Doug McMasters: That's beautiful.
Doug McMasters: Well, I invite you to take your Bible and turn with me over to the Gospel of Matthew.
Doug McMasters: We're going to be in chapter 23, Matthew chapter 23.
Doug McMasters: Wasn't too many weeks ago we were in chapter 21, which is where you might find the triumphal entry of Christ.
Doug McMasters: We've been going as a church through the Gospel of Matthew together.
Doug McMasters: And if you want to listen to the passage about the triumphal entry, you can go to our YouTube channel and you can hear that message.
Doug McMasters: But for this morning, we're going to continue on uh through our study of Matthew.
Doug McMasters: Next week on Resurrection Sunday, we'll spend some special attention on the resurrection of Christ.
Doug McMasters: If you don't have a Bible, then you can turn to page 878 in the Pew Bible in front of you or near you, 878, and just feel free to turn to there.
Doug McMasters: And I just want to give you an invitation.
Doug McMasters: If you don't have a Bible and you would like to have a Bible, please just take one of those pew Bibles with you when you go home.
Doug McMasters: Feel free to do that.
Doug McMasters: Now, if you have a Bible but not a CSB Bible, I can tell you where you can buy one.
Doug McMasters: But if you don't have a Bible at all and would like to have a Bible, please feel free to take that Bible.
Doug McMasters: It's yours.
Doug McMasters: So last week we entered into Matthew chapter 23, and where Jesus begins by warning the crowds that are around him about the dangers of the religious leaders in Israel.
Doug McMasters: And last week we looked at the passage of scripture in chapter 23 from verses 1 through 12.
Doug McMasters: And Jesus highlighted several practices of the religious leaders that he warned the people about.
Doug McMasters: That they were hypocritical by way of being inconsistent with what they said and did.
Doug McMasters: The commands that they gave were not the commands that they followed, but they were the commands they expected other people to follow.
Doug McMasters: That's hypocrisy.
Doug McMasters: He also talked about the heavy loads that they would lay on people, putting all these demands upon others without even lifting a finger, Jesus said, to help them.
Doug McMasters: And then he also talked about their hungering for recognition.
Doug McMasters: They loved the applause of others.
Doug McMasters: They loved the places of prominence.
Doug McMasters: They wanted to be seen by everyone.
Doug McMasters: And so in their dress and in the places of prestige that they chose for themselves or pursued, they wanted others to know just how important they were.
Doug McMasters: All of these were examples demonstrated by them of things that the Lord warns about.
Doug McMasters: And here in our day, we can certainly take this to heart by looking for leaders in churches that are sincere, who try to align their life with what they preach, who are helpful, who are giving up their life in ministry for the betterment and help of others, who are devoted to God's praise and don't care a whit about whatever accolades they might receive, and who live humbly with an eye of service to others.
Doug McMasters: But these are also characteristics of all of us as believers in Christ, that these are things that we need to be as well, because we stand as representatives of our Lord Jesus Christ in this world.
Doug McMasters: And so we too are to be sincere, we too are to be helpful, we too are to be devoted to God's glory, and we too should be filled with hearts of humility and service.
Doug McMasters: This is the last few days of earthly ministry of Jesus.
Doug McMasters: One of the last things that he will talk about on this earth.
Doug McMasters: And it's remarkable to me that here on the cusp of his approaching sufferings and his death, that he reminds us all of the characteristics of himself as the Savior and of those who must necessarily live like him as part of the kingdom.
Doug McMasters: Jesus wants us to have no part with the ways of the world that are troublesome and sinful, those characteristics of pride, of showmanship, of one-upmanship, of profiting off of our own position, and certainly of hypocrisy.
Doug McMasters: And so as we go deeper into Matthew 23, Jesus' words of warning in the verse 12 verses, as he speaks to the crowds, now become statements of woe as he addresses the religious leaders directly.
Doug McMasters: He moves from the focus to the crowds by way of warning, and he now moves to the religious leaders themselves and speaks to them with a series of woes.
Doug McMasters: Now, we're going to ask and answer the question what is a woe?
Doug McMasters: But I want you to notice with me just how significant this is.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verse, several verses, and we'll see this word woe show up a lot.
Doug McMasters: Verse 13, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees.
Doug McMasters: Drop down to verse 15, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees.
Doug McMasters: Verse 16, woe to you, blind guides.
Doug McMasters: Verse 23, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees.
Doug McMasters: Verse 25, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees.
