Woe to the Teachers that Hinder

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Luke 11:45-54

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If you would, take your copy of God's Holy Word and turn to the Gospel of Luke.
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The Gospel of Luke. We will be in chapter 11 of the
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Gospel of Luke, looking at verses 45 through 54.
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Luke chapter 11, verses 45 through 54.
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Let's stand for the reading of God's Holy Word. This is the word of our
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God. Now one of the scholars of the law answered and said to him,
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Teacher, when you say these things, you insult us too. But he said,
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Woe to you scholars of the law as well! For you weigh men down with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves will not even touch the burdens with one of your fingers.
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Woe to you, for you build the tombs of the prophets, but your fathers killed them.
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So you are witnesses and approve the deeds of your fathers, because it was they who killed them, and you build their tombs.
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For this reason also the wisdom of God said, I will send to them prophets and apostles, and some of them they will kill, and some they will persecute, so that the blood of all the prophets shed since the foundation of the world may be charged against this generation.
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From the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the house of God, yes,
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I tell you, it shall be charged against this generation. Woe to you, scholars of the law, for you have taken away the key of knowledge.
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You yourselves did not enter, and you hindered those who were entering. And when he left there, the scribes and the
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Pharisees began to be very hostile and to question him closely on many subjects, plotting to catch him in something he might say.
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This ends the reading of God's holy, inspired, and infallible word. You may be seated. So the context of this section of Luke's gospel is that Jesus was dining in the home of a
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Pharisee, and he was noticed for not washing his hands in the proper ceremonial way.
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And he calls the Pharisees here fools and pronounces woes upon them.
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But there were also some scholars of the law there, Luke tells us. We're going to learn about these scholars of the law, or lawyers as they're called in other translations.
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These were not attorneys in the modern sense, it's a different kind of lawyer. As we consider this text, we will see the
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Lord's emphatic condemnation of their practices, and there will be encouragement and warning to us not to follow their destructive example.
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But before we begin, there's a wonderful passage of scripture in Ephesians chapter 4, verses 10 and following, one that we've studied in depth recently.
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Listen to God's word. He who descended is himself also he who ascended far above all the heavens so that he might fill all things.
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And he himself gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the full knowledge of the
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Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.
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Now, that's what teachers are supposed to do. That's what the teachers that Jesus provides to his church are supposed to do.
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They're supposed to perfect or equip the saints for the work of ministry, and to build up the body of Christ as they teach them the understanding and give the right sense of the word of God.
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And Paul gives the reason for this down in verses 14 and 15 in that same text.
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So that we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness and deceitful scheming.
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But speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects unto him who is the head, that is
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Christ. As we've learned in Pastor Brandon's Ephesians series, pastor -teachers are provided to the church by the
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Lord for the purpose of bringing unity among God's people around the truth in the faith given to us in Scripture.
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God has given good teachers to his church in every age of redemptive history.
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In every age of the church, there have been some who were good teachers. In the
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Old Testament, there were priests and Levites who taught the Old Testament Scriptures to the people.
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They would read it to them and teach them what it meant. In the book of Nehemiah, when the walls around Jerusalem were completed by those exiles that came back with Nehemiah, and a crowd of people assembled in the open square in front of the water gate,
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Ezra, the scribe and priest, brought the book of the law of Moses and read it to the people.
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And this is in Nehemiah chapter 8. In Nehemiah 8 .8,
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the word of God says, they read from the book, from the law of God, explaining and giving insight, and they provided understanding of the reading.
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So they read distinctly in the book of the law of God, and they gave the sense and helped them to understand the reading.
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That is what a teacher is supposed to do. They're supposed to read the
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Scripture, give the sense, and then help the people to understand what it means, to understand what they read.
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This is what all teachers are supposed to do. They're to study the
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Scripture with great care, with great thoroughness, and with caution.
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This is so that they can teach it accurately to the people that listen to them. In Nehemiah, there was a great spirit of repentance among God's people.
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These exiles who were allowed to return from Jerusalem, from Babylon, to rebuild the wall and then to celebrate the
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Feast of Tabernacles together. They confessed their sins, and they lamented their sins.
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They wept while the law was being read, and they said, we have sinned, and so our fathers have sinned against the law.
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We want to do what is right now. And they were taught the law of Moses anew so that it might point them to Christ.
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And in our passage here in Luke chapter 11, Jesus turns from pronouncing woes on the
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Pharisees to these lawyers, to these scholars of the law. Lawyers were members of a very learned profession, dedicated to the detailed study of the
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Old Testament law. That's why they were called lawyers. Some of the lawyers were also
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Pharisees. You had Pharisees who were a part of that scholarly group.
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Being a lawyer simply meant that you were supposed to be a scholar of all the details of the law.
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So there were members of this learned scholarly profession. That's what lawyers or scholars of the law, as we read it here, were.
