It Is Written: The Chair of Moses | Matthew 23:1-4

All right, let's turn over to the Gospel of Matthew, the

Gospel of Matthew chapter 23. We'll start in the beginning in verse 1, verses 1 through 4, in Matthew 23, verses 1 through 4.

God's Word says, Jesus also spoke to the crowds and to his disciples, saying,

The scribes and the Pharisees have seated themselves in the chair of Moses. Therefore, all that they tell you, do and keep, but do not do according to their deeds.

For they say things and do not do them. And they tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger.

This is God's Word. Amen. So, the agenda

I had laid out for today was that we're beginning, we're reaching the end of this series on Scripture alone, on the doctrine of Scripture and all of the related doctrines tied to that.

Ultimate authorities and so on. There's probably a couple more sermons left.

And it's funny because I had an idea of what I was going to preach today, but this passage, there's so much more to this passage than I realized that I kind of want to focus on this a little bit more and unpack it, because there's a lot to cover here that I think is really important and very much relevant to the topic of Scripture itself.

And what we believe as Protestants on the doctrinal principle of Scripture alone as the ultimate, final, sole and fallible authority for the church.

And so, I always, and part of that was because I always try to start with a verse, with a passage, with Scripture.

And then sometimes it becomes much deeper than I expect. So, let's,

I really want to dive into this. There's some important material here, and I really look forward to sharing this with you all.

And I think it'll be a blessing to everyone. So, there's some important passages here that, as I said, tie into many of these underlying doctrines pertaining to this series on Scripture.

I want to reread the passage again with some drive -by commentary this time in Matthew 23.

It says, Jesus spoke to the crowds and to his disciples.

So, note that he spoke to everyone. He's speaking to everyone, and he wants everyone to hear what he is saying.

Not just his disciples or his immediate group of people following him, but everyone.

And he says, That word will become important in a little bit.

Seated themselves in the chair of Moses. That word chair is cathedras, where we get the word cathedra or cathedral from.

In the chair of Moses, the seat of Moses, the cathedra. Therefore, all that they tell you, do and keep, but do not according to their deeds.

Do not do according to their deeds. For they say things, they say, they will preach, and they will preach and teach, and do not do them.

They do not practice what they preach. And, in essence, is what Christ is saying.

They say, but do not do. They practice, but do not. They preach, but do not practice. And they tie up heavy burdens and lay them up on men's shoulders, but they themselves aren't willing to move them with so much as a finger.

Which means that they are hypocrites, in other words, right? That's the main focus of this chapter.

Christ is exposing the Pharisees as utter hypocrites in every kind of way.

And so, it's very important to unpack this because there's a lot more than meets the eye here.

And a lot of different controversy or difference pertaining to how to understand this passage.

So, there is the Pharisees who have seated themselves in Moses' chair. And this is chair of authority as teachers of the law, so to speak.

And Jesus is showing the disconnect. There's obviously a contrast and a sharp contradiction that he is pointing out regarding the scribes and Pharisees to everyone.

He's not just calling the Pharisees out to their face. He's calling them out before everybody. And this is partly why they wanted to kill him.

Because he was undercutting their authority completely. And so,

Jesus is rebuking the scribes and Pharisees for their hypocrisy, among many other things.

Because they do not practice what they preach, in so far as what they preach and teach actually agrees with Moses and the prophets, right?

You can't, if you sit yourself in the seat of Moses, but teach contrary to Moses, that makes no sense, right?

It's only in so far as what they preach and teach actually agrees with Moses, with the law and the prophets, which is a synecdoche, right?

For the sacred scriptures. It is the written word of God. And you'll note, too, that this passage is actually a chiasm.

A chiasm. And that's another Greek rhetorical term that pertains to how it's a rhetorical device that you start with something, with a certain statement, and then you end with that same statement.

And so, the next statement pertains to the second to the last statement. And then the third statement pertains to the third to the last statement, and so on, until you reach a middle point where they both meet.

And then it extends back out again, okay? So that's known as a chiasm. And there's many of those in scripture as well.

But here, we see that in verse two, where he says that the scribes and the

Pharisees have seated themselves in the chair of Moses, the leaders of Israel have taken on Moses' teaching authority.

So there's an irony there that the chiasm is leading us into. And then

Jesus continues. So do what they say, but do not do what they do.

