Take your Bibles with you this morning. Open back up to Matthew chapter 23. Looking at verses 23 through 28 this morning. So as we've gotten into Matthew 23, we know we started with the first paragraph of text where Jesus was talking about the Pharisees and the scribes. And then we looked two weeks ago at the first section where Jesus actually addresses them. And that's what we're gonna continue with this morning. There are the woes that he pronounces, and we're gonna have three woes this morning in verses 23 through 28. As Jesus is condemning the religious leaders, condemning them as false teachers and as hypocrites. This morning in our text, he demonstrates the dangerous beliefs and the dangerous practices that are leading them to judgment and leading those who follow them to judgment. In these three woes this morning, he focuses on the drastic difference between what they do on the outside and who they are on the inside. There is always the temptation to want people to like us. or at least to leave us alone. And so we do what we have to do on the outside, not to provoke people, to even appease them, to compromise, so that maybe they won't even notice us. Well, the Pharisees wanted to be noticed. They wanted to be noticed for their righteousness, for their holiness. What they missed, of course, that we're seeing in what Jesus tells them, the righteousness that they were boasting in was self-righteousness. It was their works, it's what they could do to gain the praise of men. Understand, they weren't doing this to gain the praise of God. They thought they had the praise of God and the attention of God by the way that they lived outwardly. Because when people praised them and identified them as being righteous and the religious leaders and people to be listened to, that puffed them up in their own self-assessment. And they thought then, of course, God has to be pleased with us. Look at how good we are. We understand that God tells us in his word, there's none good, no, not one. God does not love us because we are good. He makes us good because he loves us. That's why Jesus came, to take the ungodly, the ungood, and to make us good, to make us holy, to make us righteous. He uses a phrase here in verses 23 and 24 to start again that we left off with last time, where he tells them they're blind guides. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done without leaving the others undone. Blind guides who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel. In this first woe, Jesus pronounces this judgment on them as blind guides because of their hypocrisy, because they neglect what really matters. Now, there are principles given in the law for tithing in Leviticus 27 verse 30. and all the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land or the fruit of the tree, it is the Lord's, it's holy to the Lord. Deuteronomy 14, 22, you shall truly tithe all the increase of your grain that the field produces year by year. So there is a principle here for tithing off of what is produced. Now here's the reality. These Pharisees weren't farmers. They were not growing this stuff. So the way that they would interpret this was that they would take, and if you can imagine, Spurgeon actually laughed at this. Spurgeon said if you can imagine sitting down and counting through the leaves on an herb plant that you're growing in your kitchen and counting the number of leaves so you know how much 10% is so you can take 10 of them off. and give those to the Lord for the provision for the Levites, for the priests. Now, I'm sure the Levites loved it when the Pharisees came to tithe because they were tithing even of their spices. But I mean, what do you do with 10 mustard seeds? What do you do with a 10th of this or 10th of that? They were so focused on the minutia of something that really the tithe didn't even apply to. Jesus says, you're so hyper-focused on this thing that is insignificant. And yet you're neglecting weightier things. Now, he doesn't say that they should not have tithed, by the way, but he's telling them you're making a big point out of something that's very little, something that's very insignificant. And for Jesus to use the word to neglect the weightier matters, there was a whole school of debate. We talked about this last time within the different schools of the rabbis about what laws were weightier and what laws were lighter. So you knew what really mattered. You know, the laws you have to pay attention to, you know, like don't kill people. We all jump to that. We'll always compare ourselves. You know, we always find somebody to compare ourselves to that's worse than us, right? I mean, and what's the default? Well, I'm not Hitler. Well, you know, Hitler was Hitler, and you know that Hitler wasn't any more evil than any of the rest of us without Christ. That's the truth. We were all born in sin. We were all born guilty of sin. We would all go on to commit sin, some more than others. But then the debate becomes about the weightier matters, because if something weighs more, if something's heavier, then that's what we need to pay attention to. Now, there's two ways of danger here. The one way is to ignore the weightier things. And that's what the Pharisees are doing here. They're taking care of all the little tiny details that people might notice. I mean, you can imagine that they would announce it. I'm bringing the tides of my spices today. Look at what I've done. I'm so specific. And yet