Morning. I will ask you to turn in your Bibles, please, to Matthew 23, and we are going to look at the first 12 verses this morning. Matthew 23, 1 through 12, and once you're there, I would ask if you would please stand in reverence for God's Word. And these are the entirely sufficient, inerrant, and authoritative words of the living God. Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, the scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses's seat. So do and observe whatever they tell you, but do not do the works they do. For they preach, but they do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. They do all their deeds to be seen by others, for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, and they love the place of honor at feasts, and the best seats in the synagogues, and greetings in the marketplace, and being called rabbi by others. But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one father who is in heaven. Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ. The greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. May God bless the reading of his word. You may be seated. The question I want us to consider this morning in light of this text is this. What is the motivation behind your behavior in public? Are you motivated by a desire to make yourself look good to others? Or are you motivated by a genuine desire to bring glory to the living God? Do we see God's law as a to-do list without understanding what it's pointing to or what is underneath or behind it? Or do we, as Jesus pointed us to a few weeks ago in this text, see a picture of who God is and then therefore, in light of that, make every effort to conform our lives into his image? What about when we're thinking about theology? Is our study of God's word just to remember a bunch of facts and memorize little things for when we debate someone? Or just sign a statement of faith as just a box to check off without really meaning it so we fit in the right circles? Or, when we're doing theology, are we glimpsing into God's character in order that it will transform every sphere of our lives? The problem that we've seen as we've been working through the tail end of the Gospel of Matthew is that when Jesus goes to Jerusalem and he interacts with the scribes and the Pharisees and the priests, we have a bunch of religious leaders who show that they are all show and no substance. They're all sizzled and no steak. These guys are hollow men, men without chests. These men make a great show of their outward actions, and yet they have repeatedly shown that they do not understand the Scriptures. And so what's happening as we move along in the narrative of Matthew, as we're moving along in the Gospel, we're looking at the 30,000 foot view, I try to bring us there occasionally, so that when we're looking at the small details, we can make more sense of it in light of the big picture. But what's happening in the big picture, as we're working through this story, We're seeing further installments as Jesus is establishing his kingdom, he's establishing the new covenant, and the old covenant world is slowly coming to an end. We are watching an overlapping time of worlds, an overlapping time of covenants. Christ is bringing the one up and the other is phasing out, and we're seeing a transfer and a contest of power as that is happening in the tail end of Jesus's ministry. were on the boundary of a new world being created into existence just like what happened after Noah's flood. Jesus himself has been using more and more force and increasingly harsh and abrasive language as his ministry tactic as this contest goes on. He's asserting his authority and his lordship very clearly in this final week. We saw that on Monday with this triumphal entry, and there's a choir singing messianic psalms to Jesus, acknowledging him as the son of David, and he refuses to silence them. He is accepting the crowd's verdict that he is the Messiah, that he is the son of David. He cleanses the temple like the priests. This is the second temple cleansing before this temple gets judged to be deeply sick, deeply diseased, and it must be pulled apart brick by brick as the Levitical priests were commanded. And then on Tuesday, Jesus comes back to town in the morning. He curses the fig tree, and he speaks of the Temple Mount. This mountain will be thrown into the sea of God's wrath. And then he tells a number of parables about a transfer of power using sons, using vineyard tenants, and so forth. Jesus is saying in story form, what is happening to the world? What is happening to the nature of his people? It is being ripped out of the hands of the covenant breakers and given to those who have faith. He's demonstrated his authority over Caesar and taxation. He's asserted his authority over the resurrection of the body. He has asserted that he, that God, is the unifying theme behind all the law that Moses gave. And lastly, as we saw two weeks ago, he had just pushed the logic of the Psalms into the corners to demonstrate that he is the Messiah. And the Messiah is not just an earthly son of David, but is in fact divine. He is God the Son. Jesus has asserted in an indirect manner, but very clearly and very forcefully, that he is God the Son. These men have a contest against God, not just with a man. And we're still on Tuesday, as we start chapter 23, And so we've had a number of very heated exchange. But finally, on this last one, the Pharisees and the priests have shut their mouths. We've seen Jesus' rhetoric move through several stages. At first, he's teaching and inviting the way of life. However, after the Jews resist him, he starts to speak in parables, which further drives the truth home for those who will hear it and further alienates those who refuse to hear it. But then now finally, after the Jews start a plot to kill him, he curses them with woes. And that is where we are at in the story. Jesus is cursing Jerusalem in a series of woes. This is a kind of second Sermon on the Mount. The first Sermon on the Mount was out in the wilderness. This sermon is on the Temple Mount. This time it's come into Jerusalem, and Jesus gives a sermon that is actually