Now let me read the text over
in Luke chapter 12, and then I'm going to go back to Matthew
23, but I want you to see this, the seriousness of the subject.
Our Lord uses the word beware. He said in Matthew, beware, beware
of false prophets. Avoid them. False prophets. Dangerous men. beware of them. And then here in Luke 12, in
the meantime, verse 1, when there were gathered together innumerable
multitude of people, insomuch that they trod one upon another,
there are just lots of them out there gathered around to hear
him, he began to say to his disciples before he addressed the crowd,
he looked at his inner circle, he looked at his twelve disciples
and His immediate followers, first of all, and said to them,
Beware. Beware ye of the leaven of the
Pharisees. And that leaven of the Pharisees
is hypocrisy. There's nothing covered that
shall not be revealed. Things are going to be seen as
they really are. Nothing hid that shall not be
known. Now back to Matthew 23. As I read this 23rd chapter of
Matthew a few moments ago, you notice the cutting, the cutting
words of Christ. Kept saying hypocrites, hypocrites. Talked about generation of vipers,
of snakes. How shall you escape damnation
of hell, severe, cutting, critical words. Now when our Lord spoke
to sinners, publicans and sinners, He didn't use words like that.
When our Lord spoke to the publicans and sinners, as far as I can
judge, His words were always of the tenderest nature. He said,
I am come not to call the righteous, but sinners to repent. He said,
the Son of Man has come to seek and to save, that which was lost.
He said to the woman that they found in adultery and brought
to him to be stoned or judged, he said, neither do I condemn
thee, go and sin no more. Mr. Spurgeon was invited to preach
before the House of Commons, the highest ranking men in the
British government, I guess, the House of Commons, the Parliament,
or something. And he brought a message, a severe,
cutting message on the evils of religion without Christ. Oh, he just up one side and down
the other. And when he finished, he said
one of the men came to him, one of these lords in Parliament,
and said to him, I'm not denying the truthfulness
of your message, but he said that message would have been
more suited for Newgate prison than Her Majesty's Parliament.
Mr. Spurgeon was never to be bettered
or outdone, and he looked at him and said, My friend, that
was the message for you men. If I had been preaching at her
Majesty's prison in New Cape, I would have preached, on behold,
the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world." So when the Master spoke to sinners,
his words were always gentle, tender, and kind. But when he
spoke to religious Pharisees and leaders of religion whom
he knew to be hypocrites, His words were words
of condemnation and stinging rebuke. Stinging rebuke. Here in Matthew 23, He kept saying,
woe unto you, woe unto you, woe unto you. And then He said in verse 33,
ye serpents, a whole generation of serpents, vipers, One preacher I heard said the
word there, and I don't know this is true, he said the word
there was female snakes capable of reproducing their own kind. How shall you escape the damnation
of hell? Now, he said this, and then he
turned to his disciples in another passage and said, beware of this
condition. Beware of this state, this condition. Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees. Now, I'm sure that everyone here,
this is the way I speak for myself, and you always remember, I'm
not preaching down to you. I watch some of these preachers
sometimes, and they give me the impression that they think they've
got this thing well. They give me the impression that
they got it all settled and signed and delivered, and they're talking
to you now. You. But I'm not talking to you, I'm
talking to us tonight. And every time I try to preach,
if it doesn't bless me, it won't bless you. If it doesn't help
me, it won't help you. If it doesn't fit me, it won't
fit you. And I know that. And I'm sure
that, and I say this from experience, every one of us occasionally,
some more or less, stand in doubt of ourselves, don't we? Don't
you stand some occasionally in doubt of yourself? And don't
you question Occasionally, your interest in Christ? I know some of you have been
at death's door so much. You've been there. Half of you
have been there. Cecil, you had a heart attack. Reese, different
ones. You've been faced with this. This may be winding her
up. I may be going to meet God. Now,
that's got to be a sobering time. That's got to be a time of I'm
rejoicing Christ, I rest in Christ, but have I missed Christ? Now there's
got to be, it's got to be that examination, that going over
this thing. Spurgeon said one time, he who
never doubted his state, he may, perhaps too late. I'd rather be like Newton when
he said, to the point I long to know, and oft it gives me
anxious thoughts. Do I love the Lord or no? Am
I His or am I not? Lord, decide this doubtful case. Give me some confidence and assurance
in Christ. If I've never loved you before,
let me begin today. I don't give a hoot about a profession
I made so many years ago. I'm tired of people telling me
when they got saved. I wish they'd just quit saying
that. When I got saved. I'm interested in in whom and
not when. I'm interested in whom, him,
Christ, Christ, resting in him. Salvation is a person, it's not
a profession. And I worry sometimes if we're
not defending an old experience, it's mighty old, and it's stayed
old, and it's moth-eaten and rust-covered and dust-covered,
an old profession. It's just not worth anything.
