You Might Be a Pharisee If...

Weakness isn't a flaw. It's where hope begins. In A Place for Weakness, Michael Horton shows how the cross and resurrection of Christ don't just explain suffering, they overcome it. This isn't a book about clichés or quick fixes. It's about real hope for real pain. Hope that quiets guilt, silences doubt, and outlasts every storm. Whether you're grieving or walking with someone else through their grief, A Place for Weakness shows how the doing, dying, and rising of Christ silences the thunder of the law and gives eternal hope in the face of life's hardest questions. Grab your copy today for a donation of any amount at solomedia.org slash offers.

That's solomedia.org forward slash offers. So if you've been going to church for any amount of time, I guarantee you that at some point, especially if you've gone through the Gospels, you've heard about the Pharisees. They're the bad guys, the antagonists in the Gospels, oftentimes bumping up against Jesus and his teaching.

At various points, they want to kill him or stone him. They're the epitome of a religion, religious observance, without a personal relationship with God. And sometimes in the church, you'll hear people say things like, don't be such a Pharisee. Well, what does that mean to be a Pharisee? Who were the Pharisees? And I want to give you three things that if you do these things, you might actually be a Pharisee. First things first, who were the Pharisees? The Pharisees were a religious and political association that developed probably around the second and third centuries BC. Jews who wanted to be faithful to the Torah and to push back against the Greek influence on their religion separated themselves into non-conformist sects in order to follow God. In fact, some people think that's where the word Pharisee comes from, a Hebrew root word meaning separate. The idea being we're going to distinguish ourselves from everyone else.

We're going to be a cut above the rest. We are the true holy people of God. The historian Josephus who, believe it or not, says that he was a Pharisee claimed that on account of their doctrine, quote, they are able to greatly persuade the body of the people and whatsoever they do about divine worship, prayers, and sacrifices they perform according to their direction. Josephus says that they lived meanly, meaning in a poor or a humble manner, and had a great respect for their elders. They were committed to Torah, that's the law of God, and tradition. For people who were tired of the Roman decadence and Herod's immoralities, you have to imagine that the Pharisees must have been a breath of fresh air. Here's something else you need to know about the Pharisees.

Most of them were regular people. We sometimes get this picture in our minds of the Pharisees as priests decked out in holy garb, having studied the Hebrew law as a profession. Listen to what one scholar, Joachim Jeremiah, said about them in his classic work, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus. In short, the Pharisaic communities were mostly composed of petty commoners, men of the people with no scribal education, earnest and self-sacrificing, but all too often they were not free from uncharitableness and pride with regard to the masses, the people of the land who did not observe the demands of religious laws as they did, and in contrast to whom the Pharisees considered themselves to be the true Israel. Look, most Pharisees were laymen. There were some who had been trained in the law, and they were the authoritative interpreters of Torah and tradition.

They were called the scribes. This is why oftentimes in the New Testament you'll hear about the scribes and the Pharisees, and so they're placed side by side. Some of the Pharisees had more legal training, but many of them were regular guys who had applied to be a part of this religious association because they wanted to follow God's commandments amidst a corrupt culture.

Another historian, Everett Ferguson, emphasizes this. He says, quote, the Pharisees' reputation for exactitude in the study and interpretation of the biblical law and their applications of it to areas of life where other Jews did not apply it distinguished them from other Jews. The Pharisees wanted to apply all of the law to all of life, and they often looked down on other Jews who didn't make the same applications that they did. They were known for prayer, fasting, and tithing. They were committed to works of superarrogation.

That's a big word, superarrogation, but it simply means doing more than the law asks. They wanted to go above and beyond for God, even tithing things that the law didn't demand, and yet somehow they missed the forest for the trees. Sure, they tithed on garden herbs, mint, and dill, and cumin, but they rejected the weightier matters of the law like justice, Jesus says in Matthew 23, verse 23. The case of the Pharisees is really terrifying because one thing they show us is that you can be committed to proper biblical interpretation, have a deep concern for moral purity, and lament the cultural decadence all around you, be known for prayer and piety and external religious observances, and still be under God's wrath. So we've set the stage answering who the Pharisees were from a historical perspective. Now, how do you avoid their fate in the gospels? There were three vital errors that the Pharisees made that people make today too.

The first and most important error was that they trusted the wrong thing. They put more stock in their good works and religious pedigree than they did in Jesus the Messiah. Early in the gospels, we encounter the Pharisees in the wilderness listening to John the Baptist preach, and John's warning to them is fascinating.

