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

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As we've gone through Matthew, we have seen that Jesus and the
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Jewish establishment are on a collision course. A peaceful agree -to -disagree solution cannot happen.
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You can see that clearly. These are diametrically opposed positions that Jesus and the
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Jewish leaders have. From the very beginning of Jesus' ministry, He has condemned the
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Pharisees and Sadducees. The very ones who made up the Jewish establishment.
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The Jewish leadership had a hold on the entire Jewish community and this hold went back several centuries.
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The moment that the prophet Malachi stopped speaking in the 5th century B .C., that is when their hold began.
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During the intertestamental period. During that time, we can be sure that there were dissenters among the
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Jewish population who knew there was corruption within the Jewish religion, but most of the people went with the flow as people normally do.
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But then a man came on the scene who preceded the Messiah and his name was John the
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Baptist. John the Baptist set the tone of his ministry very early on.
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He got right to it. As John was preaching repentance and people were coming to him to be baptized, this is what happened in the interaction between John and the
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Jewish leadership in Matthew 3 .7 -10. When he saw many of the
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Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
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Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, we have
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Abraham as our father. For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.
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Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree, therefore, that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
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That's the first message from John the Baptist in the Bible. He didn't start off soft. He just got right to it.
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Repent. Then Jesus starts his ministry and he is 100 % in agreement with John the
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Baptist. In the most famous sermon ever preached, the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus repeatedly corrects the false teaching that the people received from the
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Jewish leadership. What the Gospel of Matthew records is the collision course between the false teachers and the true teacher,
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Jesus. The Jewish leaders, as we have seen, see Jesus as the greatest threat to their power and their way of life.
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Before Jesus came on the scene, the Jewish leadership had a stranglehold on the population. But now things have changed.
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Wherever Jesus speaks, the crowds follow Him. The Jewish leadership realizes their influence is diminishing.
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And they can't have this. Not only this, but they really do believe that their way, their religion, their practices are the right way.
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So we've seen this collision course coming for some time. And now we are reaching the end.
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Over the last month, we have seen the Jewish leaders ask Jesus questions, and with every question they have asked,
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Jesus silenced them with every answer. Things have been heating up throughout
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Matthew, and now it has been heated up to its highest point. Before the
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Jewish leaders delivered Jesus over to the Romans to be crucified, Jesus is going to send
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His strongest message yet. What we are going to see over the next few weeks is
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Jesus condemn the Jewish leaders, and all pleasantries and civility goes out the window.
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Jesus' love for His Father and His love for the truth drives
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Him to be as firm as He can be with these evil people. The greatest men are those who are very gentle with the weak, but very strong against the evil.
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Let me say that again. The greatest men are those who are very gentle with the weak.
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Very gentle with most people, in fact. But very strong with the evil.
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We are going to see the strength of Jesus as He exposes the evil of these people.
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The evil of their practices. The evil of their heart. And He's going to do it one last time.
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We've been seeing Him do this throughout the Gospel of Matthew. He knows how evil they are, and He knows that these people are going to send
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Him to the cross. But before He goes to the cross,
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He is going to pronounce great condemnation upon them to make it clear to them and to the crowds that their understanding of following God, that their religion is dead.
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It's wrong. It's evil. It is blasphemous.
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And He's not okay just standing by saying nothing. They have offended
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God tremendously and misled many. And Jesus is going to make that crystal clear.
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This morning as we continue our sermon series through Matthew, I encourage you to turn in a Bible with me to Matthew 23.
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And if you're using one of those red Bibles, it's on page 984. This sermon is titled,
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The Ugliness of False Religion. And this is one big sermon that we're going to be going through.
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It's going to take three or four weeks to get through this. There's ten points to this. We're going to look at the first two points today.
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And the first two points are found in the first five verses. So let's read this together. Matthew 23, verses 1 -5.
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Then Jesus said to the crowds and to His disciples, the scribes and the
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Pharisees sit on Moses' seat, so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do.
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For they preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.
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They do all their deeds to be seen by others, for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long.