Is Christ my hope now? Is He my Lord now? Am I resting
in Him now? Do I have a living union with
Christ now? It doesn't matter. I run into
people all the time that keep wanting to defend that thing.
Well, preacher, I heard you come along preaching grace, but now
I say before I heard the gospel of grace. Where are you now?
What have you done when you proved that? I don't believe you can be saved
without knowing the gospel of grace anyhow, and so you just
go on saying what you want to. But why defend it? This is what
I'm saying. Why defend a profession? Why
defend a decision? Why go back and try to prove
something is real when it doesn't matter? It doesn't matter at all. But one
thing I know as I read this scripture, there's one thing of which I'm
sure the true believer He needs to examine himself. Didn't our
Lord say, examine yourself whether you be in the faith? Give diligence
to make your calling and election sure. If you do these things,
you'll never fail. Do it now. Do it tonight. Do
it tomorrow. Keep looking to Christ. Keep
calling on Christ. Keep seeking the Lord. Every
time you come to the table, examine yourself. Examine yourself. But I do know this, I do know
this, the true believer, the true Christian is not a hypocrite. He's just not a hypocrite. He's
not a hypocrite. He's a whole lot of things, but
he's not a hypocrite. He fails in a lot of places,
but he is not a hypocrite. And I'm going to give you these
seven, eight, or nine marks of hypocrisy. Our Lord, right here,
when he said to his disciples, now you beware of this leaven
of the Pharisees. It's a leaven that leaveneth,
and it spreads. It's a deadly spreading disease,
and beware of it. And I'm just going to look this
over, and as I do, let's just search our own hearts and look
into our own consciences. And he says in verse 2 of Matthew
23, here's the first thing that our Lord mentions about Phariseeism. This is phony religion. It's not genuine. He says in
verse 2, the scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. In other
words, they have a profession. They're religious men. They're
professing religionists. They're church men. They're even
leaders, men in authority, men in leadership, men who are well
thought of and men of renown. They handled the things of the
synagogue. And he said, what they bid you
observe, observe. In other words, they were men
who talked about the Sabbath and the tithe, and all these
things were in, they were in, required in that time, that they
do these things. You do them. But he said, do
not be like them, for here's the first mark. They say, they
say, but they don't do. Now what's he saying? He's saying
this, woe unto the man whose religion is only talk. It's an outward show. I was preaching
somewhere not so awful long ago, and a preacher's son, whom you
do not know of, this or was that, father's a preacher, he said,
And he made this statement to the man sitting next to him when
I got through preaching. I preached along this line, something
along the genuineness of true faith, the genuineness of a real
union with Christ. If any man's in Christ, he's
a new creature in attitude, in spirit. And what we're talking
about here, when our Lord said these religious Pharisees, they
say and do not, he doesn't mean they didn't go to church. They
went to church. He doesn't mean that they didn't tithe. They
tithed. He doesn't mean that they didn't fast. They did fast.
