You know the paganism and all the other world religions of the day. We're just talking about the the particular sections of Jewish religion that makes sense All right, so we're going to talk today about Specific group called the Pharisees the Pharisees and If that, well, we'll see. I was going to say if we get done with that, we can go on to the next one, but I don't think we're going to. So the Pharisees. Does anybody know anything about the Pharisees? They were what? Haughty. They had the whole law memorized, yeah. What's that? They were leaders, yes. What did you say? Religious? They were religious, yeah. They believed in angels and the resurrection, yeah. As opposed to the Sadducees. That's the primary, basic thing that everybody remembers about between the two, Pharisees and Sadducees. Anything else about the Pharisees? What's that? They were middle class. Well, I've got to look at my notes here. I actually had, they're not, the Sadducees were rich. The Pharisees were, they were considered middle class. The Sadducees would have been elite. No. No, the skilled were usually middle class. So the Pharisees would have been skilled in scripture and doctrine and things. Not that the Sadducees weren't, but the Pharisees would have been the common folks rabbis, if that makes sense. So let's look a little bit about their religious beliefs. They had an adherence to the Torah. So they had an adherence to the Torah. The Pharisees emphasized strict observance of the Torah. That is the written law and the oral law. Yes. Which they believed was given alongside the written Torah to interpret and apply its commandments. Does anybody know what they called the oral law? The oral law. There's a book that ended up getting written or series of books that that had to do with there. It's not scripture. It's alongside of scripture. It's like it's like a big Jewish commentary of the law. Nope, nope. Yes, the tall mud. No, the Talmud, yes. That's how I remember it, is I look at, for the Pharisees, they have the Bible here, and then they have this huge stack of mud next to the Bible that they try to use to interpret the Bible. And so obviously the word is not Talmud, it's Talmud, but it's T-A-L-M-U-D, I believe. Right? Alright. So that Talmud would be where you would get all these other oral commandments. Now, not all of the oral commandments were bad, but some of them were. They weren't Scripture. What's that? Yep. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, and by the way, Paul himself, you know, a Pharisee. Before becomes a Christian and he tells Timothy and Titus and he tells others that that come after him not to forget the tradition that he has established with them. So tradition isn't bad unless tradition goes contrary to the Word of God or unless tradition is held in a higher regard. to the Word of God. So, do we have any present-day similarities with what they were doing there? I want to be careful not to say certain things yet. I mean, present-day things. in our midst. No, I mean in terms of among fundamentalist Christians. We'll put it that way. Go ahead. Do it. Go for it, man. Let it rip. Say it. Come on. That's what I'm going for, yes. Yeah. Yep. Like. Oh, thank you. She cannot silence that, but put your phones on silent. Yeah, there are a few people that have like a device that it goes off no matter what. So. Ignore that, but put your phones on silent otherwise. So. Pastor G, what about these things? These things. If I were to decide not to wear this during the morning service, I probably wouldn't get very much heartburn over it from anybody here. But, among some friends, I'm no longer a fundamentalist if I take this off. What is this thing? I mean, where is it written that I must wear a tie and a vest and a suit coat? And, well, I'm breaking all the other rules, but where's it written that I must wear these things, that I have to present myself? Hey, you know what? Among the same circles, let me figure out how to get this thing back in here where it goes. I gotta keep it in here so it doesn't flap in the breeze, right? That's why I wear a vest, so it doesn't swing. It's all messed up, yeah. So, but where, where do we get things like that? I mean, we broaden the borders of our, we enlarge our phylacteries, right? Our, we, and we broaden the border of our garments, right? And all of these things. Where do we get these things? Now, listen, we have some biblical precedent for how we dress. We do. The Bible does say that in the Old Testament, and I believe that it carries into the New Testament in the New Testament Christianity. The Bible does say that we're to be modest. You know, that's a New Testament statement. Specifically, the Bible says that we are that a woman is not to wear that which pertaineth unto a man. Neither is a man to put on a woman's garment. So there you're not supposed to cross dress. Okay Now what we've done with that is Every church it seems has a different standard as to what that means. I I mean, that's that's I just quoted for you a part of a verse from the Old Testament. There is a specific command right along with other commands having to do with homosexuality and things like that. And along with other appearance factors and things like, for example, a priest is to wear breeches. Y'all know what breeches are? Breaches. These things. Breaches, yeah. Yeah, the Bible uses the word breaches. So, why? Why is it? No, no, no, it's