Matthew: On Earth As It Is In Heaven

All right, I encourage you to get ahead and grab a seat. After the service today, we don't have any formal stuff going on, so you can continue the conversations with each other after the service today. We're so glad you guys are here. My name is Nick, I'm a pastor here at Neighborhood Church. It is so good to have Kirk and Barbara here, and Barbara, I've heard a lot about this upcoming fireside chat. I'm very excited for these guys to get to hear your story. As I'm sure you can notice, there are people that are still around from when you're here, but lots of new faces that we'll get to know you, who I'm very excited for. We're going to be in Matthew 23 today, if you want to turn there, whether in your Bible or on your phone, or you can just look up on the screen. We have been in the gospel of Matthew for quite a long time. I think, without a close second, this has been the longest series I've done since I've been a pastor here. Then we've been in the gospel of Matthew for at least six months, maybe eight months I need to go back and actually count it, and we're not actually finishing it today. We're finishing Matthew 23 today, then we're going to push pause on Matthew and Lord willing during the Lenten season in the 40 days, six weeks before Easter. We'll come back to the gospel of Matthew, and we'll kind of work through the passion story, working up to Good Friday and to Easter. Quick heads up, I'll actually allude to this in the message itself, indirectly, but the next two weeks, if you just want to do some reading ahead of time, we're going to be in a really famous, really important passage for the next two weeks, Hebrews chapter 11, which is the roll call of the heroes of faith. By faith, this person did this, by faith, this person did this, it defines what faith is. And this will be kind of like unofficially the end of our summer before we launch into the full kickoff on September 20th and go into other stuff. But I'd encourage you to spend some time in Hebrews 11, just reading it and re-reading it over the next couple of weeks. That said, I am going to slowly work through the passage, or at least I'll work through it sequentially. And so I'm not going to read most of it right now, but just to give you a flavor, a taste of the flavor of this chapter, which is basically about criticism, in the Beatitudes at the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew, at the very beginning of the Sermon of the Mount. Jesus stood up and said, "Blessed are the pouring spirit, blessed are the pure in heart, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness." And here he says, "Woe to you, woe to you, woe to you." Specifically to the Pharisees and the scribes, the religious leaders of the people of God. But I'm going to read all the way up, starting in verse 1, down to verse 12, before we get to the first woe. Just when you get a sense of the flavor, going to say a couple of things, and then we'll work through the woes here. And by the way, it won't be until the end that I read it. I have already alluded to this a few times in the last couple of weeks. But very famously, I think, very importantly for understanding Jesus overall, understanding this passage and where this criticism comes from, is very importantly, very famously, this chapter ends with Jesus weeping over Jerusalem, over the people of God. And so Jesus is not losing his temper here in a rage. He's certainly not indifferent. He's not shooting it from the sidelines, like a social media post, where you just take your enemies down. But you just kind of feel, you actually take pleasure in it. Like Jesus weeps at the end of this. We will end with that in a few minutes. But I just want you to know that that's where this is going. So let me read the first 12 verses, and then we'll back up, and we'll start looking at it. Matthew 23, starting in verse 1. Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples. First thing to notice, he's actually not speaking to the scribes and Pharisees here. And so this is actually a teaching moment for us. It's not primarily a teaching moment for them. It's not overhearing what Jesus is criticisms of these groups that have often criticized Jesus, that Jesus is often criticized them, and now we're getting kind of a summary. And Jesus says the scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat, that is there basically where I am right now, that they are officially teaching the people of God from an authoritative position. Very interesting, Jesus says there's a number of famous idioms even to this day in the English language we use that come from this chapter. So do and observe whatever they tell you, but do not do the works that they do. Have you ever heard the expression? They don't practice what they preach, or do what they do, but now what they say, that comes from this verse. This is where that expression comes from. In English, they tie up heavy burdens that are hard to bear, and they lay them on other people's shoulders. But they themselves are not willing to move them in their own lives with a finger. They do all of their deeds to be seen by others. That's for Jesus that is characteristic of them as a group. For they make their factories broad and their fringes long, that doesn't translate well to Gentile Christians today. And even today, I know this would not be anything you guys would do, not because you're so saintly, but it's because this would not give a good impression. But I remember even like 30 years ago when I became a Christian like maybe you bring a really big Bible and to church made like there are certain things to kind of virtue signal really pious. I really take my faith seriously. I am very holy. I am very religious. This is the number one priority in my life, and they broadcast that. In the way they dress, in the way they talk, in the way that they conduct themselves before others. And verse six, they love the place of honor at feasts. And the best seats in the synagogue and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others. Real quick, both the phrase, they love the place of honor at feasts. And when they go to church, when they go to synagogue, they have their pew here. And everybody sees them in the front, raising their hands in worship and engaging like this. Both times, it's the word first. They love first place at wedding feasts. And they love first place in the synagogue. We should hear echoes of the first will be last and the last will be first. They are constantly putting themselves first before other people in the way that they conduct themselves in the way that they want to be seen. But now, we hear some of the positive vision underneath the criticism. But you are not to be called rabbi, or