a photo-negative of that first Sermon on the Mount. In that first Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives a number of beatitudes, or blessing statements. In Scripture, that's called oracles of weal, oracles of blessing. If you do this, you will be blessed. Happy are those who do this. Blessed are those who do this. It's oracles of weal. It is blessing. Now Jesus pronounces seven woes, oracles of woe. Seven damnation statements that actually match up to the to the Beatitudes perfectly and we will see that as we get to them It's a photo negative. It's a mirror image of the Beatitudes is now these woe statements of that match them for disobedience. And this is in keeping with how God has always worked. We see that already in Moses. In Deuteronomy 28, one of the most famous statements that Moses left us to see how God operates in covenant. If you obey the words of these law, blessed will you be in the city, blessed will you be in the country, blessed, blessed, blessed. And if you break these words, then cursed will you be in the country. Cursed will you be in the city. God damn you. Your cows are going to die. Your wife will not get pregnant. Your vineyards will dry up. Damn you if you break covenant. Woe, woe, woe. And that is exactly where we are at in the story, is a series of woe statements for the unbelief that Jesus has found in Jerusalem. It is the photo negative of the Beatitudes, and this is in perfect symmetry with Deuteronomy 28. And some people struggle how to reconcile this curse on Jerusalem, which is very clear and very firm and very forceful. And we read about divorce language, God divorcing Israel and Jeremiah and Isaiah, and Jesus picks up that same kind of theme here. And how does that all fit with the promises also that God has given to the city, some of which seem to be unconditional? And I think we can say two things about God and his covenant as we approach a heavy text, like we're about to get into, Jesus' woe sermon in Matthew 23. First of all, we can look at a place like Joshua 21, verses 43 to 45. So this is Joshua writing. So keep in mind, we're in Joshua's time. And what does Joshua say about God keeping covenant? Joshua's looking back after the promised land has been given, And he says, thus the Lord gave to Israel all the land that he swore to give to their fathers, and they took possession of it, and they settled there. And the Lord gave them rest on every side, just as he had sworn to their fathers. Not one of all their enemies had withstood them, for the Lord had given all their enemies into their hands. And now notice this. Not one word of all the good promises that the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed. All had come to pass. In Joshua's life, past tense, God kept his word. God cashed this check. He promised, he kept his word perfectly. Joshua speaks of that in the past tense. This has already happened. God gave you the land. But further, when we run into these woe statements, whether it's in Deuteronomy or whether it's here in Matthew, God does, in fact, mark specific days on the calendar to bring his judgments on the earth. And these are frequently, all through scripture, called a day of the Lord, or days of the Lord, so forth. And when those things happen, God is not breaking covenant, he is actually keeping it. Because think of all the conditional statements. If you do this, expect this. If you do this, however, expect this. When God comes in wrath against Jerusalem, he is not breaking his covenant, he is keeping it. He is doing what he said he would do from before this ever happened. God is doing exactly what he has promised. His blessing is conditional. His blessing is for a thousand generations of what? Those who love him. As long as that condition is met, God will give his blessing. And he curses for three or four generations of those who hate him. So as long as Jerusalem hates the Lord, he is happy to return the favor and judge them. And that's where we're getting to in this And it's not a denial of God's providence whatsoever because, as we looked at this morning, God also supplies the condition of faith in us and through us. So God can make certain promises that are conditional because he supplies the conditions on our behalf. So this is not leaving man in charge or denying divine providence, not by any sense. At this point in the story, the Jews have broken covenant for many generations. Their leaders very clearly hate God, especially now that he's shown up in the flesh in Jerusalem. Their hatred is very clear. And so when God destroys the temple and the city, just as he promises to do, he is keeping his side of the covenant against those who have broken their side. And again, lest we think this is all just confined to a particular time in history, this is interesting to know this about first century Jerusalem, but there's no application for us today. I want us to remember that God is still in the business of removing his lampstand from apostate churches and apostate families and apostate cities and nations. That's the 30,000 foot view. Let's get into the text. In verse 1 through 3, Jesus says, So after humiliating the Pharisees about the law and then showing His divinity from the Psalms, right? We saw that Jesus shows not only that he's divine, but he also shows the triune nature of the Godhead from the Psalms. He humiliates those he is in a contest with, but now he turns to the crowd. We don't know if the Pharisees and the scribes are listening in, if they're eavesdropping on this conversation or not, but Jesus' attention is clearly on the crowds now and not on the Pharisees and the scribes. He's not addressing them, he's addressing the crowd. He has silenced his opponents, and now his concern is very clearly for the bystanders. The shepherds of Israel have cursed themselves, but Christ remains compassionate for all the sheep that are left without a shepherd. By turning to the crowd, Jesus is further showing what we've already seen. There has been a contest for authority in Jerusalem. And so the question must be answered. Who is going to shepherd these lost sheep in Israel? Christ humiliated the Pharisees in