pants. Pants that go at least to the knee or past the knee. Or they have to cover the thigh. They have to cover the thigh. And it all depends on how you're built, I guess. Some people, their thighs stop about right here, because they don't have any meat on their bones. But no, your thigh actually attaches to your kneecap here. It's right there. That's my thigh, the end of my thigh. It's attached to my kneecaps. And I know that now because I did leg day this morning. And so when you do those, you know lunges you you feel where the end of that thigh is you know but uh so they were to wear breeches because what men wore in those days were robes basically it would be what we would call a robe right um they would they would wear clothing that had an open bottom right like a like a robe, a dress, like what we would call a dress or a robe. And there was a difference between men's clothes and women's clothes. It wasn't directly like, well, men wear pants and women wear skirts, that's just how we differentiate today a lot of times. But it was, there were marked differences between what they would wear. And beyond that though, the priests were to wear breeches because they often worked elevated. So they would go up above where everybody else is to do their priestly duties. They would go up to the altar to do the sacrifice, right? And while they're cooking on the grill, God didn't want anybody to see up the skirts of their clothes and see their nakedness. So He said in the Bible to wear breeches. Right? And eventually that, you know, you watch like the clothing, cultural clothing changes that have happened over the centuries and stuff. You know, you had, you know, typically robes worn and things. And then it ended up they would be coats. Like a long coat. I should have brought my coat and used some illustrations here. I have a robe in there. No, I don't need the robe. Everybody knows what a robe looks like. What? You skipped a few hundred years. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we want to we want to dress nice. Yep. Yeah. Right. But there's good there's there is good precedent biblically for dressing the way that we should right now. There there's a little bit of wiggle room within that there's what the Bible says and then there's how we apply it you know you think about just even secular whatever you get into say like the twelve hundreds or so and now you've got a split coat but it still goes down past the knee typically and you would have breeches and you would have what I wear and those are long socks that come up almost to the knee and so you know you they would take their pants and they would tuck them in to the top of their socks right or they would have their socks they would go what's that No, it's the same socks I wear all the time. I don't know, if you'd have zoomed into it, though, you'd have seen all the cat hair all over it. I don't know how that happened. And sometimes they would have their socks come up over here. Like they would have their pants come to here, and the socks would come up and come over, right? Anybody know what they called those? Hosen. Hosen. That's actually a biblical word. And it's in Daniel. When the three Hebrew boys got thrown into the fiery furnace. You know, they wrapped them up, including their hosen and threw them in there, you know, so, but they would have, and then it just kept going. And then you have like stuff out West, you know, your professional guys, they would wear like a, they'd have a, what do they call it, a cravat? there's a it's like a tie that's not a tie it's a stuff shirt there's a stuff shirt i mean that's why they call them stuff shirts right your professional guys they would be stuff shirt they would have a dress shirt of sorts right or not like a a blouse men's blouse like a a nice you know what's what we call in the military your top that you put on the button up top it's called a blouse and um but they they would have um they would have this uh men's shirt and then you would often have like a button up like a vest or something It also depends on where in the world you are because of the weather and all that. And then they would have like their frilly dilly thing, you know, stuffed in their shirt. And the really fancy ones, you know, they would try to stuff it and make it all big. And you got this big old puffy thing there, right? And then in the seventies, they just opened the shirt and had the carpet sticking out. And so, but, so, so the, but the idea is the changes have been made. 1900s, late 1800s, early 1900s, we kind of shifted to more of this look, you know, similar look to this, not exactly, but it would be like, if you're going out on the town, like we went on a date last night, If you're gonna go out on a date, or just to the grocery store, men would put on, like, dress pants, slacks, and they would put on a dress shirt and a tie, and usually a blazer or a sport coat, right? Something like this, right? And that was just your normal thing. Also, men would wear a hat when they go out. And then when they would go inside, they'd take the hat off, you know, or when a woman would come and approach them, they would take the hat off to talk to the woman. You know, typically there would be a like this etiquette thing, right? None of that's in the Bible, but it's not all bad. Right. A lot of the things that the Pharisees added, they didn't add to the Bible, they added tradition. Not all of