Pharisees and Sadducees # 2

Pharisees and Sadducees # 2

I may be allowed to say that none warnings so much as the ministers of Christ's Gospel. Our office and our ordination are no security against errors and mistakes. It is true, that the greatest heresies have crept into the Church of Christ by means of ordained men! Ordination does not confer any immunity from error and false doctrine! Our very familiarity with the Gospel often creates in us a hardened state of mind. We are apt to read the Scriptures, and preach the Word, and conduct public worship, and carry on the service of God, in a dry, hard, formal, callous spirit. Our very familiarity with sacred things, unless we watch our hearts, is likely to lead us astray. "Nowhere," says an old writer, "is a man's soul in more danger - than in a minister's study." The history of the Church of Christ contains many dismal proofs that the most distinguished ministers may for a time fall away. Who has not heard of Cranmer recanting and going back from those opinions he had defended so stoutly; though, by God's mercy, raised again to witness a glorious confession at last? Who has not heard of Jewell signing documents that he most thoroughly disapproved, and of which signature he afterwards bitterly repented? Who does not know that many others might be named, who at one time or another, have been overtaken by faults, have fallen into errors, and been led astray? And who does not know the mournful fact that many of them never came back to the truth - but died in hardness of heart, and held their errors to the end!

These things ought to make us humble and cautious. They tell us to distrust our own hearts, and to pray to be kept from falling. In these days, when we are especially called upon to cleave firmly to the doctrines of the Protestant Reformation, let us be careful that our zeal for Protestantism does not puff us up, and make us proud. Let us never say in our self-conceit, "I shall never fall into the errors Roman Catholicism or any New Theology: those views will never suit me." Let us remember that many have begun well and run well for a season - and yet afterwards turned aside out of the right way. Let us be careful that we are spiritual men - as ell as Protestants, and real friends of Christ - as well as enemies of antichrist. Let us pray that we may be kept from error, and never forget that the twelve Apostles themselves were the men to whom the Great Head of the Church addressed these words: "Be careful and be on your guard!"

II. I propose, in the second place, to explain - what were those DANGERS against which our Lord warned the Apostles. "Be careful," He says, "Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees." The danger of which He warns them is false doctrine. He says nothing about the sword of persecution, or the love of money, or the love of pleasure. All these things no doubt were perils and snares to which the souls of the Apostles were exposed; but against these things our Lord raises no warning voice here. His warning is confined to one single point: "The yeast of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees." We are not left to conjecture what our Lord meant by the word "yeast." The Holy Spirit, a few verses after the very text on which I am now dwelling, tells us plainly that by yeast was meant the "doctrine" of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees. Let us try to understand what we mean when we speak of the "doctrine of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees."

(a) The doctrine of the PHARISEES may be summed up in three words: they were formalists, tradition-worshipers, and self-righteous. They attached such weight to the traditions of men that they practically regarded them of more importance than the inspired writings of the Old Testament. They valued themselves on excessive strictness in their attention to all the ceremonial requirements of the Mosaic law. They thought much of being descended from Abraham, and said in their hearts, "We have Abraham for our father!" They imagined, because they had Abraham for their father - that they were not in danger of hell like other men, and that their descent from him was a kind of title to heaven. They attached great value to washings and ceremonial purifyings of the body, and believed that the very touching of the dead body of a fly or gnat would defile them. They made a great deal about the external parts of religion, and such things that could be seen by men. They made broad their phylacteries, and enlarged the fringes of their garments. They prided themselves on paying great honor to dead saints, and garnishing the graves of the righteous. They were very zealous to make converts. They prided themselves in having power, rank, and preeminence, and of being called by men, "Teacher, Teacher." These things, and many things like these, the Pharisees did. Every well-informed Christian can find these things in the Gospels of Matthew 15 and 23; and Mark 7.

Remember, all this time, they did not formally deny any part of the Old Testament Scripture. But they brought in, over and above it, so much of human invention, that they virtually put Scripture aside, and buried it under their own traditions. This is the sort of religion of which our Lord says to the Apostles, "Be careful and be on your guard."

~J. C. Ryle~

(continued with # 3)