All right, the Lord's Sorrow
is the title. And we'll begin in verse 27 where
the Lord continues pronouncing woes upon the Pharisees and the
scribes, those who promoted a false gospel of legalism, salvation
conditioned on sinners, righteousness by works of the law. And you
remember what woe means. It's a term of distress and sorrow
and desperation. He says, woe unto you. I think
there were seven woes in this passage alone. And in verse 27,
he picks up where we left off last week. Woe unto you, scribes
and Pharisees, hypocrites, that's actors, they're acting like something
they are not. They claim to be righteous before
God, But as we're going to see here, Christ speaks of their
appearance unto unregenerate people. They appear righteous.
Look at what he says. For you are like whited sepulchers. That's like if you go out to
a graveyard and you look at the beautiful statues and the beautiful
icons and the headstones and all of that. Marble, white marble
and things like that. He says, you look like that.
But now if you opened up that grave and went down and opened
up that casket, what are you going to see? Corruption, rottenness,
it's all. And that's what he says. You're
like whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward,
but are within full of dead bones, dead men's bones, and of all
uncleanness. And that's what false religion
does for people. False religion can clean up the
outside, but it cannot clean up the inside. And the very two
things that we have to have in order to be saved to the uttermost,
we have to have a legal righteousness charged to our account. which
we cannot produce, and that's what the Pharisees, that's what
their problem was. You can read that in Romans chapter
9 where the Apostle Paul spoke of them as Israel followed after
the law for righteousness, but they didn't make it because we
always fall short. And no matter how good we try
to be, we can never be good enough. And that's why we need Christ's
righteousness. Christ did good enough. He did
more than enough. In His obedience unto death,
we have a perfect righteousness that has no flaw, no blemish. It doesn't fade away. It doesn't
tear. It cannot be taken away. It's
imputed by God to His people, and that can never change. And
that's why we speak so much of righteousness. That's the issue,
you see, of salvation. And so it's Christ's righteousness
imputed. Now, false religion cannot give
us that. It can inspire us to reform. We talk about reformation. Somebody
who is openly immoral can become a moral religionist. They can
start going to church. They can join a church. They
can get baptized. They can take the Lord's Supper.
They can become pillars of the community. And you know false
religion, I've had people tell me this over the years. They'll
say, well, I could not have made that change if it weren't for
God saving me. Well, that's not true. The Bible
tells us that's not true. And you know, I think we talked
about this last week or sometime, you know, where we talk about
how the man that has an unclean spirit and that spirit goes away
and then he comes back, finds the house all garnished and all
cleansed and all that, you know, there's a reformation there and
he brings back seven other spirits more wicked than himself. And
that's what Christ meant when he talked about the Pharisees
when they make a convert You make them two-fold more the child
of hell than you are because now they're ensconced in a false
profession of religion. And I'm going to tell you something.
It does take the Spirit of God to get a sinner out of that false
profession of false religion. That experience. Because they're
just convinced, you see. And you know, that's why the
Lord says He's going to bring us to repentance. That's what
repentance is all about. It's not just cleaning up the
outside. And then the second thing we
need is a new heart, new life. We must be born again. That's
the spiritual aspect of salvation. The legal aspect is the ground. The spiritual aspect is the fruit. You see that? Christ told his
disciples in John 16, if I go not away, the Comforter, the
Spirit, will not come. He had to go away. Well, what
does he mean by going away? He had to go to the cross. He
had to die for the sins of his people imputed to him. He had
to be buried and raised again the third day and ascend unto
glory because the Spirit's work, even in the Old Testament, before
Christ actually died, the Spirit's work was the fruit of what Christ
accomplished on the cross 2,000 some odd years ago. but he was
always sure and certain that he would do so, so even the Old
Testament saints were born again by the Spirit based upon the
righteousness of Christ imputed to them, the righteousness that
he accomplished at the cross. Well, false religion couldn't
do any of that. God says in the new birth, he said, I'll give
them a new heart, I'll give them a new spirit, I'll cause them,
he says in Ezekiel 36, to walk in my statues. Even the obedience
of a believer, in which we know that obedience is not meritorious
and it's not perfect in this life, but even that obedience
comes from the new heart, it's a gift of God. That's right,
because it's obedience motivated by grace, gratitude, and love,
and not by works and earned rewards, fear of punishment. So all of
that. And so this is why we see in
the truth of the law and the gospel for salvation to be complete,
we need both. We need a righteousness imputed,
a legal standing before God, a right standing, and we need
to be born again by the Spirit. Both are necessary. Both are
necessary. Again, one is the ground, the
other is the fruit. And why is it that way? Because
Christ gets all the glory. He did the work of righteousness,
He sends forth the Spirit. Well, all that false religion
can do is make you like a whited sepulcher. You may look beautiful
outside to the natural man, but believers know the difference.
