The Kingdom of Heaven (Jn. 8; Matt. 5)
In the summer I blog often because I have much more time to type my thoughts about the way the Lord is working in me, but this year I’ve scribbled them down instead, going back to an old-fashioned journal. I had forgotten how rewarding that can be, but it is the reason for my extended silence this summer. I’ve pulled back and plugged in to where I need to be, God’s Word. After the business of moving and the end of the school year, it has been much needed.
My husband has been preaching through the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) for the past two months, and I am facilitating a ladies’ Bible study this summer about the same, so the intersections have been frequent up to this point, and the impact has been significant. However, today’s study took me beyond where he has preached into the territory of the scribes and the Pharisees.
Part of my homework today was to define both the words scribe and a Pharisee, so I went to my go-to, Webster’s 1828 dictionary of the English language. A scribe was defined in the context of the Bible as one who served as a clerk or secretary to the king. I imagine the skill level required to take notes for a king would be quite high. The dedication to learning, writing well (not creatively) in an exemplary manner could tend make a person’s ego a little inflated. Imagine the conversation when they met someone new:
My husband has been preaching through the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) for the past two months, and I am facilitating a ladies’ Bible study this summer about the same, so the intersections have been frequent up to this point, and the impact has been significant. However, today’s study took me beyond where he has preached into the territory of the scribes and the Pharisees.
Part of my homework today was to define both the words scribe and a Pharisee, so I went to my go-to, Webster’s 1828 dictionary of the English language. A scribe was defined in the context of the Bible as one who served as a clerk or secretary to the king. I imagine the skill level required to take notes for a king would be quite high. The dedication to learning, writing well (not creatively) in an exemplary manner could tend make a person’s ego a little inflated. Imagine the conversation when they met someone new:
“What do you do?”
“Me? Oh, I work for the King himself, taking notes, writing important documents, making copies of contracts, treaties, and such.”
It could easily go to one’s head, couldn't it?
Then there is the Pharisee. Webster’s 1828 defines a Pharisee as the following: “One of a sect among the Jews, whose religion consisted in a strict observance of rites and ceremonies and of the traditions of the elders, and whose pretended holiness led them to separate themselves as a sect, considering themselves as more righteous than other Jews.” Wow. Their noses held a little higher, their self-worth going ever before them, as they “pretended holiness,” never aware of their true standing before Jesus, the Word who spoke them into existence.
The scribe convicts the haughty and self-important, but the Pharisee convicts the religious still today. Are we too strictly observing rites and ceremonies and traditions of men, pretending holiness, separating into denominations, considering ourselves more righteous than others? We shouldn’t, but the reality is much the same. Without a relationship with Jesus, His love, church is just religion that puffs up.
Today’s study also led me to John 8, a familiar story for most of us about the woman caught in adultery and brought to Jesus. It was interesting reading it in the light of the scribes and Pharisees I had just defined. They brought her to Jesus wanting to test Him and to accuse Him, “but Jesus stopped down, and with His finger wrote on the ground” (Jn. 8:6).
Often when I’ve read this in the past, I wondered what He is writing as He ignores their accusations and testing. Today, I noticed that He only raises up when they persist with their hypocritical accusations, and when He speaks about the one “who is without sin among you” (8:7) throwing the first stone, again He stoops down and writes on the ground (8:8).
It’s ironic isn’t it? That the King Himself would descend from the kingdom of heaven, become a man, become His own scribe, taking notes (of what we don’t know and aren’t told), possibly about their sins, listing them one by one while they badgered Him about the Law He had come to fulfill perfectly, the Law they had no hope of keeping perfectly, only in pretense. The one-day judge in the kingdom of heaven gives them a chance to repent.
The older ones get it first and leave, the younger brasher ones staying just a heartbeat or two longer leaving Jesus still stooped down, inscribing the dirt (8:9). He remains there, stooped down, writing, until they all leave and it is just He and the woman there, the woman who IS guilty, who has been caught in her sin, which is still clinging to her like the dirt Jesus has been writing upon. The only righteous one there refuses to condemn her. His righteousness EXCEEDS the scribes and the Pharisees, yet He looks at her and tells her to go and “sin no more” (8:11).
This is such a powerful example of Jesus’ compassion in the light of man’s judgment. He was offering her salvation. It was now in her ballpark. The judgment would come later, after she had lived her life and made her choices. This moves me more each time I read it, and I wonder if I am offering this kind of light and love to others and withholding judgment when I should be offering the Way. Yet it didn’t move the scribes and Pharisees to do anything but leave, a momentary defeat in their purpose of trapping and accusing. How could they be so close to the Lord and not see the truth? How can we? The kingdom of heaven has come to earth.
