So the Man of God is Now a "Pharisee"?
Looking at the comic strip above, it's very easy to see how the man of God can be so easily judged and verses are taken out of context. One of the most misused and abused verses ever is judge not and you will not be judged (Matthew 7:1) all because people do not bother to take the Bible into context. The more I observe about how Scripture is misquoted (note Satan also quoted Scriptures to tempt Jesus), the more I realize that people misquote the Scripture just to get their own way. False prophets just love to misinterpret the Scripture, don't they?
Jeremiah was doing his best to warn people of the sheep but the people think that he had no right to relay the truth. Most people today cannot tell the difference between judging people as the final judge and judging people's actions. While I should not judge the final fate of people that so and so should have died already, however I am commanded to make sound judgment about doctrines and actions as to warn others of the danger waiting to devour them. People must be warned of false prophets in their midst waiting to devour them even if it means rejection and making one's life more complicated.
Pastor David W. Cloud of "Way of Life" from his article called "Those Fundamentalist Pharisees" had this to say about who's the Pharisee:
"To label a Bible-believing Christian who is passionate to honor Christ and to obey God’s Word a Pharisee is a slander, because the error of Phariseeism was not their zeal to obey the Scripture. They had no such zeal. They were zealous, rather, to create their own religious system and to exalt their own self-righteousness. "
From the same article I mentioned awhile ago, Pastor Cloud also mentions these five important traits of the Pharisees:
1. Phariseeism is supplanting the Word of God with man-made tradition and thereby making the Word of God of none effect. “Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men” (Mat. 15:7-9).
2. Phariseeism is rejecting Jesus Christ. “Then was brought unto him one possessed with a devil, blind, and dumb: and he healed him, insomuch that the blind and dumb both spake and saw. And all the people were amazed, and said, Is not this the son of David? But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, This fellow doth not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub the prince of the devils” (Mat. 12:22-24).
3. Phariseeism is perverting the Gospel of the free grace of Christ into a work’s salvation. “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves” (Mat. 23:15).
4. Phariseeism is self-righteousness. “And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess” (Lk. 18:9-12).
5. Phariseeism is the practice of religious hypocrisy. “In the mean time, when there were gathered together an innumerable multitude of people, insomuch that they trode one upon another, he began to say unto his disciples first of all, Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy” (Lk. 12:1).