My text this evening is Matthew
23, verses 13 through 33. Matthew 23, beginning at verse
13. If you're taking notes, the title
of this message is Eight Stern Words of Condemnation. That may seem like a very negative
approach to any portion of scripture, But I assure you that if you
will listen and follow along carefully, you will find these
eight stern words of condemnation to be full of instruction for
our souls. Standing in the midst of the
temple, after addressing his own disciples and the multitude
around them, while he had their ear, the ear of the people, our
Lord Jesus turned to the scribes and the Pharisees in the most
public manner possible, and denounced and condemned them with these
scathing words, beginning at verse 13. Read with me. 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 ye them that are entering to go in. 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. Woe unto you, scribes and pharisees,
hypocrites, for you compass land or sea and land to make one apostolate. And when he is made, you make
him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. Woe unto
you, you blind guides which say, whosoever shall swear by the
temple, it is nothing. But whosoever shall swear by
the gold of the temple, he is a debtor. Ye fools and blind,
for whether is greater the gold or the temple that sanctifies
the and whosoever shall swear by the altar, it is nothing.
But whosoever sweareth by the gift that is upon the altar,
he is guilty, you fools, and blind. For whither is greater
the gift, or the altar that sanctifies the gift? Whoso therefore shall
swear by the altar, sweareth by it and by all things their
own, 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 setteth thereon. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! For you paid tithe of mint, and
of anise, and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters
of the law. judgment, mercy, and faithfulness. These ought you to have done,
and not to leave the other undone. You blind guides, which strain
at a gnat and swallow a camel, woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! For you may clean the outside
of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion
and excess. Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse
first that which is within the cup and platter, and that that
the outside of them may be clean. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! For you are like unto whited
sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but within
are full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so, you also outwardly appear
righteous unto men, but within you're full of hypocrisy and
iniquity. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites, because you build the tombs of the prophets and
garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, 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. wherefore you be witnesses
unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed
the prophets. Fill ye up therefore the measure
of your fathers, you serpents, you generation of vipers, how
can you escape the damnation of hell?" Now those words were not spoken
secretly. Our Lord did not call the scribes
and Pharisees to one side and have a private council or a private
conversation with them. But rather he went into the temple
where the scribes and Pharisees were commonly found, where the
scribes and Pharisees talked with authority, where the scribes
and Pharisees were revered as the servants of God, where they
were honored and respected as the leaders of the religious
generation in which they lived. These scribes and Pharisees then
gathered in their own temple, the temple of God, gathered in
their own church house, the temple of God, gathered just like we
are in this house. Our Lord goes into the temple
where these men are revered as God's messengers, and with the
most scathing words imaginable, with unsparing terms, he denounces
them and denounces their religion publicly. He condemns them and
condemns their doctrine, their religion, and their practices
in a most public manner. Eight times he uses these solemn
words, woe unto you. Seven times he calls them hypocrites. Twice he calls them blind fools. And at last he denounces them
as a generation of serpents, and of snakes, and of vipers. Why such, I read this passage
today, as I was preparing this message, I said why, why such
public condemnations? Why such scathing language? Could he not have said the same
thing in more polite, more acceptable, more easy terms? Certainly he
could have done so. Certainly he could have been
more civil, but it was not his purpose to be polite. It was
not his purpose to be easy. It was not his purpose to be
civil. It was not his purpose even to be acceptable. It was
his purpose to be heard, and therefore he spoke in such a
manner that I'll guarantee you no one standing in the temple
that day forgot it to the day they died. He meant to be heard,
and so he spoke as one who meant to be heard. Remember, these
are the words of the one man, the one man, the one preacher,
the one servant of God, the one person who has ever lived in
this world, whose love and goodness cannot possibly be called into
question. He is love, he is goodness, for
he is God. And yet, you never heard a man
use more severe tones in dealing with religious men than our Lord
uses when he speaks here of the scribes and Pharisees in his
day. Why did he choose to use such
scathing language to denounce and condemn these men and their
religion and the doctrine they taught? He did so simply for
this reason, the glory of God, the truth of God, and the souls
of men were at stake, and he recognized that. He recognized
that these men were attempting to deny the very truth of God
in which God's glory is wrapped up, and they were attempting
to destroy the souls of men as they pretended to be the servants
of God. Now, the solemn truth to be learned
from this passage is quite clear. The doctrine, the religion, the
spirit, and the practices of the scribes and Pharisees are
abominable in the sight of God. The religion of this world is
contemptible to God Almighty, and wretched ought to be to us.
