Well, good morning. If you care
to open your Bibles with me to Matthew chapter 23. Continue our study in Matthew
this morning in Matthew chapter 23. Before we begin, let's bow together
before our Lord in prayer. Our Father, we bow in your awesome
presence this morning. Thankful that Sinful men and
women such as we are can come into the presence of the thrice
holy God boldly, confidently, knowing that we'll be accepted
and heard in our Lord Jesus Christ for Christ's sake. Father, how
we thank you. We thank you for your mercy and
your grace that makes such an awesome blessing so that you
would Save us, sinful people, through the obedience and the
blood of your Son. Father, how we thank you. Father, I pray
this morning that you give us a spirit of worship, that you
would be our teacher, that you would apply your word to our
hearts for your glory, that we might look into your word and
see the glory of Christ our Savior. But we pray for ourselves, we
pray for our children's classes, that you would use this time,
Father, to plant the seeds of faith in the hearts of our young
ones. And Father, for those who are hurting and who are sick,
and each especially, in many different difficult times of trial, Father,
we pray you'd meet their need, that you'd heal, that you'd deliver,
that you'd comfort their hearts till such time as you are pleased
to deliver them. And Father, all these things
we ask in that name which is above every name, the name of
Christ our Savior, amen. I've titled our lesson this morning,
Don't Become a Modern Day Pharisee. In our text, we'll see that our
Lord has the most scathing words that he ever used that are recorded
in scripture, and he directs them at Pharisees. He publicly,
in front of a crowd, to the face of the Pharisees, he didn't call
them aside and kind of tell them this off in the corner in hushed
tones. to their face in front of a crowd of people. He calls
them hypocrites. He calls them fools. He calls
them blind and murderers and snakes. Well, so much for political
correctness, huh? And I'm not saying that we should
be going around calling people names like this all the time.
But we do have to point out error where it exists. And then, you
know, the Lord wasn't, I don't think, as much doing this to
insult the Pharisees as he was to warn the crowd around them
of their error, not to follow their error. And we need to do
it in clear, plain language so that everybody knows what we're
saying. Souls are at stake here. And one thing that's obvious
as you read through the Gospels, the four Gospels, the Savior
hated, Fleshly outward religion. I mean he just hated it These
are the strongest words that he has for anybody in this and
we ought to hate it, too Now I want us to heed these warnings
and not just you know, talk about look at these people You know
how bad you know, they are what they're doing wrong. I Mean,
I guess we need to point that out. That's not really the point
I want to get us to get out of this lesson this morning Is I
don't want us to become modern day Pharisees. I don't want us
to take our doctrine and things that are true and right and turn
them into a way that we can be Pharisees and don't think it
can't happen to us. The Jews had the law and the
ceremonies, didn't they? Nobody else did. They had the
prophets. Nobody else did. No other nation did. And they
took those things that are good and right and should point them
to Christ and they turned them into a way to be a Pharisee.
God deliver us from doing the same thing. And a master here
gives eight warnings that we should heed so that we can avoid
becoming a modern day Pharisee. Number one is this, modern day
Pharisees are gatekeepers, or they try to be gatekeepers to
the kingdom of heaven. Verse 13, Matthew chapter 23. 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 to go in. Now, don't mistake this. I mean, you know, nobody can
stop God from saving his people. God's going to save his people.
Christ reigns. The savior reigns to ensure the
salvation of his people. Nobody can stop it. No one can
pluck them out of his hand. Nobody can stop God's people
from receiving faith in Christ. Holy spirit is going to give
that to them and nobody can stop them from entering the kingdom
of heaven. But these false prophets do. everything that they can
do to shut men and women off from the means of grace. They
try to shut them off from the preaching of Christ. They do
everything they can do to stop the people from hearing the message
of sovereign grace, that salvation is by faith, not by works. And
they hate that message. They hate that message. They
don't want to hear it. And they don't want anybody else
to hear it either. You know, they'll say things like this,
you know, whatever you do, don't hear that guy preach. Whatever
you do, don't go down to Hurricane Road Grace Church, you know,
just go anywhere but there. And you think about it, how can
somebody enter the kingdom of heaven if they don't know Christ
the way? How can you enter the kingdom
of heaven if you don't know the king of the kingdom, if he's
not preached to you? You know, let's never fall into
that trap of thinking, well, you know, if somebody can't be
saved, we don't waste our time, you know, preaching the gospel
to them. I mean, you know, we all come here and, you know,
we dress a certain way. We come wearing our Sunday best.
