I wanted to begin our talk this morning about a… I just wanted to begin with a recent technological advancement that I find both really cool and also deeply disturbing. There’s a recent phenomenon, something called deep fakes. Have you heard of this before? Deep fakes. Wikipedia describes it this way. Deep fakes are the manipulation of facial appearances through machine learning and artificial intelligence. Basically, it’s artificially generated video or image of someone saying something or doing something, but it’s not actually them. It’s creepy. I found a video that I want to show you. It’s like 30 seconds. I’m going to read the caption as it’s going. It says, as you probably know, this is former US President Barack Obama, but this is not This footage is fake. The University of Washington researchers created this synthetic Obama. All right. Creepy, There’s a recent wave of people noting that this technology could have tremendous political and even societal threats attached to it. If you could make someone who is somewhat powerful, make it seem like they said something. That could start a war, that could mess up the economy, that could do… People here are feeling a little creeped out by it.
I get it. It’s important. And I get it. Some horrific things could happen for society. People pretending to be others is something that maybe is dangerous. And this makes sense. Would you agree this makes sense? But it got me thinking about the text we’re looking at this morning in Matthew 23, because in our text this morning, yes, of course, there is danger in having bad actors artificially plant words in the mouth of world leaders. But what Jesus talks about in Matthew 23 is something similar, but a little different. And I would say it’s maybe more dangerous than any of these deep fakes. It’s a person orchestrating, to use my own words, their own deep fake. Instead of someone artificially, inserting words in someone else’s mouth or constructing words or actions and pretending. Instead, what happens is the person does it themselves. What they do is they say they are something, they say they are some way, they pretend to be something, they pretend to do something when in fact, they are not that way. The Bible has a word for this deep fake, this original deep fake. It’s called hypocrisy. Hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is a deep fake perpetrated by oneself about oneself.
And just as a deep fake should be dangerous to society, I’d argue that hypocrisy should be seen as incredibly dangerous within the church community. Today’s message, out of Matthew 23, is all about religious hypocrisy. Now, what is hypocrisy? There’s a Greek and Roman etymology to the word, and basically what it means is play acting. That’s what hypocrisy is. It means it means to pretend. It means to be an actor. It means that you think or you pretend to be something that you are not. The idea is very simple. Hypocrisy is pretending to be someone that you’re not actually. That your words are one thing, but your life is another thing. Religious hypocrisy, it means to pretend outwardly to be someone of God, but inwardly, you know you are not. That your life is about impressing other people or impressing other people in the way they view spirituality should be. But in fact, you don’t live any of the words that you say you live by. We know hypocrites. We’ve seen hypocrites. We sense hypocrites. And here’s some good news. If you don’t like hypocrisy, well, then you’re in some good company because Jesus hated it.
Jesus hated hypocrisy. In the chapter we’re going to look at today, that is the subject, religious hypocrisy. Now, in a minute, we’re going to read all of Chapter 23, a bunch of reading. But before we do, I want to make three quick notes. Three quick notes. First thing is, again, we’re in Matthew Chapter 23. Here in Matthew 23, Jesus’s language is strong. It’s harsh, even. And I would say rightly so, Jesus is dealing with sin that needs to be dealt with in the strongest terms. Today, we in our religious, evangelical, American society, we recoil at the language Jesus is about to use. We look at it and go, No, no, no, no, no, no, no, that’s too much. And maybe rightly so because unrighteous people use language that Jesus uses to condemn other unrighteous people. And so we can sense that even when people use the language, typically they are also hypocrites. But Jesus is going to be intense here. He’s going to be intense. He’s going to talk about some scolding rebukes about people that he sees. And I hope that if you are listening to this, you won’t recoil, but instead you’ll lean in and you’ll go, what is Jesus trying to communicate to his audience back then?
