Majoring on Minors
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
What happens when a church begins to major on the minors and minor on the majors? Or to put it another way: What are the results when God’s people begin to make mountains out of mole-hills and mole-hills out of mountains?
To answer that, we first might want to figure out what the minors are and what the majors are. We’ll want to determine mole-hills and mountains. For the purposes of this sermon, I’ll make up a simple definition for both, but I am sure that as we will see, the definitions may not be as simple as we’d like.
A minor (a mole-hill) is that which is a tradition that has a lot of sway among a group of God’s people. A major (a mountain) is God’s Word that ought to direct all of God’s people. Any church can minor on majors and major on minors. Big churches can do it; little churches can do it. Any and every church is always susceptible to making mountains out of mole-hills. Any and every church has the potential to elevate tradition as if it is Bible and lower the Bible as if it is tradition.
We see this happening among the Pharisees this morning. We began to see it last week when Jesus was invited to a Pharisee’s house for lunch. He continues on in the passage we’re looking at today. This time, Jesus pronounces three woes upon the Pharisees. The first was due to the Pharisees’ focus. The second woe was based off of their fixation. And the third was due to the fallout they produced.
The Pharisees’ Focus
The Pharisees’ Fixation
The Pharisees’ Fallout
“But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and every herb, and neglect justice and the love of God. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.
Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the best seat in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces.
Woe to you! For you are like unmarked graves, and people walk over them without knowing it.”
The Pharisees’ Focus
The Pharisees’ Focus
The first woe that Jesus pronounced upon the Pharisees came because of their focus. As we see, they were focused on the little matters and not on the great matters. They were focusing on the minor things—the mole-hills—and not on the major things or mountains.
“But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and every herb, and neglect justice and the love of God. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.
Many people look at the word “woe,” and immediately think condemnation. I used to think that as well, but as I’ve said before, I don’t see it as a word of condemnation, but one of sorrow as the condemnation is to come if one does not repent. When we see the word woe, we ought to see it as a warning based in sorrow. Jesus wasn’t angry over the Pharisees’ actions.
As Leon Morris would said, “Jesus grieves over the Pharisees for their tithing practices. Tithing was commanded in the Law. . . It was meant to be a joyful offering of love, but this calculation of one tenth of all the stalks of garden herbs made a burdensome mockery of it.”
To understand this, we need to understand what the tithe was about. I don’t want to go too deep into the woods on this, but I do think that we tend to have a partial understanding of the tithe. The tithe was certainly to give thanks to God for what he has provided for his people. It was to be the first-fruits, the first of the crops each year. But I think that’s what most Christians know and that’s about as far as they go.
But there is more to it. The tithe was not only a giving of thanks to God for what he’d provided. It was also a provision from God. God was using the tither to provide for others. It was a major deal for God to use a person to help another person. It was such a big deal that he aligned the tithe with his own provision.
In God’s providence, the Levites were not given any land to keep. They were given cities scattered throughout the other eleven tribes, but no land was given to the Levites. Why? Because God made it clear that he, the LORD their God, was their inheritance. The need not worry about land to provide for sustenance. God would see to it. They need not care about gaining land for wealth; God would make sure they had all they need.
So when we see the tithe being ordered, we find God saying to Moses:
“To the Levites I have given every tithe in Israel for an inheritance, in return for their service that they do, their service in the tent of meeting,
so that the people of Israel do not come near the tent of meeting, lest they bear sin and die.
But the Levites shall do the service of the tent of meeting, and they shall bear their iniquity. It shall be a perpetual statute throughout your generations, and among the people of Israel they shall have no inheritance.
For the tithe of the people of Israel, which they present as a contribution to the Lord, I have given to the Levites for an inheritance. Therefore I have said of them that they shall have no inheritance among the people of Israel.”
The tithe was not just appreciation to God; it was provision from God. God had set apart the Levites for the good of Israel and the people were called upon to show love and care for the them by giving their tithe so they could live.
But it wasn’t just them. There was an additional tithe taken every three years. This was a benevolence tithe.
“When you have finished paying all the tithe of your produce in the third year, which is the year of tithing, giving it to the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, so that they may eat within your towns and be filled,
then you shall say before the Lord your God, ‘I have removed the sacred portion out of my house, and moreover, I have given it to the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, according to all your commandment that you have commanded me. I have not transgressed any of your commandments, nor have I forgotten them.