front of a live captive audience, and now he is slowly and gently and tenderly releasing the city that was under their snare. He is letting them loose from that bondage. He's loosened the hold that the Pharisees have had on the city, and he is demonstrating to the crowd that they no longer need to fear these wicked tyrants. In verse two, Jesus does acknowledge that the scribes and the Pharisees do sit on Moses' seat. Scribes were those who were specialists in the text itself, and the Pharisees were more like the theologians. So if we put that in today's seminary or Bible college terms, the scribes would be the one who would teach a class on Torah or New Testament survey, for example. The Pharisees would be the ones who would teach you theology or church history, roughly. Lest we say that well then that means that's bad because scribes and Pharisees did it no not at all These are legitimate offices Jesus says they're sitting on Moses's seat. Okay. This is a legitimate office They're holding it the wrong way, but the office itself is legitimate the seat is a legitimate thing and it has an actual historical pedigree right in Scripture and today in our learning arrangements, what we're normally accustomed to is students sitting at desks, and then the teacher stands in the front of the class to instruct. But in the ancient world, a teacher would take a seat, and his students would sit around him on the floor, literally learning at the feet of their master. And the master had the seat. And we still actually talk that way. In university departments, you have the chair of philosophy. You have the chair of science. That is this language. This is the typical arrangement of how this worked in that time. And so it's perfectly fitting and right and good that Moses' seat would not stay vacant after his death, but that God would continue to rise up teachers who would come and pass the torch as they continue to instruct God's people. So the seat itself is legitimate. Jesus is saying the office is legitimate. These men are holding it in an illegitimate manner, however. And that's why Jesus tells the crowd that they should do and observe, and this is maybe tough to swallow at first, whatever they tell you. That sounds, in English that sounds like an unlimited statement, do whatever they tell you. So this is like a blank check, and we of course know that it can't be. The whatever that they must observe is actually a limited statement. It clearly does not include all the legalistic extras that the Pharisees demand, but is limited to the legitimate teaching and application of Moses. And you'll notice closely, if you look at verse 3, the word so, That's the conditional statement. They're sitting on Moses's seat, so because this is a legitimate office, therefore, do whatever they tell you, but that is in connection to the legitimacy that is placed there on Moses's seat. So they don't have free reign to add to that. So to the degree that they are teaching Moses properly, the people must obey. Jesus himself, of course, follows every word of Moses perfectly and from the heart, and he intentionally rejects the legalistic traditions and additions that the Pharisees have made surrounding Moses' law. And so we see here a principle that the abuse of something does not undo its proper use. So because there's a bad theologian out there doesn't mean we should give up on theology. Because there's bad husbands out there, we don't just dissolve the idea of marriage. The abuse of something does not cancel out its legitimate usage. We just need to do it the right way, according to the bounds of scripture. And all of us, in reality, have authority in our lives. We're all men and women under authority. Children are under the authority of their parents. Wives are under the authority of their husbands. Churches are under the authority of elders. Citizens are under the authority of the government. And I know we bristle at that, but this is true. The world of the Bible is a world that has actual authority, actual hierarchy, actual patterns to follow. however we chafe at it. But the Bible is also clear that all of these authorities are legitimate, and this is noteworthy, okay, we have to keep this in mind. The authority is legitimate to the degree that it conforms with God's law. So a husband or a church elder or a governor may not demand anything of those under their authority. Their authority is legitimate to the degree that they are following God's law. And when legitimate authorities operate outside their limits, they do not need to be obeyed in that area. Many of us think or can think of examples of how people grab at authority that God didn't actually give them. And there may be times where we have had to or will have to, again in the future, disobey strategically things where authority has gone way outside of its proper bounds. If the town council in Niverville said, on Tuesday from now on, everybody has to wear a yellow shirt, they have no competence and no authority. You don't need to wear a yellow shirt. In fact, I hope you don't, okay? Because they have no authority to tell you that in that realm. That also does not give you permission to go speeding through Niverville and murder people and lie to authorities, okay? This is different than putting up the pirate flag and saying, okay, well, we're all anarchists now. So Jesus threads a line here between giving proper respect to the office of Moses' seat, saluting the flag, it's often called, or saluting the uniform. So even if the man in the uniform is not an honorable man, you still respect the position even if there are specific spots where you must obey God rather than man. And so that concept of saluting the uniform is a difficult thing, but many of us are in positions where we have to do that, where someone has exercised authority in an ungodly way in our lives that is not a license to become pirates, okay? Even if we have to obey God rather than man, we still respect the man, and Jesus is offering respect to the office. even when he clearly is in a tilt against the Pharisees and the scribes. Verse 3 goes on to show that the men in Moses' seat are indeed not good men. Their