Things I Have Learned About Pharisees:

 1. They still exist today, and many call themselves Christians. 

2. They have an orthodox view of the Bible.

3. Jesus condemned them more than any other group.

4. They place themselves in seats of authority and usurp God’s authority. 

5. They know the law in their heads, but do not love God in their hearts.

6. They say and do not do. 

7. They are actors pretending to be something they are not.

8. They are always willing to make your life harder, but never care to make it easier.

9. They do not help.

10. Their good works are done to be seen by men.

11. They reject Christ.

12. They outwardly appear to accept Biblical authority, but inwardly reject all authority but their own. 

13. They are the Devils magnum opus.

14. They have a false relationship with Gods Words, because they do not have a real relationship with a personal God.

15. They lead from a place of pride, and reject servant leadership.

16. Their heart is full of pride.

17. They never apologize or admit fault, but they expect others to grovel around them. 

18. They do not understand love.

19. Their false truth can only keep people from God. It lacks the power needed to bring people to God.

20. They act the holiest in public, but commit the worst type of sins in private.

21. They possess tremendous energy without truth. Their zeal only leads to more judgment.

22. They do not believe deception is wrong, only getting caught breaking the letter of the law.

23. When they strike they strike fast. 

24. They are dead in their souls.

25. They ignore the more important things (love, kindness, justice, mercy, faith, compassion) 

26. They are proud of keeping all of the little standards (Dress, traditions of men, worship preferences.)

27. They are shallow, superficial and all about appearances.

28. They are unconcerned with an inward relationship with God. 

29. They are attracted to narcissistic leaders.

30. They are wicked sinners in their hearts and mask this by dressing up their outward appearance.

31. They go to great lengths to look as though they are winning. 

32. They prey on your assumption that they are holy.

33. They genuinely believe they are standing shoulder to shoulder with the prophets, but they are not.

34. They are actually standing shoulder to shoulder with the men who killed the prophets.

35. They are the Devils children and like him they lie.

36. They will destroy anyone who: stands in the way of them getting what they want, opposes their pride, challenges their power. 

37. They will make you their proselyte. 

38. Their religion is spiritual poison.

39. They go to great lengths to find people searching for hope and trick them into taking spiritual poison.

40. They disguise themselves very effectively. 

41. They appear to be winning but are actually losing. 

42. Their religion is a hard taskmaster, unloving, relentless

43. They live for the praise of men.

44. They have a preoccupation with the small things of religion. 

45. They deal mostly with externals.

50. They rally around worldly issues (politics, culture, family.)

51. They are obsessed with authority.

52. They revere only what is dead. (Dead style, dead music, dead people.)

53. They like dead things because they are dead spiritually. 

54. True spiritual life makes them uncomfortable. 

56. They lie, gossip, and slander their fellow man under the cover of religion.

57. They are control freaks. 

58. They rationalize their sin as for the greater good of religion.

59. They will destroy your family, children, marriage, reputation, friendships, mental health and basically anything else they touch.

60. They group together.

61. They use their religion as a weapon to control other people.

62. They weaponize weakness.

63.  Are easily and often offended, but rarely are concerned with offending others.

64. Assume dishonest intent in others.

65. What they can not get by flattery they will take by force.

66. Force others to live under the tyranny of the weaker brother.

67. They honestly believe the rules do not apply to them.

68. Their is no amount of evidence that can convince them of who they are. 

69. They are fully confident that they are going to Heaven.

70. Even though many of them believe they are saved. The end result of their lives will be judgment and fearful condemnation. 

One Last Meal

If you knew you could have one last meal, what would it be? Who would invite? What kind of food would you eat? What kind of atmosphere would you want? What would you say? And whom would you tell it? 

John, the author of the Gospel of John, is writing to early Christians, and he is recording the choices Jesus made for his last meal. The meal was Passover, a Jewish celebration meal that dated back to the night before the children of Israel's Exodus out of Egypt. Present with Jesus were his closest disciples, his friends. They had spent nearly three years together and walked over 3,125 miles of dusty roads working together to fulfill Jesus' ministry. There is a banquet room atop someone's house in Jerusalem; the group sat around a table. The band of misfits, unlikely converts, simple fishermen, and educated elites observed, looking for signs of what would come next for them and Jesus. 