The religion of this world is not something that God stamps
with honor. The religion of this world is
not something that God teaches us to revere. Rather, the religion
of this world is contemptible, and we ought to look upon it
as a contemptible thing. Now, tonight I want us to look
briefly at each of these eight stern words of condemnation which
our Lord delivered to the scribes and Pharisees. And when we finish
looking at them as briefly as I possibly can, I'm going to
draw three or four words of instruction and application for ourselves.
May God the Holy Spirit be our teacher. First, read verse 13. Here our Lord condemns these
religious leaders for shutting up the kingdom of heaven. What
a woe unto you, scribes, and Pharisees. Now these were the
most religious men of their day. These scribes were the fellows
responsible for transcribing the scriptures. These scribes
were men who devoted themselves to the study of the Old Testament
scriptures. These scribes were regarded by
their generation as the most devoted of men, along with the
Pharisees, who in their life and behavior and discipline exercised
the most straight, strict, straight-laced manner of religion imaginable.
And everybody looked at them and said, these are God's men.
These are God's servants. These men are devoted to God. But our Lord says, woe unto you,
scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for this reason, you shut up
the kingdom of heaven against them. For you neither go in yourselves,
neither suffer you them that are entering to go in. Now we
know, of course, no man is going to literally shut up the kingdom
of heaven. That kingdom which God Almighty
builds, no man can hinder. And yet many, like the scribes
and Pharisees, do all they can to keep sinners out of the kingdom
of God, persuading them not to hear those men who come preaching
the truth of God, persuading them against those who teach
the doctrines of the gospel, doing all they can to persuade
people not to pay any attention to that man who dares proclaim
that which is obviously the truth of Holy Scripture. This is what
scribes and Pharisees did. John the Baptist came, and all
the people heard John the Baptist, and they said, man, this man
speaks for God. And they came to the scribes
and Pharisees. The scribes and Pharisees said, don't trust him. Don't
pay any attention to John the Baptist. Now, you fellas ought
not get excited about John the Baptist. This fella can't be
of God. And they, by their rejection
of John, led the others to reject John the Baptist as well. Our
Lord Jesus came, the Messiah, the Prince, the one of whom the
Old Testament Scriptures spoke. And as he proclaimed the word
of God, the scribes and Pharisees heard his doctrine and refused
to bow to his doctrine, refused to bow to his claims, and thus
led the people away from the Son of God, and at last led the
nation of Israel to cry against God's dear Son, crucify him,
crucify him. They tried to keep anyone from
hearing and believing on the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of
God. and their followers to this day
do the same. They take those who proclaim
the gospel of God's free grace, those who proclaim the message
of redemption by the blood, regeneration by the Holy Spirit, and they
declare plainly that these men are somehow leading men to evil. I can't tell you how many times
over the years, you may have heard it, you may not, but I
can't tell you how many times over the years I've had men who
say to me, I talked to so-and-so, talked to my pastor about what
I heard you preach, talked to my pastor about this paper, I
gave him this article, and they say, now the pastor, he can't
deny what you say, though he may not like it. He even says
sometimes he believes what you say. But you can't preach this,
you can't teach this, because this leads men to do evil. This
leads to deadness, this leads to lifelessness, this leads to
apathy and indifference. Oh no, oh no. Such men will not
enter the kingdom, and they shut up the kingdom against those
who are entering. Second, in verse 14, our Savior condemned
these men for being pretentious, abusive, and self-serving. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! for you devour widows' houses,
and for pretense make wrong prayer, therefore you shall receive the
greater damnation." These base men, wearing the mask of piety
and devotion, devoured widows' houses. And that simply means
they took advantage of the unsuspecting pretending to be devoted spiritual
leaders, pretending to be the true servants of God, like the
hucksters of our day, pretending to be so wise, so devoted and
so good, they kept their hands in your purse. They kept their
hands reaching out for you to demo something so they could
do the work of God. They kept their hands grabbing
after everything they could for themselves. They took everything
they could get from the weak, the unprotected, the unsuspecting,
particularly these elderly women, these widows. I can't think of
words sufficient to describe my contempt of the televangelist,
as they're called these days, the religious con-men, the religious
con-artist. who go about their days enriching
themselves by robbing others, unsuspecting, and they think
that the money they've given has gone to God's service. The
slickest, most vile, con men in the world are those who run
a scam upon the souls of men to enrich themselves. Now let
me make two or three statements here, and I want you to hear
me, hear me well. men who enrich themselves by
the ministry, by the work of the ministry, men who enrich
themselves by what they call Christian service, are not ministering
to yourself. That'll make perfectly good sense. That'll make perfectly good sense.
