Noah Graves: And so if you were here last week, we got to kick off our summer sermon series called Summer in the Scriptures.
Noah Graves: So we're going to be spending a whole summer looking at different passages in the Bible and learning from different scriptures.
Noah Graves: And so another thing that happens to be going on this summer is the Formula One World Championship is in full swing right now.
Noah Graves: And if you don't know what Formula One is, it is the highest level of motor racing.
Noah Graves: And so they travel all across the globe, uh race in different countries, different cities.
Noah Graves: They have the best drivers, best cars.
Noah Graves: It's the top class racing division.
Noah Graves: And of course, the most famous team is Ferrari.
Noah Graves: I think all of us know Ferrari.
Noah Graves: We've seen the fast red sports car in the movies, we've seen them pulled over on the side of the highway, and they're everybody's favorite team.
Noah Graves: And for Formula One, they have the most world championships, the most race wins, and they're just the most iconic team.
Noah Graves: And for them, in the 2010s, it was just a big drought for them.
Noah Graves: Other teams like Red Bull and Mercedes were dominating, they were getting all the wins, all the world championships.
Noah Graves: And then it came to 2019 where Ferrari brought in the best young driver named Charles Declare.
Noah Graves: He was a Monaco-born boy, and so he was just ready for the scene.
Noah Graves: So they finally had the driver, and then in 2022, they had the fastest car on the grid.
Noah Graves: So there it was.
Noah Graves: 2022, fastest car, one of the fastest drivers, six races in, they're in the lead.
Noah Graves: They have this huge lead over all the other teams, and it looks like it's finally gonna be Ferrari's year.
Noah Graves: They're gonna be back on top and they're gonna get the world championship.
Noah Graves: And so in this race, in the sixth race of the year in Spain, Charles Declare is out there, he's in the lead for Ferrari.
Noah Graves: It's looking like they're gonna get another win and take another step towards winning the championship.
Noah Graves: But then, about 20 or 30 laps into the race, they cut to Charles Leclerc, and he's out there driving.
Noah Graves: He he notices that his screen on his steering wheel just goes black.
Noah Graves: And then he says on the radio, like, oh no, oh no, what just happened?
Noah Graves: And so his team radio comes back to him and they say, Retire the car, retire the car.
Noah Graves: We had a mechanical failure.
Noah Graves: So there he was, pulled to the side, out of the race, done.
Noah Graves: So that was the first domino for Ferrari that fell in the wrong direction.
Noah Graves: After that, they had multiple other races where their engine just died in the middle of the race and they went on to lose that year.
Noah Graves: So for Ferrari in that year, on the outside, everything looked good.
Noah Graves: They finally had that fast red car again, they had one of the best drivers, they were in the lead.
Noah Graves: But on the inside, not so much.
Noah Graves: On the inside, it was a different story.
Noah Graves: They had an engine that just couldn't make it through a whole race without breaking down.
Noah Graves: And so the reason I share that story this morning is that in our spiritual lives, it's possible for us to have something very similar happen where on the outside everything can look good, everything can look great, but then on the inside, like Ferrari that year, we can have a faulty spiritual engine that, if we're not careful, might break down in the middle of our spiritual race.
Noah Graves: So today, as we come to Matthew chapter 23, verses 25 to 26, Jesus is going to be addressing exactly this issue.
Noah Graves: And so starting in verse 25, Jesus says this 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.
Noah Graves: You blind Pharisee.
Noah Graves: First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean.
Noah Graves: So it probably helps to get a little bit of context here, because if you're not familiar with it, you might be wondering what's going on here.
Noah Graves: Did the Pharisees just have bad dishwashers?
Noah Graves: What's going on with these cups and plates that are dirty?
Noah Graves: And so, if you're not familiar with the context here, Matthew 23, Jesus is addressing these groups of people called the Pharisees.
Noah Graves: And so the Pharisees were the spiritual elites of the day.