And what does he want to say to me today? That’s number one. Number two, Jesus’s intensity is pointed towards people who he’s spoken to a bunch of times. This isn’t the first time he’s tried to rebuke these people. This is like time 80 over the course of three years. He has come now to judge them, ultimately. In fact, we are talking about sin that is fully formed as the Bible talks about sin being fully formed. I want to show you what the scripture say about this, because I think it does illustrate where we’re going with this. James 1 says, But each person is tempted when they are dragged dragged away by their own evil desires. This is the progression of sin and enticed. And then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin. So it says, look, it begins with your desire to be something or your desire to look at something or your desire to engage with something or your desire to be judgmental or whatever it is. And then from there, it begins to be a temptation that you actually do. And that is giving birth to sin. And sin, when it is full grown, gives birth to death.
I want to note here that Jesus is speaking to people about a sin that is full bore. It’s all the way to death. That’s why his language is so intense. He’s talking to people at the death phase of the sin cycle. And this is why the language is so strong. Last thing to note, I thought a lot about what we might get out of this. And Because some of the language is just it feels a little bit beyond what I could say on a Sunday morning in Broward County. We’re not these people. It feels a little bit beyond what you’re even or I’m even able to handle and go, yes, I fully understand why that’s valuable to my life. It feels a little bit like that. But two things, one is I had to preach this because that’s where we are in the text. Number two is I actually think there’s something in here, and it’s really because we are religious. You may not think you’re religious. You’re like, No, I have a relationship with Jesus. That is true. I’m a disciple of Jesus. But you’re also religious, which means you are culturally a Christian.
You have things that you do and things that you say that are just in the culture of Christianity that don’t necessarily come directly from Jesus’s own words. And so because we’re religious people, religious hypocrisy is an ever present temptation. Let me add this as a last point front. This includes me. I had a really hard time feeling confident in teaching this lesson because I feel like in some ways I am the target demographic of this rebuke. Jesus is speaking to religious leaders. That is who I am. I’m a religious leader. And so when I read this, I thought to myself, I don’t know if I can preach this because in some ways, I’m condemning my own self. And so I was really I’m just trying to be careful. The Bible does tell me I will be judged for every careless word that I speak. And so I wanted to listen and to learn and to be corrected by Jesus before I could present it to you. But I didn’t have a lot of time to do that. And so what I’m going to do today is I’m really just going to allow Jesus to teach.
And my job is going to be to make some clarifying comments along the way. Amen? All right. Follow with me. We’re reading a full chapter. Here we go. If you didn’t have a quiet time, check. I’m just I’m just kidding. I’m joking. I’m joking. That’s a lie. Here we go. Matthew 23:1. Then Jesus said to the crowd and to his disciples, we’ve been talking about this before, but Jesus is at the Temple Mount. This is the last week of Jesus’s life. He’s come in. He had the moment where he was praised. They called Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna. He had the moment where he cleared the temple, and then he’s in there the next day doing the teaching and the preaching. Last week or the last three weeks, we have looked at the three parables he said, the parable of the two sons, the parable of the tenants, and the parable of the wedding banquet. This is immediately after the parable of the wedding banquet. Jesus has been speaking to the religious leaders, and it says he stops and he turns to the crowds and to his disciples. And he’s about to make a judgment on the religious leaders.
The teachers of the law and the pharises. That’s the people who are the preachers and the teachers and the rabbis. That’s the religious establishment of the Jewish system. Sit in Moses’s seat, So you must be careful to do everything they say. They sit on the seat of Moses. This is a figurative expression. It means they have the authority of Moses. Moses would have brought the law. And so subsequently, he allowed the law to be passed down from person to person to person. And it’s always been necessary for there to be someone to expound upon the law and to apply the law. And so what Jesus says is, look, these pharisees, these teachers, these religious leaders, they are the ones given the authority by God to teach you about what God says. They sit on Moses’s seat. But what’s their issue? So first off, you must be careful to do what they say, but Verse three, But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. What’s the leader’s issue? Their fake They say what’s right to do, but they don’t do it. Is this still an issue in Christianity in America today?
