One of the questions that I hear frequently
from people who are earnestly seeking to do the will of God is the question, “What is
the most important thing that God wants from me in the Christian life?” It’s like the businessman who’s always
asking the question, “What’s the bottom line?” Let’s cut through all of the details and
the myriad possibilities and the thousand-and-one commandments. What is it that God really cares about in
terms of the chief focus, the chief goal, the chief end of the Christian life? And what I’d like to do in this session
is to focus on what I think the Bible says is the answer to that question. As I read the Scriptures, it seems to me that
the bottom line, the chief goal of the Christian life is righteousness – that what God wants
from us more than anything else is righteousness. Now, I emphasize that for a reason. I hear Christians speaking all the time about
piety, about spirituality, and even about morality, but you almost never hear anybody
talk about righteousness. In fact, I’ve never had a student in the
seminary come up to me and say, “Professor Sproul, how can I become a righteous person?” Now, maybe that says more about me than it
does about my students, that they don’t bother to ask me a question like that, thinking
that they’re wasting their time. But you hear them concerned about, “I want
to be more spiritual,” “I want to be more moral,” and so on, or more pious, but they
shrink from that term “righteous,” and perhaps it’s because nobody wants to be
guilty of beings self-righteous; and in the currency of our language, the very word “righteousness”
has become something of a liability. But if Jesus were to walk in that room tonight,
and we said to Him, “Lord, what is the chief priority that You have for Your church?” If He answered that question this evening
the way He answered it in the New Testament period, He would say this: “Seek ye first
the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and everything else will be added unto you.” Let’s take a moment on that text we’ve
all heard of. When Jesus says, “Seek first the kingdom
of God and His righteousness,” the word for “first” there is the word “protos,”
and in the Greek language, the term “protos” does not simply mean “first in a sequence
of events” – that is, a serialized procedure where you have the first and the second and
the third and the fourth and the fifth and so on. Jesus doesn’t simply mean number one in
terms of chronological order, but this word “protos” in the New Testament carries
the implication of that which is first, not only in order of sequence, but it is foremost
in terms of importance. That is to say, when Jesus says, “Seek first
the kingdom of God,” He’s saying, “This is the top priority of the Christian life
– seeking the kingdom of God and God’s righteousness,” and so what Christ wants
from His people and from His disciples are people who actually manifest righteousness. Now, I’ve often said that one of the most
frightening statements that ever came from the lips of Christ was the statement that
He made when He said, “Except your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees,
you will in no wise enter the kingdom of God.” Now, you’ve all heard that passage, haven’t
you? And I think what puzzles me about it is that
we don’t seem to be too troubled by it. I mean, here Jesus gives a ghastly warning. He gives an if-then necessary condition. Unless “A” takes place, “B” can’t
possibly follow. Unless your righteousness exceeds – that
is, goes beyond – the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, you don’t have
a chance of getting into the kingdom of God. Now, there are a couple of ways that we can
interpret what Jesus is saying. Some commentators look at that phrase by Jesus,
and they say, “Well we don’t have anything to worry about because what Jesus is talking
about here is the righteousness that is required for us for justification.” In order to be justified, we have to have
perfect righteousness, and obviously the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees was imperfect;
and the only way you get into heaven is by perfect righteousness, and thanks be to God,
that’s what we have by faith in Christ where we receive through God’s decree the imputation
of the righteousness of Christ. And obviously, His righteousness exceeded
that of the scribes and the Pharisees, and since we possess by faith the righteousness
of Christ, we can breathe a sigh of relief, and we don’t have to worry about that dreadful
warning that Jesus gave on that occasion. Now, I think it’s very possible that that’s
exactly what Jesus had in mind. That when He said, “Unless your righteousness
exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees you’ll never enter the kingdom of God,”
that maybe what He had in mind there was the imputation of His own righteousness that is
