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Beelzebub, and that's why He has the ability to cast out those spirits. Those are the Pharisees that are making those accusations, not the

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Sadducees, because the Sadducees did not even believe in demonic spirits. The Sadducees, again, were more concerned with political matters, and they were not even concerned with the stuff that Jesus was doing.

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And when you read through the Gospels, they're not the ones that are there as Jesus is teaching or He's warning the people about the

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Pharisees and the Sadducees, whose present there are the Pharisees.

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The Sadducees don't even get involved until the latter portions of all four Gospels, and it's when they are afraid that Jesus is going to start earning the attention of the

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Romans. That's when the Sadducees start getting concerned and start kind of coming into this, okay, we got to do something about our

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Jesus problem. But political matters of everyday life was mainly what they were concerned with, and being part of the aristocracy, being part of the upper echelon of the people that lived in Jerusalem, they just didn't mill around with the common man most of the time.

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So most of the people did not like the Sadducees, even though they made up the majority of the

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Sanhedrin. Most people were pretty cool with the Pharisees. So we tend to come into the

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New Testament narrative thinking that Pharisees and Sadducees are just bad guys, and everybody's on Jesus' side, and they start following Jesus like, oh, somebody who gets us now, like somebody who's from the lowest class of us.

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And so when Jesus pops up on the scene, everybody's just automatically attracted to Jesus, right?

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No, that's not really the way that went. There were times when the people were very much against Jesus.

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You see that over and over again. In Nazareth, in his own hometown, they tried to kill him there. So the people were not always on Jesus' side.

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A lot of the times, the people were on the side of the Pharisees, which is why it was so easy for the

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Pharisees to gather a mob against Jesus when he was arrested to force

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Pilate into exercising his hand of judgment against Christ and crucifying him.

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So the Pharisees did have an influence among the people. The Pharisees were primarily from among the middle class.

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While the Sadducees were from the upper class, the Pharisees were of the middle class, and they were businessmen.

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They actually had dealings with work and trade and things like that in Jerusalem and in the surrounding

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Jewish towns. And so they would actually interact with people in their own settings.

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They would actually be seen in the marketplace, which is not a place where the Sadducees were seen.

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They wouldn't go to market. They had people and servants that they paid to go to market for them.

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But the scribes and the Pharisees, they themselves would be seen in the marketplace. But as Jesus points out here, the scribes walk around in long robes and they like greetings in the marketplaces.

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What does that mean? Well, nobody really goes to the marketplace to be seen or have any sort of attraction or importance among people.

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It's not really why you go to the market. You go to buy or sell goods. But the Pharisees and the scribes, they would walk around in these long robes, kind of look like they were upper class, even though they weren't, and they would desire that people would pay attention to them.

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So even though, as far as their income was concerned, they were middle class, it's like they tried to position themselves as the most important of the middle class.

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They would have loved to have been upper class if they could have been. And so they would sit in the best seats in the synagogues, not give up their seat for any of the lower class that might come in and want to hear the teaching there in the synagogue.

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They would take the best places of honor at the feasts. They would devour widow's houses and, for a pretense, make long prayers.

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It's exactly the kind of a thing that Jesus spoke against in Matthew 6, where he taught his disciples how to pray.

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He said, don't pray these long prayers like the Pharisees do. And these loud prayers, so that they might be seen by other people,

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Jesus said, I tell you, they got what they want. They got the attraction from other people, which is exactly what they were after.

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They have received their reward. But you instead need to go in secret and pray like this, and your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

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So the Pharisees still wanted to be noticed. And they wanted everybody to think that they had all the authority, and they had all the knowledge, and they had all the wisdom when it came to understanding the scriptures of God.

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Some of the Pharisees were scribes, but not all of them. And the scribes, very simply, were the keepers of legal documents.

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They made sure that everything was in writing, and every decision that was made in some court of law was put down in writing, so it could be referred to later.

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Well, we've tried this case this way before, so out of consistency, we're going to try it that way again, much like the way the court system works in the

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US today. Scribes were Pharisees, but again, not all Pharisees were scribes.

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Now, another difference between Sadducees and Pharisees, this is kind of interesting considering that the

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Sadducees were of the upper echelon, but the Sadducees were more conservative than the

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Pharisees were. The Sadducees believed that all we had was what was written down by Moses, and that's what it was that we were to follow.

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Anything that was written by Moses in the law, that was most important. There was no oral tradition, according to the

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Sadducees. Whereas the Pharisees believed not only in the written law, and that the written law was indeed the word of God, as well as what was written by the prophets, but the

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Pharisees believed in an oral tradition. So that there were certain traditions that had been passed down orally and were not written down by Moses or any of the prophets.

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Now, the problem that this brought with it was speculation about what the law said or meant.

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And so the Pharisees, in a sense, end up adding to the law. The Sadducees would take away from the law.

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The Sadducees took away from it in the sense that we don't have to follow this, we don't have to follow this.

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They would not believe anything that was written by the prophets concerning spirits, or afterlife, or resurrection from the grave, or any of those things.

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It shouldn't even be there. So the Sadducees would take away from the word of God, whereas the Pharisees were adding to the word of God.