righteousness is nothing but religious theatre. These men are rotten on the inside and they make a great show of the externals. They preach but they don't practice, Jesus says. I mentioned not long ago on Reformation Sunday when we looked at a little bit of history of Puritan New England and Christianity on this continent, I mentioned that the warm, vibrant faith of the Puritans within two generations had become very nominal and very ungodly on this continent, and the hearts of the grandchildren had become cold. indifferent until in the mid-1970s the situation had gotten so bad that Gilbert Tennant kind of dropped a missile in North America by preaching a sermon titled, The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry. And he pointed to the problem of unconverted leaders in the church and all the damage that that was doing. And Jesus is addressing the same problem here in verse 3. even much closer to our time, reading his commentary on this passage, R.C. Sproul comments on his own time in seminary in the 1950s and 60s. It seemed as if the majority of members were quite hostile to all things Christian. I scratched my head and wondered, what are these men doing preparing for the ministry when they are so hostile to the things of Christ? In time, it became apparent to me that one of the reasons why people go into the ministry is to refute the truth claims of Christianity. Becoming a pastor is one of the easiest ways to gain a public hearing. The preacher can air his views to a captive audience for an hour each Sunday morning. However, those unbelieving men who are ordained to the ministry usually find it difficult to sustain a viable ministry in the local church for any length of time. So this is tremendous. So they tend to gravitate to administrative positions, and before you know it, the unconverted control entire denominations. How do denominations get conquered? By people not caring. Just going through the motions. And I'm going to single out every young man here who may one day be an elder or a deacon or a minister in this church. Never quit the builder mindset. Managers ruin things. Managers destroy things that the builders built, okay? You never stop with the builder mentality. You never stop taking dominion. You never stop pushing. The minute you stop pushing and you become a managerial church is the day your soul leaves the church, okay? Churches get destroyed this way, families get destroyed this way, entire denominations and nations get destroyed this way. We quit taking dominion for Christ and we just become managers. We become complacent with what we have. It's a problem in the Bible times, it was a problem when Gilbert Tennant was preaching, it was a problem when R.C. Sproul was in ministry, and it's a problem today. Managers, destroy. Builders, build. So young men, build. Take dominion. It's in your DNA. God made you for dominion, okay? It's not wrong to have ambition. Push into it. God built you for dominion, and the minute we give up on it is when we turn backwards. Jesus further describes what he sees in verses 4 through 7. It says that they tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move their finger. They do all their deeds to be seen by others, for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others. We saw in the last half of chapter 22 that the scribes and the Pharisees did in fact know everything about the Bible except for what it meant. They were experts on the details and they had no clue how to put it together in any kind of meaningful or coherent sense. So rather than seeing the law as a reflection of God's holy character and standing in awe of it and letting it guide their sanctification, all they saw was isolated rules. And isolated rule keeping with no unifying purpose or theme is a recipe for misdirection. So they start creating new laws around the old laws and finding loopholes that still let them to do the bare minimum and still cross over the bar of obedience, at least the external bar of obedience. There's one obvious example in their treatment of the Sabbath, and we know of course that the Sabbath is a picture of God's own pattern of rest, And labor, the Sabbath actually predates God's law with Moses. The Sabbath is there at creation, so this is something that tells us something about God. The pattern is good. Moses reaffirms it, and we're meant to see the meaning. And if we understand it properly, Sabbath is a great blessing. The legalistic approach of the Pharisees, however, not seeing what's behind it, just making up rules, decided that it would be good to limit a man's walk to 2,000 cubits a day. Is that in Moses? No. 2,000 cubits. What is that? Well, about 3,000 feet. So here's what you're allowed to do on the Sabbath. We're not going to think about what it actually means or what it's designed to do. We're just going to say you're limited to 3,000 feet a day. That's it. But that became difficult because what if your mom's really sick and she lives more than that away? you'll be surprised to know this. You can establish a secondary residence by bringing a household item with you and dropping it at your 2,000 cubits, and that resets the clock, okay? So you just put your toothbrush down and now you can walk another 2,000 cubits, okay? And then you put your hairbrush down, you can walk another 2,000 cubits. And then you put your shoe down and you've established another secondary residence. It's nonsense. These guys completely missed the plot and it became about just vain rule keeping that completely misses what the point even was in the first place. And that's why Jesus has to tell them that the Sabbath was made for man. The Sabbath is meant to be a blessing for you. You can rest. In fact, you must rest. It's a day of worship. It's a day of rest. It's not a day of mindless rule keeping and nitpicking about where you leave your toothbrush so you can take more steps. This is just one example, but there's many such examples. They don't see the picture of God, and so they just make arbitrary rules so they could feel like they were righteous and in charge. Verse five. mentions the phylacteries that some wore, and we saw that a couple weeks ago