Suppose a visitor came in in rags. Maybe they didn't take
a shower this morning. Maybe they're, you know, they
look pretty rugged or somebody comes in, boy, Not just in their
clothing, but in their attitude. They wear religion. I mean, they
wear it. I mean, it's just, you know,
it's kind of irritating. Are we just going to write them
off? Wait a minute. Wait a minute. God saves people
by the preaching of the gospel. It's not up to us to determine
who should hear it and who can't. Who is going to be effectual
to it? Our job is to preach. Our job is to preach Christ.
And these ought not just be words on paper. This ought to be something
I really believe. If God saved me, he'll save anybody. He'll save anybody. Our job is
to preach the gospel. We should be committed to that,
preaching nothing but Christ, preaching sovereign grace, and
preaching salvation by faith, not by works, and not compromising
it an inch. Not compromising it an inch. We want to see people saved.
We want to see people come into the kingdom. Our goal is not
to keep people out because they don't match up to our standards.
What we want to do, we want to see God save his people, don't
we? How's he going to do that? By the preaching of Christ. We
ought to be committed to it. Number two, modern day Pharisees
are religious predators. Verse 14, woe unto you scribes
and Pharisees, hypocrites. For you devour widows' houses,
and for a pretense, make long prayer. Therefore, you shall
receive the greater damnation. Now, false prophets are in it
for their belly. They're in it for what they can get out of
it, plain and simple. They're hypocrites. And I really
believe they know it. They know they're just making
a pretense of religion. They're just putting on a good
religious show for everybody, so everybody will be impressed
with them and support their ministry. It's just a business to them. How much can I get out of it?
And quite often they prey on the most easily deceived, older,
sentimental widows, who by the way, happen to not have that
much to give, but seems like they're deceived frequently and
just giving it over to these fellas, you know. These are religious
scammers. They're no better than somebody
sent out these emails trying to get you to click on this link
to give them all your bank account information so they can transfer
$15 million into your account. They're no different than these
scammers. But now listen, we don't have a religious scam.
We've got the truth of the gospel. By God's grace, he's given us
the truth of the gospel, and we're to preach it. and we're
to preach it with a couple motivations. Number one, to tell the truth
about God, to tell the truth on Him, glorify who He is, glorify
how it is that He saves sinners. And secondly, we're to preach
the gospel that God's people might have life and rest and
hope and peace in Christ. We're to preach the gospel to
the helpless and the hopeless, seeking to give them something,
not seeking to get something from them. And you just mark
this down. Any preacher who's begging for
money is a false prophet. God Almighty will support his
preachers by giving. He surely will. And I'll tell
you what, you give what you can afford to give. You give as God
has blessed you. People, you know, they end up
being retired, they're living on fixed incomes, they don't
make as much money as they were making when, you know, they're
working it to hire their career and stuff. Well, they can't give
as much as they used to. Nobody's putting any pressure
on you to do that. Give what you can. Give what the Lord lays
on your heart to give. Because I'll say it again, the
focus of this ministry is to give something to people. To
give a spiritual blessing to people, not get something from
them. And if you ever find it the other way around, run away
from it. Run away from it. And I hope God will always let
us approach this ministry seeking to glorify God and give a blessing
to God's people and not get something from them. All right, number
three, modern day Pharisees have a self-serving religion. God help us from using the gospel,
using the worship of God to gain something for self. God help
us. Look at verse 15, this is what
they do. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites, for you encompass sea and land to make one proselyte.
And when he's made, you make him twofold more the child of
hell than yourselves. Now the focus of religion is
numbers. trying to, how many people can
you get converted? How many people can you get saved?
How many people, you know, and by get saved they mean, you know,
make a decision, walk an aisle, you know, do whatever. They focus
on discipleship. It's the making of disciples.
Now when that happens, it'll always degenerate to this. If
your goal is to make disciples, you'll make them. you'll make
them no matter what you gotta do. You'll compromise the gospel
in order to get the result that you want. And please don't get
me wrong, I would love to see this place full of people. And not just, if I could say
this, not just full of people, but full of people who have a
need of Christ, who have an interest in Christ, who are coming to
hear of Christ. and I'm all for witnessing. We
ought to do that. We ought to invite people to
come to the services. We ought to be talking to people
about Christ. If you don't think you're very
articulate, you don't think that you're good at that, well, keep
a bulletin to give somebody. Tell them about Sermon Audio
where they could go hear something. We ought to be witnessing to
people, and the Lord is not condemning that at all. What he's talking
about here is the focus. And if your focus is to make
disciples and to gain numbers, you'll compromise the truth to
get it. You all know my brother is an insurance salesman. And
it drives him insane. He says, false religion, all
they're doing is using sales techniques. And they're bad sales
techniques. They're not even good ones. It's
just a sales technique. It's just a psychological tactic,
rather than preaching the unvarnished gospel. rather than telling them
the truth. And when we do that, if we compromise
the gospel in order to get somebody to make a decision, you know
what we've done? We've given them a false hope. And when somebody's got a false
hope, now we might have good numbers, we might build up numbers,
but that person who's got a false hope is just as bound for hell
as they ever were. The only difference is now that
they've got a false hope, now they won't seek Christ. because
they think everything's okay. Can you think of a worse thing
to do to somebody? Honestly, can you think of a worse thing?
