Pharisees

"'The pair of fleas or something like that?' Dad was tucked in the cabinet again and his belly quivered with laughter." You crack me up.

Yep, like the Pharisees.

Jesus said they were like nice tombstones, painted on the outside but inside full of rotting bones.

Thomas wrinkled his nose.

Now I don't know about you, but this gets me a little angry.

i want you to forgive me if in times past in any way if i hindered you from entering into the the the privileges of the inner circle because my job as a cabinet minister of the government of god is to make sure every single citizen is in the cabinet now that's a strange government he said upon this rock i will build my ecclesia that means anybody who has entered the kingdom the way that he prescribed they are all cabinet ministers let's take a look at something else here i thought it was interesting the next verse verse 13 woe to you teachers of the law and Pharisees you hypocrites you shut the kingdom of heaven in man's faces you yourself do not enter nor will you let those enter who are trying he said you shut the door in their face now watch this Luke 11 52 words of a cabinet language woe to you Experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge.

You yourselves have not entered and you have hindered those who are entering.

Once again, he calls it the key to what? Knowledge.

Of course they did.

I don't know if Dinesh has heard of the gospel of John, but from chapters five through nine, Jesus has these debates with the Pharisees where he refutes them multiple times over by saying, they worshiped me.

Moses wrote about me.

Moses met with me.

Okay.

He says this over and over and over.

And we know that's what he means because the Pharisees immediately intend to stone him because no one saw God face to face, God the Father.

So who was Moses interacting with? Well, 2 Corinthians 3 says that it was Jesus face to face.

Remember? And Jesus looked at them with compassion.

The scribes and Pharisees would also have been listening as well.

And they hadn't blessed the people.

They hadn't blessed the people.

So they might have thought, something full of blessings.

Maybe he's saying that, hey, we don't need to adhere to these strict laws anymore.

Yes, because man, who could keep those? All the Pharisees hold these things over us.

We couldn't do this.

And so Luke chapter 5.

It says this, some men came carrying, sorry, it says this, one day Jesus was teaching, and the Pharisees and the teachers of the law were sitting there.

They had come from every village of Galilee, from Judea and Jerusalem, and get this, and the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal the sick.

We're going to go through the story for just a second today, but before we do, I just want to stop at this one part.

It says from Judea, Jerusalem, everywhere around.

I don't think this is a small thing that's occurring when Jesus is meeting on this day.

And it says that the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, they're around Jesus.

I reckon they probably made sure that they got the best seats.

But on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.

And when the chief priests and Pharisees had heard his parables, they perceived that he spake of them.

But when they sought to lay hands on him, they feared the multitude, because they took him for a prophet.

I've still got a lot of room to grow in my grace of giving compared to Laurie.

And I just really wanna be aware here as well that Jesus scorned the Pharisees who made a public spectacle of their giving.

That's not what I'm doing here.

Please don't take it that way.

But let us grant, as indeed we ought to grant, that the Spirit may reveal to some humble and unlearned man what He has not revealed to many learned men.

For Christ gives thanks to the Father on this very account, that what He had concealed from the wise and prudent, that is, from scribes, Pharisees, and philosophers, He had revealed to little children, that is, to the simple and in the world's judgment foolish.

Matthew 11.25, Luke 10.21 Perhaps Dominic was a fool of this kind.

Perhaps Francis was such a man, had they been permitted to follow their own spirit.

We are to prioritize genuine, personal fellowship or communion with God over outward expressions.

Further reinforcing this point, on multiple occasions, Jesus condemned the Pharisees and others for their outward religious displays, arguing that their hearts were far from God, as a couple of those quotes I just read demonstrate.

When I read that devotional, I was in the process of publishing the previous episode, The Truth About Voting Democrat and National Suicide.

The parallels between how Christians are taught to avoid seeking recognition for their faith or accolades for acts of kindness or charity and the proverbial silent majority in the political arena suddenly became crystal clear.