Noah Graves: They knew all the scriptures, they were the hotshots, everybody looked up to them, but they had this problem.
Noah Graves: They had this spiritual issue, this spiritual pride going on inside.
Noah Graves: One of Jesus' most well-known parables is the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, in that two people go into this temple, one a Pharisee and one a tax collector.
Noah Graves: And this tax collector was this sinner, and the Pharisee looks at him and thinks, oh, thank you, thank you, God, that I'm not like that tax collector.
Noah Graves: Thank you, I'm not like him with all his sin.
Noah Graves: Thank you, I'm not like that.
Noah Graves: Pharisees were blind.
Noah Graves: They were blind to their sin, to their pride, and ultimately to the dirty cups that they had.
Noah Graves: So the temptation is the same for us today.
Noah Graves: To have a dirty cup.
Noah Graves: And I think a lot of us might think, well, okay, that's not me.
Noah Graves: I'm not that far off the deep end like that Pharisee.
Noah Graves: I've never come into church and looked down and judged people that harshly like that Pharisee.
Noah Graves: And while that may be true, I think that probably is true for most of us here that we're not quite like these Pharisees exactly.
Noah Graves: But is it possible that in some little ways and subtle ways that each of us have a little bit of a Pharisee creeping out ourselves?
Noah Graves: Or maybe even we too have been slightly blinded to things like the Pharisees.
Noah Graves: I know for me for college I went to Liberty University down in Virginia, and my freshman year, I got this electric longboard, and it was my mode of transportation all across campus, and it would just get me to class on time, get me everywhere.
Noah Graves: It was a ton of fun, fly around campus.
Noah Graves: And my junior year, I came back and it was about one week in, and I was getting onto my longboard to go around this route that I had done a million times, and so I get out and I go and I'm going through this turn, and I just come through and I turn to the side and I look and I just see this car coming at me full speed.
Noah Graves: And I just I can't I can't help.
Noah Graves: I can't I can't stop.
Noah Graves: And so the car nails me, I go flying into the windshield, it shatters, I go soaring through the air, land on the ground, and just all these people come rushing towards me, checking on me.
Noah Graves: Before I know it, I'm in this ambulance, rushing to the hospital, and it was terrifying.
Noah Graves: And then thankfully, God protected me, and all the exams, the x-rays, everything came back clean, no broken bones, and it was truly a miracle that I came out okay.
Noah Graves: But then, two days later, I checked my calendar and I saw that I had a preseason intramural football game.
Noah Graves: And so, like any responsible college student, I decided I'm good to go.
Noah Graves: So I suited up, went out for the preseason game two days after being hit by a car, and I was our team's quarterback, and you know, the first few plays went pretty well, threw a couple passes, made some completions, was feeling feeling okay.
Noah Graves: And I just remember there was this one play where I drop back into the pocket, I don't really see anybody open.
Noah Graves: So then I start to see these defenders are running at me, and so I think, oh no, I have to turn, I have to scramble, I have to run away.
Noah Graves: So I spin and then I turn to run full speed to the left away from these defenders.
Noah Graves: I just remember when I took that first step, I just remember I felt all this pain shooting up inside my entire body, and I just run straight out of bounds, toss the football to the ref and just ride the rest of the game out on the bench and learned my lesson there.
Noah Graves: And the problem with me in that story was that I was only looking on the outside.
Noah Graves: I saw, you know, x-rays were clean, no broken bones, no stitches.
Noah Graves: I thought I was I was fine.
Noah Graves: But then when the rubber met the road, I realized on the inside things were not so fine.
Noah Graves: I was completely blind to what was really going on inside of my body.
Noah Graves: Is it possible that maybe maybe you've had that same blindness in your spiritual life?
Noah Graves: Maybe you look at the outside and everybody, all the exams, all the reports, they they check off, look good.
Noah Graves: But is it possible there might be some not so good stuff deep down inside the cup of your spiritual heart?