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Pharisees were more members of a religious party, and Jesus spent much more time speaking to these lawyers and these scribes and Pharisees than he did to, say, the
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Sadducees. Have you ever noticed that? He talked a lot more to the
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Pharisees and to these scholars of the law, who were also called scribes, than he ever did to the
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Sadducees. And the reason for that is the Sadducees were liberals. The Sadducees didn't believe in the afterlife.
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They didn't believe in angels or demons. They didn't believe the Bible. The Pharisees, however, the scholars of the law and the scribes, they were conservatives, comparatively speaking.
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And they did believe that the Old Testament was truly God's Word. They did believe that one day a
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Messiah would come, and they did believe that there would be a final judgment and either a good or a bad afterlife.
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Eternal judgment or eternal salvation awaited everyone. Just like today, however, there are many people who do not believe the
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Bible is God's Word, but still know a lot about it, but they don't teach it accurately.
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Charles Finney was one of the most notorious heretics in the history of the church. And yet, when he explained the gospel, he got the facts about it exactly right.
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He did understand it, but he just didn't believe it. Many of the liberals, many of the so -called neo -orthodox, they did understand the
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Bible, they just didn't believe any of it. Sometimes this was on purpose, and other times it was simply because the person teaching was unregenerate and blind.
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And so, that's why they don't understand the Bible. Jesus, though, gives godly and faithful teachers to his church to help teach and lead and to establish his blood -bought sheep in the faith.
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That's the purpose of what pastor -teachers in the church do. They are given to ensure that you understand the
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Bible and that you'll be established in the gospel and in the faith. But sheep themselves also must learn to be discerning.
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Christ's sheep are not just called to blindly take the word of the shepherds over them with no discernment.
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No human teacher of scripture is infallible, nor are they always right about everything.
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This is probably one of the most remarkable things about the Christian church. It is led by God's design, by elders, chosen by their congregations.
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But those elders who are tasked with preaching and teaching the scriptures, while they should always have the best of intentions, they themselves are in need of instruction at times and can be at times wrong.
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I've been encouraged and shaken by the things I've heard said from R .C.
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Sproul over the years. He's one of my heroes in the faith. And he's one of the men that God used to bring me to the doctrines of grace.
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And I can remember him saying in one of his many teaching series that he shuddered to think of how many times in his teaching that he may have led people to believe things that were actually untrue.
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Now he wasn't talking about essentials of the faith, about the heart and soul issues of the faith, but nevertheless, important things that are revealed in scripture.
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He said, I shudder to think how many times through my efforts, people have been led astray on some of these secondary matters of the faith.
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And there are many secondary matters on which we would disagree with R .C. Sproul, of course, infant baptism and presbyteries and covenant theology, just to name a few.
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But God uses fallen, fallible men to teach his infallible and perfect word.
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Any good teacher of scripture would want to know if they're wrong about something. And they would be open to correction from scripture about such things.
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However, in our passage here, Jesus says what is probably the worst possible thing that he could ever say about a teacher.
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And it's in verse 52 of the text. And I want to start at the end of the passage, and we'll work our way back to the beginning in a moment.
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But I want you to notice what he says here in verse 52. Woe to you, scholars of the law, for you have taken away the key of knowledge.
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You yourselves did not enter, and you hindered those who were entering.
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For men held in high regard by all the people and held in high regard by each other.
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This was an insult as an insulting statement as could have been uttered.
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Jesus tells them that they have taken away the key of knowledge. These guys that probably knew most of the
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Old Testament from memory. He tells them that you have taken away the key of knowledge that unlocks the meaning of scripture so the people of God can truly know
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God. It was taken away by these scholars of the law, these lawyers, who were considered the greatest living scholars of all the details of the
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Bible. Jesus says they took away people's understanding. These who were the most knowledgeable had in effect closed the
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Bible to everyone they presumed to teach. People could not understand scripture after listening to them.
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The word that's translated key here, in the key of knowledge, is just the normal word for key.
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It's something that unlocks a lock, like a key that unlocks a door or a treasure chest.
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Teachers are supposed to be like well -trained locksmiths. According to Thomas Watson, the
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Jewish teachers of the law had an actual key formally given to them when they were ordained or set apart for the office of teaching.
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So when they formally began their ministry, they got a key reminding them and their learners that they had a responsibility to unlock the scriptures, to teach
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God's word plainly and helpfully. Now, don't misunderstand.
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It's not that the Bible is confusing or too profound that nobody understands it, but everyone needs help.
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Everyone needs help from teachers. Everyone needs help from good theologians who have studied the word of God and have given themselves to its proper explication and application.
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Do you remember the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts chapter 8? And turn over to Acts chapter 8, looking at verse 27.
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In Acts chapter 8 and verse 27, this
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Ethiopian eunuch, what was he reading from, do you remember?
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He was sitting in his chariot and he was reading from the book of Isaiah, from Isaiah 53.
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It's an amazing moment. Listen to the narrative from Acts chapter 8 and verse 27.
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So he rose up and went, and behold, there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the
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Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. Now this was somebody, this guy was an important man.