the only way that we can ever stand in the presence of God. But you remember that at the time of the Reformation
when Luther was running around teaching justification by faith alone, he used a Latin phrase that
has since become so famous that every Christian can recite it – that that person who is
justified is “simul justus et peccator.” You all know that phrase, don’t you? Huh? “At the same time, just and sinner.” Just by the application of the righteousness
of Christ, yet we receive the righteousness of Christ while we are in fact, in and of
ourselves, are still sinners. But Luther said in our sanctification it doesn’t
stay like that – that the person who is declared to be just by faith, if that faith
is in fact genuine and not just a claim to faith or a charade here but that it’s authentic
faith, then Christ will truly begin to be formed in that person’s life, and that person
will begin to show forth the fruit of righteousness. And so the other half of the commentators
look at Jesus’ warning and say that what Jesus means there is that unless our lives
begin to manifest a quality of righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees,
then that’s the surest sign that there is that the faith that we profess is not genuine. So even though we don’t teach justification
by works, we still are very much concerned with the fact that the New Testament calls
us to show our faith by our works; and justification is by faith, but sanctification is where we
grow in authentic righteousness. Now, if that statement by Jesus does not curdle
your blood, let me start the cauldron boiling because what I’d like to do in the time
that we have left in this session is to consider the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees
– to consider that level of righteousness that we are called to go beyond if we are
to please God with our lives. It’s so easy for us to simply dismiss that
statement of Jesus because we say, “Well to exceed the righteousness of the scribes
and the Pharisees, that’s a piece of cake. That’s duck soup, for heaven’s sake! They were the ones that were the chief object
of Jesus’ wrath.” Whenever we think of the bad guys in the New
Testament, we think of the Pharisees. They were the worst of the worst. Well why were the Pharisees called “Pharisees”? You don’t read about Pharisees in the Old
Testament, do you? The reason why you don’t read about Pharisees
in the Old Testament is because there weren’t any Pharisees in the Old Testament. The Pharisees, as a party in Israel, emerged
after the exile and the return from exile. Well what had happened was that the new generation
of Israelite people began to adopt the pagan practices of those who were now in place,
and they forgot their traditions. They forgot the Law of Moses and the covenant
promises that God had made, and so a group of people who were especially devout arose
in the nation who were the ancient counterparts, ladies and gentlemen, to the Puritans. They had this profound desire to reform the
faith of Israel and to restore godliness to the nation. They were the conservatives of Israel who
wanted to reach back into the past and recapture the pristine purity of the Commonwealth of
Israel, and so they set themselves apart out of this concentrated zeal to obey the law
of God; and because of their single-minded desire towards righteousness, they were named
the “Set Apart Ones” – the “Pharisees.” In other words, what I am saying is this:
that the Pharisees as a group of people got their start in history as a group of men whose
sole business in life was the pursuit of righteousness. They majored in the pursuit of righteousness. There was nothing casual or cavalier about
their zeal to accomplish righteousness. I doubt if you know anybody who had the same
kind of determination to find righteousness as the Pharisees as a group did. But we think, “Oh well, yeah. Maybe that’s the way they started, but by
the time the first century rolled around they had degenerated into such godlessness that
they were a bunch of hypocrites and so on that Jesus called “vipers” and threatened
them with hell and all the rest. Well let’s see if these people in the first
century who incurred the wrath of Christ achieved any elements of righteousness, at least by
the testimony of Jesus. We hear Jesus denouncing the Pharisees when
He says unto them, “Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you compass sea and land to make one convert,
and when he is made you make him twice the child of hell that you are yourselves.” Now, this is a pretty scathing indictment
that Jesus makes of these people, but while He’s making this criticism, He does acknowledge
that they are evangelical, or at least evangelistic – not in the sense that they were running