So that's a literal advice, non -ironical advice, what

Jesus is saying. Do not practice, do not do what they do, but go ahead and follow what they teach.

Again, insofar as it agrees with Moses, the law of Moses and the prophets. And then in verse four, the irony continues because their teaching merely binds men.

It binds men to their traditions of men. So there's more irony here that Christ is continuing.

And Jesus continues this diatribe of judgments against the scribes and Pharisees with more biting, rebuking, sarcastic irony and condemnation.

Okay, so that's the chiasm there. And so this is a very interesting passage that many traditions try to use for their own justification of why they do things or why they consider other things to be authoritative.

And this brings us to a very important question now. That is the question of what is the cathedral of Moses?

What does that mean? What is the chair of Moses mean? The seat of Moses? This is a very important question because there's a lot of confusion and speculation and conflicting interpretations and abuses of this phrase by various groups and various traditions.

Some claim, for example, that the seat of Moses is an extra -biblical, infallible, quote -unquote, tradition.

A teaching authority that was handed down from Moses to God's people outside of the written word of God.

Because there's no other reference to it in the scripture. No direct reference to the chair of Moses in the

Old Testament. So according to them, this supposedly proves that we need other infallible traditions and authorities outside of scripture.

So you see how they sneak that in. They try to use this verse to justify extra -biblical traditions that are not stated in the

Bible, that are not deduced from the scriptures or stated in there. So in other words, scripture for them, according to them, is not enough.

It's not sufficient like 2nd Timothy says. So that scripture is sufficient for equipping the man of God for every good work.

But they say no. This is an example of the cathedral of Moses.

The chair of Moses is outside of scripture, but it's necessary for the church to have.

And sadly, many churches who claim to be the one true church of Christ, such as two big ones, the

Roman Catholicism, the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, both claim that exclusively.

They likewise sit themselves in the chair of Moses to justify their own extra -biblical and so -called infallible traditions.

They both claim to have infallible traditions outside of scripture and authorities, much like the scribes and Pharisees did.

This was one of them. So and by way of a concrete example, have any of you heard the term the chair of Peter, the chair of Saint Peter or.

Ex cathedra, speaking ex cathedra, right? Does any of that sound familiar?

And it should because many of us came from Roman Catholic backgrounds. We live in a predominantly

Roman Catholic city. And these are fundamental doctrines in the teaching of the

Roman Catholic Church. These terms and the New Catholic Encyclopedia.

Says this about ex cathedra, ex cathedra, which means from the chair like we saw the word cathedra means chair or seat ex cathedra, according to Rome, symbolically expresses the supreme authority within the church of the

Roman pontiff of the. In other words, the Roman pope, the

Roman bishop, the Roman pope. It represents people authority and infallibility, not just authority, but infallibility, right?

So extended in the form of ex cathedra Petri, that is from the chair of Peter, the apostle

Peter, it symbolizes the Roman pontiff's or pope's title to that supreme authority and to the carism of infallibility of the incapable of committing error.

Carism is the power supposedly granted by God. So they're claiming that God grants the pope infallibility, which accompanies the supreme authority of ex cathedra.

Because he is a successor of Peter, the head of the College of the

Apostles, according to Rome. None of this is true, by the way, none of this is biblical, but I continue through succession to his chair,

Peter's chair or supreme office in the church, the authority and infallibility of Peter lives on in the

Roman pontiff or pope. Okay, so in another entry on the chair of Peter, the

New Catholic Encyclopedia says this, since the teaching power of the pope is not merely that of a bishop, but that of the successor of St.

Peter, the chair of St. Peter indicates the authoritative doctrinal power of the pope as a successor of St.

Peter. This is the origin of the expression ex cathedra. Such a people pronouncement, very rarely made, is one in which the pope infallibly defines a doctrine that is irrevocably, irrevocably binding on all the faithful.

Okay, so you can't take it back, you can't, you can't change it, it's irrevocable.

So whatever the church declares ex cathedra, it's irrevocable, it's unchangeable, and it's supposedly without error, according to them.

So again, this is complete nonsense and contrary to scripture, because the authority that they claim

Christ gave to Peter in Matthew 16 about the keys to the kingdom and upon this rock building the church, in a few chapters later,

Christ gives the same exact authority of binding and loosened to the rest of the apostles. There's no distinction made between Peter and the rest of the apostles.

