"Pity the Poor Pharisees"

5:34 AM
Did the Pharisees get the short end of the spiritual stick? I mean, just think about it for a minute.

In the New Testament the Pharisees were a strict sect of Rabis whose compulsive devotion to rules and traditions might be politely described as obsessive.

But the Pharisees grew up religiously going to temple and "only doing the best they could," staying busy trying to be very strict and religious, to earn God's favor. Then, through no earthly fault of their own, Christ arrived on the scene ... and overturned their legalistic apple cart.

So how were they to know God made His own plans instead?

Oh my ... here they'd devoted their entire lives to publicly proving their piety, but still somehow managed to get it all wrong. How were the poor Pharisees, who loved rules SO MUCH, to know the rules had changed? How had their hard work, Legalism and traditions managed to fail them?

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The Pharisees rejected Christ because they loved & worshiped what was safe and familiar, Legalism, instead of the living God. Which caused the Pharisees to miss recognizing the Messiah when he stood in the flesh before them. Their laws had become legal bars wedged so tightly together that their own rules kept them from seeing outside the cells of their spiritual captivity.

The Pharisees didn't love the Spirit; they loved their self-importance. They also loved emphasizing their OBLIGATION to force others to respect their self-righteousness.

Shoot, not even the light got inside the Pharisees' man-made reformatory.

Here's a story-book ending to the story ...
The best part for 21st-century believers is that after witnessing the Resurrection the Pharisees realized their man-made errors, apologized for all the confusion, Rules n' Traditions they'd created, and went voluntarily extinct (taking their R n' T music with them).

I mean, can you imagine what churches would be like today if the Pharisees had quietly escaped from the temples ... and slipped into modern-day pews, committees and the blog-o-sphere instead?