There was a man one time I was talking to him and Bible school here was coming
up and he would not send his children to Bible school here.
And the reason was he's afraid that we'd get his children away
from him and their mother and get them to make a decision.
He was very uncomfortable, and I told him, we will not do that.
We'll not do that. We would try to slow it down
instead of just, and he wouldn't do it. I mean, I guess if he
thought we would really do that, I don't blame him. But I hope
we always have the heart to care for people, to tell them the
truth, to tell them the truth, to tell them the truth in love
so that they have unfeigned faith. They don't just have an empty
profession. And if we believe God, this is
a true statement. If we believe God, we'll feel
very comfortable with preaching Christ to people and leaving
them alone with God. Christ described himself as the
great shepherd of the sheep. He described himself as the good
shepherd. Rick, I just believe a good shepherd
can save his sheep, don't you? I think he can. I believe he
can. All right, number four. Modern day Pharisees make religious
things more important than Christ. Verse 16. Woe unto you, ye 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. He's got to keep his
promise. Ye fools and blind? For whether it's greater, the
gold or the temple that sanctifies the gold? And whosoever shall
swear by the altar, you say, it's nothing. But whosoever sweareth
by the gift that's upon it, he's guilty, he's bound to keep his
promise, what he swore he would do. He fools and blind, for whether
it's greater, the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift?
Whoso therefore shall swear by the altar, sweareth by it, and
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 this is a bizarre thing,
but this is, you know, in a nutshell what the Lord's saying. The Pharisee
said, now it's okay for you to swear, you'll do something, to
swear by the temple, you know, swear by the altar. And then
if you find out, I can't keep my promise or it's inconvenient,
you know, for me to keep my promise. It's no big deal. The Pharisee
said, you can get away with that. But now if you swear by the gold
that's in the treasures in the temple, or you swear by the sacrifice
that is upon the altar and you remember now what's going to
happen, that sacrifice it's offered, you know, there in the morning.
And usually what happened, there's a few sacrifices that weren't
this way, but usually what happened is the priest took that home
for dinner that day. That was his meat for the day.
So you swear by that gift. Well, you got to keep your promise
then. You got to keep your promise. If you don't, that won't be forgiven
you. That's a silly tradition, but
that's what they did. They made the offerings, the
gold and the animals that were brought as offerings more important
than Christ. more important than God, more
important than the temple and the altar, which are pictures
of Christ, which the Lord says here, you swear by the temple,
you're swearing by him that dwells in it. God's shekinah glory dwells
in that place. You're swearing by God. Now,
modern day Pharisees do the same thing. They make religious things. They make holy places or buildings
or relics, these things that you can touch and see. They make
them more important than Christ. And I'll just apply this to us,
this building. I'm thankful for it. Aren't you?
I'm thankful for it. I love it in the sense of this. This is where Christ is preached.
This is where God's children gather to worship. So in that
sense, I love it. But I'm telling you now, don't
get too attached to this building. If the gospel is ever not preached
here, you get out of it. Get out. I'm telling you, get
out. Don't ever make the building more important than the Savior. Just don't do it. And you know,
the Pharisees of old and the modern day ones too, they're
making a big issue of this, that you swear, you do the swear by
the gold or swear by the sacrifice. They're making your decision,
what you swear that you will do, to be more important than
Christ. and who he is to his people,
what he's done to his people. They may, in modern day, you
know, Pharisees, make your decision for Jesus, they make that the
deciding factor in salvation. Well, that makes our decision
more important than Christ. That makes me more important
than the Savior. Now, by God's grace, and I can say this about
myself and many of you, I'm committed to Christ. I believe Him. I'm
committed to Him. I'm committed to His cause. But
our resolve and our promises, our resolve to be faithful and
do all these things in the service of God is utterly useless to
our souls. What oath have you ever made
to God that you kept? Not one. Not one. There's one
man. who made an oath to God and kept
it. Christ the Savior. Christ the Savior. We ought to be faithful men and
women, but we're not saved by our faithfulness. We're saved
by Christ's faithfulness to us. His faithfulness to do everything
he promised his father he would do. His faithfulness to do everything
that it took to save his people from their sin. His faithfulness
to call him, his faithfulness to keep him, and his faithfulness
to glorify him. It's all him, isn't it? I'd a
whole lot rather talk about that than try to rev myself up to
do something that I know in my heart I can't do. Wouldn't you?
