WWUTT 2087 Full of Dead Mens Bones (Matthew 23:23-28)

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Jesus said to the scribes and the Pharisees, woe to you hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside you're full of dead men's bones and all uncleannesses.

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When we understand the text. This is

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When We Understand the Text, a daily Bible study in the word of Christ that men and women of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

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Tell your friends about our ministry at www .utt .com. Here's your teacher,

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Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. In our study of the Gospel of Matthew, we've been in chapter 23, going through the seven woes that Jesus issued to the scribes and the

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Pharisees. Today, we'll be looking at woes four, five, and six. So I'm gonna begin reading in verse 23 and go through verse 28 out of the

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Legacy Standard Bible. Hear the word of the Lord. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you tithe mint and dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law, justice and mercy and faithfulness.

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But these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others. You blind guides who strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.

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Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside they are full of robbery and self -indulgence.

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You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and of the dish so that the outside of it may become clean also.

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Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.

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In this way you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

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In addition to these three woes that we're looking at today, I also wanna go back and look at another one and give some application to a woe that I didn't give application to yesterday.

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I explained it, but really didn't apply it. And that's back in verse 15. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around on sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.

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I'm gonna come back to that at the end. So let's look at these three woes that we just read. Beginning in verse 23,

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Jesus says, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you tithe mint and dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law.

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Now, mint and dill and cumin, there's nothing in the law that says you have to tithe of those.

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So this was the Pharisees that were giving a 10th of even the smallest little plants that they had in their own private gardens.

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Look at how diligent I am to obey the law. I even take these little plants that I'm growing over here and I will give them into the service of the temple, whatever good they would have been in the temple.

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It was just to exalt themselves, to show themselves about how high and mighty they were.

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Mint was a garden herb that had an agreeable flavor. It was used to spice up certain meats and you could also burn it and it gave a good fragrance to the house.

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You've probably seen a mint plant before, maybe even growing in your backyard. You can chew on the leaves and they have a minty taste to them.

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The other one that is dill, it has a fine aromatic smell and it might be used in some foods and some perfumes, but it isn't a terribly rare plant.

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And then the other one is cumin. I'm not sure if it's the same cumin that I put in like my chili recipe or not, but yeah, again, it's another herb.

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It's another kind of spice that somebody might grow, just small plants that they have in their garden.

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And these Pharisees are saying, look at these things that I do, how diligent I am to give a 10th of all it is that I have.

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But Jesus goes on to say, you have neglected the weightier provisions of the law. Those things that the law says plainly that you are to be practicing in fulfillment of the instruction to love your neighbor.

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You ought to be practicing justice and mercy and faithfulness.

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These are the things you should have done without neglecting the others. Whatever other laws there are about tithing and giving, hey, if you want to tithe your mint and your dill and your cumin, then go ahead.

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But the things that you really should be paying attention to is the love that you should be showing to your brothers and to your neighbor.

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And so Jesus lists judgment and mercy and faithfulness. And these things are in keeping with loving your neighbor.

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Judgment is doing justice to others. Since these persons, the scribes and the

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Pharisees are considered the rulers of Israel. They sit in the synagogues with the

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Sadducees. They're part of the Sanhedrin, that they issue judgments for the people. So they are to be issuing right judgments and giving to all their just dues.

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Those things that are deserving to people, punishing those who do wicked and then rewarding those who do good.

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Doing justice as God has said in his law that justice is supposed to be done.

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These are the men of Israel that are supposed to be overseeing these things, that are supposed to be issuing counsel to people, that are supposed to be judging in cases between who is right and who is wrong.

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And yet the Pharisees really only judge to benefit themselves. What is it that I can gain that can come into the temple that benefits me?

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That's the way they issue their judgments. Not using equal weights and measures, not considering those who are unjustly treated, but as we had read previously, they prey on widows.

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They will devour widows' houses and leave those widows poor and destitute as we considered yesterday.

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So they're not issuing justice. They're not exercising justice. They are doing injustice.