they were ignoring the things that really mattered. Justice, mercy, faith. These principles and these fruit that should be born in their lives that they're ignoring. Now, the other thing to do is to be so concerned about the weightier things that we don't pay attention to the little things. And we think that there are things, well, you know, I didn't kill anybody, but it doesn't hurt if I tell a white lie. It doesn't hurt if I exaggerate. It doesn't hurt if I bend to the truth. Listen, bent truth is broken truth. Sin is sin. And while there are different consequences for different kinds of sins, while there are degrees of sins, the wages of all sin, any sin, even one sin, is death. All sin is deserving of death. In that way it's equal. So we have to be careful that we do pay attention to the little things, but not at the expense of the things that really matter. This is the idea that there are those who will major on the minors. Have you met people like this? They usually have one thing they like to talk about. This is the joke among pastors. If you have somebody in your church who volunteers to teach eschatology in Sunday school, that is the one person that should not be teaching eschatology in Sunday school. Because that's going to be a hobby horse and they're going to be so focused in on that that they're going to miss the whole counsel of the Word of God. People get excited about something and people have pet doctrines. Heard this week about a pastor at another church, not a Reformed Baptist church in our association, but at another church and he's preaching and in his concepts of our union with Christ, he's gone off the rails and is denying the gospel. He's gone to the point where he's so focused on the doctrine of union with Christ that now he says that when Paul says, I was crucified with Christ, that literally that means we were there with Jesus on the cross. He absorbed some part of us into his person to participate in his crucifixion on our behalf. Now, that means you're joining with Christ. You become a co-mediator, and that means you're dying for your own sin. Not to mention, it means that you had to exist before you existed. Now they called him on it and he held to his guns and it's the association that they're in have lost some churches over this because he's so fixated on this point about the doctrine of the union of Christ. Now is the doctrine of our union with Christ important? Yes, because that is Christ living in us. That is the fact that yes, We were crucified with him, not meaning we were physically there, but meaning when he died, he took our place. And that means we died with him. And Paul says now we're raised with him to walk in a new way of life. And we can walk in that way of life because of our union with Christ. So we have to make sure that we don't take something that matters and make that all that matters. You know, some people, there's only one topic that they want to debate. There's only one topic that they want to discuss. And until everybody agrees with them, their mission on earth is not through here for the Pharisees. They were doing these little tiny things, but ignoring these big things, justice and mercy and faith. This, by the way, does harken back to Micah 6, 8, doesn't it? I'm sure Jesus had that in mind when he said this. He has shown you, oh man, what is good and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. This is what we're taught really matters. Justice, justice is doing what is right for the right reasons. We need to be just in our dealings with one another, just with our dealings with ourself. We need to do what's right for the right reasons. Proverbs 21 verse 15 says, it is a joy for the just to do justice, but destruction will come to the workers of iniquity. It is a joy for the just to do justice. Mercy, this quality of mercy, and this is beyond feeling compassion for. This is getting down with people in the mess that they're in and helping them out of it. You know, sometimes the best way to help somebody in a mess is just to sit down and be there for them. Sometimes you don't have to say anything, do you? Just be there, be compassionate, be loving and be merciful. Jesus said in Matthew 9, 13, go and learn what this means. I desire mercy. and not sacrifice for I did not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. And that's quoting Hosea 6, 6. I desire mercy and not sacrifice and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. We do need justice, but I love it that in the scripture in Micah and here in Jesus teaching and confronting The Pharisees, he ties justice and mercy together because you can be just but not merciful, can't you? And that's harsh. You can be merciful without justice. And that's where social welfare programs come from. Vance Abner once said sometimes that sometimes what we've done is we've allowed the social gospel movement to remove people from under the conviction of the spirit. that people will sin, they'll make bad decisions, there'll be consequences, and they'll end up hungry or needing a bill to be paid, and the church steps in and thinks that the compassionate thing to do is meet all their physical needs, so then we can tell them about the love of God. Well, you know it was those physical needs that God was using to drive them to the point where they had nowhere to go but up. Nowhere to look but up. Not saying that we don't care for people, not saying that we don't meet needs, but we need to