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Ridgecrest Baptist Church is located in Dothan, AL and exists to Reach the lost, Build the believer, and Connect people of God to the mission and purpose of God.
So thank you for sharing that with us. Take your Bibles this morning, if you will, and open it up to Mark's Gospel, chapter 7. While you're finding your place there, let me welcome a new audience in. I told you last week that our radio broadcast would no longer be on 94 .3. They've gone to an all -music format. So we began to talk and meet with a local station here that was interested in us coming on their channel. And so today we are, for the first time, on 102 .5, the queue. And so we have a
new audience. And so, Ridgecrest, would you welcome our new audience in this morning from 102 .5. So glad to have them on. As I told you, it's one of our local stations. And so I think somewhere in there, I'm sandwiched. I'm sandwiched between the Red Hot Chili Peppers and John Cougar Mellon Camp. Kind of always wanted to be there. But at any rate, you will encourage others to find us there. Our audience from
94 .3, as well as our new audience again. By the way, they'll also be carrying us now, Heart Truth Devotion, every afternoon, Monday through Friday, at 5 .20 drive time. And so our devotion, our Heart Truth Devotion, will be carried on 102 .5, the queue, at 5 .20 every afternoon. So when you're stuck out there on the circle going home somewhere, put it on 102 .5 so you can hear the Heart Truth for the day. The 19th century Danish theologian, Soren Kierkegaard, identified what he
called two kinds of religion. He said there's a religion A and there is a religion B. And the first is faith in name only. He said it's the practice of faith. It's the practice of attending church without genuine faith in the living Lord. Then he said religion B, on the other hand, is a life -transforming, destiny -changing experience. It's a definite commitment to the crucified and risen Savior, which establishes an ongoing personal relationship between a forgiven sinner and a gracious God. This difference in those two expressions of faith explains why, for many
years, the great British literary genius C .S. Lewis, had great difficulty in becoming a Christian. He did, after he understood the difference between religion A, you know, practice or religion in name only, because it had blinded him to the real kind of faith, that relational faith that Kierkegaard talked about or called religion B. Today I want to talk with you on how to be a Pharisee. Now, I'm not saying that is a good thing. I really want you to see how you'll become a Pharisee if you act like Pharisees and if you practice. They practiced the way they practiced their faith. They had a religion A. It was a religion in name only, but it wasn't a relational connection with God. And that's what I want us to talk about this morning. And so if you've got your Bibles open, you're physically able to do so,
why don't you stand with me as we read our text, beginning in verse 1 of chapter 7. Now, when the Pharisees gathered to him with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands, that were defiled, that is, unwashed. For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly, holding to the tradition of the elders. And when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches. And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, why do your disciples not walk
according to the tradition of the elders? And by the way, that's an important statement. Why do they not walk according to the tradition of the elders? It didn't say according to the scripture. Why do they not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands? And he, that's Jesus, said to them, well, did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites? As it is written, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. That's that religion A. In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. You leave the commandment of God and you hold to the tradition, of men. And he said to them, you have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God
in order to establish your tradition. For Moses said, honor your father and your mother, and whoever reviles father or mother must surely die. But you say, if a man tells his father or mother, whatever you would have gained from me is Corban, that is given to God, then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down, and many such things you do. Now, Father, would you teach us, instruct us, enlighten our hearts and minds,
convict us, Father, with the truth of your word. Lord, tragically, too many of us, myself included, Father, often are more like Pharisees than we are like the Savior. Help us, Father, to understand what it means to be in a devoted, deep relationship with Jesus Christ and not just a believer in God. We're in name only. So would you speak to us this morning? Would you teach us? And, Father, would you cause us to hear everything that you have for us from your word? For we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you. You can be seated. Now, the story here is set around the continued plot by the religious leaders,
particularly the Pharisees of the day, to try and trap Jesus in some kind of legal violation, religious kind of violation. They were all in the same place. I'm always trying to catch him in that. In this case, the disciples had failed to wash their hands before they ate. Whether they were clean or not wasn't even the issue. They didn't go through the ritual of washing their hands. And verses 3 and 4 actually explain that this was not something that God had ordered. It was a tradition that they had started. The Pharisees had started, and they had handed it down over the generations. And so they had taken something that they created, and they sacramentalized it. They turned it into something that God had not. Now, who are the Pharisees is a question that's worth answering. How did they begin?