as well as we were working through this passage. This is based on an overly literal interpretation of Deuteronomy 6 that instructs us to have God's word on our hearts and minds. So the Pharisees took little scrolls of scripture and they rolled them up really tight and they put them in little leather boxes that they wore on their forehead and on their arm, right, but it's by your heart. If it's on your arm, kind of connect it to your hand, and it's also right by your heart. But the fact that they took a command to internalize scripture and turned it into leather boxes with paper inside it is the most perfect metaphor you could possibly think of for completely missing the point. What's the point? Get it in here! Okay? Just a box on your forehead does nothing. A box on your arm does nothing if you're not actually doing righteous things with your hands. It's the most perfect misdirection you could imagine. It's the most perfect metaphor for the religion that Jesus found in Jerusalem. A clear teaching that is designed to get us to internalize scripture turns into a box you wear on your body. How much worse can you possibly miss it? And what do we do every day? Those people missed it. But I think we also need to consider how we might miss it. Jesus mentions the tassels on the priestly garments. And these were actually, according to instruction, in Numbers 15, 37 through 41, there actually are instructions given to put tassels on the priestly garments. And the reason given is to remind us of God's law. How do tassels on the garment remind us of God's law? Again, if we're seeing what's being communicated, if we're looking for the symbolism, if we're looking for the meaning, we can see, well, what do tassels do? Well, they flow down from the man. and they follow him around wherever he goes, as our righteous behavior must follow us around wherever we go. The tassels were good, but they were not the thing in themselves. They were symbols to point us to that what is in the heart flows out of us, like tassels. Your actions follow you around. Your reputation follows you around. That's what the tassels were meant to communicate. There's symbolism. There's meaning. But again, they lost it, and it just became about the tassels. John Gill in his commentary on this passage talks about one rabbi in particular at this time who made his tassels so long that he needed servants behind him to put the tassels on pillows. So these tassels that are meant to remind us of good behavior suddenly become like this royal thing where you have servants carrying pillows behind you to take your great big tassels around with you everywhere. They missed it. They missed it. So we're getting a picture that these false shepherds in Israel did not care to lead the sheep into deeper and greater godliness, or to truly understand the scriptures. But what did they do? They loved the authority, they loved the respect, they loved the position that they gathered to themselves. They loved the theater that they could create in public. The Reformed Baptist preacher John brought us in his time, says that the application for that in his time was that it's for this very reason that the man who most desperately wants to be invited into the pulpit is the one you need to spend the most effort keeping out of it. Okay? Pulpit ministry is an act of service, and if someone's chomping at the bit, he's probably not ready, at least according to John Broadus. Let others discover and validate the calling. Even great men in history, I love John Knox. He was a bodyguard before he was a preacher. And as long as he was a preacher, he always preached with a great big broadsword at his side. He was a man's man. He was a galley slave. He spent several years rowing across the Atlantic. He was a man's man. Tough as nails, Scottish Highlander type. He was a warrior of a man. And at one congregational meeting at St. Andrew's Castle, membership meeting, the preacher John Ruff called John Knox to the ministry. You know what John Knox did when he was called to the ministry? He ran out in tears. He realized, this is terrible. I'll do it, but this is terrible. He felt the gravity of this calling. John Knox did not become John Knox because he was interested in making a name for himself. He became great because he was willing to serve, despite knowing what it was going to cost him. Matthew goes on in verses 8 through 12. But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father who is in heaven. Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ. The greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted." And so Christ is further advancing his view of how to lead God's people. And this stands in very sharp contrast to the Pharisees' view of how to run and how to lead Jerusalem. There is always a certain kind of man who wants respect, and he wants titles, and he wants prestige. But he's not interested in showing up and doing the dirty work. He's not interested in getting his hands dirty. And this isn't just inside the church. This is outside the church as well, too. The men who are most eager to get respect are often the men who don't have it because they're not worthy of it. Men who demand respect typically don't get it because they're not that kind of a man. outside the church or inside the church the rule is true that authority naturally it just it's like gravity it just goes to the people who take responsibility okay so if you want authority don't be looking for a title just start doing the right things and you will find people just start to trust you more and more. Of course, Jesus' context has specifically to do with the ministry among God's people, and I'm reminded of an old saying in church history. I can say this because I'm bivocational and a dairy farmer, but it has been said in church history that a hot sun and a slow mule have led to many a call to ministry. There's a type of man who's drawn to ministry because it's an air-conditioned job inside the house. There is that kind of a man out there. It's non-physical work. And these types of men are typically soft. They're typically vain. And they're driven by public praise because they have soft, sensitive