Doug McMasters: Verse 27, woe to you.
Doug McMasters: Again, scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites.
Doug McMasters: And then lastly in verse 29, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.
Doug McMasters: Seven times in this translation, we hear this word woe.
Doug McMasters: Well, what is a woe?
Doug McMasters: It's not a word we might use very often.
Doug McMasters: And if we use the word woe, we say it a different way.
Doug McMasters: Whoa! You know, we're kind of like surprised and shocked.
Doug McMasters: That's not this word.
Doug McMasters: Even though a friend of mine, whenever he wants to use the woe word, he uses this one.
Doug McMasters: And I just laugh every time I see it.
Doug McMasters: But I'm not going to correct this misspelling.
Doug McMasters: He knows what he's trying to say.
Doug McMasters: And I know what he's trying to say.
Doug McMasters: What is this?
Doug McMasters: Well, it's a mixed cry of mournful sorrow with denunciation and condemnation.
Doug McMasters: It's a bewailing of the miserable condition of these religious leaders who have missed it so terribly.
Doug McMasters: And yet, at the same time, it's more than just a bewailing their miserable condition, it's condemning them for putting themselves into that terrible condition.
Doug McMasters: So it's mixed together, pronouncing their fate and yet crying over their just condemnation.
Doug McMasters: The Lord says in Ezekiel 33, as I live, this is the declaration of the Lord God, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked.
Doug McMasters: And here we can see that here.
Doug McMasters: We hear this mournful cry, and yet this condemnation of people who have so determinatively turned their hearts away from God, even though they're religious, the most religious people in society.
Doug McMasters: Tragically, these men are unaware of the judgment that awaits them.
Doug McMasters: They're living a life in a fantasy world of their own making, secure in their own thoughts, that they're living a life of pleasant and future blessedness and heavenly reward.
Doug McMasters: But the reality is far from the case.
Doug McMasters: And Jesus' woes are meant to be an abrupt, perhaps even rude awakening for them.
Doug McMasters: Giving them the recipe of repentance.
Doug McMasters: What are the areas that need correction in your life?
Doug McMasters: Religious leaders, here they are.
Doug McMasters: And if they would only listen to that, their hearts could have been moved the right direction.
Doug McMasters: But instead of this being a recipe of repentance, it becomes an indictment of judgment.
Doug McMasters: Well, we're going to look briefly at each of these woes this week and also the next time we come back to Matthew 23.
Doug McMasters: Next Sunday, we're going to look at an Easter passage, a beautiful passage out of the Psalms that speaks of the resurrection of the Savior.
Doug McMasters: The week after that, we have our missions conference, and so we're going to have some special speakers here.
Doug McMasters: And then in a the week after that, we'll come back to the latter part of this chapter.
Doug McMasters: But we're going to do like we did with the first 12 verses, taking these indictments against these men, these denunciations of their horrible behavior, and seeing what kind of positive encouragement we might receive and how we ought to live our lives, and what kind of focus we should present as representatives of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: There are several positive, contrasting encouragements to be found in these woes.
Doug McMasters: But let's walk through them.
Doug McMasters: We're going to look at the first four this morning.
Doug McMasters: The first woe is found in verse 13.
Doug McMasters: Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, you shut the door of the kingdom in people's faces, for you don't go in, and you don't allow those entering to go in.
Doug McMasters: Now, before we look at this passage, I want you to notice something that I think some of you will ask.
Doug McMasters: There's no verse 14 here, right?
Doug McMasters: You go from verse 13, it jumps directly to verse 15.
Doug McMasters: If you have a New King James Version, for instance, you will see verse 14.
Doug McMasters: Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you devour widows' houses and for a pretense make long prayers.
Doug McMasters: Therefore you'll receive the greater condemnation.
Doug McMasters: The reason why we don't see it in this version and many other versions of the English Bible, and also other versions in other languages, is there are some internal and external reasons why this passage, verse 14, is not included here.
Doug McMasters: Verse 14 is derived from two parallel passages where it does show up without question in Mark 12, 40, and Luke 20 and verse 47.
Doug McMasters: But if you were to read those passages, you would discover that the substance of what's said there is in the context of the warnings to the crowd rather than the woes to the religious leaders.
Doug McMasters: Let me read it.
Doug McMasters: Mark 12.
Doug McMasters: In his teaching, he was saying, that is Jesus, beware the scribes who like to walk around in long robes, like respectful greetings in marketplaces, and chief seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets, who devour widows' houses and for appearance' sake offer long prayers.