Yes, I’d say, in fact, it’s probably It’s the greatest issue facing Christianity today. It’s people who talk a lot about what God says to do, but do not do it themselves. People who say, man, this is what God declares that we should do, and they choose to do something that is often the complete opposite. And the fact is that many people hate Christianity today because of this exact thing. If you’ve never been around the church before, you have heard the line, they do not practice what they preach. It’s in the vernacular of America because this is such a pervasive issue. Our message is right. Our message is good. It’s so good. But our lives, the lives of those who claim this message, our lives often undermine our message. So what do these leaders do? They preach, but they don’t practice what they preach. Jesus continues. They tie up heavy cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. There’s a progression of ideas here, of issues here. It says, first off, they don’t practice what they teach. That’s the first thing. And so when you don’t practice what you teach, your teaching becomes disconnected from reality.
I want you to imagine this. If I go, Hey, everyone needs to be here at 07:00 AM, and you end up coming, and I don’t even come at 07:00 AM. I could just keep pretending like my teaching. I could say, No, you need to be here at 06:00 AM because I’m not willing to come at 07:00. You need to be here at 05:00 AM. I need to be here at 04:30. You need to be here at 02:00. I want everyone here at midnight for church the next day. I could just continuously make bigger and bigger burdens on you if I’m not willing to obey them. Does that make sense? So it’s a progression. I’m not really willing to do it so I can just continue to tie up more loads on you. Because it doesn’t matter what I say, because what I teach is totally disconnected from the reality of the life I live. It says that they tie up these loads. There’s a beautiful imager here. They tie it up, meaning they spend a lot of time thinking about the load. If I could just convince them to do this and to do that and then to do that, I have to do all of this work.
I have to study and I have to debate, and then I have to figure out how to put this terrible load upon you. Is this still present in Christianity today? Of course it is. And again, they teach, but they don’t obey their own words. And so they can make up anything they want, and they can bind anything upon the people who are listening because they don’t do the things they say they’re going to do anyway. I thought about a modern equivalent to this, and this is what I came up with. It’s not a perfect illustration, but In this church, we ask people, we ask you to be consistent in trying to help other people know Jesus Christ. That’s a fair thing, right? We ask you to do that because Jesus asked you to do that. So we’re just saying what Jesus said, but to you, right? That’s a message I teach. That’s a message that Cassandra and I try our hardest to follow. And many, many, many members here do that same thing. They try, they make an effort to help other people know about Jesus Christ. But imagine instead of doing that, I didn’t actually help anybody.
And I just said to you, look, I want everyone here to help somebody come to church. And then I was like, well, why can’t I just make that even worse? If I’m not willing to do it, why can’t I just say, well, I want you to bring two people to church every week? Why can’t I say, look, if you don’t bring someone to church next week, you’re kicked out of the church. I could just make it worse. I could just keep going. I could say, if you don’t bring 10 people next week, you’re all going to hell. All of you, you can’t clip that. That would be a terrible Understand the context. I could just keep going. I could say, unless there’s five million people here on Sunday, this church is disbanded, whatever. I could say, If you don’t bring a million dollars next… Because the thing is, I can say whatever I want to say if it’s disconnected from the reality in which I live. And so Jesus is making a point, if these leaders don’t obey their own teaching, they will just continue to tie up heavy loads on people’s back so heavy that later on, he’ll say, they can’t even…
They never allow people to enter the Kingdom of God. Here’s the point. As a teacher of the Bible, I have to be willing to do the things I tell you to do. If I ask you to confess your sin, I have to confess my sin. If I ask you to read your Bible, I have to read my Bible. If I ask you to love your neighbor, I have to love my neighbor. I should be doing the things I ask you to do. Otherwise, I should shut up and let someone else do it. Because if I don’t, my words will become a burden to you. Jesus has broken this down, and so now he will summarize the whole point in a couple of a couple of verses here. Verse five, it says, Everything they do. I want you to just note the word. You can highlight this in your Bible. Everything. Everything they do is done for people to see. They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long. Phylacteries are these little prayer boxes that Jewish rabbis would put on their head or on their left arm. And he says, Look, they make them long.