be careful that we are not robbing someone of the opportunity to be broken by their circumstances. that God will use those things to bring them to an end of themselves. So you have to have justice and mercy together. And what ties those together is faith. And the word faithfulness more than belief means faithfulness, faithfulness to God. We need to have justice and mercy tied together in our faithfulness to God. By the way, John MacArthur says, you know where justice and mercy meet perfectly, don't you? Right there, they intersect at the cross. There's justice and there's mercy. Through Christ's death that we justly deserved and he did not, we now have been given mercy that we do not deserve by grace. The results then is that we need to be faithful to God. And faithfulness is a fruit of the Spirit, part of the fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, against such there is no law. When he tells them that you're straining at gnats and swallowing camels, this is funny because number one, this is a play on words. And I am justified in telling you. that in Aramaic, as Jesus would have been speaking in chapter 23, verse 24, Jesus uses a pun to make a point. Hallelujah, puns are sanctioned by the Bible. He plays on words. The Aramaic for gnat is kala. The Aramaic for camel is gamla. So he says you're straining at gamla and swallowing gamla. Now what does that mean? Interesting, by the way, that the gnat is the smallest unclean thing, creature. It's listed for us among the swarming insects in Leviticus. The camel, in this instance, where they are, would have been the largest unclean animal. So you've got the smallest unclean creature and the largest unclean animal. And so as a result of them being unclean, guess what happened if you were drinking a glass of wine or a cup of water, you're at your meal and you're drinking, you're out in the field, you're working, you take a drink, what happens if there's a gnat in your water? That would never happen. Well, you know, gnats are the same around the world. The spawn of the devil. You know that. They come out in the summertime and they fly up your nose and they fly in your ear. They get in your drink and they drown. Depending on what you're drinking, they die happy. And here they are. And you don't want to swallow a gnat. It's gross to swallow a gnat. You've heard about the old woman who swallowed a fly. It's the same concept. Ew! So there were actually rabbinical laws about how to strain a drink so that you didn't swallow an unclean gnat and defile yourself. And they actually, the Pharisees, took it to the point that they would drink through clenched teeth so that their teeth would strain out any bugs that then they could spit out, not on the dirt, but on the grass, if it was the Sabbath, and not swallow a gnat. Now, I understand not wanting to swallow a gnat. But can you imagine how ridiculous it is if you have rule upon rule and all this practice and procedure not to swallow a gnat while you drink? And yet, after you take your drink, you swallow a camel whole. How do you get him down? One hump at a time. Swallow a camel? You don't want to swallow a gnat, but you will swallow a camel. As the Bible explains this, smallest and largest unclean creatures, this is the idea, the parable, the principle that we see here, the speck and the plank, the splinter and the two by four. The Bible is using this to make a comparative point. You don't want to choke on an insect, but you'll swallow a camel. And that's what Spurges, as Spurges said, these Pharisees would swallow a camel willingly, hump and all. Now, what's a camel? A camel is a big deal. You're straining something little, paying attention to something, focused on something that really is insignificant. Is it really gonna hurt you if you swallow a gnat? How many of you this morning, if I ask for testimonies, how many of you have swallowed a bug? Some of you will not raise your hands. A lot of you will. Those of you who don't raise your hands, you swallowed bugs, you just weren't aware of it. We swallow bugs. They get digested, they move on. That's it. It's not a big deal to swallow a bug. Can you imagine trying to swallow a camel? It's just like the camel through the eye of a needle. It's impossible. You can't do that. So Jesus is telling the Pharisees, you neglect what matters, but you take this to the point that you major on minor things and you ignore the big things. It's as ridiculous as if you are so hyper-focused on not swallowing a gnat while you don't realize on the same hand at the same table, you're swallowing camels. You're arguing and insisting about small things while ignoring and being blind to big things that really matter. We need to talk about the small things, but we need to talk about the big things too. We need to make a big deal of what God makes a big deal out of. Can you believe it? That just been a few years ago now that a pastor who was the president of the Southern Baptist Convention said that God whispers about homosexuality in scripture. that he doesn't address it boldly or bluntly, he just whispers about that sin. Folks, God doesn't whisper about any sin. Sin is sin, and the Bible is clear. I love Votie Bauckham's response. Somebody said, well, Jesus never taught on that. Well, when you consider that Jesus is the source, he is the living word, and this is the written word, it doesn't matter if the words on the page are read or not. This is what Jesus says to us. So we