Married a Pharisee

by John Greene


While driving to Augusta, Georgia with my wife, we discussed some of the things taught in my Sunday school class for the adults. In our look into the reasons why the paralytic man was the only person healed out of the large crowd that had gathered, we had to open up the proverbial can of worms and expose Pharisees for who and what they were and are today.

Then the thought crossed what's left of my mind, my itty bitty mind as some might term the words, "I married a Pharisee." I said it to my wife who didn't know what I meant assuming I meant the she was a Pharisee. I admit that in studying about Pharisees that I teased and joked with my wife a number of times about being a Pharisee. This wasn't demeaning, but eye opening in the aspect that so many of our thoughts and actions are Pharisaic. She would tell of something that happened or something that was said and I responded with my teasing.

"I married a Pharisee," is meant to be spiritual, not physical! We're not to be "of the world," yet our thinking is from the Pharisaic church world! We're lukewarm. We have married the world and the things of the world, yet like the Pharisees, it is okay because we're saved?! The mystery of the church is marriage! "I married a Pharisee!"

All our beliefs and doctrines come from somewhere, but where? Do we ever take the time to genuinely examine ourselves to see if we are in the faith as Paul concluded in 2 Corinthians 13? Do we take time to think out what we want to believe to see where in ends up or what the conclusion of the matter is when compared to all of the Scriptures!

I hardly think we consider much of what we say we believe! We spout off and our pride stubbornly stands by what was said absent of thought and absent of theological stability. Most of us have married a Pharisee, the church or denomination to which we belong. When challenged by what we hear or read from the Word, we sarcastically destroy the message, messenger, and without realizing ourselves!

Jesus has a bride that is in preparation, one that He has betrothed less than a marriage, but more than an engagement! The concept may first appear somewhat hard to comprehend, yet it is actually quite simple.

Asian custom sets the marriage of two parties (man and woman) done so at an early age by the parents. They are betrothed and will marry at the appropriate time and age. This was the case with Mary and Joseph. They were betrothed, yet there actual marriage hadn't taken place. Joseph was a just man who wanted to divorce Mary without anyone knowing it because she was pregnant with Jesus.

Paul the apostle clearly states to the Ephesians that we are betrothed to Jesus, our soon coming King! Paul uses just slightly different terms. He says that we have been predestinated! Peter tells in his second Epistle that it is God's will for everyone to be saved, yet not all will be saved! We have been predestinated to be saved which means, betrothed to Jesus in a marriage covenant relationship.

Clearly, the Word tells that it is a relationship that God has described and written for our benefit. Although it is a covenant, when we legally bind God or when we say that if we do a, b, and c that God must forever honor His covenant, we reduce it to a legalistic document that destroys that for which we were predestined. Marriage needs a license, yet it is not treated like a legal document because it is a lifetime relationship.

Paul uses marriage because a marriage is a lifetime of experiences that draw two people close together strengthened by their trials and united in an ever increasing love for one another. Relationship!!!

If God divorced Israel, and the same way He was alienated to Israel, He was alienated to Judah which again was divorce, then how do we think that we are better than His chosen people? It is our mere arrogance and pride that won't allow the love of God to penetrate our hearts and change them. Israel and Judah were evil, but because they were Jews, they were okay! Because they had the temple, the priests who offered sacrifices for their sin, and because God didn't judge their sin the way they thought He would for centuries, they must be all right.

Israel and Judah had been lulled into a false sense of security into believing because they did a, b, and c that they were okay! Their false sense of security landed them into hell. Their descendants, the Pharisees, created a man made document of the law, the Talmud which did the same thing. It reduced their accountability, destroyed their responsibility, and forced God to accept them because that is how they chose to believe the Scriptures. They went to hell!

The beliefs of the Pharisees changed after Jesus was murdered. After all, in a few short days, ten percent of Jerusalem now accepted Jesus as Lord. They had to do something, so they became known as "Christians" but salvation came from Jesus and the law! Their names were now Judaizers according to Acts and some of Paul's Epistles.

These attitudes that the Pharisees had never changed, but their beliefs adjusted so that they could keep their kingdoms they so desired to have for themselves! By the end of the first century and into the next century, they would become Gnostics which Peter and John in their Epistles address their new found beliefs.

The church went under ground because of persecution, whether rightly or wrongly, you decide, but the results were the fourth century emergence of the Catholic church under Constantine's Roman rule. You know the history, twelve hundreds years of death, torture, and spiritual anarchy until a priest named Martin Luther wrote 95 ungodly beliefs that were practiced by Catholicism and nailed them to his church door at Wittenburg. This protest had adherents. They were called protest-ants or Protestants.

For years I have read the account of Jesus in the Book of Revelation concerning the seven churches wondering how the Laodiceans might believe they are saved, yet clearly on their way to hell. I'm honestly not that dense, yet the understanding escaped me. I know they are lukewarm; I know they are Pharisaic in attitudes; I know that all these things are sin. The point is "how" could the Word clearly reveal their thoughts and intents of their heart, and for them to reject God's Word? Was it the fault of their pastor? Was the Word left out of their pulpits? I have wondered all these years.

