Amen, tell this morning's sermon is learning from the Pharisees learning from the Pharisees on Sunday mornings We're working our way through Luke's gospel verse by verse and we find ourselves at Luke 11 42 we're beginning a new section Jesus finished the dinner with Well, I don't know if he's finished the dinner But he was at dinner with this religious leader who was upset that Jesus didn't ceremonially wash his hands and Jesus didn't like that this man and the other religious leaders had added some number of commands to the word and so Jesus rebukes this Pharisee and And then he moves from rebuking that Pharisee to rebuking all the religious leaders. And he does this using six woes. And let me give you a brief outline for the following verses. In verses 42 to 44, which is what we're going to look at this morning, Jesus condemns the Pharisees using three woes. And then in verses 45 to 52, which we'll begin looking at next week, he condemns the lawyers or the scribes with the other three woes. The word woe to make sure we understand it for this morning and the following sermon, is not so much a curse as it is a lament. So it would almost be better to understand that Jesus is saying, how sad for you. That would be a fitting equivalent, how sad for you. So we're going to consider why Jesus would say this to the religious leaders, what exactly was so sad for them, so we can learn from their example and ensure that the same isn't true for us. So look with me at the first woe in verse 42. Jesus says, woe to you Pharisees. You tithe mint and rue and every herb and neglect, or it should almost be understood as but you neglect, justice and the love of God. These you ought to have done without neglecting the others. So just picture that. Picture the Pharisees meticulously weighing out 1 10th of every spice and herb that they used. More than likely, this means that they probably even individually counted the seeds. And so when Jesus says, these you ought to have done, let me be clear about what he was saying and what he wasn't saying. He was saying that they should be given a tithe because that's what the law commanded. He was not saying that they should be giving a tithe of spices and herbs like this because that's not what the law commanded. Leviticus 2730, it says, give a tithe of the land whether of the seed of the land, referring to vegetables, or of the fruit of the trees, referring to fruit, is the Lord's. It is holy to the Lord. So any reasonable person would read the law, see this command, and nobody would misunderstand it and think that it meant to give a tithe of spices and herbs. People would understand that this meant the produce, the fruit, or the vegetables. And so this begs the question, if that's what a reasonable person would take away, then why would they go ahead and go so far beyond what God's law commands and give a tithe of the spices and herbs? And there's two reasons. And both of the reasons relate to what we've discussed the last couple of weeks. First, the religious leaders, we knew, where was their focus? Their focus wasn't inward. Their focus was where? Outward, right? And they thought that giving a tithe of spices and herbs would make them look outwardly good or more spiritual to everyone who became aware of them doing this. And second, something else we talked about recently, this is one of the fences that they added. You can picture the religious leader saying, if we're supposed to give a tithe of fruits and vegetables, then what we can do is expect people to give a tithe of even spices and herbs. If we can get people to give a tithe of the smallest things, here's the fence, then we can be sure that they'll give a tithe of the bigger things, or basically everything else. And nothing could be smaller than spices and herbs, so let's tell people that they should give tithe of that. And here's the irony. If that was their thinking, which I suspect it was, to put that fence around the law to prevent people from violating the command to give a tithe, then the irony is that they wanted to make sure that the law was not neglected, but what did Jesus say they ended up doing? What does it say? It's not a trick question. I mean, they're trying to make sure that nobody breaks the law, but in the process, or they're trying to make sure that nobody neglects commands in the law, But what did Jesus say that they actually ended up doing with these fences that they added? Caused people to neglect parts of the law. And this brings us to Lesson 1. Jesus lamented over the Pharisees because they, Lesson 1, only obeyed when it was easy. Jesus lamented over the Pharisees because they, Lesson 1, only obeyed when it was easy. Let's be clear about what Jesus was condemning here. He wasn't condemning their obedience to very fine points of the law. In other words, while it wasn't required, if they wanted to give a tithe of spices and herbs, they could do that. There was nothing necessarily sinful about it. But the problem was they did that and then neglected other areas of the law in the process. God says that they need to concentrate on all of his commands without leaving some of them undone. Now, here's the question. Why did they obey some areas and neglect other areas? And I would submit to you it had to do with ease and difficulty. It had to do with ease and difficulty. If you're writing your Bible, do me a favor. Look in verse 42 and circle the words tithe, mint, and rue, and every herb. Circle that and then write the word. Draw a little line out and write the word easy. And then you can circle the words justice and the love of God. draw a little line out and write the word hard. Now it might be tedious and very unattractive or time-consuming to count out one-tenth of all of your spices and herbs, but I would ask you this. Is it a hard thing to do? It's meticulous, but is it hard? No, it definitely is not. But what is hard? It is hard to be just. which means to do what's right, to be honest. This is the horizontal command relating to our treatment of others. It