He doesn't mean they didn't pray. They did pray. They made pretense
of long prayers. They prayed more than we prayed,
outwardly. He doesn't mean that they didn't do these works of
religion. They did those. But what our Lord is saying here
is they say, but they do not, their attitude and spirit It's
where he's talking about. That's where it is. That's where
it is. Look down here in verse 23. One
of you scribes, Pharisees, and hypocrites, you pay tithe of
mint, herbs, dill, plants, cumin. You've omitted the weightier
matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith, the inward
attitude, the inward spirit. See what I'm saying? A man may be the first one at
church every Sunday. He may carry a Bible bigger than
anybody else. He may precisely give his tithe
every Sunday. He may read, he may lead in prayer. He may teach a Sunday school
class. He may be doing all of these, saying all of these religious
things. But the people that know him
and the people with whom he has dealings are those he lives with
and works with. And they see a totally different
person. They see a man who's not gentle
and gracious, but harsh. We talk about believing in the
grace of God. Let's live the grace of God.
Let's show the grace of God. We say that God is love, and
we say that we love Jesus. Oh, how I love Jesus. But we
don't act like we love Jesus and his people. That's what I'm
talking about. We talk about the sovereignty of God. Let's
live like we believe it. This is what I'm saying, it's
not just an outward, they say and do not, or they do a lot
of things. But it's a spirit, and this young man turned to
the person next to him, and he said, that preacher rang my father's
bell tonight. That preacher rang my father's
bell tonight. He said, my father is a very
religious man, and a doctrinal man, a Calvinist, My father is
a man who reads the Bible and has his devotions, and my father
is a stickler for righteous living and all of these different things,
but he's mighty hard to live with. And my mother's at the
point of just about giving it up and throwing it in because
he's so mean. There's something wrong with
that. You see, that is hypocrisy, a total hypocrisy. One time,
Doris and I went down to a hospital to visit a preacher. This is
a man who is one of the strongest preachers of sovereign grace
that you've ever heard. He's preached right here in this
pulpit, and he could lay out sovereignty for an hour and a
half. God's on the throne. Every little detail, every little
feather that falls from the wings of a pharaoh and lights on the
ground is directed in its plight by the hand of God. Fear not,
little ones, everything God does is for your good. This fellow
had a hard time. We went down to see him. And by the time we
walked in that room, by the time we left, we were depressed. He
never smiled a time. He never rejoiced a time. He
never said anything about God's will or purpose or sovereignty
one time. He did nothing but complain and
gripe and find fault and wonder if he's going to live or die
and question God's judgment. It was like a mausoleum in there. Isn't that right? And we went
out of there looking at one another and saying, where's God? Where's
God? That's what they say. They use
words like sovereignty and grace and love and the mercy and all
these things. But they don't do it. They don't
do it. That's what he's saying here.
They say and they do not. They do not. It's attitude and
spirit. You see, as a man thinketh in
his heart, so is he. That's what he is. Conviction's
a hard work. Repentance is a hard work. Faith
is a hard work. Love is a hard work. Knowledge
of Christ is a hard work. And I'll tell you this, that's
the place to begin. Make me like Christ. Lord, make
me like Christ. Don't let me by my spirit and
attitude and the conversation deny the very thing I preach. One time a fellow came in to
I believe William Jay, John Newton and William Jay, they used to
talk a lot together. And John Newton said, Do you
believe that Mr. So-and-so is a saved man? And to which Newton replied,
I don't know, I've never lived with him. That's a good answer. I don't
know whether he's saved or not, I've never lived with him. Well,
you've been to church with him. Well, that don't help me much.
