Clones Or Discsiples? Series

NOTE:

This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message. The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript.

Over the last 20 years or so as I’ve officiated high school and college sports, I’ve had the privilege to work with some really great officials. And I’m very grateful to a few of them who took me under their wing and helped me to become a better official. For me personally, the officials that helped me the most were the ones who helped me see the big pictures and made suggestions, but also gave me the freedom to develop my own way of doing things.

But I also worked with some excellent officials who really aren’t very good at helping develop less experienced officials because they are so rigid and demanding. They insist that these new officials do everything exactly the way they do – even when that might not be consistent with the rules or established protocols and procedures. In a sense those officials were more interested in making clones of themselves than they were in developing good officials.

And it’s possible for the same thing to occur in the church. Perhaps you’ve known some Christians who operate a lot like that. They are anxious to bring others on the same journey that they have been on, sometimes even for some very good reasons, like their zeal for God. But they tend to think that the way they have navigated that journey is the only way and they are so rigid and demanding that others do it exactly the same way they do. So instead of making disciples of Jesus, what they end up doing instead is trying to make clones of themselves.

Today, we’ll see that the Pharisees tended to operate like that. They were quite set in their ways and they expected others to be just like them. So we’ll see what Jesus said to them about that and see what we can learn from Him so that we don’t become a “modern day Pharisee”.

This is the third message in our current sermon series that we have titled “Modern Day Pharisees”. We are studying Jesus’ sermon in Matthew 23 where He confronts the scribes and Pharisees about the things they are doing to deter people from becoming His disciples and applying what we learn to the church in America in 2019 and to each of us as individuals.

So let me remind you once again of the six ways to tell that you might be a “modern day Pharisee”.

You might be a “modern day Pharisee” if…

• You judge the Scriptures rather than being judged by them

• You think you’re better than other Christians

• You are more interested in making clones of yourself than disciples of Jesus

• You look for loopholes in God’s Word in order to excuse your sin

• You major in minors and minor in majors

• You work harder at looking good than being good

This morning, we’re going to focus on the third indication that you might be a “modern day Pharisee”:

You might be a “modern day Pharisee” if you

are more interested in making clones of yourself

than disciples of Jesus

Before we read this morning’s passage, I need to call your attention to something that many of you may have already noticed. If you haven’t already done it, go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 13 and go to verse 13. If you’re using the ESV translation, you’ll notice that there is no verse 14, but only a footnote that indicates that some manuscripts include that verse either after verse 12 or as verse 14.

This is what is known as a textual variant and if you’d like to know more about it, I’d be happy to discuss it with you in more detail in person. But we don’t really have time to do that in the message today. There is also a link in this week’s newsletter that I sent out on Monday that provides some more information.

But what I can tell you is that we find almost the exact same wording in both Mark chapter 12 and Luke chapter 20, so we can be confident that Jesus did in fact say those words, even if it wasn’t in this exact context. So I’m going to include verse 14 in the message today, that is if I can read the 2 point font in my footnote, which is a challenge even with my reading glasses.