And that's why, you know, I've had, you know, I know people
in the past who have made great changes of character and conduct. And somebody would say, well,
I know that person is saved because, well, we know better. And here's
the thing about it. Don't you want people to change
in their character and conduct if they had bad character and
conduct? Don't you want them to change?
I do. I do. But I don't want them to think
that's salvation. Now, that kind of change may come along with
salvation. You know, I've heard some people
talk about being drug addicts. Some people who claim to believe
what we believe. And the Lord saved them out of
that and brought them to Christ, the true Christ. But where was
I when I was saved? I was a second year seminary
student, learning to preach a false gospel. So you understand that,
that repentance is of dead works and idolatry. It's not just repenting
of your drinking and carousing and all that. But that may come
along with it with some people. And like I said, we want people
to change. I don't want to face drunk drivers
out here on the road or drug addicts coming in and stealing.
I don't want that. I want people to change. But
that's not salvation. Salvation is a believer being
brought to Christ for all righteousness and all forgiveness. and having
been given a new heart. So he says, you're inwardly full
of all uncleanness. Now, how do we know? We know how Christ knows that
because he looks upon the heart. Back over in the book of John,
right before John chapter three, when he talks about the new birth,
one of the verses that I, I don't wanna say I looked over any verse,
but there's one that just didn't hit me like it does now. And
that's in John chapter two. And verse 23, right before he
talks about you must be born again. And listen to what it
says in John 2, 23, it says, now when he was in Jerusalem
at the Passover and the feast day, in the feast day, many believed
his name, in his name, when they saw the miracles which he did.
Now the thing you need to understand about that is to believe in him
because of those miracles is not salvation. To believe in
Him with the gift of God-given faith is to believe in Him as
the Lord, your righteousness, as the mediator between God and
men. But it says in verse 24 of John
2, but Jesus did not commit Himself unto them because He knew all. He knew all men, it says there,
but He knew all. Now that's attributed to His
deity. He is omniscient. That means He knows everything.
He is truly a know-it-all. And aren't you glad? There's
nothing he doesn't know. And it's not because he's learning.
It's not because he looked down through a telescope of time or
looked through a microscope. He knows it all because he's
determined it all. And I know people don't like
to hear that, but that's too bad. That's the way it is. But look at verse 25. It says,
and needed not than any should testify of man, for he knew what
was in man. And I preached a message on television
about that. What is in man? Death, depravity,
darkness, unbelief. That's what's in us by nature.
