The Old Testament law said that all increase, all increase of your seed must be tied. And that was usually taken to mean that there were three major crops, grain, wine and oil. The Pharisees were taking the principle and they were applying that principle as we should. They were saying that if a tithe of the seed was to be taken, the tithe also would have to include herbs that you would grow in your garden. If you had mint growing, then you would give a tenth of it. If you had rue, cumin, you would give that as well. Now, we've talked a lot about the Pharisees as we've been looking through this section of Scripture. These men were scrupulous men. They taught that obedience to God's law must be extended to every corner of your life. Even the finest details of your existence, the very least important parts of your daily routine were subject to God's law. And it's important that you notice that Jesus does not denounce them for this. Actually, so far, so good. In fact, Jesus says, these you ought to have done and not leave the other undone. So when he says, woe to you, scribes and pharisees, hypocrites, that's not directed against their careful obedience. No, he says, this you ought to have done. What that means, and it's important for us to take this in, it means scrupulosity, carefulness, strictness in matters of faith, conscience, It's good. It's godly. We actually need, in the Church of Christ, men and women and children who are careful about what the Bible says, who have tender consciences, who will not just shrug off what they read in the Bible as if it didn't really matter. Over and over again, the Israelites were reproved, were rebuked by God for trivializing the fact that they were disobedient. So they wouldn't listen. God would tell them what to do. They had the law before them, and they wouldn't do it. And God would come to them asking, is it a little thing with you that I have told you not to do this? Is it a little thing that you are breaking my law? Too often, our sin is our carelessness. We're careless with the scriptures, that we aren't. We are not scrupulous and we don't want to be. We don't want to be strict or known as strict. And so when a man in the church is strict, the tendency actually is to make life difficult for him instead of respecting his effort to be faithful and to obey. So tithing the mint, Jesus says, tithing the mint, the rue, the cumin, these were good things to do. They ought to have done them. You know, God teaches us that you can't be too careful about obedience. There's actually one area in which it is impossible to be extreme. You can work to a point of extreme. You can work too much. You can play. You can have recreation to the extreme. You can train your body to the extreme. How can we ever talk about being too godly? How can we ever say that a person is too much like Christ? He's too obedient. And that's nonsense. We are to be more careful. Clearly, the Lord Jesus commends them for that. So our question, the question we need to be asking is not, is this thing that I'm thinking about doing, is it too extreme? Is this too... radical, but what has God said? That's the question. What has God said? What does He require? Because if God has said it, if He's commanded it, we're to do it. And we have no right to say that it's too much. Just think of some of the examples in scripture that are sometimes difficult even just to read. You get a man named Uzzah who's killed by God on the spot for trying to prevent the altar from falling on the ground because God had said, don't touch it. You think of Ananias and Sapphira who were struck down dead. All they did was, well, they gave money to the church, which you would commend them for. All they did is lie to God about a little bit of it. Or take the case of Achan and his family, killed for taking a bit of plunder for themselves. There's example after example after example. Think of Moses not allowed to enter the promised land because he had a moment where he lost control of himself in public. Or turn it around and think about Abraham. As he took his son and he bound him, ready to kill him. Was Abraham wrong to do that? Should Abraham have known better and said, no, this is extreme, I'm not going to do this? Of course not. God told him to do what he was doing. The reason those men were killed, we have the case of Uz and the case of Ananias and Sapphira, the problem happening in Corinth because of the way they were participating in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, is because it all came down to obedience and disobedience. God had said, and God's people didn't listen. Abraham had the command of God, he had the word of God. It was his duty to obey him. So the question that Christians must ask themselves is not how can I avoid going too far or landing in an extreme camp. No, that's not the question. What does God require? That's the one question that we need to put to ourselves. What is my duty? That's it. So then that raises another question. What was wrong? If it wasn't wrong for these men to be scrupulous and to be careful, to be exact and strict, Why did Jesus denounce them? Matthew Henry said this in his commentary. It's not the scrupling of a little sin that Christ here reproves, if it be a sin, though but a gnat, it must be strained at. But the doing of that, and then swallowing a camel. You hear what he's saying? See, if the swallowing of the gnat is sinful, then don't swallow the gnat. What's wrong is when you're so careful to avoid the gnat and you swallow a camel. Their sin, he said, is that they observed smaller duties but omitted greater. They exalted trifles in religion