John 10:1-18 (The Profile Of A Pharisee)

Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day Sermon. We pray that as we declare the

Word of God that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and that you would catch a greater vision of who

Christ is. May you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word, and may the Lord be with you.

Thou shalt be a good and faithful and healthy leader. The Bible does have much to say on the topic, though, and you would be remiss if you think that the

Bible doesn't actually speak to what a leader is. In fact, it's all over the pages of Scripture.

But the Bible doesn't just come out and say it like we as Westerners are used to saying it. The Bible doesn't create these pithy maxims that you would find at leadership conferences and, you know, following leadership

Twitter accounts and all of that. The Bible showcases it. The Bible demonstrates it.

The Bible tells us stories and narratives of leaders. And as we've seen, the good and faithful and healthy leaders of the time of Israel and the time of Judah lead their people into health and peace and security and stability, whereas the wicked leaders from old lead their people into disaster and ruin and exile.

And in the case of Israel, extinction. The Bible, based off what it says about leadership, the way it demonstrates and showcases leadership, is the world's authority on the topic.

But the question is, will we read the Bible biblically? Will we see how it examples and how it showcases what godly leadership is?

And for us today, there's no better example than the Pharisees on what bad leadership actually is.

They were, in fact, the worst example of what leadership is. And today, what

I want us to do is I want us to see who the Pharisees are so that we can understand what kind of leaders we are not supposed to put ourselves under, what kind of leaders we are not supposed to be, and so that hopefully the church can grow healthy and strong.

Now, the Pharisees began well. I think it's important to note that. We noted that a couple weeks ago. The Pharisees began as a religious reform movement against the things that were going on, the idolatry that was happening in Judah.

They started about the year 200 BC, and they started out of a good motivation to not see the country of Israel or Judah destroyed again by God for idolatry.

You can imagine them getting together and saying, Hey, listen, this idolatry stuff really makes

God angry. We've been destroyed several times now by God. So maybe we ought to not do that anymore.

And then that's where Pharisaism started from that sort of conversation, that sort of motivation, which is good.

If you think like they want to abolish idolatry, that seems like a good goal. But what happened was, is that when

God didn't bless Judah immediately, and the Greeks were still over them, or the

Assyrians at that point were still over them, and then eventually Rome was still over them, and they started thinking to themselves,

Well, this whole obedience thing isn't working. You see the subtle shift? They wanted to honor

God by not falling into idolatry, but eventually it became pragmatism, and it became, this is what we do in order to earn

God's blessing. And while they were still miles away from their goal, they thought maybe we're doing something wrong.

We don't have a Davidic king. Rome is still over us. Maybe we're not obeying hard enough. It was the conclusion that the

Pharisees came to. Instead of reevaluating their movement, going back to Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Daniel and the prophets and saying,

Maybe God has showcased us that we can't do this on our own to show us that we need a

Savior who's going to come and who's going to set us free. Instead of seeing that, they doubled down on religious performance and obedience and legalism, and they became rigidly moral to the point that they lost every bit of joy when it came to obeying

God. And they began leading others that way.

You can imagine the loudest voice in the room tends to get the power in a room, not always a good thing.

So the Pharisees who were the most rigid, the most religious, the most, you know, boisterous group, they ended up assimilating and assuming a lot of power in Judah to where they took over the leadership of the temple.

They took over the leadership of the synagogues so that eventually their leadership began infecting the entire nation.

Now, their goal was not just obedience. It kind of transitioned into, we believe that if we can obey hard enough and long enough and righteously enough, then the

Messiah will come. So what they eventually ended up saying is that if we can get every single person in this country to obey the law of God perfectly for just one day, then the

Messiah would come. And you can imagine how in that sort of perverted spirit, they began hating people who have disobeyed the law.

They actually invented the term sinners. It wasn't a term before the Pharisees, and it was a pejorative term to look down their noses at people who weren't obeying, who were stopping the progress, who were preventing the

Messiah from coming is what they thought. So they noticed people who would sin and they would say, you're the problem.

You're the reason why Rome is still over top of us, that our King's not coming. You're the dirty, filthy, wretched sinner that's standing in the way of our progress.

Shame on you. That's the attitude of the Pharisees. Now clearly, they didn't start that way.

They drifted off course one degree at a time until they were in a place where they were so far away from where they began that it was unrecognizable.

So far away from where they began, they didn't even realize that they were the problem. That's the context for what

Jesus comes into the New Testament. They're the ones in charge. Jesus came not only to forgive us of our sin, praise

God for that, but one of the consequences of Jesus coming is that he would abolish their wicked rule, that he would overturn their rule of tyranny over the people of God.

Now today, this sermon, I want us to focus on two things. Number one,

I want us to understand who the Pharisees are. I want us to discern why they were so ungodly in their leadership.

I want us to examine a few examples of how we see that in the church today. And I want us as Christians to kind of know what their character profile is so that we don't fall into the sins of the

Pharisees as well. That's the first part. The second part, which is shorter, and I'm telling you that only because about 80 % is the first part.

So when we get to the end of part one, I don't want you to think that it's double, it's the same amount of time as part two. Part two is the gospel.

Who is Jesus Christ? Who is he in all of his goodness and fullness? And why should we trust and rest in him?

So if you will, let's turn to John 10, verses one through 18 again this week.