A bad heart, the heart's deceitful, desperate, that's what's in us
by nature. Even us religious people, see? And then he goes in John chapter
three and tells Nicodemus, you've gotta be born again. Nicodemus
was a Pharisee. So go back to our text now, Matthew
23, 27. So because of our state as fallen
in Adam into spiritual death and depravity, God, by his grace,
through the application of the blood of Christ to our hearts,
our minds, our affections, our wills, our consciences, he's
got to cleanse the inside. And again, now, he doesn't make
us perfect inwardly yet. He will. But that blood of Christ
has to be on our hearts. Isn't that right? Hebrews chapter
10, I think I may have that quote. Yeah, Hebrews 10, 19 through
22. How the conscience is cleansed, purged. And how's it purged? By looking to Christ and resting
in him as our whole salvation. So, just an appearance of righteousness. Now look at verse 28. He says,
even so you also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within
you're full of hypocrisy and iniquity. Now, one thing I don't
want to do as a true believer, I don't want to appear to men
to be a bad person. Do you? I don't want my outward
appearance to be something negative to people as far as morality
and responsibility and citizenship. All of that. I want to be a good
person. I want to appear to be a good
person. But I realize that unbelievers, they don't know the reality of
righteousness. They don't know the reality of
goodness. You remember the rich young man who called Christ the
good master and he didn't believe him to be God now. And that's
how Christ approached him. He said, why you call me good?
There's nothing good but God. You see, if we're believers,
we go by God's standard of righteousness, God's standard of goodness and
sin and badness. And in God's standard of goodness
and righteousness, anything less than the perfection of righteousness
and goodness that can only be found in Christ is sin and iniquity,
no matter how you appear. And so he says this, you outwardly
appear righteous unto men, but that's not going to do you any
good, because inwardly you're full of hypocrisy and iniquity.
Hypocrisy is acting, again, like something you're not. They said,
we're righteous. And those publicans, those harlots,
those Gentiles, they're not. That's what it means when it
said there in Luke 18, he spoke this parable to those who claim
to be righteous and despised others. I'm saved, but you're
not. Do you know, and here's the thing.
Now, we want to be honest in ourselves and with everybody
else. But now, any time we judge a person to be lost because of
their sinfulness. We, in essence, condemn ourselves. Now, that doesn't mean if somebody
commits a great sin. We don't align ourself with that. We don't justify it. It's sin.
It deserves damnation and hell. All sin does. My sin deserves
it. Somebody asked me one time, we
were talking about justification and how we believe that we're
justified by God in Christ before the foundation of the world.
And they said, well, if we're not condemned, why do we need
salvation? I'll tell you why, because if it weren't for salvation,
we would be condemned. Condemned unto death, that's
what we deserve. That's what we've earned. But here's the
thing, if you had come upon King David when he was committing
adultery with Bathsheba and judged him lost based upon that, you
condemn yourself. Why? You might say, well, I've
never done anything like David did there. But you're still a
sinner, aren't you? That's what I am, a sinner saved
by grace. How did Christ knew their hearts? But how do we know that a person
who appears righteous unto men, is within full of hypocrisy and
iniquity. They don't rest, trust, and believe
in Christ, the Christ of the Bible. They believe a false gospel,
a gospel written by the works and the wills and the decisions
of men and women. And when I see that, their testimony,
I know then, if that's what they believe, They're hypocrites.
They may not be aware of it. Most of them aren't. They don't
know, see, the blind leading the blind. But they're full of
dead men's bones. They may appear, you know, we
talk about this all the time. Oh, he's such a good person.
