The Ugliness of False Religion Part III Matthew 23:1-39

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The last two weeks, we have looked at verses 1 -13 of chapter 23.
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We are taking several weeks to go through one big sermon that covers all of chapter 23.
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In this chapter, Jesus is going scourge to earth on the corrupt
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Jewish religious establishment. Jesus was not one of their rabbis.
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He never went through the rabbinical system. He was against the
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Sanhedrin. He despised their traditions and their own self -made religion.
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Jesus was the authority. What we have seen clearly in Matthew is that Jesus is not only man,
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He is God. As God, He speaks the words of God. He is the true
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Teacher and the unhealthy conservatives of His day in the first century, the
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Pharisees, these were the false teachers. And the people were led astray by them.
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What we see at the beginning of Matthew 23 in verse 1 is that Jesus is addressing the crowds and His disciples.
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What He is doing is warning them not to follow the Pharisees. To follow them will lead one down the path of destruction.
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Here's the big idea once again of chapter 23. What we have seen is the big idea is to understand that counterfeit religion always receives condemnation from Jesus.
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In the first 13 verses, we have seen five ways how. Let me run down these at this time.
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These five ways how counterfeit religion always receives condemnation from Jesus. The first way how is through promoting burdensome rules while neglecting true godliness.
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Secondly, living differently in public than in private. Thirdly, finding identity in their personal status in society.
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Fourth, elevating themselves above God. And finally, the fifth is believing mistakenly that they are a heaven -bound people.
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Now let's begin by reading our text this morning, verses 14 through 22.
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And then we will take a close look at these verses. But let's read first. And what you will notice is that verse 14 is in the footnotes.
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And I'm going to explain in a little bit why that is. But I'm going to read that as well.
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Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you devour widows' houses, and for a pretense you make long prayers.
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Therefore, you will receive the greater condemnation. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
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For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte. And when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.
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Woe to you, blind guides, who say, if anyone swears by the temple, it is nothing. But if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.
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You blind fools, for which is greater, the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred?
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And you say, if anyone swears by the altar, it is nothing. But if anyone swears by the gift that is on the altar, he is bound by his oath.
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You blind men, for which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred?
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So whoever swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it. And whoever swears by the temple swears by it and by him who dwells in it.
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And whoever swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him who sits upon it.
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And here's the big idea once again. Understand that counterfeit religion always receives condemnation from Jesus.
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And here's the sixth way how. We will see in verses 14 and 15. The sixth way how is through making disciples of hell just like them.
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Making disciples of hell just like them. Now you'll notice, as I've already mentioned, that verse 14 is in the footnotes.
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That verse reads, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you devour widows' houses and for a pretense you make long prayers.
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Therefore you will receive the greater condemnation. So why is this verse a footnote and not in the text?
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This is so because among the earliest manuscripts this verse is not found. If a verse is not found in the earliest manuscripts but appears in later manuscripts, this likely means that the verse is not a part of the original text.
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But we don't have to wonder if verse 14 is from the mouth of Jesus because this verse also appears in Mark 12 .40.
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What happened is a medieval scribe would have known about the verse in Mark 12 .40
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and he took liberty to add this to the text in Matthew 23.
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But since it is in Mark, we know that Jesus said it. That's why I'm including it in this sermon.
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What Jesus says in verse 14 fits well with what he says in verse 15. Let's first take a close look at what he says in verse 14.
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And you can see this once again at the bottom of your Bible in the footnote where once again he says that they devour widows and they make long prayers and because of this they will receive the greater condemnation.
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What Jesus says about them is that these are hypocrites.
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They do certain things in public to give an appearance, but this is not who they really are.
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And one of the ways, one of the spiritual practices that they show their piety is through long prayers.
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Have you ever met anyone who makes a super long prayer in order to sound super spiritual?
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That's what the Pharisees did. A short prayer would make them less spiritual, so it needed to be an extra long prayer.