is hard to love God, which is the vertical command. So the point is, it's clear that the religious leaders, in attempts to be spiritual or to appear self-righteous, were very comfortable obeying those commands that were easy, but they were neglecting the commands that were hard. I want to give you an example of this, of the religious leaders' behavior using an individual in the Old Testament. You don't have to turn there. I suspect we're pretty familiar with the account. God commanded Saul to wipe out the Amalekites. They had centuries to repent. They didn't. Many people criticize God because of how severe he looks regarding the extermination of the Amalekites. The truth is it's actually one of the greatest examples of God's mercy in all of scripture when you consider how many centuries he had given these people to repent and when you consider just how wicked they had been and that God had not punished them earlier. Most people living in that day would not have criticized God's severity, they would have criticized God's mercy or criticized him for not being just and having not destroyed the Amalekites earlier. So God commands Saul to wipe out the Amalekites, destroy everything that belongs to them. Listen to this, 1 Samuel 15 9, and see if you can tell how Saul did the same thing that the religious leaders did. It says, Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of the fattened calves and the lambs, all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them, all that was despised and worthless, they devoted to destruction." So do you see how Saul looks like the Pharisees? Or do you see how Saul obeyed in the easy areas, but he disobeyed in the hard areas? He obeyed in the easy areas in that he was willing to destroy what? Everything that was unattractive, that was worthless, that was despised, and then he disobeyed in the heart area. He wouldn't destroy everything that was attracted to him or that looked good to him. Now, if you think about it, is God really that impressed with our obedience in those areas that are very easy for us? Or I would say those areas that don't even require much sacrifice from us because they're not very tempting. It's not very difficult to resist or is it better to obey God in those areas? That are really difficult for us to obey because they happen to be particularly Tempting and those are the temptations that require a considerable amount of sacrifice on our parts There's an account with David that illustrates this again You don't have to turn there, but you can just listen to these verses and here's the situation David is facing the He's in a situation where he needs to obey God. God had commanded him to build him an altar. And God told him to build this altar on the threshing floor of a man named Arunah. And what you need to know about Arunah is he is very generous, and he seems to have a considerable amount of affection for David, and he thinks very highly of David. And so when he sees David coming, it says, when Arunah saw David coming toward him, Arunah went out He paid homage to David, to King David, with his face to the ground. And Arunah said, why has my lord the king come to his servant? And David said, to buy the threshing floor from you in order to build an altar to the Lord as God had commanded him. So David tries to buy this threshing floor and then listen to what Arunah says. Second Samuel 24, 22. Arunah said, let my lord the king take and offer up what seems good to him Here are the oxen for the burnt offering. Here are the threshing sledges and the yokes of the oxen for the wood. All this, O King, Aruna gives to you. May the Lord your God accept you." So not only was Aruna willing to give David the threshing floor, what else was he willing to give him? Pretty much everything else that was required for this sacrifice. He's going to give him the threshing sledges for wood to be used probably to build the altar and to burn for the fire. He's even going to give him the animals, so anything that David was going to need. Now here's the question. If David took everything that Arunah gave him and used that for the sacrifice, whose sacrifice is it truly? It's Arunah's sacrifice. So listen to David's wonderful response. Second Samuel 24, 24, David said, no. but I will surely buy it from you for a price because I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God that cost me nothing." So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for 50 shekels of silver. So what did David say? He said, I'm not going to offer anything to the Lord that what? That cost me nothing. Or that involves what? No sacrifice on my part. And why is that? because God commanded him to do this, and obedience that doesn't involve any sacrifice isn't much of a sacrifice. So when Saul and the Pharisees, when they obey in these easy areas that don't involve much sacrifice, they're not offering much to the Lord. It's not very impressive. Before we're too hard on them, let's be honest, we can do this too. We can obey in easy areas, perhaps even areas that border on insignificance, like counting out a tenth of our spices and herbs, and then we might disobey in the hard or the challenging areas. The problem is God is not looking for our obedience, at least not primarily, in areas that are easy for us to obey. And I would say God, you know, He's not looking for us to be counting out one tenth of every spice or herb that we use. These are kind of the despised or the worthless areas for us. that are easy for us to destroy. Instead, he's looking for us to resist those temptations that are particularly difficult. These are the temptations that he wants us to utterly destroy. Or you might say, these are the temptations, using the language Jesus used in the Sermon on the Mount, that he wants to see the sword of severity, cutting off the hand or plucking out the eye. So what could this look like? Here's a few examples. Imagine this. People who are very frugal, perhaps they even border on stinginess, they never waste any money, they never Think