above serious things. So they took the last things and they put them first and they put the first things last. So you have somebody, for example, who never misses worship on the Lord's Day, but he never worships. He's there, he's singing, he's just not worshiping. Or you have somebody who's very careful never to go out to the stores on Sunday, but six days a week he's utterly merciless in the way he conducts himself in his business. People that make much of the liturgy but don't make much of prayer. Or think about in the church when it comes to the tithes and the offerings. How much money is going to go into investing in the building itself? In the pews? In the way the building looks? In comfort? How much of that money is going to go to missions? How much toward making us comfortable and how much toward the advancement of the kingdom of King Jesus. And it was specifically here, exactly here, that the Pharisees were completely wrong. Because for all their efforts at straining at gnats, they were guilty of swallowing a camel. They were tithing the mint and the cumin and the dill, but they were neglecting judgment and faith and mercy and love to God. So that their priorities were backward. It's fine to tithe. Jesus isn't saying that it's wrong for them to do that. But they were letting their tithing get in the way of primary matters. It was as if this were the most important thing. Imagine becoming so preoccupied with how much of your herbs should go to the church that you neglect mercy. So you've put the mint in, you've handed the mint over, but you're not feeding the hungry. You've given your tithe to the church, but you're not sharing the gospel with those who've never heard it. Now this wasn't the first time that this had happened. God said something to the Israelites through the prophet Isaiah. He said this, to what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me. What's the point, God's asking? I am full of the burnt offerings of rams and the fat-fed beasts. I do delight not in the blood of bullocks or of lambs or of goats. I've pointed this out before. What was going on here? What was happening? What people were doing, you think about what the people were doing, what God was rebuking them for, they're doing exactly what they've been told to do. He told them to bring sacrifices, they were bringing sacrifices. He told them to offer burnt offerings of rams, and they did so. These things were carefully, meticulously spelled out in God's law. All of it was there, all of it was required, and the Israelites were very dutiful about doing that. But they were hypocrites. Because while they were offering the sacrifice, they were not showing judgment at home. They were not merciful with those who needed mercy. God wanted humility. He wanted repentance. And they were just bringing their sacrifices. It would be like coming to the Lord's Supper and remembering the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, taking the bread, putting it in our mouths, and thinking about Christ's broken body. Meanwhile, we're bent on a life of sin. Doing things we know he hates. Wicked hypocrisy. So Micah, he asks this, how shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams or with 10,000s of rams or 10,000s of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body, for the sin of my soul? He said this. He has showed thee, O man, what is good, and what does the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God. God, and ordained the sacrifices. God told them to bring the burnt offerings. It wasn't wrong for them to do that. What was wrong was what their religion had been reduced to. God had said to obey is better than sacrifice. And they had reversed the order. He required justice, mercy, and humility. And they had taken the sacrifices and made their whole system of religion about the sacrifices. He wanted their hearts and their lives and they cared about these secondary things. There is something very wrong with our system when last things are put first and the first things are put last. When the things that excite us, that arouse our passions and get us to act are the lesser things of the kingdom. I believe I shared with many of you before what happened in the 60s. Martin Lloyd-Jones got up and he addressed a group of evangelicals and he drew their attention to a problem that was taking place then in the contemporary church. The problem was this. You had Anglicans and they were united by their polity, by their system of government. And you had Presbyterians and they were united by their system of government. And you had the Baptists and they were united by their system of government. But they were divided on almost everything else. So they didn't agree on the atonement. They didn't agree within themselves, within their own denominations, about the resurrection even of Jesus Christ. They didn't agree on the doctrine of regeneration. the need for repentance, the importance of missions, the reality of hell. But they were coming together because they agreed on how and when to baptize, how and when to do this and the other thing. And Martyn Lloyd-Jones said this is the very definition of what it is to be schismatic. They were divided on the fundamentals And yet they were coming together because they were agreed on things that were secondary, the outward things. And at that meeting, Martyn Lloyd-Jones called on evangelicals of every denomination to repent of their divisions and work together for the sake of missions. We speak so much about the need for unity among believers in Jesus Christ and for the sake of the lost. We talk about the importance of being willing at times