Noah Graves: In Psalm 139, King David writes, Search me, O God, and know my heart.
Noah Graves: Try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.
Noah Graves: God is the only one who truly sees the inside of our cup.
Noah Graves: Others don't.
Noah Graves: We can hide it, we can dust it off.
Noah Graves: Even we can be blind to it sometimes, but God, God truly sees the inside of our cups.
Noah Graves: So let me ask you this morning.
Noah Graves: Would you like to allow the spirit to search the inside of your cup this morning?
Noah Graves: Like David, are you willing to say, search me, O God, and know my heart?
Noah Graves: Is the Spirit searching you and bringing anything to light to you this morning?
Noah Graves: Maybe for you it's religion.
Noah Graves: Go to church every Sunday, read my Bible every day, go to small groups, check off all the boxes, yet inside maybe there's this spiritual pride.
Noah Graves: Like that Pharisee, maybe you look at other people and think, you don't go to church every Sunday?
Noah Graves: You don't read your Bible every day.
Noah Graves: Or maybe there's certain sins.
Noah Graves: Hey, I don't do these sins.
Noah Graves: I don't do these big sins.
Noah Graves: I don't do anything that big, that bad.
Noah Graves: Yet maybe inside there's quite a few sins in there that aren't as big or as well.
Noah Graves: Or maybe it's some kind of phony love where on the outside we we appear loving, we we we say all the right things, we we we do all the right things, yet on the inside there isn't that true, genuine love for the other person.
Noah Graves: It's bitterness, hard-heartedness, and not real.
Noah Graves: Or maybe for you, it's just some way that the outside of your cup looks clean, but the inside has some dirt in it.
Noah Graves: So the question we have to ask is what do we do when we see that the inside of our cup is dirty?
Noah Graves: Because if we're honest, we all have that problem.
Noah Graves: If we're honest, we all have some kind of problem with the inside of our cup.
Noah Graves: And so too did the author of Psalm 139, David himself.
Noah Graves: And so I'd like us to look at a time in his life where he had an outside of his cup that looked clean, but the inside not so clean.
Noah Graves: So here we're gonna be looking at 2 Samuel chapter 11.
Noah Graves: At this point, David is the king over all of God's people.
Noah Graves: He was the shepherd boy that wrote all those psalms that we love.
Noah Graves: He was the one who knocked down Goliath, and this is what happens next in his life after years of following God.
Noah Graves: Verse 1.
Noah Graves: In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab and his servants with him, and all Israel, and they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah.
Noah Graves: But David remained at Jerusalem.
Noah Graves: It happened late one afternoon when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful, and David sent and inquired about the woman, and one said, Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?
Noah Graves: So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him and lay with her, and he lay with her.
Noah Graves: Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness.
Noah Graves: Then she returned to her house, and the woman conceived, and sent and told David, I am pregnant.
Noah Graves: This is quite a low point in David's life here.
Noah Graves: David's supposed to be king.
Noah Graves: He's supposed to be king that leads all of God's people in truth and righteousness.
Noah Graves: He's supposed to be the shepherd boy that we all love.
Noah Graves: All those Psalms, the Lord is my shepherd, to taste and see that the Lord is good.
Noah Graves: Same guy.
Noah Graves: He wrote all that before this.
Noah Graves: And yet, what is he doing?
Noah Graves: He's taking another man's wife, he's getting her pregnant.
Noah Graves: David.
Noah Graves: And the truth is, David should have stopped here.
Noah Graves: As soon as he heard the news that Bathsheba was pregnant, he should have seen what he did, knew that it was wrong, turned back to God in repentance.
Noah Graves: But he doesn't.
Noah Graves: What does he do next?
Noah Graves: Many of us know the story.
Noah Graves: He hears the news, he gets scared.
Noah Graves: He realizes that his reputation of being God's king is about to be attacked because of the sin that he committed.
