Taking off the Pharisaical Robes and Burning Them

Some of us might know what a Pharisee is. Before writing this up, I really couldn’t tell you what they did exactly, but knew they were religious leaders in Jesus’ day. They are talked about quite a bit in the New Testament, approximately ninety-eight times.

I discovered that the great Apostle Paul was a Pharisee. (I think I knew that once upon a time but lost the mental file.) Remember, Paul use to be Saul, and ran around doing his duty of offing the new Christian sect who weren’t conforming to the rules of old.

Here is Oxfords Dictionary explanation:

noun: Pharisee; plural noun: Pharisees

a member of an ancient Jewish sect, distinguished by strict observance of the traditional and written law, and commonly held to have pretensions to superior sanctity.
a self-righteous person; a hypocrite.

Pharisees were leaders of religious practices and served in the political arena.

I think Pharisee’s probably were good at their jobs. Sounds to me like these guys were the religious police of sorts, running around telling people what to do and not do. Now, to be fair, someone had to be walking rule books. It's not like they had actual book books to hand out to everyone for their own pleasure reading.

Pharisees are more often than not, portrayed in opposed to the changes that Jesus was bringing. However, not all Pharisee’s were in opposition to Jesus’ ministry. In fact, in some cases, they did help Jesus. Unlike the Sadducees, they believed in the resurrection of the dead and the afterlife.  But often, they just caused a lot of trouble for Jesus and his followers. (I bet these fellows got into a lot of disagreements on things.)

Teachings on the Pharisee lifestyle leads us to believe these were often, cold hearted men. Fun sponges, wet blanket’s, fuddy duddy’s. They were all about the law and took their jobs very seriously indeed. They had no room for some stranger showing up and upsetting their apple cart. One of the basic complaints of Jesus towards them were the standards that they held for others, yet they themselves couldn’t meet.

Jesus in Luke 12 talks a bit about the leaven of the pharisees. The leaven, he called hypocrisy.

No wonder they hated the Messiah. Here he was, stabbing holes in their knowledge; telling them they were sinning, gasp! No one should ever be pointing out that they broke their own rules. (which I might add, they invented a bunch of those rules) This was reason enough to plot and have the man ousted. It was cancel culture at its finest.

Now get this, In Luke 11: 37-54 he entered the lair of the religious leaders. I would say he was brave to do that, but I think he knew a little more than they did and with the wisdom of God, he popped their balloons left and right. He insulted them so badly, that after he left, the Scribes and Pharisee’s stayed late to discuss Jesus’s demise. Can’t you just see them all huddled with their tidy proper hats, furrowed bushy brows and tapping their boney fingers together at the tips?

Hmm. This doesn’t sound like the loving, wimpy Jesus that a lot today propagate that he was. This sounds like Jesus had downloads of wisdom from his father and had no fear to take them to bat in a debate. Jesus had a sound mind, and he defeated them at every engagement, making “the smartest guys” look like fools. They hated him for it. How dare he challenge their knowledge and power and experience! These guys were looked up to, to have known it all. So it was a bit of a problem for Jesus to be taking jabs at the information in their heads.

The legalistic spirit (Often called religious spirit) does not like to be told it is wrong, or that it has missed something, or that it is less than perfect. It gets angry and hopping mad when challenged. It cannot be taught, unless it wants to be taught. This group was well known to have it all together and to have arrived at the ceiling of knowledge. Humility was not something they practiced let alone looked at. And Jesus wasn’t having it.

Jesus didn’t have anything against knowledge. What he really was trying to point out with this group, was that their hearts were so bent into the rules and regulations, they couldn’t see past them. They had a controlling spirit and it intoxicated them with power over the people. They really did hit a ceiling of growth because they would not walk past the rule book to see, there was more. Which is ironic because their job was to discover the mystery of scripture and then take it to the people.