This will be the third week in a row that we've read this passage. And if the Lord wills it, we'll read it one last time next week as well.

As we read this, I want us to focus on who the Pharisees are. So let's read John 10, one through 18.

Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbs up by some other way, he is a thief and a robber.

But he who enters by the door is a shepherd of the sheep. To him, the doorkeeper opens and the sheep hear his voice and he calls his own sheep by name and he leads them out.

When he puts forth all his own, he goes ahead of them and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.

A stranger, they simply will not follow, but will flee from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.

This figure of speech that Jesus spoke to them, that's the Pharisees who were gathered around him, but they did not understand what those things were, which he had been saying to them.

So Jesus said to them again, truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them.

I am the door. If anyone enters through me, he will be saved and he will go out and he will find pasture.

But the thief comes only to steal, to kill and to destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who is not the owner of the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees and the wolf snatches them and scatters them.

He flees because he's a hired hand and is not concerned about the sheep. I am the good shepherd and I know my own and my own know me, even as the father knows me and I know the father and I lay down my life for the sheep.

I have other sheep which are not in this fold and I must bring them also and they will hear my voice and they will become one flock with one shepherd.

For this reason, the father loves me because I lay down my life so that I may take it up again.

No one has taken it away from me, but I lay it down of my own initiative. I have authority to lay it down and I have authority to take it up again.

This commandment I receive from my father. Lord Jesus, there's so much in this passage.

By the time that we're finished, we will have four sermons when 50 ,000 could have been preached on these passages.

Sermons talking about your love and your sacrificial care for us, your sheep, versus talking about the thieves and the robbers who steal, kill, and destroy.

Lord, I pray that as we focus more specifically on the Pharisees today and we talk a lot about their sin and how they missed it and how they did not lead the sheep well and did not even follow the true and good shepherd.

Lord, I pray that we would see their error and that we flee from their error. Lord, I pray that we would not perpetuate the sins of the

Pharisees, but Lord, we would humbly repent and turn to Jesus Christ, our only hope.

Lord, I pray that in Christ's name. Amen. We're not gonna be able to go into great detail on this passage.

And more specifically, we're not gonna be able to go into great detail about anything that we talk about today. What we're going to do is we're going to use what it talks about, that they're thieves and robbers, and we're gonna open it up to the entire gospel narratives and we're gonna look at and do a character examination of who the

Pharisees are. So if we struggle each week to get four verses done, imagine how much we're gonna struggle to try to get four gospels worth of material done.

It won't be possible. Jesus calls them a thief because a thief is a sort of catch -all phrase in that particular time period.

A thief was the person who hid by the road in the middle of the night. We think of thieves as trying to find ways to break into our home or try to break into our bank account or some things like that.

Thieves in those days actually hid on the road so that when the sun went down, because there's no street lights before electricity was invented, they would wait, they would pounce, they would steal, they would kill if they had to in order to take your property.

That's why it was very dangerous to travel on the road at night. If you think about the two men who went back to Jerusalem after Jesus was resurrected on the road to Emmaus, they're taking their own life in their hands as they go because of the reality of thieves and robbers.

So this was a sort of feature in that day and it was a catch -all for the sort of moral depravity that it would take for you to hide in the shadows and pounce upon someone and abuse them and exploit them for selfish gain.

It's a sort of catch -all category that talks about a variety of sins. Corrupted, abusive types of sins that he's applying to the

Pharisees and their leadership. So what we're going to do is we're going to look at what the Gospels say about the

Pharisees and we're going to try to examine how we don't want to be like them. That's the point. So number one, they were argumentative.

We're going to go in alphabetical order. Again, this is kind of a flawed approach because like 70 % of it is

A through C. So again, don't worry. When we're still in C, it's okay. We'll move along fairly quickly after that.

They were argumentative. It says in Mark 8, 11 that the Pharisees came out and began to argue with him, seeking from him a sign from heaven to test him.

Now when we think about it, argumentation or being argumentative doesn't sound like that big of a problem.

In lieu of the fact that they murdered Jesus and they did all kinds of other terrible sins, argumentation doesn't seem to be one of their greatest sins, but yet it showcases their pride that they think that they're the authority.

They think that they're the way that people can get to God and that if someone disagrees with them, then they disagree with God.

There was a sort of arrogance when it came to the Pharisees that they believed that they were the gatekeepers of orthodoxy and it showcased that they were willing to damage and destroy any relationship in their path in order to maintain the semblance of being right, even if that meant being separated forever from the

Son of God. And in this time period, the Pharisees were not used to being challenged.

They were considered the authority and no one actually spoke up against them. They ruled with an iron fist and they dominated.

So you can imagine how angry that they were when Jesus actually stood up and said, no, I'm the way,

I'm the truth, I'm the light. Imagine when John the Baptist called him a brood of vipers.

Imagine the humiliation that they would have felt in a moment like that where they were being publicly embarrassed in front of the people that they're trying to forcibly rule.

This is why in countries like North Korea, if you make fun of the dictator, you end up dead because there's a sort of pridefulness that comes with being that sort of dictatorial ruler, which the

Pharisees certainly were. They were argumentative as a way to establish that they were the authority. And Jesus, when he comprehensively humiliates them on multiple occasions in the gospel, he doesn't soften them, that actually hardens them and they become more hateful and more opposed to Christ.

