How to Argue with a Pharisee

Today we're going to dissect a passage that our friend,

and say amen. Amen. We are glad you're here today.

Today, if you're new here, welcome. We find ourselves right in the midst of a sermon series

of the four-week study about what Jesus actually intended for his followers. It wasn't religion,

it was a relationship with God through himself, the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

Last week we began the sermon series with Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

Now he has three weeks of Fratavos, including today, where Jesus is having interaction with the religious leaders of Jerusalem.

Before we begin today, I just want to say how excited I am about the ladies conference that's coming up this Saturday.

It's... Okay, wow. All right. Very good. Now, I'm not excited for myself. I'm not invited.

I'm not allowed to come, but these ladies are excited because they've been preparing all week long.

And if you haven't picked up your tickets, ladies, you can do so in the foyer at the Connect Desk on the way out today.

The tickets today are only $300 a person. I'm just kidding. How much are they?

Yeah, it's something like 25 or something, but please pick them up in the foyer on the way out.

It's going to be a great opportunity, ladies. We're excited about that.

Hey, those of you who go deep in our Bible study every midweek on Tuesday nights,

the book of 1 Thessalonians is what I'm teaching verse by verse.

However, this Tuesday night we're taking a break and we're picking up a week from Tuesday.

So for those who want to know that, come on back Tuesday nights, 1 Thessalonians.

And then lastly, our teenagers have a youth group called the Ascent.

And tonight is Summit Night, which is the most important night every single month.

And if you have teenagers, bring them tonight at 6 p.m.

And if you are a teenager, come at 6 p.m.

If you know teenagers, bring them. They're going to have a great time tonight.

How many of you are ready to study the Bible together?

If you are, say amen. Today's sermon is entitled How to Argue with a Pharisee.

And I want to begin by making a very strong statement and then an illustration of that statement.

If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, Pharisees will challenge you.

How many of you in this room are followers of Jesus? If you are, say amen.

Okay, so you're going to be challenged by a Pharisee.

My wife tried to warn me.

When I became a Alabama football fan, she told me you would be there.

She told me you would have to deal with haters. See, I didn't know this, Jonathan.

I did not watch college football growing up.

I wasn't interested, was not something that I was involved with.

I grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada, where our college football team, let's move on.

So I did it. But my wife is from Alabama.

And when we started dating, I went to Alabama to meet her family.

And the very first thing her brothers said to me was this question.

They said, role tied or war eagle?

War eagle. And I did not understand the question.

My wife looked over, my future wife looked over and said, just say role tied.

I said role tied. They said, all right. You're okay. Come here.

Here, all right. Come here. Come here. Come here, Josh. You're going to be all right.

Role tied. So I just said role tied.

Kept seeing role tied. Didn't really know much about what that meant.

But that meant Alabama football. And then I started watching every Saturday.

And it grew on me. I started enjoying it because Alabama football, they tend to win quite a bit.

And my wife warned me. She said, here's the problem with being an Alabama football fan.

That we are surrounded by haters. And at first I thought to myself, that's not true.

Nothing's going to happen in this way. I'm going to be absolutely fine.

But I found it to be the case. When we have a winning season, when we're dominating college football,

here's what I often hear. Well, you have a cushy schedule.

And then when we are losing, I hear, well, the dynasty is over.

And so no matter if we win or lose, we're always going to be attacked.

This is the way winners have to live their lives.

Some of you might be asking the question, what's going on?

Oh, those who know college football know. My team lost yesterday and I'm upset.

It happens. I was at Buffalo Wild Wings as I often am.

150 people in that building, none of them wearing Texas t-shirts, none of them wearing Texas hats,

but all of them, except for Alabama fans, rooting against my team.

Why? Not because they love Texas, but because they hate Alabama.

So what my wife prophesied was true.

I went home last night with my wife. It was not a good night.

Heather's not here this morning. She's still at home mourning the loss.

That's not true. She's up teaching the new members class right now.

And I asked her, I said, what are you going to do?

Like, what do you do? She's still my, like my discipler, right?

She's still my Jedi master in this Alabama realm.

I said, what are you going to do if a Texas fan says something to you?

She says they already have.

I said, well, what are you going to say?