egos. They're driven by praise. They're driven by public opinion. And this is the kind of man that the Pharisees were known for being. They like being in charge. They just don't like the part about showing up and getting your hands dirty and serving other people. They don't mind laying burdens on others as long as he doesn't have to lift a finger. And the way of Christ is exactly the opposite. Christ leads by serving, and he serves by leading. And so again, by way of application, especially because we're talking about leadership here. And so this is a young man's realm. I want the young men especially to pay close attention to what's happening here. I don't doubt that some of the young men here are going to be the elders and deacons and preachers of this church one day. And I want you to see what Jesus is saying here. This isn't a title to grab. This is an office to hold out of service, to understand properly. Leading God's people makes you a slave and not a master. Just ask Moses how glory it is to have a title as you lead a bunch of whining people through the promised land. And I'm not complaining. That's not what's happening here. It's not tough here at all. but leadership frequently involves that Moses style of being a slave to your people. And if God does call you into ministry, then also please keep in mind that ministry is not, I repeat, not a place for creative entrepreneurship. It's not. If you're a preacher, you are a slave not just to your people, but to the text. You're a slave to the text. One of my preacher friends once commented to me, and I agree with him, it's so much easier, just let the text do the work. Let the text do the work. This is your outline. You don't need to come up with some clever four-point sermon outline and then fill it in with however your imagination works. Let the Bible do the work. Let the Bible do the work. It's amazingly simple, and I agree with him. It does save a lot of work if you just let the Bible do the work. And this is very different. He spoke of this positively. That's very different than Andy Stanley's very public advice that preaching the text is lazy. You know that? Preacher said that. Preacher at one of the biggest churches in North America said that expository preachers are lazy because they let the text do the work. Real preachers are innovators. Real preachers come up with really creative topical sermons and then they just grab verses from all over to kind of support what they want to say. So we're agreed. Letting the text do the work is easier. Okay? I'd say let the text do the work. Some people think the preacher's ego needs to take over. So young men, be ready to be a slave if that's what God is calling you to. I like the amen, by the way. So being a slave to the text is both harder and easier than being creative. It's easier in the sense that you don't need to keep coming up with creative ideas or new rules that no one has discovered. New law from God just dropped everyone, let's check it out. That's not how it works. It's harder because your hands are tied. You are a slave to the text, you are a slave to God's word. But we're at an interesting point in history here in North America, I do believe. We're coming out of several generations of softness and vanity and the church has gotten lazy and flabby and managerial instead of dominion-taking and we're seeing the rotten fruit that has come from that managerial approach to God's house. The downside of that is there's a lot of disaffected young men who have all this masculine energy and they've been told it's sinful to be a boy. Okay? Having dominion feelings in your body is wrong, it's sinful. God says, no, it's good. You've got to direct it in the right way. And the older men need to show the younger men how to direct that in the proper way. But there's a great appetite. There is something, and this isn't just here. I hear this all over the place. There is something worldwide happening with young men, and it's terrific. It's going to have to be steered in the right direction. It absolutely will. because young men left to themselves are not typically a storehouse of deep wisdom, okay? It will need to be shepherded, but something good is happening as masculinity is no longer illegal, okay? I'm happy for that, and it's not that I'm wanting to neglect the ladies here, but this is a text about church leadership, which is naturally masculine. It's naturally and necessarily patriarchal in that sense, which is why I'm drawing attention to the young guys here. But there's other ways that people serve in God's house. It's not just elders or deacons or ministers. There's also a deep need now, as much as ever, for ministries that are helpful and come alongside the church, like counseling, for example. If you're a counsellor, you're always, again, you're a slave to the gospel. You're always looking for ways to get the gospel into a painful situation. We're not looking for pop psychology with two or three misapplied Bible verses. That's not biblical counselling. Biblical counselling is getting the gospel itself. into difficult situations. Getting the gospel into a difficult marriage. Getting the gospel into addiction. If you're a counselor, you're a slave still to the text. And if we're not, we're going to set ourselves up as the Savior. I'm the one who likes to fix things. I like to be the Savior. I like to be the hero. But again, we're slaves. We're slaves to getting the gospel into a difficult situation. And there is a great need for biblical, actual biblical counseling in this day. And so I don't doubt many of you will be called to that as well. But remember, you're a slave in that ministry and in all others as well. The Puritan David Dixon said that men are called to the ministry, not to preeminence. In other words, your ordination is your death. Your conversion is actually your death. But your ordination better be your death. You're not to be a Pharisee, you're not to be out in the public with tassels. By the way, this is really hard to preach to myself, because I know I'm the main target of application here, but so are you, so I'll keep going. Ministry is not about building a personal brand or