As I prepared to preach from Luke 5 recently, God impressed on me to look at the history of the Pharisees. You may have heard the part of their story where they challenged Jesus and felt they were above God, but the details of how the Pharisees came to power and prominence were a shocking challenge to my religious heart.
From Exile to Occupation
The story began 600 years before Luke 5. God’s people, the nation of Israel, had fallen into sin and false worship of other gods. God’s judgment came on them as they were invaded and carried into exile in Babylon. God’s people had to repent of their sin and figure out how to be his people in a foreign nation.
Seventy years later, Babylon was conquered by the empire of Persia. The new king allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem and worship together. Under the leadership of Ezra, they rebuilt the temple, and under Nehemiah they rebuilt the city and a protective wall around it. The Persians did not allow them to appoint a king, so the priests, left to themselves, became the highest authority.
Persia was conquered by a Greek,
Alexander the Great, a few hundred years later. The Greeks also left God’s people to themselves, but Greek culture was a force to be reckoned with. Bit by bit, year by year, the Jews began to take on more and more Greek language, literature, and, eventually, the worship of their many gods—including the construction of monuments to Greek gods in the Jewish Temple.
From Compromise to Revolt
The Jewish people were sharply divided among those who favored assimilation into Greek culture and those who held fast to God’s Law (the Scripture) and temple worship under the Law. This divide culminated in revolt as the traditional Jews took up arms against the Greek Jews in the
Maccabean Revolt (165 B.C.). The more traditional Jews won and restored the temple and leadership under the High Priest.
It was out of this time of idolatry and conflict that a new movement began to rise up from within the Jews. They were disgusted by the compromise of so many of their brothers. Their movement was marked by two distinct values:
- They were known as the most expert and accurate expositors of Jewish Law; they were the Bible guys of their day in the midst of cultural compromise.
- They believed that God’s standards for purity were not just intended for the temple, but for all of life. In this they were also the worship guys of their day, saying, “This isn’t just about things you do in a certain building at a certain time of the week. It’s about all of life to God’s glory!”
You can probably guess what they were called: the Pharisees.
From Righteous to Religious
What happened? Their message could not be more familiar to us: “The Bible is the highest authority and you should live all of life to the glory of God!” How could something that started so right go so wrong—as we know it did by Jesus’ time?
Somewhere along the way, the Pharisees’ power and authority became an end in itself. Somewhere the leaders grew to love the sound of their own voices. Somewhere, at least in their own minds, their words became equal with God’s.
The reality is that becoming a Pharisee can happen to any of us. And if you think it could never happen to you, then maybe it already has.
If you would like to hear the whole sermon I preached on this, it's called "
Gospel Heals, Religion Kills."
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