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We'll stop right there for today. Here's our big idea. What this text is calling each one in this room to do.
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Remember, every sermon is calling us to do something. This is what this one's calling you to do for the next several weeks.
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Understand that counterfeit religion always receives condemnation from Jesus.
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Understand that counterfeit religion always receives condemnation from Jesus.
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And over the next several weeks, we're going to see ten ways how. And today, the first two ways how we will see.
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But before we jump in, let me give you a little recap of where we were one Sunday ago.
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We saw in chapter 22 several conversations between Jesus and the
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Jewish leaders. Jesus was asked three questions and each time He answered,
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He put His enemies in their place. His answers were so good that they could not say anything.
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They were put in the corner every single time. As these conversations took place, there were people there to witness
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Jesus humiliate His opponents. You can imagine, He's talking to them. There's crowds around.
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And they're waiting to see what's going to happen here. And then He puts them in their place. The crowds are there to see
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Him do this. And it was clear to any honest person who the true authority was.
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The Jewish leadership in the first century were frauds whom no one should follow.
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Jesus has shown that He is the one they should be following. He is not only this powerful
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Teacher that has stood above the lifeless preaching of the scribes. He is also the
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Messiah. And He has also made the claim that He is equal with His Father.
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He is God. The people have seen this. Now, many still didn't believe, but they knew there was something different about Him.
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He was different from the scribes. Far different. He was different from the Jewish establishment.
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As we transition to chapter 23, these crowds are still present. And verse 1 tells us this, then
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Jesus said to the crowds and to His disciples... We can see the audience here. These are people.
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Some of them are already following Him. Some of them might be following Him pretty soon. But He's warning them.
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He's telling them here. We're going to see over the next several weeks, don't be like this.
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Don't be fooled by false religion. If you go down this path, you're going down a path that God hates with all of His heart.
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You can't fool God. Okay, so in verses 2 and the first half of verse 3, He says this, the scribes and the
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Pharisees sit on Moses' seat. So do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do.
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So how is it that the scribes and Pharisees sit on Moses' seat? Moses, of course, is one of the most famous people in the
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Bible. He's the one who met God at Mount Sinai. He's the one that God gave the commands to to pass on to the people.
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So how is it that the scribes and Pharisees sit on His seat? What we know from the first five books of the Bible is that the law was given to Him and the scribes and the
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Pharisees were not given the position to sit on Moses' seat to be proclaimers of the truth of God's Word.
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God didn't put them there. They put themselves there. I saw one translation that said, they have seated themselves in the chair of Moses.
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And that's exactly what's going on here. The scribes and Pharisees occasionally teach the law correctly.
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But Jesus explains the problem in the second half of verses three and verse four.
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He says, for they preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens hard to bear and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.
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So here's the problem. It is true, as Jesus acknowledges, that the scribes who represent the
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Pharisees, say some true things. They teach what God gave to Moses and that the people needed to hear and follow.
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But what Jesus points out is that the laws they do teach accurately, they don't follow.
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For example, Luke 16, 14 called the Pharisees lovers of money. They would have told people, don't covet.
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Don't be lovers of money. But they themselves were notorious for being lovers of money.
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If you go right down the Ten Commandments, you shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. You shall not covet.
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You shall not commit heart murder through anger. To name a few of these, they broke these.
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And they had no problem breaking these. They preached hard to the people that they obey, but they didn't themselves obey.
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Their lives were one of hypocrisy. In the second of verses, or verse three, that is,
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Jesus says they preach, but do not practice. There are people like this in our world. And it might be you in this room.
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I'm not trying to go after you, but ask yourself this. Are we preaching, but are we not practicing?
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Ask yourself that question. People can use very strong language, stressing obedience, but they themselves have no intention on keeping the instructions that they give others.
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Jesus tells us that the scribes used very strong language in verse four. The text says they tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders.
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What the Pharisees believed is that if the good outweighs the bad, then you're good with God. You'll go to heaven.