They have a sort of defiant, obstinate aggression that fuels them to hate

Christ and to eventually kill Christ. Now, that sort of spirit,

I think, is still alive and well today, that Pharisaical, sinful spirit in the church.

You think about men who are more enamored with winning arguments than winning souls, people who are more concerned with a social media tiff than actually meeting with people face -to -face and caring for their brokenness.

You think about men who go to seminary and they think just because they learn what a substantival preposition is or some

Greek and some Hebrew or any of that stuff that they are somehow better, that they somehow now are on a platform that they can speak with this sort of nasty, disgusting authority that makes them think that they're somehow better than the lambs that God died for?

It's disgusting. I have a friend on Facebook who I don't really know him that well, but I guess

I should always say that, right, when I'm getting ready to criticize him. I don't really know him that well, but he argues in the most unloving ways.

He tries to destroy people's character. He tries to win no matter what.

It looks like, you know, like when people throw the chum into the water and the sharks come and you see all the blood in the water.

This is what his Facebook profile looks like on every single thread. He has an argumentative spirit and he cares more about being right than being

Christ -like. And if you actually call him out on this, he'll say, I'm not the one who's argumentative, you are.

I'm trying to win souls here, brother. And I'm like, you're not winning anybody but people who agree with you and the list is getting smaller because you keep offending more and more of them.

It's an easy thing. I think all of us struggle with it at times. There's things that we're passionate about and things that we care about and things that we know that we're right on.

And when someone contradicts that narrative, it takes a tremendous amount of courage to not say what we want to say.

Now, I'm not talking about pliability. As Christians, we shouldn't be pliable. If you've read the Pilgrim's Progress, you'll know the character of pliable.

He's someone who can be convinced to go along with anything. That's not who Christians are supposed to be.

We don't acquiesce to whatever viewpoint that someone voiced upon us just because they have a stronger personality than us.

No, we hold to the truth. We believe the truth. We're people who are committed to the truth of God, but we don't have to be argumentative and hateful when we do that.

This is one of the things that is so frustrating about our culture right now because if you disagree with anybody, you're hateful or you're evoking violence on someone.

You're violent if you're silent and you're violent if you speak. What a confusing time it is and I think that that sort of impacted us as Christians because we don't necessarily realize that it's okay to hold fast to the truth of God.

It's okay to disagree while not being disagreeable. It's okay to hold fast to the truth, but it's not okay to be like the

Pharisees who looked past the people in front of them, who only cared about winning an argument and cared more about scoring points than winning the person.

That's the difference and that is a disgusting damaging sin back then. It's a damaging sin among Christian leadership today and it is a damaging church -breaking sin that if it gets into a church, it will do so much damage.

That's the first thing. The second character trait that we see in the Gospels of the Pharisees is that they were attention seekers.

Luke 11 43 says, Woe to you Pharisees for you love the chief seats in the synagogues and the respectful greetings in the marketplace.

Jesus is saying that their entire point of doing ministry was not to point people to God. It's point people to themselves.

They prayed long prayers to make people think how spiritual and righteous they were. They said long sermons in the public marketplaces and in the temple courtyard so that people would see, wow,

I really need to listen to them. They're so winsome and they're so this and they're so that. They did this as a way of getting attention for themselves instead of focusing attention on a holy

God. They wore the nicest clothing. They had the finest education. They were the narcissist of their day that said if you could just love us, then

God would give you all your desires. It's terrible.

And yet how frequent is that now in the church today where we have a culture full of narcissistic pastors who have become celebrities, who have stand on stages and get hundreds of thousands of downloads each week, have become celebrities.

Can you imagine any biblical category that has celebrity and pastor put together and that being okay?

Is it any wonder that the sin of the Pharisees is alive and well in the American church? Because we've forgotten that it's all about Jesus and it's not about us.

It happens in megachurches where pastors believe that they're the brand and that if they can just market themselves well, then

God's kingdom will grow. It also happens in small churches where your beloved favorite pastor becomes the one that you look to for every answer, for everything, and you end up developing this affection for your pastor that really is not the same affection that you have for Jesus and that's wrong.

We exist to give glory to God. We do not exist to receive glory for ourselves.

A pastor who points to anything other than Jesus needs to be fired or stepped down in disgrace.

His job is to point to Christ. That's it. No matter where you find the sin of attention -seeking, it's wreaking damage in the church.

As Christians, when we leave here, we have to remember that we don't live to have attention pointed to ourselves.

We don't work and go to our jobs to have attention pointed to us. Now, it's difficult in our careers, right?

Because we want people to notice how great of a worker we are. We want people to notice that we're worthy of the next promotion or a raise.

And we want people to notice the good things that we do. But as Christians, that's not our point. That's not our goal. Our goal is to give glory and honor to Jesus.

And if we gave glory and honor to Jesus in our work and in our job performance, don't you think that we would actually probably get promoted?

If we did what 1 Corinthians 10 31 says, that do everything to the glory of God, that people would stop and notice that and they would say, they're the best employee

I've got. I'm going to put them over more. That's not a guarantee.

But all I'm saying is that the focus is not on us. The focus is on Christ. That's the kind of people we are because we know that he is our only hope.

Again, an awful sin back then. It corrupts leadership in the church today. And it also, if it gets into the church, it creates damage.

The next one is biblical illiteracy. Which is a shocking one when it comes to the

Pharisees because they were the most educated people in all of Israel or on all of Judah.