it was bad. Lot of it was good. Now, when it comes to the point where, well, you're not wearing a tie, so you can't speak behind this pulpit, that's a bunch of baloney. Now, you come in purposely dressed like you have no respect for what God's doing here and no respect for the responsibility to preach, then of course, no, you wouldn't be allowed to preach. And so there's a difference between dressing respectfully and dressing what you have, right? I was thinking about just the other day, You know, I've been dreaming a lot lately. It's weird. So I I was dreaming about doing missionary work and I was talking to these missionaries and About like they're like what they do and how they serve and all this and and their appearance. I remembered a friend of mine who was He's an evangelist and he went and he taught in a Bible college and over in a, not a third world country, but not like America. It was over, over yonder, all right, over across the pond. And he like railed on these guys because they came, it was a week long like session where they were supposed to do like, they come for a week and they, they get their teaching and then they go back home wherever, you know, hours away walking. Well, these guys, these are professional men, supposedly, we say professional, they're pastors, right? And they come to this Bible college and they're coming to learn and the teachers are dressed nicely and everything, but these students, these pastors who have come to learn something, They come and their clothes are a little tattered and they don't change their clothes the entire week. Well after the couple days he says He does a class on the importance of personal hygiene and changing your clothes and and then and like the importance of being professional in your appearance and all that kind of stuff and then after that class one of the administrators of this school comes to him and said Brother let's go get some coffee or whatever they so they go they privately go talk and he says, you know Those men that's the nicest thing they own It's all they've got. They dressed in the nicest thing that they own and they're wearing it all week because they didn't have anything else to bring. Anything else would have been rags. And so he was corrected and apologized to the men the next day. But the idea is we don't necessarily want to try to force our particular tradition and try to make it and say this is the Bible. It's not. It's not. For us, you know, dressing up, trying to look nice, trying to show the importance of what you're doing, it looks kind of like this. I mean, I don't dress down. Sometimes I add fancy stuff, you know. I don't wear shoes like some of those fellas do. I can't. I'm wearing tactical boots. Why would I do that? I actually need to clean them a little bit they look a little better, but why do I do that because You know, it's more comfortable for my feet, you know, what's that? Comfortable. Yeah, and it's kind of cold outside, you know, I Don't I don't care if if y'all, you know for the guys that preach here I don't care if you're wearing tennis shoes, you know, whatever in passages got some tennis shoes on I you know, I mean obviously don't be like flippant about it, but what you have is what you have and you work with what you can, you know. I wear the pants that I wear because they're about as close as I can get to dress pants without being, without feeling like, I don't know, dress pants, they just, they're not, they don't fit me quite right. And so I wear something that's made more for utility. So, and then I find, try to find like black so you can't tell. See, I've got zippers here, guys. I mean, and these are my dress pants. I mean, I don't have another, I think I have a suit that has dress pants. I don't wear it very often at all. But that, so like maybe a funeral or something, you know, where somebody looked at me kind of funny wearing, these are technically cargo pants. What's that? I don't have to iron these either. And I don't know what they're made of, but it's like, I mean, you could spray me with a water hose and I won't get wet inside. It's kind of cool. So not that, you know, I get sprayed with water hose while I'm preaching, but hopefully not. But anyhow, I'm still at the first point here. The idea is they held very, very strongly to tradition. And they held tradition as equal to the Word of God. By the way, we do have some fundamentalists today that do that. Fundamentalist Baptist, fundamentalist whatever you want to call them, whatever they call themselves. There are a bunch that are that way. There are those who go the total opposite and they're like, well, that's wrong. You can't, you know, tell them to do such and such. And then they're like, I'm just going to wear like a T-shirt with some weird design on it. And I'm going to wear, you know, some skinny jeans. And I'm going to like try to look like the dudes up on the block, you know. You know, I. I'm not that's. That's not what we're trying to do, you know. And I know people say, well, you know, if you if you want to reach the world, you got to. Well, the fact is, that's really an indication that the world has reached you. As opposed to you reaching the world. But anyhow, so they held that really, really in high regard. Tradition in high regard. There's nothing wrong with tradition. It just needs to be recognized that tradition never ever trumps the Word of God. The Word of God is always