Contaminated By Grace
Series: Markers Along the Narrow Way
November 11, 2012
READ Mark 2:13-27
Let me ask you a question…when you think about the Pharisees, do you have a negative reaction or a positive reaction? Most of the time when we hear the word Pharisee…we have these images of hypocritical, narrow-minded, puffed up religious snobs! But actually, in Jesus day to be seen as a Pharisee was a GOOD thing, not a bad thing. In fact, in Jesus’ day…if someone called you a “Pharisee”, it would be seen as a compliment, not a slam. 1st century Pharisees were everything we would admire in our most spiritual Christians. They were zealous for God…committed to their faith, they knew the bible inside out, and obeyed everything they knew. They practiced the spiritual disciplines like praying, and fasting and going to church services. They would be every pastor’s dream of the perfect church member! Yeah, they were a little bit over the top sometimes…but just like in our churches today…because they’re more committed than anyone else in the church... many times we make them leaders!
So if the Pharisees were so good and righteous…what happened? I mean, how did they end up on the wrong side of Jesus and become the ultimate villains in all the gospel stories? 2 words…2 words caused the Pharisees to end up on the wrong side of God. And those 2 words are…1. comparison and 2. pride. And if we’re not real careful…the same thing can happen to you and me. You ever see those guys on TV or on the street corner with the sign that says…”Turn or Burn”? and wonder…what happened to them? Or maybe it’s a pompous coworker or neighbor with a big Bible on his desk, a chip on his shoulder and a teeny weeny little heart…who everyone trys to avoid. How did these “Jerks for Jesus” get like that? For a lot of people, they fear becoming a Christian, because they’re afraid they’re going to turn into that guy!
And if you’re not real careful… you WILL become like that guy or gal. They’re what you might call, “Accidental Pharisees’. Accidental Pharisees are people just like you and me…people who love God, love the bible and are trying their best to live up to it. But it’s like eating at Denny’s. Nobody actually plans to eat dinner there… you just accidently end up there. Ever notice that? The journey to becoming an accidental Pharisee starts out innocent…maybe it’s a conference, or a powerful book, could be a new bible study…or a message series. It grabs you so much (that with H.S. help) you step out and make some big changes. You get more committed to God than you’ve ever been in your entire life (and that’s a good thing).
But here’s the problem…as you surge ahead, growing spiritually at breakneck speed…you begin to notice that the people around you aren’t moving as fast as you are. In fact, they start to lag behind! And as you look at them something dangerous happens…you begin to compare their growth and passion with yours. Eventually you even start to get frustrated with your friends, other church members, even pastors…who don’t share your passion and zeal. Now here’s where it gets really scary…if you let it…your frustration will turn into disgust and disdain for people who aren’t meeting up to your own standards of devotion. At this point PRIDE kicks in… and instead of becoming more like Jesus…(full of mercy, kindness, compassion and patience)…you become more like his archenemies …arrogant, pious, & confident in your own righteousness. Fewer and fewer people will measure up to your definition of what a TRUE disciple is. Finally your metamorphosis will be complete. You’ll become a full-fledged Pharisee!
Now listen, because here’s the deceptive thing…As long as I see a Pharisee as a spiritual loser, an enemy of Jesus, I’ll never recognize the danger of becoming one in my own life! You don’t think it’s possible…but believe me…it is. In fact, as a person who loves God with all my heart…I can testify to how easy it is to be come an accidental Pharisee. A lot of pastor’s have become just that. In fact, I spoke to a pastor recently who said that after years, they’ve been successful at driving out all the people in his church that cause him all the problems…(the alcoholics, the adulterers, the people with marital issues, people on drugs…you know…all the “problem makers”) and “Now” he said, “…finally…all we have left are a core of the mature Christians”. He was excited about that! But wait…aren’t the people he successfully got rid of, the ones we’re supposed to be reaching?
In the passage I read this morning, it’s Jesus vs. the Pharisees. 3 times, Jesus is confronted by them about disputes they had with Him regarding Jewish ritual laws and customs. Each argument starts with a question (which challenges Jesus’ spiritually)…and ends with a response by Jesus. (can you imagine becoming so pompous that you challenge the spirituality of Jesus?), But each time Jesus answers, he defines for them what TRUE spiritually really is.
The 1st question/answer session is found in Mark 2:13-17 and it starts with a guy named Levi. Levi a tollbooth operator who collected taxes for the Roman government…he’s kind of like one of these guys/girls who sit in the toll booth before you go over the Antioch Bridge and take your money. (I always say thank you and then wonder why?) Anyway, Levi was stationed at an intersection of trade route. Men like him were renowned for their dishonesty and extortion.