take the scripture and we look at the scripture and it's plain about what is sin and what is not, what is allowed and what is not. And if we try to minor, make minor things big things and make big things like they don't exist, our economy is backwards. We're doing it wrong. We're not paying attention. We're neglecting what really matters. The next two woes actually serve to demonstrate that point. In verse 25 and 26, he goes from blind guides to blind Pharisee. There's a question. One commentator said he's not sure, but maybe Jesus is talking to one Pharisee. But as he talks to them and says, blind Pharisee, I think this can be taken and what Spurgeon said, I think it can be taken that he's making a personal point to all the Pharisees there. Each of you, you're blind. You're a blind Pharisee. What's the proof? It is in this woe in verses 25 and 26. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and dish that the outside of them may be clean also. What are they blind to? The filth inside the cup. Now why does this matter? You'll remember that they made a big point about the disciples and how the disciples didn't wash their hands like they were supposed to. Everything had to be done. There was a ceremonial purity and cleanliness that you had to do and there were steps to do that for every meal and you had to wash your hands a certain way you had to wash your dishes a certain way you had to you know not mix different kinds of foods on the plate you had to have the outside of the cup cleaned just right and he said everything on the outside looks perfect but you didn't look at the inside and he says you're blind because if you had looked at the inside you would have cleaned the inside of the cup before you put something in there to drink now have you ever done that where you have something to drink, you may be sitting on the porch enjoying the sunset. You know, we're past the gnats now, but you got a lid on it so there's no gnats in there and you're okay. And you get done with it and you take the cup inside to wash it out and you see what was in the bottom the whole time. So the only thing worse than seeing mud or something like that in the bottom of a cup is to find a dead spider. That'll make you wish you hadn't drunk any of it. If you had known it was there, you would have washed the cup or thrown the cup away or burned the cup. You would have gotten rid of it and found a new cup. You wouldn't have filled up that dirty cup. This is the point that if you do everything outwardly to be seen by men, but you're not taking care of the internal, internal morality, righteousness, purity, then you're like a cup that's filthy on the inside that nobody in their right mind would want to drink out of. You see, they did their righteousness to be seen by men, to garner the praise of men. I want to be noticed for who I am and for what I believe, and I want people to praise me for it. It's pretend purity. It's pretend. It's not real. Jesus says, for all that you look right on the outside, inside, the words here mean there is plunder and a lack of self-control. The words can literally be translated violence and robbery. You look so holy on the outside, But you are greedy and covetous on the inside. And in fact, that greed and that covetousness is what motivates your external righteousness. You're not being righteous because you think God demands it. You're being righteous because it draws attention to you and you want the praise of men. And so you will put on a show to get men to praise you. This is unrestrained selfishness. Literally, it means I will do anything to get what I want. And if I have to play a part, I'll play a part. I will be whoever I need to be. Heard another fascinating testimony. Again, I think one of the greatest times of our fire conference this week, sitting around a table with a bunch of other pastors, and we each got to share our conversion story. And one of the pastors who was there shared his conversion story, and he told us he had been a pastor for almost 30 years, and he'd been a Christian for the last 12. What? He was in a church, he studied the scripture, he went to seminary, he preached the gospel, but he didn't really believe it. He wasn't converted, there was no spiritual power in his life. He could go through the motions, and people loved him and thought he was a fantastic pastor, until he got saved and they couldn't stand him. And he said what brought him to it was studying the scripture and just realizing at one point he'd never been broken over his sin. He had never gone to Christ out of a desperate need to be saved. He just assumed for his upbringing and his family that he was. And when he came to Christ, that was one of the moments he said, it was the point that I bowed my head. And he said, I have led people in the sinner's prayer. And suddenly I knew that wasn't what I was supposed to pray. That doesn't change anything. That's just words if you're not meaning it. He said, I just realized, Romans 10, 13, whoever calls on the name of the Lord, I just had to call out to Jesus to save me. And he said, I bowed my head and I cried out to Jesus to save me. And I raised my head and I opened my eyes and I knew that he had saved me. revolutionized his life and his ministry and he had to go find a new church. Can you imagine being a pastor for 20 something years and not even knowing Jesus? It happens all around us. This is what the Pharisees did. He in his testimony said, I knew