our authority. And any traditions that we have, as good as they may be, need to be able to be shifted if they're not fitting with the Word of God and the culture to a certain extent. To a limited extent, I would say. So, they also believed in the resurrection of the dead. They believed in this, and this is actually stated in the Bible, and so they believed in the resurrection of the dead. resurrection of the righteous and life after death contrasting this with the Sadducees who denied those doctrines Acts chapter 23 verses 6 through 8 there would refer to that they believed in angels and spirits so the Pharisees affirmed the existence of angels demons and the spirit realm Right. And then they believed. So relating to the free will and divine sovereignty they taught a balance between human free will and God's control over the universe. So that honestly the Pharisees would be independent fundamental Baptists if they were in the Christian realm. They would be. And that that may sound like well wait a minute now Jesus had a lot of bad to say about the Pharisees. And there's probably some independent fundamental Baptists that kind of hold more to their works and their traditions than they do faith. Yeah. Right. Right. I'm what I'm saying is the Pharisees got a real bad rap because Jesus rebuked them a lot because they were wrong about him and they were wrong about emphasizing their tradition over the word of God. And so you know that that is where they were off. However for the most part A lot of the rest wasn't so bad. Except when it became how I look and how I act is more important than who I am. Who I actually am. Yeah. Yep absolutely right. Now people will say see they were they were full of dead man's bones they were hypocrites and they were wrong and they were you know all this. Yes correct. But Jesus did say they look good right. Yeah, well, I mean, it's the same as Christians who look good for public, but not in private. But they don't you know, they don't really have a relationship with God. They just look like they do. And that's I mean, that's a problem in Christianity today. And when I say in Christianity, there are some Who look good and talk the part and act the part? But they're not even saved because they haven't they're trusting in their ability to look like they're saved and I mean there are there are even those I would say that it goes as far as to say that those who count on how they look and how they act are As evidence that they're saved, they're going beyond what the gospel demands. The gospel demands faith in the work of Christ. How you look and how you act is simply a byproduct. And you can't look at the byproduct and say, OK, I need to duplicate this and then I've got it. No, you need to have it and then that stuff will come. You know, just like Jesus said, you wash the outside of the of the you know, the the cup and the platter, you wash the outside, but the inside is nasty, right? This is, you know, you and the same thing on the washing of hands, right? So, well, y'all wash your hands. That's not bad. But you're filthy inside you're washing the outside, but the insides filthy and so that that's the thing that that really all religious folk get wrong is That's right on the out on the outside. They look religious. They look like they they try to look like they're supposed to look and it's not bad to look right and It's right to look right. It's bad to count on the looking right and acting right as your righteousness. That doesn't make you righteous. You can practice the law, but it does not make you righteous. It is only the blood of Jesus Christ that makes us righteous. It's only His work at Calvary that makes us righteous. The works are not bad. They're good to do. But when we do them for our righteousness, or to prove our righteousness, or to bear the fruit that we're supposed to bear, and I'm for bearing fruit, but if we're doing that to prove we're saved, or to try to earn some favor with God, we got it mixed up. We got it mixed up. We earn favor with God by trusting Him. We get saved by faith alone in His work. And then the things that we do and looking right and acting right on the outside, that's great. As long as we're, I'm trying to preach next week's message, as long as we're walking by faith. It's not just about do this, do this, do this, do this. It's about be a believer. And these things happen. You don't do them to try to prove anything. You do them because they're right to do. It's a difference in the heart when it's not performance, but rather it's just simply an outpouring of the love of God. So social and religious practice and the synagogues and education. The Pharisees were instrumental in developing the synagogue as the center of worship, study and community life, making the Torah access accessible to the common people. This was important. They didn't have printing presses. They didn't have the Internet. They didn't have cell phones. They didn't have computers. They didn't have a copy of the word of God within reach all the time like we do. So they would typically have a copy at a synagogue. And if you wanted to read, that's why they would memorize the Word of God. Because if you wanted to actually look at it yourself, you had to go to the synagogue. And that's what these Pharisees, they would get with scribes, and they would have them copied, and then they would have a copy. And that's why they would have a synagogue for every ten men in a city, typically. That was their goal. For every ten men in the city, you would set up a little synagogue. That way, there was a place where people could go on a pretty regular basis to see and read the Word of God for themselves, or have someone read it to the group. Make sense? So that was the education factor. Purity laws. So they sought to apply the temple's ritual purity standards to everyday life. Emphasizing personal holiness. