SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/25/2023 11:00 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “The Description of False
Spiritual Leaders”
Bible Reading & Meditation
Reference: Matthew 23:1-7
Message of the verses: “1 Then Jesus spoke
to the multitudes and to His disciples, 2 saying, "The scribes and the Pharisees
have seated themselves in the chair of Moses; 3 therefore all that they tell you, do and observe,
but do not do according to
their deeds; for they say things, and do not do them. 4 "And
they tie up heavy loads, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves
are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger. 5 "But they do
all their deeds to be noticed by men; for they broaden their phylacteries, and
lengthen the tassels of their garments. 6 “And they love the place of
honor at banquets, and the chief seats in the synagogues, 7 and respectful
greetings in the market places, and being called by men, Rabbi.”
We have been talking about how the Pharisees came
into existence, but the truth is that the precise origin of the Pharisees is
unknown as they appeared sometime before the middle of the 2nd
century B. C. During the time of Christ
on the earth there numbers were as many as six thousand, as many of them were
also scribes, who were suppose to be authorities in Jewish law; but scriptural and
traditional. As we have been studying
the book of Matthew for almost four years there have been times when we saw that
the Pharisees were by far the dominant religious group in Israel during the
time of Christ, as they were most popular to the people of that day. Now as far as the Sadducees, they were
largely in charge of the Temple, however their driving concern was not for
religion but for money and power. Now we
move to the Herodians who were a political party who were loyal to the Herod
family. The one we don’t hear of much
are the Essenes, and the reason we don’t hear about them much is because they
are not mentioned in Scripture. “The
Essenes, which are not mentioned in Scripture were a reclusive sect who devoted
much of their efforts to copying the Scriptures, and the Zealots were radical
nationalists who sought to overthrow Rome militarily. Like the Sadducees, the Herodians’ and
Zealots’ interest in religion was motivated primarily by desire for personal
and political gain. Consequently, it was
to the scribes and the Pharisees that the people looked for religious guidance
and authority, a role those leaders greatly cherished” writes MacArthur.
MacArthur
then speaks of William Barclay, “who devoted many years to biblical research in
Palestine, reports that the Talmud (Sotah,
22b) speaks of seven kinds of Pharisees.”
I
will not go to John MacArthur’s sermon on these verses and quote what he says
about these seven kinds of Pharisees.
“First,
there was the shoulder Pharisee, so called because he wore his good deeds on
his shoulder. He paraded the good that he did. When he prayed, he would put
something - ashes on his head and he would look sad so everyone would know
how pious and spiritual he was. He was the shoulder Pharisee.
“And
then there was the wait-a-little Pharisee. This was the Pharisee who could
always come up with a spiritual reason to put off doing something good. He
always had excuses, but they sounded very pious. And then there was the
bruised-and-bleeding Pharisee who thought it was a sin to look at a woman, and
so whenever women were around, he bent over and closed his eyes, and he kept
running into walls. And according to the Pharisees, the more bruises you had
from walls, the more holy you were.
“And
then there was the humpback-tumbling Pharisee, and the humpback-tumbling
Pharisee was called that because he wanted to demonstrate his humility, so he
slouched way over and bent his back and walked around all day in that humble
position and thought it was wrong to lift his feet, so he shuffled his feet,
and he kept tripping on things and tumbling, and he was called the
humpback-tumbling Pharisee.
“Then
there was the ever-reckoning Pharisee. He was the Pharisee who kept count of
all of his good deeds so he’s know what God owed him in terms of blessing. And
then there was the fearing Pharisee who did all that stuff because he was
scared to death of going to hell. And then William Barclay suggested there was
the God-fearing Pharisee who did what he did because he thought it was right to
do it, and he had integrity to some extent. He was the one out of the seven who
was a really good guy. And that’s the group to whom our Lord speaks in this
chapter and of whom he warns.”
I
hope you enjoyed reading about this group of seven types of Pharisees.
9/25/2023 11:35 AM
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