of taking any chances with it. Now, those sorts of people, is God going to be really impressed when they don't give in to the temptation to gamble? No. You can almost say that's not their nature. But what would impress God? If they're generous? If they're gracious? If he sees them giving to the church or giving to others? You imagine a man who's a workaholic. You could say that his job is his idol. Is God really going to be impressed or pleased with him when he doesn't give in to the temptation to be what? Lazy. Probably not. But is God going to be impressed when this man puts his job on the back burner and makes his family or his church or his friends or other relationships in his life the priority that they should be? Imagine a woman who loves to gossip, but maybe she also hates the taste of alcohol. Is God really going to be impressed when she gets together with some of her friends and she doesn't get drunk? Probably not. But is God going to be impressed when he sees her get together with her friends, and then she says to them, we shouldn't talk about this person, or this is a conversation that shouldn't take place right now, or this is starting to border on gossip? If she's someone who is particularly prone to that, then that would be a particularly pleasing behavior to God. So Jesus said this, you tie these spices and herbs, but you neglect these hard areas. So if we think about Jesus' words and we ask ourselves, are there easy areas that we feel good about obeying while there are hard areas that we neglect? Are there easy areas that we feel good about obeying but there's hard areas that we neglect? And if you ever thought about this, most people, or at least I did prior to becoming a Christian, maybe some of you did or maybe some of you still are tempted to do this, We generally define our goodness by what we don't do. If you were to talk to someone and they were to tell you that they're a good person, they're going to say that it's because they haven't done what? Murdered someone or committed adultery. Have you ever thought about that? That someone's goodness is defined by the sins or the evil that they haven't committed, as though that makes us good? I can remember that saying that many times. And so the point is, we tend to obey in certain areas, and then we'll neglect other areas, but we'll think that we're good because of these areas where we're obeying. So we obey regarding lying, but then we neglect God's commands to love our enemy. Or we obey regarding worry, but we neglect God's command to be content. We obey regarding laziness, but we neglect God's command to avoid pride. We obey regarding stealing. It's not particularly difficult. We don't walk into a store, and you know there's just some people they go into a store and it never crosses their mind to steal something. Other individuals go into the store and the first thing they're thinking is, how could I walk out of the store with this without paying for it? And so if we obey regarding stealing, but we neglect God's view of blame shifting, one of the most common ways we justify disobedience is by focusing on our obedience, but God is also looking at those areas where we disobey. Jesus would say, I know you're obedient in these areas, but I don't want you neglecting these other areas. Listen to how Jesus explains this verse in a similar account in Matthew 23. He says, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. You tithe mint and dill, again, herbs and spices, and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faithfulness, Again, these you ought to have done without neglecting the others. You're blind guides, you strain out a gnat, and you swallow a camel. Now, I don't know if you've ever, there's kind of two lies that circulate through the church. I think they're both very detrimental. One of the lies is that all sins are the same. That's just completely not true. They're not, they're not the same in many respects. They're not the same in terms of their consequences, the effect on others, or even the effect on the individual. You can read, I think it's in 1 Samuel 6, when Paul says that sexual sin is a sin against our own body. Homosexuality is a sin against nature. There are certain sins that God labels as abominations. And since not all sins are labeled abominations, even just that alone reveals that sins are different in God's sight. Proverbs 6.16 lists six sins that God hates. And whether you can say, you might be able to say that God hates all sins, but you've got to acknowledge that apparently these six sins, he must hate even more for them to be listed. So that's just one of those lies. I don't think people tell it maliciously, but it's just simply not true and very detrimental. One of the other lies that can kind of find its way into the church is that all commands are the same. And that's just not true. We've got Jesus himself saying, that some commands are what compared to others? Weightier or heavier and others that are lighter. And he says some of these weightier or heavier commands are like camels. And then in comparison, he says some of these other lighter commands are more like gnats. And they were getting this wrong because they were straining out gnats. They wanted to make sure that they obeyed these little commands. But then they were swallowing these camels. They were disobeying the weightier or the heavier commands. If the religious leaders wanted to give a tie the spices and herbs, they could do that. But the problem was they made it too big of a deal. They were taking a nap, and they were acting like it was a camel. And this brings up their second error on our bulletins, that Jesus lamented over the Pharisees because they less than two majored on the minors. Less than two, they majored on the minors. And while you're writing, if you want to write something else in your bulletins here, In verse 42, you've already got it circled, tithe, mint, and rue, and every herb. Next to the word easy, you can also write the word gnat. Giving a tithe of mint and rue