The Ugliness of False Religion Part IV Mathew 23:1-9

Over the last three weeks, we have been in the process of going through Matthew 23.

There's 39 verses in Matthew 23. And we're a little over halfway through.

The last three weeks we have looked at the reality that counterfeit religion always receives condemnation from Jesus.

To this point, we have seen seven ways how. This has been shown. As Jesus is going after the

Pharisees. And to remind you, at this point, this is only a couple of days before Jesus is going to go to the cross.

And what we've seen thus far is Jesus and the religious Jewish establishment have been on a collision course.

From the very beginning, Jesus has been against this movement, this religious system.

And they are against Him. And there's really no way around it. He has made claims that He is

God. He has told them that what they're doing is wrong. He has condemned their idol.

And what is their idol? Their idol was their religious system. And we've seen seven ways how counterfeit religion always receives condemnation from Jesus.

The first way how was through promoting burdensome rules. The second way is living differently in public than in private.

The third way is finding identity in one's personal status in society.

The fourth way, elevating oneself above God. The fifth, believing mistakenly that one is a heaven -bound person.

Sixth, making disciples twice as much a son of hell as they are.

And seventh, declaring false oaths that do not fool God. That's what we've seen through the first 22 verses of this chapter.

At this time, we are going to read the text we're going to zero in on today. And that is verses 23 through 28.

So I encourage you to turn in a Bible with me to Matthew chapter 23, if you haven't already. It's also in the

Red Bible in the pews. If you need a Bible. Matthew 23, verses 23 through 28.

These are the words of the Lord Jesus. He says, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you tithe mint and dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faithfulness.

These you ought to have done without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel.

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

You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and the plate that the outside also may be clean.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness.

So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

So here's the eighth way how. Counterfeit religion always receives condemnation from Jesus and that is through neglecting bigger matters for smaller.

Neglecting bigger matters for smaller. This is another emphasis the

Pharisees made that Jesus despised. As Jesus says in verses 23 and 24, you tithe mint and dill and come in and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice, mercy, and faithfulness.

In the previous passage, Jesus called the Pharisees blind guides. Now in verse 23, he calls them hypocrites once again.

Once again, a hypocrite in ancient times was an actor. That's what that word means, an actor.

Someone who is completely different in private than in public. And people are masters at that.

And the Pharisees were masters at being actors. He calls the

Pharisees hypocrites seven times in this chapter. They presented themselves as spiritual, but were really awful people.

And the kind of people you wouldn't want your kids to be like. This is why he once again calls them blind guys in verse 24.

As we have seen, their piety is false and they are leading people to be worse than even they are.

But in this section, Jesus highlights something about them. What Jesus tells the crowds and the disciples who are listening to him as he's telling them about the

Pharisees, as he's speaking to them concerning the Pharisees, he says that the

Pharisees love to focus on the minute details of the law of Moses.

And not just the law of Moses, their own religious system. What we see in verse 23 is that the

Pharisees tithe mint and dill and cumin. In the Old Testament in Deuteronomy 14 .22,

the Israelites were commanded to do this. That verse told people, you shall tithe all the yield of your seed that comes from the field year by year.

The Pharisees did this and it's good that they did. It's commanded.

The Pharisees obeying this is not the problem. But what is the problem is their emphasis to the people.

The Old Testament commanded that the Israelites were to tithe all of their crops and the smallest of those crops were the garden crops.

Mint, dill and cumin. The Pharisees were so detailed in this that they would not forget to tithe even the smallest crops.

To forget this was a grave sin to them. What Jesus says in verse 24 is their practice can be described as straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel.

That's interesting. What does he mean by straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel?

Anyone swallowed a camel before? We know about gnats. We love summer but we don't love gnats, right?

Camels we don't know much about. We've seen them on TV. Now if you've been to the Middle East, you've seen them.

Most people haven't been to the Middle East though. In the law of Moses, Leviticus 11 declared gnats and camels unclean.