about taking our station and making it big, building an empire around a personality. I think the best ministries don't have the names of their founders attached to them, typically. Rather, ministry is about being obedient, taking your spot, taking your place on the battlefield, and then being obedient to the Lord's directions that he's given you. And so the verses that we're looking at here should not actually be seen also as a strict prohibition against titles like teacher or father or instructor, because the apostles used those descriptors themselves. Rather, what's being prohibited here is the vanity of chasing those titles for the sake of public respect. And so anyone here who is ministering or will be in ministry in some form or another must do those even then as some who are under authority. We're answerable to Christ. We're under his authority. He asserts his own preeminence over the ministry of the church. And again, in these verses, just in case that anyone has forgotten what he just showed us from the Psalms in his contest with the Pharisees, last passage, he is again showing his preeminence over the church. Okay, the Pharisees and the scribes, the preachers and the elders are not preeminent over the church, Jesus Christ is. And that's why he says we have one teacher, verse 8, one father, verse 9, and one instructor, verse 10. And this is God himself. And notice here, Jesus just showed his divinity from the Psalms. He showed the triune nature of God in the Psalms. What do you see here? One teacher. Who's the teacher? Holy Spirit. One father, who's the father? God the father. And one instructor, who he identifies as himself. This is a triune statement. The triune God has authority over the church. So don't exalt yourself as one. Even God's shepherds are those who are under authority. Maybe you could think of it like God's shepherds in the church are like commanders out on the battlefield. Yes, they have real authority. Yes, they're actually leading. Or at least they ought to be. It's real authority. They ought to be leading. But a battlefield commander is always one who takes orders from a general. He himself is one who is under authority. And the shepherds of God's people are like that. They're commanders on the battlefield, under authority of one who is greater than themselves. Slaves to the text, slaves to Christ. And so Christ closes in verse 12 with a familiar instruction that we've seen throughout the gospel several times, to pursue humility. And so again, this is in contrast to the vain, self-important man who uses his soldiers as a human shield. A man who uses other people will become an object of ridicule and scorn and he will not get respect because he doesn't deserve any respect. David's darkest days were when he was leading his troops on the battlefield from back home. It caused him to fall into sin. Cowards lead from the rear, men lead from the front. Real men don't use their troops as a human shield for them. Real men take bullets for their men. They lead. They're not afraid to get shot. In fact, if you're at the front, you frequently will. take some flack, and that's okay. And so young men, count the cost if that's what God is going to call you to. And in one sense, God calls all of us to this, because this isn't just confined to church leadership. There's leadership principles here generally. It is clear that those who lead God's people do so as men under authority. And preaching is an authoritative event. It ought to be taken with the utmost seriousness by both the preacher and the listeners, but just like Moses' seat, it's a legitimate office, it's a legitimate task, but the preaching of God's word is authoritative the same way, to the extent that it correctly expresses the meaning of the word. And that's why we are intentional in this church about saturating the whole service with as much scripture as we do, to breed familiarity with the text so it gets internalized, so we understand it. This is why we stand and pay attention and then respond audibly when we read God's Word to involve the whole person in the reading of God's Word and internalizing it, familiarizing ourselves with it. This is why we encourage catechesis and family Bible reading and family worship at home. And this is why I want all your Bibles open during the sermon. no preacher gets a free check. Every preacher needs to just preach the next verse, and then you keep going. And that's why your Bibles are open, to see it for yourself. Check, double-check, triple-check, do the work, okay? So the situation in Jerusalem has to do with those who are leading God's people, but it applies to all leadership positions generally. There's not a person on earth who is happy to follow a vain, sanctimonious, self-righteous, self-important man who is busy promoting himself. We all know self-promoters. They're the worst people to be around. Nobody likes to be around someone who's praising his own glory, right? And typically, these are guys who, the older they get, the better they used to be, okay? No one likes that. And it's not helpful for young men to hear old men complain about how much better it was back in the old days either because they can't go there. So why don't we shepherd rather? Why don't we grab hold of that masculine dominion that these guys want to take and shepherd it in a healthy direction? Teach them how to be leaders that are joyful instead of shrill and self-important. Because, now I'm talking to dads and husbands, if everything in your house is serious, then guess what? Absolutely nothing is serious. If everything is like 10 out of 10, nothing is. So I think there is a general principle here that one way you can tell the spiritual health in a family is how much laughter there is. Does dad love his girls enough to tease them and give them nicknames? Okay, I hope so. Can kids laugh at each other? Is there laughter in the house? Is there joy in the household? Or is dad just commandeering? There's a different ethos in the house and it will yield different kinds of fruit. Parents, if you've got little kids and you're just at that stage where you need to teach them to obey, Don't be like the Pharisees. Don't