Tag Archives: hypocrites

Jesus And His Enemies

Christian Life, , , ,

JESUS AND HIS ENEMIES

If Jesus loved the down-and-outs like that, what about His enemies? When we read the gospels, it seems that He had it in for them. He took every opportunity to tell them off in public and to make them squirm and look like fools. Did He tell His disciples one thing and do the opposite? He was big on “Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you. Don’t take revenge. Let God avenge the wrong they do to you.” But He mercilessly exposed the wicked hearts of the religious leaders. How loving was that?

We have to concede that Jesus was always guided by the truth. When He collided with the Pharisees and the religious leaders, what was His motive? What was the difference between the “sinners” and the Pharisees? Need!

Jesus did not have to tell the “sick” ones how sick they were. They knew it. Just like a medical doctor whose job is to prescribe treatment for the sick, not condemn the patient for his condition, it was not Jesus’s role to beat on those who knew they were sick. They flocked to Him because He had treatment for their diseases, both physical and spiritual. They hung on His words because He supplied answers for their need.

The religious ones, on the other hand, were so full of their own self-righteousness that they didn’t need Jesus or the message He came to bring. They were quite satisfied with the status quo, thank you very much, and even hated Him for showing up their shallowness, emptiness and hypocrisy. They needed to hear the diagnosis, whether they wanted it or not because, unless they understood how deathly sick they were, they would die without even trying to find a cure.

Jesus revealed His love for them in the very truth He told them which they refused to hear. Once He had told them the truth, it was up to them what they did with it. If they chose not to respond, their guilt was theirs on Judgment Day when they had to give an account of what they did with their lives.

Surely, speaking the truth is the most loving thing a person can do, regardless of whether the other person wants to hear it or not, or will respond or not. The responsibility becomes his when the words have been spoken.

This is where attitude and motive come in. What was Jesus’s attitude? His very words and tone conveyed anger. Why was He angry?  Was it right for Him to be angry? Anger is not sinful if it directed at the right object and for the right reasons. Jesus’s anger was not selfish. He had nothing personal to defend. His anger was directed at those who misled the people they were supposed to be teaching the truth.

The whole of Matt. 23 is an outburst of anger against the Pharisees for misrepresenting God and His Word and for increasing the load of rules and rituals on the people and then judging them for failing while they basked in their hypocritical self-righteousness. Righteous anger has a redemptive purpose if it is heeded, but brings judgment if it is ignored. It was Jesus’s anger that eventually took Him to the cross because he never gave up on exposing those who opposed Him.

What was His motive? Once again it was the truth. He wanted them to hear and to respond to the truth. If they refused, it was on their own heads.

As for the person who hears my words but does not keep them, I do not judge him. For I did not come to judge the world but to save it. There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; the very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day. (John 12: 47-48)

Jesus’s words of accusation were never vindictive or directed towards settling a personal grudge. He was fighting for justice for those who were wronged by the attitude and behaviour of the Pharisees.

His exasperation with those who refused to listen to Him culminated in an outburst of tears.

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord,’ (Matt 23: 37-39)

Is that not the expression of love?

Scripture is taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my first book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3,                                                                              eBook 978-4828-0511-6

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or Kindle version, on www.takealot.com  or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

Do you like this post? Then buy your own copy of my book, Learning to be a Disciple, which is also available from www.amazon.com or www.takealot.com in South Africa. You can also order a copy directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com

Watch this space!

My latest book, The Heartbeat of Holiness, will also soon be available.

 

 

The Folly Of Tradition

Bible Study, , , ,

THE FOLLY OF TRADITION

The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus, and saw some of His disciples eating with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. (The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as washing of cups, pitchers and kettles). So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, ‘Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands?’ (Mark 7: 1-5).

A good plan – to wash hands before eating, especially after being at the market! And as for washing dishes – don’t we do that every day? So what was the issue? The religious types were not critical of Jesus’ disciples for not washing their hands before lunch. They had issues with them for eating with ceremonially “unclean” hands. Their problem was not hygiene but religion.

They were fastidious about keeping the detailed instructions handed down from their sages – the ancient rabbis who spent all their lives debating the meaning of the 613 laws of the Torah, and adding what they considered to be interpretations which were supposed to protect the people from inadvertently transgressing the commandments. The outcome was a top-heavy load of rules that made the ordinary people’s lives intolerably weighed down by so much “do-ing” that they had not time for “be-ing”.

That led to another problem. The emphasis of the rules was so much on the doing or not doing that they lost the implications of the Torah, to show mercy to their fellow beings, both Israelites and foreigners by being generous and kind, like the God they served. They were so self-absorbed in their efforts to be right that they became self-right-eous, and despised those who were not as “holy” as they. The nature of their God was distorted and the ones they were supposed to be influencing toward Him were driven away.

He replied, ‘Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites, as it is written: ‘These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.’ You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.’ (Mark 7: 6-8).

Aha! So this was not new. It was already happening in Isaiah’s day, some six hundred or so years before. It was not new then and it certainly is not new today. Look at some of the additions to Jesus’ simple command to follow Him that have become integrated into the gospel and the Christian way of life. Those who are bent on being true disciples of Jesus might wonder where all that stuff came from.

