Unmasking the Serpent

Introduction

Many of you are celebrating Father’s Day today, and a loving father can relate to where Jesus is in our text today. A while back, I had to bring hard discipline in the life of one of my daughters. And, it was discipline that I knew was necessary for her good and for her development as a young lady, and yet it was also discipline that she thought was unjust and unnecessary. Honestly, I didn’t want to bring this hurt into her life. On that day, I had planned for she and I and to have fun and to make memories, but now, all of those plans were changed and my hand was forced, and I knew that to love her well and to lead her well was going to require discipline, even though it was not at all what I wanted for her. And so, it was with sadness and a heavy heart that I brought hardship and discipline into the life of my daughter. And so, for you brothers who are celebrating Father’s Day today who can identify with a story like that, this is a picture of where we see Christ speaking to the religious leaders of Israel.

As the Great Prophet, the long-awaited Messiah who had now been rejected by them, He was now compelled to bring judgment and condemnation upon them. But, these are not words of hatred, these are words of a loving Savior longing for his people to realize their sin and to turn from it and be delivered! These are loving words of intended to protect his disciples and the crowd from following the Pharisees to Hell and to call the Pharisees back from the flames themselves. And so, yes, He’s shouting, but not as one who is abusive and seeking to humiliate, but as One who is urgent is trying to warn them of the train that is soon to run them over! Turn with me now to as we hear these words of judgement.

God’s Word

Read

Fervent, but Fake

“But, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” As we come to verse 13, Jesus shifts from verses 1-12 where He was addressing his disciples and the crowd to addressing the scribes and Pharisees directly, and, man, does He ever. For the close listener over the last couple of weeks, you’ve probably heard me reference Jesus as being the Great Prophet a couple of times. In , God promises that He will raise up a New Prophet that will be even greater than Moses, and here we see Christ Jesus speaking prophetically. Prophets either spoke words of blessing or words of judgement, and very often they began words of judgement with, “Woe to you!” Here we find seven “Woe to you” to statements given to these religious leaders of Israel. And, He’s not unclear about why He’s judging them. Out of seven of those pronouncements, Jesus starts off six of those by calling them, “Hypocrites,” with the only exception coming in verse 16 when He calls them “blind guides.” The judgement isn’t coming agains them because they’re atheists. The judgement isn’t coming against them because their partying or living a homosexual lifestyle or philandering. By all accounts, these men would have given every appearance to be pious, religious, virtuous men. These would have been men who would have been members of the Baptist church, respected in the community, on the school board, volunteer firemen, family men, and all of us would have been impressed by them. The judgement isn’t coming against them because of reckless, godless living. These were by all accounts faithful, respectable, fervent men. The judgement was coming against them because they were fake. It was a false front. Their apparent religion and virtue was nothing more than marble facade on a condemned shed. And, most terrifyingly of all, is that they all the while, they believed themselves to be right with God, when in fact, God despised who they were, what they did, and what they stood for.

APPLICATION: Brothers and sisters, I cannot think of a more terrifying position to be than to believe yourself right with God all while God himself stands against you. And yet, what we simply cannot escape is that Jesus finds religious hypocrisy utterly intolerable. There is a trending thought of cheap grace bubbling beneath the surface of Christ’s church today that says, “every Christian is a sinner; so, every Christian is a hypocrite. Thus, it’s okay that I’m a hypocrite. I’m not going to sweat it or worry about it.” And, brothers and sisters, that’s half right. But, the two realities that the gospel simply will not allow, that Jesus simply will not tolerate is that 1) we cannot rest and justify and be okay with our hypocrisy. It shames Christ. It murdered Christ. It undermines the mission of Christ. It clouds the glory of Christ. And, if you none of those things are significant to you, then you don’t know Christ! The Spirit of God isn’t in you! 2) But, the second reality that Gospel simply won’t allow, is that it won’t allow you to be fall into despair. His grace does cover your hypocrisy, brothers and sisters. But, don’t miss this! Don’t miss this! His grace goes to the repentant and to the broken-hearted, not to the self-excused and self-justified! So, don’t rest in your hypocrisy! Take it to Christ, and take it to his cross; so that it might be put to death yet again!

And, most terrifyingly of all

But, the second reality that Gospel simply won’t allow, is that it won’t allow you to be fall into despair. His grace does cover your hypocrisy, brothers and sisters. But, don’t miss this! Don’t miss this! His grace goes to the repentant and to the broken-hearted, not to the self-excused and self-justified! So, don’t rest in your hypocrisy! Take it to Christ, and take it to his cross; so that it might be put to death yet again!

The Pharisees led people away from God.