It says in Matthew 15 1 through 2, then some of the Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, why do you disciples break the tradition of the elders?

For they do not wash their hands when they eat. Now for the

Pharisees, washing the hands wasn't entirely the issue. And today, I hope that you wash your hands. It's a good thing to do.

Especially as we shake hands and we don't want to pass everything that you've interacted with in the week.

So it's not really the washing the hands that's the most important thing. It's the traditions. The Pharisees had a list of traditions that they carried and that they held to that were more important to them than even the

Bible. They had a list of traditions that were given to them by the rabbis. Over 200 years of traditions where they elevated those up and above the word of God so that if you didn't wash your hands before a meal, it showcased that you were a sinner.

Remember the word they invented. If you don't do X, Y, and Z, then you're a dirty sinner.

And guess what? You're preventing the Messiah from coming. So you need to wash your hands and shut your mouth. That's what the

Pharisees were saying. They used their tradition as a weapon against the people.

They used it as a hammer to where they could keep the masses in check constantly so that they could say, this is the standard.

You have to obey us so that the Messiah will come. What a spirit of wickedness that was infecting the people, the

Pharisees. They tried to do this to Jesus in this passage. They tried to exert religious pressure on him to get him to conform to their standard and Jesus blows up their standard and shows them that they don't actually believe the

Bible. That as educated as they are, they're really not that educated at all because even a small child can read the text and come to the right conclusion, but not them.

And you see this all over the text where they misunderstand the Sabbath. They misunderstand all different kinds of things.

They're biblically illiterate. There's lots of examples today of how this plays itself out.

I think of the Catholic Church, and I'm not trying to be offensive here, but I think of the Catholic Church as the Pharisees of our day who are holding a tradition over the heads of the people, who are saying that if you don't have this particular baptism at this time, and if you don't do this absolution at this time, and if you don't take this communion at this time, and if you don't have your last rites at this time, then you're going to probably either go to purgatory or you're going to die and go to hell.

They have elevated tradition. They've made salvation Jesus plus their tradition. They are the

Pharisees of our day. And it's not biblical. They've weaponized false doctrine against the people in order to have a powerful church, and they're powerful.

And they have lots of money, just like the Pharisees. But it's not just the

Catholics. They're easy target. We're a reformed church. We're in the tradition of Martin Luther. It's easy to pick on the

Catholics. But biblical illiteracy in general is a plague in the church.

Biblical illiteracy is a plague in evangelical Christianity.

You think about it. The Pharisees were using their biblical illiteracy as a weapon against others.

Our biblical illiteracy, us not knowing God is also a weapon, but it's not a weapon against other people.

It's a weapon against ourselves. Us not knowing what the text says will leave us unprepared to live as Christians.

It will leave us vulnerable to Satan's attack. It will leave us unprepared to live a

Christian life and to be a Christian witness. Biblical illiteracy in the church is the same kind of sin of the

Pharisees that ought to be repented of today. It creates havoc in our own soul. The greatest defense that we can have against the world, the flesh, and the devil is to know the

Word of God. The greatest defense. And yet, I want you to pay attention to how your day goes tomorrow.

What area are you being attacked by the world, the flesh, and the devil most consistently in your life?

It's the Bible. The world says it's not true. Your flesh says I don't have time to read it and Satan tries to twist it because you don't know it as well as you thought you did.

You are constantly being attacked with the Word of God against you because you don't know it.

Because I don't know it. This is not one of those moments where we say, gosh, I need to feel sorry for myself.

No, just let's get into the Bible. Let's get into the Word. Let's know it as Christians so that we can be just prepared to be his servants here on earth.

The fact that Satan attacks it more than he attacks anything else should give us indication that it's the most important thing in our lives.

More important than oxygen. More important than water and food. The Bible is our guide that points us to Christ.

It is the gift that he has given us by the power of his Holy Spirit and left with us so that we could know him.

What a treasure. Don't hide that treasure away on bookshelves allowing it to collect dust. The next sin that we see of the

Pharisees is that they were blasphemous. They blasphemed

God. Matthew 12, 24 says, but when the Pharisees heard this, they said, this man cast out demons only by Beelzebub, the ruler of demons.

Now, this is one example of many examples. We've covered several in the Gospel of John where the

Pharisees look at the things that Jesus is doing. And Jesus said, when I work, I only do what the

Father tells me. So they're looking at the works that Jesus has done that God himself told him to do and they're saying that's the power of demons.

The Pharisees are accusing God of doing demonic work.

It is a special sin that happened in those days called the unforgivable sin, blasphemy against the

Holy Spirit. You've probably heard it in several different ways and you've probably wondered all your life if you've committed it.

I don't think so. In those days when Christ was on the earth, they were looking at God in the flesh.

They were watching God act out redemption right before their very eyes and they were accusing him of being influenced by the power of demons.

That is the context for what Jesus says is the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. It's looking at what

God does and calling it wicked. I don't think, I could be wrong, this is a highly debatable topic,

I don't think that that sin is something that you and I commit today. We're not living in the presence of the incarnate

Christ and calling him demonic. That is a specific sin that fell on that generation but the heart of it still exists today.

Even though it says in the Bible that all blasphemy will be forgiven by God, all of it, if you turn to Jesus Christ, the heart of this unforgivable sin still exists today and that heart is to look at the things that God is doing and to mock it and to turn against it.

