PHARISEE PHONINESS

“By this time the crowd, unwieldy and stepping on each other’s toes, numbered into thousands. But Jesus’ primary concern was His disciples. He said to them, ‘Watch yourselves carefully so that you don’t get contaminated with the Pharisees’ yeast, Pharisee phoniness. You can’t keep yourself hidden forever; before long you’ll be exposed. You can’t hide behind a religious mask forever; sooner or later the mask will slip and your true face will be known. You can’t whisper one thing in private and preach the opposite in public; the day’s coming when those whispers will be repeated all over town.'” Luke 12:1-3 (The Message).

It’s amazing how comfortable Jesus was in the company of tax collectors and ‘sinners’. He ate with them, symbolising that He had no issues with them. He spent time with them in preference to the religious ones. You never read long accusations against them from His mouth and yet…He had so much to say against the Pharisees.

He hated Pharisaic attitudes so much that He spent time warning His disciples against them. ‘Don’t even keep company with people like that,’ He said, “because you will be contaminated with their ‘yeast’.’ Why?

Is it possible that God is far less fazed by the obvious sins that we find so heinous, sins like adultery, lying, stealing, murder, etc., than He is by the two-facedness of the Pharisees? Why did Jesus hate their hypocrisy? The people He hobnobbed with had no need to be told how bad they were. They knew it and they welcomed Him because He accepted them and offered them hope.

A comment I wrote in my Bible long ago says it all. ‘Religion is the most difficult disease to cure because it infects with such self-righteousness that no sense of need remains.’ Isn’t that the difference between the ‘sinners’ and the Pharisees, no sense of need?

Sinners, for example, like Zaccheus, grasped the forgiveness Jesus offered and received new life from Him. The Pharisees covered up their wickedness with a veneer of religion and pursued their greedy lives thinking that no-one knew what was behind their masks.

Jesus warned that the rot could not be covered up forever. Sooner or later they would be found out and exposed for who they really were. Imagine the shame of such exposure, especially because they were supposed to be representatives of God to the people.

God is never fooled by the face we show to the world. I quote from a message from Bill Johnson of Bethel Church, Redding, CA. ‘Jesus loves to offend the mind in order to expose the heart.’ God’s desire is to expose our darkness by turning on the light of His truth. The problem is that, like the Pharisees, we prefer the darkness because our deeds are evil. Our ‘darkness’ infects our world like the Pharisees’ darkness infected theirs.

Instead of scuttling under the rocks like bugs in the light, Jesus yearns for us to come clean so that we can walk in the light with Him. Our masks may hide our true faces for a while but sooner or later they will slip and then…?