Whose Approval Do You Crave?

When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. (Matthew 6:16)

Perhaps Jesus’s words about prayer and fasting are more relevant than ever. Not that the human heart has changed. Quite the opposite — the heart has been, and always will be, apart from God, “desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9).

No, the condition of man’s heart hasn’t changed; there are just new ways, with every new app and social medium, for man’s desire for praise to express itself in public. No longer is the reach of our actions simply relegated to the street corner. Instead, in today’s world, the simplest of YouTube videos can make you famous.

Seeking Approval in All the Wrong Places

Seeking approval, and the personal satisfaction that results, is not what Jesus condemns; it is seeking it in the wrong source. John Piper writes....   Continue at Joseph Scheumann

Will the Real Pharisee Please Stand Up!

So, what exactly is a Pharisee, anyway?  Every Christian has some idea; in fact it has become the Christian version of “Nazi” – you win any argument by being the first to call the other guy a Pharisee.  But do many Christians know what a Pharisee is?

There are a number of passages in the Gospels which speak of the Pharisees, but one brief interaction summarizes the major elements of their theology and practice.  It is found in Matthew 15:

¹ Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, ² “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.” ³ He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? ⁴ For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ ⁵ But you say, ‘If anyone tells his father or his mother, “What you would have gained from me is given to God,” ⁶ he need not honor his father.’ So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the wordof God. ⁷ You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said:
⁸ “‘This people honors me with their lips,
but their heart is far from me; ⁹ in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’”

And what do we learn about the Pharisees from this?

The first element of Phariseeism is clearly implied, and Jesus makes it even more clear elsewhere: Pharisees were moralists.  That doesn’t just mean that they believed in morality; if that were so, every member of every religion ever would be a Pharisee.  Rather it means that they saw personal morality as the path to redemption.  It is why they became so adept at popping up in every situation to point out perceived sins.  Only a moralist could be concerned with whether or not Jesus’ disciples washed their hands.  This central element of their theology is what Jesus had in mind when He told the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector.  The one saw that righteousness was unobtainable and relied on the mercy of God.  But the other – the Pharisee – thought his own moral character was enough for him to draw near to God.    Continue at ChantryNotes

How to Raise a Pharisee in 12 Easy Steps

Carey Hardy offers some practical advice for Christians seeking to be biblical parents. Brief excerpts of his 12 steps for raising a Pharisee are provided here, but you can read the full length article by following the link at the end of this summary.

Here’s 12 easy steps for raising your children to become Pharisees:

1. Major on external instead of internal issues.

See the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5–6).  This is majoring on controlling the child’s behavior without using Scripture and prayer to deal with his heart.

2. Exercise excessive control.

This is not balancing discipline with instruction.  This is manifested by the creation of TOO MANY rules and restrictions, rules that are POINTLESS, or rules that are HARSH AND TOO STRICT.

3. Overreact to failure.

This includes not allowing the freedom to fail. It’s treating failure as the end of the world. You must see failure as an opportunity for instruction. But many parents live in FEAR of failure—and thus they become excessive controllers. This may be manifested in calling attention to every mistake. It’s a performance-based love…expecting perfection.

4. Be unforgiving and impatient.

A grouchy/irritable parent, frustrated over everything that goes wrong.  Instead of a home that is filled with joy, there is an oppressive, negative atmosphere. Sinful choices by your children definitely need to be dealt with. But make sure there is a visible end to the consequences, with the home thus returning to a pleasant atmosphere of peace and tranquility.

5. Elevate preference over biblical principle.

Some parents are prone to emphasize rules that really don’t reflect the Bible at all. Instead, the rules reflect personal preferences.   Continue at Jared Moore

Avoiding Legalism in Our Sabbath-Keeping

The position of Day One¹ regarding the abiding validity of the fourth commandment is essentially the position of the Westminster Confession of Faith, which states that God, 'by a positive, moral and perpetual commandment binding men in all ages . . . has appointed one day in seven for a Sabbath, to be kept holy unto him' (WCF 21.7). This day of rest and worship was, in the Old Testament, appointed on the last day of the week, but is now, by virtue of Christ's resurrection, appointed on the first day of the week.