Doug McMasters: They will receive the greater condemnation.
Doug McMasters: So you can see it's a statement about them, not to them, in that passage.
Doug McMasters: And again, Luke 20 and verse 45 to 47 says exactly the same thing.
Doug McMasters: So there's some internal reasons here why we would say that this passage in Matthew was added by a scribe at some later point.
Doug McMasters: Additionally, in some of the manuscripts that we have of the Gospel of Matthew, that verse is sometimes placed before verse 13, and sometimes it's placed after verse 13.
Doug McMasters: So those are internal, what we call internal reasons, why we would wonder whether or not that verse itself is placed here.
Doug McMasters: There's also some external reasons, and that is that the manuscripts themselves often don't have this passage until you get to later ones, upwards into the 1200s rather than in the early years.
Doug McMasters: It's a true statement.
Doug McMasters: It's true about these men.
Doug McMasters: It's recorded in Mark, it's recorded in Luke.
Doug McMasters: It's not here, but it's a just condemnation against their behavior.
Doug McMasters: They truly are taking advantage of weak people, and in their weakness, they don't find a reason to help, but a reason to manipulate.
Doug McMasters: What a horrible thing that is.
Doug McMasters: But for now, let's focus on verse 13 and take a look at this.
Doug McMasters: Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.
Doug McMasters: You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people's faces, for you don't go in, and you don't allow those entering to go in.
Doug McMasters: This is what a horrible indictment this is against the Pharisees.
Doug McMasters: These men, the Pharisees, were not part of the priestly elite of society.
Doug McMasters: They were people, however, who held powerful religious influence among the people.
Doug McMasters: They started out as a group of people about 150 years prior to this moment, who were concerned about trends in their society.
Doug McMasters: They were concerned about the Jewish nation becoming more and more like the ruling Hellenistic Greeks who were controlling that part of the world.
Doug McMasters: And they were seeing the move away from the language and the culture and the religion of Israel becoming more Greek in their speech, more Greek in their dress, more Greek in their worship.
Doug McMasters: And they reacted against that move in society, and they did so by trying to become more committed to the language and the dress and the behavior of Jewish people.
Doug McMasters: They developed a system of ritual precision by which they would operate as signs of keeping the larger law, and they would find themselves with all kinds of added ordinances and regulations to give a distance, a physical, cultural, and social distance from anything that looked Greek at all.
Doug McMasters: And so as they scoured scripture, they weren't looking for the heart of what God's word had to say.
Doug McMasters: Rather, they were looking for details by which they might be able to demonstrate their purity and demonstrate their separateness from everything that wasn't essentially Jewish.
Doug McMasters: And as they developed as a group of people called the Pharisees, which may have been derived from a word which means the separated ones, they began to hold sway over society.
Doug McMasters: And Jesus here is speaking with words of condemnation that their whole focus is not in alignment with God's will, and it's having a negative influence upon those that they speak to.
Doug McMasters: He's telling them that they are wrong, dead wrong, in their understanding.
Doug McMasters: Not only do they not enter into the doorway of the kingdom of heaven, they are shutting the door for others so that those people might go in themselves.
Doug McMasters: And so when John the Baptist, for instance, came and preached a statement of repentance to the people to prepare themselves for the Lord who was about to come, these men, instead of listening to John the Baptist, said, What kind of message is that?
Doug McMasters: And they ignored his ministry.
Doug McMasters: And when Jesus stood up and preached a message, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, it's here.
Doug McMasters: Again, they refused because when Jesus began to expand upon the word of God, he talked about an internal change of heart, not forms of religion.
Doug McMasters: And they didn't want to hear that because they could control how they acted religiously, but they knew, like all of us know, that we actually can't change who we are.
Doug McMasters: Only God can do that.
Doug McMasters: And so finding their influence, finding their place in society under threat, they refused John the Baptist.
Doug McMasters: They refused Jesus.
Doug McMasters: And when Jesus began to speak favorably to those that they thought they needed to stay separate from, their disregard of Jesus turned into a determined effort to rid this world of Jesus.
Doug McMasters: So when Jesus began to sit with prostitutes and to sit with people who acted as tax collectors, when Jesus began to embrace the brokenhearted and the diseased, when he began to speak favorably to the Gentiles, they said, wait a second, this guy cannot be the Jewish Messiah because he would be joining our cause and separating the Jewish people from anything that might taint their religious and ethical identity.