Their story began really with the conquest of Alexander the Great. In 332, Alexander the Great conquered the Middle East, and he brought with that Greek culture into the Middle East. He brought their philosophy and all of this kind of Greco, we call it Greco -Roman architecture. All of that came out. It came out of that period from Alexander the Great's conquest. And by 200 B .C., that philosophy, Greek, Greco -Roman ideology, philosophy, and that
kind of worldview, which, by the way, was referred to as Hellenism, it was significantly impacting the lives of Jewish young men. And more and more of these Jewish young men were getting caught up in the Greco -Roman philosophy and worldview, this Hellenism, and they were abandoning the Hebrew faith and it created a crisis in Judaism. And the leaders at that time in Judaism were concerned that the faith and the covenant responsibilities of the Scripture would not survive from generation to generation. And so, thus, the Pharisees were born in response to this alarming trend moving toward
Hellenism. And its two -fold purpose, that is, the creation of what we call the Pharisees, was to call young Jewish men back to the tenets of genuine Hebrew faith and to a priest -like kind of life. Now, the first Pharisees had their hearts in the right place. They had a passion for evangelism. They wanted to bring Jewish young men back to the historical faith, as well as bring Gentiles into Judaism. They prayed dozens of times a day. They memorized great portions of the Old Testament Scripture. They had a passion to honor God in everything they did, and they wanted to fulfill their responsibility. Six hundred and thirteen laws. They wanted to fulfill and obey all of those laws. But as is true with many movements and factions, things began to happen inside, and the
Pharisees began to divide among themselves, and some began to revise their theology. And they began to harden their hearts toward any that differed from them. By the time Jesus comes on the scene, there are probably, somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 ,000 Pharisees. And many of the Pharisees now had taken Judaism to a place that did not honor their origin, nor did it honor God in how they lived. And collectively, they took great pride in themselves, as we well know from reading about them in the New Testament. In fact, if you didn't agree with them, they began to perceive you as really just, you're an outsider. You don't have it. And by this time in their history, they had exhibited hard hearts and harsh attitudes toward
anybody that didn't agree with what they taught. Jesus, of course, you know, likened them to whitewashed tombs. They were clean -looking on the outside, but they were dead bones on the inside. And their zeal for God was, over time, replaced with kind of an insider -outsider kind of theology. And so rather than being models of relational, devotional devotion to God, they became legalistic creators of all kinds of unbiblical rules that God had not sanctioned. And then the ones God had sanctioned, they misapplied. They twisted them to fit what they wanted them to mean. And as a result, Jesus frequently rebuked them. He called them out for their misapplication of the law and the prophets, and he revealed them to be anything but real models of genuine faith. Now, interesting. Interestingly, here we are 2 ,000 years later, and though the Pharisees no
longer exist as a technical group, would you agree they've always been around? That is, you know, those who Jesus said, strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. Those who miss the joy of walking with God because they have substituted their traditions over real truth, biblical truth. Interesting. This is the season of traditions, isn't it, we're in? And we love those kinds of traditions. I know you do. We love them. We love them around here at Ridgecrest. We have lots of them. And not all traditions are bad, certainly. Unger's Bible Dictionary reports that the Talmud, that is, after the Hebrew Scriptures, that's
the most central text of rabbinic Judaism. The Talmud lists seven kinds of Pharisees. Let me give them to you. There were the Shishamite Pharisees, and they were known because they were those who kept the law for what they could profit through them. In other words, they used it purely for their own personal gain. We have some of those Pharisees today, don't we? The Shishamite. And then there were, he lists the tumbling Pharisees. There was a group called the tumbling Pharisees. No, they weren't gymnasts. But they were those who wanted to appear humble, and so they always walked with their heads hung down. And as a result of that, they tripped and stumbled and fell. They were called the tumblers. There were the bleeding Pharisees, he lists, who, to avoid seeing women, they walked with closed