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it could be taken overboard or the wrong way. Emphasizing personal holiness is good. Emphasizing personal holiness to say, I'm holy because I do these things, you missed the point. Missed the mark. Personal holiness takes place because you're holy. Not, I'm holy because I do this and I don't do that. I don't do this and I don't do that because I'm holy. And I'm holy because God made me holy by the blood of Jesus Christ. Prayer and fasting? They were known for public displays of piety. Again, that's real obvious on the pride factor. Or the haughtiness, as Brother Wilhelm said. Including frequent prayer and fasting. Is prayer and fasting okay? Yes. Is it okay if people hear you pray? Yes. Is it okay if people know you're fasting? Now some people say, no, nobody's supposed to know. That's not what he's saying. If you tell people you're fasting to look good, well, you got your reward. Congratulations. Good job, Mr. Faster. but if what's that way to be hungry yeah um but if you if you if if people happen to know fine yep absolutely that's fine um and it's fine to plan fasts together yep Right, they just mark it. But some people do have a conviction that because Jesus said that it's to be in secret, that they believe that He literally meant nobody can know. People take the same thing to do with giving. Some people are like, well, I can't give in the offering publicly because nobody's supposed to know. I'm not supposed to let my right hand know what my left hand does. I just said right hand know what my left hand does. What's that? Yeah. Right. So. I mean, but then Jesus praised the widow that gave two mites and he told everybody how much she gave and how much and what percentage of it was or what percentage it was of her of what she owned. told everybody you know but then there's there's some churches they have a bulletin board that says non tithers and they list everybody's name that's a member of the church that doesn't tithe what's that there are actually churches that do that what What'd you say? Why don't we do that? I think, I think that, I think maybe you cross a line there, probably. Yeah. But anyhow, no, it's OK for people to know that was actually the next point tithing. They were meticulous about tithing, even minor crops reflecting their detailed observance of the law. It's good for them to do that. It's right for them to do that. It's fine. You know, Jesus said you tithe of this and this and this, but you don't do this and this and this says you need to be doing this and not leaving off the other. So, again, and some people say, well, tithing is not a New Testament thing. Jesus said you should not do it. So, there's that. But, tithing doesn't make you spiritual. Not tithing does make you disobedient. But, it doesn't make you right with God to tithe. Because you can tithe 90% of your increase and still not be right with God. It doesn't make you right with God. Your works don't make you right with God. Now your works can make you wrong, but they don't make you right. Not alone anyways. Jesus did rebuke them because what they were doing, they were doing to be seen of men. Is it okay to do what they're doing and be seen of men? Yes. But is it okay to do what they're doing to be seen of men? No. No. And that's why it's important to be careful and check yourself once in a while if you do something and it's known publicly. Stop for a second and think about how you feel about that. If you're real excited that everybody knows you did something good, you probably need to get your heart right. Because you need to be excited that God knows what you did. And whether others do or not, shouldn't have a heavy relevance. Now, at the same time, we On the other side of that, we have a responsibility to praise God and praise the works of one another in a sense, right? We're to appreciate one another and appreciate what each what everybody does, right? We we want to edify, which includes encouragement, which includes blessing one another, right? And so you know that from that perspective, you know, it ought to be one of those things where it's like a. You know, I'm over here serving God and you notice and you like you say and you tell people, hey, I want to just praise God for, you know, Pastor Campbell. He's he's doing such and such and whatever. And he let me let me just I'm not pastor right now, OK? I just want to praise God for brother Aaron and what he's doing for the Lord over here And you know, I saw him, you know scrubbing the toilet the other day and so on and whatever and I just want to just want to praise the Lord It's kind of like those little memes, you know, it says so and so did such-and-such be like so-and-so, right? It's you know It's kind of like that, you know, it's like hey, I actually I think you did you did something like that with brother Eric the other day Yesterday was a yesterday man. It's a long day yesterday. It was a good day. It