Ted McJunkin message in Wales in 2008

You will no doubt be challenged by Ted's penetrating and purifying insight into what is probably our most prominent sin - hypocrisy. Read, absorb, meditate and mind the Spirit who is Holy.

Don

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The following is an excerpt from the message Ted shared at the Wales Fellowship Retreat last year. I was very moved by it and saw that this “Pharisee attitude” is a sin of which I have often to repent. It is based on one of the parables in Luke 15.
In His Love, Betty

I had always seen this story of the prodigal son being about the prodigal but Jesus says in Luke 12:1, ‘Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees which is hypocrisy.’ Hypocrisy is acting a part, putting on religion like a garment, insincerity toward God. The key verse to me in this passage is verse 3 where it says that Jesus told this parable to the Pharisees who were criticizing him. This is a beautiful picture of God’s love to a repentant sinner, but we forget there was another son and Jesus puts a little hook in the story. He often did that to the Pharisees – saying things like ‘a doctor comes to help the sick and not the healthy’ – they had to decide whether they were sick or healthy. Or ‘those who are forgiven most love most.’ If you live the life of a Pharisee like I did and do, you ask in amazement and astonishment, ‘Why does he bother? Why does he reach out to these critical people who thought they had it altogether?’ He is reaching out to his enemies in this parable. A self-righteous spirit is deadly because it is so close and yet so far away. The son who stayed home was close to his father; he never left him, but he might as well have been a thousand miles away. It makes me wonder if the self-righteous spirit isn’t the deepest of sins.

The elder brother accuses the younger brother of being wasteful and recklessly extravagant (that is the definition of prodigal). He then accuses the father of being wasteful and recklessly extravagant. Amazing! Self-righteousness can hide as a virtue and we commend it oftentimes in others and in ourselves. Not long ago, Betty told me, “You’re no fun to work with.” Why? Because I am a nit-picker. It is also called a perfectionist. I have been proud of being called that, but it can hide the sin of self-righteousness. I fold towels in a single fold and put them in the cupboard so the fold it facing outward. That way I can count all the towels that are there. I learned that in the Army and I thought that if you didn’t do it that way, you were stupid. I didn’t say that to my wife, but she felt it. It hurts. I like to call it a subtle thought, but I can’t repent of that very well but when it is called deceit, I can repent of that. Praise the Lord, she calls me on it and I can repent.

John Fischer has written a book called Twelve Steps of a Recovering Pharisee Like Me. The following is an excerpt from that book. “Astonishment comes from being surprised. It comes from the unexpected. A degree of astonishment is related to our personal knowledge of sin. If I am not facing the sin in my life, I am not likely to be very impressed with salvation. It is a nice thing for God to do this for me and all, but I don’t really get it. The Pharisees are so far removed from their sin and their salvation that it would have little effect on them. Tell a Pharisee that Christ died for him and he will say, ‘He what? What did he do that for?’

In our recent form of astonishment is full of amazement both over who God is and over why given who he is he would be interested in associating with us at all. To stand in his presence and not be struck blind like Paul is pretty remarkable. It is the astonishment of the vagabonds and street people who were ushered into a lavish banquet because the invited guests had better things to do. It is the astonishment of workers who got paid a full day’s wage for an hour’s work.’ My pharasitical mind says, ‘That’s not fair!’ It is only when I see myself as a sinner that I really get it. ‘It is the astonishment of Sarah who laughed a real laugh no longer cynical as the boy, Isaac, was placed in her old withered arms, chalky white, screaming from birth.

It is the thing that will cause us to proclaim when we reach our final destination and first lay our eyes on the glory of heaven, ‘What could I possibly have done to deserve this?’ We can’t help but be amazed. This is Ebenezer Scrooge after discovering the amazing ghosts have gone all in one night and he still has Christmas Day to make up for all the Christmases he missed.’ (Isn’t that a delightful scene when Ebenezer Scrooge wakes up in the morning and hops and dances around in astonishment? He is laughing at himself, that he is still there.)

‘It is the Pharisee laughing perhaps for the first time in his life. He is laughing at himself, laughing to think he could actually do it and then to find it has already been done. It is the Pharisee hugging a tax-collector, sinner to sinner, crying over the unbelievable joy of belonging to such a group. Claiming as friends these people who he once despised and finding out that he actually likes them. This is a Pharisee with his old Pharisee friends looking on and judging him as a fool gone off the deep end and not caring one iota what they think. This is a Pharisee lifting the hem of his robe and dancing. This is the amazing grace of Isaiah 1:18 where he says, ‘Come, let us reason together. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.’ The amazing thing is why does he want to reason with me? It is amazing. It is the blood of Jesus that covers my sin and makes me white as fresh snow.

Ephesians 1:7 says, ‘In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.’ He lavished his grace on him and he keeps lavishing on us! John Newton wrote, ‘I am more wicked than I ever imagined but I am more loved than I ever dared to hope.’ We can add to that, ‘I am more wastefully, recklessly wicked than I ever imagined but I am more lavishly extravagantly loved than I ever dared to hope.’