Back in Matthew 5, the verse that really confounds me is the one where Jesus tells His disciples that unless their righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, they will not enter the kingdom of heaven (5:20, NASB). This follows closely after the two Beatitudes that relate to the kingdom of heaven: specifically verse 3, which deals with the “poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” and verse 10, which speaks to those persecuted “for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Chapter 8 shows the scribes and Pharisees in action. Chapter 5 shows the disciples that the only righteousness that saves is His, and it only comes to those who are humble, poor in spirit, as far from the Pharisees and scribes as it could get, a reality that contradicted everything they had known. At the same time, the scribes and Pharisees are the ones offended by Jesus and His disciples, and the cost (persecution) would be great, but it would lead to the kingdom of heaven.
Maybe this is a jumbled mess of thoughts, hopefully not, but the reality is that those of us who follow Jesus must exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ time, of our time, and we can only attain the kingdom of heaven through Christ. His righteousness is the only righteousness we can hope for, “Christ in us, the only hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27).
Then there is the Pharisee. Webster’s 1828 defines a Pharisee as the following: “One of a sect among the Jews, whose religion consisted in a strict observance of rites and ceremonies and of the traditions of the elders, and whose pretended holiness led them to separate themselves as a sect, considering themselves as more righteous than other Jews.” Wow. Their noses held a little higher, their self-worth going ever before them, as they “pretended holiness,” never aware of their true standing before Jesus, the Word who spoke them into existence.
The scribe convicts the haughty and self-important, but the Pharisee convicts the religious still today. Are we too strictly observing rites and ceremonies and traditions of men, pretending holiness, separating into denominations, considering ourselves more righteous than others? We shouldn’t, but the reality is much the same. Without a relationship with Jesus, His love, church is just religion that puffs up.
Today’s study also led me to John 8, a familiar story for most of us about the woman caught in adultery and brought to Jesus. It was interesting reading it in the light of the scribes and Pharisees I had just defined. They brought her to Jesus wanting to test Him and to accuse Him, “but Jesus stopped down, and with His finger wrote on the ground” (Jn. 8:6).
Often when I’ve read this in the past, I wondered what He is writing as He ignores their accusations and testing. Today, I noticed that He only raises up when they persist with their hypocritical accusations, and when He speaks about the one “who is without sin among you” (8:7) throwing the first stone, again He stoops down and writes on the ground (8:8).
It’s ironic isn’t it? That the King Himself would descend from the kingdom of heaven, become a man, become His own scribe, taking notes (of what we don’t know and aren’t told), possibly about their sins, listing them one by one while they badgered Him about the Law He had come to fulfill perfectly, the Law they had no hope of keeping perfectly, only in pretense. The one-day judge in the kingdom of heaven gives them a chance to repent.
The older ones get it first and leave, the younger brasher ones staying just a heartbeat or two longer leaving Jesus still stooped down, inscribing the dirt (8:9). He remains there, stooped down, writing, until they all leave and it is just He and the woman there, the woman who IS guilty, who has been caught in her sin, which is still clinging to her like the dirt Jesus has been writing upon. The only righteous one there refuses to condemn her. His righteousness EXCEEDS the scribes and the Pharisees, yet He looks at her and tells her to go and “sin no more” (8:11).
This is such a powerful example of Jesus’ compassion in the light of man’s judgment. He was offering her salvation. It was now in her ballpark. The judgment would come later, after she had lived her life and made her choices. This moves me more each time I read it, and I wonder if I am offering this kind of light and love to others and withholding judgment when I should be offering the Way. Yet it didn’t move the scribes and Pharisees to do anything but leave, a momentary defeat in their purpose of trapping and accusing. How could they be so close to the Lord and not see the truth? How can we? The kingdom of heaven has come to earth.
Back in Matthew 5, the verse that really confounds me is the one where Jesus tells His disciples that unless their righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, they will not enter the kingdom of heaven (5:20, NASB). This follows closely after the two Beatitudes that relate to the kingdom of heaven: specifically verse 3, which deals with the “poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” and verse 10, which speaks to those persecuted “for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Chapter 8 shows the scribes and Pharisees in action. Chapter 5 shows the disciples that the only righteousness that saves is His, and it only comes to those who are humble, poor in spirit, as far from the Pharisees and scribes as it could get, a reality that contradicted everything they had known. At the same time, the scribes and Pharisees are the ones offended by Jesus and His disciples, and the cost (persecution) would be great, but it would lead to the kingdom of heaven.
Maybe this is a jumbled mess of thoughts, hopefully not, but the reality is that those of us who follow Jesus must exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ time, of our time, and we can only attain the kingdom of heaven through Christ. His righteousness is the only righteousness we can hope for, “Christ in us, the only hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27).
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