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But this is not what the Old Testament taught, nor what the New Testament teaches. In Genesis 15 -6, that verse says,
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Abraham believed in God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. The Apostle Paul writes in Romans 4 -23 that it was counted to him, we're not written for Abraham's sake alone, but for ours also.
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It will be counted to us who believe in him, who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.
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The Pharisees completely missed the meaning of God's Word. What is interesting is that when
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Jesus says in verse four that they place things on people that are hard to bear, he's not talking about God's commandments, but the commands that God never gave.
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This is the worst kind of religion. False religion puts burdens on people that God doesn't.
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As one author said, they piled up heavy loads of religious regulations, rules, and rituals on men's shoulders until they were unbearable and impossible to carry.
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And when the people failed to keep all their requirements as they were doomed to do, they were chided and rebuked by the leaders who thereby added the burden of guilt to those of weariness and frustration.
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But here's something that everyone needs to understand. You must understand that keeping
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God's commands are not a burden. But there's another
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B word here. They're a blessing. This doesn't mean that God's commands are always easy to follow.
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But what it means is that blessing follows the one who obeys God's commands.
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Followers of God find that true joy only comes with walking closely with God.
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1 John 5 says, for this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments and His commandments are not burdensome.
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Satan wants us to think that his commands are a burden. That they're hard to bear. That they're joyless.
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What God tells you is not to steal what belongs to your neighbor. He tells you not to covet your neighbor's lot in life.
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Like, look at how great of a life this person has. I wish I had that. He tells you don't do that.
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He tells you to tell the truth even when it's hard. God tells one not to have sex before marriage or outside of marriage because that's going to lead to a lot of problems.
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Do you know what Satan says to this? What a killjoy God is. He robs one of pleasure.
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He robs one of fun, of excitement. He's so restrictive. This is what
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God did to Eve. I'm sorry, this is what Satan did to Eve in the garden.
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There's a song written by a musician whose name is Carolyn Cobb. It's titled
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Eve's Lament. Listen to it. Look it up later. It's really a good song. And here's the chorus of that song.
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Did God really say it? Why is He keeping you down? Don't you want to taste it?
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Freedom without Him around. Don't you want to know? Don't you want to choose?
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You want it, don't you? You can just see Satan tempting, can't you? This is what
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Satan does. He's the tempter and he and his demons want us to think freedom from God's law brings great joy and people fall for it all the time.
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We can see the joylessness of sin. The pain of sin. Thieves aren't happy.
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Adulterers aren't happy. Those who have hate in their hearts aren't happy. Those who covet aren't happy.
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And it goes on and on and on. Outside of God's law at the end of the day, there is no joy.
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But inside God's law is delight. You read it in Psalm 119.
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Psalm 119 is the longest psalm there is of the 150. He's talking about, I delight in God's law.
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It's as sweet as honey. He delights in it because he knows that it's the path of life.
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His commands are not burdensome, as 1 John 5 says. But the Pharisees were not stressing the life -giving commands of God that come from the law of Moses.
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They taught some of those commands, yes, but mixed in with those were man -made laws.
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And man -made laws never give life. You can see
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God saying, why are you doing that? I didn't tell you to do that.
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Why are you putting that burden on you? I didn't put that burden on you. The Pharisees were masters at this.
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They added their own laws onto God's law. They placed these burdens on the people.
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These were burdens they couldn't keep. But they pushed these hard on the people and they didn't let up.
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As the end of verse 4 says, they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. You can picture this.
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Imagine getting a bag that weighs 100 pounds and you're told to carry that bag three miles.
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That'd be hard to do, wouldn't it? I don't know if anybody could do that. A Pharisee is someone who tells you that you must do this, but will never pick up that bag himself.
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The Pharisees not only did this in the first century, but this is alive and well in our day. I had a troubling conversation with a
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Christian about a year or two ago. He actually came to our church once or twice. This man was troubled when he saw people not dressed super formally.
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Okay, so in other words, you're all in trouble. A lot of people in this room. We are a church that is fairly casual, so you can imagine that he was troubled by what he saw.