So they say, look how spiritual I am. You want to know who knows the Bible? I know the Bible. You want to know who is someone who should be respected? I should be respected. Look at me. Look at the thing upon my head. Look at my long tassels. Numbers 15 says they should wear tassels, but they make them extra long. Look, you want to see someone who’s very spiritual? Look at my leg. It’s like that’s the feeling. Oh, look how wonderful I am. Does this still happen today? It sure does. It sure does. And why do they do these things? It’s for other people to see. They love the place of honor and banquets and the most important seats in the synagogue. They love to be greeted with respect in the market and to be called rabbi by other people. They just love it. They love the special places. They love to be called rabbi. By the second century, the title rabbi, the etymology of the word comes from my great one. That’s like our word reverend, by the way. They love when people say, my great one. Hey, before you address me, make sure you My Great One.
Don’t come to me and just say, Tony. Say, my great one, Tony. I love that. That’s what I want. What does this title have to do with God? It doesn’t. It has to do with them. By the way, this is why I reject with kindness and with respect all of the titles. I know if you’re new here, you sometimes call me Pastor Tony. I appreciate that. I understand what you’re I’m trying to… Did my thing die? Someone hates that. I understand what you’re trying to say. I totally get it. But I’d rather just be called Tony. I’m nothing special. I’m not important. In fact, Jesus will say here, we’re all brothers. We’re all brothers. We’re all brothers. Just because I get the chance to speak doesn’t mean how many is more special than you are. We’re all brothers. Now, there are biblical titles, elder, deacon, evangelist, etc. But those are titles of service. They’re not titles of honor. Does that That makes sense? And so Jesus is like, these guys love long tassels. They love the external show of their wonderful spirituality, but they don’t really do it for God. They don’t do it for God.
They go on, but you, he’s now is teaching the crowds. I love this scene because Jesus is speaking to the crowds about the pharisees. Imagine if I’m talking to this group over here about those people. I’m like, Tom Hadaway, you need to really… He’s in the room. You know what I’m saying? They’re in the room. He’s talking about them, but they’re in the room. But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth Father, for you have one father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servants. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exaltet. Stop with the titles. Titals produce competition. It’s a way of saying, I am better than you. And Jesus doesn’t like any of that. Instead, what you need to do is just greet everybody as brother, as sister, as equal. We’re all the same. We’re all the same before God. And who should we instead desire to be? Not the great one, but instead a servant, a servant of all.
That’s the summary. And now Jesus is going to dive into seven woes. Seven woes. The next section here, I’m calling seven woes, a snake and a hen. Ready? Seven woes, a snake and a hen. By the way, this is just a straight Bible study. I don’t have any funny stories or anything like that. I’m just going to teach you what the scriptures teach, because, again, I mentioned this before, but I feel totally inadequate teaching this text. Here we go. Woe number one. Woe to you. First off, let’s just talk about the word woe. Woe means trouble to you. It’s an expression of condemnation. It’s the opposite. I’ve read a commentary that says it’s the opposite of the Beatitudes. Blessed? No, this is like cursed. Woe, woe to you. Jesus is borrowing a literary device that Isaiah 5 also uses. Woe to you. Shaming Claim on you. Condemned are you because of the things I’m about to describe. The first three are similar. This is the first one. Woe to you, teachers of the law, you and pharisees, you, hypocrites. Six of the seven times, he will call them hypocrites. What do they do? You shut the door of the Kingdom of Heaven in people’s faces.
You yourself do not enter it, nor will you let those enter it who are trying to do so. What is the point here? You make entering heaven impossible for people because of the gospel you teach. You teach a gospel that requires you to be perfect, that requires you to obey all of these laws that I just made up, all of these silly, maybe even stupid laws that these people came up with. You say, unless you obey every single one of those things, you’re never going to get to heaven. And Jesus is saying, you shut the Kingdom of Heaven for everyone, including yourself. You make the relationship between God and man into a chore. And so doing so, you make sure that no one will be able to enter it if they follow the gospel that you preach. Woe to you, teachers of the law and pharisees, you hypocrites. There it is again. So you have this gospel you teach that’s all about human achievements. And And it’s all about following these things. And if you don’t get it perfectly right, you don’t do everything I said, then you’re never going to get to heaven. You have this law that you’ve created or this law that you’ve perpetrated on people.