She said, in the most pleasant Southern hospitality womanly type of a Southern woman way that she could.

She said, well, bless your heart.

This must mean a lot to you since the last time Texas beat Alabama was 1982.

So enjoy the moment.

You do not want to argue with my wife.

So she was right.

Being an Alabama fan means you're going to be surrounded by haters.

Being a follower of Christ means something.

And some of you today are new to Jesus Christ.

And that's awesome.

Some of you found out about who Jesus is, the reality of what actually matters in life.

The Son of God to save you from your sin and to bring you into eternity in His kingdom.

And you've become a follower of Christ and you've given yourself over to Jesus Christ.

But you need to know something from somebody who's been around.

Coming along with your following of Jesus Christ means that you have enemies who hate you.

You say, no, I know about the devil.

The devil is like a lion, right?

And he's trying to devour me.

Yes, the enemy is the Satan who is attacking you and wants to destroy you.

But it's not just Satan.

There are other humans who do not follow Christ who hate Christ and therefore are against you.

And you need to be aware of it.

And some of them hate Christ because they love their religion.

Maybe it's their traditional religion.

Or maybe it's a new modern religion of materialism, sexuality, godlessness, where the man himself becomes his own God as they reject the God of heaven.

These individuals who hate the message of Christ will also come after you.

And I know some of you, some of you, not all of you, some of you are a little naive as it relates to this.

Just like I was about Alabama football and you're like, come on, not really.

And the answer is yes.

And today I'm going to share with you how you can interact with those who hate you because they hate Christ.

If you're ready for it, give me an amen.

Today is a very serious message from Luke chapter number 20.

If you follow Christ, Pharisees will challenge you.

Three questions you have to ask is your challenge by Pharisees.

Three questions you have to ask while you're challenged by religious individuals.

Question number one, how do you identify a Pharisee?

Question number one, how do you identify a Pharisee?

Say it with me, I'm going to say question number one, you say how do I identify a Pharisee?

Question number one, how do I identify a Pharisee?

The way you identify a Pharisee, as outlined in this passage, two ways.

Number one, they question Jesus' authority.

And number two, they reject God's messengers.

Two things here, they reject Jesus' authority and they question, they reject God's messengers.

Look at the passage, Luke chapter 20.

Luke 20 · chapter mention

And as you do Luke chapter 20 and verse one, you're going to find this fascinating.

Luke 20 · chapter mention

If you remember from last week, Jesus has just arrived in Jerusalem.

He went into the temple and when he went into the temple, he cleansed the temple of all the money changers and the marketplace individuals.

And said, this is to be a house of prayer, but you've made it into a den of thieves.

And then the Bible says he arrives the next day and he sets up shop in the temple and he begins to teach.

Look what it says, as it happened on one of those days, that as he taught the people in the temple, he preached the gospel.

And the chief priests and the scribes together with the elders confronted Jesus and spoke to him and said, tell us, by what authority are you doing these things?

Or who is it that will give you this authority?

Notice what they did.

They approached Jesus and said, who do you think you are that you could come in here and cleanse the temple and teach opposite of what our religion teaches?

Who do you think you are?

So a Pharisee will question the authority of Jesus.

Even to this day, there are people all throughout our land who question the authority of Jesus in their own lives and in this world.

But hear this, not everyone who has this question is a villain.

Not everybody who wonders why Jesus is the king is a villain.

Not every Pharisee who wonders, who are you and where did you come from?

Look, you might be here today and you might be saying, I don't know much about Jesus.

Can you explain why he has the authority to tell me what to do in life?

See, you might be a Pharisee in our terminology, but you might be a good Pharisee like the one who came to Jesus in the middle of the night.

Do you remember him?

There was a Pharisee in the middle of the night that came to Jesus and he had exactly the same question.

His question to Jesus was, we see all the miracles you do.

You must be from God. Who are you and where do you come from?

Does anybody know the name of this Pharisee? Who was it?

Nicodemus.

And you might be like that.

By the way, if you're a Christian here today, do not push away and damn all Pharisees who have questions.

Some questions are legitimate good questions.

Can I get an amen?

And Jesus dealt with Nicodemus and explained to Nicodemus who he was and that he must be born again or he would never enter the kingdom of God.

Hear this, Christian.