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A one minute prayer, not good enough. 20 minutes, much better. But what people didn't see is what they did to widows.
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The text says that they devoured widows' houses. What does he mean by devour?
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What he means is that they took advantage of them. They took advantage of the most vulnerable among them.
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In our modern day, many women are self -sufficient, but this was not how it was in the first century.
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Women relied upon their husbands to be their provider. And with the husband gone, people in the community needed to take care of her.
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But some would take advantage of this. Much of the care fell upon the religious establishment.
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The religious leaders. But sadly, these religious leaders, the people who most of all should not have taken advantage of them, sadly did.
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They were supposed to provide for the women, making sure they had food and shelter, but they didn't do that.
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They may have given the appearance that they did that, but what they did was take advantage of them. We can imagine that they robbed them.
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For Luke 16 .14 says that the Pharisees were lovers of money. If you want to get
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God really mad, then harm the weakest among you. In James 1 .27,
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that verse says, religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this, to visit orphans and widows and their affliction and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
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God loves it when widows and orphans and the weakest in society are helped, but He hates it when they are taken advantage of.
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In our day, who are the weakest among us? There are orphans and widows, yes, but also others you come across who have a tough lot in life.
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They are those who need food, clothing, shelter. They are those who most people like to avoid, but Christ wants us to befriend those people.
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They're also the mentally handicapped who should be treated with extra special care.
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And what a calling that is for those who care for them. But in some sense, every
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Christian, if we come across a handicapped person, we should treat that person with the greatest care.
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Children and the elderly are also weak. They can easily be taken advantage of, but the one that gets overlooked in our society so often is the unborn, that little baby in the womb.
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And they are taken advantage of because their life is far too often ended.
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One thing you always hear from this pulpit is that the weakest among us are the babies inside their mother's womb.
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And we should fight for these babies to be protected. It is a tragedy that there are still state laws that do not protect the baby, even though we just had
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Roe v. Wade, which is great. But there's still state laws that say it's okay to have an abortion.
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And what we should pray for, what we should advocate for, is that states outlaw the taking of this innocent life.
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Yet there are churches, and I put churches in quotations, there are churches out there that offer long prayers from the pulpit, and yet the person saying the long prayer and the people in the pews are for the ending of a human life in the womb.
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Be sure of this. God does not hear those prayers, nor is
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His blessing on that church. But this is what the Pharisees were all about.
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They were hypocrites. They proclaimed loud prayers, but they did not protect the weakest among them.
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They took advantage of them. They were those who had power, and they had a position where they had the resources to help people.
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But what they did with their resources was not help people, but they hurt others.
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They hurt others in the position that they had. And Jesus is very angry about this.
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What He says at the end of v. 14 is that they will receive the greater condemnation.
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What we need to understand is that there are different levels of punishment for those who die in their sins and are sent to hell.
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Those who will receive the worst punishment in hell are Satan and his demons.
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Right after Satan and his demons are false teachers. Those who give the appearance that they're following God, but what they're really doing is leading many astray.
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And Jesus calls them blind guides in this chapter. The Pharisees were false teachers.
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Remember, they invented their own righteousness, their own religion, and rejected true righteousness, true religion, truly following God.
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That's what they rejected. When Jesus says in v. 14, the Pharisees will receive the greater condemnation, what
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He's describing is the great punishment that awaits them in hell. What Jesus says in v.
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15 is these people who devour widows and make long prayers are the same ones who are aggressive in converting others to their ways.
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And this is what Jesus says in v. 15. He says, what would you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.
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What He scribes is the aggressiveness of the Pharisees in converting people to their religion.
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And Jesus makes no mistake about it. They are converting people to the false religion of the
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Jews at this time. They are not converting them to the true faith taught in the
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Old Testament. Jesus just described how horrible of a people the
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Pharisees were in v. 14. Then when He tells the crowds and His disciples in v.