around preaching the gospel, but they had a zeal for missionary outreach, a zeal for
evangelism and conversion that was unparalleled in the ancient world. So in that sense, let’s say that the first
thing we learn about the Pharisees of the New Testament is that they were evangelistic. How concerned about missions and evangelism
were these conservative people? Jesus said they would go over land and sea
to make one convert to their religion – go over land and sea to make one convert to their
religion. I spend nine months out of every year away
from my home, traveling round and about, speaking and lecturing, teaching and all of that, and
I do that because that’s my job and that’s my calling. That’s my vocation, but I doubt if a speaking
request came to our office in Orlando and said, “RC, I’m living up here in the state
of Washington, and I haven’t had an opportunity to hear much teaching on the book of Romans
in my lifetime. I wonder if you’d be willing to fly out
here and spend a couple of days teaching me lectures from Romans.” I doubt if we would accept that speaking invitation,
to go clear across the United States to speak to one person. I don’t think I’d do that because I don’t
have the zeal for outreach that these people had – that they would go over land and sea
to talk to one person, to get one person persuaded to their way of thinking. And so in that regard at least, in terms of
missionary fervor and evangelistic zeal, the Pharisees shame me, and I suspect they shame
most of you as well. What else does it tell us about the Pharisees? “Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin
and have omitted the weightier matters of the law – judgment, mercy, and faith. These ought you to have done and not to leave
the other things undone.” Now, the second thing we learn about the Pharisees
is that they were tithers. Not only were they tithers, ladies and gentlemen,
they were scrupulous in obeying God’s laws for tithing. In other words, they put their money where
their mouths were. The last poll that I saw about – that was
taken of “evangelical Christians” in the United States of America indicated that four
percent of proclaimed evangelical Christians tithe their income. Four percent. You remember the book of Malachi where the
prophet Malachi is sent by God to the household of Israel, virtually as a prosecuting attorney. That was one of the rolls of the prophet in
the Old Testament, was to summon the people of Israel before the tribunal of God, at times
to bring charges against them for breaking the terms of their covenant; and in this case,
Malachi comes, and the charge that he brings to the people is the charge of committing
robbery against God. And so he says, “Will a man rob God?” He raises the question, and it’s a rhetorical
question like, “What could be more unthinkable than that a human being would have the audacity
to steal from God Almighty?” And then the answer is what? “But how have you robbed Me? In your tithes and in your offerings.” And the prophet speaks to the nation and says,
“By withholding your offerings and your tithes, you are actually stealing from God.” Put it in New Testament terms. How could someone seek first the kingdom of
God and rob from the kingdom of God at the same time? Now, is that conceivable to you? And now the Pharisees listened to that, and
they understood the duty that every member of the covenant community had before God,
and the duty was to pay that ten percent, to pay that tithe to the storehouse in Israel. Now, they were so, as I said, so scrupulous
about it that they didn’t just tithe in general. Now, the tithe, for the most part, was paid
in produce or livestock, and it worked out like this: If you raised cattle and in a given
year you had ten new calves born, then what would you do? One out of those ten calves would be returned
to God. If you raised wheat or barley or oats, ten
percent of the yield went to God – and it went off the top, I might add. All right? Now, what the Pharisees and the scribes did
was this: If they were growing vegetables or cows and they had 50 barrels of wheat,
they would take five barrels of wheat, but if they found some – ten little plants of
mint growing by their doorstep, they’d take one and give it back to the church. That’s how scrupulous they were. It would be like this: If you, at the end
of your month you calculated how much income you have, and you give your ten percent to
God, but you’re walking down the street and you find a dime on the sidewalk. What the Pharisee would do is his conscience
would bother him unless he took a penny and made sure he paid one cent out of that ten
cents to keep those accounts absolutely square with God. Now, Jesus said, “You’re scrupulous about
the tithe, but you omit the weightier matters of the law.” Whew! It’s good news to find out that Jesus didn’t
