WWUTT 2083 They Shut the Kingdom in People's Faces (Matthew 23:13-14)

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Jesus issued seven woes to the scribes and the Pharisees who were acting as hypocrites. They were saying one thing, they were doing something else.

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And Jesus did this in view of the people so that the people would not follow after their ways when we understand the text.

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This is When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible teaching podcast. That we may be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the

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Lord. Tell your friends about our ministry at www .utt .com. Here once again is

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Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. We are back to our study in the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 23.

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And we are on to the seven woes that Jesus issues to the scribes and Pharisees, beginning in verse 13.

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And I'm going to read through all seven woes. So this will take us through verse 36, reading from the

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Legacy Standard Bible. Hear the word of the Lord. But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!

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Because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people. For you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.

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Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you devour widows' houses, and for a pretense you make long prayers, therefore you will receive greater condemnation.

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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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Woe to you, blind guides, who say, Whoever swears by the sanctuary, that is nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the sanctuary is obligated.

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You fools and blind men, for which is more important, the gold or the sanctuary that sanctified the gold?

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And whoever swears by the altar, that is nothing, but whoever swears by the offering on it he is obligated.

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You blind men, which is more important, the offering or the altar that sanctifies the offering?

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Therefore, whoever swears by the altar, swears both by the altar and by everything on it.

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And whoever swears by the sanctuary, swears both by the sanctuary and by him who dwells within it.

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And whoever swears by heaven, swears both by the throne of God and by him who sits upon it.

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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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Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, and say, if we had been living in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partners with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.

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So you bear witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.

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Fill up then the measure of the guilt of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell?

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On account of this, behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes.

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Some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, so that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous

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Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar.

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Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.

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And then let me read the last part, Christ's lament over Jerusalem. This is verses 37 to 39,

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Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her.

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How often I wanted to gather your children together the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you did not want it.

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Behold, your house is being left to you desolate. For I say to you, from now on, you will not see me until you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the

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Lord. And that's the conclusion of Matthew chapter 23.

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So if you were counting the woes as we went through these, how many did you count?

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If you were keeping track, you probably counted eight. Even though this section is commonly referred to as the seven woes,

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I actually read eight woes, but that's because one of the verses in here doesn't actually belong.

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It was added in later by perhaps an overzealous Byzantine scribe who was bringing in the words that are in Mark 1240 and Luke 2047 into the seven woes that Jesus issues in Matthew 23.

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But Matthew did not actually write the words that we have in Matthew 2314.

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They're in scripture. They're in the New Testament. They're in Mark 12 and in Luke 20. But Matthew did not write these words.

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These were added in by a scribe several hundred years after Matthew would have written this.

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So it's verse 14 where we read, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you devour widows' houses and for a pretense you make long prayers.

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Therefore, you will receive greater condemnation. Jesus did say that. It's just that he didn't say it here where Matthew is writing these woes that had been issued to the scribes and the

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Pharisees. It certainly makes sense and looks a lot neater when you consider that there are only seven woes here, not eight.

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Seven is a number of completion in scripture. So this is a complete condemnation of those scribes and Pharisees, those false teachers who are leading people astray, making their converts twice as much sons of hell as themselves.

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One of the woes that we read here. So let me go back up to verse 13. I'll list for you here the seven woes, and then we're going to cover about the first three today.

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So in verse 13, Jesus said, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people and you don't enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.

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That's the first woe. The second one, then skipping verse 14, the second one would be verse 15.

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Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around to make proselytes, but you make them twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.

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The third woe is in verse 16, and this one's a little bit longer. It goes verses 16 to 22, and this is where the

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Pharisees were swearing by certain things in the temple, saying, it's not important that you swear by the temple, but that you swear by the offerings that are made in the temple.

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And I'll explain that coming up here in a moment. The fourth woe is in verse 23.

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Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, for you tithe mint and dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law.

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The fifth woe in verse 25, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, for you clean the outside of the cup, but inside it's still dirty.

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Verse 27 is the sixth woe. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, for you're like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside full of dead men's bones.

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And then the seventh woe in verse 29, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, for you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous.

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You say we would not have done the errors that our fathers did, but you have not only killed those prophets, you are going to kill others that will be sent to you.

