My daughter was a little upset when I called her last week. She had gone to the traditional service at her church in Tennessee, instead of the contemporary service they usually attend. The senior pastor who is proficient in both Hebrew and Greek, and taught at the seminary level, preached on Matthew 22:36-39 where the Pharisees ask Jesus this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” And Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Now, he is supposed to be a biblical academic, but he brushed over the scripture for the day and did not speak about it, rather he talked about what he said was a “third” law: The importance of loving yourself. Never mind that the Bible never tells us to love ourselves, but in fact tells us to deny ourselves, he lifted it up as a biblical principle, to the point of ignoring the first two commandments to love God and others.
You see, the problem with us as human beings is not that we don’t love ourselves enough, it is that we love ourselves too much. Our problem is not low self-esteem, but pride. Listen to our culture which is constantly telling us to value ourselves, treat ourselves, love ourselves, be good to ourselves, believe in ourselves and you begin to get some idea of the values of our current culture which are centered around the self. Instead, the Bible tells us to value truth, treat others well, love God, be good to others and believe in the Christ who sacrificed himself to give us life.
The closest the Bible comes to telling us to love ourselves is the Old Testament passage which Jesus quoted: “Love your neighbor as yourself’” (Matthew 22:37-39; [Leviticus 10:18]). But Jesus was not telling us to love ourselves. The point of what Jesus was saying is that we already love ourselves. No one has to teach us that. From the earliest days of our existence, our personal needs were all that we were aware of. We cried when we wanted something that we did not get. We fussed and fought over toys instead of sharing them. A young mother recently posted this about her child on Facebook: “Clara has developed the highest pitch squeal/scream that makes dogs bark all over the neighborhood, her brother cry, and her mother cringe!” But like little Clara, we too want our way. We still want what we want, and we want it now. We are self-preserving, self-focused and self-exalting. We are envious when others have more than us, are better looking than us, have a better life than us, are smarter than us, are healthier than us, etc. We don’t have to be told to love ourselves, that is already in place. The point of what Jesus is saying is that we are to love others as much as we love ourselves — which is a lot.
And this is where our Scripture comes in today. To anyone with eyes, it was so easy to see through the Pharisees, although, many of the people in that culture may have assumed that this was the way things were supposed to be. Jesus’ public statements against them were highly unusual and certainly shocked people who heard them. But the Pharisees who were supposed to be living symbols of what it meant to live for God, instead, were full of hypocrisy and drove people from God. Their lives were completely self-centered. As Jesus said, “Everything they do is done for men to see.” If anyone loved themselves it was them. They flamboyantly prayed in public rather than private. They were ostentatious and dressed in flowing robes with special tassels. They tied leather boxes, called Tephillin or Phylacteries, to their heads and arms with the Scripture containing the Shema written on parchment: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5). Over time these boxes became bigger and bigger to draw attention. They made their tassels larger and longer as they competed with one another. As their phylacteries became bigger, their love for God became smaller. It was comic and absurd. When they fasted, everyone knew it, for they threw ashes over their head and moaned as they went about. They competed for the best seats in the synagogue, and wanted to be called by special titles: “Rabbi”, “Father”, or “Teacher”. Everything in their lives said, “Look at me!”
At the same time they were showing off, they were also doing everything they could to make others look bad. They were tying heavy burdens on people that they could not bear. They would watch people like hawks to make sure they weren’t breaking the laws which the religious leaders had set up. They complained to Jesus that healing a man with a shriveled hand on the Sabbath was work and therefore wrong (Matthew12:10). Forget the fact that it relieved suffering and restored wholeness to the man’s life, it was still wrong. Forget the fact that they themselves would help their donkey out of a ditch on the Sabbath, they still would not approve of Jesus healing a human being on the Sabbath. As Timothy Keller writes, “Their hearts are as shriveled as the man’s hand. They’re ... anxious about the regulations. They’re... judgmental, and self-obsessed instead of caring about the man.”
You will remember the story of Jesus and his disciples who were walking by a grainfield one fine Sabbath day. As they walked along they plucked some of the grain and rubbed the chaff away with their hands (Matthew 2:23ff). But the Pharisees were watching them and condemned them for breaking the Sabbath. Just the simple act of rubbing the hands together was considered working on the Sabbath. They were threshing. And there were many things like this. Someone has written: “There were ten commandments but the Pharisees had added 1,521 additions to the ‘Sabbath’ law and 39 sections of things forbidden on the Sabbath.” Remember the man that Jesus healed on the Sabbath and told him to pick up his mat and walk home. The Pharisees said that carrying his mat was unlawful on the Sabbath. That would be defined as work, and work was forbidden. You could not walk more than 3,000 feet. You could not carrying anything weighing more than a fig. On and on it goes.
The people of the day were always under the watchful eye of the Pharisees who were always willing to condemn someone for doing something wrong. The tradition continues today among orthodox Jews. When we were touring the Holy Land in Israel on a Saturday, I can still see the man shouting at our Jewish bus driver: “Shabbat! Shabbat! (i.e. It’s the Sabbath!)” Philip Yancey in one of his books tells how the Sabbath is still observed today: “Orthodox Jews in Israel have programmed elevators to stop at every floor on the Sabbath because they judge pushing an elevator button as work; for the same reason, some hotels pre-fold toilet paper for their Sabbath guests.”