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Men not wearing ties and dress pants. Women not wearing dresses. Now, a man or woman can, of course, dress inappropriately if what they wear is immodest, but that is not what this man was talking about.
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He had certain standards that the people had to reach. These standards were not put there by God, but by him.
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It's interesting. I wear a tie when I preach, and the reason I do that is because it's because of the importance of the message that I'm bringing from the
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Word of God. When you see a news anchor, remember when they used to actually tell the news?
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The news anchor would ask, why is he wearing a suit? Why is the woman wearing a suit?
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It's because they're delivering something very important. They're delivering news. Why does the president wear a suit, right?
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Because he's delivering a message to the country. That's why
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I think a pastor, my opinion is, should wear a tie or wear a suit sometimes because what's more important than the
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Word of God, right? But this man, if it wasn't done his way, then it wasn't right.
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This was pharisaic, and I even told him that. He actually received what I said, and I hope he turned from it, but I was alarmed by what
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I saw. You also see this with the strictness in some churches over the years. We are a
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Baptist church, and we should be proud of our history as Baptists. Lots of churches are running from that name.
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They'll call it a community church or something like that. The Baptist movement started in 1609 as the
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Baptists corrected the unbiblical view that infants should be baptized. There have been many great
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Baptist movements over the last 400 plus years, including this church. But sadly, when many people in America hear the
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Baptist name, what comes to mind is not the great history, but the legalism that developed and was present in many places during the 20th century and is still present in some places today.
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Baptists would say things like, you can never play cards. You can never have a drop of alcohol.
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Any rhythmic movement is from the devil. And so is just about every movie out there.
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And as I already mentioned, they also insisted on precision in what people wore. Now we need wisdom in all of these areas.
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Christians can cross lines in these areas where it becomes sinful, yes. But what pharisaical people do is use what
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I mentioned above as a standard for Christian obedience. And this is not a good standard.
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You can avoid everything above that I just mentioned and still be a rotten person.
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And some of you maybe know something like that. You know, they're very, very, very strict on just about everything.
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But is the person pleasant to be around? There's a problem there.
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The people who insist on these things while not really loving other people, they are like the group of people that no
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Christian should want to be like. The Pharisees. The Pharisees made all these rules that people had to keep.
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Jesus calls them heavy burdens, hard to bear. As they impose these heavy burdens, they themselves did not even follow their own rules.
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And most importantly, they did not practice the law of Moses. The teaching that they were considered the experts of.
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They were the ones who were supposed to understand the law and to truly understand the commands of God.
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One must not only understand them with your head, but also live them. Understand them is just half of it.
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Then it's OK, we've got to live this. These commands are to be obeyed and to obey them is to experience life.
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You know what Jesus said? In John 10, 10. I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly.
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What a burden it is to be weighed down by manmade rules, but what a blessing it is to follow God's commands.
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Jesus hates manmade rules and so should you. The first way how counterfeit religion always receives condemnation is through promoting burdensome rules while neglecting true godliness.
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That's the first way how in this in your outline, if you have it in your bulletin.
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The second way how counterfeit religion always receives condemnation is through living differently in public than in private.
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And we'll see this in verse 5. Not only were the Pharisees wrong in the way they approached their religion through rule keeping and making up their own laws that no one could keep.
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They also were masters at giving the appearance of godliness. Verse 5.
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They do all their deeds to be seen by others, for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long.
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You might be wondering what in the world is a phylactery? That's not something you see every day. A phylactery was a small leather box that these
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Jewish people wore on their forehead. They wore a headband and on the front of the headband would be a leather box that contained part of the
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Hebrew law. Wearing this was a reminder for them to keep the law.
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What Jesus says is they made these boxes on their foreheads broad. They wanted people to see them. Look at how spiritual we are.
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See this box on our forehead? So people see them as super spiritual.
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A lot of people are fooled by this. Not only do they have this box on their forehead containing the law, but they also make their fringes long.