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And Luke goes on and says, and he had come to Jerusalem to worship. So this eunuch, a government official with great power under Queen Candace, he had somehow come in contact with the
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Jewish people. He had been put in contact with the Old Testament law.
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He'd probably been there for the feast of Passover. And in verse 28, it says, and he was returning and sitting in his chariot and was reading the prophet
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Isaiah. And then Luke goes on to tell us how the Lord used
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Philip to open the scriptures about Jesus. Then the spirit said to Philip, go over and join this chariot.
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And Philip ran up and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and said, do you understand what you're reading?
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And he said, well, how could I unless someone guides me? And he invited
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Philip to come up and sit with him. Now the passage of scripture which he was reading was this, as a sheep is led to slaughter and as a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he does not open his mouth.
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In humiliation, his judgment was taken away. Who will recount his generation?
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For his life is removed from the earth. And the eunuch answered Philip and said,
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I ask you earnestly, of whom does the prophet say this, of himself or of someone else?
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Then Philip opened his mouth and beginning from this scripture, he proclaimed the good news about Jesus to him.
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So in this passage, we see Philip, he gives the key of knowledge to this eunuch.
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It's about the coming Messiah. And in fact, he had just got through doing what was described in that text from Isaiah, this prophecy that the
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Ethiopian eunuch was reading. It had just come to pass. Just a few days before that,
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Philip, at the direction of the Holy Spirit, guides the eunuch into understanding the good news of Jesus Christ.
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He didn't get bogged down in private interpretations or legalistic explanations.
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Instead of hindering the eunuch by laying obstacles in his way, Philip opened his mouth and proclaimed
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Jesus from this text in Isaiah and then others.
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What was the result? The Lord saved the Ethiopian eunuch and he was baptized.
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As one writer put it, teachers of scripture are to be the doorman to the word of God.
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They hold the key to unlock the treasure chest so others can understand it more clearly.
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There's nothing more satisfying to a good teacher than to know that his hearers understand the passage better than they did before.
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Here's an example. For years, I had read through the New Testament and didn't understand or believe in the doctrine of predestination or of God's unconditional election of his people to eternal life.
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I just didn't believe it. And then I read four books. Grace Unknown by R .C.
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Sproul. It was later released under the title of What is Reformed Theology. It's a very good book.
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I highly recommend it to those who are new to the doctrines of grace. The next one was
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All of Grace by Charles Spurgeon, a magnificent work. The third one was
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The Bondage of the Will by Martin Luther, which was a written debate between Luther and the
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Roman Catholic priest Desiderius Erasmus over the sovereignty of divine grace.
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And the fourth was The Potter's Freedom by James White, a work that masterfully answered
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Arminian and synergistic proof texting point by point from Scripture. And then
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I reread the New Testament again and wondered, how did I miss that before? How did
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I not see that? It's on every page. How could I have read John's Gospel and not noticed that God had an elect people?
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How could I have read Ephesians 1 and Romans 9 and John 6 and 10 and 17 and not see this?
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Those good teachers gave me the key to open the Word of God. Why do people still read
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John Calvin, but they don't read Karl Barth or don't read Rudolph Bultmann and they don't read
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Paul Tillich? Now if you've never heard of those guys, consider yourself blessed and give praise to God.
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Paul Tillich's systematic theology is over a thousand pages long and he cites three
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Bible verses in that thousand pages. It's good for starting fires, someone wrote.
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People still read Calvin 500 years later because he gave and gives people the key to understand
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Scripture. And those other men threw away the key so that nobody could find it.
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Again and again, I would recommend that you read John Calvin's Bible commentaries and his institutes.
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What he could do in one paragraph, it takes others 10 pages to do. It's unbelievably insightful.
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But it's because he gives the key to those that he's instructing.
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Why do people still read Martin Luther over 500 years later? Why do we still read Matthew Henry or the
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Puritans or Charles Spurgeon? Because as one pastor wrote, they devoted themselves and their considerable talents and their gifts to making
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Scripture accessible to people and understandable to people. There's a huge difference between people who seem to know what they're talking about and people who actually know what they're talking about.
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But those men and their great works on theology in the Bible have stood the test of time. Children, let me have your attention.
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Have you ever been locked out of a room or your house or a car because somebody lost the key?
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You get back from going somewhere like the grocery store or the playground with your family and maybe mom or dad or a brother or sister misplaced or lost a key and they don't remember where the key is to open the door.
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Now some people solve this problem by hiding a spare key. But if you don't have a spare key, you might be waiting outside for a while until the key is found or you pay somebody to make a new one.
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Until you get that key back, you can't get inside. Good teachers of the Bible are like that.
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They're like that key. They get you to where you need to be by helping you understand what is in the
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Bible. They unlock the door so that you can understand what the Bible teaches and so that you can obey
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God and do what he wants you to do. Without somebody to unlock that door, without somebody to help you understand what the
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Bible teaches, it's like you're locked out. But God uses good teachers like your pastors and your parents to unlock that door so that you can understand
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God's Word. Now this does raise an important question. How can we tell the difference?