Gnats would get into the wine and to prevent from swallowing this unclean insect, the

Pharisees would either strain the wine so that it would be gnat free or they would drink the wine with their teeth closed.

Yes, they did that. Now gnats were the smallest unclean animal if you want to call it an animal.

It's an insect technically. Camels were the biggest unclean animal.

When Jesus says the statement, strain out a gnat and swallow a camel, He is saying their focus is on tiny details.

And their neglecting of larger issues is like focusing on not letting a gnat in their mouth as they did, but having no problem swallowing a camel whole.

When Jesus says swallowing a camel, He's using hyperbole. Hyperbole is when one makes an overstatement to make a point.

The Pharisees of course were not able to swallow a camel. But what Jesus is saying is they focus on the really small things while neglecting the huge things.

The Pharisees cared about the details at an obsessive level. And they made it clear to the people who were under their teaching that one needed to care disproportionately about tiny matters.

Some of those matters were in the law of Moses like tithing, mint, dill, and cummin.

But some of them were their own rules that they made. For example, they were incredibly strict on the

Sabbath. But the Sabbath was supposed to be a blessing for the people. To be told one day a week, you're not to work.

That's a blessing. It was a day of rest.

But they said you could not even help people on the Sabbath. The Pharisees were angry at Jesus because he didn't follow their

Sabbath rules. In John 5, verses 1 -18, Jesus healed a cripple on the

Sabbath and they were angry. They were extremely upset that he would violate their

Sabbath rules. In the Gospel of Matthew, as we saw back in chapter 12, the

Pharisees asked Jesus if it was lawful to heal on the Sabbath as a man with a withered hand was present.

They already knew that he had healed a man on the Sabbath and this episode gave them an opportunity to demonstrate that he was out of line.

That he was out of line with the religion that they followed. The religion that they believed was truly following God.

And if he's not following this, how can he be from God? Jesus told them in Matthew 12, verses 11 and 12, which one of you who has a sheep, if it falls into a pit on the

Sabbath, will not take hold of it and lift it out? Of how much more value is a man than a sheep?

So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath. Then he said to the man, stretch out your hand.

And the man stretched out his hand and it was restored, healthy like the other.

But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him. How to destroy him. You want to get someone mad?

Go after their idol. That's what Jesus is doing here. Their idol is these rules, these tiny details, extra strict.

And he just rubs it in their face. Okay, I'm gonna go heal this guy right in front of you. Whether it was the tiny details of the law of Moses, like tithing mint and dill and cumin, or tiny details of their own man -made laws, they were obsessively committed to keeping these, as if keeping these was the most important thing in the world.

What Jesus says at the end of verse 23 is that they were right, not to neglect the tiny details of the law of Moses, but they missed the most important commandments of all.

What Jesus says in verse 23 is that they missed justice and mercy and faithfulness.

This is what God cares about. In the Old Testament, there are numerous verses that held utmost importance to God that the

Pharisees paid little attention to. And these verses were the heart of the

Old Testament. A few weeks back, Jesus was asked, what is the greatest commandment? And he said, quoting

Deuteronomy 6 .5, it's to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and might.

And then he said, quoting Leviticus 19 .18, that the second is like it. To love your neighbor as yourself.

They ignored the true greatest commandments. To love God and to love your neighbor.

They also ignored a passage like Isaiah 66 .2, which I've read recently.

This is the one to whom I will look. He who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.

What does it mean to be contrite, by the way? That's not a word we hear every day. To be contrite is to be repentant.

That's what God cares about. Repentance. I've heard it said, there are two types of people in this world.

Unrepentant people. Some people know they're bad and they don't care. Some people think they're good, but they're really bad.

And then there's people who realize that they are sinners and stand condemned before a holy

God. And those are the ones to whom God will look. Those are the ones who will populate his future kingdom.

And they tremble at his word. These are the people. We should never take this book flippantly.