add rule upon rule upon rule upon rule upon rule and exasperate your children. Sometimes the best answer to poor behavior is actually for there to be fewer rules that are properly explained. Pare it down, get your kids, because the goal in parenting is not just to get your kids to obey the standard, it's to love the standard, to understand it. So there might be times where it's okay to have fewer rules, teach them deeply so that children love to obey, so that they see that they're glorifying God by obeying. But we need to follow the Christly model of leadership here and not the Pharisaical one. We're not doing this for our own gain. People are willing to follow if they know that you love them and you have their best for them. The patriarch who sits on the chair barking orders will soon find that he has nobody following him. The patriarch who is willing to bleed for his family will sense loyalty from all those around him. This is two ways to lead families or cities or churches, okay. Patriarchy is one of those inevitable concepts. It just means father rules. There's church fathers, there's family fathers, there's city fathers, there's national fathers. And that's why when this lands on the Pharisees and scribes, there is also application to every husband and every father in this room. And it forces us to make a decision. We need to see the difference between the Pharisees and Christ. It's a great difference. It's the difference between unbelief and belief. Are we just going through the motions to make our name great? Are we downgrading God's law by adding all kinds of petty man-made rules around it and treating it like our opinions are the same as God's actual law? Or are we willing to pay a price for obedience to God's actual law, be willing to bleed for those that God has put in your care, and then offering grace and service to others so that all of us together are marching in the same direction to make God's name great, not for each of us to make a personal brand for ourselves. Let's close in prayer. Lord God, you have shown us two very contrasting ways of what leadership in your house looks like. The way of vanity, the way of arrogance, the way of self-promotion like we've seen with the scribes and the Pharisees. or the way of tough strength that leads from the front, as your son demonstrated in his own ministry. Lord, I pray for all of us here as we all, no doubt, have positions of authority somewhere or another. And yet I want to pray especially for young men as they are learning to lead their families well. lead this church, as we lead workplaces and all kinds of other things. Lord, I pray that we would see that the way of service and the way of humility is far greater than demanding titles. That the way of joy is far, far more contagious than the shrill man who curses what he cannot change. Lord, and I pray for the men in this church and the women, but I pray for all of us that we would be filled with a joy which is contagious, a joy which meets difficulty and tough situations with laughter and confidence in your purposes. Lord, I pray that the young men would be humble enough to receive instruction and that the old men would be humble enough to show genuine leadership instead of cursing what they don't like. Lord, and I pray for us as a church, I pray that we would never allow ourselves the sloth and the laziness of slipping into managerial mode, but that we would continue to be active in taking dominion, in advancing the Great Commission, of sharing your gospel with those who need to hear it, in growing deeper in our walk with you and encouraging and spurring one another on. Lord, help us. We thank you that you forgive us where we fail in this task, and we also want to thank you that your Holy Spirit is more than enough to help us as we pick up where you would have us go. Pray this all in the strong name of Jesus, and we thank you for your kindness to us. Amen. Please stand as we sing. What is our hope in life and death? Christ alone, Christ alone. What is our only confidence? That our souls to Him belong. Who holds our days within His hand? What comes apart from His command? The love of Christ in which we stand. Christ our hope in life and death. What truth can calm the troubled soul? God is good, God is good. Where is His grace and goodness known? Who holds our faith when fears arise Who stands above the stormy trial Who sends the waves that bring us nigh Hallelujah! Now and ever we confess Christ, our hope in life and death Unto the grave what will we sing? Christ He lives, Christ He lives, and what reward will heaven bring? An everlasting life for Him, and we will rise to meet the Lord, and sin and death will be when Christ is our forevermore. Oh, sing hallelujah. Our hope springs eternal. Oh, sing hallelujah. Christ our hope in life and death. Oh, sing hallelujah! Our hope springs eternal. Oh, sing hallelujah! Now and ever we confess Christ, our hope in life and death Now and ever we confess Christ, our hope in life and death God gave his law to water the garden of Israel. The Pharisees turned this law into a blunt instrument with which to beat people, into a whip with which to scourge them, and into poison which turned the garden into a waterless desert. Moses came to bring Sabbath, to break the yoke of burden, and to let the slaves go free. Jesus likewise has come to the weary and heavy laden to offer rest, while the Pharisees and scribes act as second-rate pharaohs, forcing the people to make bricks without straw. Because Jesus' life is a re-enactment of Israel's history, it begins in Exodus and ends with exile and woe. Prophets curse a people when they have broken covenant and refuse to respond to the preaching of repentance. Jesus is bringing woe on Jerusalem and her leaders, and in so doing, is offering to free those under their burden. Will you follow the proud into certain woe or the humble into certain blessing? And I'll leave you with the benediction from Numbers 6. The Lord spoke to Moses saying, speak to Aaron and his sons saying, thus you shall bless the people of Israel. You shall say to them, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace and go in peace.