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How can we tell the difference between somebody who knows what they're talking about and someone who only appears to be profound but is not?
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One will walk through a passage and explain it in a way that's consistent with itself and the rest of the Bible, and others will not.
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These scholars of the law, the Pharisees and the scribes, they were famous, or I should say infamous, for their convoluted interpretations of Scripture, especially the details of the law.
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Their added traditions made it nearly impossible for anyone to really believe that they even understood the law of God, let alone that they could obey it.
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The Lord Jesus told the scholars of the law, you have not entered God's kingdom and you are hindering others who wanted to enter that kingdom.
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A .T. Robertson solemnly remarked about this in his word pictures. It is the most pitiful picture imaginable of blind ecclesiastics trying to keep others as blind as they are.
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Blind leaders of the blind both falling into the pit. They were lost and the people they taught were lost because they believed their teachings.
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That word that's translated hindered in our text, it means to prevent or to forbid.
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The term means to prevent a person from doing something. People who were wanting to enter the kingdom of God who were being prevented from doing so by the very people who were supposed to help them enter.
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What an insult. These scholars of the law recognized this immediately in Jesus' words to them.
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Let's go back to the beginning when he was rebuking the Pharisees. Look at verse 45 in chapter 11 of Luke.
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One of these lawyers, one of these scholars of the law said to him, teacher, when you say these things, you insult us too.
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Now, that term that's translated insult, it's a fairly strong word. And this is how one lexicon defines it.
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To treat in an insolent or spiteful manner, to manner, to mistreat, to scoff at or insult.
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And then you have to love Jesus in the very next verse where he just basically tells them, well, let me tell you exactly how
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I'm insulting you. Now, it's not clear exactly what he had said to the
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Pharisees that made the lawyers suddenly realize, hey, he's talking about us too.
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Well, the reason they thought that is they tended to agree with the Pharisees on everything they did.
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In fact, the Pharisees got most of their weird understandings from these scholars of the law, these scribes.
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And they fed off each other. All the elaborate tithing on mint and rue and cumin and every kind of garden herb was something they did too.
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They taught the Pharisees those things. And they were probably advocates of the ceremonial hand washing that Jesus ignored by simply not doing it before he sat down to eat in the
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Pharisees' house. But Jesus rebukes the Pharisees. He's telling them that they're full of robbery and wickedness.
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He tells them that they were predators who preyed on people and robbed them. He tells them that they are fools for not realizing that the same
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God that made your physical hands also made your souls. And you know that our hearts are full of wickedness.
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That's what Scripture tells us. The Scriptures tell us that we're enslaved to sin in our natural state.
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And Jesus charged them when neglecting justice and the love of God, and he rebuked their love of the best seats and of the best greetings in the marketplaces and all the religious titles that they coveted so much.
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And he told them that they themselves were like whitewashed or concealed tombs that defied everyone who accidentally walked over them.
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Very strong words that Jesus uses. The scholars of the law, they were on the side of these
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Pharisees and all these issues. And therefore they said basically, hey, you're insulting us too.
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And this was a mistake on their part because Jesus immediately turns and tells them the truth about their spiritual condition.
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Look at verse 46. But he said, woe unto you scholars of the law as well, for you weigh men down with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves will not even touch the burdens with one of your fingers.
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When legalism and law are the only message that people preach, there will be no transformation in people's lives.
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This is demonstrated here. Legalism and law as the essence of religion, according to one writer, only produces two results.
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And I think he's absolutely right. They produce Pharisees who think that they're actually pulling it off and doing it.
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Or the overwhelmed, depressed types like Martin Luther, who know that they're lost in despair.
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And those are not good results to one's message. Both are devastating to human beings.
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Scholars of the law with their intricate systems of interpretation and complex superstructures of add -ons to God's law left people with burdens hard to bear, which these experts of the law, these lawyers, they wouldn't even try to touch with one of their fingers,
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Jesus tells us. While the law of Moses was indeed a gift, we need to understand that it has no life -transforming power in it.
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It brings the knowledge of sin, God's word tells us. It has no enabling power within it.
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It only works wrath in the lives of people. Now it reflects God's holiness, his holy character.
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And as such, it is entirely unattainable by fallen sinners, even by the redeemed.
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We fall short and are always falling short of God's standard in the law in the sense of satisfying his righteous demands.
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Now you can describe someone, they are, as a godly person, this person is morally upright.
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Remember the way that Luke describes Zacharias and Elizabeth at the beginning of the gospel.
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He says that they were blameless, walking in God's commandments in chapter one and verse six.
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And that's talking about a general moral godliness, general moral uprightness.
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But the other sense of that term is used for a forensic, for a legal righteousness before God's law in the sense of satisfying his demands.
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And that's what nobody can do. We cannot keep
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God's law in such a way that it justifies us. These traditions of the elders like this hand -washing ceremony, along with the rabbinical interpretations that made the law unintelligible, not understandable to some people, and it made it sound so easy to others.
