There are a few pejoratives, you know, insults that float around that have to do with religious things, especially with Christianity. I think one of them is like, don't be puritanical. I always think that one's funny because if you really want to get somebody and you want to look real clever and smug at a party, if somebody drops that line, like, don't be so puritanical about things. Be like, name a Puritan for five billion dollars. Go. I they're not gonna know a Puritan. They just said it because it's a phrase that you say. But obviously, that religious insult is you're being too uptight about things, you're being too restrictive. Usually there's an element to like being sexually restrictive or something about that. You don't want to be puritanical. Another one is you don't want to be a Pharisee, quit being Pharisaic. Now, okay, well, that one has more teeth, you know. It's probably a little stronger point because they were the bad guys in the Gospels, and they are definitely the main driving force behind getting Jesus killed. They were at odds with Jesus through the whole thing. But also, man, it's kind of a weird insult when you actually get to know what the Pharisees taught, because you probably agree with about 75% of what they thought, or maybe more, especially if you're a Christian. We started talking about some of that stuff yesterday. We can deduce some of what they believe from the Bible. There's a couple of moments in the Bible where it even comes straight out and it tells us the Pharisees thought this and the Sadducees thought this. But we've got extra biblical sources that tell us all about the Pharisees. And yesterday we talked about how they took a middle-of-the-road balanced view on the questions of free will and determinism. We realize that they believe in resurrection from the dead. That's an important Christian belief. They believe in the spiritual realm, angels and demons, and they believe in religious piety, which, you know, if not taken to weird extremes, can be a really good thing. I think the Pharisaic critique of Judaism in the couple of centuries leading up to the time of Christ was probably like something like this. Hey, Jewish brothers and sisters, you all say that you believe in God, but you don't live like you believe in God. You're sloppy with sacred things, you take secular things and you mingle it into your life. You are only serious about the God stuff when you're around the temple or when it's on the Sabbath. And even then, you don't really take God's commands about that stuff very seriously. You need to take it more seriously, and because they were the party of the people, they knew how to say it in a way that would relate to normal people, and then the normal people would feel bad and they'd be like, You're right, we are lazy and sloppy about that. What must we do? And the Pharisees were like, You gotta obey the law of Moses, guys. And also this like 800% more laws that we wrote to help you make sure you obey the law of Moses. So it's about degrees, right? Like if you throw around the insult, you know, that's Pharisaic or don't be Pharisaic, I think what you mean is don't be legalistic. Don't come at the whole thing about Jesus and the gospel and look at it and be like, ah, this is all about my effort and my excellent behavior and my not doing the naughtys. Don't make up a whole bunch of rules for yourself that you only actually know the parameters of and then judge everybody else for not living up to your weird, arbitrary, made-up set of rules, while patting yourself on the back for how good you are obeying your own rules that you made up that you didn't even totally tell to anybody, and in doing so, completely miss the point of God and put your faith in yourself and your own behavior. When we say don't be Pharisaic, I think that is what we're talking about. But there's all this other stuff that the Pharisees thought and taught that I just reeled off and that we talked about yesterday, where you look at it and you go, I mean, it's actually kind of a compliment to be told you're acting or believing like a Pharisee, like three quarters of the time. It's actually, you know, don't be such a Pharisee. Quit quit believing in the spiritual world. Oh, well, I kind of want to be like the Pharisees on that one. Don't be such a Pharisee. Don't care about personal piety and saying you believe in God and trying to obey his commands. Oh, well, I mean, I I'd like I kind of want to obey his commands. That one seems actually pretty don't be such a Pharisee and say that you believe in the resurrection of the dead. Oh, actually, I think Jesus was raised from the dead, and if there's no resurrection from the dead, I kind of think this whole thing's a joke. I mean, I think that's even in the Bible in here somewhere. So we're getting to know these people, and what we're finding is that they are a complex and interesting bad guy. And because of that, I suppose it makes them all that much scarier. Well, let me give you just a little bit more here from Josephus about who exactly these guys are and see if we can start getting a sense of how they're going to go off the rails and get sideways with Jesus. And really, in light of what we're looking at here, the collision course that we're starting to see take shape is a collision course between two very popular grassroots, blue-collar, normal people, salt of the earth groups, the followers of Jesus. Well, they're normal people. Jesus is kind of other, but he certainly paled around with and lived like the common people. He certainly couldn't be called rich or upper class or uppity or anything. And so the Jesus movement was a very grassroots, populist of the people movement, that is, and so are the Pharisees. So it's interesting that that's going to be the collision course more than the Sadducees. I mean, they get pretty mad at Jesus toward the end, but the Sadducees are they're uppity and they're for the rich. Well, I don't know, Jesus doesn't really run in those circles a whole bunch. So it makes sense that they kind of fly past each other, Jesus and the Sadducees, for a long time. But the Pharisees and Jesus, I mean, as we're getting a sense of the Pharisees here, it looks like they're kind of in the same lane. So it makes sense that the Pharisees would be the more threatened group by Jesus. Book 18 of The Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus. This was written just a few decades after the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It gives us more about the Pharisees. Uh, I'm going to start in line 11 of book 18. The Jews had for a great while three sects of philosophy peculiar to themselves, the sect of the Essenes. We've talked about them. That's your Qumran settlement, Dead Sea Scrolls, sort of John the Baptist-like people. They were the only group that was doing some sort of ritual washing or baptism at the time of John the Baptist and Jesus. That's an interesting note. Josephus continues, and the sect of the Sadducees, and the third sort of opinions was that of those called Pharisees. Now, for the Pharisees, they live meanly and despise