Well, as we turn our attention now to the preaching of God's Word, please turn with me in your Bibles to the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 23. This morning we'll be looking at verses 13 through 36 of Matthew, Chapter 23. If you're using your Pew Bibles, you should be able to find this on page 1053. As we begin this morning, I'll actually begin in verse 1 of chapter 23 and read through verse 36. So hear now the word of God. Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat, so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do. For they preach, but 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 marketplaces, and being called rabbi by others. 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. But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. Woe to you, blind guides, who say, If anyone swears by the temple, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath. You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred? And you say, if anyone swears by the altar, it is nothing. But if anyone swears by the gift that is on the altar, he is bound by his oath. You blind men. For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? So whoever swears by the altar swears by it and everything on it. And whoever swears by the temple swears by it and by him who dwells in it. And whoever swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him who sits upon it. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done without neglecting the others, you blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be cleaned. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, saying, If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets. Thus, you witness against yourselves that you are the sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of innocent Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation." Let us once again bow our heads in prayer. Our gracious Father, we thank You, Lord, for the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ and these words recorded by Your servant Matthew. And Lord, as Jesus is giving woes, pronouncing woes upon the scribes and Pharisees, we pray that we would take to heart the hard lesson that he is teaching them. That you, Lord, would give us ears to hear and eyes to see. May we come away, Lord, being molded more into the image of our glorious Christ. And Lord, we pray that you would bless my mind and my mouth, that I may think and speak clearly this morning. It is in the name of Jesus Christ that we do pray. Amen. Well, last week we looked at the opening verses of chapter 23 in the Gospel of Matthew. And if we recall, when we looked at those verses, there was a call to serve one another, contrary to the way in which the Pharisees and the scribes were, quote unquote, serving the people of God. Instead of exalting ourselves, Jesus' call is to be humble and to serve one another with humility. He ends that section by saying, whoever exalts himself will be humbled and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. In the verses that follow, what we have here is a clear humbling of those who had exalted themselves." Where Jesus, as we like to say, He took off the gloves and He directly challenges the scribes and the Pharisees and the leaders of His day. Now as Jesus confronts the scribes and the Pharisees and those who had been given charge to watch over the flock of God and to guide and to protect them, we also need to take to heart what He is saying to them, because these have been recorded for our benefit. These have been recorded so that we might learn from them, and that we might grow from them. And as we seek to apply these words to our own life, the theme that I want us to be left with, I want us to remember, is that in order for us to have a life which pleases God, which truly pleases Him, we must have a heart that pleases Him. In order for us to have a life that pleases God, we must first and foremost have a heart that pleases God. And I've divided these woes, and we'll actually be looking at them pretty much all together. Now, we won't be going through verse by verse. It's a larger section of Scripture, and we'll kind of be just bouncing around this whole section, because they really build upon each other, and there's a nice ramping effect as Jesus then gets to the final proclamation of woe against them. But as we look at this, we'll be looking at it in three points. Woe to the hypocrites, first of all, and we'll be looking at that introductory phrase that we see repeated throughout The second one, outward righteousness is meaningless for salvation. And lastly, strive to be clean from within. So first of all, woe to the hypocrites. Now, woe is not a word that we use often in our day and age. And when I looked up the definition of the word woe in the Oxford American Dictionary, I found it interesting that it has written there, often humorous. So when we do use this word, it's often in a humorous context. You might consider somebody just jokingly saying, woe is me, for some insignificant, meaningless little thing. So it's become a word that is used in humorous settings, and it's lost its oomph over the years, and its force. But what it means is something of great sorrow or distress. Of great sorrow or distress. And so each time Jesus proclaims here, but woe to you. What he is saying here is great sorrow and distress to you. Great sorrow and distress to you, O scribes and Pharisees, O hypocrites. May you be in suffering. That is the essence of what Jesus is saying here. Now, as I mentioned at the beginning of the message last week, that after Jesus had really silenced his opposition at the end of chapter 22, it's probable that a lot of the group of Pharisees and scribes had kind of gone about their business in shame and humiliation as Jesus had shut the door in their arguments. But there's no doubt some left there that Jesus is