Pharisee & the Prostitute 1

After you finish reading the Old Testament there is a gap of over 400 years where the bible is completely silent. This is where I would like to start.

The glory and blessing of God had left Israel. There were no prophets giving words from God, no Bible’s were written yet and Israel was attacked, destroyed and ruled by the Romans. Study the history of Israel and you will see how bad things were. Over 500 years of captivity, and I understand that I am writing to Americans who have no idea what captivity means, so imagine what it was like when Germany started capturing countries in world war 2. A lot of people die, torture, taxes, probably the lose of their homes and destruction of their identity. Imagine China takes over the U.S. one day; we wouldn’t be called the United States anymore, probably western china or something.

Now that I’ve painted a background for you, lets talk about the Pharisees. These guys were the religious leaders of that day and pretty powerful people. There was no separation of church and state and religion was deeply intertwined in the culture and laws of the nation. The Pharisees were the only one’s with access to the written law and they used it to their advantage. They were well respected and very educated, probably comparable to our politicians. In the Old Testament God spoke through the prophets and there had not been one of those in a long time.

God was essentially absent and the only thing left was hundreds of laws God has given to Moses about 1400 years earlier. So that’s where the Pharisees came in. They studied these laws until they knew every single one and they used the laws to take advantage of the clueless people. No one knew as much as them, and  people didn’t argue with them or they would excommunicate you from the temple, which basically meant you didn’t have any more friends. The Pharisees loved the attention, respect and advantages this knowledge and power gave them.

I can relate to their dilemma because what do you do when God is silent? If we want to appear good, we become moral. We follow this external list of actions that make us good and avoid the ones that condemn us as evil. The laws God gave Moses were intended to show man how wicked man was, it was not intended or capable of saving us. But so many people resent the idea that they need a savior. They are good enough or at least better than most. Since the Pharisees were better than everyone, God must love them. But when Jesus came, instead of praising the Pharisees for all their good deeds he condemned them.

He used them as an example of what God despises, those who try to save themselves. The Pharisees might have kept the commandments from first to last, but their hearts were full of greed and pride. They appeared perfect, but were empty. Blinded by the fear of losing their position and reputation, they didn’t recognize that God was among them. They hated God, and they hung him on a cross to die.

Humanism is the idea that man must save himself, that God does not exist or he is hiding himself from us. There have been times in my life where I have searched for God and couldn’t find him. Somewhere along the Christian journey, God feels absent and far away from us. This abandonment leaves us desperately searching for spiritual clarity. I have seen in my Christian journey, two extreme solutions to the perceived absence of God. It is religious humanism. We either become the Pharisee or the prostitute.

1. The Pharisee

This is the militant type of Christian. Their ideology is pull yourself up by your bootstraps and ignores their lack of hunger. A checklist of does and don’ts and a rigid faith then measures spiritual success. This is an empty form of legalism, void of love and joy; the unintended consequence of choices made to please God. Sunday mornings are not much different than the days of Israel. They are lost without God and everyone; including the pastor, cannot find him. Religious people try to save themselves. With good intentions, people attempt to earn their salvation through good works and a little more morality than the next guy. Pharisees still fill the church.

The Pharisee is too proud to realize they needed Jesus to die for them. You might have entered the Kingdom through the cross, but are you now trying to earn the salvation you were given?  When God seems to be gone, we assume morality and goodness are what we were lacking, and the reason God is gone. Or when we are doing well, we congratulate ourselves, believing God loves us because we are better than others. The Humanistic pharisee inside you believes you must save yourself; but you must remember,  Jesus came because we were and still are hopelessly lost without him.

Paul, former chief Pharisee writes in Galatians (The message translation):

19 -21What actually took place is this: I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn’t work. So I quit being a “law man” so that I could be God’s man. Christ’s life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not “mine,” but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that.

Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God’s grace. If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily.”

Pray this prayer of repentance if you see the Pharisee inside of you:

God, help me to reject the propensity to save myself. Break me free from the chains of religion and the lie that I can earn your mercy. Remove pride from my heart and help me to see my constant need for your grace.  I have found myself an empty person, full of religion and absent of joy. Lead me back to the cross. Help me to find again the nearness of your presence and eternal approval at the feet of Jesus. Thank you for saving me from myself.

Stay tuned in; I will cover the prostitute approach in my next post.