eyes and were often wounded. They weren't whacked by the women. They were wounded because they walked with closed eyes. They ran into things. They were called the bleeding Pharisees. Then there were the mortar Pharisees. These were those who wore mortar -shaped caps, kind of like a graduation cap. A mortar board kind of cap. They wore these, and they walked with closed, I mean, they walked with these hats that would cover their eyes to help them avoid seeing impurities or indecencies around them. Then fifth, there is what is listed as a what -am -I -yet -to -do Pharisees, who, not knowing the law as they should, often ask, what is my duty? They were really the ones who said, what do I have to do, not what, should I do? Then there were six, he says, the fearful Pharisees. These were those who kept the law because
of fear of future judgment. And then last, they list, the Talmud lists the Pharisees of love, who actually obeyed the law because they loved the Lord with all their heart. Maybe a legitimate group, amen? But regardless of what kind, the truth is that being a Pharisee can become the norm for all of us if we do not maintain, in the personal dynamic of our walk with Christ. And so this morning, let's take a look at these ancient Pharisees, lest we become one of them, a modern -day version, that is. And see if you discover any Pharisaical tendencies in your own life. Jesus points out four things that the Pharisees were known for. The first is this, they were known
for their superficial religion. Verse 6 tells us this people, Jesus quotes the prophet Isaiah, Isaiah, this people honors me with their lips. In 1889, American journalist and humorist Edgar Nye introduced a phrase that all of us have heard before, a mile wide and an inch deep. 1889, this journalist, and he was referring to a river that was found in the Midwestern, Western United States called the Platte River. The Platte River is a muddy river. It's wide, it's shallow, it meanders with a kind of a swampy, bottomed to it. It's full of mud. And these characteristics made that river too difficult to ever be used as a major navigation route.
And though the Platte is very important to the Missouri watershed and tributary system, it really can't be used for much more than that. And this journalist, Nye, wrote that the river had a very large circulation, but he said very little influence. It covers a good deal of ground, but it's not deep. In some places, he said it's a mile wide and three -quarters of an inch deep. Well, this is the phrase that could be used to describe the Pharisees and, frankly, many modern -day confessors of Christ. They're shallow and they're superficial. They are a mile wide and an inch deep. They may have large circulation, but they have little genuine influence. And Jesus points out a couple of issues of their superficial kind of religion. One is their superficial
confession, their shallow confession. This was an external problem. They said the right things with their mouth, but their words were empty. Did you know this people honors me with their lips? Now, don't misunderstand. The Bible makes clear that your words are important. You understand that, don't you? Your words are important. What you affirm, what you declare, and what you confess, that's all very important. But words alone are not necessarily the evidence of real faith. And a genuine relationship with Christ. Our world and even our churches are full of confessors. You know, people that know the right thing to say.
They've learned the language. We call it Christianese. You know, it's the language of Christians and knowing the right things to say. Jesus is Lord. That's true. We know how to throw those kind of phrases. Praise the Lord. Amen. Be blessed, brother, sister, those sorts of things. Nothing wrong with those as long as they are not meaningless. Religious statements that have lost their personal significance. But there are a lot of folks who are just like the Pharisees and that is they've learned to be confessors. They know the right things to say. They know how to honor God with their lips but their heart is far away from God. That was their superficial and shallow confession. But he also addresses their superficial possession when he says that their hearts were disconnected from him.