Now again, we don't have Jesus in the flesh right before our very eyes. So how do we do this? How do we commit this?

How do church leaders do this? Well, we remember that Christ in his incarnate form did not stay here.

He rose from the dead. He ascended into heaven. He sat at the right hand of the Father and reigns from his holy throne and he sent forth his spirit to the earth to author the

New Testament through the writers of the New Testament scriptures. So the work that we have today, the work of God that points to who he is in his character is the word of God.

And how often is the word of God blasphemed because we don't like what it says, because it says that abortion or all life is sacred, so therefore abortion must be wicked or because it says that marriage is between a man and a woman and that we can't manipulate that.

We can't make up 72 different genders, one of them being a tree nymph. We can't.

These things are defined for us in the word of God and we blaspheme the word of God as a culture and as people when we mock the revelation of God.

One way that this is exampled in the Bible is one that's one that we don't like. So I'm going to share it with you.

Comes from Titus 2. In Titus 2 verse 5, it says that older women in the church are supposed to raise up and train the younger women to stay at home and to work and to love their children and to raise godly families.

And as men and women who live in a society where everyone has a career, these verses are difficult for us because what do you mean that I have to stay home?

What do you mean that I have to do this? What do you mean that I have to do that? And I say, let's look at what the text says. It says that older women and to encourage younger women to do that because that is how

God designed family and when God designed family that way, that means that it will most optimally function that way and it will be healthy in that way.

And it says that the older women who do not do that blaspheme the word of God. It says blaspheme the word of God.

Did you know that? It's hard to know that because 99 % of modern translations were too cowardly to put that word in there.

They use words like dishonor the word of God. They use words like revile the word of God or slander the word of God, but the

Greek word is blaspheme and it's not that difficult. You don't need a Greek degree to know that. The word is blasphematae, which means blaspheme.

The King James Version has it in there. The New King James Version kept it in there, but all the other translations took it out.

Why? Because they felt pressure. How can you tell me as a woman that staying at home, if I don't do that, that I'm blaspheming the word of God?

So under the pressure of a feministic culture that says that that's not appropriate anymore, translators cowardly put in different words.

They mean similar things, but it's not the same word. When we don't follow what

God says in his word, it is a kind of blasphemy against him. When we think of blasphemy, blasphemy we think of saying

God's name in vain or bringing God's name down and making it trifle. God's character and his holiness is revealed in his word.

When we trifle with the word of God or when we bring it down low and say that my standard is higher than God's standard, surely this doesn't apply to me today.

We're blaspheming the word of God. We're doing the same thing that the Pharisees did back then. Some other examples,

Matthew 27, 29 says that it was a blasphemy to hurl insults at Jesus. Acts 13, 45 says that it's blasphemy to disagree with apostolic teaching, which is the

Bible. Titus 3, 2 says that it's blasphemy to slander another believer.

Isn't that interesting? Because if blasphemy is bringing God down low and God's spirit dwells within us who are

Christians, then to slander another Christian is to slander someone with whom the

Holy Spirit of God lives inside of them and dwells. It is a dangerous offense to slander a

Holy Spirit -indwelled Christian. If we knew that, if we really knew that, the church would be pretty healthy, wouldn't it?

This word occurs 34 times in the New Testament, blasphemity, and every time it's about bringing

God down low. And this is a sin that happens again in the

Pharisees. It happens in church leadership all over the place. It happens in the church, and it's a sin that we must repent of if we want to know

Christ. The next sin is that they were cancerous. They were malignant.

They were spiritually infectious. It says, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around on sea and land to make one proselytite, and when he becomes one of you, you make him twice the son of hell as yourself.

Jesus is saying, and I think this is really important, that religion, that dead moralistic religion is more infectious than anything on earth.

It's more infectious than Omicron. It's more infectious than the common cold. It's more infectious than whatever other disease that you can think of.

Legalism is infectious to the soul of Christians, and it will pervert us into believing that we can somehow earn our standing before God instead of trusting in the

God who earned our standing on a cross. Religion is dangerous to the soul of a

Christian. Religion is dangerous because it perverts the gospel. When you take the gospel of the

Pharisees, which is Jesus plus work, or which is, I can do this and God will accept me. You've lost the gospel.

You don't have the gospel anymore. You have Pharisaism, and it's infectious in the church.

I've seen this my whole life, and maybe you have as well, where you have sermons that don't even mention the name of Jesus.

A sermon that doesn't even mention the name of Christ. The only place that it is good for is the trash can.

What hope do we have? If we say here, here's five ways to change your life from Proverbs.

We've just put a noose around your neck and tried to attempt to tell you that you can leave here today and that you can obey the

Bible and that you are going to make God so happy with you and pleased with you. If you're just sexually pure, or if you're just this, or if you're just that, what a noose.

The point of the Bible is that we can't obey God. The people who tried harder than you and I have ever tried before, who had more tenacity and grit that we've ever had, they couldn't do it, and their lives devolved into idolatry.

How do we think we are? Pastors who don't preach the gospel are dooming their people to hell.

The gospel is the only hope that we have. Christ's obedience on the cross is the only hope that you and I have.

Jesus even said, watch out and beware the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees because religion is dangerous and infectious.