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And this completely disobeys Deuteronomy 4 .2 where God said, you shall not add or take away from my word, but you shall keep all the commandments that I give.

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The Sadducees did not keep all the commandments. The Pharisees did keep all the commandments, plus a bunch of extra ones.

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And so, because they had added to the law, they added to a burden upon the

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Jewish people that was not a burden meant for them to bear, but they had this legalistic way of salvation.

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As long as you do these things, and check these boxes, and be like us, you will have eternal life.

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And that's why the people liked them, because they have the words of eternal life, according to the people that followed the

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Pharisees. How do I live after this life? How do I go and be with God?

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I do everything that the Pharisees tell me to do, and then I know that I will have eternal life.

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And so there were people that did not like that Jesus was warning about the

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Pharisees and the Sadducees, because then that meant the Pharisees were wrong. And all the stuff that I've been doing according to what the

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Pharisees said that I'm supposed to do, no longer has any meaning or significance. Hence why there were many people that were in fact angry with Jesus when he would rebuke the

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Pharisees and the Sadducees. We shouldn't have this idea, this understanding, that everybody was on Jesus' side.

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The Sadducees and the Pharisees were just the bad guys. A lot of people liked the Pharisees. The majority of people that came to hear

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Jesus at the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7, the majority of them were on the side of the

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Pharisees. When you read at the start of Matthew 5, Jesus was addressing his disciples.

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Anybody who was there to learn from Jesus, that's who he was truly talking to. The rest of the people were there because they wanted to hear miracles, or wanted to see miracles from this guy, or hear about the great things that this new teacher was saying, attracting crowds of thousands into his presence.

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But they didn't actually believe what he said. In the book of John it is recorded that many of them would hear what

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Jesus said, and some of them would even believe what he said. But because they feared the Sadducees and the Pharisees, they would not commit their hearts to Christ and follow him.

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It's a very scary thing to consider, to believe and not yet follow.

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And so as Jesus spent this time in this week teaching in the temple prior to being arrested, prior to being crucified, some of the things that Jesus taught were not just for the benefit of his hearers, in the sense that he was just trying to teach things that edified.

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But some of the things that he taught were warnings. Some of the things that he taught over the course of this week were rebukes against the scribes and the

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Pharisees, and the things that they said and did, which not only added to or took away from the word of God, but even made victims of the people that they should have been caring for.

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But in order to make themselves more important, and in order to preserve their places of power, they made victims of those people that the law of Moses even stipulated should have been cared for.

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And one of those persons is mentioned in this story right here in Mark 12, beginning in verse 41.

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Jesus sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box.

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Many rich people put in large sums, and a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny.

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How do you often hear this story told? You often hear this story told as an elderly woman who was poor, who didn't have much, gave all she had.

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And she was more giving than even the richest people who came in and gave out of their abundance.

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Therefore, the teachers will tell you, you must be like this woman who gave out of her poverty, rather than the person who's rich and gives out of their abundance.

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People will take this story and turn it into something legalistic, about how you're supposed to give to God.

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That's not the point of the story. This story is being given as yet another rebuke against those

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Pharisees and Sadducees who had twisted the word of God and had used it to make victims of people instead of caring for people.

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Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came in and put in two small copper coins.

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Some of your translations might say mites, two small mites, two coins that in our currency today would have made up a penny.

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In our American currency concept, we can't think of a coin smaller than a penny.

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But in this particular culture, there was. It was called a mite. And it took two of those coins to amount up to what a penny would equal for us today.

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Even smaller form of currency than a penny. And it was all she had.

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He called his disciples when she did this. And he said to them, truly,

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I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box.

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Jesus is angry when he's talking about this. He's not calling his disciples over going, look, look, guys, come here, come here, come here, look, look, watch this woman, put these coins into the box.

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Oh, she gave so much more than all of these because she gave out of her poverty instead of all.

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Well done, woman, well done. That's not what Jesus was doing here. He just rebuked the scribes and the

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Pharisees, just rebuked them. In verses 38 through 40, beware these people.

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They like to walk around, attract attention to themselves, they take the best seats, and they devour widows' houses.

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And then what do we see next? A poor widow giving all she had because she was being required to.

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She gave all she had, and if she had not done that, she would have been against the law, according to the

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Pharisees and the Sadducees. And in the law of Moses, it says that the least of these that we should be taking care of are the orphans and the widows.

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And you see that over and over again in the Old Testament. Those who are the most destitute, who cannot take care of themselves, are orphans and widows.

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Orphans have no parents, nobody who can take care of them. Widows, elderly women whose husbands have died, who cannot provide for them, and they do not have any entitlement to their deceased husband's estate.

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So what's happened here is that this woman's husband has died and the

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Sanhedrin has taken all that belonged to her husband for the temple.

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Probably sold off the land and used the money for the service of the temple, which wasn't really for the service of the temple, it was just to make themselves more rich and more powerful, instead of providing for this woman, which the law of Moses commanded them to do.

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There is a system of welfare that's written into the Pentateuch as to how

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Israel was supposed to care for the least of these. And here they were not being cared for.