Doug McMasters: So they asserted the right to speak authoritatively about God and missed the whole message about God.
Doug McMasters: And they were in actuality shutting themselves out and shutting out their hearers from hearing about the wonderful truth of God's rule coming in Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: This long-anticipated and prophesied Messiah, Jesus himself.
Doug McMasters: And instead of welcoming Jesus, they directed people away from him.
Doug McMasters: They sought their own power and their own prestige and shut the door of heaven.
Doug McMasters: What a tragic thing this is.
Doug McMasters: These men dedicated to the study of scripture and don't even know what it says.
Doug McMasters: These men dedicated to religion, and God says, I hate what you're doing.
Doug McMasters: To feel as though they're inside the sacred place of heaven.
Doug McMasters: And Jesus makes the indictment, you're shutting the door to yourself and others.
Doug McMasters: Just how wrong-headed they must be here.
Doug McMasters: What does this teach us?
Doug McMasters: Well, this teaches us of the temptation to be absolutely deluded in our way of thinking, to be completely contrary to truth, and yet be assured that we own it.
Doug McMasters: It's also teaching us of the importance of aligning ourselves with God's purposes in Christ.
Doug McMasters: And one of the things about our generation is that it doesn't matter what we believe as long as you're sincere.
Doug McMasters: Jesus is bringing that point to a dead stop right here.
Doug McMasters: These men were sincere, they had that in handfuls, but they were wrong.
Doug McMasters: And Jesus bewails and condemns how wrong they were.
Doug McMasters: Paul spoke about his fellow brothers and sisters who were Jewish, and he said, My heart's desire, my prayer to God concerning them is for their salvation.
Doug McMasters: I can testify about them that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.
Doug McMasters: Since they're ignorant to the righteousness of God and attempted to establish their own righteousness, they have not submitted themselves to God's righteousness.
Doug McMasters: For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness for everyone who believes.
Doug McMasters: Because they didn't know how holy God was.
Doug McMasters: They thought they could make themselves presentable enough to God without realizing that those things would only show them their need rather than assure them of their place.
Doug McMasters: And they never fled to the only one who could bring forgiveness of their sins, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: I pray that none of us here this morning might be trying to establish a place in heaven based upon what we do.
Doug McMasters: Because we are as deluded as these men if we think that's the way forward.
Doug McMasters: It is not about cleaning up our act.
Doug McMasters: It's not about turning over a leaf.
Doug McMasters: It's not about presenting ourselves righteous to God.
Doug McMasters: It's not about how do I sign up and become a member of a church?
Doug McMasters: It's not about getting into the water and being baptized.
Doug McMasters: It's not about keeping the Ten Commandments or being better than your neighbor.
Doug McMasters: It's about realizing before a holy God none of us deserve to stand and none of us can.
Doug McMasters: Not a single one of us.
Doug McMasters: And realizing the only hope for forgiveness and the only way we can be seen as righteous in the eyes of God is through the one who suffered for us and the one who obeyed in our place, the Lord Jesus Christ, and to cast ourselves.
Doug McMasters: On him.
Doug McMasters: What is our hope?
Doug McMasters: Only Christ.
Doug McMasters: And if we were to be brought into heaven and asked the question, Why should I let you into my heaven?
Doug McMasters: The only right answer is Jesus and Jesus alone is my Savior, and I'm clinging to Him.
Doug McMasters: Nothing in my hands I bring.
Doug McMasters: Simply to His cross I cling.
Doug McMasters: That's the hope of heaven.
Doug McMasters: And the wonderful thing is, is the scriptures warmly receive us with promises of hope and life, for whoever will believe on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Doug McMasters: Doesn't matter who you are, doesn't matter what you've done.
Doug McMasters: As if we'll hear from Al soon, but Al and I were talking just a few minutes before the service, and he repeated something that he had heard.
Doug McMasters: Every one of us come to a place where all of us need to be before the Lord Jesus.
Doug McMasters: But when we look at this passage, we see that on the positive side for us who are believers in Christ, that we have a responsibility to model our life as signposts for the kingdom of heaven rather than to shut the door of the kingdom of heaven.
Doug McMasters: And it's important that we examine ourselves and ask ourselves is my hand inviting or is my hand shutting people away?
Doug McMasters: Am I one of those ones who's trying to shut down a curious heart or to point the way of a lost soul?
Doug McMasters: In John chapter 3, John the Baptist was confronted by some troubles disciples of his who were concerned that he was being sort of overshadowed by this one who was baptizing Jesus across the river.