They say and do not. What's the second thing? Look
at verse 5. This is a heart-searching thing. Watch verse 5. And all
their works they do for to be seen of men. Now the religious
fella, the religious Pharisee, he doesn't care a whole lot for
secret prayer. He cares a whole lot for public
prayer. And he makes much of public prayer. And he's willing
to publicly pray, but the Pharisee doesn't care a whole lot for
secret prayer. And he is very gung-ho about
public works. He likes to do things so everybody
can see it. You can count on him. If you want something done where
everybody can see it, or if you want a gift, give him. Where
everybody will know that he gave it, he's ready. But secret prayer
and secret works and secret giving He doesn't care a whole lot about
that. Turn to Matthew chapter 6 and let me show you what I'm
talking about. The Master is speaking here.
And this is one thing that, one of the things for which I'm grateful
here is that the things that people give and the things that
people do and the contributions that people make and the help
that people are here in the kingdom of God that nobody knows about.
Nobody knows about this. You see, that's genuine grace
when you do it for the glory of God only. And you know that
God sees it and God blesses and you do it for His glory and not
to be seen of men. Now listen to Matthew 6. This
is hypocrisy right here. Matthew 6, 1. Take heed that
you do not your alms or your righteousness or your works before
men to be seen of them. Otherwise you have no reward
of your Father which is in heaven. You wonder why that we don't
put in the bulletin when somebody gives a special gift, or why
we don't list the names of those who give to the missionaries.
That's to be seen of men. And every one of us is human
now. Every one of us is human, and
there's that little thing within us that says, well, if I do something,
I want somebody to know about it, you know. Every once in a
while, I could use a pat on the back. Well, I know we can, and
we need to do that. We need to thank one another,
but let's don't do it for that purpose. Read on. Otherwise, he said, you have
no reward of your father which is in heaven. God's not going
to bless that kind of prayer and that kind of giving, that
kind of work that you do to be seen of men and to receive credit
for men. Therefore, when you do your works,
don't sound a trumpet before you. Don't announce what you're
going to do or what you have done or what you intend to do.
Hypocrites do that. in the synagogues and in the
streets, that they may have glory of men. That's what they're seeking.
I say to you, they have their reward. When men praise them,
when men thank them, when men brag on them, that's their reward.
That's what they did it for, and that's what they're rewarded.
But when you do alms or works or give, do it secretly. Don't let your left hand know
what your right hand is doing. that your arms may be in secret,
and your Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward you
openly." Well, brethren, I just tell you, we need encouragement. We need someone to see us, and
someone to say, thank you, and someone to encourage us in our
good work. God sees us. God sees us, and
our encouragement is His encouragement, and our blessing is His blessing.
All right, we'll go back to the text, Matthew 23. I've got to
move along. Let me show you the third thing
here. But that's this leaven of the Pharisees, to be seen
of men. I see churches with names on the windows, and names on
the pews, and names on the pulpit. Somebody did all of this, but
there's no name up here. Somebody built this building
and paid for it, but there's no names on it. See what I'm saying?
Somebody supports all of this work here, but there's no name,
there's no credit given. That's not why we do it. That's
Pharisees. Look at verse 6. These Pharisees,
these hypocrites, love the uppermost rooms at the feast. They love
the chief seats. He said they like greetings in
the marketplace and they like to be called rabbi. And you know
the disciples weren't totally free of this. Hold that place
and turn to Mark 10. Listen to this. Here's the disciples
themselves. the Lord's inner circle. Listen to Mark 10. And James and John, the sons
of Zebedee, came unto the master, and said unto him, Master, we
would that you should do for us whatsoever we shall desire.
And he said to them, What would you that I should do for you?
And what do you suppose these men are going to ask? Lord, give
me wisdom, that I may be of greater use in the kingdom of God. Give
me an open door to preach your gospel. Lord, enable me to be
of help to somebody. No, listen to it. Grant, Lord,
verse 37 of Mark 10, they said unto him, grant that we may sit
one on your right hand and one on the left when you come in
your globes. Our Lord said, you know not what
you ask. Look down here a little further,
verse 43. So shall it not be among you, whosoever will be
great among you shall be your minister. And whosoever you be
the cheapest, let him be the servant. For even the Son of
Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, to give
his life a ransom for many." I know there are some of my friends
who are getting doctor's degrees.
