Before you, you have typed out
Matthew 23, chapter 23. And Mark 8, 38 to verse 40 is
actually just Mark's summary of Matthew's extraordinary chapter. And these
The verses before us show us, as Mark has done all the way
through his Gospel, they show us the contrast. The contrast between life and
death. The contrast between faith and
unbelief. And today we are treading on
ground which should cause us to pause deeply, to think seriously,
because there is nothing more dangerous in all this world,
and there is no place more dangerous in all this world, to be in a
place where the Gospel is proclaimed and people hear the Gospel as
these people did, and people see the Gospel as these people
saw it, and yet They harden their hearts against the Lord Jesus. And the cause of the hardening
of their hearts is religion. The cause of the hardening of
their hearts is what is called Christian religion. These are the most serious things.
the most serious things that lie before each and every one
of us. We are just a heartbeat away
from meeting God. Just a heartbeat away from eternity. And as I said earlier, these
are the Lord Jesus' final words, which he spoke within the walls
of the temple. and may God the Holy Spirit just
lay to our hearts the gravity of these words and the awfulness
of the situation that these religious people, these zealous religious
people have found themselves for this past nearly 2000 years
as they spend every waking moment in hell contemplating the fact
that they heard from the Lord Jesus, and rather than hearing
His words, they followed the wisdom of their own hearts and
the traditions of men. God wants us to stop. and to
think very seriously. This is just now, maybe just
two days away from his betrayal and his crucifixion and his death
at the hands of these very same men that he speaks to in this
passage before us. It's a question that should make
us stop and pause in the midst of the busyness of this world
and give us reason to think deeply and seriously. What will the
last words of Jesus be to us as a church? What will the last
words of Jesus be to this generation that we live in? What will the
last words of Jesus be to this religious world that we know
and see around us all the time? And what will be his last words
to you? His judgment will always be based
on absolute perfect truth. God looks at the hearts. God looks at your hearts right
now. God looks at my heart." And this
message has come through tears and pain because those who have
known what we have gone through individually and the congregation
know that these words are not words that are just written on
a piece of paper 2,000 years ago. They are words that we have
seen lived out in our midst. They are words that we have seen
lived out before us in the lives of people that we love very,
very dearly. May God cause us to shed tears
over what we see around us so often. May God cause us to stop
and to think and to come before our goal and lay our hearts and
our lives open before Him. And only He can do it. Only He
can do it. Chapter 12, verse 38, He said
to them in His teaching, He said to a multitude, now this multitude
included His disciples, it included those who were amazed at His
teaching and the people that we read earlier, last week, who
heard him gladly, and it included the scribes and the Pharisees
that he addressed himself to here. The Lord Jesus was an honest
man. He didn't go around behind the
backs of people to talk about them in secret and dark places. He who is light speaks openly,
speaks plainly, speaks in the presence of all who need to hear
him. Then he says a word which he
surprisingly says little, considering how much warning there is in
the scripture. He says, beware. He says, be on your guard against. He says, look and see and take
serious, serious note of what you see before you. One accusation that's levelled
so often at preachers of the Gospel is that we are continually
issuing warnings and religious people say that therefore when
we challenge them about their teaching and challenge them about
the things they do in the name of their teaching, they say that
we are then making judgement calls on people and that we are
saying that they are necessarily lost. The reality is that's not what
we are saying. We are saying that people who
do not know the Lord Jesus at this time in their lives stand
in precarious and dangerous places. Those whose religion causes them
to have confidence and faith and hope in the things that they
have done and the things that they see are in the most dangerous
place of all. We don't, I don't, have secret
insight into what is going on inside your hearts. And you don't
know what's going on inside my heart. Our job as a church and
our job as individuals is to do as God said, is to proclaim
the Gospel of the Lord Jesus as clearly as we possibly can. Our obligation to people that
we love is to give God's warnings to them as plainly and as clearly
as we possibly can, and we leave God to do what He alone can do
in the lives of people. We are not responsible for what
people make us out to be. We are not responsible for how
they choose to interpret our words. We are not responsible
for what motives they assume we have. As I said, they have
no better understanding of our hearts than we do of theirs.
The scriptures give us countless examples of the Lord's prophets,
preachers and teachers. receiving the same reaction to
their message as the Lord Jesus did when he spent over three
years preaching the Gospel in Israel. He was criticised for
the nature of his conception. He was born in immorality, they
said. They thus criticised his parents
for being involved in premarital sex. They criticized the place
where he was read. Can anything good come out of
Nazareth? They found fault with his teaching,
his claims to be God, his claims to be the one who alone can forgive
sin. They found fault with his miracles.
