All right, Matthew chapter 23
begins with a series of what we call the woes of false religion. Look at verse 13, but woe unto
you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, woe. Now that word woe is a term
of great trouble. I've got it in your lesson, trouble,
sorrow, anguish, despair, woe is me. That's how, when a person
gets in that shape, and Christ himself confronting these false
religionists had several woes for them. You know, as you go
down through, woe unto you, woe unto you, woe unto you. And of
course, that's a commentary, that's a statement of judgment
against their false religion, their legalism. And we know the
essence of what they were preaching. It was salvation by the works,
by the wills, by the efforts to keep the law. And there's
nothing but despair and sorrow and anguish and trouble. There's
nothing but death there. You could say it's the woes of
false religion, the woes of legalism, hypocrisy, It's trying to be
something that they're not thinking that they are that something.
They thought they were righteous, but they weren't. You remember
we mentioned last week about Luke 18, the parable of the Pharisee
and the publican. and how the Pharisees, Christ
spoke this to those who imagined that they were righteous and
they despised others. It's kind of saying, I'm righteous
and you're not. Well, what makes you righteous?
Now, we can say that to people, but what makes us righteous?
Well, they would say their law keeping, their efforts, their
determination, their sincerity, all of that. And that's a lie,
woe unto them because that's legalism. And that's what this
is about. And they hated Christ so much.
Look at verse 13. They hated Christ and they hated
His message. They hated Jesus because of His
message, which exposed them for what they were. It removed the
cloak of hypocrisy and showed them that they weren't righteous,
that they were living a pipe dream, that their whole religion
was nothing but death and hell. Condemnation. And so it says,
woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, verse 13, hypocrites, actors,
acting like what you're not, for you shut up the kingdom of
heaven against men. They did not want people to believe
in Christ. That's what that's about. They
would do their best to keep a person from believing and resting in
Christ as their only hope of righteousness and salvation.
And I've seen it happen today. Somebody comes to hear the gospel,
and at first they become a little bit interested, maybe even enthralled
with it, and they go get a second opinion, and I've heard, it's
been said, oh, don't go listen to him, don't listen to that
church, they think they're the only ones, all of that stuff.
They shut up, they don't want them, they don't want to go in
themselves. And it says, and for you neither go in yourselves,
neither suffer you them that are entering to go in. They did
everything that they could to stop people from entering the
kingdom. And that's what, yeah, you have,
I have too. For years, people, don't go there, don't listen
to that, all of that. But now here's what I want you
to see in light of that woe. And that's this, and I've got
this in your list and I've got it double marked because it's
so important. The fact is that all whom the
Father chose before the foundation of the world and gave to Christ,
put all of their salvation upon Him, All of them will come to
and follow Christ and there's not one person on earth, no group
on earth, no army on earth who can prevent it. If you're one of his chosen people,
justified in Christ, what does that mean? That means your sins
are washed away. They cannot be charged to you.
What does that mean? That means you're righteous in
God's sight and redeemed by the blood of Christ. You're going
to come to him, you're going to believe in him, you're going
to rest in him, and no power on earth, devils, demons, human
beings, can stop it. And all for whom Christ died. The Bible says, Christ says,
all that the Father giveth me shall come to me, and him that
cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. And then he said, no
man can come to me except the Father which has sent me draw
him. And how does the Father draw us? He draws us by the power
of the Spirit and the preaching of the gospel. Now who's going
to stop that? You yourself can't even stop
it. You know, by nature, we don't want to come to Christ. We don't
want to receive him. We don't want to believe and
repent. By nature, But we can't even stop ourselves because once
God shows us the truth, reveals it to us, we must come. And I
love that passage in John 10 where Christ, in speaking of
His sheep. And he made this statement in
verse 16. I didn't put it in your lesson, I should have, but
you mark that down in your lesson. John 10, verse 16. And he made
this statement. He said before, he said he'd
come to seek and to save the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
That's God's elect among the Jews. And while he was on earth
in his earthly ministry, that was his main focus. But he made
this statement in John 10, 16. He said, an other sheep I have,
which are not of this fold, this Jewish fold. Others, he said,
of the Gentiles, he said, and them also I must bring. He must bring them. Why? Because God chose them. They're
objects of God's everlasting, eternal, unconditional love.
He redeemed them. He bought them lock, stock, and
barrel. He must bring them in. So understand that this condemnation,
this judgment pronounced upon these false religionists, even
though they did their best and even though they were influential
people, they had clout. They had clout among the people.
But they could not stop the least of God's children from coming
into the kingdom. And I thank God for that. Don't
you? Because, like I said, you wouldn't
have come on your own. We wouldn't have come on our
own. But thank God that He overruled us. He overpowers us. Somebody asked me one time, said,
are you saying that God makes His people come to Him against
their will? No. He has the power. Now, I don't have this power.