We should tremble at it. We should tremble to keep it. Tremble not to misquote it.

Misrepresent it in some way. Tremble not to blaspheme the name of God.

These are the ones whom God is pleased with. Another passage they would have paid little attention to is

Micah 6 .8, what I quoted in the call to worship. What does the Lord require of you? But to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your

God. The Pharisees were the kind of people you wouldn't want to sit across the table from them. They would have been pretty good neighbors because they actually would have been people who obeyed the rules.

You wouldn't have been calling the police on them late at night. But they would not have been pleasant people to be around.

These verses I just read to you is what God cared most about. But these verses from the

Old Testament, the Scripture for which they were supposed to be the experts, they did not care about these passages.

They did not care about the heart of the Old Testament. They missed the whole point.

If someone's high is 9 % and not 10%, it's the end of the world.

But that's not ultimately what God cared about. He wanted their heart. He wanted them to love

Him. And out of that deep love for Him, He wanted them to truly love other people. They were so obsessed with keeping these rules that they forgot about other people.

Think about how bad that is. And if they did help people, it was only to be seen by others so that they would look super spiritual.

He wanted their hearts. They loved themselves.

They loved their religion. They were a prideful people. They thought they were good through their own self -righteousness.

And they were tyrants telling people to obey the smallest parts of the law of God and the smallest parts from the laws that they invented.

Following the tiny details is not the point. Loving Him is the point.

The Pharisees didn't love God. They loved their rules. And this can happen to Christians who are overly strict.

Sometimes Christians can go down the wrong path. And other times, people who confess Christ are really

Pharisees at heart. In other words, some people who profess the name of Christ are unbelieving religious people.

They are impressed with their own righteousness and their zeal for keeping rules.

And they're also very quick to point out the faults of other people. But people who are overcome by this do not have the

Spirit. A couple of weeks back, I mentioned the man who was overly troubled by what people wore to church.

You would think that someone said a blasphemous word to his face about Jesus by how troubled he was by what people wore.

What people wear has small importance. It's not that it has no importance. It has small importance. But the love that we have for God and others is of utmost importance.

That's what God cares about. There was another man that I knew that would listen to preaching and he would find the smallest thing wrong with what the preacher said and make a huge deal about it and then miss the whole point about what the sermon was about.

He cared about the small details and missed the big picture. We have this saying in our society, don't miss the forest for the trees.

What it's saying is, don't get caught up in the details so much and miss the most important things.

It's okay to ask questions about the Bible. It's good to ask questions about the

Bible. Even questions like, how many kings did the nation of Israel have? During their history.

It's okay to ask questions about chronology. Like what month was Jesus born? And what year did he die?

But if our Bible study is dominated by that, what a waste.

Our reading of the Bible should make us love God more and live for Him more.

If we have an obsession with minute details, we miss the point. What's interesting is that the people who haven't done well at Eureka Baptist are those who are

Pharisaic. It's kind of a surprise maybe, huh? We have pews?

We sing old and modern hymns. Some people might look at us and say, man,

Pharisee would do well there. Oh no, they don't do well here. Our church is very conservative, but we're not

Pharisaic. We never want to be that. It's not allowed here. Here's another encounter that I had with a

Pharisaic man. When I first started here, there was a man who came for a very short time who stopped coming because of some things that I did.

We had a Good Friday service, but he thought Jesus died on Thursday. Because of this difference, he said

I can't come to your Good Friday service. That's Pharisaic. It's not about the day.

It's about he died for our sins. That's the only hope we have.

That's not holiness. That's Pharisaism. There are

Pharisees all over the Christian world. Sometimes it can be hard to tell whether or not one is a true believer.

Sometimes the person is a true believer. And it's just a sin that they wrestle with. And if the person is honest about that,

God can change that person's heart. But some people, they love their own religion. They love following their rules.

And that's just who they are. And you may know a Pharisaic person, and you may even fight

Pharisaic tendencies, but understand that Jesus despises the religion of the

Pharisees. He doesn't want his people to be anything like they were. He wants us to truly love him and to truly love his image bearers, and especially the household of God, as Scripture says.