They said they were done by the power of Beelzebub. They found
fault with the time he did his miracles. He healed people on
the Sabbath. They found fault with those who
were the recipients of His miracles. You were steeped in sin from
your birth, they said to the blind man. They found fault with
those He associated with. He is a friend of sinners. They found fault everywhere,
and this with the Son of God Himself. And as they treated
Him, so they will treat us. For that should not stop us from
proclaiming what He proclaimed, issuing the warnings that He
issued. Let's just read these verses
here in chapter 12, verse 38. And he said to them in his teaching,
Beware of the scribes who desire to go around in long robes, love
greetings in the marketplaces, the best seats in the synagogue,
the best places at the feasts, who devour widows' houses, and
for a pretense make long prayers. These will receive greater condemnation. As I said earlier, as you read
those words, we'll now turn to Matthew chapter 23. And I'd like
us just to go quietly as I read Matthew 23 and hear the Lord's
words to these religious people. Matthew 23. Then Jesus spoke
to the multitudes and to His disciples, saying, The scribes
and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. Therefore whatever they
tell you to observe, that observe and do, but do not do according
to their works, for they say and do not do. For they bind
heavy burdens hard to bear and lay them on men's shoulders,
but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. but all their works they do to
be seen by men. They make their phylacteries
broad and enlarge the borders of their garments. They love
the best places at feasts, the best seats in the synagogue,
greetings in the marketplaces, and to be called by men, Rabbi,
Rabbi. But you do not be called Rabbi,
for one is your teacher, the Christ, and you are all brethren. Do not call anyone on earth your
father, for one is your father, he who is in heaven. And do not
be called teachers, for one is your teacher, the Christ. But
he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whoever
exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will
be exalted. But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites, for you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men,
for you neither go in yourselves nor do you allow those who are
entering to go in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites, for you devour widows' houses and for a pretense make
long prayers. Therefore you will receive greater
condemnation. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! For you travel land and sea to
win one proselyte, and when he is won, you make him twice as
much a son of hell as yourselves. Woe to you blind guides who say
whoever swears by the temple it is nothing, but whoever swears
by the gold of the temple he is obliged to perform it. Fools
and blind, for which is greater the gold or the temple that sanctifies
the gold? And whoever swears by the altar
it is nothing, but whoever swears by the gift that is on it he
is obliged to perform it. fools and blind, for which is
greater the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift. Therefore
he who swears by the altar swears by it and by all things on it. He who swears by the temple swears
by it and by him who dwells in it. He who swears by heaven swears
by the throne of God and by him who sits on it. Woe to you, scribes
and Pharisees, hypocrites, You pay tithe of mint and anise and
cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law,
justice, mercy and faith. These you ought have done without
leaving the others undone, blind guides who strain out a gnat
and swallow a camel. Woe to you, scribes and pharisees,
hypocrites, for you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish,
but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee,
first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside
of them may be clean also. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed
tombs, which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full
of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. Even so, you also appear outwardly
righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and
lawlessness. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites, because you build the tombs of the prophets and
adorn the monuments of the righteous and say, if we had lived in the
days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with
them in the blood of the prophets. Therefore you are witnesses against
yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.
Fill up then the measure of your father's guilt. Serpents, brood
of vipers, how can you escape the condemnation of hell? Therefore, indeed, I send you
prophets, wise men, and scribes. Some of them you will kill and
crucify. Some of them you will scourge
in your synagogue and persecute from city to city, that on you
may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood
of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah,
whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Assuredly,
I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one
who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her. How
often I wanted to gather your children together as a hen gathers
her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. See, your
house is left to you desolate. For I say to you, you shall see
me no more till you say, Blessed is he who comes in the name of
the Lord. The Lord Jesus, when he said
those words, knew what was in the hearts of the people he was
speaking to. He knew their history and he
knew what lay before him. We often are reminded that the
Lord Jesus was a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering. We so little understand what
it is to suffer as a man who knows absolutely everything. He not only knew what these men's
thoughts were, but he knew what their destiny was, which is why
he wants his people to take note and to beware of them, to watch
them, to see what they are like, to beware of them and not to
follow them. When he uses the word beware,
he's using a word which has the strongest significance and importance. He says in Matthew 7, Beware
of false prophets which come to you in sheep's clothing, but
inwardly they are ravening wolves. Beware of men Beware of the Sadducees
and the Pharisees. Beware of their leaven. Mark 12. Beware of the leaven
of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. Beware of covetousness. Beware
of false prophets, false shepherds. They look so good on the outside,
but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Beware. God's saying to us today,
look at these men and beware. Look at them. Let's look at what
their lives were like. Let's look. of what God the Holy
Spirit tells us of these men. A desire to go around in long
robes, love greetings in the marketplace, best seats in the
synagogue, best places at the feasts. They desire to go around. They parade themselves around. And not only do they go around,
they have the long robes, the long robes of royalty, the long
robes of the priesthood. They desire to do this, walking
around, parading how religious they are in the marketplaces. And then they love the greetings
that they get. They love people acknowledging
how wonderfully righteous, how wonderfully religious they are. They love the best seats in the
synagogues. These are the things they love.