Do you see the heart of God in the tithe? The Pharisees didn’t. The missed it! God was caring for those who could not care for themselves by way of tithe. Yes, the tithe was part of the law, but what is the law about? It can be summed up in two commands: Love the LORD your God with all your heart, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. The tithe was to do both.
But the Pharisees made it about ritual. They majored on the minor and minored on the major. To them it was about getting the tithe down to the “nth degree” rather than the justice and love of God. Yesterday, I went out and bought a half ounce of frankincense. That was the minimum amount I was allowed to buy from the store. So I got my little baggy and poured what I needed into it. I went to the counter and found that I only needed 1/10 of an ounce. I was the only one in the store and I had to go back, not once but twice. I could tell the cashier was getting a little annoyed with me. But on the last trip, I got to 1/2 an ounce. No less, no more. Now I would have paid for a little more 6/10 or even 7/10, but not these guys. Even if it displayed justice and the love of God.
And I have to tell you, when I was first studying about this, I couldn’t tell you what the justice and love of God had to do with the tithe. And so I went back and read up on the tithe again. And that’s when I came across the Deuteronomy passage we just read.
That word transgress in verse 13 is the same word Jesus used when he said that the Pharisees had neglected God’s justice and love. They had transgressed his justice and love by their focusing on the mint, rue, and herbs. They had missed the whole point of caring for people and displaying God’s love.
When we think about the justice of God, we typically think about the “righteousness of God.” In fact, the Greek word “dikaiosune” can be translated as either justice or righteousness. That’s the word we are used to and and synonomous definitions—justice/righteousness. But that’s not the word used here. This word is “krisis” which actually is usually translated as judgment. It can mean anything from condemnation to decision to doing what is fair.
So, in this context, we see that the issue is not about the righteousness of God spiritually speaking. It’s about the administration of what is right and fair. I know this is a loaded term and it can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, but what Jesus was referring to was not judging God, nor being God’s judge on earth as if we go around condemning people. The reference is in showing God to be good, right, fair. In essence, it is social justice. The caring of the poor and needy. The Pharisees were not giving for godly reasons. They aren’t giving this tithe because they are seeking to carry out the justice of God by caring for those in need. They aren’t giving because they love God and want to show him obedience. As Matthew Henry wrote, Jesus was saying, “you make no conscience of giving men their dues and God your hearts.”
For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.
They aren’t burdensome. They are expressions of God’s love toward us, and our love toward him and others. But they saw themselves as men who were set apart for their holiness. They were men who did what they did to the “nth degree”, burdening themselves by God’s law so as to be an example, perhaps, but to gain the favor of people for sure.
And this takes us to the next woe.
The Pharisees’ Fixation
The Pharisees’ Fixation
The Pharisees’s focus was certainly majoring on the minors and minoring on the majors. But their fixation of different. Some may not see the difference between focus and fixation and that’s fair enough. When I say fixation, I mean to say that this was what they wanted more than anything. They focused on the little things to get them there.
For instance, if someone becomes fixated on buying a Ferrari, they yearn for it enough that they begin saving every penny that they can. It may look like they are focused on money, and they are, but only as a means to an end. The Ferrari is really their fixation. To put it another way: the focus is the outward action of an inward fixation. The fixation is the inward love of the heart.
So we see this with the Pharisees.
Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the best seat in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces.
The reason I believe that the Pharisees were merely focused on the tithe, but fixated on the seats and greets, is because of the word that Jesus used here. “For you love. . .” Luke records Jesus’s word here as “agapate.” It’s the present, active, indicative, second person, plural form of “agapao.” It’s a strange word to use here. They have an agape love for the seats and greets. One may expect Jesus to use the word for desire or lust or something like that, but instead it’s “agapate.”
It shows to what an extremeness the Pharisees desired the seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplace. The word that is almost always associated with God—whether the love that comes from God or the love that is given to God—is here said to be toward the best seats and the greetings in the marketplace.
Because there is a new “woe” given in verse 43, it’s tempting to separate this woe from the previous woe. But we mustn’t do that. These are connected. Do you remember what the Pharisees were neglecting? The justice and the love of God. In this verse God is what we’d call the genitive of object. In other words God is the object of love, not the subject. Hence, Matthew Henry saying that they did not give God their hearts.
What did they give their hearts to? What was the object of their love? The prominent seats in the synagogue and the wonderful greetings in the marketplace.