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Rather, this woman was being told, you don't even give the last two insignificant coins that you have into this box, you are going to be held in contempt.

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And so Jesus says, watch this widow put more in than all those who are contributing the offering box.

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Basically, Jesus is saying, everybody else who's been in here contributing out of their abundance could be taking care of this woman, and nobody's doing it.

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She, out of her poverty, has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.

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It's not a congratulatory applause for what this woman gave, it's a rebuke to the scribes and Pharisees that put this woman in that position.

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And this is Jesus warning his disciples against false teachers, and in a sense, saying to them, look what false teaching does to people.

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Not only are the Pharisees and the Sadducees in a place where they will be judged greatly for what it is that they have done, that's what we read at the end of the previous section, they will receive the greater condemnation.

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It echoes of James 3 .1, many of you should aspire to be teachers, my brothers, for you know that teachers will be judged with greater strictness.

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Not only do they heap condemnation upon themselves because they twist the word of God, but they also make victims of other people.

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For this woman has put in everything she had, all she had to live on. So you see the two parts of this put together.

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We see what false teachers become, what they do to people. They heap condemnation onto themselves and they make victims of others.

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And the interesting thing is when you study about the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and when you study about what it was that they taught and who they actually were, and you understand some of the backstory behind them, you start seeing some similarities between who they are and who our false teachers are today.

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Often, you might hear the Pharisee card played upon a person who desires holiness.

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If you ever rebuke somebody because they're in sinfulness, they might say to you, oh, see, that's what the

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Pharisees did. You're just being like a Pharisee. You ever had the Pharisee card played on you before? On the contrary, they're the one that's behaving like the

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Pharisee because they're deciding that part of the word of God doesn't apply to me.

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I can make up my own tradition or I can take away from the word of God the parts that I don't want to pay attention to, and thus they make themselves like the

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Pharisees and the Sadducees. Jesus said, unless your righteousness exceeds those of the

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Pharisees and the Sadducees, you shall not enter the kingdom of God. I have actually had it asked of me one time, does your righteousness exceed that of the

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Pharisees and the Sadducees? And I think I threw the person off a little bit when I replied, yeah, it does. Whoa, who do you think you are?

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Well, I have the righteousness of Christ. That's exactly what Jesus was talking about.

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If you don't follow him, you will not have a righteousness that exceeds the

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Pharisees and the Sadducees. And without Christ, you cannot enter the kingdom of God.

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The Pharisees and the Sadducees not only wanted to keep people from the truth of God's word, they crucified

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God's word. And His crucifixion upon the cross, they did not realize, was predestined by God.

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They were doing exactly what God had foreordained would happen and they would do for the salvation of those people that they did not care for.

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One of the things that Chris brought out to me a couple of nights ago as he was teaching about Jesus cleansing the temple.

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I thought it was very interesting that Chris noted that in John's account, in John 2, so this would have been the first temple cleansing at the start of Jesus' ministry,

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Jesus sat down and made a whip of cords. And Chris pointed out, that's something that takes some time.

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So he has to sit down and he has to braid this whip that he's then going to use to drive out all of the merchants and the money changers and even the sheep and oxen, driving them out of the temple.

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When we see the second temple cleansing, the one that happened this week, the one that took place on Monday.

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In Mark's account, which I've just read from here, his rebuke of the scribes and the Pharisees. In Mark's account, after Jesus comes into Jerusalem in the triumphal entry, he goes into the temple and it says he looks around and then he leaves.

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And he comes back the next day and drives out the merchants and the money changers and the sheep and oxen.

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So in both accounts, whether you're talking about the one at the beginning of Jesus' ministry or the one close to the end, you see

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Jesus being very patient and very deliberate. Is he angry?

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Yes, he's absolutely angry. But it's an anger that is patient and reasonable and an anger that cares for other people.

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This isn't Jesus snapping and flying off the handle. He sees something and he goes, all right, what are we going to do about this?

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And he acts with a holy, heavenly rebuke.

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And when Jesus rebuked the scribes and the Pharisees, it was likewise holy and caring and reasonable.

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He did this out of love just like Chris pointed out that Jesus cleansed the temple out of love.

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He rebukes the scribes and the Pharisees so that they may have an opportunity to repent and not receive the greater condemnation.

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We actually read a story of one such Pharisee that repented. His name was

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Nicodemus, who came to Jesus by night. Later on in John's story, he defends

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Jesus before the rest of the scribes and Pharisees. And then after Jesus is buried, we see

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Nicodemus there as well to contribute some of the ointments and spices for Jesus' burial.

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We see a reformation that happens in this man from at the start of Jesus' ministry being skeptical about him and asking some questions to at the very end becoming one of his followers.

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Jesus rebuked the scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees so that they would repent and not fall into condemnation.

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But secondly, Jesus rebuked the scribes and the Pharisees out of love and care for those who are being led astray by them.

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So that they also would not fall into condemnation because they listened to false teaching, but instead followed the words of life given by the true teacher.

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Thank you for joining us during Passion Week. As we studied the events leading up to Christ's death on the cross for our sins and his resurrection from the grave.