The best seats in the synagogues are the seats up the front, where
everyone looked at them. One of the things I hated most
about being in India in Mecca was that they would always take
the token Westerner and you would sit up the front. And I used
to squirm and squirm and squirm until finally I just refused
to do it and I'd find a seat right down the back and find
some poor person to sit next because they'd love to sit you
up the front all the time. Why? Just for a show. just so they can get honour,
and they think that you will enjoy honour of men yourself. John says in John 5.44 of the
Lord Jesus, how can you believe, the Lord Jesus said, how can
you believe if you receive honour from one another and do not seek
the honour that comes from the only God? They love titles. They love to be spoken of as
reverend and doctor and holy. All of these nonsensical names
which we just have in this religious world. What ridiculous nonsense. What blasphemy to our God to
have some silly old man dressed up in women's clothing, parading
around in Rome with silly hats on, doing all this silly stuff,
and being called Holy Father by a billion poor people. And
it's no worse than what goes on in this land of ours where
people who have reached some position of power and fame in
the religious world are bowed and scraped to and looked upon
as someone special because they are the leader of a Bible college
or they are the head of a denomination. We need to look and beware. and they put on a public show
of religion in the marketplaces. And then it says that they make
for a pretense long prayers. They devour widows' houses and
for a pretense make long prayers. The Pharisees And the others
thought that praying three times a day wasn't good enough. So
we will pray three times a day for an hour. And then three times
a day for an hour, you can't really be holy and seem to be
holy if you just pray three times a day for an hour. So you actually
pray three times a day for an hour before the hour and an hour
after the hour. So you actually pray three times
a day for nine hours a day you pray. And all you were doing
was just repeating repetitious, nonsensical things. It was pretending. It was pretending so that you
would be seen to be holy and righteous. And then when some
poor widow left without a husband and defenseless, was in need
of protection. She would think that the safest
place for herself and her family and her possessions to be, the
safest place for all of them, was in the hands of these people
that pray nine hours a day and parade themselves around in their
long robes. They were just playing games. They actually really believed
This is the scary thing about it. They really believed that
their religious activity was an activity that pleased God. How many of us meet people, know
people, maybe in our own hearts we think that some of the religious
activity that we do is religious activity that will please men. Matthew Henry has a wonderful
comment on these men and their prayers. The Pharisees' long
prayers were made up of vain repetitions. and they were a
pretense. By them they got the reputation
of pious, devout men that loved prayers and were the favourites
of heaven. And by this means people were
made to believe it was not possible that such men as they should
cheat them. And therefore, happy the widow
that could get a Pharisee for her trustee and guardian to her
children. Thus, While they seemed to soar
heavenward upon the wings of prayer, their eyes, like a kite,
was all the while upon their prey on the earth, some widow's
house or something else that lay convenient for them." Religious people who play religious
games with God for a pretense and play religious games of legalism
are always deceitful. Here these men were stealing
houses, the houses of defenceless women. And yet, if you'd asked
them what the law said about widows, they would have taken
you quite happily to Exodus 22, verse 22. It's an easy verse
to find. Let's look at it and read it together. They would
have known what this said. This is how blinding religion
can be. This is how blinding external
religious activities can be. They knew these words off by
heart, these same Pharisees. You shall not afflict any widow
or fatherless child. If you afflict them in any way
and they cry at all to me, I will surely hear their cry. and my
wrath will become hot, and I will kill you with the sword. Your
wives shall be widows, and your children fathers." Such is the nature of religion
without God. Religion which is a religion
that comes from men's activity. Everything they did was motivated
and controlled by the love of honour and the love of money. And we have to remember when
we see and hear of the Pharisees and the scribes that there is
living in my flesh one of these. How much do we and praise of men. How much do we fall prey to the
desire that we would be seen as someone who is holy and devout
and godly and zealous. How much do we covet our reputation
before men. These men did. May God break our stoning hearts
and just continually remove them from us and continually cause
us to see that it wasn't for His grace we would join these
people every moment. We have to be careful to take
seriously the Lord's warnings. We have to beware of them. We have to be aware of what they
are like and we have to be aware of following them. He says at
the end of verse 40, these will receive greater condemnation. They will receive more abundant
condemnation. It's one of the places in the
scriptures where the degrees of punishment in hell are clearly
taught. We praise God that the rewards
of all of God's children in heaven are exactly the same. There are
no degrees of reward in heaven. If Christ is not sufficient crown
for you, heaven is not the place where you'll go. Jesus is our
reward. And he's the same for everyone.