regard tithing as one of the weighty matters of the law. That was a small thing! That was a lesser matter of the law. He said, “These things you ought to have
done. I’m glad that you paid your tithe,” he
said. “But you’ve omitted the weightier matters
of the law – justice and mercy and faith.” Now, when I hear Jesus talk like that to them,
I can just hear our defense as contemporary Christians saying, “Well Lord, yes we’ve
been negligent with the tithe. We’ve – 96% of us have systematically
robbed you and have not made the building of Your kingdom such a priority that we were
willing to part from our own resources to give back to You what You’ve given to us
and as a real measure of our obedience and faith and so on.” And I hear people saying already, “Oh, well
that’s the Old Testament. We don’t have to do that anymore.” That’s right. They got away easy in the Old Testament. Ours is a better covenant, a richer covenant
with far more benefits than they received in the Old Testament, and I might add, far
more obligations and responsibilities. The starting place of the Christian life is
the tithe. That’s a minor – it’s simple. That’s a little thing. But we say, “We could say to Jesus, ‘Jesus,
we want to please You with our lives and so we’re not going to worry about the lesser,
lighter matters of the law like tithing. We offer to You justice and mercy and faith.’” I wonder how that will go down. I think unless we’re faithful in little
things, it’s very unlikely that we’re going to be faithful in the weightier matters
of the law. And so even when the Pharisees are being rebuked
by Jesus, He at least compliments them by acknowledging the fact – at least they tithe. They were tithers. What else? They were debating with Jesus constantly about
what the Scripture says, and Jesus said, “You search the Scriptures. You do well. Believing that in them, you have eternal life.” But this group of people, again, who received
the most vehement denunciation from Jesus during Jesus’ earthly ministry, were acknowledged
by Jesus to be serious students of the Bible. I doubt if there was a Pharisee
in all of Israel who didn’t believe in the inspiration of the Bible, the infallibility
of the Bible, and the inerrancy of the Bible. Their doctrine of Scripture was impeccably
orthodox, and they not only had a good view of Scripture, but they studied the Scripture. Them memorized. They would always win the sword drills in
the churches. The problem was, it never got into their bloodstream,
did it? Do you see why this is so scary? I mean, there are all kinds of people in the
church who don’t care at all about evangelism, who wouldn’t think about tithing, and have
never cracked the Bible open. They haven’t even met the minimal requirements
of the Pharisees, but what about if we have done all of these things – if we’re evangelistic,
paying our tithes, studying the Bible left and right? That doesn’t prove anything. One more point as we consider the Pharisees
– and there’s more to be said, but time doesn’t allow it – was that one of the
things that Jesus complained about the Pharisees was their ostentatious display of piety through
their long-winded prayers. The Pharisees spent all kinds of time in disciplined,
spiritual exercises, and in prayer. In fact, they loved to be called upon at public
meetings to pray because they were so eloquent, and the people applauded them. They were the teachers, the preachers, the
prayers, the evangelists – the professional religionists of their day. But the one problem that comes out over and
over and over again as we look at the New Testament model of the Pharisee is that the
Pharisee’s religion was strictly external. The word that Jesus uses for them again and
again is the word “hupokritos” – hypocrite – which means “one who is a play-actor,”
one who on the surface manifests a religiosity, a kind of piety, but whose life in the deeper
dimension never, ever reaches authentic righteousness. Now again, the danger here of reducing the
Christian life to externals is a danger that comes in every age. I don’t mean that we’re supposed to neglect
the externals. Again, it’s not an either/or here. Jesus says, “These things you ought to have
done and not neglect the other.” I’m not suggesting that we can say, “Oh,
well we can dispense with prayer, we can dispense with the spiritual disciplines, we can dispense
with Bible reading and all of that stuff as long as we really care about being kind to
our fellow man and working for justice and all of that and forget all of this piety.” No, no, no. It’s not the letter or the spirit, but godliness
is the letter and the spirit. It’s the external and the internal. It’s the outside and the inside. It’s not the inside without the outside,
and it’s not the outside without the inside; but authentic righteousness involves obedience
to the commands of God.