You don't have this power. But He has the power to make
His people willing And it says in the day of his power. He has
the power to change the heart. And of course we're gonna see
later on how the Pharisees didn't have that power, no man does.
Well look at verse 14. He says, woe unto you scribes
and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you, now you understand now,
he's pronouncing these woes publicly now. He's not hiding in a room
somewhere. The people are hearing this.
And he says, woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for
you devour widows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayer,
therefore you will receive the greater damnation. The devouring
of widows' houses has to do with taking the assets of a widow
and justifying it by saying you're using it for the glory of God. And that's what they did. I don't
know how they would take care of the widows and orphans back
then, but I know in the church, if we had a true widow who could
not support herself, we're obligated to take care of a sister in Christ
or an orphan, but they would actually devour their houses,
take their goods, take their money, and use it and justify
it by saying it's for the glory of God. And then they'd make
a pretense of long prayers. They love to be seen. Remember
Matthew chapter six? They love to give, they love
to pray, they love to fast and let people know what they're
doing. Like people today, they'd call that their witness. Well,
that's not our witness. Should we pray? Oh yeah, we ought
to pray. We ought to be a people of prayer.
I ought to pray more than I do. You ought to make time to pray.
And that's a good thing. We ought to give. We ought to
support the gospel. We ought to support one another.
And fasting, there's no law that says we have to fast. But if
you do, do it privately. And don't go around telling everybody,
oh, I'm fasting. I'm on the 24th day. I had a
man tell me that. He wrote me a note. He said,
I'm on the 24th day of fast. And I said, well, you just blew
it, friend. I said, the Bible says when you fast, don't let
anybody know you're fasting. It's before God. He wrote back
a nasty note. But anyway, this is what they
do, and receive the greater damnation. Well, you remember what it says
in Matthew 11 when it says, woe unto thee, Chorazin, and Bethsa,
it'll be worse for you in the day of judgment. Now, some people
say that means there are degrees of punishment in hell. Others
say, no, it's just talking about judgment, greater judgment. And
I don't take a dogmatic position either way, but I do know this.
I believe that somehow, some way, under God's judgment and
justice, it's gonna be worse for false religionists like this
than it would be just for people like in Sodom who didn't even
claim to be religious. But here's the point. The point
is this, condemnation and death and perishing and hell, it's
all, I don't want any part of it, do you? I know the only way
to eternal life in heaven is Christ crucified and risen from
the dead. And anything less than that is
not good. And you can say, well, that person's
gonna receive a greater condemnation or, maybe, and I don't know what
that involves. But I know Christ said that to
those cities who rejected the revelation that God gave them
and the miracles that he performed. They rejected him in light of
all that knowledge. And he said, you're gonna receive
the greater damnation. And that's what he said here
to these Pharisees. You'll receive the greater damnation.
Think about what all they saw and what all they heard. The
miracles, the throngs of people following him. the words that
he spoke, and not only just the condemning words about their
false religion, but he preached the gospel, the good news. But it wasn't good news to them,
was it? I can remember when it wasn't good news to me. then
God made it good news to me. He gave me ears to hear and eyes
to see. So think about that. We'll look
at verse 15. Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites, for you compass or you surround, you go out, you
travel sea and land to make one proselyte. What's a proselyte?
That's a convert. It's a Gentile who converts to
the Jewish religion. But what religion is he converting
to or she converting to? False religion. So you make one
proselyte, and when he is made, when you're successful, you make
him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. Well, you
see, as I put in the lesson, they were missionary-minded.
They wanted converts. They wanted to convert the Gentile
world, and especially what he's speaking of here is what they
would consider the immoral, idolatrous Gentiles. Bring them under the
law of Moses, and make them Pharisees. That's what they wanted to do.
But Christ is clear here, what happens when you're successful? It's like false religion today,
who sends out their missionaries. When I was in false religion,
I was studying to be a missionary, to go overseas and convert people
to what I thought was Christianity, but it wasn't. I would have been
making people twofold more the child of hell than I was, and
that they already were. What does that mean? Well, look
over at Luke chapter 11. I believe this explains exactly
what he's talking about here. In Luke 11, I've got this cited
in your lesson, verse 24. And here's the thing, to be a
child of hell, now you say you make them two, four more a child
of hell. To be a child of hell is to be non-elect. And it's one who goes through
life and dies in unbelief deserving of hell. It's like the vessels
of wrath fitted for destruction. And that's what it is to die
without Christ. It means your sins are charged
to you. And you're responsible for them,
which means eternal damnation. That's all it means. It means
you have no righteousness, no matter how religious or how converted
you become under false religion. Think of those in Matthew 7,
21 through 24. Haven't we done this? Haven't
we preached? But they were damned. All right? And they'll be judged and condemned
because they have no righteousness. The only righteousness we have
is that which we find in Christ. But look at Luke 11, look at
verse 24. It says, when the unclean spirit is gone out of a man,
now the unclean spirit could be a demon. It could be his evil
thoughts. He walketh through dry places
seeking rest and finding none, he said, I will return unto my
house which I came out. This is the unclean spirit speaking.