how to act the part. in the community and in the pulpit. I knew what people expected of a pastor, and I presented that really well. And people didn't even, they were shocked when he came. He called his associate pastor that was working with him at the time, called him and said, I've just been saved. And he thought it was a joke. No, you've been saved ever since I've known you. No, that's what's wrong. I haven't been, but now I am. This was what the Pharisees struggled with. Inside, they would do whatever they had to do to get what they wanted. And what they wanted was the praise of men. What we realize from the scripture is that external holiness requires internal holiness. Holiness has to work its way out. Why? Because our heart is the problem. Matthew 15, Jesus says, Those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart and they defile a man for out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornication, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. We need a new heart. We need holiness on the inside, holiness that's developed from our walk with God and our time spent with him in fellowship with the church so that then holiness is not a show. You know, you can always tell when you meet people. If we were to go out to lunch today and we were to sit down at lunch and two young men came in, got off their bicycles with their white shirts and their ties and their black pants, we would know who they were, wouldn't we? The cults all look alike. Each cult has its own look. We need to be careful that we don't adopt an outward look and think that that means we're part of the church. It's not about membership. It's not about baptism. It's about conversion. It's about salvation. It's about asking the question, do you know Jesus? Not, do you look like it? Not, do you act like it? Not, can you answer it? That was funny too. We were having a question and every time somebody asked a question around the table, the answer was God. Who did this? God. Who's responsible for this? God. And that was amazing because somebody finally said, y'all, this isn't Sunday school. You don't have to answer everything with Jesus and God. But don't we just fall into that routine that we know how to answer the questions. We know how to present ourselves. We know what's expected of us. Why? Because somebody at church told us or got irritated at us one time because we didn't do what we were supposed to do. We didn't look like we were supposed to look. Well, if all we care about is molding an external look like a Christian, we've missed the point. Looking like a Christian doesn't prove that you're a Christian. You have to have been convicted of your sin, brought to the end of yourself. You've had to cry out to God in brokenness. And this may happen many times over the course of your life. There are times that you might backslide into sin. There were times you might wander from God. There are times you might be caught in a besetting sin and you need to be broken again. Folks, the reality is we need to be broken every day, broken of ourselves and finding we're whole in Christ. That is the reality of our union with him. We need to be rid of self and full of the Holy Spirit so that internal holiness works its way out in the way we act. This is what's amazing. When you listen to what Jesus says about the groups of people, the sheep and the goats that stand before him on the day of judgment, and there are those who are gonna come, well, look at everything we did for you. Look, I mean, we were so super spiritual, we even cast out demons. Surely you have to let us into heaven. And what's the answer? Depart from me, I never knew. So you can look the part. You can fool everybody and you can fool yourself. You cannot fool Jesus Christ. It's amazing in the story where Jesus says, when you did these things, when you visited prison, when you fed the hungry, when you gave a cup of drink to the thirsty, you did this to me. And what's the answer from the sheep on the sheep side? When did we do that? You see, it's not that they didn't, because he says, you did. It's that they were totally not aware of it because they were just doing what they were supposed to be doing, not doing it so that God would take notice, so that God would keep count, so that we would have something to say, look what I did for you. You understand when we stand before Jesus, when we stand with him before God, the Father, it is not about what we did for him. It's all about what he did for us. And we take no notice. At that point, we will take no notice. And everything we would take notice of is going to be burned up wood, hay, and stubble. It's going to be gone. Paid for by Christ. Gone. Burned up. Because it's what He has done that matters. That's great because it takes the focus off of us. We don't have to convince people of anything. That'll free you in evangelism, I promise. That'll free you in your walk of discipleship. You don't have to convince anybody of anything. Just be obedient. That sounds simple, doesn't it? There's the war. Be obedient. Be putting the flesh to death. Be denying yourself. Be taking up your cross. Be following after Christ. The next woe, the third woe this morning, verses 27 and 28. also deals with deceitful appearances. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you're like a whitewashed tomb, which indeed appears beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. Even so, you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. Now, this would have been significant because you will remember what week we're in. At the beginning of this week, Jesus came in with the pilgrims from Galilee up through Jericho into Jerusalem for the Passover week, the Friday of which, in just a day or two, he's going to be crucified. As he's denouncing them in the temple, everybody would have known about the whitewashed tombs. You say, what is a whitewashed tomb? Well, if you've ever been involved in whitewashing, it actually means two things. But before we get there, here's the history. If in the scripture you touch a dead body, you're defiled. We look at that. Numbers chapter 6, Numbers 19, Leviticus 21. If you touch a body or touch a tomb with a body in it, you become defiled for a certain number of days and have to have sacrifices rendered so that you can be made clean again. Now there are people buried all along the road on the way into Jerusalem. And all these pilgrims are coming in for the week of Passover. And if you touch a body at that point you're defiled and can't participate. So you've traveled this whole pilgrimage and you lean against a rock and it turns out that's covering a tomb. you've just defiled yourself and you can't participate. So what they would do is they would have groups of people that would go out all around town and whitewash. They would use a lime solution to, limestone, to wash the tombs so that they were brighter than the rocks around them. So that you knew that rock that sticks out over there, that's a tomb. Don't touch it. Now, of course, if you were a child like me, what do you do when you notice the tomb over there? Don't touch it. Don't be defiled. But as Jesus makes the point, the way he uses the phrase is not that you're doing this to protect from defilement. You see, whitewashing has come to mean something else. And in fact, it did mean something else in the book of Ezekiel in the Old Testament. When you whitewash a building, you are using stucco and paint to cover up architectural flaws. Something's wrong with the building and you want to hide it. So you just cover it. It's the idea that you want to sell your house and there's a foundation problem. There's a crack on the side of the wall by the door. Well, you just put some putty in there and paint it. Hope nobody notices until after you've sold the house. It's supposed to be disclosed. But if you don't say anything, then you can get in a lot of trouble because you've just covered it up and pretended it's not there. God tells the people in Ezekiel, in fact, not to do that. He said, this is what you've done spiritually. You're doing this. You're using mortar and plaster. And so God says, you know, if you look at at my house, he says, you've seduced my people. You've told them peace when there is no peace. And the picture here is one builds a wall and they plaster it with untempered mortar. They don't build it right. And those who plaster it with untempered mortar, it will fall. There will be flooding rain and great hailstones and it will fall. A stormy wind shall tear it down. And God says to the point, if you're being this dishonest in the way you do things, I'm going to cause a storm. I'm going to cause the wind to blow to expose what you've tried to cover up. Of course, the prophecy there is those who are preaching peace when there is no peace. So he's going to be exposing the false prophets who aren't really prophets. The other thing that it means is as you strive to avoid defilement, you make something look good that's not good. You're taking care of a tomb. And you might have done this. You might travel and you might go through graveyards if you go and either visit tombs for family members, or some just like to go through, just find old tombstones, read old tombstones. You know, it's really quiet in there usually. Popular places, graveyards, people are dying to get in. But as you're there, you notice beautiful tombs and some mausoleums, some great big monuments. I actually found a graveyard in Arkansas, and it was a Confederate graveyard where they had taken a bunch of Confederate soldiers who'd never even fought in the war, but they'd all died of a sickness, something like 15,000 of them. And there's this cemetery out in the middle of nowhere. Of course, it's Confederate, so nobody knows it's there anymore. But the monuments are still there. Everything was erected in the 1980s. And to look and to see the inscriptions and see how many men died and all the things that went on and to be moved by that. But the reality is what's in those graves? Decomposing corpses, bones, the remains of dead people. And so Jesus's point is, you've made yourself look so alive and beautiful and righteous on the outside, but on the inside, you're a corpse. You're a rotting, decomposing corpse. Something that would have made you unclean if you touched it is a reality in your own soul. He said, outwardly you appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. You're not obedient to me. You're only serving yourself. You're dead to me. What is the cure for this? The reality here is that If they are practicing lawlessness, what does Jesus say to those who he says, depart from me, depart from me. You who practice lawlessness, you're not being obedient to God. What is the command here that we're supposed to be obeying? It's the command to repent and believe. You understand that's not just an invitation. That's an order from the Lord. Repent and believe. 