“For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces.” Now, as we look at the specific words of judgements themselves, what we see is that Jesus painted a very detailed picture of the hypocrisy in the Pharisees’ lives and that He knew exactly where it was headed. First of all, Jesus says that the Pharisees led people away from God. Jesus says that they ‘shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces.’ Man, think about that. Jesus is describing them as being the guardians of a door or a gate that will literally allow people to know God or not know God, to have eternal life or not have eternal life, and Jesus says that they are slamming that door people’s faces! Now, maybe you’re thoughts go to many of our lives, and you’d be prone to think that they just don’t care, and they just aren’t teaching people and telling people. But, look at what it says in verse 15, ‘you travel across sea and land to make a single (convert).’ Man, they were getting after it! They were moving heaven and earth to go and win one person over to what they were teaching! But, what was the problem in all of this? What was the problem? Because man they were going! They were zealous! They were working hard! They were teaching! They were spreading the word! They were sincere about their message! What was the problem with all of this? They were concealing the truth. They were concealing the gospel. They were concealing Jesus. They had rejected Christ, and every person they were converting, they were not converting to the Kingdom of God; they were converting them to their way of thinking. They were not making people into the image of God; they were making people into their own image. And, as a result, the people that were converted were ‘double damned’, as Eugene Peterson says in the Message.

Hypocrisy in God’s people always leads people aways from God. These Pharisees claimed to know God’s law and love God’s law more than anybody else. And yet, the entirety of God’s Law is about the revealing of God’s Son, as we see in , and they couldn’t see it. They were hypocrites! Their hearts were hard because Jesus didn’t fit their agenda and their mold. They rejected Jesus, and they led people to hell. They taught people lies in their churches and with their lives and with their platforms and in their homes through their hypocrisy, and they led people away from God. And, the same can be true of us. There’s two forms of hypocrisy that’s crippling the church, as I see it: 1) The self-righteous church that maximizes all of the sins of the world all while minimizing our own sin. These churches are experts at finding the specks and not so good at recognizing the planks. 2) The secular church church that blends so seamlessly with the culture that they have no way to lead anyone to God because they can’t be identified from the culture to begin with. Both are hypocrisy. Both of these churches conceal christ and conceal the Gospel, leading people away from God.

What If We Make More of Us?

APPLICATION: And so, brothers and sisters, we have to ask ourselves an uncomfortable question this morning: What if we make more of us? What if our evangelism actually works? What if we, like the scribes and Pharisees, bring into our church family, and they become just like us? Will they look like Christ? Will they become God-centered, glory-loving, joyful Christians? Or, will they become hypocritical, secular people that for more justified in their sin and more alleviated from their guilt only to have their final judgement be, “Depart from me, for I never knew you”? Are we leading people to God or away from him?

The Pharisees used the letter of the Law to violate the spirit of the Law.

“You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred?” The next two woe statements that we come to in verses 16-24 really revolve around God’s word, and abusing God’s word. Here’s what the Pharisees loved to do: they loved to drill down to the really, really fine points of the law, to that stuff that nobody else pays attention to, and then use that stuff to advance their agenda one way or another. And, this is what Jesus is calling them on. This is gross hypocrisy. They are pretending to be upholders of God’s Law. They are fancying themselves as speaking for God. In fact, they are manipulators of God’s Law who are speaking for themselves. First, Jesus talks about the tradition of oath-making that they had developed. They had developed this tradition of oath-making where if you swore by a certain object in the Temple, your word had to be kept, but if you swore by something else it could be broken. So, it was an allowance for sin. It was a loophole. It was a justification for them to break their word and for dishonesty.

APPLICATION: It is a sure fire mark of hypocrisy when you start looking for loopholes to justify your most common sins. I know there are Christian couples who justify their romantic impurity because they’re in adulthood or because they’ve been married before or because they know they will marry that person someday. Those are loopholes, and you aren’t trying to love Christ and honor Christ. Many make the same types of allowances and justifications for pornography. Loopholes. Christians cheat their employers on their time cards or vacation time, and they find a hundred ways to make themselves fill justified in doing it before the eyes of God. Loopholes. We lie, and we overeat, and we spend all of our money on ourselves, and even though God has told us that all of these things are sinful in his sight, we find ways justifying them, we create loopholes because we are hypocrites, like the Pharisees. Brothers and sisters, this is an intolerable abuse of God’s word in the eyes of our Savior.