Those who are ready to fight the Pharisee, hear this.

Every critic is a possible convert.

Before you knew Jesus, guess what?

You didn't know Jesus.

Before you didn't know the relationship with Jesus, you had to get rid of the religious mindset.

And so it was with the time of Christ.

So you have to learn how to identify a Pharisee.

A Pharisee is one who questions Jesus' authority, but questions him in such a way that is not interested in the answer, but is declared of about what they already know.

They question Jesus' authority.

Number two, what does a Pharisee do?

You can tell because they reject God's messengers.

Look what it goes on to say in verses three and following.

But Jesus answered and said, I will ask you one thing and answer me.

The baptism of John was it of heaven or from men?

Now this is most fascinating about Jesus.

They came to Jesus and they asked Jesus a question.

Jesus, I've got a question for you.

And Jesus said, fantastic.

I'll answer your question if you answer my question.

Do you ever read and study Jesus' words?

And the more you do, you're like, oh man, snap, you're awesome.

Like you're really good.

Like you are worthy of worship.

And so here's the question that Jesus asks.

He says, the baptism of John the Baptist, was that from God or was that an evil thing from men?

And the Pharisees were like, oh, see John the Baptist was a prophet from God, but the Pharisees rejected John the Baptist because he didn't fit into their little religious box.

And so what the Bible tells us happened is the Pharisees all rejected John the Baptist.

And so Jesus knew this.

So Jesus said, John the Baptist, was he from God or was he from men?

That's my question.

And the Bible says they all gathered together and they began to reason among themselves.

If we say that John the Baptist was from God, then he's going to say, why didn't you get baptized?

And if we say that John the Baptist was from men, all the people believe he was a prophet, then they won't listen to us.

So they come back to Jesus and they're like, so we can't answer your question.

And Jesus brilliantly says, well, well then neither will I answer your question.

Ha, he's so awesome.

Can I tell you something about how to identify a Pharisee?

A Pharisee can be identified because they question the authority of Jesus and then they reject God's messengers.

Because we know this, Jesus is making a bigger point because of the next story he tells.

So all of that just took place.

And then verses nine through 16, Jesus tells a story.

The story says, he said, let me explain what you are like.

There was a man who owned a giant farm, a vineyard that made wine.

And the man who owned this giant vineyard, this man who made wine, he had to go away into a far country

and he hired a bunch of farmer tenants to work the vineyards and take care of all the grapes while he was gone.

Now, as soon as the people that Jesus was talking to heard this story, they knew immediately what story he was telling.

Jesus was actually giving an old story.

It was a story that another prophet gave over five, six hundred years before. His name was Isaiah.

And Isaiah tells the story in Isaiah chapter five to the people of Israel.

And he says the exact same story about a vine dresser who has a big vineyard who goes away and he leases out his land to a bunch of people.

So Jesus tells the story.

And he says, as the man was far away, he decided to ask one of his servants to go and ask how the grapes were doing.

And so he did.

The messenger went from the big important man over to the people who were supposed to take care of the vineyard

and said, hi, I'm here on behalf of the owner. How are the grapes doing?

And Jesus said in the story that they take the messenger, they take the servant and they beat him up, they despise him,

they embarrass him, and then they kick him out of the vineyard.

And so the owner of the field was like, well, that must have been a mistake. I'll send another one.

And so the owner of the vineyard sends another one to the same group of people.

Hey, I'm here for the messenger. Don't know what happened to the first guy, but hey, hey, what's going on with the grapes?

The master wants to know.

They took the second messenger, beat him up, despised him, embarrassed him, kicked him out of the vineyard.

The third messenger, by the way, aren't you thankful you're not the third messenger at this point, right?

This is what it was like to be a prophet of God.

To know that you're going to go to the people of God and the people of God are going to hate you and reject you and destroy you.

And many of them were killed for Jesus Christ and for the prophets of the prophecies of God from the Old Testament.

The third messenger goes and what do they do with the third messenger?

What do you think they do with the third messenger and Jesus' story?

Same thing. They take him, they beat him up, they despise him, they embarrass him, they kick him out of the vineyard.

And so then Jesus ends the story by saying, what is the master of the vineyard going to do?

He thinks to himself, I know, I will send my only beloved son because they certainly will not hurt him.