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The next one Jesus mentions is mercy. They're supposed to show compassion and kindness to those who are poor and wanting.

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And then he mentions faithfulness, piety toward God, confidence in Him.

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They have confidence in themselves rather than putting their trust in God. Here, this one, faithfulness, this is with regards to how one is to conduct themselves in the presence of God.

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The other two are love that they are to show to their fellow man, justice and mercy, but then faithfulness is the way that they are to consider their conduct before the

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Lord, how they walk uprightly before God. Remember going back to the Sermon on the

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Mount, when Jesus was talking about prayer, the hypocrites go around praying in public so that they might be seen by others about how holy and pious they are.

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So they have this outward piety, but inside they don't truly fear God. In private, they don't come before the

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Lord and confess their sins and seek Him and His will. They only do those things that can be seen by others.

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And so this one, faithfulness, comes back at that again, just as Jesus had warned of those hypocrites back in Matthew 6.

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So he is confronting them here, that the only faithfulness they seem to exercise is those things that they can receive the recognition of others, but they don't truly have a relationship with God.

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These are the things that they should be considering. And again, this goes back to the fulfillment of the law.

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Remember that Jesus had said previously in His teaching that's been going on here in the temple, He has said that the greatest commandment, this was at the end of chapter 22, the greatest commandment is to love the

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Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. The second one is like it to love your neighbor in yourself. On these two commands hang the whole law and the prophets, chapter 22, verse 40.

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And so these three things that Jesus mentions here is the same, love God and love people, justice and mercy out of love for others, faithfulness out of love for God.

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These are the things that you should have done without neglecting the others. And my friends, may that be a conviction to us as well.

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We understand the love that we are to show to other people, even fighting for their causes. You see so many

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Christians today, so many Bible -believing, God -fearing Christians today that are fighting for the lives of unborn children who are being destroyed by the thousands every day in this country, in the

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United States of America and in other parts of the world as well. And so they are speaking up for the mute, for the poor and the destitute as talked about in Proverbs chapter 31, wanting justice to be done for the poor, our poor neighbors, these infants who are being killed by the merciless in our culture.

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And may we also show mercy to one another as the Lord had said previously in the

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Sermon on the Mount, if we don't forgive others their trespasses, neither will the

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Lord forgive us our trespasses. So if we know that we have been forgiven by God, we must forgive others.

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We must not hold grudges with one another. We must have resolved in our hearts, having forgiven somebody else, even if they don't ask for it.

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So we're not holding the grudge in our heart. They've never asked for forgiveness. Maybe we've never verbally given it to them, but in our hearts, we're not holding onto those things.

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We're laying them before God, knowing that He is sovereign. He has shown us mercy, so we must be merciful to others.

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And then with regards to faithfulness, we must consider our private worship before God.

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When you are alone and nobody else is around, where do your thoughts go? Do your thoughts go to God?

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Do your thoughts go to your flesh? Do you find ways that you can entertain certain sins that nobody has to know about?

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As John Owen said, who you are in private is who you really are. So may it be that when we are in private, we are disciplined, we are self -controlled, we are submitting ourselves to the

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Lord, heart, soul, mind, and strength, worshiping God with all that we are. Again, that goes back to the greatest commandment.

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You will love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your mind, all your soul, and all your strength.

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And so that's the fourth woe that we have here. In the next part of that, this falls right under that fourth woe.

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In verse 24, it says, you blind guides who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel.

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So again, this is talking about how they will, they try to pay attention to these tiny parts of the law and think that in their attention that they give to these things, that they're making themselves holy, but in the meantime, they're still doing things that make themselves unclean.

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The weightier matters of the law that they don't pay attention to, that's really what has made them unclean.

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Not because they accidentally swallowed a gnat. A gnat, according to Leviticus chapter 11, was one of the foods that was unclean.

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You couldn't eat a little bug like a gnat. And so the Pharisees would have these strainers that when they poured their drinks, it would go through this strainer so that it would catch any gnat that may have potentially come into that wine.