pastor, or teacher, an authority figure, and the people of God. For you all have one teacher, and this is clearly Jesus, not Mayor Lynette. And you are all brothers and sisters. We're all on equal standing here. And so call no man on earth, your father, for you have one father who is in heaven, neither be called instructors or guides. For you have one instructor or guide, that's the Christ, the Messiah. And we have heard these statements over and over and over again. One last time, the greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. Very clearly, that's central to Jesus' criticism of these people. There is a lot that this passage brings up. But for now, I just want to get to the heart of it and kind of set up how we can hear this. And so I'll start with this. I know a lot of you are here from my cutting-edge pop culture references from the 80s and 90s. And so I'm going to give you one of them. When I grew up, I don't see these much anymore. But when I grew up, it was pretty common that when you went to the doctor, or you went to the dentist, or you just want anywhere where somebody had an office that, to me, with my cynical personality, very hokey posters on the wall of these offices would be like a picture of like a bald eagle, or like a mountain range. And underneath it, it would just say like courage, or like daring, or like endurance. And I would just always roll my eyes at these posters. They used to be ubiquitous when I was a younger man. And they were just very hokey, very sentimental. And so to my delight, probably 25 years ago, I found a company online that made posters just to mock those posters. And they did kind of counter posters on them. And one that I've always loved actually sets up a passage like this well, which is the poster with a picture of the Titanic after it hit the iceberg. And like the ship is split in half, and like half of the thing is just up in the air and is going underwater, and it just says disaster. And underneath the subtext is, because it might just be that the sole purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others. And these are certain moments in Scripture, the wilderness generation that comes out of Egypt, but fails to enter the Promised Land 40 years later, mostly exist in Scripture for the rest of us to look at them and say, guys, don't be like them. Don't be like them. Don't do what they did. Don't fail to enter the Promised Land as they did. Hebrews 11, we're going to look at the next two weeks and you have all these positive examples. Be like these people, imitate their faith, and just dozens of examples. But just a chapter later in Hebrews 12, do not be like Esau. Do not be like Esau, who sold his birthright for a cup of porridge and gave it up, and write like Esau, and not exclusively, but mainly exist in Scripture as a warning of what not to do. And as you listen to Jesus in the Gospels, the Pharisees mostly exist as a warning about what not to be, about what not to do. And so this is a passage about criticism. It's a very basic, helpful definition of criticism. One author uses says, I'm using criticism in a broad sense as referring to any judgment that is made about you by another person which declares that you fall short of some particular standard. The standard might be gods, or it might be human beings, or it might be this culture, or that culture, the judgment might be true, or it might be false. The motivation for it might be gentle with a view to correction, or harsh in order to condemn. It may be given by a friend or by an enemy, but whatever the case, it is a judgment or criticism about you that you have fallen short of the standard. And that is the essence of what Jesus is delivering in this chapter that as the leaders of the people of God, the Pharisees and the scribes fall short and have gone astray of what God wants them to be, very quickly before we look at the Seven Wows, I just want to talk about very quickly the dangers of criticism, whether of receiving criticism or giving criticism, and even overhearing criticism of others like we're doing here, also to talk about the importance of it, no good human life can be lived that is shut down to hearing criticism from others, nor can a wise, good, godly life be lived, where all you are doing or the main thing you're doing is criticizing others. And then I just want to talk about just what role and what posture should we have towards hearing criticism from God especially, but ultimately even from one another in the Christian life. So some dangers real quick, I think it's one of our worst habits, a habit that's growing worse and worse over time in our culture, which is if you just, if you're an outsider to America right now, or you're within our culture on any side of the culture wars, is there's an awareness of we are like 98% criticism in the public square. We are a discontent, resentful, angry culture, and you could say therefore we're a very critical culture, but in one sense that's not true because close to 100% of the criticism is always from one camp towards their enemies, in which all of it is criticism over there, but only affirmation towards ourselves, and worse, where you know if you're even halfway aware, no Republican, no conservative is listening to any criticism given by a Democrat in Brooklyn or San Francisco, and no Democrat or liberal in Brooklyn is listening to anything anybody on the right says. And so it does have this almost like performative aspect of I'm going to find pleasure in giving this criticism, or I'm going to find pleasure in listening, like this is how sometimes it feels like 90% of clickbait is just being triggered to over here criticism from someone else to someone you already don't like, and you just kind of feel good as you listen to that, and so there are many dangers of how criticism can malform us, how it can deform us, it is also possible when we're on the receiving end of criticism that it can become sheer condemnation, it can lead to despair, it can lead to the opposite of love and of hope, and so there are many dangers and just a final danger for now, criticism can also be wrong. When somebody critiques you, they could be wrong about you, when you critique someone else, you could be wrong about them, and so we do need to be careful about criticism. With all of that said, I cannot imagine any of us individually us as a community, any marriage, any friendship, any family, any organization that is healthy and growing, that is not open to being critiqued by those around us. That love us, that care for us, C.S. Lewis, who Ryan mentioned earlier, would often say in his writings this is kind of a principle that's true in life in general, but he would say religion in the modern world especially bears this danger, which