And the master sends his son and the vineyard land tenets take him and they say to each other, you know, if we kill the son, then the vineyard will become ours and now we'll own the vineyard.

And so they take the son, they beat the son and they murder the son.

Now let me ask you a question. Jesus is telling the story. Who do you think in the story? Who do you think in the story? Who do you think the son is in the story? Who do you think? You're smart.

By the way, do you think you were smarter than these Pharisees? No, they knew. They knew exactly what Jesus was saying.

Jesus was saying, you have persecuted prophet after prophet after prophet after prophet and now the he has sent his only son, you're going to kill him.

Wow. I got to tell you, that's a mic drop moment for Jesus right there.

So what do they say back to Jesus?

We'll get to that in the second question. The first question that we have to ask when fighting with a Pharisee, number one, first and foremost, you have to ask the question, how do you identify a Pharisee?

Number two, number two, how did Jesus argue with a Pharisee?

Okay, let's take a few principles about argumentation. If you like debate, if you like confrontation, if you like to get into a good argument, if you like to argue on social media more than you do in real life because you're a coward, if that's you, then you're going to get into a good argument.

If you like to argue on social media more than you do in real life because you're a coward, if that's you, I'm just serious, I'm just serious, I'm just serious.

All right, I'm just serious. See, I'm saying it with a smile, you can't be offended.

If that's who you are, you're going to love the principles of argumentation from Jesus here. Here's a few of them. Number one, number one, Jesus, how did Jesus argue?

Number one, He answered a question with a question. Did you notice that? How many of you, your spouse does this to you sometimes?

Right, you ask a question, they're like, well, I'll tell you if you tell me. And you say, what are you doing? You're like, I'm like Jesus.

It's actually not original with Jesus, it's called the Socratic method and it was made famous by Socrates hundreds of years before Jesus.

It's a way of teaching principles by asking question, if you're an educator or a teacher, you know this, you go to the class and you say, ask this question and then this question and then they respond, it's one of the ways you teach.

It's also a great way to argue a point because if somebody is absolutely dogmatic about what they believe, instead of addressing what they believe, ask them a question and that question oftentimes undermines their foundational argument.

Jesus does it this way, tell us by what authority do you do these things or who is it that gave you this authority? But Jesus answered, I'll say to you, I also will ask you a question, answer me.

The baptism of John, was it from God or from man? We can't answer you, okay, question's over.

How could you do this in your life? Maybe in your life you have a Pharisee who is worshiping the world.

Like they would say they're not religious but they actually worship their car and their job, you know what I mean?

By the way, am I alone here? How many of you know what I'm talking about?

They would say, I'm not religious but they bow down at the altar of social media four hours a day, you know what I'm talking about?

And they might say to you something like this, a family, a friend, a co-worker, they might say to you something like, why do you spend a whole day of, why do you spend a whole day every week at church?

Like you go to church and then you go to the small group and then you sit around and you help with the kids ministry or whatever.

You're like, man, you spend so much time at church, like why do you do that? And oftentimes what we do is we just give a direct answer because I love God, don't you?

We don't get anywhere. Instead, why don't you answer a question with a question like, that's a very good question.

How do you refresh your soul and motivate your spirit? Does it make sense?

Why not reply back? That's a very good question. Let me ask you a question. How is it that you refresh your soul every week?

How is it that you fill your spirit? Because I know clearly you feel very rested and at peace. You're filled with joy and love.

And genuinely, not being sarcastic, attempting to help them understand why you do this, but not just why you do it, ask the question to them.

Where do you get your peace and solace and encouragement and motivation for the week? For me, I just happen to go to that place and be around those people, you see?

They might ask the question, why isn't your church very traditional?

Maybe if you come from a very traditional religious background and our church is a little bit more contemporary in a lot of things, they might ask, why isn't your church very traditional?

Why don't you baptize your babies? Why don't you do this and that and the other?

Instead of saying, we don't like tradition, instead why don't you say, which traditions do you find most biblical?

Say, that's a very good question. Tradition is not bad. Which tradition do you think we should follow?

Is it the Roman tradition or the Amish tradition or the Jewish tradition or maybe the American evangelical tradition?

Can you show me which tradition is found in the Bible?