addressing and speaking to. But as he addresses them, he calls them hypocrites. We see that over and over again. O hypocrites, O hypocrites. And I've mentioned this in the past, but it's been a while, but I want to remind us that the word hypocrite here, the Greek word hypocrite is the word that we would use as actor, saying you actors. And when we consider the connection there of, you know, this isn't to bring any offense to any actors at all. It's, it's, it's a legitimate profession and there are some really good actors out there, but the core of their work is to be someone that they're not and to do it convincingly. You know, the really good actors are those where you're watching a TV show or you're watching a movie and you forget that it's the actor. And all of a sudden, it's that character is who they are. But at its very core, an actor is someone who spends their life being someone that they're not. And that is the essence of what it is to be a hypocrite. Of putting forward a facade, a lie that This is who I am, but really, I'm someone else. Acting in a way that is not in line with who you are. And as we consider hypocrisy, there's really, I think, two forms that it can take. The one form that Jesus is addressing here is those who on the inside are opposite in the sense that they are lawless on the inside, but they're putting forward a picture that they are good people, that they're following the law of God perfectly, and they're righteous, and they're those to be followed, but while on the inside, they are corrupt, and they are lawless. They are putting forth an image that is false. But I also want us to remember another way that we can be hypocrites. That was brought out by one commentator in dealing with the fact of As Christians, who are we? We are children of God, redeemed by the shed blood of Jesus Christ. We are sinners saved by the grace of God. But God has declared that we are His children. That is who we are. We have been adopted as sons and daughters of the Most High God. Our Father, as Jesus said in the previous text, is in heaven. We are His children. And so as His children, when we sin, Christians are being hypocritical. We are acting in a way that is contrary to who we are, who God has made us to be. And what can we learn from this? Well, don't be hypocritical in either sense of the word. For each leads to woe. Each leads to sorrow and distress. As children of God, when we sin, it leads to distress and sorrow as we realize we have sinned against our Father. We have grieved His Holy Spirit. And we in sorrow turn to Him and seek forgiveness and to be restored once again. But let us especially, brothers and sisters, make sure that we are not the other type of hypocrite as well. that on the outside we look squeaky clean, but on the inside we are full of lawlessness. That, brothers and sisters, leads to the sorrow and suffering of hell itself. So let us not only make certain our walk matches our profession, we must make sure our hearts match our profession as well. Let's not just be satisfied with making sure that our actions match the words that we speak, but let us be always diligent to make sure that our hearts, our hearts match the profession that we speak. And as we consider that, this moves us to our second point, that outward righteousness is meaningless for salvation. First of all, as we look at each woe here, The first and second woe in verses 13 and 15 are really combined together. And unless you have a King James Version or a New King James Version, you might be wondering, what happened to verse 14 that goes from 13 to 15? Well, there's a question as to whether or not what would be verse 14 that you might find in the King James Version or the New King James Version was in the original documents. But I can assure you what it teaches, Jesus pronounces woe to the scribes and Pharisees to their oppression of the widows and their swallowing up widows' homes. It's another example of their greed and hostility. And I want to assure you and comfort you that if it's there or if it's not there, the message of Jesus is not altered in any way, shape, or form. It's still the same thrust and the punch that is there, as we'll get to in this point. So verses 13 and 15, we see, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces, for you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who had entered go in. And then he also pronounces a second woe, for you travel across sea and land and make a single proselyte. And when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourself. A proselytist is a disciple, someone who is converted to the faith. And so what Jesus is expressing here is that the Jews of the day did, they went out and tried to convert people to the Jewish faith. They would seek to bring people in. And that's good, that's noble, but what Jesus is showing here is that the way in which the Pharisees were living out their faith and living out their life and completely missing the idea of faith and completely resting it upon a works-based righteousness, in this way, by setting up people to follow after them also in a works-based righteousness, they were shutting people out of the way to hell. They were having the opposite effect of what they were desiring. They were shutting the doors. We cannot enter the kingdom of heaven through works of righteousness of our own strength. Jesus said to his disciples that unless you have a righteousness greater than the scribes and the Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. That righteousness is the righteousness of Christ himself, which is only through faith in him. The second woe that is given in verses 16 to 22, Jesus changes his phrase a little bit. Woe to you blind guides. And he teaches about swearing. And in that, Jesus is pointing out the fact that they didn't even see the error of their own logic. What made things in the temple sacred was the fact that