Think about the old-time churches. There used to be seats up front looking over the congregation. Usually the preaching pastor would sit up there. Perhaps a special guest, the chairman of deacons, the song leader, etc. Depending on how big the church is, may depend on how many seats were available. But everyone knew that whoever was sitting up front was someone important. That’s the way it was in the synagogue. There were the regular laypeople seats and then there were the prominent seats, and who doesn’t like to feel preeminent?
They were famous, walking into the marketplace and hearing their names like they were Norm going into Cheers.
That’s the stuff they were after. That was what they loved—rather than loving God—they loved receiving human recognition. In order to gain that, all the external things had to be done. The cleaning of the cup and dish, the tithing of the mint and rue. They needed people to see their piety. They needed people to see their holiness. It’s how they were able to get a taste of the “good life.” But it was only a taste. Like chewing gum, the taste would soon lose its flavor and another piece would be needed. So more outward holiness would be demonstrated so more laud could be given.
That’s a dangerous road to go down. Not just for the one who seeks the recognition through their outward works. But for those observing that one. This leads us to the third woe.
The Pharisees’ Fallout
The Pharisees’ Fallout
The Pharisees focused on the externals, making the law a burden through their traditions, because they were fixated on the recognition that they could receive. But there were devastating effects that would come from that. So Jesus, in his sorrow pronounced a woe upon the Pharisees for the fallout of their actions. It not only affected them, but their followers, and even those who may not follow.
Woe to you! For you are like unmarked graves, and people walk over them without knowing it.”
This sounds similar to another woe that Jesus said recorded in Matthew.
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness.
But this is actually different. The point of being a whitewashed tomb was not to look beautiful, though that was a side effect. They would gleam in the light and stand out. But the point of being whitewashed was so that people could see that they were tombs and avoid coming into contact with them.
In this instance, Jesus doesn’t say that they are whitewashed tombs, but just the opposite. They are unmarked graves. In this case, no one knows that they are to be avoided.
When I was a kid, I remember visiting a cemetery. I don’t know whose grave we were visiting, but I remember just walking along oblivious to other graves around. I was just walking all over graves. It didn’t take long for my parents to correct my behavior. They told me it was disrespectful to walk on graves and that I needed to do my best to walk in between the headstones. It took only one lesson for me to get the idea that walking on graves was a major no no.
But this wasn’t a matter of disrespect. The Jews weren’t as concerned about disrespecting the dead as they were about becoming unclean.
Whoever in the open field touches someone who was killed with a sword or who died naturally, or touches a human bone or a grave, shall be unclean seven days.
We can see how touching a dead body could bring about a state of uncleanness, but so would touching a grave. It was just as unclean as touching a body. So when Jesus stated that the Pharisees were unmarked graves, what he was saying was that people unknowingly walked on them, they were actually being contaminated by them.
In other words, the teachings and actions that people were learning from the Pharisees were causing the people to be unclean and they were oblivious to the fact. The Pharisees were oblivious, but so were those who were following and learning from them. That’s the sad reality. That’s the reason for the woe.
The Pharisees were so focused on tithing the minutest detail because they were so fixated on being seen as holy and the fallout was that they were producing more people just like them. They had neglected, transgressed the command of justice and fairness. They had transgressed giving their hearts to God and instead gave them to fame and recognition. And now others were learning from them.
The Pharisees were dead but didn’t know it. Those who followed them, listened to their teachings, walked in their ways, were becoming unclean because they were in contact with such teachings.
Application
Application
Normally, I give application along the way. Today, I thought I’d leave it until the end. I started off by asking the question: “What happens when a church begins to major on the minors and minor on the majors? Or to put it another way: What are the results when God’s people begin to make mountains out of mole-hills and mole-hills out of mountains?”
The answer is that we take the same path as the Pharisees. We certainly can do this as individuals, but Jesus wasn’t referring to one individual when he pronounced these woes. He was referring to a group of religious people and leaders. So what happens when a church begins to major on minors and minor on majors? We lose our focus. We start looking at little things—traditions that somehow are meant to prove our holiness. They are meant to prove that we are more biblical than the next guy or the next church.
Look at us; we sing hymns. We sing from the Psalter. We sing spiritual songs of praise.
Look at us; we have choir robes. We have hymnals. We have screens, lights, smoke machines.
Look at us; we still have Sunday School. We have small groups.