All right, here's the fifth thing. Modern day Pharisees leave off
the most important spiritual matters, verse 23. 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, faith. These ought you to have done,
and not to leave the other undone. Ye blind guides, which strain
at a gnat and swallow a camel." Now, at this time, when the Lord
is speaking, the Old Testament law was still in full effect. So tithing was still required.
That's a good thing that the Pharisees, that they tithe the
true 10%, even down to the herbs in their garden. That's a good
thing. I mean, that's what they're supposed to do. But while they
were doing that, they ignored the much weightier spiritual
matters. They're getting all caught up
in the ounces of the herbs and they missed the pounds. They
strain to do the smallest thing. I wonder about this this morning.
How did they know they were getting 10% of those little mint leaves?
Do you count the number of leaves? Do you do half a leaf? But they
did it. But they ignored the weightier
matters, the huge matters that concern their souls. And the
same thing is in today's religion. They stress at the smallest things. They don't matter. It just doesn't
matter. Dress codes, religious ceremonies,
religious traditions, things that affect the body. But then
they ignore the huge issues that affect the eternal state of their
souls. They ignore righteousness. Is anybody asking how can a sinner
be righteous with God? Is anybody asking that question?
Anybody answering it? Well, I can tell you this, righteous
is not gonna come by what you and I do. I can tell you that.
They ignore true holiness. Nobody's asking, how is it that
I can be made holy? How is it that God can see me
as holy? I can tell you it's not by the
way I dress, because God looks on the heart, not how I'm dressing. They ignore this. How can God's
justice, and I tell you they ignore it, I don't think they
have the foggiest idea that this is required. They ignore, how
is it that God's justice can be satisfied against my sin?
Justice has got to be satisfied. I can tell you, it can't be.
My sin can't be put away by just following up, you know, a bunch
of religious ceremonies. God's justice is not satisfied
that way. There's got to be blood. And whose blood? It's got to
be Christ's blood. And they ignore receiving mercy
from God. You know why they ignore receiving
mercy from God? They don't think they need it. And oh, they're
caught up on tithing 10% of their little mint leaves, but they
completely ignore showing mercy. They're tithing on the herbs
in their garden. They're checking up on you and
judging you if you don't tithe on the herbs in your garden,
too. They just completely ignore mercy. They stress out over things
that don't matter to their souls. I mean, they just don't matter.
I listened to a message of Brother Henry's this week from back in
the 70s. And he said, would I shock you
to tell you that a man can go home tonight and open up and
drink a beer and watch the ball game and his soul wouldn't be
affected? They just stress out over these
things that don't matter to their souls. And they completely ignore
faith in Christ, resting in Christ, the sacrifice of Christ, the
saving, keeping power of Christ. I tell you, if God gives you
that in the heart, everything else is going to take care of itself.
I promise you it will. Then six modern day Pharisees
focus on the outward, not the inward. Verse 25. Woe unto you
scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you may clean the outside
of the cup and of the platter, but within they're full of extortion
and excess. Thou blind Pharisees, clean first
that which is within the cup and platter. that the outward
outside of them may be clean. Also, what one do you scribes
and Pharisees, hypocrites for your likened to white and sepulchers,
which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full
of dead man's bones and of all uncleanness. Even so, you also
outwardly appear righteous on demand, but within you're full
of hypocrisy and iniquity. Now that is so obvious it requires
very little comment. False religion is, always taken
up with the outward. It's an outward show of religion.