Now, without question, any congregation served by a faithful pastor ought
to take care of that pastor to the best of their ability. You
understand what I'm saying. But any man who is God's servant
will not enrich himself by robbing God's people of their goods.
He won't do it. He will not enrich himself taking
back which men intend to be for the service of Christ and line
his own pockets with it. He won't do it. He won't do it. In our public officials, we have
such strict laws, such terribly strict laws that it has gotten
to the place that public officials are not even allowed to go out
and do other things and enrich themselves in that manner for
fear that there should be some indication of impropriety because
they've used their position of influence to enrich themselves.
Now, in my own opinion, the public laws with regard to Senate, Congress,
and so on, perhaps have gone too far to the extreme. Anybody
with common sense says that this man is the servant of the people,
he's using his office to serve the people, not to serve himself.
And if a man is God's servant, he uses his office to serve God's
people, not to serve himself, not to enrich himself. God's
servants come to serve, not to be served. I don't know where on earth they
get it. I don't know where they get it. Bible college students,
I know some of them will hear this tape and maybe be upset,
but let them be upset. Bible college students are the
worst group of college students in the world for expecting people
to wait on them. Expecting them to wait on them.
I'll give you an illustration. Shelby is very hospitable, generous,
and kind, and we open our homes to a lot of people. When I was
pastoring at Lookout, we had normally about 16, 18 people
for lunch every Sunday. Bible college students, we happened
to remember the days when we were in college. God had opened
the door of opportunity to minister to these 16, 18 people, and they
were coming over in pretty good ways, and the only way they could
afford to be there for services in the evenings was if we kept
them and fed them and they spent the afternoon with us. This went
on for weeks and weeks and led into months and months, and it
was fine. But in the course of time, not
once, not once did I hear one say, thank you. Not one time
did I hear one of the ladies say, you sit down there, we'll
take care of the dishes. Not one time. Until finally, I said,
you folks need to learn something. You need to learn something about
just general gratitude. You need to learn something about
just general manners. I was talking to someone the
other day. I am fairly well of the firm conviction that preachers
have no business attempting to pastor a congregation who haven't
gone out and worked and earned a living for a family, because
they have no idea what's involved in earning a living for a family.
Most preachers, by and large, in our day, most folks involved
in religious activity and in religious service, somehow they
give the idea that they just expect everything. You buy me
a coat, you buy me a coat. I need a tie, you buy me a tie.
I need some shoes, you buy me some shoes. They just expect
everything. Not God's service. Not God's
service. I'll give you an example. Turn
to Matthew chapter 20, verse 20, or verse 26 rather. It shall not be so among you,
but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister. And whosoever will be chief among
you, let him be your servant, even as the Son of Man came not
to be ministered to, not to be served, but to minister, to serve,
and to give his life a ransom for many." Turn over to 2 Corinthians
chapter 2. 2 Corinthians chapter 2 and verse
17. Listen to what the Apostle Paul says
concerning this. 2 Corinthians 2 verse 17. for we are not as many." That
is, we're not like most of the fellows you hear calling themselves
preachers, which corrupt the Word of God. Do you have a marginal
reference in your Bible that tells you what that word corrupt
means? Which deal deceitfully with the Word of God. They handle
the Word of God and make it to serve their own purposes. But
rather, we are like those who, I'm sincere with you, as of God,
in the sight of God, speak in Christ. We speak of Christ and
we speak for Christ. Look again at chapter 4, 2 Corinthians
chapter 4, verse 5. The apostle speaking of himself
says, concerning himself and all other servants of God, we
preach not ourselves. We preach not ourselves. This
is not what he's talking about. He's not saying we don't stand
up here and talk about ourselves. That's not the meaning of the
text at all. He's saying we don't preach for
ourselves, Father. We don't preach for our own gain.
We don't preach to serve ourselves. We don't preach to enrich ourselves.
