The Pharisees of Jesus’s time were quite hard-headed. There are many examples of why this was the case. Here is a series of four on a central them:
- In Luke 6:1-5, the Pharisees criticize Jesus’s disciples as they plucked heads of grain and rubbed them between their hands to eat them on the Sabbath.
- In Luke 6:6-11, they watched in earnest to see whether or not Jesus would heal a man with a shriveled hand on the Sabbath so they could find something to charge Him with.
- In Luke 13:10-17, Jesus heals a woman “disabled by a spirit” on the Sabbath and the leader of the synagogue becomes indignant, talking to the people about how there are six other days of the week to do work.
- In Luke 14:1-6, the Pharisees (once again) watched Him closely to see if He would heal a man “swollen with fluid” on the Sabbath.
The Pharisees repeatedly tried to argue with Jesus, lay charge against Him over things He did on the Sabbath, their holy day of rest. In all of these cases, Jesus responded to them to illustrate their hypocrisy (Luke 6:3-4, 9; 13:15-16; Luke 14:5) and His own deity (Luke 6:5). He actually declared His deity after the first confrontation. Yet, the Pharisees came back to the topic again, and again, and again as if they had not learned the lesson the first time.
It can be very easy for us to look at these situations from a 30,000-foot view and identify how obstinate the Pharisees were. Yet, how often is that us? How often do we have to “learn our lesson” multiple times before it finally sinks in? Proverbs 26:11 warns us of this: “As a dog returns to its vomit, so also a fool repeats his foolishness. The writer uses some pretty graphic (and, well…gross) imagery to illustrate what it looks like when we continually return to our sin; when we make those same mistakes over and over. Change is hard; change of heart can be even harder.
There are a lot of things we have to do in order to effect that change. 2 Peter 1:5-8 helps to give us a road map of what that path to change requires: “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with goodness, goodness with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with endurance, endurance with godliness, godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being useless or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Pursuit of these things will help us to grow our hearts and mature in our service to Him.
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