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They wore these robes and these robes were extra long. They didn't want anybody to miss it.
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Look what we're wearing. They wore attire that common
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Jews did not wear. Jesus' point is that they want to be seen as spiritual by the people.
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They are putting on a show how close to God they are. But Jesus isn't fooled.
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In the Sermon on the Mount, He condemned their false public worship. In Matthew 6, verses 1 -4,
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He tells the crowds that He's preaching to, Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them.
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For then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others.
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Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret.
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And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. What Jesus proclaims there in the
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Sermon on the Mount and here in our text is that the Pharisees were frauds. Everything about them was fake.
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They were those who portrayed themselves as one thing when they were really another. I once heard a man say, who you are in private is who you are.
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Isn't that sobering? That's exactly right. Who you are around your spouse is who you are.
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Who you are around your kids is who you are. Who you are around your closest friends is who you are.
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Who you are when no one is looking is who you are. Here on Sunday mornings, we can put on a good face but who we are at home is more important.
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Who we are when no one is looking is far more important. God knows who you are.
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He sees everything. We can fool people, but we can't fool
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God. This is why it's important to be real. Don't be afraid to confess your sins to God or to others.
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1 Corinthians 10 .13 says that no temptation has seized you that is not common to man. God is faithful.
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He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability. What that verse is saying is that if one person in this church has that problem, another person is bound to have it too.
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We have common struggles and we shouldn't be afraid. We shouldn't think we're some freak that we're the only person who has that problem.
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First and foremost, God forgives you of those sins as you put your trust in Jesus. And once he saves you and gives you the spirit, he doesn't want to leave you in your sin.
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He calls you to turn from it. He doesn't want you to stay in that place of misery. He wants you to be free.
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This is what God wants for you. He wants you to be real, not a fake who puts on a show that might fool other people, but doesn't fool
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God. Think about how silly that is. You can fool dust, but you can't fool the living
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God. He knows every detail of your life. He knows you better than you know you.
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It's not as if God is fooled because he's impressed with one's public display of righteousness that is out of step with one's private life.
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As I already mentioned, who you are in private is who you are. If people have a window into your private life and they can say, yes, this person has flaws, but he or she is truly striving to follow
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God. That's where you want to be. Because you know what? If we had a window in every one of our lives in private, we would be less impressed with each other, would we not?
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Let's be honest. But if it's like, wow, this person's a good actor, that's where it becomes a huge problem.
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And sometimes, something comes out about a person and what comes out is shocking.
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In the news recently, I found out that one of my former professors, an adjunct professor, which means a part -time professor, who taught a class when
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I was in college, and he was also a pastor of a church, he was charged with a crime and he could be spending some time in jail.
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And that was quite a shock. What I read was that for a long time, he was living a double life.
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But eventually, God exposed his egregious, sinful activity.
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I tell you what, when I get up here on Sunday mornings, I'd better be confessing my sins beforehand.
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Because I don't want to be a fraud, right? And how horrible that is to live a double life.
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It's going to come out at some point. If you are, it doesn't work, right? You can't get away with it.
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And no one who lives a double life will get away with it. And the Pharisees didn't understand that.
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They were frauds that fooled many Jews into thinking they were godly. And the Pharisees were foolish enough to think that they could fool
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God. But Jesus the God -Man gives the right pronouncement here.
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He is the God -Man and His pronouncement is always right on the money. He says in the first time of verse 5, they do all their deeds to be seen by others.
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Another way to say it is this, they do everything to receive the praise of man. That's what they're after.
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They want people to praise them. In our day,
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Pharisees abound who want to be seen as virtuous to the public. And some of the worst offenders, ironically, are the people you'd never find in church on Sunday.
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We saw this during COVID. What's interesting is that every person is religious. That's what you come to find out. Every person is religious.
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Everybody worships something. We saw this in the last couple of years.
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This probably has never been shown more in history than now. With social media during COVID, think of how many people posted pictures of themselves wearing a mask.
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Or some of them even had a profile picture. I'm wearing a mask. Or they showed themselves getting a booster shot.
