The Leaven of the Pharisees posted Dec.

1, 2007
If you type "leaven of the Pharisees" in your google bar, you'll come up with
nearly as many results and definitions of the term, as there are denominations
and churches. For the fundamentalist hardliners, the Pharisees of today are
represented by the catholic church, whose members, again, have their own
definitions.
I find the leaven of the Scribes and Pharisees to be much closer to home than
the other side, the other denomination. The leaven of the Pharisees is a sin we
have all committed, especially the most righteous among us. It is the sin that
nailed our Savior to the cross: Self-righteousness.
It's the audacity of thinking we have the right to judge another, blatantly defing
Jesus' own commandment He gave us to "judge not that ye be not judged"
(Matth.7:1). But we go ahead and do it anyway. We go around and call others
"fornicators" and "adulterers" because they live together "in sin" without a
marriage license.
We go around and tell others the Satanic lie that they can lose their Salvation if
they don't watch out and stop sinning, quoting the only verse most Christians
ever memorize on Salvation (Phil.2:12): "Work out thine own Salvation in fear
and trembling" (Ahhh, it feels so good to cause others to feeeaaaar and
trrrremmmmble, doesn't it? - So who's the pervert here?).... Of course, totally
ignoring the dozens of Scriptures that make it quite plain that Salvation is a gift of
grace, only to be obtained through faith, and without works whatseoever. What
Paul was referring to in the verse above, is what we make out of our Salvation in
this life, and what kind of a life we build on the foundation of the new life in Christ.
But our eternal Salvation is a gift of God (Ephesians 2:8,9), and if God is Love
(1John 4:8), then He won't jerk that gift away from His child everytime he sins.

Besides, sinning is something we all do a lot more often than we like to admit.
Those self-righteous Scribes and Pharisees of today are just trying to make it
easier on themselves by re-defining sin: you are a sinner because you're not
married, and I'm not, because I go to church on Sundays and have a marriage
license. According to Jesus, everyone who even so much as looks at a woman
and desires her in his heart, has already committed adultery (Mt.5:28). Now, the
only sort of (male) people I know of who can withstand that natural urge God built
into a healthy man's system, are homosexuals.

Selected Scriptures About the Pharisees:

Mt.5:20 You've got to be better than those who are think they are good, if you
want to go to Heaven.
Mt.12:14 (It was the Pharisees who were responsible for Jesus' death, not the
Romans, nor the publicans and sinners, prostitutes and adulterers!);
Mt.12:34 When the Pharisees accuse Jesus of casting out demons through the
Devil's power, He winds up calling them a "generation of vipers, how can ye,
being evil, speak good things?"
Mt.12:39 He also calls them an "evil and adulterous generation." Funny, because
it was usually the Pharisees that point their fingers at adulterers (as they still do!).
What is Jesus trying to tell these people? Perhaps the same thing Paul was
trying to tell them in Romans 2:1, that they become guilty of the same things they
judge others of? Maybe the spiritual adultery they commit with the gods of this
world (materialism, power and prestige) and with the spirits of the Devil (pride,
self-righteousness, etc.) are much worse in God's eyes than the mere "sins" of
the flesh?
Mt.15:3 Here Jesus replies to their accusation of having broken one of the
formalities of Jewish law by asking them, "Why do you break the law of God by
your tradition?" What IS the law of God? In Mt.22:36-40 Jesus makes it plain that
the law of God is LOVE, and all the other little laws are fulfilled in that one. In
other words, the traditions of both Scribes and Pharisees of yesterday and of
their self-righteous followers of today are breaking God's true law!
Mt.15:5 He goes on to say that they are making the law of God of none effect by
their traditions. Why is it that you find anything but love in those churches? (John
13:35).
Mt.15:8 They're always praising God with their lips in their church services, but
then treat their fellow humans with the very self-righteousness of the Devil,
oblivious to the fact that they are putting God at the same distance from their
heart to which they exiled that sinner they judge.
Mt.15:9 Such worship is empty and vain in God's eyes. They're replacing God's
law of Love with their own man-made rules: "Thou shalt not this and thou shalt
not that, and thou shalt not the other," instead of "Thou shalt love!"
Mt.15:14 They're blind guides (thinking they see - John 9:41), destined for a hard
landing.
Mt.16:6 Beware of the leaven of Self-righteousness!
Mt.21:23-46 Jesus responds to their questioning His authority by a parable in
which he exposes their plan to kill Him and announces that the Kingdom will be
torn away from them and given to a nation that would bring forth the fruits of the
Kingdom. Instead of self-righteously judging lonely people, they ought to win their
souls to Christ and bring forth fruit for the Kingdom, instead of chasing them in
the other direction!
Mt.23 - A whole chapter full of advice from Jesus to both His disciples and the
multitudes about the Pharisees, which He probably knew were going to be
around for as long as the Devil himself:
verse 3: You can listen to their sermons, but don't follow their sample! They don't
practice what they preach!
Verse 4: they burden you with rules that they wouldn't even think of keeping
themselves.
Verse 13: Woe unto you Pharisees! You won't allow others to go to Heaven, and
you won't go there yourselves!
Verse 14-16: Woe! Woe! Woe!
Verse 23: Woe unto you: Keeping your little traditions, you have omitted the
weightier things of the law: (true) judgment, mercy and faith!
Verse 25: Woe unto the hypocrites! All clean on the outside (pretence) and all
filthy on the inside (in God's eyes)!
Verse 28: Appearing righteous, they're really full of hypocrisy and sin.
Verse 33: Doesn't look like they're going where we're going.
Verse 34: The Pharisees ceased to exist after the destruction of Jerusalem in AD
70, only 40 years after Jesus said this. So, who is He talking to? Who are the
prophets and wise men and wiriters they keep persecuting?
John 8:15-59 Probably the most remarkable conversation between Jesus and
the Pharisees recorded in the Bible, during which He plainly tells them, "Ye are of
your father, the Devil," which causes them to try to stone him.
John 9 - A chapter describing the pitiful dilemma with the Pharisees: no matter
what good you will do, they will never recognize it unless you play the game
according to their rules, the only standard they accept is their own, and the only
world they see is their own. According to Jesus, they see nothing at all.
John 11:53 They kill the love, they kill God's gift of love, they kill...
Acts 7:51-58 ... and kill again. The story continues.

Nowadays they may not kill the prophets physically (they probably would, if they
could, as the inquisitors and other Christian rulers have done for centuries), but
they still spread death through their false doctrines of "eternal insecurity" and
fear, that one might lose their Salvation, if they're not good enough.
And, of course, they can legally exterminate tens of thousands of people who
dare to believe otherwise through their practical little instrument called war. Just
elect a warmonger for president, and you'll have those God-darn heathen taken
care of big-time.

"Here I am, an empty hallway

Broken windows, rainy nights
I am 1962 and I am ready for a fight
People crying 'Hallelujah!'
while the bullet leaves the gun
People falling, falling, falling
and I don't know where they're falling from."
(Jann Arden, "Unloved")