He comes out, but he goes around in dry places, and he says, I'm
gonna return where I came from. And when he cometh, verse 25,
he findeth it swept and garnished. All right, there's been a reformation
here, say swept and garnished. It'd be like somebody like a
drunk who went totally sober, a drug addict who got off drugs,
somebody who got religion, but it's false religion now. Somebody
says one time says they say well, I know he's saved because look
at what he was, you know He was just an immoral Pervert now look
at him. He goes to church every son See
what I'm saying? And it says he finds it swept
and garnished verse 26 Then go with he the unclean spirit and
taketh to him seven other spirits more wicked than himself religious
spirits, but false religion and they enter in and dwell there,
and the last state of that man is worse than the first. You'll get more opposition from
people who have converted from immorality to false religion
than you would ever get from those who are remaining in immorality,
because they don't care. They don't care at all. But you
talk about when a man or woman gets religion, or has a religious
experience? Ooh, boy, and you question it? Ooh, they want to kill you. They want to get away from you.
Don't you come around me. Don't talk to me. They're twofold
more the child of... And you understand now, the conversion
there is not spiritual conversion to Christ. It's a natural conscience
conversion that brings them to a reformed lost state. And that's what he's talking
about there. You make them twofold more the child of hell than you
are. Now, naturally speaking, we would look at, let's say a
person was a bank robber and they converted, now they see
that stealing is wrong. I mean, I like it when they stop
doing that, but that's not salvation. Salvation is a sinner. brought
by God to Christ for righteousness, for forgiveness, for eternal
life. Look at verse 15 or verse 16
rather. I'll read down to verse 22. It
says, Woe unto you, you blind guides, which say whosoever shall
swear by the temple, it's nothing, but whosoever shall swear by
the gold of the temple, he's a debtor. Now, this is kind of
weird, you know, when you read it, and it's kind of hard to
understand, but let me, I think I've got the issue on it. Verse 17, you fools and blind,
he calls them blind guides and fools, the blind leading the
blind, for whether is greater the gold or the temple that sanctifies
the gold. And verse 18, and whosoever shall
swear by the altar, it's nothing, but whosoever swears by the gift
that's upon the altar, like the sacrifice, upon it. He is guilty. He's a debtor. What's that mean?
He's bound. Verse 19, you fools and blind
for whether is greater the gift or the altar that sanctified
the gift. And then verse 20, whoso therefore shall swear by
the altar, sweareth by it, and by all things thereon. And whoso
shall swear by the temple, sweareth by it, and by him that dwelleth
therein. And he that shall swear by heaven,
sweareth by the throne of God, and by him that sitteth thereon. Now, again, he calls them blind
guides, fools, and that's because that's what they were. They spiritually
blind, foolish, It's foolish for a sinner to think that he
can be righteous or be saved based on his works, that's foolish.
That's the way of false religion. And that's why he says woe and
woe and woe. And the only way that we who
are fallen in Adam and born spiritually dead can be saved and can see
and hear and know is by the power of God. Remember, he told his
disciples that, blessed are your ears for they hear, blessed are
your eyes for they see, and you must be born again. That's the
only way. But what's happened here is the scribes and the Pharisees,
and I was reading a couple of commentators on this, and they
cited some of the old rabbis in the Torah. That's their commentary on the
first five books of Moses and all that. And what they had done
is they had concocted an elaborate system of swearing oaths in order
to give them an out, a loophole, that they didn't have to keep
their oath. They didn't have to keep their promise. And so
what it was, it was an act of evasion in the matter of swearing
oath. And here's what they reason.
I'll just read this to you. I know you got it in your lesson.
It says, they reasoned that an oath was binding upon them if
the name of God was involved. You may have heard people in
the past say, well, you can swear by this, but don't swear by God.