Because what that does is it says, I want to follow whatever you think, just show me in the Bible where it is.

Does this make sense?

See, here's another question you could ask to a question.

Somebody might say, why do you base your whole life on that ancient book?

I mean, you said, my whole life is based on this ancient book.

I would ask the question, what book do you base your life upon?

Like which book?

Maybe there's a better one, more authoritative, more historic, more relevant, more filled with wisdom.

Which book?

And no matter what they say, at least you are engaged in a dialogue. You understand?

Rather than fighting and yelling at each other.

I know it, friend. I know what it's like to be a follower of Christ who engages in dialogue about spiritual things, it can be irritating.

It's like my sister Charity.

Charity is my sister.

She's the one who's speaking at the Ladies' Conference on Saturday right here.

Charity, she grew up as a pastor's kid, like I do.

And pastor's kids get to grow up in church, which is amazing, but they also have other issues.

How many of you have ever known a pastor kid?

You're like, amen, amen, they do have issues.

Settle down, some of you enjoyed that one too much.

They're like, look at your kids, shut up.

Pastor kids are human, right? They have issues.

My sister Charity, and when you're a PK, everybody knows your life and everybody knows your business within the church setting.

My sister also got married late in life.

I mean, she was an old widow, old woman by the time she got married.

She was 23 years old.

Which, if you're a pastor's kid, people are asking you since you're 18, when are you going to get married?

So she's 23, and people are losing their mind.

And as a pastor's kid, she's 23 years old.

When are you going to get married? So she's 23, and people are losing their mind.

And it happened all the time that she would go to the weddings in the church, because PKs go to a lot of the weddings.

She's 23 years old, she was at a wedding, and this happened wedding after wedding after wedding.

She said, Josh, these old men will come up to me and they think they're being cute, and they'll come up with a, like, hey.

And she says, I already know what they're going to say.

Hey, it's another wedding.

And she's like, uh-huh, you know, it's another wedding.

Maybe the next one, it'll be you.

The pressure to get married.

23 years old, maybe the next one will be you.

So irritating.

She told me, Josh, it drives me nuts.

The next time I'm at a funeral.

And I see an old man that has said that to me.

I'm going to walk up and say, well, we're at another funeral.

Next one might be you.

Give me irritating.

How did Jesus respond in these ways?

How did he argue?

Number one, he answered a question with a question.

Number two, he used stories and metaphors.

Notice that's what he does next.

To drive home his point, he used stories and metaphors.

Look what he says in verse nine.

Then Jesus began to tell the people of parable, a certain man planted a vineyard and leased it out to vine dressers.

These are the tenant farmers we talked about.

And he went away into a far country for a long time and he sent back and said, hey, how are my grapes doing?

He told a story.

He told a story.

You know one of the best ways you can drive home a point is to tell a story.

You know, I know what you're saying about giving a whole day to church.

I do.

You wonder why?

Like, why do I, why do I re-

Some of you come from like the Las Vegas background where it's like work seven days a week, never stop, never rest, keep going, keep going, very entrepreneurial and then type A in driven.

You're like, go, go, go, go.

And then you get saved and you get baptized.

You become a follower of Jesus.

You learn about the Sabbath principle and you're like, I need to take a day to rest and focus on God.

Like that's what you've learned.

But then you've got people from your back.

They might even say they're followers of Jesus, but they're not really.

And they say, why do you spend a whole day focused on Jesus and God and rest?

And here's what you say.

Tell a story.

Say, you know, I used to think exactly the same way.

I really did.

I totally know what you mean.

I felt the same way.

I used to think that taking a Sabbath was going to ruin my productivity.

But I began to reach a breaking point.

I was like a car metaphor that was running out of gas.

And I found when I follow Christ, he gives me a day of rest and a day of worship and a day of church.

And what that does is that fills me up.

Tell a story of metaphor and then go back to the original aspect, ask a question back.

How do you get filled up?

Because I was just like running on fumes until I gave a whole day to God every week.

Maybe the question is about the book.

You follow that ancient book.

You can reply back with a story.

I know it seems strange.

I really do.

To follow an ancient book, but I got to tell you who I am.

I was lost.

I knew there was a better way.

I needed a better way.