Every heaven-born child is there 100% by the grace of God and
0% by the activities of men. And it always has been so and
it always will be so. But in hell there is greater
condemnation. Just think for a moment what
these men have lived with now for 2,000 years. In hell, people
become remarkably intelligent. They become remarkably knowledgeable. They become remarkably truthful. and they see around them, as
Jesus said, He said, you will die in your sins. You die as an enemy of God, surrounded
by your sins. These men had been plotting and
scheming against the Lord Jesus, finding sneaky, sly ways to kill
Him, to destroy His character before men for three years. He has come to them as their
King. He lived before them as their
King. And in Psalm 109 is a beautiful
description. They have surrounded me with
words of hatred. I am fought against me without
a cause. In return for my love, They are
my accusers, but I give myself to prayer. Thus they have rewarded
me evil for good and hatred for my love." Those men at this very
moment, at this very moment, right now, are contemplating
the way they treated the Lord Jesus. They're contemplating
the fact that before them was the light of the world, but they
preferred the darkness of their self-righteousness, because their
deeds were evil, and only evil all of the time. May God cause
us to pray again and again for the grace to avoid hypocrisy,
to avoid a pretense, to avoid trying to make a religious show
so that someone will think that we are holy. Someone might think
that we are a good and godly Christian. Someone might think
that we are better than someone else that we see wearing our
same human flesh around us. Only grace will save us from
that. And the question that we have
before us again is, and these words are living and active,
what do the scribes and Pharisees of our day look like? You've
got to remember that these words were spoken by the Lord Jesus
in what was the very centre of what they thought was real Christian
religion, at the very centre of religious activity. at the
very center of Christian learning. If you wanted to know about God,
you went to Jerusalem, and went to the universities and the Bible
college of Jerusalem, and you were taught by the famous men
of Jerusalem. And these men thought that they
were the closest to God. In fact there was a saying that
if only two people go to heaven, one will surely be a Pharisee. Such is what they were thought
by their extraordinary devotion, their piety, their selflessness,
their honour and their truthfulness it seemed. We need to rethink again and
again what God sees as honourable in His worship and His service. And these verses give us pause. If these men came back here today,
in no time at all, we would make them the head of Bible colleges,
we would make them pastors in churches, we would have them
as the leaders of missionary organisations, they would be
the leaders of denominations, they would be worldwide, world-famous
evangelists, travelling over land and sea like their forefathers
did. This is not a word to a generation
that's past. This is a word to a generation
that we live in the midst of. These people, said Isaiah, honour
me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain they worship me, teaching
as doctrines the commandments of God. They lay aside the commandments
of God to hold on to the tradition of men. How many people do we
know that are in churches where they say, I don't really worship
God there, but I go there because of my friends, I go there because
of my family, I go there because of tradition. And God has one
word for them, to leave those places and to leave those blind
guides. For he has made a promise, if
the blind lead the blind, both fall into the ditch. They hold
on to the tradition of men. The traditions of men in our
world say that God loves everyone. Jesus died for everyone. The
Holy Spirit is trying to save everyone. Salvation is there
and it's in your hands and by your free will you can take the
offer because Jesus has done all he can do. It blasphemes
the God of this universe. It's become the tradition of
this world that we live in. And it's the tradition that allows
people to raise up huge churches and huge denominations, become
famous like Billy Graham as a worldwide evangelist speaking to millions. As Mark 7.13, they make the Word
of God of no effect. And now in these verses, as the
Lord Jesus always does, as much as He wants to warn people, He
wants to show. He wants to show people something
of what it is to be a child of God in this world. Let's read
Mark 12, 41 and following. Now Jesus sat opposite the treasury. He'd finished his admonitions,
and now he sat down in the temple for the very last time, and saw
how the people put money into the treasury, and many who were
rich put in much, and so they ought. Then one poor widow came
and threw in two mites which make up a quadrant. It's the tiniest coin they had. It was called, the word in Greek
is to be peeled or to be stripped. It was so thin and so fine, you
could just sort of hold the stamp mark on it to make it currency.