and every herb, or I mean, giving a tithe of the spices and herbs, excuse me, you can write gnat. And then you probably have the words justice and the love of God circled. Next to that, you can also write the word camel. You've got the word hard written, you can also write the word camel. Now, since the Lord says that some commands are heavier or weightier than others, I think this indirectly tells us that not only should we be more familiar with those weightier or heavier commands, but they warrant greater attention from us. We should have more familiarity with them and be willing to give more attention to them. So what exactly makes them weightier? so we can identify them. The weightier commands, or you could say the camels, are those commands that deal with the inside. Justice, mercy, faithfulness are weightier issues dealing with the heart. Giving a tithe, especially a tithe of spices and herbs, that's lighter. That's an outside behavior. This would be a gnat. Second, the weightier commands are the ones that deal with the treatment of people. Giving a tithe, at least not directly, It doesn't deal with the treatment of others, but what does? Justice, mercy, faithfulness, love. These are the weightier commands because they deal with the treatment of others. Briefly turn a few chapters to the left to Luke 6, 1. So I can show you an example of this. In your Bibles, turn to Luke 6, 1. All right, verse 1, it says, on a Sabbath while Jesus was going through the grain fields, his disciples plucked and ate some heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands. But some of the Pharisees said, why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath? Verse 3, Jesus answered them, and he said, have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him? How he entered the house of God, he took and ate the bread of the presence, which is not lawful for any but the priest to eat, and he also gave it to those with him. Now, here's what you need to know about this account that's so fascinating. The law said that only who could eat this bread. It said only the priest could eat this show bread. So the law forbid that anyone other than the priest, and David definitely is not a priest. So to be clear about this, when David, or let me say it like this, when the priest gave the bread to David, they were breaking the law. And when David ate that bread, even though the priest gave it to him, He was breaking the law. Now, the interesting part of this is not that David and the priests broke the law, because they're sinners, and there's lots of times that they broke the law, right? That's not what makes this fascinating. What's fascinating about this is they broke the law, and who defended their actions? Come on, I should hear more than John Madela. Jesus did. I mean, this is the one. Every kid answers Jesus, you know, no matter what. In Sunday school, whenever people ask the question, you know, it's always Jesus. So we've got to get this one right. The thing that's particularly fascinating about this, I mean, try to wrap your minds around this, is you've got David and the priest breaking the law, and Jesus defended their actions. And so how do we understand this? Believe it or not, they were breaking the law so they could keep it. That is the truth. They were breaking the law so they could keep it. They were breaking the lighter, ceremonial portion of the law so they could keep what? The heavier or weighter portion of the law. So they swallowed the gnat, in a sense, so that they could keep out the camel. That would be a good way to understand it. They were keeping the weightier portion of the law, not dealing with ceremony, but dealing with what? Love. or the treatment of others. So they disobeyed Leviticus 24.9, which says only the priests could eat the showbread. But so they could obey Leviticus 19.18, which says to do what with your neighbor? It was written in the Old Testament before it was written in the New Testament. Love your neighbor as yourself. So to be clear about that, literally, they disobeyed the command, Leviticus 24.19, about the showbread so that they could keep the command about loving their neighbor as themselves. And so here's the irony. The irony is if the priests had not given the bread to David, they would have kept the lighter portion of the law, or they would have strained out what? Strained out the gnat. They would have broken the weightier portion of the law regarding love, and they would have swallowed the camel. Romans 13.10 and Galatians 5.14 both state that the whole law is fulfilled in what word? Love, the whole law, the whole Old Testament law is fulfilled in the word love. Jesus expounded on that when the man asked him, what are the two greatest commands? And he said, secondarily, to love your neighbors yourself, but first, to love the Lord your God with your heart, mind, soul, and strength. So those two commands, the horizontal and the vertical, both dealing with love. And so the point is, if the whole law is bound up in the word love, then when the priests gave the bread to David, They were keeping the spirit of the law, because the spirit of the law is love. They weren't keeping the letter of the law, but they were keeping the spirit of the law, and that's what Jesus defended. I'll give you one more example from Luke's gospel. Turn to Luke 14 1. Turn to Luke 14 1. And I think you can probably imagine situations where you can feel conflicting commands. I'll give you the one that I have heard most often, and maybe it's just because of marriage conferences. I'm not exaggerating when I say, I think we receive this question or something very close to it at almost every single marriage conference. And it goes like this. There's a woman who's married to an unbeliever. The woman wants to go to church, and guess what her husband doesn't want? She doesn't want him to go. Do you see the two conflicting commands? Hebrews 10 says, let us not forsake what? Gathering together. 