Jesus did not disappoint. What He did next revealed to them powerfully just who He was. You must understand what Jesus did next to realize who Jesus was. 

For his last meal, Jesus chose to eat with His friends. He decided to celebrate the Passover God's miraculous deliverance from bondage. He decided to use this meal to show His followers just precisely who He was.

James 4:1-3

"What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures."

From the street, you can see a small crowd gathered in a dwelling. Warm orange and yellow radiance spilling out into the street from the glow of oil lamps. Jesus lovers gathering again to fight and talk deep into the night about their Messiah, death and being raised from the dead. About their king and how he is coming back to overthrow Rome. Inside, one man sits in front, a wealthy businessman. Behind him citizens, merchants, and landowners. In the back are the poor, the sick, the lower class. 

They are, after all, still Romans, much like the people you would see at the Saepta or the great Circus. In their midst are as many vices as there are people. Like all other Romans, they dress in the garments of peace, but there is no peace among them. Each one would, for a small gain, bring any other of them to ruin. After all, not one of them can profit anything except by the loss of another. They smile and grudgingly bear the strong, all the while oppressing the small. They are all fueled greedily by diverse lusts, and everyone would wreck the dreams of another for the slightest bit of pleasure. Like a gladiator school, they fight with and are willing to kill the same people they live with. They are like a cage full of wild beasts, except the beasts will not bite the master who feeds them. These men are like all other men. One accuses his brother falsely, another steals from his father, yet another informs against a man for committing the same crime he is guilty of. The rabble takes the side of the guilty man against the innocent. 

Come stop for a second and listen to the faint voice coming from the house to hear what the followers of Jesus discuss so late into the night. 

"What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet, but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures."

Supremacy and Influence in the Life of the Christian

Matthew 4:8-11 "Again, the devil took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to Him, "All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me." Then Jesus said to him, "Away with you, Satan! For it is written, 'You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.' " Then the devil left Him, and behold, angels came and ministered to Him."

Here we see our Lords third and most terrible temptation. Jesus is tempted to doubt His Fathers love for Him, and to forsake the way of the cross. At the heart of this temptation is an invitation for Jesus to prescribe to a philosophy that many poorly thought out christians share with the father of all lies. It is the belief that the end justifies the means. The Fathers way, and the way the Devil both lead to the same results (Jesus obtaining universal sovereignty.) The temptation is for Jesus to think that as long as the end result reached was good it mattered not how He reached it. But God cares as much about the way we go about accomplishing something as what we accomplish. This is why the Lord rejected the ark returning to Jerusalem in a cart in 2 Samuel 6, and why God would not accept strange fire from Nadab and Abihu in Leviticus 10. If the action or system by which a result is brought about is corrupt, then the result will be corrupted as well. When we are tempted to use the tools of our enemy rather than the tools that God has given to us to accomplish our goals in this world, then we must recall that our Lord (who called us to take up out cross and follow Him) refused to use the tools of the Devil no matter what the cost. Evil my friends can never be overcome by evil, and God's rule can never be established through the means of the Devils devices. 

Is it worth it? Is the Devils offer of power in this world to do what is good and right or even to stop what is wrong from happening worth the sacrifice of your soul? No.

Mark 8:36 "And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?"

John 3:1-36

In John 3 a man named Nicodemus a great teacher of the Jews (3:10) encounters God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, Jesus Christ. It is hard to imagine what it would have been like for Nicodemus, a man who had worked hard to study, learn, and obey the Holy Scriptures from his childhood to be told he needed to be "born again." Christ's point was clear, it was not more studying that Nicodemus needed, but the new birth resulting in the eyes of his heart to be opened to the things of God. Sinful man is blind to the things of God, unable to comprehend the glory of Christ (Eph. 4:18). In fact Christ is foolishness to sinful man (1 Cor. 1:18.) For this reason sinners apart from the grace of God remain hostile to the Gospel. Man is corrupt, man is lost, and for this reason God will not great them to enter His Kingdom unless they are born again.