That's an internal problem. The confession is an external problem. It's saying the right things when there's nothing of substance inside. And the internal problem is that what's going on in here doesn't match what's being said out here. Their lips honored him but their lives didn't. Their hearts were far from him. I don't think there's ever been a time like the age that we're living in where there was more fake faith and false religion. I don't think there's ever been as much as there is today. Paul wrote of it as a characteristic of the last days. Did you know that? Paul said in the last days that people will hold to a form of godliness but deny its power. Avoid these people, he said. You see, superficial religion is superficial because there's just nothing to it. It's all externals. It's all
fluff and feathers. It's ritual but not relational. It may be informative but it's not transformative. Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5 .17, he said this, If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation. The old things have passed away and behold, all things have become new. You see, that's the difference in just being informed and being transformed. There are a lot of people today that are informed about God. There are a lot of people today that are informed about Jesus Christ. There are a lot of people that can tell you all about what Jesus Christ came into this world to do that first Christmas. They can tell you. They can tell you the whole story but they have never moved from information to transformation. And it is the transformation that makes all the difference in the world. You know, I've told you many times before, all the polls will tell us interesting statistics about how many people
believe in God and how many people confess Christ. The numbers
are astounding. Eighty plus percent of the American population makes that kind of confession. But we know that they've got information, not transformation. Don't we? Because if this culture, eighty percent of the population were transformed by the gospel of Jesus Christ, do you think this culture would look different, class? Do you like this? Of course it would. And yet we find that there are so many today who just have that information. The transformation hasn't happened there. That's who the Pharisees were. They were informed. They knew the scriptures as well as anybody. They knew their maidenhood. They made up laws better than anyone. They had all of the information, but there was no transformation. Again, it's why Jesus referred to them as whitewashed tombs. They had this superficial confession and they had a superficial possession.
I want to ask you this morning, have you been transformed?
Jesus put it this way, you must be born again. Not just informed by the prophets, not just informed by the law, not just informed about the gospel, but you must be, you must be born again. And that is the difference between genuine faith and superficial religion which characterized the Pharisees. The second thing I want you to notice is their sacrifice doctrine. Not only did they have superficial religion, they had sacrificed doctrine. They had given up the truths of God for the commandments of men. Verse 7 reminds us, they taught it. They taught the doctrines, their own doctrines, their own commandments. They taught them in place of the truth of God. They sacrificed and substituted their ideas for God's truth. They substituted their personal preferences over the truths of God. They elevated what they wanted to be true over what God has declared to be true. That's the world we live in today, isn't it? Where people have elevated what they want to be true. They've elevated their preferences over the truth of God. It's not unusual today to hear people say things like, well, I don't think God would. And just fill in the blank, right? I just don't think God would operate this way. Or I don't think God would do this. And by the way, the blank that they fill in is usually something that clearly disagrees with the word of God. And that's why they say, I just don't think God would operate this way. Or it means that I want God to operate in a way that will make me feel better about the way I'm going to operate anyway. Or we hear things like, well, the God I believe in allows all religions to be pathways, to God. Or we hear, you know, I've told you this one, me too. Well, the Bible is just an ancient set of writings that no longer apply. There's a popular preacher today who has told people that they need to unhitch from the Old Testament. That it's no longer useful. Isn't that interesting that he would say that given the fact that Jesus just quoted the Old Testament right there. And does numerous times in the scripture. But this particular prominent pastor has said we just need to unhitch from the Old Testament. He also said, by the way, we need to quit treating the Bible as if it is such a serious expression of God. Now friend, listen.
This is what the Pharisees did under the guise of spirituality.
They took the word of God and they reworked it to accommodate their opinions. That is, they taught as doctrine, the commandments of men. Now listen to me. Friend, listen. I don't want to hurt your feelings this morning. But let me give you a little insight. God doesn't care about your opinion.
And all of heaven isn't waiting for you to weigh in. What do they think? We may need to adjust. God's not taking an opinion poll. By the way, recently we discovered that opinion polls don't mean much.
God doesn't care about your opinion. He's not up in heaven going, what do they think? Let's see. Do we need to adjust? Let's decide what is true or not. See what they think. See what my creation thinks. In fact, that's why Jude, verse 3, tells us, I found it necessary to write, appealing to you, to contend for the faith, listen to this, that was once and forever delivered to the saints. It doesn't need to be revised. It doesn't need to be rewritten. Jude writes and says, I told you to contend for the faith, the faith that was delivered to you. That means the truth of God delivered to you, the doctrine of God delivered to you. It doesn't need to be amended. It's settled.
And furthermore, let me just say this, no matter how good a communicator is, no matter how persuasive they may be, if they are elevating culturally accepted lies
over the truth of God, they are teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. And that's particularly relevant today. There are churches, Christians, and there are even complete denominations that have disregarded the truth of Scripture and elevated the doctrines of men in order to be accepted and received by the world. They've substituted lies for truth. They've sacrificed doctrine for the opinions of people. So I ask you this morning, is your doctrine divine or demonic?