But rather, we preach Christ Jesus, the Lord, and for Christ
Jesus, the Lord, and ourselves, your servants, for Jesus' sake. Now, that doesn't mean that the
pastor, the preacher, is a wimp and that he he does what he's
told to do, and he doesn't cause any trouble, and doesn't make
any waves? Oh, no. He may make a lot of waves and
cause a lot of trouble, but it does mean this. His object is
to serve your soul for the glory of God. And if he's God's servant,
that's what he does. Thirdly, look at verse 15. Matthew chapter 23, verse 15. Pharisees, hypocrites. For you compassion would see
in land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, you make
him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves." Now, here
the Son of God condemns the scribes and Pharisees, and all their
successors today, for destroying the souls of men with false religion.
Now, most of the time when you read commentaries Modern commentaries,
most of the time when you hear men talk about verse 15, they
condemn the practice of proselytizing. It's commonly called. I remember
when we were in school, folks condemned the Jehovah Witnesses,
not because of what they believed, not because of what they taught,
but because they proselytized everybody. Well, our Lord is
not condemning the practice of proselytizing. That's not it
at all. In fact, he commands us to be
proselytized. Read Matthew 28. He says, go
into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
It's our responsibility to do the very best of our ability
to proclaim the gospel to all men, and to direct all men away
from veil worship to the worship of God, away from false religion
to true religion, away from the path of darkness death and destruction
to the path of life, liberty and life in Jesus Christ. Now
that's our responsibility. He tells us plainly that's our
responsibility. What he condemns is the practice
of going about persuading men and women for sectarian reasons,
serving themselves to join up with our group and join up with
our society, join up with our church, join up with our sect,
and thus ruining their souls. making them also, like yourselves,
to be damned children of the devil." What he's talking about
is getting sinners to believe a false gospel. As Paul wrote
to the Galatians and said, who has to preach this? Who's cast
a spell over you? He's condemning the practice
of getting people to make a profession of faith who've never experienced
the grace of God. Preachers everywhere churches
everywhere do it. And the rest of us are expected
to do it. They chase ambulances like a hungry log. Go up to the
hospital, go to the funeral home, and somebody goes through some
trauma, some thing that men call a tragedy, and they run and get
them to make a profession of faith. Not God's servants. God's
servants aren't interested in getting a statistic, they're
interested in a symbol. You understand the difference?
Our Lord is here condemning the idea of giving men and women
a false peace and a false assurance based upon a false hope without
the knowledge of Jesus Christ and Him crucified and the experience
of grace in your soul. I get calls almost every week,
either calls or letters every week, from men and women literally
around the world seeking assurance and want me to tell them whether
or not they're saved. And I can't do that. I won't
do that. Brother Rob Barnard made a statement
I heard on a tape when I was just a young man that still rings
in my ears. He said the only fellow who will
try to convince a lost man that he's saved is another lost man.
That's a pretty good assumption. That's a pretty good assumption.
I'm not the Spirit of God. I can't give you assurance. I
can't give you peace. All I can do is tell you to believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ and you have life everlasting. All
I can tell you is if you trust the Son of God and the Son of
God alone as Lord and Savior, your only righteousness, your
only redemption, your only sanctification, you have righteousness, redemption,
and sanctification before God. These religious hucksters don't
care what they do. They do what they do not from
a desire to benefit the souls of men. or to bring them to the
knowledge of the living and true God, not in the least. But they
do what they do with only this as their object, to swell their
own ranks, build their own churches, increase their own numbers, and
make disciples for themselves to make themselves a name. The
religion and zeal arises not from a desire for the glory of
God, not from a desire for the salvation of men's souls, but
from their own self-serving interest, and that's what our Lord condemns.
You encompass land and sea to make one apostolate, just one
more disciple, and when you've made him a follower of you, you've
made him two-fold more the child of hell than yourselves. Fourthly,
the Lord Jesus condemns the scribes and Pharisees for categorizing
sin. That's a summarization of verses
16 through 22. You can read it again at your
leisure. You'll remember what we read just a little bit ago.
The scribes and Pharisees, they said, now if you swear by the
temple, that's all right. But don't swear by the gold that's
in the offering plate. You talk about a revealing statement.
If you swear by the altar, now, maybe you ought not do that.
God forbids that, but after all, that's not the real important
thing. The real important thing is the sacrifice that's on the altar.