It's infectious in the church. It's infectious in our own lives. Whenever we pray and we think,

Lord, I'm so glad I'm not like that person. That's Phariseeism. When we think that,

Lord, I feel so guilty right now because of this sin. If you just let me repent and if you just let me clean myself up so that I can make you happy, then you'll really love me.

That's Phariseeism because you can't repent hard enough. You can't repent good enough. If you don't trust in the finished work of Christ, you will be miserable and you will be believing a false gospel that doesn't save.

We need Christ. That's the point. The next is that they were considering It says in Matthew 12, 14.

But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him how they might destroy him. They went in secret closets in the city of Jerusalem so that they could try to destroy the

King of glory. And they did this because this passage in John 10 says that they were strangers, that they were the hired hands, that they were thieves and that they were robbers.

And because of that, they didn't hear the voice of the shepherd. They didn't discern that this was the Son of God that they were attacking.

So they attacked him ferociously and God destroys them for it. The next sin, we're going to go a little bit more quickly now, just so that we finish before tomorrow.

The next sin is that they were easily offended. Then the disciples came and said, do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this statement?

Jesus probably like, what else is new? The more Jesus taught, the more he preached, the more that he showed them the true truth from God's word, the more angry and hateful they became.

The Bible says that they were easily offended to the point to that they killed him. It says that they were greedy and that they were lovers of money.

This is the next one. Matthew 23, 14, if you want a passage that really hammers the

Pharisees, read all of Matthew 23. There's seven woes, which means perfect condemnation has come down upon these wicked men.

But here's one example from it. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you devour widows' houses.

Those who are the poorest among them, they were devouring in their greed. It says again in Luke 16, 13 through 14, that no servant can have two masters.

Since either he will hate one and love the other or he will be devoted to one and despise the other.

You cannot serve both God and money. And now the Pharisees who were lovers of money were listening to all these things and were scoffing at him.

What a wicked sin it is to be in love with money, to be in love with paper, especially now that we realize that it really doesn't have any value.

It's a kind of idolatry, isn't it? Some cultures make statues and other cultures, like here in America, we make stacks of dollar bills that are just as damning and just as incapable of saving.

Unfortunately, this example affects the church. There's, I think I've alluded to this before, but there actually is an

Instagram profile called Preachers and Sneakers. Where preachers wear like $20 ,000 shoes on stage and this profile showcases it.

It's disgusting. I have Costco specials on and that's good enough for me. I think they're from Costco.

That's my wife. There's another example recently. I don't know if you heard about it in Lakewood, Texas, where Joel Steen's bathroom, it was lined with money.

Now inflation's bad, but I don't think insulation is still more expensive than lining your bathroom with money.

Maybe it'll eventually get that point. Maybe your dollars will be of so little value that it would be cheaper to line your house with money instead of insulation.

But this kind of sin showcases a heart that loves money, that loves wealth, that loves status, that loves influence over God.

If you listen to the man speaking, I don't recommend it. He even says that you'll be healthy, wealthy, and happy if you love

God. How does that apply to Jesus, who died with nothing?

The last coat that he had, they took from him and stole from him. How does that apply to Paul, who was beheaded in a

Roman jail cell with nothing to his name? How does that apply to Peter? How does that apply to anyone in the New Testament? This false doctrine of health, wealth, and happiness.

We're going to be healthy eternally. We're going to have riches that no one could ever imagine when we get to heaven.

We're going to be whole and made perfect. What these preachers do is they exchange the eternal gifts that God is going to give us in heaven for this temporary satisfaction that you can have on earth.

And it's adulterating the gospel in its idolatry. It's not just those who want more money.

How often, and maybe this is because I've spent a lot of time not having money, but how often is it an idolatry in our own lives when we focus on how little we have as well?

It's not sanctifying to be poor just because you're poor. God doesn't look down on you and say, you don't have a lot of money.

You're really doing it right. It's not a sin to have money. It's a sin for money to have you and it's not a sin for you not to have money.

It's a sin for you not to have Christ. The point of this is that we must not be idolaters.

Isn't it interesting that the Pharisees began 200 years before this to stop idolatry and here they are the chief culprits of it just 200 years later?

I think it shows us that the harder we try in our human effort to eradicate sin in our life without the power of God, we will also become idolaters as well.

The next sin is that they were judgmental. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to the disciples, why is your teacher eating with the tax collectors and sinners?

They loved themselves, but they hated others.

They hated the ones who struggled with sin and they're like, Jesus, get on board with our mission.

You want to see the Messiah come too and you think about the irony of that statement. He's like, I'm here.

And they get mad at Jesus because he doesn't join in with their sinner -hating sort of mentality and ministry.

They get mad that he eats with people who are caught in sin. They get mad that he loves people and calls them out of their sin instead of beating them over the head with the

Pharisaic hammer. They thought that if they could just abuse you enough and if they could just hurt you enough, they'd make you hate your sin and you'd eventually come around.

That tactic doesn't work anywhere. It's like in the army. They said that we will continue to beat you until morality improves.

That doesn't really improve morality. It's like the Pharisees were ultimately saying, you know, we hurt you because we love you.

That's what abusers say. That's not what people who are called by God say. Jesus offended these

Pharisees for being so judgmental and Jesus offends us today when we devolve into this kind of sin as well.

The next one is that they're self -focused. See how big the jump was from J to S? You're like, now there's light at the end of the tunnel.