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People with soft consciences likely felt overwhelmed. That's what Jesus is talking about.
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You're making them think that they must do all this nonsense, and you're totally missing the point of everything in the law.
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You're laying these huge burdens on them. Stop doing that. And he pronounces three woes on them for doing that.
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People with soft consciences probably felt overwhelmed by these interpretations and teachings of the
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Pharisees and the scholars of the law. They probably read the Bible themselves in some cases and heard it in the synagogue and wondered how in the world am
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I supposed to know all of that from reading this passage? But the self -assured and the self -righteous just checked it off.
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Checked off the easier things, the list of things that they had to do as far as washing and tithing on your spice rack and everything else.
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And they would be content with this outward righteousness. That's why
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Christ's Sermon on the Mount would have been such a shocker to these people. He takes
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Moses and he raises it to the highest level. You think this only forbids outward murder?
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If you hate somebody without cause, you're already guilty of murder. You think this only prohibits physical outward adultery and you can do whatever you want in your own mind?
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This extends to your motives and everything else about you. The law requires far more than just mere outward conformity, but an inward conformity of thoughts and wishes and desires and motives.
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And if you don't understand that that condemns all of us, then you're lost.
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For all of the non -physical murderers and all the non -physical adulterers, what Jesus has to say was not good news for those who were emboldened in those things.
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But for the people with sensitive consciences, for those who understood their own spiritual poverty,
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Jesus' message was good news. Scholars of the law and Pharisees, they added so much to Scripture that it was a burden so heavy that nobody could bear.
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And the image that Jesus uses is of someone carrying something that is unbearably heavy.
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Have you ever done that before? Have you ever carried something on your back or tried to grab something and pick it up and it was just too heavy to move?
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Or maybe you're helping somebody move or I remember one time I was helping somebody move into a house and we had to move this 800 -pound gun safe.
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If you've ever tried to do that, maybe you can identify. I didn't know they made things that heavy until I tried to help somebody move one.
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But it'd be like two guys on one end who are absolutely breaking their backs and the other person standing in the middle with a finger underneath saying, great job guys.
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Jesus says, but you scholars of the law won't even do that. You won't even put a finger to help these poor people.
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You shackled them down with something that no one can carry and you won't even try to help them.
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Leon Morris in his commentary on Luke describes some of the laws, some of the things that the scholars of the law said had to be done to obey the law.
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And listen to this, that Morris is here quoting from the Jewish Talmud. In one of them it says, on the
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Sabbath they taught a man may not carry a burden in his right hand or in his left hand, in his bosom or in his shoulder, but he may carry it on the back of his hand or with his foot or with his mouth or with his elbow or in his ear, in his hair or in his wallet.
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As long as it was pointed downwards or between his wallet and his shirt or in the hem of his shirt or in his shoe or his sandal.
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Now this creates some pretty weird images of trying to carry things with your elbows and on the back of your hands and your mouth and your ear.
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What exactly can you carry in your ear or in your hair? You could carry it in your wallet, but you'd have to turn it upside down with the mouth downward.
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And Morris goes on, he said, multiply this by all the regulations of the law and ordinary people have a burden beyond bearing, even to know what they might do and might not do.
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But there's also a multitude of loopholes for a lawyer who knew the traditions which enabled him to do pretty well what he wished.
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So the experts of the law, they knew how to get around these things. You remember you weren't allowed to walk more than a certain number of feet on the
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Sabbath. So that what these Pharisees and these lawyers, what they would do is they would take a board from their house and they would set them up at thousand foot intervals.
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So that technically their house was there and they could touch the board and they got another thousand feet and they could touch the board and they weren't technically breaking these commandments.
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Those were the kind of things they taught people God actually wanted them to do.
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And you know, we chuckle at that because it's so absurd, but people being led to believe that was what
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God expected of them. And Jesus says to these people, woe to you, you are under God's condemnation for that.
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These were things imposed by these legal experts on people. And they were, they were utterly indifferent to the suffering that it caused those people.
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And here we see a great contrast. These burdens that were laid on people by false teachers, by these
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Pharisees and these scholars of the law, these burdens that no one could carry.
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We see a great contrast to this in Jesus. In Matthew chapter 11 in verses 28 through 30,
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Jesus says, come to me all who weary and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.
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Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls.
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For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. The reason the lawyers and the
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Pharisees lacked spiritual life is the same reason that people lack it today.
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They're dead in their sins and transgressions. They're enslaved to sin and happy to be so.
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They were in the flesh. And thus they cannot please God as Paul tells us in Romans 8, 7.
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They're not able to come to Christ. They're not able to understand the things of the Spirit. They're not able to bear good fruit because they were bad trees.
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In effect, the scholars of the law and the Pharisees are great examples of what all of us in this room would be without the sovereign effectual regeneration of the
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Holy Spirit of God. That's what we would be. We can stand here and condemn them, but it's exactly what we would be if God had not opened our eyes and had mercy on us.
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Look at verses 47 and 48 again. Woe to you for you build the tombs of the prophets, but your fathers killed them.