Noah Graves: The outside of his cup is about to be revealed.
Noah Graves: And so what does he do?
Noah Graves: He decides to cover it up.
Noah Graves: He decides to clean off the outside of his cup.
Noah Graves: He says that he wants to have Uriah sent, sent home, send Uriah home so that it can look like this is Uriah's child and not mine.
Noah Graves: But Uriah refuses, and David decides he needs to finish things off.
Noah Graves: So he sends Uriah out to the front lines of battle where he knows Uriah will die.
Noah Graves: There, everything will be cleaned up, and his sin won't come to the light, and his reputation will stay the same.
Noah Graves: David is cleaning the outside of his cup and leaving the inside filthy.
Noah Graves: What is it Jesus said in Matthew 23?
Noah Graves: For you clean the outside of the cup and the pleat, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.
Noah Graves: Here the inside of David's cup is filthy.
Noah Graves: It's filled with lust, with sinful desires, yet he cleans the outside instead.
Noah Graves: Here we see that even the man after God's own heart deep down had a little bit of a Pharisee living in him, too.
Noah Graves: Even David.
Noah Graves: A seasoned David.
Noah Graves: This isn't a 15-year-old David right after Goliath.
Noah Graves: No, this is David after years and years and years of following God and being God's king.
Noah Graves: Even he can fail so horribly.
Noah Graves: That in some way, like David, you've cleaned the outside of the cup, yet the inside.
Noah Graves: Not so clean.
Noah Graves: So I think we have to come back to the question from earlier of what do we do when we see the inside of our cup is dirty?
Noah Graves: What do we do?
Noah Graves: A few years ago, Timothy Chalome and Steve Carell made this movie about a true story about this kid named Nick Schiff and his father, David Schaff.
Noah Graves: And in this story, we see that Nick grew up close to his father.
Noah Graves: He loved him dearly, and they just had this tight relationship every step of the way.
Noah Graves: And it came for Nick to go off to college.
Noah Graves: He graduated high school, it was time to go off to college, and he developed this bad drug addiction.
Noah Graves: He just spiraled farther and farther away from the boy that he once was.
Noah Graves: And it just comes to this one point in his life where he just falls the farthest he ever had.
Noah Graves: He moved across the country, he was making all these horrible decisions, left his family, and it comes to this one night where his friend is taken away in an ambulance.
Noah Graves: He sees all that he has done.
Noah Graves: And out in the middle of the road, he has no other choice but to call his father.
Noah Graves: He calls his father, his father picks up, and he lays it all out there.
Noah Graves: He says, Ted, I know I did wrong.
Noah Graves: I know, I know I screwed up.
Noah Graves: And I want to come home.
Noah Graves: You're the one that's going to be able to help me get better.
Noah Graves: I want to come home.
Noah Graves: Nick poured out his heart.
Noah Graves: He poured out everything to his father that night.
Noah Graves: And for David and his life, he reaches this exact same place.
Noah Graves: He's confronted by this prophet named Nathan.
Noah Graves: His sin is brought to light, and he sees what he's done.
Noah Graves: He sees the filth of the inside of his cup.
Noah Graves: He sees his sin, and he sees the broken man that he is.
Noah Graves: And he brings it and he pours it out before God in Psalm 51, where he writes, Have mercy on me, O God.
Noah Graves: According to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.
Noah Graves: Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
Noah Graves: In Psalm 51, David finally sees what he was so blind to.
Noah Graves: Finally sees the problem with the inside of his cup.
Noah Graves: And he knows that he can't clean it.
Noah Graves: He knows that he can't clean it.
Noah Graves: He tried to dust off the outside and he realized that wasn't enough.
Noah Graves: He could not clean the inside of his cup.
Noah Graves: That's why he cries out, Have mercy on me, O God.
Noah Graves: Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.
Noah Graves: David is calling out to his God here to clean the cup that he had made so dirty.
Noah Graves: So let me ask you again, is the Spirit opening your eyes to your cup this morning?