1 Peter 3, 1 commands wives to do what with their husbands? And so does Ephesians 5, 22 and 24 and Titus 2. Submit to your husband or obey your husband. So you've got conflicting commands here. And what is actually being asked is, what's weightier? Which one of these am I going to obey? Because in the process of obeying one, I'm going to have to disobey the other. So I can submit to my husband and not go to church, or I can go to church and disobey submitting to my husband. And I'll say, just submit to your husband, because your submission is what will win him over, and God will hold him responsible for you not going to church. And then, hopefully, as your husband sees Christ through you, he'll be won to Christ, but that's not going to happen if you cast off his headship and just walk out the door and totally blow him off. Now, there's one other example here I want you to see in Luke 14.1. One Sabbath, when Jesus went to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, they're watching him carefully, which always seemed to be the case, looking to see him do something wrong. Behold, there was a man before him who had dropsy. We're not very familiar with dropsy, but it's edema, or it's an excessive amount of fluid retention. Verse 3, Jesus responded to the lawyers and the Pharisees, because he knew what they're thinking. And he said, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not? but they remained silent. Then Jesus took him, took this man, healed him, sent him away. And Jesus said to them, which of you having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well on a Sabbath day will not immediately pull him out? The religious, the interesting thing about how intensely the religious leaders observed Jesus on the Sabbath, I mean, it's almost like they worked so hard to catch Jesus do something wrong on the Sabbath. They're like the greatest violators of the Sabbath. Does that make sense? The irony about this is Jesus says that you could pull your son or an ox out of a well or in other passages, he says, out of a ditch. But I like the one with the well the most because if you were to try to pull a child or especially an animal out of a well, it's going to take a whole bunch of what? It's going to take a lot of work. But Jesus said that you could do it and you could even do it on the Sabbath. So again, you've got an interesting situation. You've got Jesus defending, violating the Sabbath, or you've got Jesus defending breaking the law so that you can keep the spirit of the law. You violate the letter, you work on the Sabbath, the ceremonial portion, so that you can keep the weightier portion of the law dealing with love and mercy. And I think most people would understand that there's no way, I mean, picture the alternative to this. What would it look like? A child falls in a well, it's the Sabbath, and someone walks by and says, I love God so much, I'm not going to help you. Right? I love you so much, or I love God so much, I hope you can swim for a while until I can come back tomorrow because I know that God wouldn't want me lifting you out of there on the Sabbath because of how much work that would take. And that's the point Jesus is trying to make to them, that they were so focused on straining out, giving a tithe of the spices and the herbs, they're just majoring on the minors, that they're missing these sorts of points, and he has to make it clear. This captures the problem with the Pharisees. They're passionate about legalistically holding to the letter of the law, but they had no passion for the spirit of the law dealing with the treatment of others. So to avoid making the same mistake ourselves, because what's the point of reading all this if we're not going to consider the application, do we do this? In what ways might we major on minors? And it's not that those minors are totally insignificant and they should receive no attention whatsoever, because Jesus said, these you ought to have done. You should obey in those areas, but there's other areas that should be receiving greater attention from us. And so are there some minors or gnats that we're giving too much attention to? And are there some weightier matters or camels that we are not giving the attention to that they deserve? Go ahead and turn back to Luke 11, 43. And if you just take this with you, if you remember, because maybe you leave here and you're thinking, OK, Pastor Scott was talking about weightier and lighter commands. gnats and camels, which is which? How am I going to know if something is a gnat or a camel? How am I going to know if something is weightier or lighter? One of the simplest ways is the weightier commands deal with love. The weightier commands deal with love. They deal with the treatment of others. They are inward. They are heart issues, mercy, justice, faithfulness. The lighter ones typically deal with ceremony or the outward. Okay, Luke 1143, woe to you Pharisees, you love the best seat in the synagogues and the greetings in the marketplaces. So Jesus said they love two things that bring us to lesson four. Jesus lamented over the Pharisees, or excuse me, lesson three, because they, lesson three, were self-seeking. He said they love two things, they love the best seat in the synagogue and the greetings in the marketplace, because, lesson three, they were self-seeking. We look at both things that Jesus said for application. First, he said they love the best seat in the synagogues. And this refers to the way that they wanted to be treated. They wanted the red carpet rolled out for them. Or, you know, they'd kind of, if they were today, they'd insist on flying first class. There's no coach for them. They want the most comfort. They want to make sure that they get what they want when they want it. They think they're better than others, so they think that they should be treated. better than everyone else. That's what it means when it says that they love the best seats. Now we can be like this if we're pretty high maintenance, or we're very demanding, or we expect everyone to accommodate our needs. We go places we want to