Doug McMasters: And upset that their mentor was ministry, was kind of deflating a bit, they spoke to him and said, Rabbi, the one you testified about, the one who was with you across the Jordan, he's baptizing and everybody is going with him.
Doug McMasters: What did John the Baptist say?
Doug McMasters: He said, He said, This you yourselves can testify that I said, I'm not the Messiah, but I've been sent ahead of him.
Doug McMasters: He who has the bride is the groom.
Doug McMasters: But the groom's friend, that's me, who stands by and listens for him.
Doug McMasters: Well, we rejoice greatly at the groom's voice, at the marriage that the groom and the bride have.
Doug McMasters: Our joy is seeing the movement forward of this glorious relationship.
Doug McMasters: It's not about, it's not my marriage day.
Doug McMasters: It's not my day in the sun.
Doug McMasters: It's not my day to be exalted.
Doug McMasters: He said, My joy is complete in people running to the Savior.
Doug McMasters: He said, He must increase, I must decrease.
Doug McMasters: And John the Baptist speaks to us of the right attitude that these religious leaders should have had, pointing the way to Jesus Christ rather than to show off who they were.
Doug McMasters: And we too are to align ourselves with what God desires and for us to be a signpost to the doorway of heaven.
Doug McMasters: Because what we say and what we do has a tremendous influence on the lives of others.
Doug McMasters: They look to us many times for direction.
Doug McMasters: What direction are we sending?
Doug McMasters: What signals are we giving?
Doug McMasters: This from our Savior is teaching us to live as an example of God's message of grace and to be a person who through our life and our voice gives witness to the kingdom of Christ.
Doug McMasters: To be signposts of Him that help people who are in the need of salvation, to show them the suitability of Christ to meet their need, to be the only cure for the disease of disobedience that is destroying their life and bringing them to eternal destruction.
Doug McMasters: Our life ought to be marked by opening doors, not shutting them, pointing the way rather than putting out our hands.
Doug McMasters: What are some of the things that we can do to shut doors?
Doug McMasters: We can live lives of hypocritical disobedience, saying one thing and doing another.
Doug McMasters: We can live lives of pride like these men were doing, and prejudice like these men were doing.
Doug McMasters: The scriptures tell us that all of us as humanity are made in the image of God, that there's not a single one of us that aren't.
Doug McMasters: And that it doesn't matter what the color of our skin is, it doesn't matter what our educational background is, it doesn't matter what place of society we might think we might be in, God doesn't take a stock in any one of those things.
Doug McMasters: He looks at us as those made in his image, in need of a relationship with him through Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: And if we act by way of any pride or prejudice, trying to crowd out any person that doesn't look or act or talk or dress like we do, we're door shutters, not door openers.
Doug McMasters: Paul spoke to the church leader Titus and he said, remind the people to submit to rulers and authorities, to obey, to be ready to do every good work, to slander no one, to avoid fighting, to be kind, always showing gentleness to all people.
Doug McMasters: Why?
Doug McMasters: Because through your kindness, through your gentleness, through your helpfulness, through your truthful speech, through your healing words, you're pointing the way to people that are anything but that.
Doug McMasters: To the hateful, to the proud, to the slanderous.
Doug McMasters: You're pointing the way to a whole different way of life that they deep in their heart know that they would like to be, but can't.
Doug McMasters: Woe number two.
Doug McMasters: Woe number two in verse 15.
Doug McMasters: Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, you travel over land and sea to make one convert.
Doug McMasters: And when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a child as hell as you are.
Doug McMasters: Well, the Pharisees were certainly enthusiastic about what they believed.
Doug McMasters: They advocated this sort of sectarian, authoritarian position of the law, this idea of Judaism, contending that their way was the primary way of living a life of true devotion.
Doug McMasters: They elevated their oral traditions to a place of equality with Scripture, and they tried to press those things upon other people so to bring them into confirmation with those practices and with that identity.
Doug McMasters: But far from doing the work of God, they were influencing people even further away from God.
Doug McMasters: Because they were calling people to take up a life of religious devotion that was dedicated to their interpretation of the law code of Scripture.
Doug McMasters: They would gain their inheritance, adherents, rather.
Doug McMasters: They were making their proselytes, but they were being more destructive in their influence than helpful.
Doug McMasters: And Jesus here says, You're making them twice the child of hell.
Doug McMasters: They were taking people who were separated from God and just moving them even further away.