2 Corinthians 6.14 warns us, don't be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. What fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? If you are being lawless inside, you're proving that you are spiritually dead. Now, what's the cure for these three woes? We looked at the cures last week for the woes that Jesus pronounced. There's actually one cure for all three of these things. Majoring on the minors and neglecting the weightier matters. Only caring about the outside, not the inside. And the cure for that corrupt, MacArthur says it's a corrupt inversion. Everything inside is about me. There's only one cure to corrupt inversion, and that is spiritual conversion. We have to know Jesus. That's the only cure. Why? Because that's the only true righteousness in all the world. The righteousness of Christ. Matthew 18 3, Jesus says, Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. In Colossians 2, Paul writes, in him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, buried with him in baptism, in which you also were raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he has made alive together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting requirements that was against you. you against us, which was contrary to us. And he has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross, having disarmed principalities and powers. He made a public spectacle of them triumphing over them in it. Our deepest need in this world as human beings is to be converted to Christ. to come to know Him. And when you talk about conversion and you preach about conversion, there has to be signs of conversion. It's referred to as the fruits of regeneration. If you're regenerated by the Spirit, the proof of that regeneration is that now you will see your sin. You'll see God's holiness. You'll see your need for salvation. You will repent and you will believe. At that point, when you trust Christ, you are justified. His righteousness, by the work of his righteousness, you're declared to be right with God based on the basis of your faith. The very next step in that process, which happens in an instant, is you go from being justified to being converted. I'm turning from all that I was and I'm turning to Christ. I was dead. Now I'm alive. Now, what is the proof of conversion? Studying this this week and preaching earlier this week, I had come across a couple of quotes, the difference between duty and delight. And it really fit well with what Jesus is telling the Pharisees, because everything they were doing outwardly, they thought was their duty before God. I have to do this. I have to look this way. I have to speak this way. I have to walk this way. I have to live this way. Because that garners me attention for my righteousness. This is my duty as a Pharisee. Now, do we have duties as Christians? Sure. I have to read my Bible every day. I have to go to church on Sunday. I have to go witness and tell people about Jesus. That is a duty. And these things are duties, things that we're told to do. But here is the proof that you've not been converted. Listen carefully. This is proof that you may not know Jesus. If you only go through the motions because you have to, but you dread it the whole time you do it. I've got to get up and go to church again. I've got to go preach to those people. I've got to go put on a show and act like everything is great in my life. How are you today? Fine. You don't want to. Listen, here's the reality. We can do everything we are supposed to do, and if we are doing it out of duty instead of because of delight, we're hypocrites just like the Pharisees. This is Amos. This is the prophet Amos talking to the people. Your worship, in Amos chapter 5, I've mentioned this before, your worship is perfect. Outwardly, you are going through the motions exactly like you're supposed to, but your hearts are far from me. What does that mean? You're going through the motions, but you don't mean it. Well, if you just do the motions outwardly and you don't mean it inwardly, you're lying. And God says, therefore, I hate, I despise your feast days and your sacrifices. The form looks, I mean, if you had attended the church there that Amos was addressing, you would have thought it was the most lively, vibrant, most awesome Reformed Baptist church, because that's the rightest of the right churches, right, in the world. Everything was done exactly right. But because their hearts were wrong, God hated what they were doing. That's got to be pretty strong when God tells you he hates something. Well, what's a fruit of conversion? A fruit of conversion is not, I have to go to church. It's, I can't wait together with the saints of God and worship God. Because while it may be a duty, it's a delight. I want to do it. It gives me joy. And I'm not doing it just because I have joy. I'm doing this because I want to do that. And you know the difference between when you want to do something and you have to do something. I'm going to tell you something. If living the Christian life is something you have to do, but not something you want to do, you need to be born again. You need to be converted because when you're converted and the Spirit lives in you and it's Christ living through you, you want to do what's pleasing to God. It's your delight to be in His Word and to meet with His people and sing praises to His name and to hear His Word preached and to counsel and serve and minister to one another. It