Then they understood that He did not say to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Matthew 16:12

In Matthew 16, Jesus had a familiar encounter with Pharisees and the Sadducees who were demanding a sign from him to confirm his authority as a prophet and, perhaps, as the Messiah. After the encounter, he and the twelve shoved off in a boat for another location. Somewhere on their short voyage the disciples discovered that no one had brought bread. As they discovered their dilemma, Jesus said, “Be on your guard against the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”

The twelve thought he was somehow discussing their dilemma and the fact that they had pushed off on a journey without provisions. After some discussion, they discerned that he had not been talking about the properties of a great loaf of bread but rather he had been talking about the teaching of the religious leaders of Israel. Their teaching was a well-developed theology of rules and laws for serving God. It was legalism in its fullest sense. It defined every aspect of the believer’s life and declared what was and was not acceptable to God.

I really like what Graham Cooke says about this in his little book, Qualities of a Spiritual Warrior. He says, “Part of His (Jesus) ministry was to take a stand against religiosity in church leadership. ‘Woe’ is a primary exclamation of grief and also denunciation. In Matthew 23:13-29, He used it on eight occasions. He called church leaders hypocrites, blind men, blind guides, and whited sepulchers. His foremost accusation was that they shut off the Kingdom of Heaven from people because they had no experience of it themselves.

In mentoring the disciples, He was developing a church leadership that could carry the message and lifestyle of the kingdom in themselves. He taught them how to believe God, how to move in the supernatural, how to have power over the enemy, and how to love people and release them into a lifestyle of blessing and favor…

He stood against a religious system that had captured people in a legalistic environment that prevented them from being loved fully by God. When the system defines the experience we can have with God, then we have no freedom. Jesus came to set us free from an organized religious experience that teaches us how to think, speak and act before God. It is the role of the Holy Spirit to renew our minds, not for man to program them. Jesus came to overthrow a system that does not allow us the joy of exposure to his fullness, anointing, and glory” (p.133-134).

The power of the Kingdom of God cannot flourish in a legalistic system of rules and regulations that place God in a well-defined box. Does that mean that “anything goes?” Of course not. Paul gives some healthy and biblical boundaries for the expression of the things of the Spirit in 1 Corinthians 12-14. However, he does not restrict their expression but only regulates them so that their expression always reflects love. It also does not mean that those individuals who want a greater experience of Jesus through his Spirit are to ignore the rules of the house set by its leaders. A great deal of harm has been done by well-meaning people who have gone off to a conference on miracles and decided to come home and “blow the roof off” their conservative congregation. Submission to leadership is an important principle in the kingdom. Finding a greater expression of the Kingdom may mean going to another environment where it is welcomed rather than “trying to shake things up” where you are. Encouraging leadership to be more open is one thing, rebelling against their boundaries us another.

We often think of legalism in terms of churches that do not accept the full ministry of the Holy Spirit but that is not always the case. There are non-charismatic churches that are full of grace but have not yet come into the miraculous measures of the Holy Spirit. They are open but have not yet arrived. There are also “charismatic” churches that are just as guilty of legalism as cessationsist churches. Some of those churches have strictly defined dress codes, hairstyles, prohibitions on makeup, and so forth that regulate the life of believers. Legalism can creep into any theology like leaven in a loaf of bread and change the very nature of faith and freedom.

Even on a personal level, we can begin to judge other believers on the basis of them worshipping God or serving him in ways contrary to our own preferences. Some of our preferences can morph into “laws” that define how God works in people and churches. There is a place for testing spirits and judging prophecies etc. but that testing must be led by the Spirit not produced by flesh or our intellect. Before declaring that God does not work in certain ways or accept certain things we need to be very careful and diligently seek the Lord.

Acts 15 is a perfect example.   The Jerusalem church came together to decide whether God was actually accepting the Gentiles and working among them. Fifteen hundred years of religion and tradition had planted deep convictions that only Jews or Gentiles that had converted to Judaism and all of its laws were acceptable to God. But God had been doing crazy things among the Gentiles who had not been circumcised, did not keep the Sabbath, and who ignored the feast days. Peter himself had to give an account of why he even entered into the home of Gentiles and why he then baptized them. The feeling in the Jerusalem church was that “God doesn’t work that way.” But, he did… and after seeking the mind of the Spirit on the matter, the leaders of the church determined that God had accepted the Gentiles without them coming under the traditions of the Jews.

Legalism, the leaven of the Pharisees, quenches the Spirit whether in churches or in our own hearts. It is actually the default setting for our fallen nature trying to work our way to heaven so we all have to guard against it. We would do well to ask the Spirit, on a regular basis, to highlight areas where we are slipping into a religious or legalistic mode because it is hard to recognize. A critical or judgmental spirit in us is a sure sign that we are slipping in that direction. For all of us then who want to enjoy the fullness of God, we need to guard against that leaven. Be blessed today. Enjoy your freedom in Christ and let others do so as well.