“For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness.” And, Jesus says that not only do they find loopholes in God’s Law, but that they so majored in the minors that they missed the whole point of the Law altogether. Have you ever spoken with someone about being a Christian only to have them tell you that there’s too many rules to follow? Every time I hear this, I can’t help but think, man, you just don’t get what this is about at all! You just don’t see this thing! This was the scribes and the Pharisees! They paid their tithe, and Jesus is like, “Great! You should have done that! You should not neglect that! But, on like a 10 point scale, you got to like a 1 and missed all the 10’s. You lifted the one pound weight, and avoided all the 100 pound weights! The Pharisees living out the Law are like when your kids pick up the big piece foam from the box in the living room, and they really think they’ve done something, and they’re like, “Look dad! Look at what I can do!” This is the Pharisees paying their tithe! And, Jesus said, yea, but you haven’t shown any mercy yet! You haven’t demonstrated justice yet! You aren’t faithful men! Don’t you understand that is the aim of the Law? Don’t you understand that’s the whole point of the Law? Don’t you understand the point of the Law is not simply whether or not you’ve paid your tithes? The point of the Law is whether or not you love God and you love your neighbor and you are an accurate picture of God on earth! Looking at the minors; they missed the majors.

APPLICATION: You see, the Pharisees liked what they could measure. They wanted to know how they stacked up. They wanted godliness that others could count and they could see. And, justice, mercy, and faithfulness just don’t work like that. How about you, brothers and sisters? Do you need measurable godliness that others can see and that you can count, or are you okay with the inefficiency of waiting for a reward in heaven? Because the majors of the Bible won’t be experienced fully in this life!

The Pharisees were outwardly spotless but inwardly dead.

“For you are like whitewashed tombs” In the next two woe statements, Jesus says essentially the same thing twice in two different illustrations. In Israel, there were a number of the things that the people of God were forbidden to touch because it would make them unclean and disqualified from worship. And, there was nothing that was more feared to make one unclean than touching a corpse. And so, every year, just before the Passover season would come, the men of Israel would go and mark the tombs which were made of granite by washing over them with a lime-plaster so that they would be bright white and keep anyone from accidentally touching a corpse, and the memorials would stand in beautiful contrast to the dark backdrop. And, Jesus says this is the perfect picture of these hypocrites. They worry about the externals, and externally they are spectacular. Their clothes show them godly, and their prayers show them godly, and their speech shows them godly, and their house shows them godly, and their headdress shows them godly, and their company shows them godly, but they are whitewashed tombs, for beneath the surface is nothing but a rotting corpse. They are washed cups, but on the inside is nothing but greed and self-indulgence.

APPLICATION: There’s a question that I want to ask you that only you can answer before God. I don’t have an illustration. I don’t have a flowery, eloquent way of asking it. Just straight forwardly. Regardless of what your reputation is, regardless of what your position in the church is, regardless of what roll your name is on or isn’t on, regardless of what you’ve done or haven’t done, regardless of what you’ve said or haven’t said, regardless if you know every Bible answer in the whole world, regardless, if you have perfect church attendance, this is the question between you and God: Are you inwardly alive? Have you actually been born again? Religious fakes don’t need to try harder. Religious fakes need to be born again and given new life and new hope in Christ! You don’t need to come back to God; you need to come to God! Are you inwardly alive?

The Pharisees murder their Prophets.

“Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers.” Jesus crescendoes this prophetic decree telling them all exactly how this was going to end in startling detail. You see, every generation is guilty of generational snobbery. Every generation feels like they have to fix all of the mistakes of the past, and they can’t believe the foolishness of the generation that is following them. And, the scribes and the Pharisees were no different. Throughout history, God would send his people a prophet, and it was quite often that these prophets had difficult and hard words for God’s people, and they would be put to death for saying what God would have for them to say. And so, the Pharisees would say to themselves, “Not if it would have been us, o God! We would have listened! We would have turned to you!” And so, they began to build monuments honoring the prophets that their forefathers had murdered like Zechariah. And yet, here was Jesus, the Great Prophet, whom they utterly rejected! Such hypocrisy! And so, Jesus said there was no escape but hell! They would know the full measure of God’s wrath stored up for the murder of every righteous man beginning with Abel, and in fact, in just a few chapter, in , they will incite a riot, shouting, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” And, they will say, “May his blood be on our heads and on our children’s also.”

“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” Oh, but brothers and sisters, look at verse 39. Because, “Crucify him,” will not be their final word to him. One day, He will return, and they will see him again, and on that day, the hypocrite, will bow in terror, and they will have nothing left to say, but “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” You see, Jesus had come to Jerusalem to save it. He had come to gather his children for all who would come. This is a heartbroken Savior calling, pleading with his people to listen and to come! This morning, come! Come to Christ! Come, and say blessed is the name of the Lord!