There's like seven S's, don't worry. Matthew 23, 14 says, and for pretense you make long prayers that you will receive greater condemnation.

They wanted everybody to look at them and focus on them instead of focusing on God. Again, idolatry. It says that they were sign seekers.

That's next. Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to him, teacher, we want to see a sign from you.

They had seen him do all kinds of things. They had seen him multiply bread and feed like 20 ,000 people.

The Bible says 5 ,000. That's how many men there were. But then when you count how many women there were and children there were, there could have been 15, 20 ,000 people.

Jesus has just done miracle after miracle in front of them. And they're like, show us a sign so that you can validate who you are.

What a wicked and adulterous generation that looks for a sign. And I find it so fascinating that church culture today in the 1900s and 2000s has done the same thing.

How many churches now say, well, if gold dust doesn't fall from your ceiling, then you don't really love God. Or if you don't have holy laughter and fall out, you don't really love

God. If you don't raise the dead and have videos about how you're going to raise the dead, then you don't really love

God. What in the world? Jesus said an adulterous generation seeks for a sign. Where are we at?

How do we miss that? The point is for us not to have a magic show every single week when we come to church.

The point is for us to point to the creator of the universe and to rest and trust in him. It says that they were spiritually abusive.

John 9, 34. They answered him. You were born entirely in sin and you were teaching us. So they put him out.

This is the Pharisees talking to the blind man. The blind man had just received sight from Jesus.

They just saw that a man born blind can now see. And they're quibbling over the details.

And eventually, because this guy doesn't renounce the one who just gave him sight, who would do that?

You've been blind your whole life. Jesus gives you sight and you want me to tell you that he's not who he says it is? And because he did not renounce

Jesus, they kicked him out of the synagogue because they believed that they were the ones who could open the door to knowledge of God.

They were spiritually blind. It says, Jesus says in Matthew 15, 14, let them alone. They are blind guides of the blind.

And if a blind man guides a blind man, then both are going to fall into a pit. You imagine this big crack in the earth and a blind man leading another blind man and then both plunging to their own peril.

That's who the Pharisees were, blind. John the Baptist calls them spiritually dull and a brood of vipers.

He says, but when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, you brood of vipers.

Who warned you? That's rhetorical. The Old Testament warned them to flee from the wrath to come. They're so spiritually dull that they didn't even know their own books.

They claim to be religious leaders. They claim to be the ones who are the authority over these texts. And yet they didn't see that the wrath was coming.

Malachi, the last book in the Old Testament, says that when God shows up at his temple, he's going to judge the wicked and the immoral.

They missed it because they weren't reading their Bible as if it was about God. They're reading their Bible as if it was all about them.

That's a sermon. We do that all the time today. We read the Bible like it's all about us. I'm David.

No, you're not. You're the Israelites who are crying. I'm Samson.

No, you're not. You're maybe Delilah and so am I. We got to read the

Bible as if it's all about God, not about us. Says that they're spiritually jealous. So the Pharisees said to one another, look, the world has gone after them.

As a Christian, if we look and we say, the world is going after Jesus, do you hear how excited we are when we say that?

They're saying, look, the world's going after him and not us. What a disgusting thing to say.

That they're more concerned with their popularity decreasing. The Bible says that we're supposed to become less as Jesus becomes greater.

Do we see how bad that this is? How wicked that this kind of leadership is? They hated him for his success.

They hated him that his ministry was growing instead of praising God that the Messiah had come.

Bible says that they're unjust. Woe to you Pharisees, for you pay tithe and mint and rue every kind of garden herb.

They actually were paying their tithes on their mint and dill and their spices rigidly so that they got exactly the right amount of dill on the scales and exactly the right amount of this and that.

Yet you do that and you disregard justice and love. But these are the things that you should have done without neglecting the others.

It says that they're unrighteous. I say that unless your righteousness surpasses the scribes and the

Pharisees that you will not enter the kingdom of God. Jesus says that the righteousness of the Pharisees is just enough to get you spewed out of the mouth of Christ.

It's just enough to get you thrown into the lake of fire. It's just enough to damn you for all eternity. Turn from that sort of righteousness.

Finally, it calls them whitewashed tombs. Matthew 23, 27.

Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs.

On the outside you appear beautiful, but on the inside you're full of dead men's bones.

I think that there's a lot of examples for this. I think this is convicting personally in the sense that we live in a social media era and we pretend like things are okay.

We pretend like we're clean and happy and we're the perfect Christian dad or the perfect Christian mom and this is what we put out there for the world to see and yet inside we're hurting and we're broken.

That's what the Pharisees were doing. That's sort of sin that we need to repent of and live authentically from.

18 characteristics that we just went through. 18 sub points in point one.

I think that's a record. But 18 identity traits from these

Pharisees and that's not even all. I couldn't count them all. I couldn't include them all.

Their leadership was infused with idolatry. It says that they were argumentative, attention seekers, biblically illiterate, blasphemous, sign seekers, cancerous, conspirators, easily offended, judgmental, greedy, selfish lovers of money.

They were spiritually abusive, spiritually blind, spiritually dull, spiritually jealous, unjust, unrighteous and they were whitewashed tombs.

How much better of a picture could you have opposed to who Christ is? The perfect shepherd, the perfect pastor, the perfect leader.

At every single point of the Pharisees' character, Jesus is diametrically opposed to who they are.