Look at us; we have RAs and GAs. We have AWANA. We have Kids4Truth.
We get stuck in our own traditions (whether from 200 years ago, 50 years ago, or 10 years ago), our own biases, our own little worlds of what it means to be holy and set apart. And suddenly caring about our neighbors, our coworkers and fellow students and the homeless and the poor and needy, the orphan and the widow are secondary issues, when God has made them primary issues. Many Christians would rather give their money—their tithes and offerings—so that others can worry about the care of the needy, and they don’t have to worry about it.
This is the state that many churches are in our day. We care more about our traditions than we do about reaching this world for Jesus by living out the justice and love of God.
Many churches want to make sure that they are seen as relevant. We want to be prominent. We want to be The Church that has all the glitz and glamour. And that can mean that we have all the programs and so everyone flocks to us or we’re the ones who utilize TikTok better than any other church. Or it can mean that we have all the stuff those big churches don’t have—like community and being known and whatever else. We can be like some mega-church that relies on gimmicks and stunts to draw crowds or we can seek to be the reformist of the reformed Baptist churches. Or anywhere in between. We love the limelight—whichever way we might see it falling. We work toward those ends. But if we’ve forgotten to love God and love people, as Paul wrote, we clanging symbols; we’ve become nothing; we’ve achieved nothing.
We love being seen for what we do. And it’s not necessarily wrong to utilize tradition for the sake of showing justice in our society or love for God. But when we focus on the minor and become fixated on the seats and greets, we’ve neglected—we’ve transgressed—what God has actually called us to do.
And what happens when that occurs? We are found to be dead and not even know it.
A few years ago, Katie and I were driving in a little town in Georgia, and we drove past a little church. Now, it’s common for churches to want to name themselves after some biblical church name. Antioch Baptist Church. Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church. But there are some names that church’s should probably avoid naming themselves after. This church was one such church that must not have read their Bibles very well. It was Sardis Primitive Baptist Church.
Do you know what Jesus said about the Church of Sardis?
“And to the angel of the church in Sardis write: ‘The words of him who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. “ ‘I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead.
If we were to be honest, there are many churches that bear the name of Sardis—spiritually speaking. Like the Pharisees, they had a reputation of being alive, but in reality they were unmarked graves causing many to become unclean—focusing on the minors, fixated on how others see them. And teaching them to do and be the same.
Conclusion
Conclusion
As we finish up this text, we’ve seen that the Pharisees focus was misguided. Again, Jesus wasn’t getting on to them for their tithing of mint, rue, and herbs. He told them to keep it up. What had grieved the heart of Christ was that they transgressed God’s call to act justly toward neighbor and to love God with all they were.
We saw that the reason they focused on the outward appearance of holiness was because they were fixated on the wrong things. They weren’t about growing in their love for God, but receiving their love for recognition. They had lost their first love. They had replaced it and because they had, it affected what they did and how they gave.
Finally, we saw the fallout was much worse. It’s bad enough when our actions and our hearts bring us down. It’s worse when they bring our children down, our friends down, our family down. The Pharisees focus and fixation brought about another generation focused and fixated on the same things.
Who will break the cycle?
That’s why Jesus came. He came to redeem a fallen people. To seek and to save those who were lost, those deceived by desperately sickened hearts. He can bring a heart fixated on the things of this earth and reformat it to love God which in turn then can cause our focus to be on the two great commandments—love God and love neighbor all while evaluating how it is we do that. Are our traditions the best way or is there another way? Some of them may be the best way. But some may not be.
Beloved Jesus died to save us from our self-deception. He died to save us from our sins, our habits, our traditions that make the heart of God woeful. The woe Jesus gives is a sorrowful warning. It behooves every Christian, every church, to heed such a warning for we do not want what comes next.
Prayer
Our heavenly Father,
Focus our eyes that they find ways to show our love for you and justice for our neighbors. May we not be so focused on what makes us unique as a church or better than the next guy, but focus on what displays your heart.
Fixate our hearts on yours. May we repent of losing our first love. May we repent of having a reputation of being alive and yet being dead. Let tradition and faulty focus be removed from us so that we can see the ways in which we can display outwardly the love that we have inwardly—a love for you and for those around us.
And may you bless us so that we do not contaminate the minds and hearts of the next generation with the wrong fixation along with the wrong focus. Instead may they see through us who Jesus is and the care he has for those unlike himself.
We pray this in Jesus’s name. Amen.