You & I probably wouldn’t choose someone like him to be on our church board, but Jesus calls him to be one of his disciples! When he does, like the other disciples…he drops everything and follows. Only, while the other disciples could always go back to fishing…a toll collector who abandons post could never go back. Levi is proof that Jesus did more than preach repentance to sinners…he actually made friends with them! Because in the next scene, Jesus is having lunch with him and all his rowdy friends! Now, to have a meal with someone back then was a sign of friendship. Jesus had magnetic power to draw people to him who normally would have nothing to do with religion. We need to be the same way!
The Pharisees on the otherhand were appalled that Jesus would dirty his hands with this scum, and they complain…”Why does He want to eat with that rif-raf?”
The question they were asking is, is the same one we’re asking today…1. How should Christians relate to NON-CHRISTIANS? Jesus shoots back with the answer…”It’s not the healthy who need a doctor…it’s the sick who need a doctor! I haven’t come to call the righteous, but the ‘so-called’ sinners”. He’s got a point doesn’t he? I mean, do doctors wait until we’re cured before deciding to treat us for an illness? That would be kind of ridiculous wouldn’t it? If that was the case, most of us wouldn’t make it! Yet sometimes, that’s the way we treat people.
Sometimes we expect unbelievers to ACT like believers, (or immature believers to act like mature ones) and when they don’t we get all over their case. It would be like getting mad at my 4 mo. year old grandson for not being able to run and talk! See, I expect unbelievers to act like unbelievers. I mean, if you don’t believe there’s a God in heaven…if you think you live this life and that’s it…poof…dust! Then it makes perfect sense for you to do whatever you can to squeeze every bit of pleasure and joy out of this life you can get! That’s why we have people worshipping their sports teams on Sunday instead of sitting in church. They’re just doing what non-believers do! It’s perfectly rational.
If you don’t have an eternal reason for living, you’ll live for your next purchase, you’ll hop from one bed to the next, getting drunk every weekend. I get it! They’re just being consistent with what they believe to be true. If I believed that “this is all there is”…I’d have the same philosophy of life…eat, drink and be merry…for tomorrow we die! So I EXPECT unbelievers to ACT like unbelievers. But I don’t want to leave them there! My passion is to show them that their beliefs are untrue and eternally dangerous! I want them to know that there’s MORE…so much more! That not only does God offers them abundant life here, (in spite of the trials) but that there is an eternal life after death…to look forward to! So I have to build a relational bridge to them. I have to show them that I care about them as a person, before I can share the truth of Jesus Christ with them.
But where I start becoming an “accidental Pharisee” is when I begin comparing my lifestyle with theirs and thinking because I know the truth about God…I’m better than they are. Have you ever noticed that we have this amazing ability to compare things in a way that always causes us to come out on top? But all we see is the outside. We don’t know what’s going on inside a human heart! We don’t know what another person is thinking. And as a result, a lot of our comparisons about people are flat out WRONG! Like the Pharisees, it’s possible for us to look impressive on the outside, but to be just as spiritually dead on the inside as the worst sinner. Jesus refused to give up on people based on outward appearances. And I guess that’s the difference between false spirituality and true spirituality…False spiritually… judges and then avoids unbelievers …while True spirituality… 1st befriends them and then tries to love them back to God.
I think about the story Jesus told in _____ about a man who had great knowledge of the bible, great spiritual discipline and an unquestioned zeal for God. When he went up to the temple to pray, he was so overwhelmed at his own righteousness that he prayed, “God, I’m so glad I’m not like other people…I don’t rob, or do evil, or sleep around and I fast 2x’s a week whether I want to or not”. And it was true, he wasn’t a hypocrite, he really did live that way! And then he added, “And I’m especially thankful that I’m not like that ‘sinner’ over there!” He was referring to a man who’d just come into the temple to pray. He was a tax-collector like Levi. However, when he prayed, he didn’t pray a pompous, self-serving kind of prayer…no, in fact He was so ashamed, he couldn’t even look up! All he could do was blurt out…”God, have mercy on me…a sinner”.
In otherwords, he knew how bad he was. But according to Jesus, guess who’s prayer God heard and answered? Right! This guy! See, according to Jesus, it didn’t matter how moral and righteous the religious guy was…his pride and his habit of looking down on others erased all the good he had done. So here’s a question you might want to ask yourself: “Do I have my own…‘thank God I’m not like them’ list? And if so, who’s on it? Is it my boss? That homeless guy I see on the corner on way to work? Who is it? All of us have someone that we kind of look down on. For example…
• If you’re doing pretty well financially, you might have very patience or sensitivity towards those who are on welfare.
• If you live “green”, care for the planet, recycle and ride your bike to work, you’ll be tempted to look down on those who don’t.
• If you spend lots of time studying your bible and read lots of books written by dead guys…you’ll be tempted to look down on people who think that Noah’s wife’s name was “Joan of Ark”. Or who believe that the “Epistles” were the wives of the “Apostles”. You consider them illiterate and yourself to be intelligent.