Christ simply tells Peter that first, and then he tells the same thing to the rest. So again, there's this erection of false doctrine off of these misinterpretation and misapplication of these verses, including this passage in Matthew 23, right, of the cathedra of Moses.

So what does this actually refer to then?

The cathedra of Moses. Moses' seat actually refers to, there's a sort of a twofold sense that it could refer to.

It can refer to the literal chair in synagogues, in Jewish synagogues, where the scriptures were placed and read and taught.

So in a synagogue in the first century, synagogues were not always around.

They were not around in the time of Moses. They came afterwards primarily through the intertestamental period.

So the synagogue, there was typically a chair, they called the chair of Moses, from which the scriptures were placed and read from and taught.

So that's the literal chair that it could be referring to. There's also a figurative or symbolic chair of Moses, Moses, which represents the teaching authority in synagogues, the teaching authority.

But this authority is derived from and based on the scriptures that were first read in the synagogue.

That was always the order. First, you would read a passage and then you would explain it or teach from it, some comment on it.

That's the order of how Jewish worship in the synagogue took place.

That is what it's referring to here. So it's very important not to miss this.

The Catholic church kind of explains this, but they totally take it a different direction by saying this is a different whole thing, different thing altogether.

It's not even in the scriptures. It's contrary to scripture, in fact. So it's referring to that, specifically that teaching authority representing, that is derived from, based on the scriptures that were read.

And I read this from a passage earlier in Acts, where Paul is visiting a synagogue.

They read from a passage and then they asked Paul, who was a visiting rabbi, hey brothers, if you have a word, say it.

If you have a word, preach it. And similarly, so Christ himself in Luke chapter four, he stands up to read the scroll of Isaiah and then he sits down and teaches what it means.

He said, this is fulfilled in your very hearing. He stands up to read. He sits down to teach.

So that's the pattern of worship in the Jewish synagogues. And that's what this is pointing to.

Now, Moses' seat then is not some extra biblical, so -called infallible tradition or authority that is outside of or independent of what is written by God.

Especially in light of how Jesus consistently and repeatedly confronts the scribes and how he himself conducted in worship.

It was always reading a text and then teaching from that text read. But how he repeatedly confronts the scribes,

Pharisees and Sadducees as well, before, during and after this passage, all throughout his ministry.

He's calling them out for straying and deviating from the scriptures, the writings, the writings of Moses and the law and the prophets and the

Psalms and so on. So then, okay, that's clearly not something foreign to the

Bible, to the Old Testament. But is there more? What say at the scriptures? Beloved, let's dive in more closely to key passages in the

Old Testament that shed more light on this concept of the chair of Moses. Turn with me now to the book of Exodus.

The second book of the law of Moses, chapter 18, verse 13 through 26.

I want to read some portions here to give us some more context on this very, this notion of the seat of Moses.

The book of Exodus 18, chapter 18, verse 13. God's Word speaks to us and says, verse 13,

Now it happened the next day that Moses sat to judge the people. Note that carefully.

And the people stood about Moses from the morning until the evening. And Moses' father -in -law,

Jethro, saw all that he was doing for the people. So he said, What is this thing that you are doing for the people?

Why do you alone sit as judge, and all the people stand about you from morning until evening?

And Moses said to his father -in -law, Because the people come to me to inquire of God. When they have a matter, it comes to me.

And I judge between a man and his neighbor, and make known the statutes of God and his laws.

And Moses' father -in -law said to him, The thing that you are doing is not good.

You will surely wear out both yourself and these people who are with you.

For the task is too heavy for you. You cannot do it alone. Now listen to my voice.

I will give you counsel, and God be with you. You will be the people's representative before God. And you bring the matters to God.

Then warn them about the statutes and the laws, and make known to them the way in which they shall go and the work they shall do.

But you shall select excellent men out of all the people, those who fear

God, men of truth, men of truth, of conviction, those who hate greedy gain.

In other words, those men who are qualified to do such a work. And you shall place these men over them as leaders of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens.

Wow. This is fascinating. So this is very clearly pointing to this concept of Moses' teaching authority.

Moses was a representative. He would receive a teaching from God, and he would disseminate it to the people.