Well, in the eyes of men, according to man's standard, he may be,
but what about God's standard? See? Because a sinner outside
of Christ cannot be good. To be good, we have to be washed
in His blood and clothed in His righteousness. And to be upright,
we have to be given a new heart, a new mind, a new motive, new
life. So look at verse 29, now he goes
on, he says, woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because
you build the tombs of the prophets and garnish the sepulchers of
the righteous. All right, he's talking about
the prophets of God. And say, if we had been in the
days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with
them in the blood of the prophets. Now you know Christ back over
in Matthew chapter five. And of course we know this from
reading the Old Testament. When Christ, when he was given
the Beatitudes, right after that, In verse 10 of Matthew 5, he
said, blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness
sake. That is for the gospel, wherein
the righteousness of God is revealed. For theirs is the kingdom of
heaven. Blessed are you when men shall revile you, persecute
you, shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for
my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad,
for great is your reward in heaven, for so persecuted they the prophets
which were before you. And you can go all over the Bible
to show how that's true. They persecuted every true prophet
of God. The religious, unbelieving Israelites
persecuted all the prophets, true prophets of God in some
way. Most of them were martyred. for the faith. So back here,
he says, but now you, he's talking to the Pharisees of that day,
you applaud those prophets, and he says, he says, and say, if
we had been, verse 30, if we had been in the days of, if we
had been there, we would not have been partakers, fellowshipers
with them, partners with them, in the blood of the, we wouldn't
have done that. And I've realized, that most
churches where a false gospel is preached, false Christians,
you know they have the same kind of attitude? When you read the
Old Testament and you hear about the Jews who were unbelievers,
on the whole, not every, you know, there was a remnant. Now,
idolaters, rebellious, they basically say, if I were there, I wouldn't
have been with them. I'd have been better. Man, if left to ourselves, we'd
be right with them. And we're right with them in
our natural state. Look at verse 31, he says, wherefore
you be witnesses unto yourselves that you are the children of
them which killed the prophets. Because of your, what he's saying
here is because of your hatred of Jesus of Nazareth, because
of your hatred of the truth, you're a partner with them. And
they wanted to kill Jesus. They wanted to kill John the
Baptist later on. So he says in verse 32, fill
you up the measure of your fathers. What is he saying there? It says,
go ahead and finish what your unbelieving father started. That's
what that means. They hated Christ, they hated
the gospel, hated the truth. And you go ahead and you finish
what they started in killing the true witnesses of God and
killing the Lord himself. And they proved that they hated
the truth. And so he says in verse 32, fill
ye up then the measure of your fathers. The cup of their wrath,
you might say it that way. Well look at verse 33, you serpents,
Yet you generation of vipers, and then what John the Baptist
called them back over in Matthew 3, how can you escape the damnation
of hell? Think about it. You serpents,
you vipers, what, you know, they claim to be children of God.
He's basically saying you're children of the devil. Remember
in John 8, 44, he says, you're of your father, the devil. The
lust of your father, you do. He was a liar from the beginning.
You're telling the same lie. You remember what the lie was
that the devil told in the beginning in Genesis chapter 3? I can give
you the title of his sermon. You shall not surely die. He
was a liar. Sin demands death. Only righteousness
can bring life. And you can't fulfill the righteousness. Remember Christ at the baptism,
his baptism, he said, thus it behooves us to fulfill all righteousness. That's the work of God. God the
Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. And so he says, he
says, how can you escape the damnation of hell? My friend,
the only way to escape the damnation of hell is to turn to Christ,
the Lord of salvation, the Lord of life, the Lord, our righteousness,
to plead him, his merits, his righteousness imputed alone.
And that's the very thing they rejected. And he says in verse
34, he says, wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets and
wise men inscribed, and some of them you shall kill and crucify.
Now he's talking a little bit about the future here now because
the disciples were gonna go out and preach. And some of them
were killed and some of them were crucified. Remember, they
say Peter was crucified upside down. That may be true. But he was killed. Paul was beheaded. You can read about the disciples. Stephen, you remember he was
stoned to death. And some of them shall you scourge
in your synagogue. Remember what Christ said in
John chapter 16, they'll throw you out of their synagogues. And they'll do this because they
neither know the father nor the son. They'll scourge you in their
synagogues. Now, listen to what that's saying. They're gonna whip you, they're
gonna torture you in their worship services. Because that's what
the synagogue was. It was a gathering to worship. And because they hated the gospel
and loved their own works and their own sin, they'll scourge
you in their synagogue and they'll persecute you, persecute them
from city to city. They'll, as the old farmer said,
they'll dog you everywhere you go. And they won't let up. They won't let up. And look at
verse 35. They say, that upon you may come
all the righteous blood shed upon the earth from the blood
of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barakias
whom you slew between the temple and the altar. In other words,
your partners and just as guilty of all the Old Testament believers
that were slain Abel being the first, you know about Abel, Cain
killed Abel, why? Because his sacrifice, his offering
was not accepted. What was his offering? The works
of his hands. Abel's sacrifice, the blood of
a lamb, which pictured Christ, it was accepted. And Cain murdered
Abel. Now this Zacharias, son of Barakas,
I read a lot about this. But if I had put all that I'd
read in this lesson, you'd have about five pages here. I'm running
out of time already. But here's the thing. It could be Zachariah the prophet. Some say it was, and I think I have a reference there.
