Matthew 23:1-12
The Pharisees were the reigning religious class of the Jewish people. For the most part, they had stolen the title and somehow held the rights that allowed them to set the pace for the religious lives of the people of Israel. Jesus tore down piece by piece everything they taught. There are many lessons for us to learn from them in our seeking to become true worshipers; we learn from them mostly what not to do.
To their credit, the Pharisees were zealous for God. We are all too quick to crucify them without understanding their righteousness. They did great acts of worship, but lost sight of what it was all about. So, in focusing the lens through which we view worship, taking a peek at the Pharisees in chapter 23 will help us be on guard from taking the right motive and doing the wrong things with it.
Verses 5 says "They do all their deeds to be seen by others." All of life is connected to our worship of God. In all we do, we are either pleasing Him or not pleasing Him. In the Pharisees effort to lead the people of Israel to worship God in every movement of life, they had developed a very burdensome formula. "Do this, do that, don't do the other." They themselves, to be acceptable to God, made great strides to look the part. If you were to have seen their clothes, their public predominance, and even noticed their title by which they required others to address them, you would have thought, "Wow, what a righteous, spiritual, true worshiper. He has it all together. Look how pleasing he is to God." Jesus, however, says to have nothing to do with these things. The specifics will come tomorrow as we unpack the "seven woes" that Jesus pounds them with.
As I read these, what I am forced to do--and I record my conviction as a challenge to you--is to call into account every so-called act of worship I commit and to evaluate it. What do we do that was merely learned by rote (by growing up and seeing it done) but has really nothing to do with whether we are true worshipers? What do we do that is merely for show, so that others will see us as worshipers? What do we do that is just part of our tradition, but are really heartless acts of ritual? That goes for everyday, not just our Sunday activities (Jesus even speaks about feasts [social events], the marketplace [out and about], AND the synangogue ["church"] in verse 6).
So, today, that's the call: let's begin to evaluate the things we have counted all along as worship and ask God if those things truly please Him or only make us to feel like we're doing what we're supposed to do. What we'll see as we finish this chapter, I think, are the worship parameters of loving God and loving people (22:37-40). Our daily worship is evaluated upon our vertical (between me and God) exaltation of God as evidenced by our horizontal (between me and others) exaltation of others.