That kind of thing. So if the name of God was involved,
then you're bound to the oath. But if the name of God was not
involved, their reasoning He said, well, you can break the
oath. You're not bound. You're not indebted. And I put
here, you may sound far-fetched, but they would say something
like this. If a person made an oath by virtue of the gold that
was in the temple, that was considered to be a binding oath, but if
he swore by the temple itself, it was not considered to be a
binding oath. Now how they got away with understanding that
swearing by the gold, that that involved the name of God and
swearing by the temple, it didn't, how they reasoned that, I don't
know. But here's the main thing you gotta see, it's all hypocrisy.
It's all sinners trying to justify themselves in their sin. Isn't
it? That's what it is. And that's
what Christ was doing. He was saying, look, you can't
swear by the gold and not claim that that's of God. God's the
one who made that gold. God's connected to it all. The
temple, that's the temple of God. The altar. That's the altar
of sacrifice, the offering on the altar. All that's a type
of Christ. It's all connected with God. You can't say, well,
if I swear by this, it's okay to break it, but if I swear by
God, then it's not. No, he said that's not gonna
get you off the hook. You may claim righteousness based
upon your oath keeping and oath breaking, but it's not gonna
do you any good. It's just false religion, woe unto you. Hypocrites,
that's what it is. And so what are we talking about?
Well, I thought about this, I said, every oath is binding and we
cannot break our word and rightly claim to keep the law. Well,
I didn't keep that oath, but it wasn't connected to God, so
I can still say I'm righteous by, no, you can't do that. And
we who are believers in Christ, we ought to take comfort in this
fact, God never breaks his word. or his oath. And I've got a bunch
of scriptures there, you can look them up. But I've quoted
this one, Hebrews 10, 23. Let us hold fast the profession
of our faith without wavering, for God is faithful that promised. He'll never break a promise.
And all of his promises are in Christ. Yay and amen. There's
no loopholes. God, when he swears an oath,
you know what he swears by? He swears by himself. and his
glory is involved in keeping his word. And I love that passage
in Lamentations 3. You can look it up where it says
that God is faithful. He's always faithful. It's of
his mercies that we're not consumed. The Lord is faithful. Well, look
at verse 23 now. He says, woe unto you scribes
and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you pay tithe of mint and anise
and cumin. and have omitted the weightier
matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith, these ought
you to have done and not to leave the other undone. Verse 24, you
blind guides which strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. They were so meticulous to make
sure that they paid their tithes, that they did these little things
of the law that didn't require much sacrifice. They tithed their
money, too. You know, in the Old Covenant,
tithing was required to support the tribe of Levi, the priestly
tribe, whose business was to be about the temple work and
the tabernacle and all that. But here they were so, so meticulous. You remember when they challenged
the disciples over not washing their hands ceremonially before
they picked corn and ate corn, picked corn on the Sabbath, they
were so meticulous. But these issues of judgment, of mercy
and faith, which are so important, that was nothing to them. That's
the way false religion is. Just like Jim, you talk about,
you know, boy, you had to be faithful to make sure you didn't
work past a certain time on that Sabbath day and all of that. And I'm not saying that all false
religion is not concerned with things like mercy. You know,
judgment, mercy, and faith, that can apply to our everyday lives,
that we ought to make right judgments, we ought to be a merciful people,
mercy to others, and we ought to be faithful in our word, all
of that, that's true. But I think the main import of
this is judgment in the eyes of God concerning the gospel,
mercy. What does the law show me? I
need mercy. I need a substitute, I need a
righteousness I can't produce. And faith, the law doesn't require
faith, but the law shows us our need of believing in Christ,
who is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that
believe it. And so in light of this, we see God's purpose to
show them their sinfulness and the depravity, and that the only
way of salvation is by God-given faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Well, look at the last few verses. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites. You may clean the outside of
the cup and of the platter, but within you're full of extortion
and excess. Blind Pharisee, cleanse first
that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside
of them may be clean also. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees. We'll stop there, but we're just
gonna go to verse 26 and we'll pick up with verse 27 next week.
But they were so meticulous to appear righteous unto men. They
wanted to appear, they wanted that appearance. But they weren't
so much concerned with the heart. And when Christ tells them, when
he says in verse 26, cleanse first that which is within the
cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean. He's not
telling them that they have the power. to give themselves spiritual
life and a new heart and to cleanse the inside. He's showing them
their need of it. And that's what they ought to
be concerned with more than the outside of the cup. You know,
we as believers, we're to be concerned about our appearance
and how we come across to people, how we deal with people. We don't
want to be hypocritical outwardly or inwardly. But what he's telling
them is what you ought to be concerned with more than anything
else is a new heart and only God can give you that. Man cannot
give me, we can't give ourselves new hearts, new lives. We cannot
birth ourselves again and nobody can do it for us. But only God
can. But that's what we ought to be
concerned with more than anything else concerning our own state
before God. Else we're hypocritical. All
right.