You understand that? Is it divine or is it demonic? There are only two sources of doctrine. There either is that which comes from God or that which comes from hell. And the Scripture is very clear of what God's is. Everything else, no matter how good it may sound, masquerades as an angel of light.
So our doctrine is to be shaped by God's Word. Is yours? Or have you sacrificed the doctrines of God in order to be compatible with the age you're living in? Then there's a third thing I want you to notice about the Pharisees, and that is I want you to notice their sanctified tradition.
Look at verse 9, if you will. I hope you've got your Bible still open. He said to them, you have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition.
Now again, as I said, we're in that kind of traditional season during the holidays. Most people and families have traditions that they participate in each year, Thanksgiving traditions, Christmas traditions, New Year's traditions. These are fun, they're memorable, and they can be important in your life. Traditions don't have to be a bad thing. There are some we need and some that are very good. Now New Year's has come. We know Christmas is coming or the celebration of Christ, but after that, of course, New Year's. There's some interesting different New Year's traditions. New Year's is one of those things celebrated around the globe. I came across a listing of some New Year's traditions in other places. For example, in Siberia, it's tradition on New Year's to dive into a frozen lake while holding a tree trunk placed underneath the ice.
There is a Greek word for that. Stupid.
Oh, you're going out to the lake where it's frozen over? There's a stump they put under there. You're going to dive in and die?
In a traditional festival from Burma, people splash water on one another to start the New Year with a purified soul. In the Philippines, homeowners open all their doors and windows on New Year's Eve in order to allow the negative energy to leave and good energy to enter. One New Year's custom in Russia is to write a wish for the upcoming year on a piece of paper, then burn the paper and place the ashes in a glass of champagne and then consume the glass, as soon as New Year's is rung in. Residents in Johannesburg, South Africa throw old appliances and furniture out the window. I do that all year.
Brazilians wear white clothing, a tradition that's meant to bring good luck for the upcoming year. Listen, those are some bizarre and some humorous traditions, but the Pharisees took traditions to a whole new level. Would you agree with that? You see, they believed traditions were more than just good ideas or cherished beliefs. They believed traditions were more than just good ideas or cherished beliefs. They believed that their traditions were of equal authority with the Scripture. They didn't just say, this is just something we've come to practice. They believed that their traditions were as valid as Scripture. Now, not all traditions, as I said, are bad. We actually need some of them to keep us connected to our roots and there are certainly biblical traditions that we celebrate and I think we should. Things like Advent, the Lord's Supper, Good Friday, Easter, these are traditions, but here's the difference. They have a very clear biblical foundation. The feasts Jews practiced were initiated by God. They were given by God. These had biblical foundations for them to practice. On the other hand, while we need traditions, we must never exalt our traditions over truth and Scripture. But that was the case with the Pharisees. They created their own traditions and they tried to sanctify them. They tried to make them spiritual and Jesus knew exactly what they were doing. That they were elevating their preferences over the commandments of God. Now, let me just say something to you because I'm connecting preferences and traditions because there is some overlap there and I want you to know something. There's nothing wrong with having preferences. We all have preferences, right? We have musical preferences, we have hobby preferences, we have all kinds of preferences, but listen, we must never elevate our preferences, our traditions, over the truth of God. Amen? And that's what they did. We have to learn to distinguish preferences from truth. We have to learn to distinguish traditions from traditionalism. One theologian in a New York U .S. News and World Report interview put it this way. He said, Tradition is the living faith of the dead. Tradition is the living faith of the dead. Tradition is the living faith of the dead. Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. And we have to learn to distinguish those things. I think he's exactly right. The Pharisees hated Jesus. You know why they hated Jesus? They hated Jesus because he brought change to their unbiblical traditions. And the collective voice of the Pharisees was this. We've never done it that way before. And you just might be a Pharisee if you've sanctified traditions that God has not sanctified.