Doug McMasters: And he uses this image that everybody in Jerusalem would have known, the valley of Hinnom, down in that deep place where dead bodies were thrown, and where garbage was piled, and where fire burnt and smell lifted up.
Doug McMasters: There was nothing pleasant about the place at all, as an image of eternal punishment and destruction.
Doug McMasters: What is our lesson?
Doug McMasters: Well, the lesson for me is to make sure that people become followers of Jesus and are shaped into his likeness rather than into any likeness of myself.
Doug McMasters: Which means that I need to squelch any sense of desire for my personal preferences to hold sway over people's consciences rather than the word of God.
Doug McMasters: So I must be careful about what I say about matters because what I say matters.
Doug McMasters: And we too must be careful about what we say about matters because what we say matters.
Doug McMasters: That matters so much that our words have eternal consequences in the lives of others.
Doug McMasters: And the Lord here is saying to these people that their purpose in life is doing nothing but ruining others, not just for the way they live, but for their eternity.
Doug McMasters: They've taken up their perspective theological projects and their hobby horses and bringing people not only to error but into judgment.
Doug McMasters: What was me pursue?
Doug McMasters: Christ, pointing the way to him, making sure that people are following him.
Doug McMasters: Paul told the Corinthians, he said, whenever someone says among you says, Well, I'm of Paul, or I'm I belong to Apollos, he said, Aren't you just talking like men?
Doug McMasters: Like unconverted people?
Doug McMasters: Christians don't do that.
Doug McMasters: He said, A person should think of us this way, as servants of Christ, managers of the mysteries of God, and it's required of these managers to be faithful to that.
Doug McMasters: Servants of Christ.
Doug McMasters: Sadly, Paul isn't hurt as well in our day as he should be.
Doug McMasters: Because there's a lot of people with their names all over their ministries and their name on our checks.
Doug McMasters: Because what they want is the benefit of gathering to people, not the pleasure and privilege of pointing people to Jesus.
Doug McMasters: Jerry Vine said this.
Doug McMasters: He said, Many people in America Day are all about building crowds, but they're not willing to pay the price to build God's church.
Doug McMasters: And so we have these secular standards of success by which we measure ourselves.
Doug McMasters: How big is our budget?
Doug McMasters: What is the size of our congregation?
Doug McMasters: What is the appearance of our church building?
Doug McMasters: What kind of income do we have?
Doug McMasters: Who attends the church?
Doug McMasters: What part of society are they from?
Doug McMasters: How many programs do we have?
Doug McMasters: And the question isn't into the basic thing: is Jesus front and center in your church?
Doug McMasters: Do people sing gladly about him?
Doug McMasters: Do they seek to walk humbly before him?
Doug McMasters: Do they encourage others to follow him and to know him?
Doug McMasters: That's the mark of a true, faithful gospel church, with Christ at the center of it all, with Christ over it all, with people serving through the energy of he who is the head of the church.
Doug McMasters: It's not about those things.
Doug McMasters: Here's the right focus, Paul again.
Doug McMasters: Who is Apollos?
Doug McMasters: Who is Paul?
Doug McMasters: You say you follow Apollos, you say you follow Paul.
Doug McMasters: You're prideful in your arrogance and your sectarian divisions among each other about who's your favorite philosopher and teacher.
Doug McMasters: Who are these guys anyway?
Doug McMasters: They're servants through whom you believed.
Doug McMasters: And each has had a role the Lord has given.
Doug McMasters: Paul said, I planted, Apollos watered.
Doug McMasters: God gave the increase.
Doug McMasters: It wasn't about the cleverness of Paul.
Doug McMasters: It wasn't about the ingenuity of Apollos.
Doug McMasters: It wasn't about the eloquence of Peter.
Doug McMasters: It wasn't about any of those things.
Doug McMasters: It's about God who gave the increase.
Doug McMasters: So then neither the one who plants nor the water is anything, but only God who gives the growth.
Doug McMasters: Now, he who plants, he who waters, well, they'll receive the reward according to their labor.
Doug McMasters: But remember, we're God's co-workers, and you are God's field.
Doug McMasters: And you are God's building.
Doug McMasters: And according to God's grace, we serve.
Doug McMasters: That foundation is Jesus Christ in Him alone.
Doug McMasters: And this is where Jesus brings this indictment.
Doug McMasters: They didn't have the foundation of God's word and God's kingdom and the Messiah who had arrived.
Doug McMasters: Their foundation was their following, their prestige, their influence, their power.
