TALK · 2025 · PHARISEES I

Pharisees — the teachers in a kingdom full of priests

The other side of the Pharisees: devoted teachers who prepared the ground for Jesus.

Ex 19:1–9 · 1 Pet 2:9–10

“Now therefore, if you will truly obey me and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession above all peoples, though the whole earth is mine. And you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” … And all the people answered with one voice: “Everything the Lord has told us to do, we will do.”

Exodus 19:1–9 (selected verses)

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people taken as God's own possession, so that you may proclaim the greatness of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.

1 Peter 2:9–10

Importance in numbers

Today's topic is the Pharisees — and first let me show you in numbers just how prominent a topic they are in the Gospels.
In the Gospels we find some 40 accounts in which Jesus speaks directly with the Pharisees or about them!
The word Pharisee appears about 90× in the Gospels alone — as often as the name of the Gospels' leading supporting character, the apostle Peter.
Once you start looking for the Pharisees, they seem to be absolutely everywhere between the lines of the Gospels. For some reason they matter. So it's worth getting to know them better.
Reading quickly, you can easily miss, for example, that in Acts 23 Paul still considers himself a Pharisee and says so even twenty years after meeting Christ: “Brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees.”

The photographer

First of all — how accurate is the picture we have of the Pharisees?
Imagine a photographer travelling back in time, catching Jesus as he drives the traders out of the temple with a rope in his hand, taking a picture of that moment — and then showing the photo to Mary with the words: “At last we have exact documentation of what Jesus was like.”
And Mary would look at that photo of an angry Jesus swinging a whip and say: but… but this isn't Jesus — let me tell you what he's really like.
In the same way, we have a few photos of the Pharisees in the Gospels that don't look particularly flattering at first glance — so we shut them in a little box and we're done with them.
But let me tell you about the rest, the part that didn't make it into the Gospels — either because it happened at a different time, or because absolutely everyone knew it already.

The teachers

A shocking number?

The Pharisees didn't usually lead the Sanhedrin, but when they did — a hundred years before Jesus' ministry — they made good use of it and ordered schools to be set up. So that even the poorest orphan could learn Scripture and be able to read it!
Luther worked for exactly the same thing — he was just about 1,600 years behind the Pharisees!
The Pharisees wanted everyone to have access to Scripture. Every Jewish boy between five and twelve could learn in the house of the book to read and to recite the five books of Moses. The teacher was often a Pharisee, because it was the Pharisee movement that pushed hardest for education available to every boy.

Result I — Josephus Flavius

And what results did they get? The Pharisee Josephus Flavius, in his defence of the Jews written in the days of the early church, describes the outcome of the Pharisees' efforts (I'm paraphrasing): other nations only get to know their laws once they are being punished for breaking them — but with us, ask anyone, even women or slaves, and they will recite the laws to you more easily than their own name… we learn them by heart from our very first moments. … The whole people is led towards devotion. Even from women and servants you would hear that the goal of everything we do in life is devotion.
The reality was probably a shade less rosy. But I'd believe him, if only because he had to write such a work at all: at that time there were two pogroms against the Jews in Alexandria — not because of race, but because of how different they were. They knew their traditions so well and held on to them so firmly that it irritated people.