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So you were witnesses and approved the deeds of your fathers because it was they who killed them and you build their tombs.
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These lawyers and Pharisees, they would decorate and adorn the tombs of the prophets because they were the authors of the scriptures that they claim to love and know.
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They claim not to be evil like their fathers who had killed the prophets.
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But listen, the fact that these lawyers and Pharisees rejected
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Jesus, the one foretold by these prophets. They adorned their tombs, but they showed that they did not believe in those prophets.
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They were of the same spirit of the ones who killed the prophets. They were just like them.
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Their rejection of Christ proved that. And soon they would kill the
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Lord Jesus. They had the same contempt for the truth that their sinful forefathers had.
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And if they had really loved and followed God's prophets, whose tombs they decorated and celebrated, why didn't they believe what they wrote?
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They claimed to love these prophets. Why didn't they believe what they wrote and said about the
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Savior? Why didn't they believe in the Messiah who was coming?
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Why were they plotting against that very Messiah in their midst and seeking to kill him?
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Even though he did miracles in their presence and taught them as nobody ever had. Why did they attribute his mighty miracles to Satan?
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If they were so different from the fathers who had killed the prophets, why were they desiring to kill
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God's only son and ultimate final prophet? Verses 49 through 51.
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For this reason also the wisdom of God said, I will send them prophets and apostles, and some of them they will kill, and some of them they will persecute, so that the blood of all the prophets shed since the foundation of the world may be charged against this generation.
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From the blood of Abel to the blood of Zacharias who was killed between the altar and the house of God, yes,
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I tell you, it shall be charged against this generation. And here
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Jesus foretells that after his resurrection, prophets and apostles would be sent to those same people, to these scholars of the law, to these
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Pharisees, and that they're going to persecute and kill them too. Jesus was going to go to the cross and die for his people, be buried and rise again, then commission his apostles to go out into the world and preach the gospel.
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And despite all the signs and wonders and the greatest miracle of all, the bodily resurrection of Christ from the dead, remember, these
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Pharisees paid Roman soldiers to lie about it. These same religious leaders would do everything in their power to murder those prophets and apostles just like they did
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Jesus. Verse 50 says that the blood of all the prophets, and here he's talking about from Abel, Abel back in Genesis who is here called a prophet, the very first child born in this world, the very first martyr for the cause of God, his blood all the way to the prophet
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Zachariah would be charged by God against that generation of Jews. And everything is building to this calamitous judgment against Jerusalem that will come before that generation passes away.
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You see that as you read through the gospel of Luke, especially when you get to chapter 9, it's building.
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And the parables, Jesus' discourse is against primarily the religious leaders of Jerusalem.
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And then finally, you get to the Olivet Discourse or Luke's version of it in chapter 21, where he describes the most calamitous and most horrific judgment imaginable.
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Matthew chapter 24 and verse 34, in a parallel passage to that,
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Jesus says, Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass until all these things take place.
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Now we know that that generation of Israel would finally be judged by Christ in AD 70, when
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Rome would surround and siege Jerusalem. There would be a final battle that would be so horrific that the descriptions of it found in the works of Josephus are difficult to read.
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If you have access to Josephus or Philip Schaff's History of the
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Church, he quotes from Josephus who was an eyewitness of it. Jewish fighters fighting on the tops of piles of dead bodies against Romans, all the way to the last man in the precincts of the temple, trying to guard the temple.
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The Roman soldiers had been commanded not to burn down the temple, but they were so angry at how stubborn the
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Jews had been that they basically said, forget it, we're burning the whole place down, and they set the place on fire.
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Because of that, the blaze would end up melting the gold in the rafters of the temple, and it would trickle down into all the cracks between the stones.
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And when the fires finally died down and everything cooled off, in order to get every last bit of that gold, the
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Romans had to dismantle every single stone one from another, thus fulfilling in frightening accuracy what
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Jesus says in Matthew 24 in verse 2. When they're standing on the Mount of Olives and the disciples say, look, at all these awesome buildings,
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Jesus says, do you not see all these things? Truly, I say to you, not one stone here will be left upon another which will not be torn down.
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Jesus asks his disciples, do you not see all these things?
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You see that marvelous temple that's the envy of the world? And then he drops an eschatological bomb on them.
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Truly I say to you, not one stone here will be left upon another which will not be torn down.
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It's one thing for us to read this 2 ,000 years later in the comfort of our modern life, but imagine being one of Christ's Jewish disciples for whom the temple represented the center of religious life.
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It had to be jarring. It had to be extremely frightening. The last time the temple in Jerusalem were destroyed, the
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Israelites were taken away captive to Babylon, and they lost their lands and their families and their nation.
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What would happen in 70 AD would be even worse than that, according to Jesus, where he says, for then there will be great tribulation such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will.
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And unless those days had been cut short, no life would have been saved, but for the sake of the elect, those days will be cut short.
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Unbelievers for centuries said that that had to be written after 70
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AD because of its incredible accuracy. And according to them, there's no
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God who can give prophecy, but we know from Scripture that he does and that it always comes true.