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So that is the, that is the final warning. That's the last of the woes that Jesus issues here.

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And then when he finishes these seven woes, when we get to the end of chapter 23, in a couple of weeks, when we get into chapter 24, it says coming out of the temple,

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Jesus was going along and his disciples came to point out to him the temple buildings. And then you have the start of what becomes the

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Olivet discourse, the last of the five discourses that Matthew writes in his gospel. Jesus goes out of the temple and it's him exiting the temple that God is no longer present in the temple, just as had happened in the days of Ezekiel.

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When Ezekiel saw God as though he had mounted a chariot and left the temple and went up on the hillside to watch

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Jerusalem in the temple be destroyed. God was no longer with his people. He was no longer dwelling with them in the temple and Ezekiel saw his departure.

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So we see the same sort of thing happen here in Matthew 24, where after Jesus gives these woes to the false teachers of the temple, he leaves the temple himself and the presence of God is no longer with them.

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So we see that same sort of thing happen at the conclusion of Matthew chapter 23.

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So coming back to that first woe here in verse 13 and overall what we want to see here, what we want to glean from this, that we would not repeat these errors, that we would not come into this as hypocrites, that we say one thing and we do something else.

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We might pledge our devotion to God and to Christ, but in our lives we live a completely different way, worthy of hell, not worthy of the kingdom of heaven.

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So we must be cautious about these things. We must check our own behavior and our own conduct lest we also be found hypocrites in the judgment of God.

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Now as we go through these things, you'll no doubt have thoughts of other teachers who do just like what we're reading here.

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And I may even come up with examples of modern teachers that do the same things that Jesus is rebuking the

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Pharisees for. I had talked yesterday about how Alistair Begg was acting Pharisaical because after giving this bad advice to a grandmother to go to her grandson's gay wedding that he was then calling

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Christians Pharisees who would disagree with advice like that. And in so doing,

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Begg becomes Pharisaical himself. Now I want to be clear, I was using that as an example yesterday when we were reading verses 1 through 12, but I don't think that Begg is condemned.

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This is not me declaring Alistair Begg anathema. But as he calls Christians Pharisees, who would hate that kind of counsel and that kind of advice, he actually acts

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Pharisaical himself. Now, so not to sow confusion,

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I'm not going to bring up Begg as an example again with regards to what we're reading here about Pharisees, because I don't think that Begg is condemned.

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I don't think he's on the level of these Pharisees that Jesus is rebuking. There are other teachers that I can use as an example.

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But all of that to say, this is a recent event. This is something that happened, you know,

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Begg just taught in his church on this past Sunday night and talking about how

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Christians who are rebuking Begg for this bad counsel that he gave, how they're actually acting like Pharisees.

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This happens a lot with somebody drawing the Pharisee card. And we must be careful that if we're going to do that, there are times and places where drawing the

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Pharisee card is accurate. But we must be careful when we do that, that we're not the ones that are actually acting like Pharisees ourselves.

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It seems to be more often than not. When I see somebody play the Pharisee card, it's actually them who is acting like the

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Pharisee rather than the person that they are calling the Pharisee. So again, we must check ourselves in light of these things.

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First of all, we must examine ourselves. But secondly, we must also examine other teachers in light of these things that we would not be led astray by their false teaching.

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So let me come back here to verse one, or well, verse 13, but it's the first woe.

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Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people, for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.

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So this is the very first woe. This is the first warning that Jesus gives to the scribes and the

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Pharisees. And really, when you consider what is being said here, this is like the pinnacle warning.

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And then everything else, there are specific things that are mentioned. But the one that's given in verse 13 is kind of the blanket condemnation that even the other six woes fall under.

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You shut off the kingdom of heaven from people. You make it impossible for them to enter in.

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Now, remember what I said yesterday about the way that they taught. They would read from the law of Moses, or they would read the other prophets, and then they would give some initial teaching.

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And so that initial reading and that initial teaching application that they would give from the teaching of the law was probably correct.

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It was probably dead on. But then they would go on to expound on other things, and they would start adding other laws.

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And they would tell people that you have to obey these laws as well if you want to be as good as we are.