This position recognises that some things did change from Old to New Testaments, while other things remain the same. Jesus did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfil it, and to keep it, and to set us an example in keeping it too. The new birth results in a new heart, on which the commandments have been written, and in which there is a new impulse to obey God out of a willing love and in devoted service.

Now what . . .?

 
Not everyone agrees with this position, of course, but let's leave that for the moment. Even when we have granted the principle that the fourth commandment continues to be relevant, and that the Lord's Day is God's new holy day, how are we keep it holy? And how are we to avoid the peril of legalism in deciding what may or may not be done on the Lord's Day?

I suspect that for most Christians, this is the most challenging issue. Much of what Jesus said about the Sabbath he said in the context of arguing with the Pharisees who had become over-scrupulous in their attempt to keep the commandments. As a result, they accused Jesus of breaking the Sabbath when he healed, or when he performed some other miracle.

The question for us then becomes - how can we ensure that our Sabbath-keeping is like that of Jesus, and not like that of the Pharisees? How can we avoid being legalistic and Pharisaic in our Sabbath observance?

Defining legalism

 
Perhaps we need to begin with definitions. If something is 'legal', that means either that it concerns the law or that it is permitted by the law. 'Legalism' is the term that is used when someone is more concerned about the strict letter of the law rather than its spirit.  Continue at Iain D. Campbell

4 ‘Warning Lights’ of Self-Righteousness

For many years, the Lord has been patiently and gradually showing me signs of the self-righteousness that hides in the deep recesses of my depraved heart. He began many years ago, and continues today. Sometime in the past year, a friend of mine gave me one of his extra copies of Extreme Righteousness: Seeing Ourselves in the Pharisees. This book is a biblical study of the Pharisees whom the author, Tom Hovestal, affectionately calls the “scoundrels” of the Gospel accounts. It has been in my “books to read soon” bag for awhile, but I finally took it out a few days ago. In the fourth chapter, the author effectively indicts every one of us as a Pharisee and warns of the self-righteousness that lurks within.

Pharisaism’s fatal flaw is self-righteousness. It lurks just beneath the surface of our evangelical souls. But we do not see it! Why? Perhaps we live such good lives that we look for sin in all the wrong places! We tune in to the external symbols of goodness but miss the internal symptoms of evil. Jesus does not want us, however, to live our lives in the pseudo-security of human righteousness. While on earth, He loved people too much to permit them to continue their merry religious ways blinded to their true spiritual condition. Instead He regularly engaged in the ministry of enabling religious people to find freedom and true life.

A few pages later, he writes, “We are sufficiently sophisticated and self-controlled to cover up most self-righteousness….So what subtle clues expose the hidden condition of our hearts?” He then describes 4 ‘warning lights of self-righteousness’ and challenges us to ask questions of ourselves. For myself, I see all four in my life at certain times and in varying degrees. How about you? Do you see yourself in this mirror?   Continue at Paul Tautges

Pastors and Tithing

I was recently asked by a church if Grace Church requires their pastors to practice tithing. This is my response to that email:

The word tithing means giving ten-percent of income to the church. I do not teach or practice that approach to money. I think that is based on a faulty understanding of the Old Testament practice, and creates and propagates a wrong understanding of God’s relationship to our money.

In the OT, the Israelites were living in a theocracy, and everything they owned really belonged to God. God drove that point home by making them revert their land sales and free their slaves every 50 years. Tithing in this system served as a form of taxation. While God owned everything, he required his people to fund the Levitical system (Levites were priests, and thus generally were not farmers, merchants, or shepherds) with a tithe collected annually (Deut 12:2-19; 14:22-29). Leviticus 27:30-32 reiterates this tithe, and applies to livestock as well.