They're very concerned with how men see them. And the Lord uses
the perfect example of a cemetery or a grave. You could make a
cemetery look real good, can't you? You put a nice tombstone
up there, keep the grass all cut real good. You can make it
look real good, but not just under the surface. All there
is is dead people, dead bodies. You can put lipstick and put
a dress on a pig, but now it's still a pig. First chance it
gets, it's going to go back and wallow in the mud, because that's
the nature of a pig. And we can dress people up, and
we can teach them to act all religious, and all we've done
is affect the outside. They're still as lost as a goose
in a sun storm. False religion only deals with
the outward. They stress it, because that's
all they know. They don't know about an inward
work of grace, because they haven't experienced They don't know about
a new heart because God hadn't given them one. So all they know
about is the outward. And they ignore a large truth
in scripture. God Almighty looks on the heart,
not the outward. Well, I hope we're always much
more concerned with what God sees than what men see. Don't
you reckon? And we ought to be begging God
for an inward work of grace from the heart, in the heart from
God. All right, here's the seventh thing. Modern day Pharisee, now
they hate the gospel. And since they hate the gospel,
they hate those that preach it. Verse 29. Woe unto you, scribes
and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you build the tombs of the prophets
and garnish the sepulchers of the righteous and say, oh, now
if we'd been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been
partakers with them and the blood of the prophets. Wherefore, you
be witnesses unto yourselves that you're the children of them,
which killeth the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of
your fathers. Now you just beware of people
who only love dead preachers. Now over the course of my lifetime,
I've known a lot of really, really good preachers, faithful, faithful
men. I'm thankful for them. I read their commentaries, I
listen to them, but there's something to remember here. Those men preach
to people in their day. Living preachers, God sends living
preachers to preach to people in 2022. Not dead ones, living
ones. And in the Old Testament, I mean,
it's the story of human nature. The Old Testament Jews hated
Moses while he was alive. I mean, they just hated him.
Why'd you bring us out here to die in the wilderness? Always questioning
his leadership and questioning the things, you know, that he
was doing and saying, oh, now anybody can be a priest, you
know, anybody can do what you're doing. The Old Testament, they
hated Moses. Boy, they loved him when he was
dead. And then they hated Jeremiah and Isaiah. They hated Moses
so much when he was alive, they tried to kill him, but boy, they
sure loved him when Jesus of Nazareth was in his ministry,
wasn't he? All they kept quoting to him was Moses. They love Moses
now, but they hated the Savior that Moses wrote of. Then time
rolled on, you know, people, they hated the reformers. How
they hated those men that just would dare say salvation by faith
alone, by grace alone, by the word of God, they hated the reformers.
But boy, when they died, they sure loved him. But they hated
Spurgeon, who was preaching the very same thing they preached.
Charles, I mean, you think of Charles Spurgeon. How much did
we admire the man? He said one time, there is not
a preacher in this town that will go lunch with me. Not one.
They hated him. Then he died. And boy, they loved
Spurgeon. And they hated Mayhem and Fortner
and Richardson, didn't they? Hated them. Now those fellows
are dead. But boy, they sure hate the people
that preach the very same gospel that they preached. And I'll
tell you why they love them so much now. These fellows who the
Lord's called to glory. I'll tell you why they love them.
They're not here to confront them anymore. That's exactly
why. They're not here to confront
them anymore. But they hate the men that preach the very same
gospel that they preached. Now, there is a There's a part of me that don't
care. I mean, there's a part of me
that I don't care. I'm that prickly, I guess. But there's a big part that hurts. I was talking to a preacher friend,
a pastor friend of mine, and we were talking about this. He's
gone through it, too. He said, Frank, it hurts, don't it? It
hurts. I wouldn't compromise the gospel.
I would just assume people like me. I mean, you know, by God's
grace, I wouldn't compromise the gospel to do it. But just
in case that you're wondering, it hurts. It hurts. And you beware
of people like that, that only love these dead preachers and
hate the living ones. I'm thankful for those men now
of the past. Like I said, I read their commentaries
and these things, you know, preparing messages. But let's always remember
this. Be thankful for the men that
God sent to preach to our generation. And remember, God's called us
to preach to our generation. Oh, God, make us faithful to
do it. All right, here's the last thing. The message of the
modern day Pharisees is deadly venom to souls. Verse 33. ye
serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can you escape the damnation
of hell? Now, the message of false religion, boy, it looks
good. It looks good to the flesh, doesn't it? It appeals to what
the flesh thinks is so religious. But the Savior, who sees the
heart, who knows all, called them vipers, poisonous snakes. Their message will kill, just
like the rattlesnake's venom will kill. If it gets in the
soul, it'll kill him because it cuts him off from the hope
of Christ, from salvation and life in Christ. And I'll say
it again, I pray that the Lord will keep us faithful and focused
on preaching and believing the message of Christ, because eternal
life can only be found in him by believing him, by knowing
him. If we trust Christ, we'll live. And without him, we'll die. It's
as simple as that. I mean, he's the only issue.
He's the only issue. I pray we'll keep preaching him
and keep believing him. That's an awesome responsibility
to preach to our generation. And that's not just to me, that's
to this whole congregation. It's our responsibility to preach
the gospel, to support the gospel, to send out the gospel to our
generation today. God make us faithful to do it,
not become these judgmental and religious nuts. All right, well,
the Lord bless that to you.