They also took offense and let that offense walk them down a path of destruction. They did their best to dismantle Jesus’s character and rowel the people to hate him for things even though the people didn’t understand why they even hated him. That’s right, the people eventually turned on Jesus because of the leadership they trusted.

Here is Jesus, “Woe to you lawyers! For you have taken away the key of knowledge. You did not enter yourselves and you hindered those who were entering.”

These guys were the keepers of the law. The interpreted the law to the people and decided to string out their profession to make it look more difficult than it really was to maintain their status and power. Their fathers previously murdered some of the prophets of God, in which Jesus brought up over the dinner table. I’m sure that was just a carefree, fun conversation…Jesus didn’t care about nice. He cared about truth. And he let those who should know better have it on regular basis.

We might like to think that the pharisaical spirit died with the close of that era. It did not.

It's still operating today in our churches, our families, in our teachers of religion and in ourselves.

We take pride in thinking that we “know it all.” That there is no more to discover, no more in the scripture to unravel. Yet, out of the same mouth, when we get cornered, we revert to say we don’t know it all. How can this be?

The very word revelation as an implementation that is alive and moving in our reality is foreign to the grand majority of the USA’s basic church and yet this same group of people points their pointy, pointing finger at those who do believe God intended more.

The Pharisaical spirit loves to march around in the same circles, feeling like its accomplishing something new with its works based agenda. It likes to shout out that God is doing something, yet sits on its rear-end doing nothing to move into new levels of faith. On some occasions, it thinks the only reason it exists on the planet earth is to get its free ticket for salvation and sit back with its sippy cup and watch the show.

Let me remind us all, we are to be IN the world not of it. That verse promotes action IN the world. It means we are to understand our identity, and understand we have the light, and go INTO the world carrying the light, not becoming OF the world. We influence---Not get Influenced… We are influencers for Christ, not busy following the influencers of the world’s agenda. We must get off our rumps and live IN the world according to whatever calling we have.

How is it that we as Christians have been tethered at the docks of the gospel message not realizing that we are floating in the mystery and wonder of God?  That we have been told to get our diving gear on and go deep sea diving to uncover the treasure that God has hidden for us there?

How can we have the audacity to say there isn’t more to life, then living a life of misery? That belief system is a slap in God’s face.

Ahhh,,, but we do not understand and see the sneaky cloak of false humility. All those times we bring up “God said we would be persecuted… God said we should feel joy about that pain… God said We are to be poor in spirit and basic losers, he said blessed are the poor… So… I’m going to wear underwear that has holes in it to remind me that I am an underserving wretch.”

Um, can we please understand that shame and guilt and holes in our underwear are not prerequisites to live as sons or daughters of God? These things and mindsets have holes in it for sure. But the Holiness of God, is not present in them.

Another wave of the pharisaical spirit is busy trying to squelch the fire of God. I’d like to know what we all think we are doing trying to put God in a box? Do we stop and ask the questions or just spout off what the preacher said was truth? I for one love it when our minister says, “don’t take my word for this, you go study it!” Why do we automatically think that because it hasn’t happened to us, it must not be real or from God? The pharisaical spirit makes up its own rules. That is a problem.

I for one, am one of the most logical people I know. I just hate it when I can’t make sense of something. I want to understand fully before I throw myself into believing something is truth. Unfortunately, God doesn’t always make sense to us. In fact I think he gets great joy out of inventing new ways of telling us things, showing us things and bringing us things. How many different ways can he wrap up his message of love? How many different ways can he bring provision as a surprise? He loves surprises! He stays several steps in front of the devil with his surprising ways, his ways of mystery and gifts. The devil and his minions, if you know their smell well, doesn’t change to much. Yes, we must be careful to recognize the darkness tricks. Just like someone spritzing on cologne over body odor to disguise the stench, ( they did this in the middle ages) we must learn to detect the truth. It’s called discernment.