I have no idea what tempts you to feel superior. It could be that you drive a Honda and everyone else is stuck driving a Chevy. I don’t know what causes you to look down on others…but most of us have a list. And if you don’t work at getting rid of it, it’ll nullify all the good you do, and put you at the top of God’s list…it’s called the “I hate it when you do that” list! Jesus didn’t come to congratulate the righteous, but to invite all who are sick…(and tired of it!) to come to him.
The religious elite didn’t have that much of a problem with Jesus being the Messiah…what they were opposed to was the kind of people he was letting into his kingdom. I’ll never forget the words of a lady in a church I used to pastor. The church was reaching a lot of unchurched, messed up people, and she criticized me to someone else one time. She said, “It’s a good thing the circus isn’t in town, or he’d ask them to come and help out in the church…” That was an incredibly cruel thing to say about people, but I actually took her criticism as a complement.
You know you’re on the right track when the ‘Pharisees’ of the church get upset! Jesus refused to allow the self-righteous to pick and choose who was going to be invited into the kingdom. So they wrote him off and tried to kill Him. The same thing happens today. People in the church are happy to have a Savior, as long as they can decide who He saves!
2. The second question about what true spirituality is and (and isn’t), is found in verse 18. Some people noticed that John the Baptists disciples and the Pharisees were fasting, but that Jesus’ disciples weren’t. How could they be considered ‘spiritual’ if they weren’t denying themselves something? How could they be as devoted as Johns disciples and the Pharisees? In otherwords, people assumed back then…(and today) that spirituality is measured by how devoted you are to certain spiritual disciplines. With the Jews, fasting was a regular practice. Especially on the “Day of Atonement” when the whole nation confessed their sins to God. But the stricter Jews…the REALLY spiritual Jews, didn’t just fast during the holy days…they fasted 2 days every week from 6am to 6pm. So they asked Jesus…”Hey, why aren’t your disciples fasting? Aren’t they spiritual? What they (and us) are really wanting to know is…
2. Do spiritual disciplines make me more GODLY?
Jesus responds by comparing his disciples to a Jewish wedding party. See unlike our custom, when a Jewish couple would get married back then, they didn’t go away for a honeymoon…they stayed at home. For a whole week it was “open house”, so that all the friends and family could enjoy a non-stop party. The bridal couples closest friends were invited to hang out with them and they were actually called, “The children of the bridechamber”. Now, the same ‘teachers of the law’ who were criticizing Jesus, had actually ruled that the wedding guests were EXEMPT from all fasting! So Jesus simply said, “Ok…then think of my disciples as the wedding guests, “the children of the bridechamber!”
Please understand…Jesus wasn’t against “fasting”. In fact denying yourself something for God so that you can appreciate it more in the future isn’t a bad idea…but you shouldn’t do something just because you think it’s going to get you noticed by God, or somehow make you more spiritual than everyone else. When it comes to spiritual disciplines like prayer, bible reading, memorizing scripture, journaling, family devotions, even fasting…one size doesn’t fit all. That’s why Jesus talks about trying to patch an old piece of clothing by sewing a patch of unshrunk cloth onto it. If you’re not careful, the 1st time you throw it in the wash, the new piece of cloth is going to shrink and re-rip the hole. The same thing happens when you try to ferment new wine in an old wineskin…
By the very process of fermentation the new wine expands…but because the old, crusty wineskin has lost it’s elasticity, it won’t be able handle it…and it bursts (like an old balloon), spilling the wine all over the place!
The same thing is true if you’re going to experience the joy of God’s kingdom. You don’t get there by doing some discipline that someone else did, so now you have to do it. You don’t “robotically” carry out some ritual that’s guaranteed to make you more spiritual. If you do, it’ll kill you’re the move of God in your heart and leave you dead and lifeless. NO!!! Instead, you experience the joy of God’s kingdom by allowing His Spirit to flood into your soul, and then letting Him lead you in the best way to keep it flowing.
For example… I remember when I was in college, I got excited about the bible, so I wanted to commit a number of verses to memory. Someone encouraged me to buy a stack of pre-made, pre-digested memory cards. They were supposed to be THE verses I needed to know to be a strong Christian. So for weeks, I tried to memorize them, but I failed miserably. BORING! But the minute I started reading the bible and then memorizing the scriptures that jumped up off the page and applied to where I was in life…all the sudden memorizing scripture got exciting.
See, the bible doesn’t present spiritual habits as rules…it presents them as ‘tools’. Tools that are used to help us know and follow God better. The difference between a TOOL and a RULE is that… rules have to be obeyed, all the time, by everyone…no exceptions. But tools are different. They’re ‘task specific’. For example…a hammer is a wonderful instrument for pounding a nail into a piece of wood…but it makes a lousy glass polisher! There’s no value whatsoever in using a tool just for the tools sake! If it helps to accomplish the task…use it! If it doesn’t…lose it!