that was the dwelling place of God, the house of God. It was God Himself who made the temple and everything in it sacred. So a vow to those things was a vow to Him who made those things sacred. And the idea that they could well let go of whatever vow, if it was on such and such or not, is foolish. Because every vow that they took was taken before God. and in His name." Next, in verses 23 and 24, "...would you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you tithe mint and dill and cumin, but have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faithfulness." Again, pointing out and expanding upon the fact of their blindness. They're so focused on following the letter of the law, that they lost sight of what the law was actually teaching. About mercy, about grace, about faithfulness. Verses 25-26, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, for you clean the outside of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean. Jesus is getting closer to the heart of the issue of what's more important is the internal aspect of what the law approaches. As he taught in the Sermon on the Mount, it's more than just an outward observance, but it's also a heart issue in obeying from the heart. In 27 and 28, He expands then on that theme, giving a vivid picture of a burial plot, a tomb that looks beautiful on the outside, but is full of dead people's bones. Then in the last section, verses 29 through 36, we see here, Jesus kind of turns what they proclaim on their own heads. We see another example of In an outward display, they proclaim that if we had lived in our father's days, we would not have so persecuted the servants of God and put them to death. This is a bold proclamation that they make, but Jesus, as he's building towards this, has been showing that these things were all outward displays for people to look at, for people to observe, for people to give them credit and exalt them for. Whereas even by their own declaration, they are showing that their hearts are far from God. Because as they say, and Jesus here points out, you're aligning yourselves. You're saying that you are their descendants. You are their sons. You are their fathers. The relationship between fathers and descendants, it's more than just a physical bond. It's something that you are in likeness of that person. We were once the children of Satan and like him, but we have been redeemed and are the children of God. Here, these Pharisees and their proclamation of saying, we would not be like our fathers, they're showing that their hearts are exactly like them. And as Jesus says here, which is remarkable, if you notice here, especially in verse 34, Jesus says, therefore I send you, I send you. You see the subtle declaration there that Jesus is making right before their eyes? I am God with you. I am the one who sent you the prophets. I am the one who sent you those servants. And I will send them to you again. And we see recorded for us in the book of Acts how this is played out. Jesus sending his apostles and they are persecuted. And we see throughout church history how the servants of Christ have been persecuted as he has sent them. This, what Jesus then goes on to say in this culminating section of, so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of innocent Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. Jesus there is giving a bookend of martyrs. In the Hebrew Old Testament, it actually ended with the book of Chronicles. We have in there the Zechariah who was murdered in the temple. So we have here Genesis, innocent Abel, righteous Abel, who was murdered by his brother King. All the way then through the entire Old Testament, when Zechariah the son of Berechiah was murdered. All that righteous blood will come upon this generation. And why is that? And not only that blood, but Jesus says also as He connects it to those that He will send to come. Coming on that generation. He's pointing to the fact that it is that generation that will crucify Him. All of the righteous who have been and will be murdered for their faith in Christ come in the name of Christ and their death is an attack and assault upon Christ Himself. So as they were the ones through whom their hands hammered the nails into the cross, the blood that is shed of the righteous will come upon that generation. So what is Jesus getting at? Verses 13 to 24 really express to us, Jesus is teaching them through these woes, their condition of blindness. And in verses 25 through 36, Jesus is showing them the source of their blindness is their heart. Their hearts are unclean, they're lawless. As he says clearly and points out the imagery of tombs filled with people's bones. Now, I want you to imagine, brothers and sisters, imagine someone that you love dearly, all of a sudden, leaves. Says, I never loved you, really. For many years, they showed you each day, and they put on a show that they loved you, but one day, all of a sudden, you find out, well, no, they never actually loved you. That's a reality for countless homes throughout our nation. Where one day that one spouse finds out that, oh, my spouse does not love me. That's a reality of some families that we are closely connected with. And we know the pain and the suffering that that brings. It is no different, brothers and sisters, When people proclaim to know God, to love God, and outwardly display a perfect righteousness, but inwardly, they are full of dead people's bones and lawlessness. At times, brothers and sisters, we can feel like we are oppressed and like we have to follow certain rules and regulations to please God and to make Him love us. What I want to point out to you, brothers and sisters, is that when you begin to feel so overwhelmed, I want you to remember that works of righteousness are meaningless to our salvation. They are meaningless to our salvation. If they are devoid of a heart that is right before God, they are