I have a simple test when it comes to evaluating all the trappings of Christianity. I ask myself the question, “Is this why Jesus came?” Of what value are fancy embroidered robes and sashes, swinging of incense, bowing to altars, wearing of crucifixes, praying to saints and lighting of candles and . . . and . . . and, to people when Jesus only said, “Follow me”? Did He insist that all of that was part of His calling? Did Jesus set up a hierarchy of people so that some are “holier” than others because they have education or a title or wear embroidered robes? What about “That they may be one . . .”?

What about all the other stuff we have added? Some believers in some circles regard other believers in their circles as “second-class” because they don’t speak in tongues, or they haven’t been “baptised” in the Holy Spirit. Where do they find that in the teaching of Jesus? And if there is no being “slain in the Spirit” during ministry, then they say that the Holy Spirit had not “worked”. Really? Who said? Who is the judge?

And what about being called “born-again” believers as though there are two kinds of believers, those who have been born again and those who have not? Jesus told only one man that he had to be “born again” because Nicodemus was a Pharisee. He had such fancy notions about himself that he needed to go back to square one, symbolically, and begin all over again through the power of the Holy Spirit, like beginning life from scratch as a baby in his understanding of God’s way.

Jesus called everyone else to follow Him; to become like Him, to think like Him, to live like Him, to speak and act like He did – to “become” Him so that the world would see what the Father is really like.

Is it any wonder then, that the church in the main is irrelevant in the world? It is no better than any other religion – fragmented, ritualistic and unrealistic, making people slaves to do’s and don’ts just like any other man-made ism.

Jesus came to set people free from all that stuff to become true sons and daughters of God. Over the centuries, rules, rituals and traditions have been so piled on Jesus’ simple call that He has become an unrecognisable caricature of the true Son of God. In some quarters the Bible, God’s Word to His people, has even become a forbidden and hated book! Why? In simple terms, because people love their darkness rather than the light because of their wicked lives.

In some places the church has become nothing less than the temple of Baal – with altars and images all over the place and beads and saints and holy water and every other irrelevancy to draw people away from Jesus. Jesus came as the truth to do away with every picture and symbol so that we can focus completely on Him and Him alone.

And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into His image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3: 18).

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (copyright 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

Check out my Blog site – www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

 

Lost and Found

Christian Life, , ,

LOST AND FOUND

“Their grumbling triggered this story, ‘Suppose one of you had a hundred sheep and lost one. Wouldn’t you leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the lost one until you found it? When found, you can be sure you would put it across your shoulders, rejoicing, and when you got home call in all your friends and neighbours saying, ‘Celebrate with me! I’ve found my lost sheep!’ Count on it – there’s more joy in heaven over one sinner’s rescued life than of ninety-nine good people in no need of rescue.'” Luke 15:4-7 (The Message).

Jesus’ stories always had a target audience. Sometimes they were used to teach and other times to expose wrong thinking or bad attitudes – especially of His religious opponents. In Hebrew thought, parables were intended, not for information but for identification. Who am I in the story?

This story was one of three, called chain parables. There was a theme running through them, except that the third story had the punch-line. In the first two, Jesus spoke of lost property, a sheep, a coin, of value to the owner. In both stories, the search yielded success – the valuable property was found and the owner called on the neighbours to celebrate. We assume that the neighbours obliged by rejoicing with him or her because there was legitimate cause for rejoicing.

In the third story, something changes; not a sheep wandering away, or an inanimate object like a coin being misplaced, but a wayward son choosing to renounce his father, his family and his heritage and to celebrate his ‘freedom’ by squandering his inheritance with equally worthless hooligans. Of what value was he? In that state, a disgrace to his father and family.

And yet, when he shamefacedly made his way home, his father did not reject him as one would expect, but welcomed him home with open arms, and ordered a huge celebration for the ‘lost’ son who had been ‘found’. But unlike the neighbours in the previous two parables, the elder brother did not value him as a returning lost brother but rejected him as a worthless good-for-nothing. He focussed on his behaviour, not on his intrinsic worth as a son.

And here is the point of the story. It was glaringly obvious who the elder brother represented. The Pharisees had just been criticising Jesus for eating with rejects. They saw no worth in the people who did not ‘behave’ as they did, forgetting that their attitude of superiority was a stench in the nostrils of Jesus, far more offensive than the sins of the ‘sinners’ they despised.

Particularly offensive to Jesus was the contemptuous attitude of those who refused to rejoice over the return of lost sinners. From His perspective it was nothing short of idolatry because they were elevating themselves above people and even above God. They were honouring themselves as the epitome of virtue and writing everyone else off as worthless.

There were two categories of people that Jesus warned about the fires of hell – the greedy and the hypocrite. Of no other groups did He tell stories to highlight God’s attitude to them. Unless they repented, they would be consigned to the garbage dump where worthless rubbish is burned.

The Pharisees thought sinners were worthless but they could not see that their own attitude stifled their potential and made their lives fruitless for God. The returning sinner was welcomed home and came back on track to fulfil his purpose in life. The interlude of his wandering away did not disqualify him from being a son. It only interrupted his fellowship with his father and his growth in becoming a mature son. It was not only an interruption but, in the long run, also a learning experience.

But for the hypocrite there was nothing of value in his attitude, only alienation from the father and the family. This series of stories should have alerted these religious prigs to the very thing in themselves that they judged in others. No wonder they could not rejoice over the return of lost sinners because they had no idea of just how ‘lost’ they were!