Don't swear by that, because that's ours. That belongs to
the priest. And so, the scribes and Pharisees
categorized sin, teaching men that it's It's all right, by
their actual doctrine. These were not things our Lord
just kind of said, now this is what I think you're saying. These
were actually the doctrines of the scribes and Pharisees. They
actually wrote down in their law, don't swear by the gold
in the temple, just by the temple. Don't swear by the altar, the
sacrifice on the altar, just by the altar, and you'll be all
right. And thus they taught me. Tragically, they taught me. that
it was okay to swear by God's name. Okay to swear by God's
name. And God specifically said, don't
you dare take the name of the Lord your God in vain. They taught
men that there were certain sins that were more evil than others.
And if you must choose between swearing by the temple and swearing
by the gold in the temple's coffers, by all means swear by the temple. What a picture of the religion
of our day. Let a man, a church, or a denomination forsake the
teachings of Christ, and it's impossible to place a limit on
the heresies and foolishness to which they will run. Now,
without question, some sins are more grave than others. Our Lord
speaks here and says to the Pharisees, yours is the greater damnation.
Without question, some will be punished more severely than others.
But whenever self-righteous religious men start defining sin in their
terms and identifying sin at their whim, not according to
the word of God, whenever they start making rules and regulations
about what sins are female and what sins are mortal, what sins
are deserving of discipline and what sins we just sort of let
go. When they begin to do so, they
violate the scriptures in that they rob God of his authority
and make sin acceptable to them. They make the very act of rebellion
against God somewhat acceptable. So, a man comes along and somebody
says, did you swear by the gold in the temple? Or did you swear by the temple?
And he says, well, yes, but I didn't swear by the gold in the temple. Did you make that pledge on the
altar? Well, yeah, yeah, I did that,
but I didn't swear by the sacrifice on the altar. Sound like anything
you hear? their category of sin. We live
for good after all. Our Lord commanded that no swearing
be done at all. Read Matthew chapter 5. He said
don't swear by anything. But the Pharisees said it's okay
as long as you don't swear for the gold or the sacrifice. Fifthly,
the scribes and Pharisees, like the religionists around us, exalted
trifles while ignoring the most important And for that they too
must be condemned. Verse 23, Woe unto you, scribes
and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and
anise and cumin, that is, you pay tithe on all the herbs in
your garden, and have omitted the weightier matters of the
law, judgment, that is, righteousness or justice, mercy and faith. These ought you to have done,
and not to leave the other undone, you blind guides. Quit spraying
in a gnat and swallow a camel." They put last things first and
first things last. They made a great issue about
tithing, a great issue about it. I never will forget, I was
a sixteen-year-old boy sitting in Sunday school class one Sunday.
I can remember it like it was yesterday. I can remember it
like it was yesterday. I sat in Sunday School, a class,
listening to two grown men, one of them was a teacher, one of
them was an assistant teacher, and they were talking about tithing,
Lindsay, and they spent the whole 45-minute session, I'm not talking
about a little bit, the whole 45-minute session debating on
whether you ought to tithe on the gross of the net. Here's
such a class full of young men headed to hell just as fast as
they can go. And these two fellows standing around debating whether
he ought to pay tithes on the net or on the gross. One of them
was of one opinion, one of them was of the other opinion. What
nonsense. What utter foolishness. What base, base, base excuse
for teaching the Word of God. These men, they had precise laws. Now you pay tithes on your herbs. When you pick dill seed and dill
weed out of your garden, you take 10% down to the temple.
When you pick cloves out of your garden, you take 10% down to
the temple. When you pick spices out of your
garden, you take 10% down to the temple. But they forgot the
meaning of righteousness. They forgot the necessity of
justice being satisfied. That's what the sacrifice in
the altar was all about. Justice had to be satisfied.
by suitable sacrifice. They forgot mercy. Mercy. The essence of godliness. The
essence of genuine faith is mercy. Oh, goodness one to another.
They forgot faith. They forgot faith. They had their
roles and they had their religion and they had their practices
and they had their laws. But they didn't believe God.
They didn't believe God. Pharisees were meticulous, meticulous
people in their outward behavior, in their dress codes, talking
about tithing, talking about attending the synagogues, talking
about attending the ordinances of worship. They were meticulous.