becomes not a duty, not a drudgery. In looking at Isaiah 40 this week as the preachers preached through that at our conference, looking at God promising comfort to His people. And when you start at the first of Isaiah 40 and he says, comfort my people, that comfort is with a comfort that's already there. You don't have to do anything. It's there. You just have to participate in it. Look at everything God's given us. Look at all that he's done for us. Look at who he is that he would pay attention and condescend and come to us and seek us for salvation. And immediately we think, well, of course he would seek me. I was worth saving. No, none of us were. That's the glory of salvation. He didn't save us because we deserved it. He didn't even save us because we needed it. He saved us because He wanted to for the glory of His name. And now He empowers us as we are converted to Christ. He empowers us from on the inside to live a life of duty that is a delight. So that when we stand before Christ and He says, look at all you did, we're gonna say, when did we do that? I was just having a good time. I was just walking with you. I was just loving you and loving your people. I was just rejoicing even in the temptations. Yes, you're crazy. That's not a song group from the 60s. I'm walking through life and I'm finding deep seated joy. because I love what God loves and I hate what God hates. And that evidence of spiritual life is that even the things that are a duty to us become a delight for us. Not because I have to go to church. I get to go to church. One last story from this week. This is why you don't put a bunch of preachers in the room together. We all have stories with the group and the seminary in India. You think our lockdowns were bad. Their lockdowns in India for 18 months were so severe that you were locked in your house and there were police stationed and your family members who did not live with you could not even come to your house. If anybody not in your house when the door was locked came to your house or you left without an escort and a reason to leave, you were thrown in jail where you were locked in an individual cell and kept there until everything was over with. So the church couldn't gather. They simply could not. Nobody could leave their house, period. Asked, well, how did the church deal with that? His answer was simple. House churches. We went New Testament, family by family, studying the scripture, keeping in contact as they could, because we have all these devices now so that we can meet as we have to, maybe not in person. But it was the point that here we are this morning and we get to come to church. We have the privilege, the blessing to meet with God's people and to exalt his name, to talk about the greatness of our God. This is what the Christian walk should be. It should be a delight, not I have to. But I want to. I want to do what is right. That's what's missing with the Pharisees. The simple answer to the question, what should the Pharisees have done? They should have repented and trusted Christ there on the spot. They should have recognized and confessed he was the Messiah. You know, they knew he was, but they willingly rebelled against God's program because it didn't involve them. Here he is. And what they needed was to be converted. This morning, if the Christian life is not your delight, I'm gonna invite you to obey the commands of Jesus, to repent and to believe. Not gonna lead you in a prayer, but I'm gonna tell you this, you need to see that you need Jesus and you need to cry out to him. Now, maybe you know that you know him, but you know that your Christian walk lately hasn't been a delight, that you need to repent of your sin, of your hardness, and you need to pray that the Holy Spirit would restore your delight in doing the things of God, that he would restore to you the joy of his salvation. When you pray that prayer, and if you don't know how to pray it, Go to the Psalms, find it. David says that all the time. Read the Psalms in prayer to God. Pray David's prayers to God. Why? Because God gave David those prayers by the Spirit anyway. Pray them back and God will restore to you the joy of his salvation. He will spark within you a delight in who he is and what he has for us to do. Then it's not what I have to do. It's what I want to do for the glory of God. Let's pray together. Father, we do thank you for your Word this morning. We thank you for the work that the Spirit has done to open our eyes, our hearts, and our minds to the truth of the Word. Father, if there are those here, those listening to this message, who do not delight in living the Christian life and walking this walk that you've called us to, we pray that you would grant them grace upon grace and call them to trust in your Son. Draw them to yourself. For those of us who struggle with delight and with duty, for those that it becomes a drudgery to live this Christian life. Grant us repentance. Remind us the delight that it is that we have in an opportunity to walk with Almighty God, to commune with you, to worship you. The fact that you find our worship acceptable in your sight, what an amazing work of grace. Not something we can do on our own, but something Christ has done for us and to us and through us. We thank you then for the work of the spirit. Pray that you would continue to aid us with him to glorify, to exalt, and to magnify our Lord Jesus. We pray these things in his name. Amen. We prepare to