Yeah, it could be Zachariah the prophet. It could be another
Zacharias mentioned in 2 Chronicles 24, 20 through 22. And without going in all the
details to show why some believe this and others believe that,
here's the point. This Zacharias was a child of
God, a minister of God, a prophet of God who told the truth and
he was killed for it. And he's telling these Pharisees,
you're aligned right with them. You're just as guilty of these
atrocities as they were. So then he says, verse 36, verily
I say in you, all these things shall come upon this generation.
That is the judgment of God. Now, he ends with this, verse
37. We'll read it through the end.
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and
stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have
gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens
under her wing, and you would not. Behold, your house is left
desolate unto you, for I say unto you, you shall not see me
henceforth till you shall say, blessed is he that cometh in
the name of the Lord. Now, you and I both know there's
some serious misconceptions of the Lord's lament here. That's
what it is, old Jerusalem. It's sorrow. Christ, in his sinless
human nature, he's sorrow. He suffered. He got hungry. He hurt. All of that. Suffering unto death. Suffering
like no other person ever has. Read it in Isaiah chapter 53.
And he sorrowed. You remember when Lazarus died
and they told him and there was such unbelief and he wept, Jesus
wept. And he's sorrowing here as a
sinless God-man, as a sinless human being. But as you know,
there's some serious misconceptions of this right here. A lot of
people, and I've got this in your lesson to show you, what
he is not saying. This is not telling us that Christ
is trying to save all without exception, but he can't do it
unless they cooperate. That's not what it's saying at
all. He is not saying here, and I've got this quoted, I would
have saved these children, but you Pharisees stopped me from
doing so. He's basically saying what he
said back in verse 13. When he said, look back in verse
13. But woe unto you scribes and
Pharisees, hypocrites, for you shut up the kingdom of heaven
against men, for you neither go in yourselves, neither suffer
you them that are entering in. And first, he's speaking out
of his sinless humanity, showing his sorrow for the ruin of physical
Jerusalem. Your house is left under you
desolate. And we know how the Bible speaks
of physical Jerusalem. Read Galatians chapter, what
is it, chapter four? Talks about Jerusalem above as
opposed to Jerusalem below, which is desolate. In other words,
it's ruined, the city of peace. But secondly, the Bible is clear.
And I express this on my comments on Matthew 23, 13. All whom the
Father chose and gave to Christ to save eternally will come to
Him, and nobody can stop it. The Pharisees couldn't stop it.
And in order for them to come, all for whom Christ redeemed,
and they can't be charged with their sin. He's had mercy upon
them. and he sends the Spirit to give them the gift of faith
and repentance and perseverance. They have to be. So as I put
in your lesson, this expression of sorrow here is simply the
man Christ Jesus expressing his sorrow over the sinfulness and
rebellion of those whose sinfulness and unbelief have left Jerusalem
desolate, wasted. Now, you shall not see me henceforth
till you shall say blessed is he that come in the name of the
Lord. That can be applied two ways. Number one, it could be
applied to somebody like Paul, who was a Pharisee. And the Lord
revealed himself to Paul. And certainly he would say this
is the blessedness of the Lord. And then, it could be applied
to those who in the end will be forced to bow. and accept
the judgment of God for their sins. And they'll say instead
of calling him cursed, they'll call him blessed. Not because
they do it from a new heart, but because they have no other
choice. Okay.