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It could be the other way too, right? People define saying, no, this is wrong.
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But then publicly displaying, look how much I'm against this. Think about how many people and even
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Christians wrote on their social media, Black Lives Matter, over the last several years. Our secular country has a value system.
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And over the last several years, that value system is saying that there was only one way to handle
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COVID. That was through masking, social distancing, and you must get the vaccine.
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And if you don't do any of these, you're a horrible person. You must love your neighbor, they said.
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But people who said this were not willing to debate the other side. Who were convinced they were loving their neighbor by not doing the things listed above.
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Who could not violate their conscience. Our mainstream culture is also pro
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Black Lives Matter. Every Christian following Jesus should be against this organization.
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Let me just be very clear on this. Against this organization, not against Black Lives. Maybe they'll be very clear.
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We're pro Black Lives. But this organization is against the nuclear family.
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It is Marxist. It is against the Bible. And if it's against the Bible, we must stand against it.
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Let's be very clear on that. But that being said, we're very pro
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Black Lives, right? Including the black life in the womb. Black babies are aborted three times more than any other demographic.
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Do you know that? Where's Black Lives Matter on that one? We know that they're not for Black Lives like we are.
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Every life matters. Every life is created in the image of God. Every life is equal before God.
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Every life should be treated with the utmost respect and care. And that's the great deception of that movement.
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If you're not with them politically, they're against you. But look at how many people have been virtue signaling.
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That's the terminology. It's called virtue signaling. They want to look virtuous to the outside world.
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So they embrace causes they shouldn't embrace because those are the world's causes. They're putting their endorsement on things that are actually immoral.
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But you can also do virtue signaling with causes that are truly moral, according to God's standard. What's interesting is that sex trafficking is hardly ever talked about.
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You ever hear people talking about that? It is. And yet it's an enormous problem.
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It's a systemic problem in our society. And yet it's just kind of behind the scenes.
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You might hear about it every once in a while, but someone could be passionate about that and with the goal of looking virtuous, right?
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So you can be right on morality. You can be you can have the right causes. You can be the most pro -life person in the world and still be a
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Pharisee if you're doing your works not out of a love for God, not out of a love for others, but to be seen as virtuous by others.
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So whether you're embracing a false morality or a true morality, you can still be a Pharisee. The Pharisees wanted praise now and they wanted praise later, thinking that somehow
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God would be impressed. They didn't really care about who they were in private. They cared about who they were in public so that people would sing their praises as they looked spiritual to the masses.
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And oh, look at how great these people are. We want to be like them. That's what they wanted to hear.
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And Jesus says, you hypocrites, you are completely different in public than you are in private.
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This was pride, spiritual pride, acting, putting on a charade.
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It's disgusting. And Jesus goes after it. What He said in the
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Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6 -2 is that they have received their reward. Because they're not getting a reward from God.
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Because God condemns the very thing they're doing. Dust applauded them, but from God, these
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Pharisees of old and false religious people in our day will receive from God only condemnation.
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So the second way how counterfeit religion always receives condemnation from Jesus is through living differently in public than in private.
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Now, next Sunday and the following Sundays, we're going to see eight other marks of false religion.
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And to give you a little preview, the third mark is this that we'll see in verses six and seven.
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Finding identity in their personal status in society. That's a mark of a
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Pharisee. Finding identity in their personal status in society. We'll unwrap that one next
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Sunday along with a couple others. And I look forward to looking at that with you. But this time, let's bow our heads in prayer.
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Father in heaven, we don't want to be like Pharisees. I pray that nobody in this room wants to be like a
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Pharisee. And that our church would be the furthest from that. But that we would be those who are real.
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Like I said, we know that in private we have warts and stuff, but I pray that we would turn from our sins and strive to grow to be more like you, to be less pharisaical and more godly in our lives.
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That we truly love you and truly love other people. We want to be where Jesus is.
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And Jesus is against this since he's a Pharisee. Give us that strong desire in our hearts and help us to live that out by your