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The thing that Jesus said about them wearing their long phylacteries, lengthening their tassels of their garments so that they would appear holier to people.

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They are actually wearing the law on their head and on their sleeves as though to communicate to people, see,

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I am holier than you are. This is how seriously I take the law. And if you are going to enter heaven, well, you must take the law as seriously as I do.

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But as we had read previously in Matthew's gospel, this was back in chapter 15, Jesus said, rightly did

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Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites. This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me.

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In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commands of men. So the

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Pharisees add to the law, they add things to it. And they would, as if say to the people, you must be as committed to the law as I am.

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If you want to be holy enough to enter into the kingdom of God. But in doing that, in adding to God's law, adding words that God did not say,

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God did not require this of people. The Pharisees are requiring this of others. They're taking the things that they do and then making them laws and imposing that upon the people to make themselves appear holier than now.

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And by doing that, by imposing laws upon people that God did not command the people to have to do, then the

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Pharisees are shutting the kingdom of God in people's faces. They themselves are not entering in and they're not allowing anyone else to get in because they're telling people, this is what you must do in order to be justified.

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We understand that we cannot attain righteousness by our own works.

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There is nothing that we do to attain righteousness. Righteousness is attained by faith in Jesus Christ and he gives us his righteousness.

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And then the righteousness by which we live is a borrowed righteousness. We are indeed to obey the commands of God, as I talked about with you yesterday.

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But we're only able to keep those commands and do it in a reverent way. Not in a vain way, not in a self -serving way, but in a way that is honoring and worshipful unto the

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Lord. We're only able to do that when we have Christ's righteousness clothing us.

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And so these Pharisees, they are requiring of the people, you must do this if you want to be holy enough to enter into the kingdom of God.

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And they make stuff up that God did not command. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.

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Now, what kinds of legalistic commands might be issued today that that would be imposed upon somebody and said, you have to follow this in order to be righteous before God or in order to be holy, in order to enter the kingdom of heaven, you must do this.

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What kinds of commands? Can you think of some? You can probably think of a time in which a certain teacher, maybe it was even a friend or a family member, tried to impose upon you something and and said to you, you have to obey this or else.

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You must abstain from these kinds of foods, that's still a very common one, even among evangelicals.

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Rick Warren and Joel Osteen, believe it or not, I've heard them say you shouldn't eat bacon.

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You rarely ever hear Joel Osteen condemn some somebody for anything, but I have heard him say that bacon is an unholy meat and that's you should not be eating bacon or you're doing something disobedient.

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So there are people out there still try to impose that. There are unbelievers that will try to impose that to try to embarrass

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Christians. Right. So they'll bring up the dietary laws of Leviticus chapter 11. You can't can't eat shrimp or you're not going to go to heaven.

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You're trying to impose all these other behavioral laws on me. But look at you eating shrimp and wearing clothing with two different kinds of fabric.

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So so the world will not understand the law and how

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Christ had fulfilled aspects of the law, the ceremonial law in particular. And so even secularists will bring this up to try to embarrass the

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Christians, try to make them feel guilty for something, try to say you can't impose your morality on me because you don't even follow your own book.

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Have you ever heard somebody say that you must not get married? There are still religions out there that impose that in Catholicism, the priests are not allowed to get married, and that's seen as something holier.

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But in First Timothy chapter four, it explicitly says that's the doctrines of demons, those who forbid marriage.

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Speaking of the Catholics, you must pray to Mary. I had somebody say to me recently that if I am not praying to Mary, if I don't call upon her as the queen of heaven, then

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I am not going to be I'm not going to enter heaven myself. And so as if Mary somehow holds the keys to the kingdom and you can't get in unless you worship and honor her,

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Jesus won't even let you in unless you pray to his mother. That's one way.

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That somebody is shutting the kingdom of God in someone's face, not allowing them to go in, and they themselves aren't getting in either.

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Have you ever heard somebody say that you must be baptized in order to be saved? Baptismal regeneration.

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You have to be baptized in water. And if you're not, you're not going to heaven. That's salvation by works.

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In Acts chapter 10, Peter declared that the Gentiles among them were saved before they got baptized.

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And he said, we need some water for these men so that they can be baptized, but they were already Christians.