One can only imagine how shocking this news must have been to Nicodemus considering how much the Jews prided themselves being physical descendants of Abraham. According to Jesus Nicodemus needed a Divine work in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Physical reproduction serves as a powerful illustration of spiritual reproduction. First like physical reproduction spiritual reproduction requires two parents (the Word of God, and the Holy Spirit.) Just as a child can not chose to be born, so a spiritual child can not chose to be born, but must be born through the actions of his or her parents. Lastly just like physical birth spiritual birth is the creation of a new creature. When a person is born again they are a new creature in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17.) Unlike physical life spiritual life is eternal. What I find most comforting about spiritual life is that unlike physical birth  (a possession that can be taken away,) spiritual birth is a permanent possession that no man can take away from the child of God.

No Rest For The Wicked: A Meditation on Psalm 73.

Psalm 73 is the first Psalm of the third book of Psalms. The theme of Psalm 73, and Psalm 1 are the same. The way of the righteous, and the way of the wicked. Psalm 73 meditates on the question; How can the wicked prosper?

The author of this Psalm Asaph knows that Psalm 1 is true, and God will bless "the man Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly" Psalm 1:1. He recounts this fact:

"Truly God is good to Israel, To such as are pure in heart."

Asaph describes how he get's distracted, and almost "slips" off the path of Psalm 1:

"But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled; My steps had nearly slipped. For I was envious of the boastful, When I saw the prosperity of the wicked." 

Here is what almost made him slip: He was "envious" of the foolish. By foolish Asaph does not mean unintelligent, but men who reject God's way in favor of their own. What could cause a godly man like Asaph to stumble? He saw their prosperity, and asked: How come they do so well?

"For there are no pangs in their death, But their strength is firm. They are not in trouble as other men, Nor are they plagued like other men." 

They appear to face both life, and death so well. Due to this wealth pride surrounds them, and they seem to be able to do whatever they want:

"Therefore pride serves as their necklace; Violence covers them like a garment."

The comfortable positions lead them to feel the world exists to serve them:

"Their eyes bulge with abundance; They have more than heart could wish. They scoff and speak wickedly concerning oppression; They speak loftily."

Just like the scoffer from Psalm 1, the ungodly look on God's ways with scorn. This arrogance leads to questing of God's goodness by both the righteous and the wicked.

"They set their mouth against the heavens, And their tongue walks through the earth. Therefore his people return here, And waters of a full cup are drained by them. And they say, "How does God know? And is there knowledge in the Most High?"

This questioning grows:

"Behold, these are the ungodly, Who are always at ease; They increase in riches. Surely I have cleansed my heart in vain, And washed my hands in innocence."

The question is: Does walking the path of righteousness pay off? Is it a waste of time? Furthermore sin bothers the upright, but seems not to bother the unrighteous. Why does sin not bother them?

"For all day long I have been plagued, And chastened every morning."

Looking for an answer Asaph expresses the feeling of being trapped. He sees the unrighteous, but if he talks about it he will offend others.

"If I had said, "I will speak thus," Behold, I would have been untrue to the generation of Your children."

 And when He thinks about it, he can not handle it:

"When I thought how to understand this, It was too painful for me--"

What was he to do?

Principle:

First: Realize envy is a sin.

Second: Take your problems to God:

"Until I went into the sanctuary of God"

Application: You are not going to solve your problems by brooding on them. You are not going to settle your issues until you turn them over to God.

Then I understood their end.

Death is the ultimate equalizer. The fool who will not see God, does not realize how short life is, and how permanate eternity is.

"Surely You set them in slippery places; You cast them down to destruction. Oh, how they are brought to desolation, as in a moment! They are utterly consumed with terrors."

The truth is when you trust in anything but God it can leave you in an instant. The fear of the ungodly is that what they trust in (wealth, power, fame) can leave them in a second. Their world is a fantasy, and it may seem real, but it does not last:

 "As a dream when one awakes, So, Lord, when You awake, You shall despise their image."

Death is a waking up to the real truth. When we see the truth as it really is, we repent of our love for the fantasy that is this temporary world.

"Thus my heart was grieved, And I was vexed in my mind. I was so foolish and ignorant; I was like a beast before You."

Nevertheless I am continually with You; You hold me by my right hand. You will guide me with Your counsel, And afterward receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides You. My flesh and my heart fail; But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. For indeed, those who are far from You shall perish; You have destroyed all those who desert You for harlotry. But it is good for me to draw near to God; I have put my trust in the Lord God, That I may declare all Your works.


Asaph knows the sin of envy was against God, and God alone. Asaph needed to cling to the God who loved Him.