This is where the concept of the chair of Moses comes from, very clearly. And in verse 24, in the same chapter, it says,

So Moses listened to the voice of his father -in -law, and did all that he said. And Moses chose excellent men, qualified men, out of all

Israel, and made them heads over the people. Right? And so on. Now turn with me, beloved, over to the book of Deuteronomy, the fifth book of the law of Moses, chapter 1.

Deuteronomy chapter 1, verse 11. Where we continue to see what this is referring to, and a continuation of what

Moses does for himself and the people of Israel. So in this book now,

Deuteronomy chapter 1, verse 11, we see

God speaking to us and saying, May Yahweh, the

God of your fathers, increase you a thousand fold more than you are, and bless you just as he has promised you.

This is Moses speaking. How can I, Moses, alone bear the load and burden of you and your strife?

Choose wise and understanding and experienced men.

Right? Men of character, men of character, men of truth, men of qualification from your tribes, and I will appoint them as your heads.

Then you answered me and said, The thing which you have said to do is good. So I took the heads of your tribes, wise and experienced men, qualified men.

Note the emphasis there. And gave them as heads over you leaders of thousands and of hundreds of fifties and of tens of officers for your tribes.

Then I commanded your judges at that time saying, Hear the cases between your brothers and judge righteously between a man and his brother or the sojourner who is with him.

You shall not show partiality in judgment.

You shall hear the small and the great alike. You shall not fear men for the judgment is God's. The case that is too hard for you, you shall bring to me, and I will hear it.

And I, Moses, commanded you at that time all the things that you should do. Wow.

So this beloved, amen, this, this is very clearly laying out the plan that Moses had implemented through the guidance of his father -in -law,

Jethro, godly counsel, and having the people of Israel selecting their best, most qualified, most experienced, and wise men to rule them, to judge them, and to help them govern them, right, in Israel.

So ask yourselves now, now ask yourselves in light of what the passage in Matthew 23, where Jesus is referring to the scribes and the

Pharisees, who sit themselves, notice that phrase, they sit themselves in the seat of Moses, right?

They sit themselves on it, in it. Ask yourselves, do these qualifications that the books of Deuteronomy, Exodus, that Moses lays out, do they sound like or resemble the character of the scribes and Pharisees during the time of Christ on earth, at all, at all?

No, right? That's a rhetorical question, right? The obvious answer is no. They don't meet the qualifications of excellent men, of qualified men, of men of truth, men who are experienced and without hypocrisy.

So, okay, let's take very careful note of that, because Moses institutes this order, and it helps for a time, but of course, as we see in the history of God's nation, the

Israel, they eventually fall back into the repeated cycle of sin, rebellion, corruption, and then at some point, repentance and some restoration, right?

But this is a recurring pattern. Now, however, fast forwarding a little bit now, during the time of Malachi the prophet,

Ezra and Nehemiah and others also stepped up to reform

Israel from her sinful corruptions once again, prior to the 400 years of prophetic silence and leading up to those years, right?

Because Malachi was the last prophet, and Ezra and Nehemiah were reformers, Ezra being a scribe and Nehemiah was a governor.

At that same time, they were reforming Israel from her, once again, cycle of corruption and sin and rebellion.

So, this is very important, okay? So, let's see what

Ezra and Nehemiah led and instituted many reforms in Israel, many reforms about restoring the law to the people, reading it, explaining it, establishing it again, re -establishing the feasts and the observances of Israel, re -establishing the

Sabbath, getting rid of the foreign pagan wives, all of these things.

There's many reforms that they institute to try to turn Israel back to God and to His law, right?

To the law of Moses by exercising the seat of authority that Moses had initially instituted, right?

So, turn with me now to Ezra chapter 10. In the beginning of Ezra chapter 10, verses 1 through 6 and 10 through 12, as we read there, what

God has to say to us. Ezra chapter 10, starting in verse 1.

So, here we see God's Word speaking to us some very important historical matters in the nation of Israel during this time.

Verse 1. Now, while Ezra was praying and making confession, weeping and prostrating himself before the house of God, a very large assembly, men, women, and children, gathered to him from Israel for the people wept bitterly and Shechaniah, the son of Jehiel, one of the sons of Elam, answered and said to Ezra, we have been unfaithful to our

God and have married foreign women from the peoples of the land, yet now there is hope for Israel in spite of this, so now let us cut a covenant with our

God. That's a phrase there, to cut a covenant is to make a covenant. With our

God to put away all the wives and their children according to the counsel of my

Lord and of those who tremble at the commandment of our God and let it be done according to the law, according to the law of Moses.