Noah Graves: Do you see that, like David, you can't clean your cup yourself?
Noah Graves: Perhaps you've tried and you've realized it just keeps getting dirtier and dirtier.
Noah Graves: The truth is, Jesus didn't come for those with a spotless cup.
Noah Graves: Jesus didn't come for those who can clean up their set their cup themselves and come to him.
Noah Graves: No.
Noah Graves: In Luke 5, Jesus said, Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick, I have come not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
Noah Graves: Jesus came for those with a dirty cup.
Noah Graves: Jesus came for those who look deep down inside their hearts and see nothing but a broken person filled with brokenness.
Noah Graves: That's who Jesus came for.
Noah Graves: Stop trying to clean your cup yourself.
Noah Graves: See what David did, how he poured it out to his God and he called out to him for mercy and do the same.
Noah Graves: Stop trying to do it all yourself and come to God.
Noah Graves: Pour out your heart before him.
Noah Graves: Jesus Himself is inviting you this morning.
Noah Graves: He is telling you that he has come not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.
Noah Graves: Say yes to that invitation.
Noah Graves: That you are a sinner and you want to come to Jesus, the physician, the only one who can make you well and make your heart clean.
Noah Graves: But so often we find ourselves coming back to this place, don't we?
Noah Graves: Or maybe it feels like we we take two steps forward in our spiritual race, and then that spiritual engine just breaks down again.
Noah Graves: And sometimes maybe it feels like we just we can't get past something.
Noah Graves: You know, and that same story with Nick Sheff, that's exactly what it was for him.
Noah Graves: He would be seeming to be making all this progress, and then he just kept going back.
Noah Graves: Two steps forward, two steps back, and he just couldn't get to where he wanted to be.
Noah Graves: I think that's how a lot of us feel in our spiritual lives so often.
Noah Graves: We just can't seem to get that true lasting change.
Noah Graves: A cup that is cleaned and stays clean.
Noah Graves: So, how can we get that lasting change that is true and real and lasts longer than just a day or two?
Noah Graves: Or we need to look at someone else other than.
Noah Graves: David, whose reputation was once at threat, like David.
Noah Graves: For David, his true sinful reputation was coming to light, and everyone would see him for who he was.
Noah Graves: But this other person never did anything wrong.
Noah Graves: His cup on the inside and out was spotless.
Noah Graves: Yet his reputation was being attacked by others.
Noah Graves: And this person is Jesus in Matthew 27.
Noah Graves: Jesus had lived a perfect, sinless life.
Noah Graves: He's arrested unjustly.
Noah Graves: He's put on this trial where people are hurling these false accusations against him.
Noah Graves: He's accused of being this blasphemer, even though he's not, he's the true Messiah.
Noah Graves: And this is what we read next in Matthew 27, 11 to 14.
Noah Graves: Now Jesus stood before the governor, and the governor asked him, Are you the king of the Jews?
Noah Graves: Jesus said, You have said so.
Noah Graves: But when he was accused by the chief priests and elders, he gave no answer.
Noah Graves: Then Pilate said to him, Do you not hear how many things they testify against you?
Noah Graves: But he gave him no answer.
Noah Graves: Not even to a single charge.
Noah Graves: Jesus is being accused of having a dirty cup here.
Noah Graves: Do you not hear how many things they testify against you?
Noah Graves: And yet, what is Jesus' response to being accused of having a dirty cup?
Noah Graves: But he gave him no answer.
Noah Graves: Jesus is silent when his reputation and his cup is being attacked.
Noah Graves: I think the question we're all asking is why?
Noah Graves: Why doesn't Jesus speak up?
Noah Graves: Jesus knows that he's never done anything wrong.
Noah Graves: He knows that he is sinless and spotless.
Noah Graves: Why does he not speak up and tell people who he really is?
Noah Graves: Why doesn't he stick up for himself and say, no, I'm not a blasphemer?