Listen to what he said. But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come, bear fruit in keeping with repentance, and do not presume to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father, for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. The Pharisees thought we are the true people of God, the sons of Abraham, and that kept them from being able to see their sin.

Self-confidence kept them from placing their confidence in Jesus. There's a great example of this in the gospel of John. This is from John chapter eight. So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. They answered him, we are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say you will become free? Jesus answered them, truly, truly I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever, the son remains forever. So if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are offspring of Abraham, yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you.

I speak of what I have seen with my father and you do what you have heard from your father. They answered him, Abraham is our father. And Jesus said to them, if you were Abraham's children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did.

This is wild, right? Jesus has come to set these people free from their sins, but they don't think they need his deliverance because they are Abraham's offspring. And Jesus says, actually, you aren't. The true children of Abraham are those who have the faith that he had. And if you won't embrace me by faith, then despite your religious and cultural background, you're still a slave to sin.

See how they're trusting in the wrong thing? It's interesting because in Luke chapter 18, Jesus tells the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, and Luke introduces it with these words. Luke chapter 18, verse nine, he also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt. So the first fatal flaw of the Pharisees is that their trust was in themselves, in their own righteousness, in their religious background.

And that self-confidence was their doom. You might be a Pharisee if instead of confessing your sins and coming to Jesus by faith, you're trusting in your own ability to keep God's law to make you righteous. Here's the second sign of Pharisaical behavior.

Self-confidence often leads to contempt. Remember again, those words from Luke 18, the Pharisees trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt. Rather than have a genuine concern and care for the loss, the Pharisees treated them with disgust. In Luke five, Jesus calls Levi, a tax collector, to be one of his initial followers.

And he goes over to Levi's house with his tax buddies to eat dinner. And what do the Pharisees do? Luke chapter five, verse 30 says, and the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples saying, why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners? In Luke chapter seven, verse 29, tax collectors hear Jesus' teaching and declare God just, but the Pharisees reject God's purpose for themselves thinking we don't need to repent. In Luke chapter 15, verses one and two, we read, now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled saying, this man receives sinners and eats with them.

And then in Luke 19, Jesus calls not just any tax collector, but a chief tax collector, a man named Zacchaeus, to be his disciple. And guess who grumbles? The Pharisees.

Here's the point. People who are self-righteous typically spend more time complaining about sinners than they do trying to show them compassion. And that's exactly what we see in the Pharisees. You might be a Pharisee if you have more contempt in your heart for the sinful people of society than you do compassion. You see the tax collectors and sinners of today and think I'd never be caught in their company.

Gross. Not recognizing that the son of man came to seek and save the lost. Jesus did never condone sin, but sinners were drawn to him because in him they found compassion and the hope of forgiveness, something they never found in the Pharisees. Lastly, you might be a Pharisee if you put more stock in your man-made religious traditions than you do God's word.

On one occasion, some Pharisees from Jerusalem confronted Jesus because his disciples weren't washing their hands before they ate according to the tradition of the elders. In other words, they're upset because Jesus' disciples aren't following their particular application of the law. Here's what Jesus said to them in Mark chapter seven. You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men. And he said to them, you have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition. For Moses said, honor your father and your mother and whoever reviles father or mother must surely die. But you say, if a man tells his father or his mother, whatever you would have gained from me as Corban that is given to God, then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down and many such things you do. What the Pharisees missed was Jesus. Their self-confidence, their arrogance kept them from seeing that they too needed a savior. If you recognize, you know what, I actually do have this struggle. I do wrestle with viewing others with contempt, with having this inflated view of myself.

Here's the good news. Jesus Christ came into the world not just to save notorious sinners like publicans, but even arrogant religious people. And when we confess our sins to him, whether those sins are pride and arrogance and self-righteousness or adultery, sexual immorality, stealing, whatever it is, if we come to him with contrition, confessing our sins, he washes us and cleanses us. That's what the Pharisees were unwilling to do.

So, don't make their mistake. Weakness isn't a flaw. It's where hope begins. In A Place for Weakness, Michael Horton shows how the cross and resurrection of Christ don't just explain suffering, they overcome it. This isn't a book about clichés or quick fixes. It's about real hope for real pain, hope that quiets guilt, silences doubt, and outlasts every storm, whether you're grieving or walking with someone else through their grief. A Place for Weakness shows how the doing, dying, and rising of Christ silences the thunder of the law and gives eternal hope in the face of life's hardest questions. Grab your copy today for a donation of any amount at solomedia.org slash offers. That's solomedia.org forward slash offers.