Arise, for this matter is your responsibility, Ezra, but we will be with you.

Be strong and act. In other words, get her done. Let's reform, right?

Let's take action and turn Israel back to God.

Then Ezra arose and made the leading priests, the Levites, and all

Israel swear an oath that they would do according to this word.

So they swore an oath. They cut a covenant. They renewed their covenantal obligations to God to stop the sinful compromises and take on the practice of the law once again.

Then verse 10, actually let me read from verse 6 again.

So I'll continue there. Then Ezra arose from before the house of God and went into the chamber of Jehoannin, the son of Eliashib.

He went there, but he did not eat bread nor drink water, for he was mourning over the unfaithfulness of the exiles.

They had been in exile and they had been allowed to return by the edict of Cyrus to rebuild their temple and everything.

So verse 10 now, then Ezra the priest arose and said to them, to the men of Judah and Benjamin, who had returned from exile and were gathered in Jerusalem, you have been unfaithful and have married foreign wives, adding to the guilt of Israel.

So now make confession to Yahweh, the God of your fathers, and do his will and separate yourselves from the peoples of the land and from the foreign wives.

Then all the assembly answered and said with a loud voice, this is so as you have said, so it is our duty to do.

Amen. So that there you see, beloved, Ezra exercising this type of teaching authority from Moses of implementing the law and holding people to that law, holding them accountable to the law, for they had strayed severely from it.

Okay, now let's look at similarly these continuing reforms in the book of Nehemiah.

In the following book, in the book of Nehemiah chapter 13 and verse 23, we will see how the story continues to unfold.

Nehemiah chapter 13 verse 23. God's word says, in those days

I, Nehemiah is speaking, also saw that the Jews had married women from Ashtod, Ammon, and Moab.

So they married foreign pagan wives. And then in verse 24 it says, as for their children, half spoke in the language of Ashtod, and none of them was able to speak in the language of Judah.

They lost their language, but only the tongue of his own people. So I contended with them, and cursed them, and struck some of them, and pulled out their hair, and made them swear by God.

Wow. You shall not give your daughters to their sons, to the pagan peoples, nor take up their daughters for your sons or for yourselves.

So this beloved is a fierce rebuke. He is fiercely rebuked. He's laying down the law.

He is laying the smackdown on Israel. Very similar. This should have a similar ring to how

Jesus is calling out the scribes and Pharisees, right? Similar tone here.

Very similar. In verse 26, he gives an example of Solomon. Did not Solomon, king of Israel, sin regarding these things?

Yet among the many nations there was no king like him. He was loved by his God, and God gave him to be king over all

Israel. Nevertheless, the foreign women caused even him to sin, to stray from God, and from his law, from the law of Moses.

Do we then hear about you, that you have done all this great evil, by acting unfaithfully against our

God, by marrying foreign women? And even one of the sons of Joida, the son of Eliashib, the high priest, was a son -in -law of Sanballat the

Horonite. So I made him flee away from me. And then in verse 29, remember them, these men with foreign wives, oh my

God, because they have defiled the priesthood, and the covenant of the priesthood, and the

Levites. What is he saying, beloved? They have disqualified themselves.

They have disqualified themselves. Thus, therefore,

I cleansed them. I reformed them from everything foreign, and ensured that the responsibilities stood for the priest, and the

Levites, each in his work, each in his work.

There you see again, very clear parallel here, to what Moses did for the people back in his time, to lay some law and order down, to receive the teaching from God, and to reveal it, to disseminate it to God's people, to write it down for them as well, to teach it, and to uphold it, and to institute judges who were qualified, excellent men of wisdom and experience, right?

And likewise, Ezra and Nehemiah, the scribes, and governor, and reformers of Israel, because Israel had so radically strayed from the law of Moses once again, yet they had similarly rebuked

Israel. They, and they, they kicked out whoever did not want to abide by these laws.

They exiled them, and they, they made the people swear an oath, even dragging them by the hair, obligating them to get rid of their foreign wives, and their, their false pagan idolatrous worship, and idols, and cleansed them, reformed them from all that foreign sin, and ensured that the responsibilities for the priests, and the

Levites stood. They were reinstituted each in his work.