Accidental Pharisees are pros at turning ‘tools into rules”…they excel at putting new patches on old clothes and new wine in old wineskins. But when you do that, you lose the joy of the wedding feast, and end up with a bunch of dry, ritualistic, grumpy sour-puss Christians. Just like Jesus said would happen…the TEAR is worse than when it started. Accidental Pharisees don’t help the kingdom…they hinder it, because nobody is attracted by hypocritical, HYPER-critical Christians!
3. The last question about true spirituality is found in Mark 2:23-27. One day Jesus’ disciples were walking through a grain field on the Sabbath. As they went, they were plucking some heads of grain, husking them and then eating them. Well, this freaked the Pharisee’s out! The bible specifically forbid anyone from working on the Sabbath, (and even though all they were doing was grabbing a stalk, rubbing off husks and eating what was inside)… it was considered harvesting wheat…and therefore…work!
The Pharisees expected Jesus to immediately put a stop to this, but instead of doing that, he reminded them of an O.T. story that involved one of their favorite heros…King David. When David was anointed King, the current King, (Saul) got jealous and set out to kill him. One day, hungry and exhausted, the entered into the temple and asked for food. Unfortunately, the only food the priest had ready was the special bread they used in their sacrificial ceremonies. It was HOLY! But since David and his men were starving, they had only 2 choices…either leave the forbidden bread alone and collapse from hunger, get caught and killed…OR eat the bread and escape Saul! They ate the bread!
What they did was clearly forbidden and punishable by death…but for Jesus it was the perfect example of God’s true priorities. So the Pharisees ask Jesus in Mark 2:24…”Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?” (it was really more of an accusation than it was a question). But what they really wanted to know was…
3. ”What’s more important to God, rules or RELATIONSHIPS?
He told the Pharisees…”You’ve got it all wrong! Man wasn’t made for the Sabbath…NO! The Sabbath was made for man! It’s God’s gift to mankind to make their lives better…to give you a rest from the hectic, pressure filled work week.” The Sabbath was never meant to test how spiritual you are! Going to church was never meant to see how much people are willing to give up for God! But some ‘accidental Pharisees’ in the church have made it that way! I know churches that meet on Sunday…all day long! And if you’re REALLY spiritual…you’ll come back for evening services at night!
Now here’s what’s amazing about this story…Jesus didn’t limit the lesson of David and the ‘temple bread’ to just crises situations. His disciples were picking and eating grain on the Sabbath as a pre-dinner snack! They weren’t starving like Davids men. In fact, they could have easily waited a few hours until the Sabbath was over at sundown before they ate. But yet Jesus still said it was alright. Here’s the point…with Jesus, MERCY trumps rules and regulations EVERYTIME! Jesus is more concerned that we show mercy to people, than that they live up to all the rules. PEOPLE are more important than PERFORMANCE.
He’s more concerned with meeting a persons NEED, than He is with keeping appearances…for example…
• Jesus would rather we feed the hungry than make sure we keep the church clean.
• Jesus would rather allow kids to get involved in church by ushering, than have perfect offering ceremonies.
• Jesus would care more about the fact that we allow people to get involved in doing ministry, than whether they are 100% sin free and mature.
• Jesus would be more concerned that you are living the bible verses, than whether you could quote them by memory.
Again, let’s not forget…the Pharisees were spiritually impressive people! They saw themselves as God’s biggest fans. They praised him…just like we do. They worshipped and spoke out in his defense…just like we do. But when He actually showed up…they aggressively opposed him…Just like we do! we can praise him, sing to him, speak out for him…but when He shows up in ways that we don’t agree with, or that make us uncomfortable…we fight him tooth and nail!
Bottom line…as long as I think of a Pharisees as someone as a ‘bad guy’ and I’m a ‘good guy’… I’ll never realize that I could end up being one myself!
Have you started down the path of becoming an “Accidental Pharisee”? 3 signs that you have…
1. Do you have a deepening sense of frustration with those who aren’t keeping up with your spiritual growth? Instead of a Jesus-like compassion for those who aren’t as committed as you are, are you beginning to judge them with cynicism and a cocky arrogance?
2. Are you looking down on other and trusting in your own righteousness acts and dedication to make you right with God? Turning God’s TOOLS into God’s RULES?
3. Instead of seeing people’s needs…are you more concerned with whether they fit YOUR personal criteria?
These are at least 3 of the warning signs that we’ve left the path and turned down a dangerous detour that turns well-intentioned zealots into accidental Pharisees. If we’re not careful, the very grace that saved us can lead us to be contaminated by self-righteousness. But…the good news is that even if we’ve inadvertently started down the path of an accidental Pharisee…we don’t have to end up there. We can repent, turn around, and reset our gaze on Jesus.