But it is not just Jews who have this problem. The Amish believe that it is wrong to drive a car, but it is okay to ride in someone else’s car if you are not driving. The “black bumper Mennonites” believe it is okay to drive a car as along as you strip all the chrome off of it. Over the years Christians have condemned their fellow Christians for wearing jewelry, going to movies, dancing or drinking wine. When I was in seminary I was the pastor at a small country church where many of the members made their living growing tobacco. Every Sunday there would be people standing around the church smoking, before and after the service. It would have been unheard of to call smoking a sin in Kentucky. When I moved north it would have been unheard of not to censure a Christian for smoking. Many Christians would think we are deceived today because we are in the wrong denomination or that we are not using the King James Bible. On and on it goes.
The problem with the Pharisees was that even though they had all these rules about minutiae and trivia, they did not keep the rules themselves. Sort of like politicians who pass laws telling you to pay more and more taxes, but who do not pay any taxes themselves. Sort of like preachers who preach against all kinds of sin, but who practice those very sins in private. Jesus said, “They tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them” (Matthew 23:4).
N. T. Wright, in writing about this passage, tells the story of trying to prepare for a hiking and camping trip. He went to an outfitter who took him around the store showing him everything he would need. The salesman recommended a good sleeping bag and a durable tent. He sold him a very good pair of hiking shoes. He convinced him he needed a proper stove and cooking kit. He piled things at the counter like maps, a flashlight, knife, and first-aid kit. He sold him all the packaged foot he would need. On they went through the whole store. The last thing he sold him was a backpack to carry all the stuff. In the pack they placed all the things he had bought for the trip. It was so heavy he couldn’t pick it up. As it sat on the counter, he sort of backed up to it and placed his arms through the straps. As he was staggering out the door he happened to ask the man who sold him all the stuff, “What sort of vacations do you have, then? Where do you go?” The man retorted, “Oh, I just go to the seaside. Bad back. Can’t carry stuff like that.” Jesus’ words came to his mind as he stumbled with all his gear toward his car: “They tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.”
So here the Pharisees were, telling people all the things they needed to take on their spiritual journey and piling them on their backs, and all the while they were not carrying the pack themselves. They were haughty and proud and held people to obeying laws that they themselves did not obey. They did not obey them because they were above the law. The rules were for the common people, the little people. They could cheat because they weren’t like everybody else. They owned the camping supply store and could tell everyone else what they needed, while they avoided wooded trails and lay at the seashore. Jesus says, “Do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach.”
Do you know people like that? They are always ready to point out what others are doing wrong, but do the same things themselves, or worse? They are a walking list of rules for others, while having glaring faults that they do not seem to notice. They put on an air of spiritual superiority and think so little of others, while feeling so good about themselves. But the call of Jesus is quite different. He said, “For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted” (Matthew 23:12). The proud are humbled and the humble are exalted. It is an upside down kingdom, or rather a right-side up kingdom, while the kingdom of this world is upside down. Jesus means to right it.
The apostle Paul said, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:3-4). He wrote: “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death — even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2:5-11).
Norman Vincent Peale once wrote, “Humble people don’t think less of themselves... they just think about themselves less.” The Christian way of life is not exalting the self, but forgetting ourselves and denying ourselves. Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it” (Matthew 16:24-25). So the message of Jesus is not being good to ourselves, or loving ourselves, but denying ourselves. It is not putting ourselves at the top or the center, but putting Jesus Christ at the center of our lives. It is thinking more of others and less of ourselves. It is not striving to get my needs met, but denying myself and seeing how I can meet the needs of others. It is primarily seeking God’s will rather than my will.
The Bible says, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is — his good, pleasing and perfect will. For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you” (Romans 12:2-3). A little humility please — for heavens sake. This was the pattern of Jesus, for as the Bible says, “He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things — and the things that are not — to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God — that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: ‘Let him who boasts boast in the Lord’” (1 Corinthians 1:28-31).
The Bible says, “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love” (Ephesians 4:2-6). Heed the warning of Scripture which says, “God opposes the proud butt gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6). And this is good and beneficial for us, because the Bible says, “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up” (James 4:10).
Alex Haley, the author of Roots, has a picture in his office, showing a turtle sitting atop a fence post. The picture is there to remind him of a lesson he learned long ago: “If vou see a turtle on a fence post, you know he had some help.” He said, “Any time I start thinking, ‘Wow, isn’t this marvelous what I’ve done!’ I look at that picture and remember how this turtle - me - got up on that fence post.” That is what humility is: Seeing that anything you are, anything you have, anything you have accomplished is a gift of God. You don’t have to have some ostentatious display. You don’t have to brag and boast about yourself. You don’t need people to call you by some title of honor or respect. All of that will come from God. Humble yourself and he will lift you up.
“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience” (Colossians 3:12-14).