They've got on their bulletin now, doctor so-and-so. And you say, well, you don't
have a doctor's degree. I was offered one one time, an
honorary. But that's like the curl on the pig's tail. It don't
add anything to the pig. And I'll be honest with you.
I think it's detrimental. I think it's a phony air. And
I'm being critical now, but I'm telling you. I think it's the
phony air. I think it's just what my Lord's
saying right here. Do not be called master. If you think that
adds anything to you or contributes anything to you, you've got another
thing coming. There's a whole lot of phariseeism
in that. Being called reverend and doctor and masters and desiring
the uppermost rooms and the cheap seats. And I know that, they
tell me, they tell me this, they say, These credentials open doors
for you. Whose doors? Whose doors? Whose doors? Since when did my
God ever need a man to open a door for Him? Since when did our God
ever need credentials that men recognized to open a door for
Him to get the gospel of His sheep? I don't have those credentials,
and by God's grace, don't intend to ever use them, but I'm sure
not lacking for open doors. That's right. God will open doors
for you. If we'll preach Christ, the gospel,
God will open the door. I say that to everyone here who
has any aspirations to teach or preach. You don't need a title. You don't
need credentials. You need Christ. You need the
Spirit of God. That's all we need. That's all
we need. But the door that God opened
for John Bunyan was a prison door. And that's where they put
him. And that's where God wanted him.
And that's where he served the Lord. He wouldn't bow to these
things. I'll show you another mark of
Phariseeism. Verse 13. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
you hypocrites! You shut up the kingdom of heaven
against men. You shut up the kingdom of heaven.
You won't go in yourselves, and you won't suffer them that are
entering to go in. I was out in California preaching, and
there was a young man, his name is, I forget his name, but he
came to hear me preach. He came three or four nights,
and he told me the third night, he said, I've been disciplined
by my church for coming to hear you preach. He said, the pastor
told the people they could talk with me only about the Bible,
but about nothing or other subjects. Me or my family. Because I came
to hear you, he forbade me to come and hear you preach. And
he's supposed to be a reformed preacher too. And then I got
a letter from him a few weeks ago and he said they'd been excommunicated
because they wouldn't repent for coming to that meeting. You know, and I was in North
Carolina recently in a meeting and a young man told me young
man in his about 19 or 20 who comes there to the church where
I was preaching, said his mother and father are Baptists, they're
Southern Baptists, they're strong Baptists, and he's in college
now, he's first or second year, and his father told him if he
went down to that church where he's attending, where they preach
grace, he said, I will not pay your college tuition. That's
pressure, isn't it? And he told his dad, he said,
thank you, I'll pay my own tuition, but I'm going to hear the gospel. This hypocrisy and phariseeism,
now listen to me, this is phariseeism that will use pressures and manipulation
and leverage to keep people away from hearing what they want to
hear. That's phariseeism. Paul Ruby, some of you remember
Paul Ruby? moved to Ashland. Paul Ruby and
his wife and two children moved to Ashland when I was pastor
at Pollard. It's a true story. Moved to Ashland
when I was pastor at Pollard in 1952. I was preaching the
gospel of God's grace, and Paul Ruby worked down here in an office
in town. He was a deacon in the church
at Independence, Kentucky. His wife was a piano player.
And so they transferred up here. And he came into the office,
the first day he was there, and he asked one of the men in the
office, a Baptist leader in this town, he said, recommend a church
to me. And this man said, this is what
he said, there's seven Baptist churches in this town, he said.
Go to any of them but Pollard Baptist. Don't go there. But Paul went home and told his
wife, he said, There's a fellow down there that told me to go
to any church in this town, but don't go out there and hear that
man ponder. He said, let's go out there and see what he says.