Amen. This is powerful stuff, beloved, and it's very often lost, and disregarded when, when you hear people talking about the passage in Matthew 23 about the seed of Moses.

The context gets lost. There's a whole historical background in, in, in, uh, intimately linked to the people of Israel, and how

Israel was reformed by, and through the exercise of the seed of Moses. That's what it is, right?

And so, Ezra and Nehemiah, like Moses, reformed

Israel's manifold corruptions, sinful corruptions, and re -established biblical decency, and order with qualified leaders.

They got rid of the ones that were not qualified, and they, oh, they appointed leaders that were qualified, right?

The excellent men. Even in, in Ezra, it says, men of insight, men of insight, who were appointed as ministers, and teachers, and scribes, and, and, uh, to, to teach

God's people, right? They had to be qualified to do these things, because they represent

God before his people, obviously. So, this brings me to a public service announcement, beloved, and this, this should be very obvious to what

I'm getting at. God always requires his leaders to be called and qualified, without hypocrisy.

Always, always, because when they don't meet those qualifications, there have always been consequences.

Consequences, personally, for the leaders, and for the people of Israel, who are misled, or led astray by those bad leaders.

That's what the entire Old Testament is about, just about, right?

So, God always requires his leaders to be called and qualified without hypocrisy, both in the old covenants, and in the new covenant.

That does, that, that has not changed one bit. Both then, in Israel, again, with scribes, the priests, the prophets, the judges, etc.,

the kings, and so on. And now, now as well, in the church age, right?

In the new covenant church, with pastors, elders, teachers, prophets, apostles, all of them have to be qualified to do that work, all of them.

Now, fast forward, let's fast forward a little bit more from Ezra and Nehemiah to the

Maccabean revolt, that I addressed last time in 164 through 63

BC, okay? Intertestamental period. Israel gains independence from the violent

Seleucid oppressors, led by Antiochus Epiphanes, who had defiled the temple, massacred the

Jewish people, and many other abominable things, a very oppressive dictator.

So the temple was cleansed, restored, and rededicated, which is where Hanukkah came from, and which is mentioned in the

New Testament as the, the, the Feast of Dedication in John chapter 10, or the

Festival of Lights, as it's also called, because of the light that was lasted for the, the, the menorah.

And so the Hasmoneans, at this time, became both kings and priests, but this led to corruption and internal division, okay?

So when they attempted to re -establish this order, it was not good.

It led to corruption, and schism, and division, which is where many of the sects that I mentioned came from, the

Essenes, the, the Zealots, the, the, the, the Pharisees, and the

Sadducees, right? They also emerged during this time, and seated themselves in the authoritative teaching chair of Moses, like Moses had done, and Ezra and Nehemiah had done, right?

However, here's the big question. Were they actually called and qualified by God to do so?

Were they actually called to do it? Because it says, Jesus is telling them, hey, they have sat themselves on that chair, and what does

Jesus tell them? You men make all your converts two -fold sons of hell.

You are woe to you, you hypocrites, hypocrites, hypocrites, whitewashed tombs.

He's rebuking them, utterly condemning them to hell, right?

So obviously, Jesus is calling them out because they are not qualified to do what they are doing.

They have unbiblically put themselves in a teaching authority that they have no qualifications for, and that is why so much, so much, in a sense, disruption occurred because of what

Jesus was doing to reform Israel from the corrupt leadership of the scribes and Pharisees, right?

This is all, I think, hopefully making sense now. This is what God has always done with Israel.

He sends reformers. He sends judges to help bring the people back, turn from their sin and towards God.

That's what Jesus was doing. Same thing, the same thing. So, fascinating.

Okay, now this is the problem that in the

New Testament we are faced with because they had taken over.

The scribes and Pharisees had taken over Israel, unbiblically, unqualified, but they nevertheless took over.

So now this gives more context to what Jesus says in Matthew 23, right beloved?

I want to read from the Amplified this time. Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to his disciples saying, the scribes and Pharisees have seated themselves in Moses' chair of authority as teachers of the law.

So practice and observe everything they tell you, but do not do as they do. For they preach and teach things, but do not practice them.

The scribes and Pharisees tie up heavy loads that are hard to bear and place them on men's shoulders, but they themselves will not lift a finger to make them lighter.

So there Jesus is pointing out the contradiction and exposing the hypocrisy of the

Pharisees who have the nerve to put themselves up in these positions of authority and yet lead people astray and bind people to traditions of men that Christ also condemns them for, right?