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The one who decreed the future and holds it in his sovereign and all -powerful hands, he has no trouble telling us what's going to happen in the future.
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But this judgment would be horrendous, and it would be God's final answer to the bloodshed on earth, he says, from Abel to the prophet
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Zechariah. And although there were martyrs after the prophet Zechariah, Jesus uses them as bookends.
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The reason it is Abel to Zechariah is because of the way the Jewish people ordered the books of the
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Old Testament, and it's different from the way we have it in our Bible today. In the Jewish canon or order of books, the last book was 2
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Chronicles, not Malachi. And the point of Jesus' words here is that all the righteous blood shed from the beginning of divine revelation in Genesis all the way to the end of 2
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Chronicles, all of that would be charged to that generation of Jews.
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Cain killed Abel out of jealousy. The Pharisees, the chief priests, the scribes, the lawyers, they would kill
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Jesus out of jealousy too. Even Pontius Pilate, he could see that the
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Pharisees had brought Jesus to him because of envy, we're told, because they were jealous of him.
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Now this Zechariah that's spoken of here, it's made clear who he is in Matthew's account.
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In Matthew 23, 35, Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar.
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And although this man's death is not recorded in the Old Testament, it did take place near the close of the
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Old Testament, 2 Chronicles, and all of their deaths would be judged upon apostate
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Israel in 70 AD. And as we look at these last few verses here, in verse 52 again,
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Woe to you, scholars of the law, for you have taken away the key of knowledge. You yourselves did not enter, and you hindered those who were entering.
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What a devastating wrecking ball of a statement. They were not able to open the word of God to the people.
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In fact, they threw away the key of understanding. They threw away any hope of unlocking the glorious treasures that that key would unlock.
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But false teachers are blinded by Satan, and they are blinded by lacking the Holy Spirit. And so they can't understand or teach
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Scripture to anyone. No matter how well a scholar has dedicated himself to understanding
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Scripture, without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, they can't understand it.
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Because they rejected Jesus, the true key to understanding the Old Testament, the
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Old Testament became meaningless to them, and it became meaningless to the people they taught it to.
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They had reduced it to a group of traditions and regulations that were not about the heart, but all about external conformity.
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They ignored the promises of a divine Savior from sin, and they turned all of those expectations into a temporal, earthly deliverer from Roman oppression.
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Even Jesus' disciples thought that way before his resurrection. Before he opened their minds to the
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Scriptures which testified of him. Because they were not
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Christ -centered in their reading of Scripture, the teaching of the lawyers and the Pharisees hindered those who were entering
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God's kingdom. And that's the harshest rebuke that he gives them.
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It's very important to remember that while Jesus is foretelling and prophesying very serious and frightening judgments coming against these men, he is rebuking them out of love.
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Jesus is showing love to these scholars of the law, to these Pharisees. This was their invitation to abandon their false doctrines.
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He's telling them how serious this is, that maybe they'll turn away from it and listen and believe the miraculous signs and come to him for salvation.
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To turn away from the very things provoking these terrible woes from Christ. And to repudiate and reject their false religious system.
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Sadly, we know that a majority of them didn't do this. The last two verses here are very sorrowful and heartbreaking and somber.
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Verses 53 and 54. And when he left there, the scribes and the
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Pharisees began to be very hostile and to question him closely on many subjects, plotting to catch him in something he might say.
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How great would it have been if instead of that it said, the scribes and the Pharisees began to weep and say, what have we done?
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To tear the robes and cry out, what must I do to be saved?
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Like the men did on the day of Pentecost at the preaching of Peter. But it doesn't say that.
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Their anger only grew and their aggression and scheming only deepened. They were truly lying in wait to ambush
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Jesus, to catch something out of his mouth. The word that's rendered here, catch, it's a hunting term in the original language.
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It refers to someone who sets traps for animals. They wanted to hunt him down and kill him like prey.
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You remember he told them earlier, back in verse 39 in chapter 11, told the Pharisees, you prey on people.
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And here they are like predatory animals, preying on Jesus. They want him dead.
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And they were far too comfortable and they enjoyed far too much their places of prestige and the best seats in the synagogues and the elaborate greetings in the marketplaces and the long ornate robes that they wore.
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And to be called by men, rabbi, rabbi. They were in love with all of these religious perks and they had turned their hearts completely away from the true
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God. And because of this, Jesus is annoying to them. You insult us too.
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Jesus gets on their nerves. And they tried and they tried and they tried to trip him up and to catch him and to pounce on him for something he might say, but they couldn't.
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And eventually they resort to the oldest method in the book, lying. If we can't catch him in something that he actually says, let's just lie about it.
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They tried to bring false witnesses against him to testify lies against him. In Matthew chapter 26, starting in verse 59, the word of God says, now the chief priests and the whole
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Sanhedrin kept trying to obtain false testimony against Jesus so that they might put him to death.
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And they did not find any, even though many false witnesses came forward.