You better be here, buddy. You better be here. But they
ignored the most important principles of true religion. or true Christianity. They ignored the doctrine of
faith, that word of faith, the Apostle Paul described when he
said, hold fast the word, the word as you've received it, the
word of faith, the word of righteousness. They ignored the exercise of
faith in God, just living by faith, walking by faith, believing
Not believing in God, believing God. Not believing in the Word
of God, believing God. Not believing in what God says,
believing God. Just walking in this world, believing
God. And they ignored mercy. Visiting the fatherless and the
widows and their affliction. Which is what the Holy Spirit
calls true religion and undefined. Sixth, look at verses 25 and
26. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! For you may clean the outside
of the cup and the platter, but within they are full of extortion
and excess. Thou blind Pharisee! Cleanse
first that which is within the cup and the platter, that the
outside of them may be clean also." Now here the religion
of the scribes and Pharisees is condemned by Christ. For this
reason, it was an outward religion of rituals and ceremonies rather
than the inward spiritual worship of God. For most people, for most people
that I talk to, for most people that I converse with around the
world, for most people from whom I hear and with whom I maintain
correspondence, For most people, Christianity is an outward system
of creeds, confessions, and ceremonies. No more. Most people base their faith,
their confidence, their assurance, they base their hope of salvation
on the fact that they, back yonder when there's a little boy, a
little girl, back yonder Yesterday, or 20 years ago, or 50 years
ago, they had an experience, and they decided for Jesus. It
doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that they've
never had an experience since. It doesn't matter that they've
never walked with God. It doesn't matter that they've
never known anything about a life with Jesus Christ in this world. They had an experience, and that's
the whole of their salvation. Or else, They base their hope
on the fact that they believe the right doctrine. They have
been brought up and catechized and taught and instructed, and
they say, yes, Calvinism is right, Farminianism is wrong. And that's
the basis of their hope. They're dead as a hammer. But
that's the basis of their hope. Their hope is altogether outward. I was baptized when I was a baby.
I come to the Lord's table. I attend church. I read my Bible. It's altogether outward. Now
don't neglect the creeds, the confessions, and the ceremonies. I hesitate to use that word,
ceremonies, the ordinances of the gospel. Don't neglect those
things. But true Christianity is much,
much more. We must not ignore God's doctrine,
God's ordinances. We must not ignore God's worship.
But Christianity in its essence is an inward spiritual matter
of the heart. God looks on the heart. God looks on the heart. He says, my son, give me your
heart. Now, Ron, it's impossible to
give him your heart, not give him everything. but it's sure
enough possible to give them everything else and not give
them your heart. You understand what I'm saying? Our Lord says,
rend your heart, not your garments. The Jews had a custom whenever
they had some terrible thing, some terrible thing happen, some
bad news, they would tear their garments and they'd shave their
head and put sackcloth and ashes on them and thus they would make
an outward show of lamentation and mourning. And our Lord said
that doesn't amount to anything. Rend your heart. Rend your heart. God's a spirit. And they that
worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. The fathers seek as such to worship
him. Faith in Christ is an act of
the heart, with the heart man believeth unto thy Jesus. We're the circumcision which
worship God in the spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus and have
no confidence in the flesh. We worship God with our heart.
That's the essence of true worship. Seventhly, let me hurry. In verses
27 and 28, I was reading Ryle today on this
passage, and he said this, told me the same thing in verses 25
and 26, but I beg to differ. Our Lord says, Woe unto you,
scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like unto whited
sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful unto men, but are within
full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so,
you also outwardly appear righteous unto men. That's the key. but
within you're full of hypocrisy and iniquity. Here our Lord condemns
as utter hypocrisy, as utter hypocrisy, all religion that
has for its object the nod and approval of men. Those religious works and ceremonies
which are performed and promoted to show men How wholly zealous
and devoted we are, are an abomination to God. Our Lord said that which
is approved among men is an abomination to the Lord. He said in Matthew
chapter 6, He said when you give alms, don't let your right hand
know what your left hand does. When you fast, don't wash your
face so that men look at you and say, look at that guy, he's
getting ready to fast. When you pray, don't blow your trumpet,
stand in the street corner and say, look at me, look at me,
now I'm fixing to call on God. Y'all know how religious I am.
But rather than your closet pray, do everything in private. In
other words, he's saying don't do anything to be seen of man.
We're neither ashamed nor showy. We don't exercise religious themes. We don't put on a religious show
so that men will look at us and say, boy, he's a humble man.