be tended to all the time. We say I hope that they'll go out of their way to make me comfortable. We're typically like this if things are never good enough for us. We're at the restaurant, we're angry that it takes too long to get our food, then we get our food and it's too too cold, or we're upset that the server is not attentive enough to us, we're at the store and the line is too long, or we're upset that the cashier is too slow, or we're driving and it takes forever for the light to turn green, or have you ever felt like you're driving down the road and all the other drivers are upsetting you, or have you ever been with someone and they're constantly complaining about the way that everyone else is driving, everyone's driving too fast, or they're driving too slow, or they're changing lanes too many times, Or we're at church, and there's not enough music. Or there's too much music. Or there's not the music that we like, or the service is too long, or the service isn't long enough, and we've got all these complaints. Not enough people talk to me. People are not friendly enough. And when we're like this, we should remember that this is what the Pharisees were like. They were picky. They were demanding. Because they thought they were better than others, they thought that there was greater treatment should receive, they're critical. The second thing that Jesus said is they love greetings in the marketplaces. They love greetings in the marketplaces. This refers to the way that they wanted everyone to notice them. So when they walked in the room, they expected everyone to perhaps drop what they're doing and to recognize them and to appreciate that they get to be in the presence of some people who are so spiritual or so religious. This is why they dress the way they did. This is why there was that extravagant religious clothing. This is why they acted the way they did, praying publicly for everyone to see. Nothing wrong with praying publicly, but they were praying publicly so that everyone would think they were more spiritual. This is why they gave the way they did. Obviously, nothing wrong with giving, but something wrong with giving if you're doing it publicly so that people think you're this very generous person. This is why They counted out the spices and the herbs. I could be wrong about this. I confess this is my suspicion, but I don't think that they counted out the spices and herbs because they thought God was impressed with that. I think this is one of the things that they did to impress who? Other people, so that other people would think that they were so spiritual and talk about them. I don't really think in good conscience that they could have believed that this is what God wanted for them. They want to be addressed by certain titles. Jesus condemned them for this. I mean, when it talks about the greetings in the marketplaces, they want to be called rabbi. They want to be called teacher. They want to be called father. And Jesus says, call no man father, but your father in heaven. And so we can be like this if we have to be the center of attention, or there is an event, or there's some activity. It has to be about us. If there's a conversation, everyone has to pay attention to what we're saying. And one of the blessings of pastor in this church, we're just I was going to, I mean, if you just think about VBS with it taking place next week, there's all these people who are laboring, who have been laboring very, very hard to see VBS go well. None of them want attention. None of them want to be singled out. None of them want to be applauded. I mean, maybe we will applaud them at Friday night, but they'll probably be embarrassed by that. I mean, that's just a blessing to have that be kind of the culture. I remember I was listening to this pastor and he was talking And he said that he walked up to the pulpit to preach one day, and he noticed that there was this beautiful bouquet of flowers in front of his pulpit. So it could even, I suppose, look like the pulpit here. And he didn't think too much about it. But sometime later in the week, there was a woman that wrote him and asked him if he really liked the bouquet of flowers that was put in front of the pulpit there. And she said, if you want to see it again the next Sunday, you better say something about it. And so of course he didn't, and then the bouquet was never back. But I guess I would just say it's a blessing to be part of a church family when nobody would want to be noticed for the bouquet. Nobody wants that sort of attention. They don't want to be applauded, or they don't want their efforts to be shared with everyone. And if you do, then you're kind of like the religious leaders here. We can be like this if we go places and we think, I hope people notice me, or I hope people compliment me. I hope people say something about the way that I look. I hope people say something about the stories I tell or the way that I talk. I hope people notice the way that I act. So maybe I give the example of serving, and you don't so much relate to that. But we can just ask, do we want attention? One way to be on guard against this or consider whether this is the case with us is when we leave, I would just encourage you. One of the good questions we can ask is, did I talk too much? Did I listen enough? Did I ask people questions? Did I try to get others to share? When I did talk, was I the hero of my own story? Was I regularly bringing things back to me? If I did talk about myself, was it in a humble way where I was saying something embarrassing I did? Or was I subtly trying to brag or boast or try to make myself look better? These are the sorts of things that would mean that we're acting like these Pharisees. One of our friends in California, she said this, and I appreciate it. This is a good story. in terms of acknowledging something. I still remember because it, or actually Katie still remembered, and she shared it with me, that this one, but I vaguely remember her sharing it, was it at a home fellowship? Okay, she