This is a true story. You remember, they came, they
came. And God saved both of them. God saved both of them. They
lived right over here on Blackburn Avenue. And they came over here
with us, and we moved over here. And they were transferred again,
and I hadn't heard from them in a long, long time. They lived
in another part of the state now. But this is what this verse
is saying. These Pharisees, these hypocrites,
they won't enter the kingdom of God themselves by the grace
of God, and they don't want you to. And they're going to exert,
parents will exert pressure on children, yes they will. Parents
will. I tell you this, a person who
really knows the gospel, believes the grace of God, he won't tell
you where to go. No, he won't put any pressure
on you. No, he won't. He will not. He said, if you want a God's
own, he'll bring you. He'll bring you. He's not afraid
of you. I'm not afraid of any of you. I'll go anywhere you
want next week to church. You're welcome to go. But I do know
this. If you've got a thirst, you go
where water is. If you've got a hunger, you go where food is.
If you've got a need for Christ, you go where Christ is. But these
Pharisees can't stand it. And they're going to They're
going to close the way. They're going to put every barrier
in your way they can to keep you from hearing the truth of
God's Word. That's what they'll do. They'll
put every barrier. Every barrier. All right, let's watch the fifth
one now. Verse 14. Verse 15. Warn of your scribes
and fail your hypocrites. Here's another mark of the hypocrites.
You compass sea and land to make one proselyte. What's a proselyte?
Thought it left one religion, came to another. That's what
a proselyte is. You proselyte somebody to your
group. He says, what you're doing, these Pharisees, they wanted
members. They wanted additions. They wanted
a crowd. They wanted prosperity. They wanted success. They wanted
all these things. They went out and they just brought
people in. They'd use every means and method
they knew to get people to join their crowd and join their group.
Now then, let me explain to you our position, then I'll go back
to this other. We must, and we will, preach
the gospel to every creature. That's what I did this morning,
that's what I'm doing tonight, that's what I do on television, that's
what I do by tape, that's what I do wherever, but preach the
gospel. I preach the gospel of Christ. I preach the gospel to
anybody who'll sit and listen to this gospel of God's grace,
the gospel of divine visitation, the gospel of of perfect righteousness,
the gospel of a sufficient atonement, the gospel of a risen Lord, the
gospel of an interceding great high priest, the gospel of a
coming King, the gospel of justification by faith. I preach it. But this
I know. Only God can open this heart
and reveal that gospel to the heart. Now, I know that. Only
God can can bring a man to repentance. Only God can bring a man to faith.
Only God can bring a person to love Christ, to look to Christ,
to believe Christ, to trust Christ. Only God can do that. I can't
do it. And therefore, when I preach
to people, I leave them alone. I leave them in the hands of
God. And that's not indifference. I believe that's real care and
concern. The fellow that comes to you
with his Bible and tries to talk you into a profession of faith,
that's not caring concern. That's covetousness. He wants
your dollar. He wants your name. He wants
your address. He wants you on the roll. He
wants to report you as a statistic. But the man who loves God and
loves the Word and loves the Gospel and loves you, he'll tell
you what you are by nature. He'll tell you who God is by
grace. and what Christ did on that cause, and he'll leave it
up to God to reveal it to your heart. But not these fellows. He said, they come from sea and
land, everywhere they can get a name or an address. Let somebody
get sick in the hospital, all the preachers descend on them.
Let somebody have a death in the family, all the preachers
descend on them. Let somebody shed a tear, and
somebody runs to them to talk them into a profession. I'll
tell you this, the Apostle Paul said, My heart's
desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be
saved. That's where I'm going to talk to you, I'm going to
talk to Him for you. I'm going to talk to you about
Him and then to Him about you. And pray that He will bring you
to know Him through the preaching of the Word. And He will. All right, look at the number
6, verse 24. This is the mark of apocryphal.
He said, you blind gods, here's another mark of hypocrisy. You
strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. Strain at a gnat and swallow
a camel. A friend of mine told me that he was, we were in college
down in Tennessee, down in Chattanooga. This had been a long time ago.
And we had a fellow that was in school with us, he was a preacher.