delicacies in diet. Okay, interesting. And follow the conduct of reason and what that prescribes to them as good for them, they do, and they think they ought earnestly to strive to observe reasons, dictates for practice. I mean, they almost kind of sound like Stoics a little bit. And remember, the Stoics would have been people who would have understood that concept of Lagos that John is using early on in the prologue of the Gospel of John. Okay, let's keep reading here in Josephus. The Pharisees also pay a respect to such as are in years, nor are they so bold as to contradict them in anything they have introduced. And when they determine that all things are done by fate, they do not take away the freedom from men of acting as they think fit, since their notion is that it hath pleased God to make a temperament whereby what he wills is done, but so that the will of men can act virtuously or viciously. Okay, so again, there's that middle road we've talked about that the Pharisees held on the question of free will and determinism. Josephus goes on. The Pharisees also believe that souls have an immortal vigor in them, and that under the earth there will be rewards or punishments according as they have lived virtuously or viciously in this life, and the latter are to be detained in an everlasting prison, but that the former shall have power to revive and live again. I mean, uh guys, don't be Pharisaic. Well, unless it's on this point, I mean, that's pretty that's pretty much Christian. That's pretty close right there. Josephus goes on, on account of which doctrines they are all able greatly to persuade the body of the people. And whatsoever they do about divine worship, prayers, and sacrifices, they perform them according to their direction, insomuch that the cities gave great attestations to them on account of their entire virtuous conduct, both in the actions of their lives and their discourses, also. That is a lot of words to say the masses like the Pharisees, even when the Pharisees are laying out pretty heavy-duty stuff and putting obligations on the masses, and the masses like the Pharisees, because they like how they live and they like their speech craft. They think they can give a good talk. Josephus goes on. But the doctrine of the Sadducees is this that souls die with the bodies, nor do they regard the observation of anything besides what the law enjoins them. That's the written law of Moses and nothing else. For they think it an instance of virtue to dispute with those teachers of philosophy whom they frequent. But this doctrine is received yet but by a few. Well, here's why nobody really liked the Sadducees that much, because they didn't understand them. The Sadducees are doing this super erudite, heady. I just use the word erudite, which is erudite. They're doing this egghead, academic, patches on the elbows pipe thing, where they use big fancy words and nobody knows what they're talking about, and it's all terribly important to this educated elite crowd, but normal people don't get it. The arguments aren't persuasive. The way the Sadducees live is not compelling to normal people. So just it the impression you get from Josephus is that the Sadducee thing, it's just not connecting with the masses at all. So, yeah, no surprise that the Sadducees wouldn't be nearly as much on the radar of the Gospels or of Jesus, because they're just not on the same collision course as the Pharisees, who kind of occupy the same lane as Jesus. So da da da the masses are only received by a few, for when they become magistrates, as they are unwillingly and by force sometimes obliged to be, they, the Sadducees, addict themselves to the notions of the Pharisees because the multitude would not otherwise bear them. So what he's saying is sometimes Sadducees act like Pharisees when they get conscripted into certain public offices that require them to appeal to the masses. They have a playbook, the sat the Sadducees here, they just act like Pharisees for a little while. Well, I don't know, is it so bad to make an effort to be understood by the masses? Is it so bad to make sure that the really important religious stuff you're talking about and teaching makes sense to the majority of people who didn't have time to go to your fancy college or study all of your fancy stuff? I don't think it is. So, in conclusion, to our little mini arc on the Pharisees and kind of accidentally the Sadducees as well, I would say this the Pharisees are a complicated bad guy. And in many ways, part of the reason that they so quickly come into tension with Jesus is because their base is the same base. So much of this stuff that made the Pharisees appealing to normal people and the masses, Jesus just does so much better. The values of the kingdom come through so much more clearly. So in the teachings of the Pharisees, the masses get a sense that I can aspire just through discipline and hard work and imitating these guys who've become rich doing this. If I imitate their hustle culture and if I repeat all the words from their thought blob, then maybe I can rise to that level of self-justification before God. We can get it right. And if enough of us common people can do it, maybe the nation could rise once again and we'd no longer be a subject people to the Romans, even though the Pharisees were not overtly revolutionary at all. You know, maybe it could be like that, but then Jesus comes along and he starts talking about the values of the kingdom, and he starts demonstrating what it looks like for God's mercy to show up and to fix all the things that are broken in culture and institutionally, but more so what's broken with the human soul and the human spirit and healing the damage that sin does to people and bringing life and light into a realm filled with death and darkness. And just immediately, pow, these normal people who had been under the sway of the Pharisees, all of a sudden they're going out to get baptized by John the Baptist. I mean, I think that's why the Pharisees are here in John chapter one. I mean, John the Baptist is baptizing their base, and now they're asking him questions, and John the Baptist is pointing to this other one whose sandals he's not worthy to stoop and untie. He's pointing them to Jesus. The Pharisees are pretty smart guys. You know, they're right about a lot of things, that they tick the right boxes, but they're also deeply insecure. And right here in John chapter one, with just a little bit of background knowledge about who these Pharisees are and how they work and what slot they occupy in society, right here in John chapter one, we can we can see the beginnings of the fissure, the sense of threatenedness that is going to pit the Pharisees against Jesus, unnecessarily, by the way. They didn't have to be against him, and that is ultimately going to lead to the Pharisees being the ones leading the charge to have Jesus executed by Rome. We'll pick back up with the story of John the Baptist and how he's answering the Pharisees and what this baptism stuff is about next time around. I'm Matt, this is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.