We should be a delight to other people. Now, it is true, right, that as we follow Christ, the world's going to hate us.

But they shouldn't hate you because you're a jerk. They should hate you because they hate your message.

Because your message calls them an idolatrous. A person who needs to turn from their sins.

That's why people shouldn't like you. But if you're following Christ, the people of God, you'll be a blessing to those people.

And even some people whom God is drawing to him, you'll be a blessing to those people. And some people are even more kinder to Christians.

You'll be a blessing to those people. That's what we want to be in this world. He wants us to truly love him, to love people, to value the most important things and not get caught in minute details that do not deserve the highest attention or even any attention at all.

Understand that counterfeit religion always receives condemnation from Jesus. And the eighth way how is through neglecting bigger matters for smaller.

Here's the ninth way how we are to understand that counterfeit religion always receives condemnation from Jesus.

And this is the final one we're going to look at today. This is through showing cleanliness on the outside while only filthiness is on the inside.

And we'll see this in verses 25 through 28. I'm going to read these verses again here where Jesus says, "'Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self -indulgence.

You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and plate that the outside also may be clean.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness.

So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.'"

What we read in this passage is Jesus addressed them as hypocrites twice.

He does so in verse 25 and verse 27. What he tells the scribes and Pharisees is the non -obvious way they have sinned grievously.

The Pharisees were not those who wore sin on their sleeves. They weren't the prostitutes, the drunkards, the gluttons.

They were those who looked squeaky clean on the outside. In verse 25 and 26,

Jesus uses the illustration of utensils. He uses a cup and a plate as an illustration.

In ancient times, a cup could be as clean as could be, and so could a plate.

The Greek word for plate carries the meaning of a side dish. Side dishes are intended to serve food delicacies.

In our day, we would call them hors d 'oeuvres. Sometimes you might go to a wedding, a banquet, or some other formal gathering, and a server carries around hors d 'oeuvres on a platter.

This is the utensil that Jesus is talking about. He compares the cleanliness of these utensils to the

Pharisees. These cup and plate utensils could be as clean as could be.

They could be shiny, but if the food on them was rotten, no one cares how clean the plate is.

I mean, would you eat from a clean plate that had rotten food on it? This is what the

Pharisees did. They looked shiny on the outside, but inwardly, they were unclean.

I remember the days when all that people could talk about were some of the biggest names in baseball.

I grew up, I was a child in the late 90s growing up, and your heroes were

Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, and Roger Clemens.

These were the biggest names in baseball. In 1998, Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa were chasing

Roger Maris' single season home run record. In 1961,

Roger Maris hit 61 home runs. In 98, McGuire and Sosa bested that mark, and McGuire came out on top with 70 home runs.

And I remember at that time, I remember I was in Little League and hearing people say, we're gonna talk about these days years from now, and where were you when the record was broke, and so on and so forth.

Three years later in 2001, Barry Bonds set the record with 73 home runs.

On the pitching side, Roger Clemens is arguably one of the top pitchers in the history of baseball.

But what all these men have in common is that they are not in the

Baseball Hall of Fame. Why is this? It's commonly believed that they use steroids.

There's no question these men were a great talent, but their purported drug use tainted everything they did.

Their records were fake, and so the excitement of those years was a flash in the pan.

I remember during that era, there was a singles hitter who hit 50 home runs. I mean, it was the era of where everyone was juiced up.

Their records were fake, and so the excitement of those years was for naught. Now, when people look back at those days and what was accomplished, they see it as inauthentic, illegitimate.

There's a reason they're not in the Hall of Fame. Many people in the Jewish community thought well of the

Pharisees while they lived. They thought they were upstanding people.

They thought they were a model, but Jesus could see right through it.

He knew they were inauthentic. They were illegitimate. They would not be remembered well.