Result II — the people of the house of Israel, the disciples

It's interesting that Jesus never left the borders of Israel — he could have set off for Rome, where there would have been far more listeners, and his miracles would certainly have drawn attention. But he stayed in Israel and said: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
Why to them? The people of his own nation were far readier to hear and understand Jesus' words than other nations — God had been preparing them for centuries: through the way he dealt with them and by giving them the Scriptures.
And the Pharisees had no small part in making sure that precisely the generations around Jesus knew their own history and their Scriptures. That goes for the disciples too.
In one passage Jesus speaks about the Pharisees in general as teachers — Matthew 23:1–3: “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat. So do and observe everything they tell you…” He then goes on in that passage to criticise their behaviour — that we are not to follow — but he acknowledges their role as teachers and their teaching.
If the Sadducees had been the teachers: imagine what it would have been like if there had been no Pharisees and the people had been taught by the temple priests under the leadership of the Sadducees. They accepted neither the resurrection nor the books of the prophets, and they believed that God doesn't get involved in people's everyday lives.
After all, Jesus often quoted the prophet Isaiah and the Psalms. If the Sadducees had taught the people and drilled into them that Scripture is only the five books of Moses and nothing more — what would Jesus have quoted from?
Yes, the Pharisees had inaccurate expectations about the coming of the Messiah — but the important thing is that, unlike the Sadducees, they expected and watched for his coming at all, and taught the people to do the same.
On top of that, the Sadducees taught that everything ends with death. You die, and that's it. For the Pharisees, though, resurrection and judgement were a fundamental theme. And for Jesus? Well, for Jesus the resurrection was perhaps an even bigger theme! And for us it's crucial too.
Jesus makes use of what the people had learned from the Pharisees and builds his new, advanced lessons on it. Remember Jesus' refrain? “You have heard that it was said… but I say to you…” He built on the Pharisees' foundation, but he took everything further.
So the Pharisees were preparing the ground for Jesus among ordinary people and among the disciples — their teaching may not have hit the bullseye the way John the Baptist's did, but they too were preparing the way and watching for the Messiah.

Result III — Jesus himself

And what about Jesus in relation to the school of the Pharisees? The Gospels record the story of how, as a boy, Jesus lost track of time in the temple with the scholars. Might he not have lost track of time now and then in some synagogue too, deep in discussion? What did he say to his parents when they found him? “Didn't you know that I had to be about my Father's business?”
In chapter four Luke specifically mentions that it was Jesus' custom to go to the synagogue regularly — and the synagogues were packed with Pharisees. You could guess that Jesus was a regular there.
If the Gospels are full of stories of Jesus debating with Pharisees, why would we think he hadn't already clocked up hundreds of kilometres of conversations with the Pharisees of his own town and his own youth?
Jesus didn't become a Pharisee — he never joined their movement, but people probably saw him as something of a colleague of theirs: the Pharisees were teachers and had their disciples — Jesus was a teacher and had his disciples. People addressed Jesus as rabbi — “master”, “professor” — that's how they addressed respected experts in Scripture. Like the Pharisees, he was a layman — he wasn't from a priestly family. Like them, he interpreted and taught Scripture.
On the other hand, people couldn't miss how different he was: not only was his interpretation incomparably more original and creative, but above all he spoke as one who has authority — not like someone who had merely studied up on somebody else's material, but with the authority of the author.
And the Pharisees? They saw his brilliance. Not all of them asked questions to catch him out — some asked because they really wanted to know his view. Some he simply won over, and they later joined the ranks of the early church.

How does this concern us?

Teaching as the task of every father

In the time before the Babylonian exile there were no synagogues and no Pharisees — so whose job was it to teach the children? Education depended on the father of the family. Every father knew the words of the Shema prayer: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord alone. … And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall impress them on your sons and shall talk of them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up…”
Josephus Flavius wrote about this that Jewish families “faithfully educated their children according to these commandments of the Torah”. Jesus was taught by Joseph, as long as he was around. The disciples were taught by their fathers.
By the way — have you noticed that among the disciples there are two pairs of brothers? I wonder how much of an honour that fact is for their fathers. The upbringing their fathers gave them undoubtedly had a lot to do with the state of the hearts of those Jesus chose…
The question for us is: have the Pharisees — or in our case the Sunday-school teachers — taken over from us the job of impressing the Word on our own children? Do we no longer have to talk with them about God when we sit at home or walk along the road, when we lie down or get up? I'm convinced that this commitment held then and still holds now. The foundation is up to us. And for me it's a struggle too.
Especially those of you with small children — right now is the easiest time to establish a habit. When our children were little, it was mainly Hanička who started the habit at our place of always reading from the Bible in the evening. Now that the children are older and evenings are complicated, I read at breakfast. It can change again over time — we'll have to come up with new ways again.

“But we're only laypeople…”

As hard-working laypeople we might protest: sure — it was easy for the Pharisees to learn, they gave themselves to Scripture full time. We have to go to work. That's a fair point — except that the Pharisees were often just working, eager laypeople themselves.
Mostly they were middle class — craftsmen, traders, self-employed people… They weren't priests from the tribe of Levi supported by temple service — they had to earn their living by ordinary work. Even Simeon ben Shetach, the Pharisee and head of the Sanhedrin mentioned earlier, lived off a small family business. Hillel also came from poor circumstances. The apostle Paul made tents.

