Are you, am I a pharisee?

In a sermon I heard today the question was asked in the style of "You Might Just Be A Redneck IF"

You might be a modern day pharisee IF:

1. You are unwilling to receive correction, instruction or direction from other people, even humble people who come to you in love.
2. You claim only to obey GOD and no man, you have difficulty in staying in order when there are spiritual authorities in your life.
3. You only see what is wrong in other people and never what is right. You believe faultfinding is a spiritual gift.
4. You feel your spiritual job in life is to "FIX" other people.
5. You feel you get no recognition from others in the kingdom of God and take offense when you consider yourself ignored.
6. You have a mechanical consistent and structured prayer life. No one can doubt your life of prayer because it's so regular and organized. It however is lifeless.
7. You are critical and disdaining of the manifestations of the Gifts of the Spirit. You don't believe in them and so look down your nose at them.

When I heard that list I had to examine myself. I'm not clean. Neither are you. I am repenting of the areas I am deficient in and will do better to not stay in that place.

YOU?

So you know these descriptions are apt:

1. Jesus was correcting and instructing the Pharisees of his day. They wouldn't hear it. They considered him a maverick and decided to close their ears to him.
2. The Pharisees considered themselves above the law, Abraham's children they said they were. They wouldn't submit themselves to any law but the ones they made up
3. They were critical of Jesus's Disciples washing of hands and fasting habits.
4. They were coming to people and correcting them. Keeping them in line.
5. They loved recognition in the marketplace, they loved the first seats in the Synagogue. They were offended if you didn't recognize them properly.
   
6. They loved to brag of their religious observances. Sabbaths were not for healing. Prayed 3 times a day in public at the front of the synagogue for everyone to see.
7. They were the ones who at Pentecost said, these men are drunk. They were the ones who questioned the blind man Jesus healed. They are the ones who interrogated the lame man healed at Gate Beautiful. They hated the gifts of the spirit.

What is so very sad in today's pharisee are many were men who at one time walked in the counsels of God. Today however some are even on church counsels. They proceeded in life and religion, developing a more and more Pharisaical lifestyle until one day they were cold and dead in their cold and dead religion. Oh, they talk big, act religious. There's just nothing going on inside. Whitewashed tombs with deadmen's bones.

They are like Sampson of old. Time and time again he operated in the power of God until his hair was shorn while he slept. Then when Delilah said, the Philistines are upon you, he did what he had always done before, He said to himself, "I will shake myself awake and shake off this attack". Unfortunately he discovered something he didn't even know, the anointing of God, the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit had left him. It was over. Because of that, Sampson in engaging the old forms of Godliness discovered that there was no power in it at all. His religious action of shaking off the Philistines no longer worked for him. He whist not that the Spirit had left him. His religion, his pharisee spirit cost him his eyes, his dignity and eventually his life.

My concern is that many men and women who call the name of Jesus are living as pharisees, and they know not that the Spirit has left them. They are operating in a godless religious system without any power at all.

It blinds them, robs them of dignity and eventually will kill them. This should not be so.

If this stings you a bit as it did for me, clean up your act, set aside your pharisee spirit and come back to Jesus.