And then what you do is you travel over land and sea win a single convert. So you’re so zealous for this law that you begin to try to teach everybody about this wonderful new law and wonderful new gospel that you have. And when you have succeeded, listen to the line, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are. You begin to teach other people your law, and they, then teach other people the law that you gave them. And there is no love, and there is no grace, and there is no truth, really, in any of it. And so it just continues to condemn, and it continues to condemn. And then the next generation, it condems even worse. And the generation after that, it condems even worse. I once heard it said that dysfunction is the gift that keeps on giving. Spiritual dysfunction also is a gift that keeps on giving. You teach bad theology, and it just multiplies. Multiplies, it gets worse and worse and worse, and it leaves people, leaves people excommunicated from the Kingdom of God. Then Jesus will take a moment to describe how bad their law is.
He’s going to use some details that we’re not going to look at, but I just want you to get the sense of what he’s saying. It says, Woe to you. He calls them now blind guides. Think about that imagery. I want to take you on a journey. Where are you taking me? I don’t know because I cannot see. That’s essentially what he’s saying. Okay, here, join me to the Kingdom of Heaven. How do you get there? I don’t know because I’ve never been there. You’re a blind guide. Then he describes how wrong their teaching is. You say, if anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing. But anyone who swears by the gold of the temple is bound by that oath. You blind fool. Which is greater, the gold or the temple that makes the gold sacred. Verse 18, You also say, if anyone swears by the altar, it means nothing, but anyone who swears by the gift on the altar is bound by that oath. You blind men. Which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the sacrifice great. Therefore, anyone who swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it, and everyone who swears by the temple, swears by it and by the one who dwells in it, and anyone who swears by heaven, swears by God’s throne and by the one who sits on it.
You may go, what does this have to do with anything? And what he’s describing is, look, you’re not only teaching a gospel that is in error, but it’s also just flatly wrong. You’re just teaching a wrong gospel. You’re not even teaching the right stuff. You’re zealous about this gold of the altar, but you don’t even know what you’re talking about. Be quiet. You blind guides. You blind men. You blind wolves. Jesus will say in Matthew 22, You are an error because you do not know the scriptures or the power of God. Imagine that. Come follow me, and I’ll show you the Kingdom of Heaven. Have you ever been there? Yes, it’s over there. Okay, I’ll follow you. And what they do is they lead you to hell. I want to make a note here, and this is for you, members of the Brouwer Church. We, in our zeal to protect doctrine, can be caught up in a little bit of this. And we can struggle with our desire, I think it’s a right desire to protect that easy believism stuff, we can project a gospel that is performance-based. We can forget that this is about Jesus and make it about man’s effort.
We can talk about, instead of talking about the value of faith or the value of God’s grace, we can instead push the value of hard work and the value of commitment and the value of coming to things and doing activities. And we can do exactly what these people do. I’m just saying we got to be careful. We got to be careful because we want to build our faith around the Lordship of Jesus Christ, not around found some methodology that we came up with to protect the things that we believe are important. And I agree, easy believism is destructive. I think it’s probably the greatest danger in spirituality today. They’re blind guides, but also humanism is a blind guide. Making it overly humanistic is a blind guide as well. So we need to be cautious of this as well. So what do we do about these first three rows? What do we actually do? There are three. We shut the doors of the Kingdom God on people because of our teaching. Our teaching is, in fact, so bad that we convert people, we actually send them to hell. So what do we do? This is going to seem like a simple instruction for you, but I don’t know how I don’t know what else to give you.