The last thing that I want you to know is that I want you to notice is the Pharisees and their substituted truth. Verse 13 articulates it for us. Thus making void the word of God by your traditions that you have handed down. You've all heard the story, haven't you, about the young girl just newlywed and she's cooking their first Christmas ham. You heard about that? So she sent her husband to pick up the ham and she said, when you get there, have the butcher cook it. Cut the two ends off of it. He said, why? She said, because my mom did that and I'm going to cook it just like my mom did. He brought it back and the ends were cut off. Put it in the pan, put it and cooked it. They got to thinking, well, I wonder why mom did that, you know. What was the value in that? They asked her mom and her mom said, well, I did it because my mom did it. And finally they got back to granny and granny, they said, granny, why did you cut the ends off of the ham before you cooked the ham? And granny just laughed. And said, oh, that's because I didn't have a pot big enough to hold it.
You know, we all can do that sort of thing, right? We just pass it on down. And that's what he said. They'd handed down these traditions time after time after time. And because they had handed them down so often, they became to believe them to be truth. And so they had trouble handling change. And they had trouble handling change because if they face the truth that Jesus was bringing, it meant they would have to change. You know what I noticed about myself a long time ago? I don't mind if you have to change.
In fact, I can tell you four or five things I think you ought to change.
When it gets tough is when I have to change. Hello? Then I see change completely different. And that's the way the Pharisees were. And it had essentially nullified the truth of God. And Jesus gave an illustration of that. Did you notice that story about Corban in there? Have you ever wondered why did Jesus suddenly say, let me give you, he's giving them an illustration. Here's one of their traditions, the tradition of Corban. Now, Corban said this, essentially. First of all, it was a way to get around honoring your father and your mother. In other words, the responsibility to take care of your father and your mother. And so what the Pharisees did, these greedy Pharisees did, is they didn't want to have to take care of their parents. And so what they did was, they took care of their parents. What they would do before their parents ever got into a state where they might need help is they said to them, they said, well, whatever we would have given to you is Corban. Corban means dedicated to God. It was a tradition. Oh, I've given all that I have eventually to God. Now, they didn't have to give it right then. They could live off of it and use it however they wanted to. But in the end, it was all God's. What a convenient way to get around. So mom, dad, I'm sorry I can't take care of you. I've given it all to God. I'm going to use it up probably before I die, but I've given it all to God. And so I can't take care of you. And the parents couldn't say, well, you know, because there was a tradition of Corban. And Jesus points out the duplicity of what they would say and how they lived. By the way, you know, my son -in -law,
you know, some years ago, we're playing golf. And I went in and I paid for his golf. And I paid for my golf. And he said to me, he said, oh, he said, Mr. Ray, he said, you don't have to do that. And at that time, he was in law school. And, you know, they were eking out a living, you know, Karris and him. And she was working, trying to help him get through law school and all that kind of stuff. And so he said, no, you don't have to do that. I said, yeah. I said, I want to do that for you, Luke. I said, I want to do that. You just don't worry about it. And then I looked at him. I said, but I'm going to get it back.
And he kind of puzzled. And I said, well, I'm going to get it back. And he said, you see, one day, one day I'm going to go, hey, Luke,
remember that round of golf? All those rounds of golf? Remember those? I need a place to live.
I made an investment. It wasn't Corbin. You see what they did? They said, I can't fulfill that commandment because I've given it all to God. This is how. This is how they operate. It was a clever way of getting around obeying God. In effect, they were substituting their tradition for the very clear command of God. They were defying God while outwardly they were appearing to honor God before others. We've given it all to God.
I love the story of a man. I mean, they bait and switch. That's what they did. They said one thing. They talked out both sides of their mouth. And I love the story. I'll close with this. There was a young man who worked in the produce. He worked in the produce department of a local grocery store. And a woman came in and she asked him, she said, she handed him a head of lettuce. She said, I just want to buy a half a head of lettuce. And he said, ma 'am, he said, we don't sell it that way. He said, God made them in whole heads and that's how we sell them. But she protested. She said, you mean after all the years that I've shopped here, you won't sell me a half a head of lettuce? He said, look, ma 'am. He said, if you'd like. I'll go and ask the manager. But he said, I don't think we can do that. And she indicated that she'd appreciate if he'd just ask the manager. And so the young man marched to the front of the store and he found the manager. And he said, you won't believe this. But he said, there's this lame brained idiot of a lady back there who wants to know if she can buy a half a head of lettuce. And he happens to notice the manager's going.