In the NT, the tithe goes the way of the Levites and the temple curtain. As the Baker Bible Encyclopedia says, “Tithing is mentioned in the New Testament only critically.” The fact was, Pharisees loved the tithe, because it was easy to enforce, said nothing of the heart, and had little to do with actual love for God. Not only that, but religious leaders were the recipients of it, and in exchange all they paid was ten-percent (to themselves!).   Keep Reading >>>

Grace for Recovering Pharisees

Pastor Bruce Brock of Faith Community Church in Tucson, Arizona, is a dear friend of mine. God has used him greatly in my own life, and over the last decade or so, we have taken something of the same spiritual and theological journey in discovering and embracing the doctrines of grace together. 

He kindly sent me his sermon notes for this last Sunday, based on Galatians 1:1-6. I thought others may enjoy reading them just as I did, so produce them here. Enjoy!:

Galatians is one of the earliest of Paul’s letters and an early defense of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. It precedes the Jerusalem Council where the early church leadership all got on the same page concerning salvation by God’s free grace – Acts 15:4-11. The churches in Galatia (Lystra, Derbe, etc) were from Paul’s first missionary journey – Acts 14. 

The false teachers were Jewish (Judaizers) and wanted to add circumcision, feasts, dietary laws, ceremonial laws to faith in Christ; they would add the Mosaic Law to the Gospel. Their logic was that Jesus is Messiah and He came in fulfillment of the Scriptures (OT), so it is reasonable to stay with what God gave us so long ago and simply add it to Christ.    Keep Reading>>>

Religious Deople are Dangerous to the Church

Religion and Christianity just don’t mix. Look at what happened when Jesus began his public ministry. The religious community resisted him the most! I realize that Christianity is classified among the religions of the world but I am quite certain the founder would not want any association with religion. The main reason is that religion is about man’s effort to seek God and to try to appease a deity through human effort. Christianity is first about God seeking man and making a way (based on unmerited grace) for humans to be forgiven and restored to fellowship with their Creator. 

 

According to Christianity, if we seek God, it is only because He first pursued us. Check out the way the New Testament summarizes it: “We love because he first loved us” (I John 4:19). The moment we reverse this and make our love for God prerequisite to God loving us, we’ve left Christianity and entered religion! The essence of Christianity is that, “… God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).   Keep Reading...

50 Characteristics of a Pharisee

This is teaching given by Zac Poonen in 2004.  Many of us need to listen or watch this teaching. We have many Pharisees in the land that show not the love of Christ of which I was an active participant. The outline was pulled from sermonindex and at the end I have links to the audio or video versions of this three part series.  Many of us need to repent as we have let a spirit of condemnation and judgment lead us astray.  Without love we are just clanging gongs and of no use to the kingdom of God. 

CHARACTERISTICS of PHARISEE’S” – Zac Poonen.

We are going to be thinking of the same theme through these 3 days, led by the spirit and not by the law. Jesus was in conflict with the Pharisees most of the time. Pharisee-ism is one of the leavens Jesus warned about Mark 8 Matthew 16. The Pharisee had all their doctrine correct and talked of holiness. The Herodians were the opposite they were worldly like modern “worldly Christian’s”. They can listen to sermons and go home and watch smut on TV. The third group was the Sadducees. They don’t believe in the miraculous. They didn’t believe in angels or the super-natural and spiritual. These are 3 groups of Christians. It is interesting to see he was always falling out with the Pharisee’s. They were the ones who crucified Jesus. Which group do you fall into. The Pharisee’s are the worst type of Christian on the earth. We need to understand the characteristics of the Pharisees. It must be that God wants us to know. I am personally in more danger of becoming a Pharisee than the others. We need God to open our eyes. I am going to go through the gospels. The spirit of the Pharisee is against the Holy Spirit. I have sought over the last few years to find the Pharisee in me. God gives you light on yourself. If you are not getting insight into the light in your life God is not blessing you. God wants to clean you. Keep Reading...

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The Double-Reach of Self-Righteousness

The Outrageous Love of God – R.W. Glenn

Jesus vs. the Pharisees

If you haven't seen John MacArthur's op-ed in last week's Washington Post, be sure to read it. The theme of that guest editorial is an echo of John MacArthur's new book, The Jesus You Can't Ignore. I think it's one of his best books ever, and I have read them all. Here's an extended excerpt from the book:

Read it HERE