That's clearly what he's telling them. So insofar as they're there reading the scriptures, okay, listen to that.

Insofar as they agree with the law of Moses, because the law of Moses is represented accurately under the qualified teaching authority or chair of Moses.

When it's faithfully being taught and implemented by qualified leadership, there's no hypocrisy when it's qualified, right?

But there's a problem with the scribes and Pharisees. Now thanks be to God for our

Lord, Savior, and Reformer, Jesus Christ, the righteous, amen?

He was the one to restore this order, to bring about this judgment, really.

It's not so much a restoration because they were judged. It ended. And that's what

Jesus came to tell them. And he was teaching the crowds as one having authority, not as their scribes, right?

Matthew 7 29. Because Christ, far from approving of the scribes and Pharisees seating themselves in the seat of Moses, in actuality fiercely denounced and condemned the scribes, the

Pharisees, the Sadducees for the ungodly, unqualified hypocrites that they were.

Much like the prophets and reformers of old did towards unrepentant or rebellious, sinfully led astray

Israel. Very clear, right? I hope this is becoming very clear now. Christ was telling them, you're done.

God is going to judge you. He's going to judge you and you're over.

And shortly thereafter, in AD 70, the temple was destroyed. Israel was judged and the

Pharisees were disappeared. They were wiped out because they did not heed to God's reformer,

Jesus Christ the Righteous. They did not believe him. They did not heed to his warnings and so they were judged.

Finally, with finality. Now, turn with me to the Gospel of John, beloved, in chapter 8 verse 14.

John chapter 8 verse 14. As you're turning there, this is important because many people will say they use this again to justify many false teachings that have nothing to do with scripture and that Christ never intended to communicate.

We cannot divorce the seed of Moses from the law of Moses and from the pattern, the system of reform that leaders of Israel, reformers of Israel implemented for Israel's repentance and reform from their corruption into God.

Now, John chapter 8 verse 14. Jesus answered and said to the Pharisees, even if I bear witness about myself, my witness is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going.

But you, but you do not know where I come from or where I am going.

You judge according to the flesh, superficially, falsely.

So they're not fit how are they able to sit themselves in the seat of Moses if they judge according to the flesh, superficially and falsely.

Ask yourselves that. So they were saying to him, where is your father? Jesus answered, you know neither me nor my father.

If you knew me, you would know my father also. Again, Jesus Christ is rebuking them on a, the, at every level.

You don't even know the father that you claim to, to teach for and speak on behalf of.

You don't know him at all. Jesus rebukes the

Pharisees for not knowing the one true God that they profess to know and speak on behalf of, hypocritically.

The Pharisees were ignorant of God the father and of his will and of his son, whom they were confronting and trying to kill instead of receive and believe.

For everyone who denies the son does not have the father either. You have neither. Without the son you have neither, the father nor the son.

1st John 2 23. Now turn over to the next chapter in John chapter 9 verse 39.

John chapter 9 verse 39. Our Lord Jesus said, for judgment

I came into this world so that those who do not see may see and that those who see may become blind.

He's expressing judgment, communicating judgment. Now some of the Pharisees who were with him heard these things and said to him, are we blind too?

So Jesus said to them, if you were blind you would have no sin, but now that you say we see, your sin remains.

You are guilty as charged. It's kind of like the other passage where they say, well hey

Jesus, Rabbi, this offends us too. It's like, hey well because you're also screw -ups.

You're all screwing up. You're hypocrites. You don't do what God says to do. So Jesus is calling them out yet again.

The scribes, the Pharisees, the Sadducees were denounced by Christ as hypocritical, unbiblical, usurpers, abusers, and abusers of authority.

They are hot. They had a hostile takeover of the seat of Moses that they did not belong to them.

They were not qualified to exercise it for that authority. Christ warned them about this and his judgment of them.

How God was going to remove and condemn them and their office in the temple. And he did away with the old covenantal system of scribes, prophets, judges, kings, and priests.

The prophets remained, the New Testament prophets, but that was a different thing, slightly different thing. And in the new covenant, he formally organized and established his church now, right?

With apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers, and with clear biblical qualifications and accountability for all those offices in the church.