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So that a Pharisee did not accidentally swallow a gnat and therefore make himself unclean, according to Leviticus chapter 11.

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But where Jesus says of them, you swallow a camel, a camel is an unclean animal.

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Also, according to Leviticus 11. So they strain out a gnat, they will do these little tiny things thinking that it is making them righteous and holy and good.

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But in the meantime, they're neglecting the weightier matters of the law, which are justice, mercy, and faithfulness.

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And so it's as if they're swallowing a camel. They're swallowing the biggest unclean animal that is in Jerusalem.

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Trying to strain out these tiny animals you can hardly ever see. But in the meantime, by neglecting the weightier matters of the law, it's like they're swallowing the biggest unclean animal.

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They're still unclean. And then Jesus confronts their uncleannesses in the next two woes, in woes five and six.

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So in verse 25, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside they are full of robbery and self -indulgence.

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Again, showing how serious their sins are. That they rob, as we read earlier, about consuming widows' houses.

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They steal from people. They hate the tax collectors, right? Because the tax collectors will cheat people out of extra money.

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They collect the money that the Romans have told the tax collectors that they're supposed to collect. But then they will take extra money on top of that.

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And then whatever extra they collect, they get to keep for themselves. So the tax collectors are robbers.

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They're dishonest. They deceive people in order to make themselves rich. And the Pharisees don't want to have anything to do with the tax collectors.

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Remember, they rebuke Jesus because he ate and drank with sinners and with tax collectors.

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And yet the Pharisees themselves are robbers. They're doing the same thing to the people that they hate the tax collectors for.

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You are full of robbery and self -indulgence. It's just about what you can do for yourself, how you can benefit yourself and build yourself up.

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You'll take from others to make better of yourselves. And while you're not showing what you have received, you don't show love to your neighbor by giving to them, by helping the poor, by providing for those widows who can no longer provide for themselves.

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So you clean the outside of the cup and of the dish. You look nice on the outside, but the inside of the dishes are still dirty.

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You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and of the dish so that the outside of it may become clean also.

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I really relate to that example as a parent because I feel like I'm still teaching my kids how to wash dishes.

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You gotta clean this part, you gotta clean this part. And when it goes into the dishwasher, if you pull it out and it's still got stuff on it, you gotta clean that too.

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You can't just put it away. So you have to clean the inside that the outside may also be clean.

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Remember what Jesus said previously in Matthew chapter 15. Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual immoralities, thefts, false witness, slanders.

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These are the things which defile the man. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile the man.

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So here it is said to the scribes and the Pharisees, clean the inside so that the outside of it may become clean also.

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And that cleansing that happens on the inside is only by the work of Christ who cleanses us and makes us new.

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The sixth woe then verses 27 and 28. Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleannesses.

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You know, this may be the most insulting thing of everything that Jesus says on this list.

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And all of these things would have surely infuriated the scribes and the Pharisees, but this one's really bad because the

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Pharisees would not go walk among the tombs. There were bodies there. It was an unclean place to go.

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So you on the outside, you look like whitewashed sepulchers, as it says in another translation, you're whitewashed tombs.

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You appear beautiful, but inside you're full of dead men's bones and all uncleannesses.

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Inside you're evil, inside you're wicked. You have broken God's law. Verse 28, in this way, you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

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I said this earlier about the Pharisees, but the people actually liked the

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Pharisees. Like we tend to think of the Pharisees as being the bad guys with the black hats.

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And then Jesus is the sheriff in the white hat who comes riding into town and he's gonna clean up this place. Well, the people actually didn't feel oppressed by the

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Pharisees. Jesus told them that they were being oppressed by the Pharisees because the Pharisees will tie heavy burdens on them and then impose upon them laws that God did not say.

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And so he burdened, they would burden the people, but the people didn't see it that way.