was a long day, but He's like, well, here's brother Bell. I just want to tell you guys, you know, he's faithful. He does these things pray for him Amen, that's good. That's good. It's okay to do that. I Not only is it OK to do that, I think it's right to do it. Actually, not only is it OK and right, I think it fits within the commandments of God to do such things, to give honor where honor is due. Now, does that mean that we all ought to be looking for somebody who's going to who's going to? No, you got your heart wrong now. And so it's it's OK to honor people. It's OK to, you know, thank God for what people are doing. You know what? Grammar, it's OK to thank God for people and what they do. And it's OK to praise good works. We just have to be careful that we don't do the good works for the price, right? And it's okay to feel good about doing good and somebody praising you. It's just there's a line there. There's a line there. You have to find it. If you're doing what you're doing so that people will praise you, you're on the wrong side of that line. If you're happy that people praise what you do, but you don't do it for that reason, you're on the right side of that line. It's okay to be encouraged when somebody tries to encourage you. Yeah. So. Yeah, specific example. Yet to balance this too, and I. Somebody tells you this is a good sermon today. You know, for so long, My response was always, praise God. You know, because that's the humble answer, you know, that's right, the right humble answer to give. But, you know, when you study and you're hoping that you connected and somebody tells you, hey, it connected, it meant something to me, that makes you feel good. Not for me to say, oh, look what I did, everybody, no. But you know what? There's a balance there. I stopped just saying praise God and I say thank you. It's OK to say thank you. You're not taking all the credit. I know some people feel like if you say thank you, you're taking all the credit. It's like, oh, thank you. Yeah, I wrote the Bible. No, I didn't write the Bible. But, you know, you do. Does anybody ever just roll out of bed, bump their head, and there's a whole sermon ready for them to preach? No, it takes work, right? Now, I'm not saying, you know, hey, you need to just you need to thank God for me. And no, no, no, no. OK. There's a balance there, though. If you're blessed and you tell and you say so. Fine. Thank you. And praise the Lord. Hopefully, you'll take what you learned and go do something with it and bring glory to God. Yes, sir. Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Or if I'm now I ask my wife pretty regularly, what do you think of the message? It's not because I'm looking to like I'm hopefully like, well, man, I really hope I prepared a message that she's going to like that she'll tell me that she likes. She always likes it. She writes them for me. No, I'm kidding. She's typically sleeping when I'm writing my sermons. But like I thought about it specifically this morning, actually, I thought. Brother Travis came up to me last week and he said I like how you did the illustration there You know that the style the method whatever and I was like, I like that, too maybe I'll start doing that more often and then after I got done with the message and Worked out and ate breakfast and stuff. I was thinking I was like or well while I was waiting on the coffee the Not a percolator it's a tea kettle the tea kettle I heat the water and pour it into the French press I'm waiting on the tea kettle to start screaming at me and so I'm thinking I was thinking oh man I didn't do an illustration like that and I was like you know what I don't want to like start making all my messages a certain way like for a while I was it was all three points got two today but next week it'll just be one. No, I'm kidding. Who knows? Who knows? I'm trying not to be the same all the time, but I don't want to change it just to change it either. Yeah. And so, do I care about whether or not you enjoyed the sermon? Now, you can enjoy the sermon by being convicted. You can enjoy the sermon by being convicted and getting mad at me. That's fine. You can enjoy the sermon by just being encouraged. Whatever. Yes, I care whether or not you're able to enjoy the sermon. That's why I spend the time putting it together to hopefully you get something out of it. That's the point, right? But I don't do it just so you get something out of it. I want to be faithful to God. And if I'm faithful to God and I preach what I believe he wanted me to preach, whether or not you get anything out of it, isn't as important as being faithful to God. However, if I'm regularly preaching messages that I believe God's given me and nobody's getting anything out of it, I'm probably doing something wrong. Or maybe I'm the one that needs to get, yeah. But I was thinking today, sermon's pretty simple today. Hopefully it'll be helpful to people. Pretty simple, basic stuff. But we need basic stuff. Pretty regularly, really. But the idea is that we're not doing what we do just to please men. Is it okay to please men? Yeah, to a degree. Jesus grew in grace and favor with God and men. That's okay. Other people, the Bible says that about also. It's okay to grow in favor with men. It's not okay to make your whole life about the favor of men. Right? There's a balance with it. So, real quick, because we're way over time. their relation to other Jewish