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15, is that when they convert someone, they make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.
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This is something interesting to think about. Every leader has disciples.
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Not just Jesus, but every leader has disciples. The question is, from this leader, what kind of people are being produced?
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What is the quality of them? A leader is judged by the quality of the people who follow him or her.
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The Apostle Paul knew that in word and deed, he was doing his best to follow Christ. This is why he said in 1
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Corinthians 11, be imitators of me as I am of Christ. Everyone in this room should desire to be one who others want to follow.
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If you are mature in Christ, others will want to follow you. But there are many people in the world who are bad people.
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And when people follow them, they end up just as bad as them. If you follow the wise, you will become wise.
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But if you follow fools, you'll be a fool. Proverbs 13 .20 says, whoever walks with the wise becomes wise.
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But the companion of fools will suffer harm. It's not just fools who are problematic, but even true teachers who have character flaws can cause problems as well in those who follow them.
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There's a teacher out there in the Christian community, one whom I have some respect for. But from what
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I've noticed, some obvious pride comes from this man. And it's very interesting that we had a guy come to our church for a very short time, early on in my time here, who was infatuated with this teacher.
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And it was interesting and troubling that he resembled the unpleasantness of this teacher.
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This man was arguably the most unpleasant person I have conversed with since I came here five and a half years ago.
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By the way, most of the people I have come to know since I've been here have been enormously pleasant. I was telling
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Bree recently that I have never loved a people like I love the people of Eureka Baptist.
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But there have been a very small number of people who had a cup of tea here, which means that they were here for a very short time, and they didn't stay because they were
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Pharisaic. They would have only caused problems if they had stayed, so it was good that they moved on.
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And hopefully, there was change that happened in them as they went somewhere else.
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But be careful whom you listen to. Be careful whom you follow. You will be influenced for better or for worse, and the disciples of the
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Pharisees were rotten people just like the Pharisees whom they followed.
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Jesus says that these proselytes become twice as much a child of hell as them.
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What Jesus is saying is that their disciples are even worse than they are.
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And this is hard to do. So, but this happens. One teacher takes it one step and then those who follow him take it two steps further.
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What Jesus said in verse 13 as we saw last week is that they shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces.
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So when they convert these people, they are not converting them to God. They are converting them to their own religion.
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Another way to say they are shutting the kingdom of heaven in people's faces is they are leading these people to hell.
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As citizens of hell, they are rotten people. These are not secular people who care nothing for God.
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They are those who say they do care for God, but they really care for themselves.
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What they are impressed with and zealous about is their own religion. It is this false religion that they shove in people's faces.
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Zeal is a good thing, but when zeal is misplaced, it's incredibly damaging.
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Think of the Apostle Paul. Before his conversion, he was zealous for the religion of the
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Pharisees. Paul, as Acts tells us, approved of the death of Stephen.
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And Stephen was a wonderful man. He was a man full of faith. Paul approved of that.
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But it wasn't until the Damascus Road, when Paul was converted, when he saw
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Jesus on the Damascus Road, that everything changed. Some people say that the
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Apostle Paul is the best Christian the world has ever seen. And you can make that argument.
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What a turnaround for this man. His zeal for the
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Pharisaic religion was really bad, but his zeal for Christianity made a huge difference.
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God used Paul as a mighty weapon in his hands. But the false religion of the
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Pharisees hurt an enormous amount of people. And when they converted someone to their corrupt religious system, the damage was multiplied many times over.
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They put burdens on people that people could not bear, and yet they themselves failed to live up to the standards that they set.
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This false movement was producing ugly legalism that helped no one.
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And it produced religious people who were citizens of hell, not citizens of heaven.
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And Jesus makes it clear how much He despised this movement that led people away from true righteousness to a false righteousness.
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He hated it. And He wants us to hate it. He wants us to run from activity like this.
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Make long prayers, but neglect the weakest among us. He hates that.