to make good compromises, but what they were doing then continues today in this sense. And we very often have people uniting who come together because they are loyal to their particular way of doing things. They come together because of baptism, they come together because of the way in which the church is governed or the way the liturgy is laid out, but they're divided sometimes on all the important things. And so that instead of showing to the world an evangelical front presenting to the world a commitment to Jesus Christ and a burden and passion for souls, they know us by these distinctives. This group wears this kind of a covering on their head. This group baptizes babies. This one immerses in water and so on. And I would never suggest that these things are not important. But the question we have to ask ourselves as Jesus is addressing amongst these men is what are we presenting to the world? What are our priorities? What do we want them to know about Christianity? What is it that matters most to God? I still sometimes look back with amazement at the fact that I worked with, well my parents did anyway, working alongside other missionaries in Africa, not even knowing sometimes what denomination they were a part of. And it seems to me the reason for that is simply this, there was so much work to do. Living among Muslims, we needed the gospel. And what was shared was more important than what we didn't share. So we worked together. We pray together, we worship together. There is a unity in our conviction that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, to the glory of God alone. We are united in our belief in the doctrine of regeneration and the need for repentance, atonement, resurrection from the dead, and so on. There were many secondary things that would have divided us, things that are important, not to be neglected, not to simply be brushed over. But on the primary things, we were in agreement. And because we were in agreement on those things, we could strive together for the sake of the gospel. Now why was that important on the mission field? Well, not only were we alone, out there very much alone, surrounded by a community that was hostile to Christianity. But all around us we were very keenly aware that the people were dying in their sins. We believe, we believe, my parents believe, the other missionaries believed in hell. And the concern of every missionary was the glory of God and the salvation of sinners. Now, are we so different in North America? Is it not true that increasingly this is becoming a secular society? Is it even possible that we'll see a day when Muslims will outnumber Christians? We are finding ourselves more and more in the minority. The fundamentals of our faith are under attack. Even the need for repentance from sin even. is no longer being taught in so many churches. We are living amongst a people who are living in darkness, whose lives are a complete mess because they are without God and without hope in the world. Some of our families are watching their own children walk away from Christ. We desperately need, in this country, men and women who are passionate But about what? About Presbyterianism. I'm passionate about God, for souls, for holiness. What did Jesus say are the weightier matters? He didn't say the other things are not important. But what are the weightier matters? What's the camel that was being, that they were swallowing? Well, if we put the lists that we read in Luke and Matthew together, we have these. Justice, mercy, faithfulness, love for God. Justice, mercy, faithfulness, love for God. All matters are the heart. It is not It has never been the externals of religion that concern Jesus so much. The sacrament of the Lord's Supper, as important as it is, it was never meant to be the end. It was a means and a help to the heart condition of the man. It's never the ceremonies so much as it is the heart that is after God, the heart that longs to do His will, that cares for the things that He cares for. It's likeness to Jesus more than the four of us. But what will be our experience? You ever think about our experience when we get to heaven and we're reunited there with so many saints who've gone before us and saints who were our peers in this world? You think we're gonna walk up to each other and point out where we were wrong or they were wrong? I expect rather we will be greeting each other with hugs and apologies. Much of our grief will be for how we allowed ourselves to lose sight of our first love while often wrangling over the lesser things. And I expect we will point to Jesus Christ and we will say to each other, isn't he lovely? Isn't He glorious? We'll wonder in heaven why in this world we gave so much energy, so much energy to so many other things when we could have had so much more of Him. Brothers and sisters, we are the family of God. We are going to share eternity together with Him. God wants mercy from us in the way that we deal with each other. He wants mercy in our homes between husband and wife, parents and their children, fathers who love their wives, fathers who give themselves and their time to their children. He wants justice in the way that we handle differences, the way that we interact with the world. He wants faithfulness, faithfulness in our obedience to His commands, faithfulness to the vows we made to our spouses, faithfulness in the service that we render to Him, and He wants love for Him, for God. You have here, Jesus deals with these Pharisees, men who have given themselves to the study of the law, who have immersed themselves in the Bible, devoted themselves even to memorizing the thing. They