I was pastor of a little church out in the country, and he was
sort of an evangelist. And a friend of mine went out
with him one Sunday to preach. They were going down somewhere
in South Alabama to preach, or somewhere down there. And they
left early, and they stopped to get something to eat. And
this preacher was about as wide as he was tall. His name was
Doppus. And Doppler sat down and he ordered
one plate of chicken, whole chicken. And he ate that. And he said,
we got time for me to have another one? So I ordered him another
one. And he was in the midst of devouring that. And my friend
looked at him and said, Doppler said, what you preaching on this
morning? He said, I'm going to preach against smoking. I had another preacher friend.
that was strong on tithing. That was his forte, or whatever
you call it, something. But he, that was really his thing. He was always preaching on people
robbing God. Will a man rob God? Matthew 3.
He just preached on that one. Will a man rob God? Yet you've
robbed me in tithing also. I went down to a doctor's office
for an appointment one day. And the doctor was talking to
me, and he said, do you know this particular pastor? I said,
yes sir, he's a good friend of mine. He said, well, I wish you
would sometimes tell him that he owes me quite a number of
bills that I've been trying to get him to pay for over a year.
I said, you're kidding me. And I said, he just won't pay
his bills. He won't. Now wait a minute.
He said, you blind God, you strain at a nap. You've got all these
things that you're so particular on, and you're so precise on,
and you're swallowing a whole camel. You see what I'm saying? You see what I'm saying? These
fellas crucified the Son of God, and then they wanted to get Him
off the cross so He wouldn't defile their Sabbath day. These fellows saw a man whom
the Lord had healed carrying his bed, he was carrying it on
the Sabbath day, and they said, they ignored the miracle, they
ignored the glory, they ignored what God had done. They said,
why are you carrying your bed on the Sabbath day? And I know some Baptists who
are so particular on women wearing hats and people being baptized
the right way. And people doing this, that,
and the other the right way, and they're very careless about
a lot of the important things having to do with our relationship
with God. And that's what our Lord said.
That's Phariseeism. That's hypocrisy. Beware of that.
Beware of that. All right, what's the next one
here? This goes along the same line in verse 25, and lest I
weary you, I'll move along. Our Lord said, Woe unto you scribes
and Pharisees, you hypocrites, you make clean the outside of
the cup, and within you are full of extortion and excess. I remember
a story that Ronnie Traback told here that I thought was so good. I was out of town. He preached
for me one time, and I listened to the tape. And he told about
in 1803, We, our nation, purchased what's
called Louisiana Purchase. The land between the Mississippi
River and the Rockies. President Thomas Jefferson was
the president. I get an A on that, don't I?
I remember it. I got it written down here. But he sent two men, Lewis and
Clark, out to explore this new part of the country that they'd
purchased. And they went, and one of them had a black servant.
Lewis and Clark one. You didn't even know which one
he belonged to. But Lewis and Clark, one of them had a black
servant. His name was York. And he was a devoted servant,
and this man loved him, and he loved his master. But he took
him out there into the West to explore the Louisiana Purchase,
and they got up one morning, and York was missing. And they
began to look for him. worried, tremendously worried
about this old black servant named York. And they went out
hunting him. One man said, well, he's run away. And he said, no,
he wouldn't run away. He just wouldn't run away. And
he said, something's happened to him. So they were looking,
and they started up a hill, and they heard the awfulest yelling
on the other side of that hill. Awfulest screaming and yelling
and carrying on you've ever heard. And they rushed up the hill,
and they looked down. And these Indians had captured York. They
had never seen a black man. Never, never, never seen a man
with cold, cold black skin. Never. And they had old York
naked out in the middle of a creek with sandstone trying to get
that black off of him. And they were going after him.
Good. And he was screaming bloody murder. That's what the Pharisees
did. They tried to clean up the outside.
York was a black man from in here. His blackness out here was because
of what he was by nature. That's the reason he's black.