It was worth one 128th of a denarius. It was a tiny coin and a tiny
thin coin. It was equivalent to six minutes
of a day's wage. And Jesus called his disciples
to himself and said to them, Assuredly, I say to you, this
poor widow has put in more than all those who have given to the
treasure. For they put in out of their
abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all that she had,
her whole livelihood. Why was this woman so poor? Religion had stolen her money
from her. The very people who God had appointed
to care for widows and orphans. were the very people who had
robbed her to the extent that all she had, all she had to live
on were these two tiny, almost worthless coins. And she's a wonderful example
of God's children in this world. See, religion robs God's children
of the comfort and the presence of their husband. Religion takes
away from people the care and protection and love of their
father. The widows represent those who
have been under false teaching, who have been plagued and harassed
by these religious people, who have taken everything from her,
left her next to nothing. What a remarkable example of
faith. No one noticed this poor woman
when the money went into the big chest. The idea for someone
who is religious and pretentious is that you make sure that you
put a lot of noisy coins in there Two little mites don't make a
sound, and a poor widow wouldn't have been noticed by anyone.
But as I said earlier, God looks at the heart, and our God never
ever takes His eyes off His children. the Lord Jesus cannot take his
eyes off his bride for a second. And what wasn't seen by men and
seemed to be nothing by men was actually wonderfully esteemed. And here we are this morning
reading about a woman who had nothing, a poor woman. They gave
something of their wealth. but only a portion of what they
had. But she gave all. And please remember that she
says that she had two mites. She could have put one mite in
the treasury and kept one mite to buy maybe a tiny piece of
bread or something that day. She put in two mites. They gave
out of all their wealth to be seen by men, and she gave out
of her poverty. They gave, did their religious
duty and still had much remaining, but she gave all that she had. She left herself nothing. They left holding more honour
from men and more esteem in their own eyes. They gave out of a
sense of duty. She gave because she loved the
Lord Jesus. They gave to cause themselves
to be esteemed. She gave trusting the fact that
her father had promised to care for her, no matter how poor she
was. She gave in faith and they gave
in duty. They gave to get glory for themselves. By faith God's children caused
God to get the glory as he seemed to provide. They gave what they
didn't need. She gave what she needed very
much. And she gave everything. It's a remarkable difference,
isn't it? What the world esteems and highly esteems is an abomination
in God's sight. What the world esteems in religion
is abominable to God. He finds the worship services
of this world of ours, this land of ours and this town of ours
which esteem men. He finds it abominable. He despises it. He says he does
not hear their prayers. He warns his people to beware,
to come out from among them. And how shall we escape? There is just one way of escape. If you turn back quickly to Matthew
23, and I'll just close. There is just one way for people
to be right with God. And that's when God does something
in their lives. when God reveals to them that
what they think is righteousness in the eyes of men and in their
own eyes are filthy rags, when God shows them that they are
sin and nothing but sin and never do anything but sin, and God
shows them the Lord Jesus. You see, in verse 8, He says,
for one is your teacher. God's children are taught by
the Christ. This lady was taught by the Christ. Just think what she's endured
and delighted in for the last 2,000 years. What wonders of
gazing at him who has been and always was her teacher and her
husband, and you are all brethren. And she had a father. She had a husband and she had
a father. One is your father who is in
heaven. Things that please God are the
things of Heaven. God is very, very pleased with
the Lord Jesus Christ. He is very, very pleased with
His dear Son, and He will not accept anything into Heaven other
than the perfect finished work of His dear Son. He will not
have His Son dishonoured. One is your Father. One is your
teacher, the Christ. And when Christ teaches his people,
verse 11 and 12, are true in our experience, that he who is
greatest among you shall be your servant, and whoever exalts himself
will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. Such is Heaven's teaching to
Heaven's children. And that's the only protection
that we have from the wolves in sheep's clothing. Let's pray.