know their scriptures. They're so careful about this and this and the other thing. And along comes the Messiah. And they reject him. And the real tragedy. They loved their traditions more than they loved him. The son of God in their midst, and they rejected him. And we have to be careful of that same hypocrisy today. Never to suggest that we disregard the mint and the cumin and the dill, but that we hold things in proportion. that we would never be found keeping traditions and rejecting Christ. You know, if you will repent of your sins and surrender yourself to the Lord Jesus Christ, you can have him. Congregation, I want you to love Him. This is what was so appalling about these men. Their sin of unbelief, their failure to take the Savior, while they were so careful about a hundred other things. You know, it grieves me when we put our priorities in the wrong places. I expect In many, many churches today, pastors have pleaded with their people to pray. I expect in many churches, pastors have pleaded with their people to share the gospel with people who do not know the gospel, to become more involved in missions. Pleaded with husbands and wives to be faithful to one another, We have churches that are full of people who are so committed to liturgies and forms and ceremonies, and homes are falling apart, and children are not being taught the things of God, and Christ is not loved and prized. What is it the Lord Jesus would have? What's a people who are hungry after God, who can say, as we sang this morning, as the heart longs and pants for the water, so they pant for Him. People who long for Him, who will seek Him in the day and seek Him in the night. Who, when they have passions aroused, it's about Him, it's about Christ. What does it say about us when we can remain unmoved by those kinds of pleas, the plea to serve Christ in the field of missions, the plea to share the gospel with the lost, the plea to seek God, and yet our emotions can be so roused by things that are secondary. I wonder what it's gonna take, I've said this before, but for God to finally convince us that we are actually a very impoverished generation of people. And what we call Christianity, even in its most healthy form today, is lukewarm. I remember when it dawned on me personally that, like everyone else around me, I had plenty of emotion. I could get excited about certain things, angry about certain things, grieved by certain things, but it was all in the wrong places. And a man could go on about Jesus Christ for an hour, and I would walk away unmoved. and yet find myself excited, engaged in all kinds of debates about just about anything else. Congregation, we've talked about men and women who have spent, in times of revival, long, long hours, day after day, in places of worship because they couldn't shake the longing in their hearts for more of God. I believe God is going to have to break this generation before we see such a thing again. What is it that moves you? What is it that moves you? What is it that excites you? What makes you angry? What makes you weep? Would you pray with me that God will humble us? We would be a people who have things in the right place. None of us are guiltless in this. Let's pray that God would do what it takes, anything, to help us to realize where we are complacent, and to stir us up to love Him more, that the weightier things would be the first things, that we would repent of our hypocrisy, our passion sometimes for dotting I's and crossing T's, when souls are left to perish. and prayer closets are left empty. We can read of the hypocrisy of these men. We can shudder at what we find in the scriptures as God describes the Pharisees for us. It will do us no good unless we will see something of that same spirit in ourselves and go to him, even now, and repent and pray. that he would heal us of our own hypocrisy. Let's pray. Our Father, you've shown yourself to be one who despises hypocrisy. But we are thankful that you are both able and willing to forgive and to save even hypocrites. You know us, you know what we are in the public, before man. Lord, you know what we are in secret. You know how in our lives the weightier things have been neglected while we have been so careful with these lesser things. Our Father, we come before you to repent, to ask your help. Would you give us grace? Our Lord, we want our homes to be places where Christ is honored. Where as husbands, we love our wives as Jesus loves the church and gave himself for her. Where our wives would rejoice in the privilege of submission and obedience. Where moms and dads would love their children and teach them Jesus. Where our children would honor their parents. Father, we want to be a people who when we gather for worship and sing are worshiping. And that we would be merciful man, and most merciful woman. You help us please not to forget the least. Those people who we are so inclined to overlook and pass by, we would not do what the Pharisees would do, but like our Lord Jesus, that we would see them, minister to them, and so ministering to Christ. Oh God, we know that there are thousands here right around us, dying in their sins, who are not honoring Christ with their life, who are without God in this world. We pray that you would give us a great burden for them, that nothing would keep us from our obligation to take the gospel to them. Lord, please order things as they ought to be ordered. Change our hearts, that we would love the first things first, that you Lord would be our all and all. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Let's stand as we sing from our hymn book number 551. Thank you.