meaningless. We instead are to live those, walk according to the law of God, out of love for what He has done for us, not to win His love, but as a response to the love that He has freely given us in Christ. This leads us to our third and final point. Strive, then, to be clean from within. I remind you again, the hypocrisy of the Christian is his sin. And the hypocrisy of the Pharisee is His righteousness. But I also want us to see here, as we look at this dialogue that Jesus has in pronouncing woe, this great sorrow and distress upon the scribes and Pharisees, we can look at that and think, well, He's pronouncing judgment upon them. Yes, in one sense. But, brothers and sisters, I also argue that these are pronouncements of grace upon the scribes and Pharisees. For if they do not have sorrow and distress over their sinfulness and the way that they are internally, apart from their outward works, they will never be saved. They will never be redeemed. In order for us to be redeemed, we must fall broken before Christ in great sorrow and distress, seeking God's forgiveness over our sin. So in essence, every single child of God, God has said, woe to you. Woe to you. Be distressed. And by God's grace, He gives us hearts that respond to that call to woe. And we are distressed. We are sorrowful. And we turn and we seek His face. We must be woeful about our sins. How do we change? How do we change before God? How do we grow in grace and following after God? We don't grow, we tend to have it backwards. We think, if I want to follow God more, then I need to do X, Y, and Z. But that's not how God has designed it. God has designed it by first we must have a heart that is right with Him, and out of that then will naturally flow the fruit that is to be seen. Proverbs 4.23 calls us to watch over our hearts with all diligence. For from it flow the springs of life. How do we watch over our hearts? Well, brethren and sisters, we partake of the means of grace. The means of grace. What are the means of grace? Well, God is a sovereign God. And He pours out His grace upon us. But He is also a God of means. So there are things that He has sovereignly decreed. This is a way by which my grace will be poured out to you. This is one of them. of God. And in it we have the preaching of the Word, where God's Word is expounded and declared. That is a means of grace that God has given to us that molds us and shapes us more into the image of Christ. Prayer is a means of grace by which we are molded more into the image of Christ as we've communed with our God and communicate with Him. The reading of the Word is a means of grace as we read the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament. God, the Holy Spirit, takes this Word and applies it to our hearts and molds and shapes us into it. The sacraments are a means of grace. We do not believe that There is something magical that happens where these elements will somehow actually become the body and the blood of Christ. We don't believe that. We believe that by faith we do actually feed upon His body and blood. By faith. These things remain bread and juice or fruit of the vine, but by faith. We are truly spiritually nourished as we remember, as we... I mean, think about the symbolism there. In the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, you are taking, by faith, the body of Christ and you are eating it. And it goes into your stomach where it is digested and the nutrients are spread to the rest of your body. That imagery of digestion showing our union with Christ. The same thing with the fruit of the vine. This is a spiritual meal that God has given to us to nourish us. When we neglect in any way the means of grace, we are punishing our own souls. We are punishing our own souls in not taking full advantage of the means of grace God has given to us. The genuine acts of righteousness flow out of a heart that has been cleansed by God and is being molded by Him. I'll close the leaving you, brothers and sisters, with John 15, verses 4-5. There Jesus says, I am the divine, you are the branches. He says, if you abide in me and I in you, you will bear fruit. But he who does not abide in me, and I do not abide in him, he will have no fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing." The only way we can have the fruit that Christ was meant to produce is if we are in the vine. And the only way that happens is through a clean heart, a new heart that has been given to us by God's grace. and is being molded more into the image of Christ. And so, brothers and sisters, remember, in order to have a life that pleases God truly, we must first and foremost have a heart that pleases Him and that is only given by His grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Amen. Our gracious Father, we do thank you for the grace that has been shown to us in Christ Lord, there are many ways and times in which we feel overwhelmed and we think that we can somehow earn your love. Lord, we know that you, like any loving parent, you are grieved when we disobey. But Lord, may we be reaffirmed in the truth that we cannot do anything to make you love us less. But we can also do nothing to make you love us more. When you look upon us, you see our Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you, Lord, that by your grace, you have given us new hearts. And we thank you, Lord, that by your working in us, that the fruit of the gospel is seen in our lives. That we are not saved by outward displays of righteousness, but through faith in Jesus Christ. And Lord, may we out of that new heart May we see greater fruit as we take advantage of the means of grace that you have provided. May you mold and shape us more into the image of Christ. And may His glorious fruit be seen more and more in our lives. For as you yourself declare to us, if you love me, you will obey my commandments. In the name of Jesus Christ, we do pray. Amen.