said, and I appreciated her humility in acknowledging this, she said when she went into a room, she always felt like saying, here I am, here I am. But she said she knew that she should say, there you are. In other words, we might be tempted to go into a room and it's all about us, but we should go into a room and it should be all about others. That's what it means for us as Christians, not to want the attention on us, but to be thinking about others and what they're going through. And I would just say, when you come to church, be thankful that God can use brothers and sisters in Christ to encourage you. You're going through something difficult. And I think there's always some number of Sundays where all of us feel like this. We come to church, and if we're honest, we really don't feel like we have anything for anyone else because of what we're going through, because of how much we're struggling, because of how much we're hurting. And if there are some number of Sundays that it's like that, that is just totally fine. Just come to church and be ministered to. Come to church and let others pour into you and invest in you and come and see how you're doing. And you don't have to feel obligated to try to pour into everyone else. Can we be honest, and I hope this doesn't sound too harsh, there's something wrong if that's you every Sunday. If you come to church every Sunday and it's all about you and all about what you're going to get and all about everyone else investing in you and talking to you, I get, you know, we come to church sometimes and we are sad, we are struggling, we are upset, but if you come to church every single Sunday and it's always about how difficult your life is and what you're going through, In a sense, there is a real pride. It almost has an appearance of humility because you look really sad and depressed, but why is it pride? It's pride because all of the attention is where? Not out there, but right here. And so you feel that way sometimes, but if it's every single Sunday you're like that, then don't, and one of the saddest things that happens, and I can, it's probably only happened, I can count on one hand, The number of times I've seen this, or the number of people who have fallen into this category, but I have to tell you, it is such a tragic thing. A person will come up to me after I've known someone for some length of time, and they will say, the church is not friendly, nobody talks to me. And my thought is, people are not talking to you because you're always so focused on yourself. They just know that they're going to be pulled down. They can't, they don't want to deal with that Sunday after Sunday after, they can handle it for a few Sundays, but they can't handle it Sunday after Sunday after Sunday. And really one of the best ways to kind of be pulled up out of that muck that we're in is to do what with our attention? Take it off of ourselves and put it where? On others. That is one of the best things you can do. But if your attention is always on yourself and how miserable your life is and how, and how hard things are going for you, then don't expect to feel much different the next day, the next week, the next month. The best way to be pulled up out of it is to look elsewhere and see what others are going through and their struggles and how you can serve them and how you can help them. So we want to ask the Lord to help us be sensitive to the Pharisee in us, all of us to some extent. can be like this, instead of looking for the best seat in the house and to be greeted by everyone, we should be looking for others and how we can greet them and how we can encourage them. Look at our last verse for this morning, verse 44. Woe to you, for you are like unmarked grays and people walk over them without knowing it. Now listen to this verse regarding ceremonial uncleanness. Numbers 19, 16. Whoever in the open field touches someone who was killed with a sword or who died naturally or touches a human bone or a grave shall be unclean seven days. So if you came in contact, not just with a body, but with a grave, then you would be ceremonially unclean. And so because of that, what did the Jews do to make sure that people wouldn't accidentally come in contact with graves and be ceremonially unclean? What did they do with the graves? They marked them. Does that make sense? They marked them because if a grave was unmarked or people couldn't tell that there was a grave there, they could accidentally come in contact with one and become ceremonially unclean. In Matthew 23, 27, in the similar account, Jesus said, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, you're like whitewashed tombs. which appear beautiful, outwardly beautiful, but within you're full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness. Why would these tombs be whitewashed? So that they could be recognized as tombs, and then people wouldn't accidentally come into contact with them and be ceremonially unclean. And this brings us to lesson four. Jesus lamented over the Pharisees because they, lesson four, defiled people through their influence. Defiled people through their influence. So the religious leaders were like unmarked tombs in two ways. First, the unmarked tombs, or actually, let me say it like this. The religious leaders were like the whitewashed tombs in that they look good outwardly, but were decaying inwardly. And they were like the unmarked tombs in that there was still this people could not tell. that they were false teachers who were going to lead people to hell. That's how they were like the unmarked tombs. Outwardly, things look fine. Inwardly, they're rotting. Jesus likened them to the unmarked graves because the religious leaders were able to hide that inner corruption, and then people would come into contact with them. And that brings us to the second way that they were like unmarked graves. They didn't look like them, and so people would walk over them, and they would become defiled. So people would accidentally come into contact with the religious