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And we should hate that. Understand that counterfeit religion always receives condemnation from Jesus.
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And the seventh way how is through making disciples of hell just like them.
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And here's our seventh way how. In fact, I just said seven.
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That was our sixth way how. But here's our seventh way how, and this is the final way how we're going to look at today.
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The final way how that counterfeit religion always receives condemnation from Jesus through declaring false oaths that do not fool
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God. And we'll see this in verses 16 -22. What I've already explained is that the
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Pharisees thought they could fool God through their outward works. Their long prayers, their outfits, the phylactery.
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Remember that box with the law in it that was on their forehead? Their public teaching.
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They thought all of this would fool God into thinking they were spiritual. What we are going to see in this section is they continue to think they can fool
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God through other practices that they took part in. Verse 16, we'll start.
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Woe to you, blind guides, who say if anyone swears by the temple, it is nothing. But if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.
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The Pharisees got into this habit of swearing oaths, and these oaths that they swore were false oaths.
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What they were doing was making a promise with no intention of keeping that promise.
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In order to add credibility to their false promise, they would swear on certain things, but not others.
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Certain things were off limits, but other things were fine. In verse 16, we see that they would swear by the temple, but they would not swear by the gold of the temple.
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If one swore by the gold of the temple, he would be bound by his oath. But they saw the gold that resided in the temple is more important than the whole temple structure itself.
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But Jesus points out their hypocrisy in verse 17. He says, you blind fools, for which is greater, the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred?
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What Jesus is saying is that what makes this gold significant from other gold is that it resides in the temple and the temple represented the place of God's dwelling.
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They not only swore by the temple, but they also swore by other things. Verse 18, and you say if anyone swears by the altar, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gift that is on the altar, he is bound by his oath.
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In verse 18, the gift is referring to the sacrifices that were offered on the altar by the people of Israel.
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The Pharisees had no problem swearing by the altar, but they made a law that no one could swear on the sacrifice that was on the altar.
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In this instance, Jesus once again points out their hypocrisy in verse 19. He says, you blind men, for which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred?
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In the same way, Jesus went after their foolishness in valuing the gold above the temple, here
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He goes after their foolishness in valuing the gift on the altar over the altar.
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Jesus is pointing out that what makes the sacrifice sacred is that it is offered on the holy altar that was located at the temple.
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These little tricks don't fool God. Once again, why are the
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Pharisees doing this? They are doing this because they had no intention on keeping the promises they made to others.
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But Jesus tells us whom they are really swearing to. And this is frightening. In verses 20 -22,
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He says, whoever swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it.
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And whoever swears by the temple, swears by it and by him who dwells in it. And whoever swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by him who sits upon it.
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By swearing an oath to the altar and swearing an oath to the temple and swearing an oath to heaven, what they were doing was making an oath to God.
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This is very serious. God considers their clever swearing of oaths as an oath that makes them bound to keep it before Him.
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When one makes an oath to God, God expects that person to keep it. The Pharisees did this false swearing and people do it in our day.
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You hear people say, I swear on my mother's Bible. I swear on my mother's grave.
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Some people even say, I swear to God. But even when one does not swear directly to God, God sees it as if a person is swearing an oath to Him.
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And when one says this, more times than not, they are lying. The one who swears on something often does this to add credibility in order to deceive.
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The thinking goes like this, if I swear on something, then they will for sure believe me.
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Oftentimes, like the Pharisees, they can't bring themselves to swear to God, so people swear on something lesser.
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But once again, as we read here, God sees it as if one swears to Him.
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I know of a man whose life ended in a tragic way. The last day of his life was not a good one.
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This man had been a smoker earlier in his life and he took up smoking again to help deal with the stress he was under.
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His wife suspected that he was smoking again. And an incident happened where she had evidence that he was smoking and she confronted him.
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But he would not admit to her that he was smoking, so he told her, I swear on my mother's grave that I was not smoking.