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But later on, two came forward and said, this man stated, I am able to destroy the sanctuary of God and to rebuild it in three days.
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They couldn't find anything real against Jesus. So they tried lying.
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They tried equivocation. They took something that he said and gave it a completely different meaning.
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And that's lying. By his statement, Jesus was referring to the temple of his body when he said, destroy this sanctuary and in three days
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I will raise it up, we're told in John 2, 19. So this was a false accusation because the people who heard
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Jesus say that, though he meant the literal physical temple, they were saying that he meant that.
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But nevertheless, eventually they were able to orchestrate his death. But we all know
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Jesus was in control of it the whole time. What looks like helplessness is simply
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God accomplishing his will. What looks like failure is the greatest success.
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What looks like foolishness, Jesus nailed to the cross, is the power and wisdom of Almighty God in the salvation of his people.
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And that takes us full circle. Teachers of God's word in the gospel are to give people the key to knowledge.
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They're not to bedazzle them with scholarly argumentation and impress them with confusing stuff that sounds deep and sounds profound.
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They're supposed to give the key to unlock the treasures of Scripture. They're given by our glorious Lord Jesus to help, not to hinder people going to heaven.
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But woe to any person who in the name of being a teacher takes away the key of knowledge and hides the true gospel from people.
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Or hides the true gospel under ambiguity by not being as precise as maybe they should be.
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Woe to anyone who hinders people from entering Christ's kingdom. And woe to anyone who does not have spiritual eyes and spiritual ears given to them so that the light of the glory of the gospel would shine upon them and shine through them to others.
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That's what teachers are supposed to do. That's what experts in Scripture are supposed to do. To give the key of knowledge, to unlock the word of God so people can believe and be saved and have eternal life, we must ask ourselves, are we hindering or are we helping?
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And as we close, I want to leave you with some words of another great teacher of the Christian faith who freely gave the key of knowledge,
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Jonathan Edwards. He wrote a treatise entitled, and this is pretty long, it's in real
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Puritan -esque style, Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion in New England and the
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Way in Which it Ought to be Acknowledged and Promoted. And he wrote this during the
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Great Awakening, that great move of God's spirit among the American colonists from the 1730s to the 1770s.
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As we continue to hunger and pray earnestly for revival in our own time, I think we'll do well to heed
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Edwards' solemn warnings. He wrote, we are who are in the sacred office, pastor -teachers, had need take heed what we do and how we behave ourselves at this time.
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A less thing in a minister will hinder the work of God than in others. If we are very silent or say but little about the work in our public prayers and preaching or seem carefully to avoid speaking of it in our conversation, it will be interpreted by our people that we, who are their guides, to whom they have their eye for spiritual instruction, are suspicious of it.
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And this will tend to raise the same suspicions in them. And so the four mentioned consequences will follow.
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If we really hinder and stand in the way of the work of God, whose business above all others is to promote it, how can we expect to partake of the glorious benefits of it?
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And by keeping others from the benefit, we shall keep them out of heaven. Therefore those awful words of Christ to the
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Jewish teachers should be considered by us in Matthew 23, 13, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people and do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.
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If we keep the sheep from their pasture, how shall we answer it to the great Shepherd, who has bought the flock with his precious blood and has committed the care of them to us?
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I would humbly desire of every minister that has long remained disaffected to this work and has had contemptible thoughts of it to consider whether he has not been like Michal without any child, or at least in great measure barren and unsuccessful in his work.
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I pray God that it will not be perpetual barrenness as hers was.
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Brothers and sisters, are we helping or hindering people enter
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Christ's kingdom? As a pastoral candidate, this question weighs heavily on me and upon those who already shepherd
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God's flock. But this exhortation and warning from Jesus is not just for pastor -teachers.
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Husbands, are you using the key of knowledge to wash your wives with the word?
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Parents, are you instructing your children by unlocking the wisdom of God's word in their lives as you train them?
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Children, are you obeying your parents in the Lord and teaching other children through your godly example?
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We must examine ourselves by the standard of Scripture to be sure that we are. The Lord Jesus pronounces these woes, not blessings, but woes upon those who hinder others and hide the key of knowledge.
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Let us heed this gracious warning that we may not suffer the same end of these scholars of the law.
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May Christ be glorified as we do this, and may his church be built up and bring glory to him.
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Let us pray. Father, Lord, you have been gracious to give us your word.
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Lord, you have been gracious to give gifts of pastors and teachers to your church so that they may be built up in the knowledge of Christ.
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Lord, as we read this text, as we consider it, Lord, let us be humbled before it.
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Let us, Lord, heed this very stern warning that's given. Lord, that we would not hide that key of knowledge by which people understand your word and are made wise unto salvation.
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Father, please use this to convict us. Use this, Lord, to change our hearts and cause us,
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Lord, to be more vigorous and more urgent.
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Lord, to be faithful stewards of what you have given us in your word and imparting it to others so that they may be saved.
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Father, we pray all of this in the name of Jesus Christ, who is the word.