She's a humble woman. She really walks with the Lord. We simply seek to live in this
world for God's glory and do everything for his glory. That's
it. That's what it is to walk by
faith in Christ. It really doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter whether
anybody else sees it or approves of it. Do you understand that? We're not tooting our horn. We're
not saying, look here at me. We seek by our lives in this
world to glorify our Father which is in heaven, but we're not seeking
anybody to say, look here, they glorify their Father. That's
not it. We just seek to glorify him. And one last thing, the Son of
God, in verses 29 through 33, condemns as a crooked and perverse
generation of snakes and vipers, those who exalt the names and
honor of dead prophets, for despising those who preach and teach the
message of those same prophets. Woe unto you, scribes, Pharisees,
hypocrites, Because you build the tombs of the prophets and
garnish the sepulchers of the righteous and say, if we had
been in those days, the days of our fathers, we would not
have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.
Wherefore you be witnesses unto yourselves, that you are the
children of them which killed the prophets. Fill ye up then
the measure of your fathers, you serpents, you generation
of vipers. how can you escape the damnation
of hell? The scribes and Pharisees built
monuments to dead prophets, and they revered the memories of
God's saints who lived in bygone days. But by their treatment
of Christ and his disciples and his people, they demonstrated
that they were one with those who killed the prophets and killed
God's saints in bygone days. I can show you numerous illustrations
of this. Today, over in England, the Church of England built a
huge monument to John Bunyan. You talk about a contradiction.
Better that be like me throwing you in jail and then coming along
and building a monument to your honor. They put him in prison
for 12 years, and after he's dead and gone, they made a museum
out of his place there in Bedford, and they built a monument to
him, and they extolled John Donnelly. Oh, what a man was the dreamer.
But he's dead now, they don't have to listen to him. John Newton's
church has a plaque in his memory, and then that same congregation
where that plaque is in the memory of that man, John Newton. Amazing
grace he was. That man who was such a stalwart
pillar of the faith. They also got in that congregation,
in that assembly, on their church building, a plaque. Brother Maurice
was just telling me today, he had seen it when he was over
there, in which they state how they revere the spirits of the
dead and pray for them. This is the total return to Romanism.
Arthur W. Pink died in 1952. 1952. While he was alive, while
he was alive, he lived alone. I don't mean almost alone. You
were talking about how we think sometimes we're alone. Buddy,
he was alone. Folks treated him like he had
bubonic plague. I mean, nobody was around. Nobody
referred to Mr. Fink. Nobody published Mr. Fink's
works. Nobody, nobody was willing to
listen to what he wrote and what he taught. Today, he did. We can publish his books and
make a million dollars. And they did. Publishing houses
that would not begin to publish what was written by a man who
taught what he did while he lives will turn around and publish
them and make a million dollars. Why? because they're all the
children of those who persecuted and despised God's prophets.
I've said many times, all it will take for Brother Mahan's
commentaries to become a standard issue in Baptist churches, to
become standard, just standard reading material in Sunday school
departments of Baptist churches literally around the world. All
it will take is for them to die. That's all it'll take. Just that! And everybody's been watching
the whole, what this dear man said for God. And yet today,
give them away, might get somebody to read them. Might get somebody
to read them. But what are the things to be
learned here? Learn this, when the teachers
and preachers and religious leaders of an age are in such darkness
and delusions, how great is the darkness of this generation,
and learn this, God Almighty hates hypocrisy. God hates hypocrisy. Thirdly, of all men in the world,
none are so base, none are so vile, none are so wicked. I mean to use the word as creatures who, in the name
of God, use, abuse, and destroy men's souls for their own gain,
and none shall be judged so severely." That man who would be foolish
enough to go over here to Bluegrass Airport and jump in one of those
jets loaded with passengers who doesn't have any idea what it
is to fly, he jumps in and takes off. If he got it off the ground,
the problem is the nut wouldn't die by himself. Lots of folks
go with him to his grave. And the problem with this generation,
the religious fools standing in pulpits don't perish by themselves. They lead multitudes to eternal
perdition with them. Let us then pray as David did. Let this be my constant prayer
and yours. Let my heart Oh Lord, be found
in thy statutes. Amen. Let's stand together for
prayer. Our Father, enable us in this
day to be found faithful unto thee. Keep us from pretense and hypocrisy. God keep us from being showy about religious acts, calling attention to ourselves,
and make us faithful in our hearts. Lord God, make us faithful. Teach us to follow the example
of our Savior, who was himself faithful unto death. make us
faithful unto death for the glory of him who loved us and gave
himself for us. Amen.