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Later that day, this man died suddenly. Out of nowhere.
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Now, I don't know if this was God's judgment. Only God knows that. But what I do know is that God takes oaths very seriously.
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When one swears on something important, they are really swearing to Him. We live in a world where false oaths happen all the time, and God is disturbed by every one of these false oaths.
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When elected politicians put their hand on the Bible and swear an oath that they will uphold the
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Constitution, do you think they mean it? Our country and our states frequently don't follow the
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Constitution, so that tells us how seriously politicians take these oaths.
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What about when one speaks under oath at a trial? Sometimes the person giving testimony lies under oath, which is a crime.
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But before they give their testimony, they swear on the Bible. Well, they swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me
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God. What about all the marriage vows that are made by men and women?
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When you make marriage vows, you are making an oath before God. It is a promise to your spouse and to God.
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You and your spouse are making a covenant before God to stay married through thick and thin.
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But studies say about half of marriages end in divorce. Now, there are certain circumstances where there are biblical grounds for divorce, but many divorces happen because things get tough and one or both spouses jump ship.
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In many cases, divorces should not happen. A marriage promise is an enormous promise.
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And sadly, many people don't take the promise that they made seriously. When it comes to marriage, it is appropriate to have a ceremony, to have this big setting with all these people coming.
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It's important to do this because the promise that is being made is an enormous promise.
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It is a lifelong promise that forms a sacred union between one man and one woman.
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Marriage is an enormous promise made, but there are also many small promises in life.
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There are also many opportunities where we are presented with a situation where we need to tell the truth. It is never appropriate to lie and swear on something important or even swear falsely directly to God.
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Earlier in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells us what we should do. We saw this in the Sermon on the
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Mount in Matthew 5, verses 33 -37. Jesus said, you shall not swear falsely, but you shall perform to the
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Lord what you have sworn. But I say to you, do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is
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His footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black.
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Let what you say be simply yes or no. Anything more than this comes from evil.
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This instruction from Jesus is very simple. You don't need to swear falsely.
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Just be a man or woman of your word. If you say you're going to do something, do it.
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If someone asks you an honest question, answer honestly. The Pharisees were phonies who made false oaths.
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Jesus tells us to be nothing like them. God is not fooled. He wants us to be real before Him.
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We don't need the weight of swearing on something to fool someone. God desires for everyone in this room to be a trustworthy person who speaks the truth and is not manipulative to others to get what one wants.
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By doing this, the Pharisees were leading people astray. They were telling people, it's okay to swear on certain things.
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But they presented themselves as pietistic by saying, you can't swear on these things.
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It gave them a way out. We can lie, but we can also look holy.
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The Pharisees were blind themselves, leading others to be blind. They were not godly, thinking that by avoiding swearing on some things,
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God would be pleased. He was not pleased. He took all their swearing as false oaths made to Him that they broke.
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By being an honest person, a person of your word, you are following Jesus and not the
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Pharisees. And that must be the aim of every one of us. Understand that counterfeit religion always receives condemnation from Jesus.
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And the seventh way how is through declaring false oaths that do not fool
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God. Now, we've seen seven ways how
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Jesus condemns false religion, and we have three more. And the three others we will see next
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Sunday. And to give you a little preview, the eighth way how Jesus condemns false religion is this.
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Neglecting bigger matters for smaller. And we're also going to see that the
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Pharisees thought that they were the good guys from history.
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That they were in the line of the good guys from history. And Jesus is going to give them quite an awakening by saying who they are truly like from the past.
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And that will be very interesting to see. We'll look at that next Sunday. But at this time, let's bow our heads in prayer.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word. I thank you that it's living and active, sharper than any two -edged sword, and pierces soul and spirit, and discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
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And my prayer, Lord, is that you would apply this text, this preaching today, right where everyone is at who hears the sound of my voice.
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May we not be like the Pharisees, which you despise, but may we be like Jesus.