Woe to you, because you are like unmarked graves, which men walk over without knowing it.” One of the experts in the law answered him, “Teacher, when you say these things, you insult us also.” Jesus replied, “And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them. (Lk.11:44-46)

In this chapter of the gospel of Luke Jesus continues to pronounce warnings and a call to repentance to the religious leaders of Israel. Jesus offers up a pointed description of these leaders by comparing them to unmarked graves that men step on without knowing what they have done.  The Jewish law pronounced anyone unclean who had come into contact with a dead animal or a dead human.  Death was connected with sin because that was the primary consequence of Adam’s sin.  After contact with the dead, an Israelite had to go though a period of separation and cleansing rituals to enter the community again or before coming into the temple area.  A Jew who stepped on an unmarked grave was suddenly unclean or defiled without knowing it.

In this section of Luke 11 Jesus pronounces a warning over these spiritual leaders because their hypocrisy not only was the antithesis of true spirituality but it also spiritually defiled those with whom they had contact.   In Matthew 16, Jesus warned his disciples to “beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees” which was their teachings. Once again, these men looked spiritual and holy on the outside but on the inside they were full of greed, deceit, envy, and pride.  They were spiritually dead on the inside while having an appearance of godliness on the outside.  If that duplicity had affected only them it would have been enough for a warning but it also influenced others.

Those who came into contact with these Pharisees and these other experts in the law were defiled by their teachings.  These leaders had missed the whole point of the Law.  The function of the Law had never been to save a man through works but to convince a man that he could never do enough on his own to merit salvation. Paul tells in Galatians that the Law was a schoolmaster that was designed to point us to Christ. Every sacrifice for sin at the temple pictured the death of an innocent for the sins of another.  The Law, if understood correctly, underlined the need for a Savior because there was no end to the blood of bulls and goats.  Those sacrifices had to be offered perpetually. It was like a cancer treatment that could hold the cancer in check but never really cure it so that drugs have to be administered perpetually. When a person has been cured, treatments are no longer required. The blood of Christ was the cure – one sacrifice for all time.

The trouble with the teachings of the Pharisees was that it missed the point.  They kept the emphasis on what man could do rather than what God could do. Not only did they preach a meticulous keeping of the Law but they also added many of their own laws which made the burden even greater.  On top of that, Law keeping for salvation’s sake becomes a test.  Who does enough or who keeps the Law well enough to win salvation? If only the top 10% get into heaven, then you better make sure you are part of the top ten.  Because man, in his fallen state, cannot change the heart, the religious leaders of Israel disregarded the heart and emphasized what could be done in the flesh.  So they did mountains of religious things and in doing so developed a deep sense of self-righteousness and arrogance along with a profound disdain of the “unreligious.”  If your salvation depends on your personal righteousness, then you better see yourself as righteous or you won’t be able to live with the condemnation you feel. Many Christians are still burdened with condemnation because they too have a sense that their salvation is based on their worthiness rather than Christ’s.

The ordinary man who encountered these Pharisees would not only leave that encounter with the impression that God approved of pride and arrogance and a hunger for the praise of men but would also with a sense of condemnation about his own condition. Both of those responses imparted death rather than life. Right or wrong, most people look at believers and, especially, leaders in the church as an accurate representation of both God and his standards through our actions, attitudes and teaching.

Those who have no experience with the Father will assume that we represent Jesus and all that he stands for because we are their only experience with God.  They will not only assume that we represent the Lord accurately but if they are drawn to the Father they will begin to emulate our attitudes and behaviors because they will assume that we are what God wants us to be.  If we are, in fact, what the Father wants us to be then we will impart life to those who encounter us.  If we are far from what the Father wants us to be then we will impart death…as if they had stepped on a grave.

Here is what the Pharisees missed:

• God looks at the heart of a man not his appearance and certainly not the “appearance of godliness.”
• Salvation comes through no righteousness of our own but only through the grace of God.
• We don’t need a judge who keeps score of our “righteous acts” but a Savior who saves us from our sinful acts.
• God is not interested in ritual but in relationship. Religion in the sense of law keeping and rituals actually turns us away from the heart of God because it places the emphasis on us and what we can do rather than on him.

Jesus said to watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees.  Here is the thing. We all have a little Pharisee in us because our flesh or natural man leans in that direction.  At Passover the Jews had to purge their houses of all leaven and we need to do the same from time to time by scanning our own hearts for religious pretense, self-righteousness, self-sufficiency, and any disdain we find for the “unreligious.”  If you think about it, Jesus apparently felt more at home with the “unreligious” than with the “religious” of his day.  I’m sure he still feels the same way. That’s something to think about. Be blessed today.

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ.  But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!     As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned! (Gal. 1:6-9).

Occasionally in his New Testament letters, the apostle Paul went “completely Billy Jack” on certain groups who were trying to influence the church. If you aren’t a baby boomer who watched a lot of movies in the 60’s you may have to do some research on that expression.  In his letter to the church at Galatia, Paul runs quickly through a curt greeting and then assaults a group who had come to Galatia soon after Paul had departed.  This was a group who had come to present a “different gospel” from the one Paul had presented.  It was, in fact, so different that Paul judged it to be no gospel at all and declared a curse over those who had brought the teaching.  The curse was for them to be eternally damned. He was so serious about it that he spoke the curse twice.