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The baptism was the outward sign of the inward change that had taken place.

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And Peter had already declared them saved even before they were baptized. Water baptism doesn't save you.

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It is something you do as a matter of obedience. We should do it. God told us to do it. But itself does not have some salvific property to it.

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Have you ever heard somebody say that you must be baptized in this specific church or in this specific denomination or by this specific person in order to be saved?

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You ever heard somebody say that you must worship on Saturday, which is the real

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Sabbath. This is the seventh day Adventist, by the way, they are, they claim that at the judgment, you will be judged by whether or not you worshiped on Saturday or another day of the week.

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Those who truly know God and who truly obeyed his word were the people that worshiped on Saturday, according to the seventh day

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Adventist who kept that day as the Sabbath. But Paul says plainly in Romans chapter 14, that this is a difference of opinion.

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Some worship on Saturday, some worship on Sunday. It's a difference of opinion. And we're not to divide over this.

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Don't look down on the person who honors this day over the others. Some have gone as far as saying you must abstain from all worldly forms of entertainment on Sunday.

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I am a reformed Baptist and I run into this even in my reformed Baptist circles. Those that will say that, that on Sunday, which is the

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Christian Sabbath, you must abstain from doing any other kinds of entertainment or, or enjoyment in the world.

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You must only devote yourself to worship and being at church and, uh, and, and being with your brothers and sisters in the

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Lord. You know, some go that far with imposing the Christian Sabbath on one another.

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These are just a few examples of ways that we can get legalistic even today.

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And impose upon somebody rules that God does not impose upon us. Beware that you don't become like those hypocrites who shut off the kingdom of heaven from people.

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You don't enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in. What has

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God's word said and be careful with how we translate these things.

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May it be done in love. May all these things be done in love. As said in first Corinthians 13,

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I could fathom all the knowledge of men, but if I have not love, then

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I'm nothing. I'm a noisy gong and a clanging symbol. We can be puffed up with all of our great theology, but if we don't have love toward others, what good does that theology do to us?

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It actually will be to our condemnation rather than to our salvation. If we are running around judging one another and, and doing so on the basis of the traditions of men rather than the doctrines of God, we're going to pick up there tomorrow with the second woe.

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We only looked at one way. I think I said it was going to cover three. Now we're not going to cover three today, but we'll get to the next woe and it won't be tomorrow because I'm back to the study in Isaiah tomorrow.

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So it'll be Monday when we resume Matthew chapter 23 and we'll spend all of next week in Matthew 23, continuing to go through these woes.

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May we be servants to one another. Remember what it is that, that Jesus had said yesterday in the, in the lesson we looked at yesterday in chapter 23, verses 11 and 12, the greatest among you shall be your servant and whoever exalts himself shall be humbled and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted.

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So how can we humble ourselves to help others, to build one another up, not tearing each other down?

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We're not using our doctrine in our theology to tear people down. We rather want to build them up, build them up in Christ, build them up in the kingdom of Christ.

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Consider Romans 15, four, whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction so that through the perseverance and the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope.

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Now may the God of perseverance and encouragement grant you to be of the same mind with one another, according to Christ Jesus, so that with one accord, you may with one voice glorify the

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God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let me jump back to verse two.

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Each of us is to please his neighbor for his good, to build him up for even Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, the reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.

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So let us use the word of God to build one another up, not tear each other down. Heavenly father, we thank you for what we've read here, and I pray that it would be convicting so that we would not become as hypocrites, imposing our laws and our legalistic system on everybody else.

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But we desire to know God's word so that we may be grown in holiness and we may know how we can help build up our brothers and sisters in the

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Lord as well. And if there are those that are adding to God's word, if there are those that are shutting the kingdom of God in people's faces, we call them out on it, but still doing so with a spirit of gentleness for, as said in second

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Timothy two, the Lord's servant corrects opponents with gentleness, and it is God that grants repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth.

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Guide us in your truth today. We pray in Jesus name. Amen. You've been listening to when we understand the text with Pastor Gabe Hughes.

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Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study. Then on Thursday, we look at an

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Old Testament book. On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers. Tomorrow we'll pick up on an