And I found out that the Bible is like a map for my life metaphor.

And you may find that your life is just right on track.

But for me, I needed a guidebook.

I needed a map for life.

And so it was so help.

You're telling a personal story combined with a metaphor and it drives home the point of why somebody and you know what you're doing.

Instead of pushing Jesus down their throat, you're allowing them to question their own worldview.

And they're going to come back to you for the answer.

Just like Jesus did.

You see?

How did Jesus argue?

He answered a question with a question.

He used stories in metaphors.

Number three, He presented a clear choice.

Here's the last aspect of what Jesus does.

Look at what He does in verses 16 through 18.

He gives a clear choice.

You remember the story?

He said, So the master sent his own son and they took the son and they said, Hey, Jesus,

if we kill him, we're going to inherit all of the land.

You remember that story?

This is how Jesus ends his dialogue with them.

Look at verse 16.

And He will come.

So Jesus said, What will the master do?

And Jesus gives the answer.

He will come and destroy those vine dressers and give the vineyard to others.

He says to the religious leadership of Israel, You don't receive the son.

Everything you have will be taken away and what you have will be given to somebody else.

And when they heard this, what do you think the Pharisees did?

When they heard this, look at their response.

They said, Certainly not.

Why did they respond that way?

Because they knew Jesus was quoting Isaiah chapter five.

He was saying, You're the villain here, pal.

You're the villain here.

And He looked at them and said, When then it was written, The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.

Jesus now quotes Psalm 118, which we referenced in last week's sermon on the triumphal entry.

He quotes the Psalm and he says, Don't you remember what the Psalm says?

The stone that everybody thought was going to be thrown away ends up being the cornerstone of everything.

I am the cornerstone of everything.

That's what Jesus is claiming.

And then He gives a very clear choice.

Whoever falls on that stone will be broken, but whomever it falls upon, it will grind him to powder.

Jesus says, Here's a metaphor. You want a metaphor? I'm the stone.

And either you fall on me and you're broken, or I fall on you and crush you.

Somebody say, Was that Jesus? That's not the Jesus I know.

That's the Jesus of the Bible.

The beautiful thing about Jesus is that He gives a very clear choice.

Here's the choice.

You're broken. You live in a broken world.

You're a sinner who needs a savior.

Once you realize that in repentance, you can fall upon the stone of Jesus Christ and say, I'm done.

I'm worthless. I repent. I need you.

And when you do that, He builds you strong like a house built upon a stone.

Built upon a stone. But if you reject Him, if you say, I don't need you telling me what to do.

God says, I'm still a stone. I will have to crush you.

Now you might be sitting there thinking, So what's the third option?

And that's what I love about Jesus. He's very good. He gives a very clear choice.

I don't like modern Christianity.

Because modern Christianity, trying to keep the doors open to their church, I guess,

attempt to say there are many, many ways to just please God.

In fact, everything you're doing is already pleasing God.

He likes everything about you and every thought you've ever thought is the right thought, given the offering.

And Jesus makes it very clear, either you're broken and you can break your whole life by falling on Jesus

and giving everything to Him, repent of your sins and receive me a Savior,

then upon the rock of Jesus Christ, I will build your new life.

Or you can reject Jesus Christ and He will crush you permanently.

Friend, let me be very clear. If you reject Jesus Christ as your King and Savior,

and you worship yourself or some other false thing, you will die and stand before the King you rejected.

When you stand before the King you rejected, you will be damned to hell forever.

And the reason you hear those amenities is not because we're excited about that,

but because those people learned that and they repented and received Christ.

And we know it's a wise decision.

So you have a choice. You can fall and break yourself upon Jesus Christ and say,

it's yours, you're my life, I'm your life, build my life.

Or you can do your own thing. You say, what should I do?

Well, I did fall on Christ.

But here's the beauty. Please listen. It literally is up to you.

Maybe I'm wrong.

Maybe you figured out a better way.

Maybe you figured out a third way that the very Son of God did not tell us.

And to that I would say, good luck.

Or today, maybe there's somebody in this room who has been worshiping everything other than Jesus Christ.

And today you need to fall upon the rock of Jesus Christ and be born again.

If you do, you're among friends and I can talk to you.

Let's look at the third question we have to ask today and then we got to go.