How to become a Pharisee

You didn't become a Pharisee by mastering a certain amount of knowledge, but simply by deciding to and taking a vow to keep the Law more strictly and to study it.
So it wasn't an elite group you couldn't get into — on the contrary, their task was to win disciples and to grow their ranks. It was enough to be one of the keener types, and perhaps a bit intellectually inclined.
In fact, it seems to me that the CB could be described as a more intellectually minded church that doesn't lack the keener types either — a bit of a Pharisee denomination, isn't it? Does the title still not sound appealing to you? 🙂 I haven't finished yet 🙂

Why? The past and the future

And why did the Pharisees care so much that everyone should know Scripture?

Because of the past: through the prophets God reminded Israel again and again that the reason they fell into the hands of their enemies was the breaking of the covenant between God and Israel — idolatry, the oppression of the weak, turning away from justice. The Pharisees were aware of this and didn't want to provoke God any further.
That's why they looked so horrified whenever they saw anyone sin. That's why they called for the punishment laid down in the law, so that sin wouldn't spread in the land.
Coming from the Pharisees, that approach feels deeply merciless — but the whole great school of Hillel among the Pharisees was known for looking for ways to make room for mercy. It tried to be creative in interpreting the laws. That's why the Essenes attacked them — for looking for smooth paths and easy solutions.
Because of the future: they were waiting for the promised Messiah and believed they could hasten his coming. They believed that if the whole people of Israel were faithful to God for a single day, the Messiah would come.
The Pharisees tried to be faithful, they taught the people — and the Messiah came. Did they hasten his coming?

A people consecrated to God

“…if you will truly obey me and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession above all peoples, though the whole earth is mine. And you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”
Who was that said to? In Exodus, at the moment when the Israelites had been brought out of Egypt. They are all standing in the desert at the foot of the mountain. And God isn't saying it to the tribe of Levi — he isn't saying it only to the priests, but to the whole people of Israel. To ordinary people like you and me. He announces his great vision, his dream, to everyone.
The Pharisees were the ones who consistently took this passage as their own. That's why they took the commandments meant primarily for priests and said: we will all keep them, because we are all priests for the other nations.

A priesthood, a holy nation — it means:

to be holy — set apart for God
access to God
a calling to bring God's presence to others — to be a visible image of God in the middle of the world
a calling to pass God's blessing on to others
to pray, to intercede, to give yourself in service

And the apostle Peter later picks up this image and writes to the church — to us Christians, ordinary people: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation…” Here Peter transfers titles that once belonged exclusively to Israel onto the new fellowship of those who believe in Christ. And these titles should become our identity.

Conclusion

As N. T. Wright writes in his biography of the apostle Paul: to many people the first church in Jerusalem must have looked like a peculiar messianic version of the Pharisee movement — to outsiders all Jewish Christians came across as Pharisees.
We, and Christians who come from a Gentile background, are no longer bound to keep the traditions given specifically to the Jews, but otherwise we really aren't that far from the Pharisees. In our own way we are Pharisees too.
I've tried to show you the other side of the Pharisees — as a group of devoted, eager teachers. And the question remains for us: what kind of teachers are we to our own children?
We've seen what motivated their teaching: looking back, they tried not to provoke God by disobedience; looking forward, they watched for the Messiah. We too watch for his second coming, and thanks to his sacrifice we can look forward to it.
In any case, thanks to him we can also receive the titles and the mission that were given to the whole people of Israel: we are to be a nation of priests — mediators between God and everyone else. People should be able to see in us what God and his kingdom are like.
The Pharisees made mistakes — yes, keen people are always at risk of going too far. And that is exactly why every lesson Jesus teaches the Pharisees is a lesson for us too. In two weeks we'll try to go through the content of the debates between Jesus and the Pharisees and his criticism of them.

Pharisees — the teachers in a kingdom full of priests · 2025 · the sequel is Jesus shakes the Pharisees (and us)

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