He's black by nature. If he's a white man by nature,
his skin would be white. But since he was a black man
by nature, and you could take the peel it off, he'd come back
black. Because that's what he was by nature. And that's what
our Lord's saying here. Get a new heart. get a new heart,
and these other things be taken care of. And I could stand up
here and tell you what movies you can go to, and what ball
games you can go to, and what restaurants you can eat at, and
how late to stay up, and what television programs you can watch,
and what kind of card games you can play, as opposed to other
card games. You can play Old Maid's, but
you can't play Briggs. And you can play Rook, but you
can't play poker. You can play poker if you want
to. I don't care. I'm not interested in what you're playing. I'm interested
in what you're thinking, what you are, what your spirit is,
what your attitude is, what you think of Christ, what you think
of His Word, what you think. And if that thinking gets straightened
out, I guarantee you, your life will straighten out. I just promise
you. Because I've discovered it and
experienced it. It'll straighten out your dealings.
That's just all there is to it. Straighten out your dealings. Yes, it will. Oh, here's the
last one. And this is down here in verse
29. He said, You build the tombs
of the prophets, and you garnish the sepulchres of the righteous. This is a pattern. It goes back
through history. We have a tendency to brag on
the dead and crucify the living. Did you know that? Strangest
thing, the longer a man's been dead, the greater he is. And
this is especially true of preachers. I run into people every once
in a while, and this is the truth, I run into people who actually
sit at home on the Lord's Day and listen to Brother Barnard's
tapes. They love Barnard. But they don't
love the men who are preaching what he preached. I found out
many of them, Paul didn't even know Barnard. Some of them were
Barnard's clients. I've known men, people who stay
home and listen to Shelton on the radio, but wouldn't support
the local pastor who preaches the message of grace. Shelton's
dead. And this is what he's saying,
and this is what I'm telling you. They bragged on Abraham, hated
Moses. And then when Moses is dead, they bragged on Moses and
hated Christ. And then they bragged on Christ
and hated the apostles. And then they bragged on the
apostles and hated men like Bunyan and Spurgeon and Whitfield and
Knox and Luther. And now today, they're bragging
on those old Reformers and they hate the men who are preaching
what they preach. That's the mark of a Pharisee, a man who
lives in the past and brags on dead preachers. and will not
support the ministry of men who preach the gospel." That's exactly
what they said. They said, well, if we lived
back then, we wouldn't have... Boy, I'd have stood up for Bunyan.
Yeah. Man, Spurgeon could have counted
on me. Didn't let Brother Shepherd done
a count on you. Brother David. Brother Paul. Brother Bob. Brother John. Brother Charlie. Huh? That's
right. One closing remark on this thing.
You know, Hagar, when she found out that she had conceived by
Abraham, she despised her mistress. Her mistress was despised in
her eyes. And she ran away from home. And while she was out there,
the angel of the Lord appeared to her, and she made a statement. She said, Thou of God seest me. Thou, God, seest me. You see
me. God sees me. He sees everything
about me. What I believe, what I think,
what I imagine. Why I'm preaching this, sir?
God knows. My gift this morning, why I said
what I said to you. God sees me. The sovereign, searching,
all-knowing eye of God sees me. He sees me. You believe that? The only way a man can continue
to play the hypocrite is to forget that, that God sees me. That's the only way a man can
keep playing the hypocrite. He can't play the hypocrite and face the
fact that God sees him. Well, so-and-so doesn't know.
God knows him. God knows him. And while we may
deceive men and even deceive ourselves, God we cannot deceive. We may die with the name of Christ
on our lips, and men may bury us in the hope of eternal life,
but God is not deceived, just not deceived. And that's, He's
where it is, not what anybody thinks. And that's the reason
in our giving, in our works, in our alms, in our prayers,
in whatever, let it be unto the Lord. It doesn't matter what
men think. Oh, and I hope that's helpful.
Beware of the leather of the Pharisees.