groups. The Sadducees, the Pharisees often clashed with the Sadducees who were aristocratic. They were the elite class. The Sadducees were, and they denied the oral law and controlled the temple priesthood. That can cause some problems. You know, you got these guys over here that are like doing things right, at least seemingly, and then you got these guys over here that are like, we don't even believe that there's a life after death, and they're running all the religious stuff. And so that could cause some friction, couldn't it? And so, now the Essenes, you'll learn more about them in a few weeks. While, what's that? E-S-S-E-N-E-S. the Essenes. While the Essenes withdrew from society, that's why you don't hear much about them in the Bible, the Pharisees remained engaged with the people, seeking to influence Jewish life and practice. That probably had a lot to do with why they wanted to be men-pleasers. Because, what's that? Well, the scenes we'll talk about it. We'll talk about it later when we talk about these scenes, but the Pharisees so that the scenes they would separate it was about holiness and you know all that but the Pharisees they wanted to integrate with society and they wanted to make an impact for eternity on the lives of the people around them. And so there was, you know, there were probably some Pharisees that actually genuinely just wanted to help people and they believed the Bible and they were fine. There were probably some. But the leadership of the Pharisees, Jesus rebuked because they were hypocrites. They were only doing the outward show. Then the zealots the Pharisees generally avoided direct rebellion against Rome unlike the militant zealots, all right, so there's the comparison there and Then interactions with Jesus and the early church I'm gonna just try to read this real fast because we're over time and I've drank way too much water That's why I'm so animated so I Trying to sweat it off. So criticism of hypocrisy. Of course, we've already alluded to this a lot. Jesus often rebuked the Pharisees for hypocrisy, legalism, and prioritizing tradition over the heart of the law. You'll see some examples, Matthew 23 verses 1 through 36, and Mark 7 verses 1 through 13. So, as we mentioned already, the tradition, prioritizing tradition over the heart of the law, and we mentioned hypocrisy, now the term legalism, Legalism is not looking at the Word of God and trying to do what it says. Legalism is when you take your works and you make those what makes you righteous or saved. That's legalism. It's works salvation. People who love the Word of God and try to live the Word of God are not legalists just because they love the Word of God and try to live it. They're only legalists if they try to live the Word of God for their righteousness. Okay? There's your disclaimer there. Conflict and agreement. While Jesus criticized their practices, he did share some theological beliefs with the Pharisees, such as the resurrection and the importance of the law. Right? Matthew 5, verses 17 through 20. Pharisees, in relation to the early churches there, or the early church in Jerusalem, some Pharisees became followers of Jesus, right? Nicodemus, there in John chapter 3. Paul, in Acts, you know. Their influence is evident in debates about the law and Gentile inclusion in Acts chapter 15, right? So there's that historical context. Remember the Second Temple, Second Temple Judaism, the Pharisees emerged during the Hasmonean period, which was from about two, around the second century BC, like a couple hundred years BC, about 300 years BC. as a response, so the Pharisees, isn't this interesting? The Pharisees emerged as a response to Hellenization and internal Jewish divisions. Very similar that the Fundamentalist movement emerged as a response to German rationalism. So, post-Temple Judaism. Pharisees emerged, I'm sorry, post-Temple. That was Second Temple Judaism, and then post-Temple Judaism. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D., the Pharisees' emphasis on the Torah and synagogue worship became central to Rabbinic Judaism. they kind of focused on personal devotion as opposed to the sacrificial system because it wasn't possible to have it, no temple. And then their legacy, rabbinic Judaism, the Pharisees' focus on oral law, synagogue worship, and Torah study laid the foundation for what is now modern Orthodox Judaism. We're not necessarily like endorsing, just making the statement, the historical aspect. And then Mishnaic and Talmudic tradition, the Pharisees teaching Teachings were codified in the Mishnah and later expanded in the Talmud, becoming the basis for Jewish law and theology. So understand, law and theology isn't necessarily just like the first five books of the Bible. Law has to do with anything legal, right? Like the whole, interesting term, judicial system. Something for you to think about throughout the day. Let's pray. Mishnaic, the Mishnah. Mishnah, M-I-S-H-N-A. We typically talk about the Talmud because it's like the expanded version of the Mishnah. So, all right, fun stuff. Let's pray, Lord. Thank you so much for your goodness. We thank you, Lord, for your word and all of the things that you've done in surrounding the history and the underlying things that are going on there. We just pray that you'd help us to look at these things and learn from them. We pray, Father, that you bless the services to come in Jesus' name. Amen.