What in the world would get Paul stirred up so much that if he had been present I’m certain he would have gotten physical with these “teachers?”   In a nutshell, Paul preached a gospel of grace through which salvation comes by faith not by the stringent keeping of laws and rituals through which a man earns his salvation.  Those who came after Paul were Jews who believed that Jesus was the Messiah but that keeping the Law of Moses faithfully was still a condition of salvation.  Their formula would have been “Jesus + good works + faithful obedience to the Law of Moses = salvation.  Pauls’ formula simply read “Jesus + faith = salvation.”  To add more to the gospel condemns man to a slavery under law.  That’s why Paul felt so strongly about it.  As a former Pharisee he knew how spiritually debilitating living under a religious system could be.

For those of us who have never lived under the Law, that might not seem like such a big deal.  After all, aren’t we as Christians supposed to do good works and keep the commandments of Christ anyway?  Yes, but we do those things as a response to the grace of God that gifted salvation to us rather than as a means to earn our salvation. The difference is worlds apart.

Under any system of religious law we are left to earn our salvation on the basis of faithfulness and good works as defined by the religion.  The problem is that you never really know where you stand.  Somehow I lost my catalogue that tells he how many salvation points are required to get into heaven, how much each good work is worth and how much is subtracted from my total score on the basis of sins and bad attitudes. I also have no way of assessing how much faith is enough faith, how much love is enough love, or how much godly sorrow is required before it counts.  Do Wednesday nights count more than Sunday mornings and do I get bonus points if I drove to church on slick roads? I’m also left to wonder if there are penalties and interest that accrue if sins go unrepented for significant periods of time.

In short, a person can never be sure of his or her salvation if we must earn it or merit it somehow. Islam is a great illustration.  Because it is a religion of works and judgment, a Muslim can never know with certainty whether he will be given access to paradise or not – unless he or she dies in defense of Islam.  Suicide bombers then have the only real assurance of salvation but even then entry is not guaranteed but only highly probable.  But the uncertainty is enough to drive many to blow themselves up along with the infidels in order to get a good shot at salvation.

Whenever Satan wants to derail faithful believers in the kingdom of heaven, he simply introduces an element of legalism into the faith.  He introduces a different gospel.  Ask any pastor who does much counseling in his congregation and he will tell you how many believers stumble through life under the weight of guilt from past sins. He will tell you how many still operate under the unspoken assumption that God’s love is conditional and based on their own goodness or religious performance.  They carry a profound sense of unworthiness that steals their faith in the promises of God.  They don’t feel worthy to ask God for big things and if they do they have no real expectation of having their prayers answered because they are too insignificant or sinful for God to say yes to them.

Multitudes of Christians live with the assumption that continued salvation and the promises of God all depend on them – their goodness, their perfection, and their performance. That is a form of legalism that cripples the church.  Notice how that kind of religious system affected the Pharisees.  If you assume that people earn their way to heaven and you know that not everyone gets in, then you must make assumptions about percentages.  Does the 50^th percentile get a passing grade or must you be in the 70^th or 90^th percentile? If only so many get in, then you are not only invested in doing better but you must also be invested in others doing worse.  The result is that you must tout your own righteousness while pointing out every other person’s failings.  In fact, you might even be invested in helping them fail. Jesus often confronted the Pharisees about their self-righteousness, their willingness to throw stones at others, and their willingness to pile religious demands on the multitudes while not lifting a finger to help them meet those demands. Rules and ritual become the test of faith because only those can be measured.

As believers, we don’t have to have a well-developed religious system like the Pharisees to fall prey to legalism.  Satan will simply point out a few attitudes or weaknesses or past sins that he will highlight as the very things that make us unworthy and unacceptable to our Father.  He gets us to focus on our self and our sin rather than the all-encompassing sacrifice of Jesus so that we feel the pressure to be perfect, to deny our own sin, or to blame others for our shortcomings because we are participating in some kind of vague score keeping.  If we don’t blame others we still always feel unqualified to share our faith, walk in the power of the Spirit, lead in our churches, or ask God to do great things using us.

As I have said before, God isn’t hung up on our imperfections, we are and Satan delights in whispering a gospel to us different from the one we first received.  We were saved by grace and continue by grace.  We serve, we make mistakes, we get up, we dust ourselves off and keep going by grace.  God’s mercies are new every morning and so we are able to put yesterday’s mistakes under the blood of Christ every evening and rise the next morning fresh in the Lord.  We are able to rise ready to serve him and love him in better ways today than we did yesterday – not in order to be saved but because we are saved.

Paul said that it is for freedom that Christ has set us free – freedom to live each day new in the Lord and freedom to know that perfection is not a requirement for salvation.  The faith that we have is enough for today and God will give us more for tomorrow.  Our part?  Refuse to accept a different gospel from the enemy or people who don’t know any better because a different gospel is no gospel at all.  Feel free to be imperfect today in Jesus and love him all the more because you can.  Be blessed in Him.