He's not argumentative. He's humble. Even in front of them, he was quiet before his murderers and captors because he wasn't like the

Pharisees. He didn't seek his own attention or renown. He pointed everything to God.

He wasn't illiterate of the Scriptures. Time and time again, he's pointing them to what the Scriptures say. He says, you've heard it said this, but what it really says is this.

He knew the Scriptures. He never blasphemed God. He only ever pointed perfectly to God and honored him.

His ministry was like the Pharisees in the fact that it was contagious, but it was contagious because of its righteousness, not because of the cancerous nature of the

Pharisees' religion. He didn't ever conspire in secret. He lived authentically and open in front of everybody.

He wasn't easily offended. He was mild -mannered and patient. He wasn't greedy. He came to give his life as a ransom for us.

The one who had every reason to cling to his status and his approval and everything else is the one who was the most radically generous and who gave to us, who did not deserve it.

It's the exact opposite of greedy. He's gracious. Instead of being judgmental, he took the judgment of God upon himself.

Instead of seeking his own gain, he went to the cross. Instead of abusing us, he adopted us. Instead of being blind, he opened up our eyes.

Instead of being jealous over the success of others, Jesus, multiple times in his disciples' life, praised them because they were getting the truth.

He said, you're going to do greater things than I. You're going to go places that I've never been. Jesus never left his own nation.

He never left his own country, except for when he was a baby and he was taken down to Egypt. But as an adult, he never went more than 70 miles away from his own home.

And he says, you're going to do greater things than me. My spirit in you is going to do things. You're going to take this gospel to the ends of the earth.

And Jesus rejoiced in that. He rejoiced that his disciples' names were going to be written in heaven, not like the

Pharisees who were so worried about themselves. He was the picture of righteousness and justice.

And I love the image of the whitewashed tomb. The Pharisees were whitewashed tomb because they were pretending to be someone that they're not.

Jesus, who is someone that he truly is, went to the tomb and whitewashed us, and washed us white as snow, and cleaned us out of our sins, and forgave us of our failures and our brokenness.

He went to an actual stinking tomb and came out in victory for us.

Their ministry kills, his ministry brings life. Their ministry steals, his ministry gives.

Their ministry robs, his ministry invests. Their ministry destroys, and his ministry builds up.

Their ministry discourages, and his ministry empowers. Their ministry damns, and his ministry gives everlasting life.

His leadership is better. He came to set us free from that.

He came to oppose that, and he came so that we would live differently. As we close,

I was thinking about an example in the Old Testament, in light of who Jesus is.

Do you remember when Daniel had the courage and the tenacity to ask for different food because he didn't want to eat the king's portion?

He didn't want to eat the portion of the world. And then he became healthier, and his friends became healthier because they were eating the portion that God prescribed in the law.

All of us who are in Jesus Christ are healthier, spiritually speaking, than the world because we feast off of his portion, not off the portion of the fat and richness of the world.

His gospel that saves us also transforms us. His gospel changes us.

His gospel shapes us. His gospel empowers us. We leave here as different people because we know

God. It says we're new creations in Christ. No longer bound to the same sins of the

Pharisees and stuck under the same legalism and trying to impress God with our actions. We are not impressive to God.

Christ is impressive to God, and we're in him. If you're a

Christian today, and you're thinking about ministry, and you're thinking about going into ministry or maybe you're already in ministry in some way, you're thinking about what that looks for your life.

Maybe it's eldership, deaconship, church planting. Maybe it's something else. Your goal is to make much of Jesus Christ and to get out of the way.

Never believe the hype that you are something that you are not. You're a slave.

Christ is your master. Magnify him above all else. If you're a

Christian, the same is true. If you heard any of these sins in this list of the

Pharisees that you're currently participating in, struggling with, then turn to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Don't go home and think that great sermon on how not to try too hard to save myself.

I'm gonna really try hard to implement that. That would be the wrong application.

The application is turn to Jesus Christ. Rest in him, trust in him.

Don't trust in yourself. We're the problem. Christ and his gospel is the solution.

If you're not a Christian today, I pray that you would see and that you would remember that the best human effort, the

Pharisees, who have more rigidity than you, who have more passion in accomplishing their goal than you and I do, they couldn't do it.

They couldn't please God. They couldn't honor him with their effort, neither can we. If you wanna know

God, don't try to clean yourself up. Run to the cross. Run to Christ because he is all that you actually need.

Isn't that the application for all of us? That Jesus Christ really, truly is all that we need.

Nothing else. We just need him. Let's pray. Lord, thank you so much that you are sufficient, that you're all that we need.

We don't need wealth, health, happiness. We don't need the right job. We don't need the right car.

We don't need family that don't annoy us. We don't need any status.

We don't need followings. We can name and name and name all the things that we say we need, and yet all we need is

Christ. Lord, please convince us of that truth. Let us rest in that truth.

That's where contentment is. Father, I pray that in all the areas that I fail, in all the areas that we as a church fail, in all the ways that the church universal fails to cling to the sufficiency of Christ, that,

Lord, we would wake up and that we would repent. And in joy, we would run to Christ.

And in joy, we would receive his forgiveness. And in joy, we would walk away knowing that we have been made co -heirs with Christ.

These sins that we repent of are sins that he's already died for.

Lord, let us remember that. And let us, with great thankfulness and joy, love and serve him.