Noah Graves: Why doesn't Jesus say something here?
Noah Graves: It's because Jesus wasn't standing there for his cup.
Noah Graves: Jesus wasn't being accused for his cup.
Noah Graves: He was standing there for David's cup.
Noah Graves: He was standing there being accused for David's cup.
Noah Graves: And the truth is, he was also standing there and being accused for your cup as well.
Noah Graves: Jesus knew how dirty David's cup was, and Jesus knew how dirty all of our cups were.
Noah Graves: And Jesus came down here to live a spotless life and to have a perfectly clean cup.
Noah Graves: And to give that up for us.
Noah Graves: To be accused of having a dirty cup and to take the punishment for a dirty cup in full on the cross.
Noah Graves: That is what Jesus came to do.
Noah Graves: Lift your eyes up from your cup.
Noah Graves: Stop trying to clean it yourself.
Noah Graves: Stop looking at how you keep stumbling and falling back in the same old thing over and over again and lift your eyes up at something much, much better and see the perfect spotless cup that Jesus had and how he died on a cross.
Noah Graves: And if you have trusted in Jesus Christ as your King, your Messiah, your Savior, and believed in your heart that God raised him from the dead, that perfect spotless cup Jesus had on the cross is now your cup.
Noah Graves: And that cup is now your new identity.
Noah Graves: You don't need to look at your old filthy, dirty inside of your cup.
Noah Graves: You can now look at a much more pleasing cup.
Noah Graves: That is the cup of Jesus Christ.
Noah Graves: And it's from that place, it's from that cup, that you can live a holy, clean life that honors and pleases the Lord in a way that lasts, that doesn't break down after 15 laps of our spiritual life, but lasts on and on and on.
Noah Graves: That is what Jesus came to do, to give us his cup and to give us new life.
Noah Graves: I have come to give them life to the full, abundant life.
Noah Graves: That is what Jesus came to do.
Noah Graves: Look to the cross, see what he did, and live in that new freedom, in that new identity.
Noah Graves: So as we close this morning, I'd like to invite the worship team up for one more song.
Noah Graves: And as we close, I'd like to look at one more part of Matthew 23, and may seem like somewhat of an odd verse to close on, and it's verse 26, where Jesus just simply says, You blind Pharisee.
Noah Graves: You blind Pharisee.
Noah Graves: The problem with the Pharisees in Matthew 23 was that they were blind.
Noah Graves: They were blind to their own pride, they were blind to their sin.
Noah Graves: But ultimately, the Pharisees were blind to Jesus, the one standing right in front of them.
Noah Graves: And the temptation is the same for us.
Noah Graves: To allow our eyes to be blinded in some way and to not see Jesus right in front of us.
Noah Graves: So I want to encourage you this morning to lift your eyes up and to see Jesus on the cross.
Noah Graves: See him hanging up there for your dirty cup.
Noah Graves: See the love that your God has for you.
Noah Graves: How deeply the Father loves you, that he would send his own precious son to save you, to take the full punishment for your sins.
Noah Graves: And live in that freedom.
Noah Graves: Live in that new life.
Noah Graves: See the one who died for your dirty cup to give you his spotless cup.
Noah Graves: Would you pray with me?
Noah Graves: Father, we come before you this morning and we see our cups, Father.
Noah Graves: We know that we can't clean them on our own.
Noah Graves: We we need you.
Noah Graves: Like David, Father, we all cry out, have mercy on us.
Noah Graves: Clean our hearts.
Noah Graves: So, Lord, this morning, as we come to worship you, I pray that all of our hearts may be open to the glory of your Son on the cross.
Noah Graves: Fix our eyes on you this morning.
Noah Graves: I pray that we may all bring our hearts to you and worship you together as the body of Christ.
Noah Graves: Lord, we thank you, we love you.
Noah Graves: We come to worship you this morning.
Noah Graves: Amen.