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They thought that the Pharisees really taught them how they were to be good people and therefore were to be pleasing unto the

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Lord. And if the Pharisees like priests in the Catholic church were to say, hey, you need to pay your indulgences, then the people would do it, believing that they're going to,

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I'm using the priest example, the priest in the Catholic church example here, but anyway, just like a person would pay a priest indulgences to knock years off their purgatory sentence.

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Well, the Bible doesn't say anything about that. These priests are lying and they're robbing people of money, promising them something that they cannot give.

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Nor does the Bible even say that people are gonna go to purgatory and be there for thousands of years. So you need to pay these indulgences to knock the years off your purgatory sentence.

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Just like there were people that did this with the Catholic church and still are today, the

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Catholic church still sells indulgences even to this day. This wasn't just something that happened 500 years ago during the

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Protestant reformation. But anyway, just like people will trust their Catholic priests that they can pay them and therefore knock years off their purgatory sentence.

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So it was the case with the people in Israel at this time, in Judah, that when the Pharisees told them to do something, well, the people did it, believing that it would gain them favor with God, but they tied heavy burdens on people.

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And going back to the woe that I had read yesterday out of verse 15, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around on sea and land to make one proselyte.

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And when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves. Now, when

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I explained this, I had said that they would convert pagans to Judaism, but then they teach those pagans things that are contrary to what

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God instructed his people to do. And so now these pagans think that they have been saved from their paganism and they have gained the favor of God when in reality, they are doing things that God had not said to do.

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And so they think they're saved, but really they become twice as much a son of hell. They were a son of hell when they were in their paganism.

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Now they are following a false version of God that has been made up by the Pharisees. So they think they're saved, but they're not.

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They're twice as much a son of hell as they were before. Now, as I had said this yesterday, I didn't quite give application to it, but we've got so much teaching like this that is going on, especially in Western world evangelicalism of people who will preach a

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Christ that is different than the Christ of the Bible. Of course, religions like Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses present a completely different Jesus.

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Mormonism believes in a Jesus that is the literal brother of Satan and the offspring of Elohim.

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And he is an exalted man. He just did good things in order to achieve his position as a

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God. And there are multiple gods according to the Mormons. Then there's the Jehovah's Witnesses who believe that Jesus is actually the

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Archangel Michael. And he likewise was created by God instead of being eternally

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God with the father. So you have these false religions that will present a false

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Christ and people will believe in those false Christ, believing themselves to be saved. And they're made twice as much a son of hell as they were before they believed in these false religions.

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But then there's also the Roman Catholic Church who do many things that are like what the Pharisees did, making up laws and rules and giving those things to people and making them think if you do these things, then you have gained the favor of God or knocked years off your purgatory sentence.

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But they're made twice as much a son of hell. And then also with the Eastern Orthodox, same sort of a thing.

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The extra laws that they bind on people, teaching them that they can be saved by their works.

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These are things that we must guard ourselves against as well. We must beware of the false teaching that is out there unless we present a false

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Christ to somebody else and they don't come to know the true Christ of the

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Bible, of the gospel of Matthew, of the rest of scripture. So let us be faithful to the words of Christ, the good doctrine that has been taught to us in the scriptures, knowing according to Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, it is by grace we are saved through faith.

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And this is not of ourselves. It is the gift of God. It is not of our works so that no one may boast like these scribes and Pharisees.

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We have one more woe to cover, which we'll do tomorrow. The seventh woe, beginning in verse 29.

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Let's finish here with prayer. Heavenly father, I pray that you would keep us faithful to those things that we have been taught, the good doctrine that we have followed and that we may set ourselves as an example in speech and in our conduct, in our faith and in our love and in purity.

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We would be diligent in these things and we would set a good example before others of these things as well.

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Help us to turn from our sin, to put off every temptation, to pursue Christ and cling to him.

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Make us more Christ -like today. It is in Jesus' name that we pray, amen.

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Pastor Gabe keeps a regular blog, sharing personal thoughts, alerting readers to false teachers and offering commentary on the church and social issues.

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You can find a link to the blog through our website, www .utt .com. Thank you for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue our study in God's word when we understand the text.