And he turns around. And when he does, he notices that the woman is behind him. And she had followed him all the way to the front. The manager. And quickly, he looks. And when he sees her, he says, and this nice lady here would like to buy the other half.
Later in this day, the manager cornered this young man and said, you know what? That's one of the finest examples of thinking on your feet that I think that I've ever seen. Where'd you learn that? And the young man said to the manager, he said, oh, he said, well, he said, I grew up in Grand Rapids. And he said, if you know anything about Grand Rapids. You know that it's known for its great hockey teams and its ugly women. And the manager's face went flush. And he interrupted. He said, my wife is from Grand Rapids.
The young man looked at him and said, really? What hockey team did she play for?
This is what the Pharisees did. They bait and switch. They were quick to speak out of both sides of their mouth. They confused truth and lies. And used it to their advantage. And they substituted God's word with their own traditions and lies. So they didn't have to be accountable to God.
But Jesus knew.
And Jesus knows.
You see any Pharisee? I heard a man say this one time. Well, he told me this. He said, Pastor, I'm a recovering Pharisee. I said, welcome, me too. We all have a little bit of that in us if we're not careful, don't we? But the question is. Do you have religion? I started with religion A or religion B. Religion A is just a confession. Religion B is a possession. It's a relational thing. If you want to avoid becoming a Pharisee, make sure that you have a relational walk with the Creator. If you don't have that, you can have it today. Those of you who are joining us by live stream, by radio, television, whatever it may be. If you don't have a relation with Jesus Christ, a relationship with Him, you can have that today. Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. What a great promise, isn't it? Not might be, but whosoever will call upon the name of the Lord. Lord, I call on you. I want you to be my Savior. I know I'm a sinner. I know I need you. I confess my sin. Lord, I've been a Pharisee. I don't want to be a Pharisee. I want to have a relationship with you. He will hear that because He's promised to do that. If you need Him today, maybe you need to move from religion A to religion B. A relationship. And I invite you to do that. Would you bow your head and close your eyes? No one looking about in this place. Father, thank you for your word this morning reminding us, God, that we all probably have a little tendency to be like the scribes and the Pharisees, but we don't have to live that way. Because we can have a relationship with you. So, Father, right now, for any that are watching, listening, in this live audience, never really called on you. They've had religion, but they don't have the relationship. Would you, right now, cause them to cry out to you, Lord Jesus, come into my life. Forgive me of my sins. Be my Savior, my Lord, my Master. Father, hear their prayer. I know you do. You've already promised that you would. In Jesus' name, amen. Would you...
Well, I'm so glad that you have tuned in to the broadcast today. I hope you've been encouraged by God's word. It sure has been a joy to share it with you. And even now, people at Ridgecrest are making decisions for Christ. Perhaps as you've watched this broadcast, you've recognized the need for your own decision for Christ. The prompting of the Spirit has caused you to recognize that you need Christ as your Savior. And the good news is you can receive Him right where you are. The Bible says, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. Right where you are, you can call on Him. Say something like this from your heart to Him. Lord Jesus, thank you for loving me. I know I'm a sinner, and I know that you came into this world and died on the cross for my sins. And right now, I invite you to come into my life. Forgive me, and be my Savior. I can assure you, if you'll call on Him, based on what God has already told us in the Bible, that He'll hear that prayer, and He'll answer that. And He wants to begin this new journey in your life with you, transforming you into His image. We'd love to help you with that decision as well. You'll see a QR code on your screen. And if you would scan that, or you'll see contact information, or if you'll contact us about your decision today, we'd love to help you take next steps. There are no strings attached. No feedback. Nobody's involved. We'd just like to help you begin that journey with Christ. You may be watching this broadcast today and say, I need a church family to belong to. I already know Christ as my Savior, and I'd like to be a part of the Ridgecrest family. Also, if you will, scan that QR code. That'll take you to a location, and we'll be able to help you make those kinds of decisions, like becoming a member here, or if you've never been scripturally baptized, those kinds of things. So contact us through that QR code, or through the contact information on the screen. Well, again, it's been a joy to have you with us today, and I hope you've been encouraged by God's Word. Whatever decision we can help you with, by all means, contact us. May the Lord bless you.