Doug McMasters: What a tragic, tragic, tragic situation.
Doug McMasters: Woes three and four are connected.
Doug McMasters: We'll move through these a little more quickly.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verse 16.
Doug McMasters: Woe to you, blind guides, who say, whoever takes an oath by the temple, it means nothing.
Doug McMasters: But whoever takes an oath by the gold of the temple is bound by his oath.
Doug McMasters: Blind fools.
Doug McMasters: Which is greater, the gold or the temple that sanctifies the gold.
Doug McMasters: Also, whoever takes an oath by the altar, it means nothing, but whoever takes an oath by the gift that's on the altar is bound by that oath.
Doug McMasters: Blind people, what is greater?
Doug McMasters: The gift or the altar that sanctifies a gift?
Doug McMasters: What is Jesus saying here?
Doug McMasters: They're religious gameplaying is what they're doing.
Doug McMasters: They're making value judgments about what oaths a person ought to be kept, ought to keep or not keep, based upon what they called upon when they gave that oath or promise.
Doug McMasters: The temple was less than the gold in the temple, and the altar was less than the gift of the altar, and you didn't have to keep your promise if you made a promise by the temple, but you had better keep your promise if you made it by the gold of the temple.
Doug McMasters: And Jesus is like, away with this foolishness.
Doug McMasters: What is this?
Doug McMasters: You can't play little games with God and think you're doing the right thing.
Doug McMasters: You're going beyond what is written.
Doug McMasters: This elaborate system of that you've contrived in your own head.
Doug McMasters: You blind people.
Doug McMasters: Jesus cuts through this twisted thinking.
Doug McMasters: What is he telling us here?
Doug McMasters: Well, one thing he's telling us is this exactly what James said when he quoted Jesus from an earlier place in Matthew.
Doug McMasters: James 5, above all, brothers and sisters, don't swear an oath, either by heaven or by earth, or with any other oath.
Doug McMasters: But let your yes be yes and your no be no.
Doug McMasters: You don't have to make an oath.
Doug McMasters: The lesson is this that a person who is in the kingdom of heaven ought to live a life of such integrity that their word is no different than a written contract that's signed.
Doug McMasters: That we should be truthful of heart, full of integrity of character, absolutely believable because we're dependable people.
Doug McMasters: Let our yes be yes and our no-no.
Doug McMasters: That's all you need to be.
Doug McMasters: You don't need to find the special spot in the temple to make a promise over.
Doug McMasters: Or make sure you got the right spot on the altar to make your promise.
Doug McMasters: No, just keep your word.
Doug McMasters: Just do what you say you will do.
Doug McMasters: Then woe number four.
Doug McMasters: Twenty and twenty four.
Doug McMasters: Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.
Doug McMasters: You pay a tenth of mint, dill, and cumin, and yet you have neglected the more important matters of the law, justice, mercy, and faithfulness.
Doug McMasters: These things you should have done without neglecting the others.
Doug McMasters: Blind guides, you strain out a gnat and gulp down a camel.
Doug McMasters: The scriptures there in the old covenant talked about them giving a proportion of what they had and what they had gained in return to the Lord for the maintenance of the worship of God among the people of Israel.
Doug McMasters: And as an indication that their lives were responsible stewards of all that God had given them.
Doug McMasters: He's saying, Yeah, do that.
Doug McMasters: But you've brought this down to such nitty-gritty granular details that you're overlooking the obvious things.
Doug McMasters: You're looking down at your soup bowl and you're you're pouring the broth through a strainer in order to get a gnat out of there, and yet you're like, no, knocking a camel down every time you drink another spoonful.
Doug McMasters: He said, How can this be?
Doug McMasters: How can you be so scrupulous in your attention to ceremonial details and not understand how important matters like justice and mercy and faith are?
Doug McMasters: To bring right where there's wrongs, to bring mercy where there is wrong, to bring faithfulness where there is nothing but apostasy.
Doug McMasters: He says, Don't you see how important those things are?
Doug McMasters: Micah chapter six.
Doug McMasters: Mankind, he's told you what is good, what it is the Lord requires of you to act justly, to love faithfulness, to walk humbly with your God.
Doug McMasters: These men were attending to the minutiae of legal details, straining out the smallest little bug, and yet in one swallow putting down a camel.
Doug McMasters: The gnat and the camel were both indicated in the Old Testament as unclean animals.