Attending church, the Word of God taught and preached, must not be the restraint that Isaiah places on the Word when he talks of it accomplishing God's intent and not returning void. I believe that "I married a Pharisee" may have more truth than I first believed!

Paul writes to the Colossians in 2:6,7, "As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him, established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving." NKJV

The Lord brought to mind His parable of the sower and the people that receive the Word with gladness, yet persecution comes and they die because they had no root!! I had always blamed the rocks, but Jeremiah says that the rocks can be crushed into good soil by the Word which acts like a hammer (23:29). Paul tells them to be rooted! The very first Psalm tells of the tree that is planted by the river of God, even the science of this world tells us that these kinds of trees have deep tap roots solidly planted!

The Pharisees were not of this type. These men knew something of the Word, but their hearts were far from God. Their attitudes were not conducive to solid growth. They tithed and attended the temple, but left out the weightier measures of the Word like justice and mercy. I don't want to be married to a Pharisee! Paul tells the Colossians the same thing! What is interesting is in this same Epistle, Paul asks for it to be read in Laodicea (4:16).

It would be a joke to say that Jesus must know something that we don't or that Paul heard something from God because the Word clearly shows that the Colossians were near by the church of Laodicea and they had similar situations. Paul tells the Colossians to be rooted and Jesus tells the Laodiceans that their lukewarmness will cause Him to vomit them from His mouth!

Being lukewarm is a particularly evil position to be in. The person that is lukewarm is not rooted, but when faced with persecution will stay out of church with their feelings hurt or some like reaction of bitterness. This same person will say, "I'm a .... (you place the denomination here), and God loves me! I'm going to heaven because I prayed once and was baptized in water."

This lukewarm one who has cast God behind their back is attempting to hold God to a binding contract that was instituted by a prayer, and sealed by water. In their eyes God must let them into heaven, no matter if they hate, have unforgiveness, commit adultery or the like in the ten or fifteen years since they were in church. I'm not trying to sound extremist, but we all know those that are like this.

Why can't these lukewarm ones see their sin? Because they weren't rooted! The lack of a root allows them to justify their condition (making their heart feel good) by works for their salvation. The Word clearly shows that we are saved by the grace of God, Jesus Christ our Lord! Works don't save, not even reducing His vicarious death to a work! His blood is appropriated only with faith in Him, not by trusting a works of a prayer or a water baptism!

A lukewarm person or Pharisee will talk from two sides of their mouth and when pushed into a corner with the truth of the Word respond with venom tearing apart the messenger. Why? Because the truth can't be argued against! Paul says to be rooted, and a Pharisee says, "I'm okay!"

Jesus was challenged by the religious Pharisees at every hand! They would say, "By what authority do You do these things?" Permit me to say it in today's vernacular! "Who died and made you God? You're judging me and that is wrong!" The Pharisee was there to listen to His every Word, just in case they could find something to accuse Him with.

The Pharisee is not rooted. The Pharisee is not established in the faith. The lukewarm one or Pharisee or religious person will not obey God's Word to deal with real life because they aren't established! It is the Word that deals with real life, a day to day reality of living. It is the Word that declares from God's own heart how to handle any and all of life's situations. It is the Word that reveals our thoughts and intentions. When we are established in the faith, we allow the Word to correct us, to tell us how to deal with life's twists and turns.

Being established deals with genuine submissiveness to God. You see, the Pharisees and lukewarm people only listen to themselves and what they want! If the Word does what they want, they obey, but if it isn't what they want, they do what they want. Their words might sound like this, "I don't believe it that way," or "The Word doesn't say that, it says this."

Submissiveness or the verb submit is described as follows: 1) to present to others for consideration; 2) to yield to the control of another, to surrender. Pharisees and lukewarm people refuse to submit especially to God, but revealed with their lack of yielding to the authority of God in leadership, the five-fold ministry, and the truth of His Word. Pharisees aren't established!

The religious world has enough of God to blaspheme God's holy name by claiming a relationship with Him, yet so much of the world that there is no relationship to God other than voided works of decades past or mere words of unreliable sources, themselves.

This establishing sounds much like the people in Jesus' parable of the sower that had all those cares of the world choking out the life that was originally brought by His Word. Isn't it amazing how THE WORD is verified by itself over and over and over again! It sure sounds like to me that the Word can establish a person in the faith.

Paul had taught the Colossians. Paul on the road to Damascus had begun a relationship with Jesus that would be rewarding yet full of opposition and peril from the Pharisee and lukewarm church. Paul knew the Word because he had received it from the Lord, Himself! Revelational understanding came to Paul from Jesus Christ, and he taught the Word to the Colossians knowing they could be rooted and should be established by it!

Each one of us must answer the question of whether we have married a Pharisee! I can say that I am saved and married to Jesus, but the truth is the evidence is not there. No matter how I state the technicality, you know the prayer I prayed (A work), the water I was immersed in (a work), or even the blood I trusted in (a work), the bottom line remains the same, if I committed my life to Jesus Christ, He is in residence and will manifest His residence out into magnificent glorious works. Are you married to the world, a Pharisee? Have you come to the conclusion that you married a Pharisee? Repent, and marry Jesus!! He is the Groom to beat all grooms!!!!

Email me!! John Greene