Here it is. Are you ready? Learn and love God’s truth. You got to read your Bible, man. You have to do it. I don’t know what else to say. You You got to read. You got to read the Bible yourself. You got to learn to love it. And you got to learn to be converted by it. So sit and it tells you something and you go, well, what does that mean? And it goes, exactly what I just said. I don’t mean you read a podcast or you read an article about the Bible, or you read a summary, a devotional about the Bible. I’m saying you learn to sit and you learn to read it, and you learn to love it. You push away the traditions of your past, and you sit there and you say, Holy spirit, what do you want me to learn from this text? And then you read it, and you learn to love God’s truth, and you learn to read God’s truth. Otherwise, we are in danger of becoming hypocrites and blind guides. We’re going to keep going. This is the next wo. Wo do you, teachers of the law, you’re pharisees, and the pharisees, you’re hypocrites.
There it is again. You give a 10th of your spices, mint, dill, and cumin, but you have neglected the more important matters of the law. You do all the outward stuff, but you’ve forgotten the inside stuff. Justice, mercy, faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter. You should give a 10th of your possessions. Do it. That’s awesome. Without neglecting the former, you blind guides. You strain out the nat, but swallow a camel. This is like you get all of the details right, but the point you have totally missed. You’re really good at singing, but you have failed at being righteous. You’re really good at doing all the performance stuff, but your heart is far from God. The outside looks really good, but the inside is a disaster. And Jesus launches into two illustrations with adding two more woes. Woe to you, teachers of the law and pharisees, you hypocrites. You clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside are full of… I want you to notice the critique. Two things. Is this true in America today? Yes. Is this true for you and me today? Yes. You are full of, what does it say?
Greed. You clean the outside inside of the cup. It looks so good, man. You even have a church hat on. But inside, you’re full of greed and self-indulgence. I don’t think… If I was going to pick two sins or two vices that are in the 21st century version of America, I would say, greed and self-indulgence. You make the outside look so good, but inside is full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind pharisees, first clean the inside of the cup and the dish, and then the outside will also be clean. Change your heart, man. Change your heart, because if you do, the outside will be totally fine. Then he doubles down. Woe to you, teachers of the law and pharisees, you hypocrites. There it is again. You are like… Okay, fine. You didn’t get the cup illustration? The cup illustration is dirty cup. You’re like, whatever. I drink from dirty cups all the time. How about this one? You’re like a whitewashed tomb. Okay. Which looks beautiful on the outside, but on the inside are full of bones of the dead and everything unclean. You know what you’re like? You know what you’re like? You’re like someone.
This is what Jesus is saying. You’re like someone who paints the outside of the grave, but inside there’s rotting bodies. That’s what you’re like. You don’t like the cup illustration? This is the illustration. Inside your heart is like a rotting, gangrene, dead corpse. That’s your heart. Outside, you’re like a beautiful tomb. You get it? That’s what you’re like. That’s what he’s saying. That’s intense. That’s intense. And in the same way, on the outside, you appear to people as righteous, but on the inside, you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. You look good, but you have a broken heart. You look good, but you have a broken heart. These people believe that God is so small that he can’t tell what’s in their heart. And I can get up here and preach and teach on this subject matter. But instead, I just like to ask you a question. How is your heart? How is your heart, brother, sister, friend? How is How is your heart? Is it full of greed? Is it full of self-indulgence? How is your heart? Is there wickedness in there? Do you love God? Or is it just all a show? Is it about looking good?
Often, it’s not about one extreme or the other. It’s really about a question of motivation. Are you motivated by looking good on the outside, or are you motivated by having your heart changed? That’s really the question. Something for you to think about, and for me as well. Next, well, this is number seven. Wo do you, teachers of the law and pharisees, you hypocrites. Notice this the way he’s describing this hypocrisely, you build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, if we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in the shedding of the blood of the prophets. So you testify against yourself that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Go ahead then and complete what your ancestors started. Jesus makes an interesting point about hypocrisy. He says that hypocrites pretend to be morally superior to their ancestors. They make a show of their moral superiority. They say, if I lived in that time, I would never do that. But they themselves do the same things. They condemn the past. They judge dead people for stuff that they would do also.