Doug McMasters: They were stepping all over and neglecting the true heavyweight issues of God's word by having this burdensome preoccupation with the smallest little details.
Doug McMasters: And they were getting caught up in these legalistic demands and expectations and not seeing the big picture.
Doug McMasters: So, as a body of Christ here, it's important that we understand what is essential to life in Christ, what is primary in God's word, those things that are necessary for life and godliness.
Doug McMasters: And to realize that there are certain things that are attendant to the Christian life that are issues of conscience, and that some of those issues even get down to the point of personal preference, depending on our backgrounds, our age, our experiences.
Doug McMasters: And we might have a discussion gladly about whether or not we like the organ, or whether or not we like the piano, or whether we'd like or not have a drum set up here, or someone playing the violin, or whatever.
Doug McMasters: But how dare we make any kind of comment about any of those things in a way that would destroy the life of someone Christ died for simply because we'd rather.
Doug McMasters: Have one instrument over another or something along those lines.
Doug McMasters: Here the Lord is telling us lift up your eyes and see the bigger picture.
Doug McMasters: Vie with a wider scope what God is giving his emphasis to in all that he has said.
Doug McMasters: And Jesus gives us the biggest hints.
Doug McMasters: Let me tell you what those are.
Doug McMasters: They are justice and mercy and faithfulness.
Doug McMasters: Give yourself to those things.
Doug McMasters: Make those your priorities.
Doug McMasters: Let the rest fall in line.
Doug McMasters: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind, and love your neighbors yourself, Jesus said just a few verses before this.
Doug McMasters: And all the other things fall under those two.
Doug McMasters: As we come to the end of this message, in the middle of this hard, hard, hard passage, we see some things that are helpful and encouraging, meant to be engendered in our life as believers.
Doug McMasters: These are lessons I've had to learn the hard way in my early walk as a believer, giving emphasis to things that were of no account in God's eyes, calling people to do things that God would never tell them to do.
Doug McMasters: And the rush of anguish and humility that it brought in my shame when I realized what I was doing as a young believer.
Doug McMasters: I pray you'd never have to experience.
Doug McMasters: Or no, and you don't.
Doug McMasters: Or those who realize the priorities of the kingdom of heaven and where your own particular interests lie with respect to those things.
Doug McMasters: As we come to the close of this, let's remember that in Jesus' stern warnings against men who utterly disregarded these things, that we're under the sound of the same word, not so that we can point a finger at them, but so that we might learn a lesson for ourselves, right?
Doug McMasters: Let's pray.
Doug McMasters: Father, thank you for this passage.
Doug McMasters: Thank you for helping us see the heart of our Savior, not just in his warnings, but in his cry of woe against things that dishonor you.
Doug McMasters: That what he is all about is justice and mercy and faith and righteousness and love.
Doug McMasters: That he has come.
Doug McMasters: And we, as we read earlier, we will say, The Lord our righteousness.
Doug McMasters: Help us to be, Father, I pray, careful people.
Doug McMasters: Prayerful that you would protect us from being obsessed with outward signs of religiosity that do nothing more than mask a proud, arrogant, hateful, malicious heart.
Doug McMasters: Father, we pray that we would truly love the Lord with sincerity and love others fervently.
Doug McMasters: We pray that we might be indicators of all that we meet, the ones that are in our homes, the ones that are in our neighborhoods, the ones that we work alongside of, the ones that we interact on social media with, the ones that we drive past or are driven by, that we would give them the signpost of Jesus.
Doug McMasters: That we'd open the door for them to enter and not shut it out.
Doug McMasters: That we would be people of integrity from our heart.
Doug McMasters: Lord, that we would understand just those things that are the highest priority to you and they become our high priorities also.
Doug McMasters: Hear our prayer, Father.
Doug McMasters: We can do this only by the power of your spirit as you work with the word to mold and change and transform our very being.
Doug McMasters: And Lord, I pray that if there's any here this morning who doesn't know the Lord Jesus as their Savior, that they would not walk away from here thinking they can establish their own righteousness and be accepted by you, or think that by their sincerity that it gives them a pass, no matter what they believe.
Doug McMasters: May them realize that their only hope is to come to Jesus, that there's no other name given among men under heaven whereby we must be saved.
Doug McMasters: Lord, show them yourself and show them the reception and life and forgiveness that comes in Christ.
Doug McMasters: And may they repent of all those things that they trusted and cling only to Him.
Doug McMasters: And we pray this in Christ's name.
Doug McMasters: Amen.