This is an amazing thing, beloved. This is why it's so important to understand and apply this in our day, in the new covenant, because Christ has clearly laid out qualifications for leadership in the church, much like in Israel.

And we have to hold ourselves and our leaders accountable to the standards of scripture, because when that doesn't happen, you will do more harm than good.

That's just, even if you're sincere, it doesn't matter. If you're not qualified to do the task, you are going to do more harm than good.

That is why the rebukes were so fierce and so harsh in every single case when reformers confronted unbiblically unqualified leaders in Israel, in the

New Testament, and so on. Whether the scribes or the Pharisees or the corrupt Levites and priests of old, right?

So now in our day, many today, including churches that claim to be

Christian or even claim to be one true church of Christ, continue to distort and twist the seat of Moses to justify their own extra -biblical, unbiblical, and so -called infallible traditions, when

Christ had no such intent from that term.

Note that that is utterly contrary to what Christ was teaching his entire ministry and throughout the entire

Word of God. These other traditions, like Roman Catholicism, again,

Eastern Orthodoxy, and so on, and other cults as well, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, they all make similar claims.

They claim that we need, we require other infallible human church teaching authorities or traditions that are either equal to scripture or above it, even though they may not acknowledge that.

But remember, when you set something equal to itself as a, as an ultimate standard, one of them always takes over.

And in these cases, it's always the other thing that's not scripture that takes over. You always see that, always, without fail.

So, and they end up replacing the law of God, the Word of God, with unbiblical traditions of men, right?

So that is what, and so they, but they claim this, that you need this, these other infallible traditions or authorities in order to truly know what the

Bible is, what the canon of scripture is, or what the Bible truly teaches, much like the scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees did before them.

There's a lot of common, there's a lot of common ground between what the scribes and Pharisees did and what these, these churches and traditions do.

So what they do is biblical, but it's biblical in the sense that it agrees with them and not with Christ, right?

There's a bad precedent for it, not a good one. So, in the end, this inevitably results in arrogant blindness, in a systemic, systemic undermining, nullifying, going beyond, and contradicting what is actually written by the breath of God and what it teaches.

Just as the scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees did, thus invalidating the word of God by your tradition, which you have handed down, and you do many things such as that.

Another rebuke from the Gospel of Mark, chapter 7, 13, from the words of our

Christ, our Savior, Lord, and Reformer. Amen?

We have to be careful, beloved, and it's, and praise God that he has given us the truth, and this, and this checks and balances of the scriptures so that we can know when we have gone astray, or when our church has gone astray, or when a teacher has gone astray, because no one is infallible.

And this, beloved, is what leads me to yet another very important concept that I want to focus on,

Lord willing, next Lord's Day, about these infallible authorities of God, the true infallible authorities of God, and what they are, and what they are not.

We've seen what they are not. They were not the scribes and Pharisees, right? Because they were hypocrites who were unqualified.

They were not human or church authorities. That's not what

God has revealed to us in his word. Amen? Beloved, let's go ahead and close out with a word of prayer now.

Our precious Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, for this, for this corporate worship of gathering of your people.

Father, we thank you for your blessings. We ask that you would edify your people with the preaching of your word,

Father God, the faithful preaching. Help me, Lord, to be consistent in the truth of your word, to be according to the logic of your son, the

Logos, and to seek to understand the whole counsel of God, Father, and to not err the way in which others who have come before us and who are here with us now, who are blind to these things because they have arrogantly put themselves up as authorities, or their churches, or their traditions as authorities, which do not agree with your words, your infallible written words,

Father. Help us, Lord, to understand and to shed light to others that you alone are infallible,

Father. You alone are pure, unadulterated, undiluted truth.

And the only reason the church is the pillar and buttress of the truth is because of what you have given her in the truth of your word to proclaim, to preach, to preserve, and to edify

God's people with it. We thank you, Father. We pray for these things in the name of your son, our precious

Lord, Savior, and Reformer. Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermons of Thorn Crown Covenant Baptist Church, where the

Bible alone and the Bible in its entirety has applied to all of faith and life. We strive to be biblical, reformed, historic, confessional, loving, discerning

Christians who evangelize, stand firm in, and earnestly contend for the Christian faith.

If you're looking for a church in the El Paso, Texas area, or for more information about our church, sermons, and ministries, such as Semper Reformanda Radio and Thorn Crown Network Podcasts, please contact us at thorncrownministries .com.