By the way, so much about hypocrisy is about trying to compare yourself to someone else. It’s about trying to make yourself look like you’re more righteous than someone else. It’s It’s to make a show. Is this still here? Yeah, I’m going to trigger a couple of us. Here we go. We make a show of this. We say to ourselves, if I was in America in the past, I would never have done some of the things that those people did. You know what? If I was in this church in the 1990s, I would never have done that. I would have marched during the civil rights if I had the chance. I would never have owned slaves. I would definitely have been the person standing up for injustice. And I think what Jesus is trying to explain here is that given the same privilege, most of us would perpetrate the same evils we criticize in others. If I was a billionaire, I would never treat my workers like that. Let me tell you, if you had the privilege of being a billionaire, you would probably do exactly what they do. And if you’re thinking to yourself, no, that’s not me.
I’m way more righteous than that. That’s a turn of hypocrisy. I’m just letting you know. The fact is that, look, we’re all sinners. And typically we sin to the height that our privilege allows. Until one day we are hopefully transformed by the grace of God. This is a chart that I’ve just made up. Here it is. This is hypocrisy. It’s the belief that you are maybe slightly more spiritual than someone else. It’s going look. And it’s figuring out how to do that. It’s like, if I was you, I would definitely not have done that. If I was whatever in America in the 1600s, I definitely would have done that. It’s all about trying to figure out how to make yourself look and appear to be more righteous than someone else. And how do you change that? How do you change that? This is how I think you change that. You begin not to look at someone else, but you begin to look at God who is way more righteous than you are. You see you? You’re all the way down there. And I understand the offense of feeling like, hey, look, you’re nothing. You’re a piece of dirt.
You’re lowly. You’re nothing. And it’s true. You are. But this is the only way to get out of a hypocritical trend. It’s the only way to do it. It’s to start not viewing yourself compared to someone else, but begin to view yourself compared to God. And when you start doing that, you get quite humble. At least you should. I perpetrate, Tony Fernandez, most of the evils that I’ve had the privilege of perpetrating. It’s a terrible thing. It’s a terrible thing. And I am so thankful to God that he loved me so much to rescue me from my own sin. Man, I am so grateful to him. I am not standing up here as righteous. I’m standing up here as a loser who God saved, who God stooped down, maybe to make great. Seven woes. Now on to the snake. You, snakes. You, brood of vipers. That’s like a den of snakes. How will you escape being condemned to hell. Therefore, I am sending you prophets and sages and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify. Others, you will flog in your synagogues and pursue them from town to town. And so upon you will come all of the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of the righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, whom you’ve murdered between the temple and the altar.
Truly, I tell you, all of this will come on this generation. You are snakes. You lie and wait, and everyone that comes, you buy fight and kill. Remember the parable of the tenants? You are the tenant workers. Remember the two sons? You are the worst son. Remember the guests invited to the wedding banquet? You are those guests that refuse to come, that murdered the servants. That is you. You, how will you escape hell? That’s his declaration. How will you escape hell? This is fire and brimstone. This is pretty intense. What What then for you? I don’t know if this lesson exactly corresponds to the life that you live. I don’t know. As I mentioned before, this is hypocrisy at the death phase. But Really, you feel the warning of it so that you’ll nip it in the bud at the temptation face. What for you? We want to catch hypocrisy in its early forms. Here’s some things I want to encourage you to think about. Do you practice what you preach? Do you practice what you preach? Do you say things and then do what you say? Do you care more about your outward appearance or your heart?