We need Holy Spirit to walk with us in the word of God. We need his activation, not just the dormant gift of who he is. Activate him! He is a gentleman. He will not trick us into things. He will not scare us. Surprise us yes, but not scare us.

The Pharisaical spirit must have control. It must dominate what is being said and acts as a check for any new religious revelations. It opens its mouth and condemns others all while its own heart is fraught with issues of justification of its own sin. It cannot see the condition of its own heart, but it certainly can point out others issues real fast.

“woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean.” – Jesus

Well crumb. I think I have worn this spirit a few times over, not realizing I was. Fortunately, I am understanding and able to step back a little to see what this is and how it operates.

This particular legalist spirit is and has been hurting the bride of Christ for a long, long time. It has to be called out and pulled out in order for us, as the collective church to come together and build together. We must be willing to admit, that we DO NOT KNOW everything. And secondly, that’s ok that we don’t. However, in that understanding we also must know, that God doesn’t give us all the answers all at once. This is so we depend on him on our weakness and desire to be with each other so we can hear the parts someone else has to share.

For those of us with a heavier gifting of prophecy, and believe we are hearing from the Lord quite clearly or are what we may deem as prophets, we must be very careful to not get into a rut where we believe we are the only ones with the truth. We see in part and hear in part and that means we share the podium with others. We value and honor others no matter if we know them well or not.

We do not walk around with our noses in the air giving off the idea that we think we are superior to anyone who we deem is not hearing from the Lord like we are. Let us remember that we are no better than someone else, no matter our gifting.

The pharisaical spirit loves to rob humility from those of us with more powerful giftings. This in turn causes people to dislike us and turn away from any message we are trying to bring. Bottom line, we aren’t superior to others, we should not present ourselves as so. The Lord has his ways of taking us down a notch. And that fall is not a way any of us want to learn humility.

We must see that God is a God of mystery and that we are his treasure hunters. This means, we ask questions, we study, we discuss, we look for the new and piece it with the old. There are things we just will not understand, and yet we are called to be men and women of faith.

Faith, doesn’t do logic.. people! This is a hard one for me, as I’m miss logical.

Fear of the unknown has to be eradicated and we need to believe that God is multi-faceted. Sometimes he speaks from the heavens, sometimes he speaks from a bush and sometimes he speaks from a donkey. He is both serious and funny. He is both mighty and gentle. He is capable of changing the trajectory of our plight yet may decide not to. God is not a boring, fear mongering grouch who is demanding your Sunday best. Along with being a planner, he is also the spontaneous “lets have a BBQ and lets have a party” type of relationship- and that is what those religious leaders missed.

Through all of our findings, experience and knowledge we gain, we NEED to share it with others. This shouldn’t be a special thing for special people. All of us have things to give and teach and share no matter how big or small. Do not withhold what mystery you’re uncovering about the Lord from others.

A re-cap: The Pharisee’s made a habit of not doing their job of searching through the mysteries of God. They got lazy, and then restricted what they were supposed to be sharing with the people. They were cheating themselves and others by their greed, selfishness and laziness. Bad move. The son of God blasted them with a bazooka of truth and reveal. Something the Pharisaical spirit absolutely hates. So, lets be in tune to what this looks like. And only then, can we see it in ourselves. Typically, it has no problems finding it in someone else, this is where the hypocrisy comes in.

The Kingdom of God will blossom into its fullness as we ourselves eradicate the influence of the darkness. The bride of Christ has some issues with being unteachable, hypocritical and judgmental. We need to get to a place where we can come together in our base solid theology and then be nice to each other as we discuss the tiny things that surround it.

We get our opinions confused with what God wants when we exercise and value our opinion above the truth. I preach to myself as I say these words, truth is often uncomfortable, and faith stretches us into spaces we didn’t know was feasible. But embrace it anyway.

Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, no man comes to the father except through me.”

Let us move far, far away from the legalistic mindset and into heart space of growth, expectancy and pure anticipation for the restoration and new creation the Father wants and is bringing.