We're going to look at that more next Sunday. He knew what was really going on. He knew they were phonies.

They were frauds. In verse 27, Jesus compares the Pharisees to whitewashed tombs.

You don't want to be compared to whitewashed tombs. And what is a whitewashed tomb? In the

Old Testament, in Numbers 19 verse 16, Israel was given a ceremonial law to stay away from tombs, because what's in a tomb?

A dead body. If they touched a tomb, they would be considered unclean for seven days.

The way to prevent passerbys from touching the tomb on accident would be to paint it white.

And of course, these tombs that are painted white, they dazzle in the sun. But on the inside of this dazzling white tomb was dead men's bones.

As Jesus at the end of verse 27 says, inside the tomb are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.

I remember when Sean was leading the way in remodeling the Matson building. The first project that Sean did was put new siding on the outside.

And so when people drove by, like, oh, wow, what a beautiful, nice building. The inside was completely gutted. We couldn't use it.

And of course, that came later. Now it looks beautiful. But at that time, the outside was beautiful. The inside was an eyesore.

And as we think about outward appearances, our world values outward appearances.

Think about the people who are most popular. I mean, if you go on YouTube, there's people who have hundreds of millions of views.

And these people are disgusting people. And then you find someone on there who actually has something wise to say, and they might have like 1 ,000 views.

I mean, this is what our world values. Proverbs 11 .22 says this about physical appearance without character.

Solomon wrote, like a gold ring in a pig's snout is a beautiful woman without discretion.

Hmm. We don't put rings on pigs, right? The Apostle Peter writes this specifically to women, but the application is to men also.

And he writes this in 1 Peter. Do not let your adorning be external, the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry or the clothing you wear, but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit which in God's sight is very precious.

Think about it. Everybody's gonna get old. Everybody's gonna have wrinkles if the

Lord gives you long life. But what's beautiful is your character because that stays forever.

Christ is redeeming you day by day in this world. And one day you will be perfect when you enter his presence.

That's what matters. That's what God cares about. God is not impressed by outward appearances, but this is what the

Pharisees were good at. This is what they valued. And Jesus highlights this.

They were hypocrites. They were good at putting on a show in public, but the reality of who they were was wicked.

But James 4 .8 tells us what God requires of his people. He wrote, draw near to God and he will draw near to you.

Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double -minded.

We can get caught in that too. Valuing what's on the outside and neglecting what really matters, the inside.

And what the word of God tells us is cleanse yourself. No longer be double -minded.

No longer be half worldly and half godly. Pursue godliness. Clean the heart.

That's what God tells us. To focus on the external and not to care about the heart is to be like a

Pharisee. But Jesus calls us to be true before him.

Understand that counterfeit religion always receives condemnation from Jesus. And the ninth way how is through showing cleanliness on the outside while only filthiness is on the inside.

Now next Sunday, okay, I originally planned to do point 10 today, but we'd be here for a long time.

As I was looking closer at verses 29 through 39, I was like, okay, there's a lot here.

And I'm gonna give you a little spoiler alert here. The Pharisees thought they were in the line of the good guys from the past.

And Jesus is gonna give them a rude awakening to say, no, you're the bad guys. You're the bad guys in the story.

And there's tons of application here to our modern day. So we are gonna take the time to look at that next

Sunday in verses 29 through 39. But this time, let's bow our heads in prayer. Father in heaven, we thank you for your word.

What would we do without the Bible? It tells us the path to life.

It tells us Jesus Christ, who is life. And we see him,

Lord, blowing up this ugly, false religion. And he shows us a better way.

The way of following you, of loving you with all of our heart, of focusing on what you want us to focus on, of being who you want us to be.

And my prayer, Lord, is that the people of this church would be nothing like the Pharisees. That we would follow you every step of the way.

That we would forsake these pitfalls that are abhorrent in your sight.

So strengthen us to do this, Lord, and apply this to everyone right where they're at through your spirit, in Jesus' name, amen.