Have you made Christianity into a heavy load for others? Do you posture yourself as the most righteous person in the room? These are questions that you can answer now. You could think about them. You can self-reflect on them. But hopefully you don’t just leave and go, You know what? That was an okay sermon. Maybe I’ll be back next week. If that’s you, then I want to tell you you’re in danger of being a hypocrite, of being a pretender, of being a deep fake, a liar, living a double life, of thinking that God is so small that you’ll never be found out. And In many ways, that person is an atheist. They care more about their outward appearance than they actually care about God at all. They’re just pretenders. You might wonder, why is Jesus so serious about this? I would say it’s because of the fact that it impacts so many people. You know what the faker does? It condemns not only themselves, but the people they teach. You know what the hypocrisy, the hypocrite does? They condemn not only themselves, but lead other people into condemnation. That’s why Jesus cares so much about this.
So how do you respond? How do you change? I want to encourage you today. If you’re sitting here and the spirit of God has told you, look, I’m in danger of being that same hypocrite, I want to ask you to repent. To repent. To come to Christ, to be humble, to believe Jesus’s words that the greatest among you are servants, that those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exaltet. I want to encourage you to repent today. Repenting is the best option. But let me just share with you what the next best option is. And it might be surprising interesting. If you won’t repent, if you won’t repent, if you won’t repent, and you should repent, but if you won’t repent, the next best option is just to be totally cold to faith. To leave, to find… You can find some place where you can hide in and be a pretender. That’s actually better for you. Spiritually speaking, it’s better for you to be hot or you be cold. The middle road is the worst road. So if you’re going to be a pretender and you’re not willing to admit your pretender and repent, it’s best for you to not come, to not be here, to be like, just make up something.
Just be like, I moved away, whatever. Just But I’m telling you, you’re heoping condemnation on yourself and on everyone you teach. It’s better for you if you’re going to be a pretender to instead be someone that’s not here. The worst option, the worst option is to sit in this room and to live in this community and just keep acting like you’re spiritual. First, repent, please repent, please repent. But if you cannot, you’re hurting a lot of people along the way. Let me end here. How do you think Jesus would close this out? After talking about seven woes and a snake? How do you think he would close it out? He is just amazing. Jerusalem, Jerusalem. You who killed the prophets and stoned those who sent you. You who have done such wicked things. Jerusalem. The next line. How often I have longed to gather your children together as a hand gathers her chips under her wings. How does Jesus end this intense rebuke by saying, I long to gather you. I long for you to come. I’ll send you prophets and you did not turn. I sent you sages and you killed them. I sent you messengers and you would not repent.
But I long still, even to this moment, to give you rest, to save your soul, to gather you like a hen gathers her chicks. Here’s my question for you. Will you let him gather you? Will you let him guide you? Will you let him lead you? Would you be honest today? If you’re struggling with something that’s leading you towards a hypocritical life, would you? I’m asking for you to respond in repentance to a message given by our Lord in the last week of his life. Let’s pray. Father, we There’s an image of Christ as this meek and lowly figure that is unwilling to call out sin. And that is just not you. Lord, you are strong and powerful. You deal with sin the way it ought to be dealt with, and you do it with grace and truth. Father, we don’t exactly know how to do that fully. And so I pray, God, that you would use your words and not mine to convince the people in this room who are pretenders their need to repent. I pray immediately after this that they will grab somebody, that they’ll talk about it, that they’ll confess sin, that they’ll get open about their greed, about their self-indulgence, that they’ll be open about their judgmental stance about other people, that they’ll be open about the way they compare themselves to others.
Father, I pray that they will have the courage to repent. Father, I’m begging you that that would be the case. God, I long, like you long, for all of us to be gathered into your presence. Thank you for being such a compassionate God. I don’t think that I have the ability to communicate such harsh truth and then to say that I want to be close to even the worst of sinners. But God, that is who you are. You are such a good God who longs to be with sinful man. God, I pray that you will grant us repentance so that we can be gathered, so we can be brought into your presence, so that we can be changed by your grace and changed by your spirit. Father, as we take communion now and have this moment of silent reflection, we take the bread and the juice. I pray that your Holy spirit will do a work in every person sitting here, that something will happen in their hearts where repentance can be granted to them. Father, we beg you for that today. We love you. It’s in Christ’s name. Amen.