Based on this passage, number one, how do I identify a Pharisee?

Number two, how did Jesus argue?

Then number three, number three, why does it matter?

Okay, let's end the sermon by asking, why does this matter for my life today?

That's a very good question to ask.

And the answer is twofold, because of the Pharisee in you and the Pharisee you know.

The reason this matters is because of the Pharisee in you and the Pharisee you know.

You say, there's no Pharisee in me.

Oh, yes, there it is, my friend.

There is a little, cynical, skeptical, power hungry, self righteous, better than everybody else.

Do your own foolish sin and then judge everybody else for theirs.

There is a little, resistant, authority resistant Pharisee inside of every single one of us.

And what we need to do is we need to repent and come to Jesus and say, you're the way, I'm not the way.

You're the life, I'm not the life.

You're the truth, I'm not the truth.

I'm not the truth, I'm going to spend less time judging everybody else for all of their mistakes and more time at your feet asking you what I need to be.

Yeah?

So the reason this is important is because God never wanted and intended a religion where you're checking all your boxes to see if God likes you.

And then you're checking everybody else to see if God likes them.

That was never the plan.

It was a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

So the reason this matters is because of the little Pharisee that lives inside of you and me.

But it's not just the Pharisee and you, it's the Pharisee you know.

You say, what do you mean the Pharisee I know?

Well, the goal of God is not just to save the sinner, it's also to save the self righteous.

Can I get an amen?

So it means there are Pharisees in your life who need Jesus and how you respond to them really matters.

How do you save a Pharisee?

I'll end with this story.

When Heather and I first started the church, we were the only people on staff.

No other pastors, musicians, secretaries, assistants, nothing, it was just us.

And I remember it was like a Monday after the church.

There was like 50, 70 people coming to the church.

And I remember I got a phone call from a visitor the next day.

Well, it wasn't really a phone call.

You know how we text everybody, thank you for coming.

Are you coming back?

And it's like all the time and it's annoying.

How many of you know what I'm talking about?

Sure, you know, we did it back then too.

And I texted some of them like, thank you for coming to the church.

Love for you to come back and they texted back.

They said, I'll never come back.

And immediately inside I was like, I was offended and also angry all at the same time.

And I asked the question, maybe she wouldn't have.

I said, but why?

They said, because your music is terrible.

And he said, let me call you.

And I'm like, oh no, then he called.

Now I'm on the phone with him.

And I said, okay, so like, what didn't you like?

And he started telling me what he didn't like.

And inside of me, it's the same thing inside of you, the rage.

You know the rage?

How many of you have the rage boil?

Yeah, you have had the rage boil inside of you?

It was like starting to, and I'm like, man, I was ready to lava flow all over that young man.

It was an old man, actually.

I was a young man.

And all of a sudden the Holy Spirit of God said, hold on, listen to him.

And so I said to him, I would love to go grab a cup of coffee and talk with you about this so our church could get better.

He said, really?

I said, I'd love it.

He said, okay, let's do it.

I said, let's do it on Friday, Friday coffee appointment.

I said, I love it.

So I drove all the way over to North Las Vegas where he came from, sat down with Anthony, sat down, had a coffee appointment.

And there we were.

And I pulled out a notepad and I said, tell me what you thought.

This needs a change and this needs a change and the church I was part of and when I grew up and I'm writing it out, page, page, page.

And I kept asking the same question, anything else?

Thank you.

Anything else?

Thank you.

Anything else?

Anything else?

Thank you.

Anything else?

No?

Nothing?

Anything at all?

Okay.

And I shut the notebook.

This is so helpful.

Thank you.

Can I ask you a question?

He said, sure.

I said, if you were to die today and you were to stand before God and God said, why should I let you into heaven?

What would you say?

And tears filled his eyes and said, I don't know.

I said, would you like to receive Jesus Christ as your savior today?

And tears poured out and he said, that's exactly what I need.

I said, awesome.

And right there over a cup of coffee, he got saved.

His name is Anthony.

He was a member of our church for almost 13 years.

Here's my point.

I hated him when I met him.

I hated him.

Pharisees are easy to hate.

But God has given you enough love to even show a Pharisee.

Bring them to Christ and show them how they can be born again.

Amen.