leaders, probably expecting to be built up or encouraged religiously, but instead they would end up being defiled through their contact with them. So that's how they're like unmarked graves. People just accidentally come into contact with the religious leaders expecting one thing and ending up defiled as a result instead. For us, I think there's a lot of application. We come into contact with a lot of people in our lives Our actions, our language, our behavior is all doing what with people around us? Influencing them, affecting them, hopefully positively, could be negatively. So we should ask ourselves, are we influencing people positively? If there are unbelievers we come into contact with, are they seeing Christ through us because of our actions and because of our behavior? If we come into contact with the believers, are we influencing them positively because they're encouraged in their relationships with Christ through their time with us? Hopefully because of the conversations we have, the spiritually edifying things we say, or are the people around us becoming defiled because of us? And there's a few ways that we might do this. Do we dress in certain ways that people are defiled just by seeing us? I mean, that's a terrible thing to think, isn't it? that you could dress so immodestly that people are defiled simply because they don't rip their eyes away from you. Do we listen to certain music and other people happen to hear it? And then it defiles them. Do we watch anything and then share it with others or talk about it? And then other people watch it and then they become defiled as a result. So we can be like Unmarked Greys if people come to us expecting Christian fellowship, but they end up leaving defiled. One of the most common ways this happens where I would say typically this occurs with our mouths. We defile people because of our complaining and our grumbling. We defile people because of our gossip. We defile people because of our slander, because of the worldly conversations we have, the ways that we end up stirring up people's flesh. Ephesians 4.29, it says, let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, which is kind of another way of saying let nothing come out of your mouth that would defile someone else, but only such as is good for building up, doing the opposite of defiling, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear." So my prayer for myself and for the church, for all of you, is that we could, you know, that God would convict us about being unmarked graves. That we should instead be faith-building, Christ-exalting, church-unifying Christians that He wants us to be. Could Willard Christian Church be clearly marked as a church that's the opposite of the Pharisees. So let me conclude our discussion of the Pharisees with this observation, because we're going to be moving on to discussing the lawyers of the scribes next week. We know not just from this account, but from, with the exception of only a few passages in scripture, that all of the interactions with the Pharisees were rooted in pride. Their problems, whether the three woes we looked at here or any of the other accounts with the exception of only a few, their problem or problems were all rooted in pride. It wouldn't be too much to say that their problem was pride. They thought they were better than others. They thought that they didn't need Christ or they didn't need a Savior because they weren't sinners. They looked down on other people. They especially looked down on tax collectors. They especially looked down on prostitutes. But here's what's interesting. In Matthew 21, 31, Jesus told the religious leaders, truly, or if you had King James, it'd be verily, verily, verily, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you. And why is that? I mean, that's a sobering thought. That Jesus told the religious leaders, the individuals who are looking down on the tax collectors and harlots, that those tax collectors and harlots would be going into the kingdom of God before the religious leaders themselves, and for what reason? Because of their religious leaders' pride, and because of the tax collectors and harlots' humility and repentance that allowed them to be not just forgiven, but to be justified by faith. The tax collectors and prostitutes, many of them, they recognize their sinfulness. They longed for Christ. They longed for the Savior that they had for them. And I would say that nothing salvificly has changed today. Religious activity has no better chance of getting any of us into the kingdom of God than it had of getting the Pharisees themselves into the kingdom of God. Repentance and faith in Christ gets us in, just as it did with the very worst sinners the Gospels the tax collectors and prostitutes let's pray father we thank you for justification by faith we thank you that through repentance and faith in your son because of the sacrifice that he's made we can be forgiven his our sin imputed to his account paid for at the cross his righteousness the perfect life he lived imputed to our account I thank you not so much for the Pharisees but for the way you so accurately or honestly Recorded their their lives and the things that Jesus said to them so we could learn from them The very worst situation to take place for us would be that we read this account and we become proud Or we become puffed up because we look down on the Pharisees We think that we're better than them and in that sense we'd be coming we would become just like them and so I pray that we would learn from their example and that it would humble us give us a healthy fear and reverence and for you, that we wouldn't make the mistakes that they made, that there wouldn't have to be any woes or lamenting that you would feel toward us. And so help all of us to apply this and to walk in it. Show us the ways that we might be Pharisees. And by the gospel working in our hearts, I pray you'd grant us repentance and sanctification from that. And we pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.