is that you begin it in many ways, this is one of Jesus' core criticisms of the Pharisees, is they begin to use religion as a means to an end to be comforted, to feel better about yourself. I certainly, some of you might doubt this sometimes, given my teaching style, I never want to send you guys home discouraged, and I always hope that there's encouragement and hopefulness and joy and growth and faith and all of that, but nonetheless there is a danger in coming to God as well as to other human beings, where functionally if we're honest with ourselves, there are means to an end to me feeling better about myself right now. And so C.S. Lewis would often say, if you seek faith, if you seek God, if you seek ultimate reality for the sake of truth, if Christianity is true, a ton of comfort is going to be thrown in, but if you seek comfort for its own sake, you are going to get turned upside down when it comes to truth. Is you're going to be someone who, like again, many in our culture, we're always criticizing others, we are incredibly sensitive to being criticized, we have a deep sense that the only thing people can speak to me is affirmation, while I speak constant criticism to many other people. So there are dangers here, but it is important, and here is the essence of why it's important. And I think this plays down to our relationships with each other, and our just individual lives being open, just on a human level, to wisdom, to growth, to critique. But if you start in Genesis and you end in Revelation, whether over the course of a year, or whether over the course of five years, or even just pushed through in three months, you will notice that God speaks the language of critique often in Scripture. Not just the language of affirmation. And so just a couple of examples, Jesus starts the Gospel in Matthew by saying, "Blessed, blessed, blessed are people who are like this, because this is what's coming for them." Whoa, whoa, whoa, to people like this, because things are not going to go well moving forward. If this is what you're doing, in Deuteronomy, right before they enter the Promised Land, Moses sets before the people, that God says through Moses, "I have set before you this day life and death, choose life." But there's a warning in that, that there's an implicit criticism that if you go this direction, things are not going to go well with you. For every passage in a New Testament filled with promises of, "If you bear the fruit of the Spirit, if you follow and trust in Jesus, if you get baptized and you become part of this redeemed community, then this is what will flow out of it. This is what will flow out of it." But for those, even in Galatians 5, right after the fruit of the Spirit. But if your life is characterized by the works of the flesh, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of God. And so there are promises of entrance right next to warnings of exclusion. I think, as a human being, and especially someone who's been a dad for a long time now, I think becoming a parent, which Diego and Christine, you have in this season, others are on the verge, and in many ways already are parents, others of you will be in the future. There is something about being a parent where you begin to realize with your kid that I cannot love them if I only affirm them. I cannot love them if I always just kind of blow smoke up their butt, whatever they're doing, and say, "Everything's going to, that I have to remind them, when you run across the street, you have to look both ways or else you'll get hit by a car." And you could hear that as a warning of, "What are you doing? Like, don't you care? Why are you trying to scare me?" But it is in a good healthy situation. It is because we love someone that we warn them. It is because we love someone that we don't just speak affirmation, but also criticism. Again, it doesn't mean that all criticism does come from love. Certainly, it doesn't mean that all affirmation comes from love. But it is to say, we need to be able to hear this. I hope Jesus weeping at the end of the chapter really brings it alive for us, that this is a rising out of Jesus is love for His people. This is a rising out of God's desire for people not to die, but to live, not to be miserable, but to flourish, not to be separated from Him, but to come back to the Father. And so, in Scripture, if I had more time on this, it could even be like a series at some point or part of a series, it is more complex than this. But I think if you had to sum up in a paragraph, how does God motivate His people in Scripture in history? I think He basically has to say three things. Through promises, through warnings, and through examples, both positive and negative. And so, if we are shutting ourselves off from hearing warnings, hearing criticisms from God, from Jesus, we're not going to do well because this is part of how we learn to grow, how we learn, how to be the people that He has created and redeemed us to be. So, final thing, and we're going to look at the woes. How should we hear a passage like this in particular where there is danger of overhearing criticism of someone else? We are an almost entirely Gentile Christian audience. There is a lot of bad history here of Gentiles taking a passage like this in an anti-semitic way. It is one thing for women to criticize another woman. Once a man takes those same words and starts criticizing, like it just changes. It's one thing for someone in the black community to criticize someone else in the black community. I could read the transcript of that and say that as white men and the whole thing changes because I'm a white guy. And so, we have to be careful about where we're standing here. This is a Jewish man critiquing Jewish leaders. This is not an anti-semitic trope or anything like that. And the reason it is addressed to us, to the crowds, to the disciples, is that we're not supposed to be applauding being like, "Hey, Jesus, we love that you're taking these guys down. We're supposed to be learning. Let's not be like this ourselves." Let's avoid this as an example. And so, three specific ways, very quick, of how I encourage you to hear this passage. As much as I would love not to have to say this, I think I do need to say it, which is that this is not really about you guys. This passage is about me in Lynette and Trevor. This is about leaders and the people of God. Now, there are certainly implications for the whole people of God, but this is a passage about leaders. Jesus is not speaking about the entire people of God. He's speaking about those who have been set over them and who he believes are leading the people of God astray. So, the first and foremost way to hear this as a way to your pastors, your leaders in the local church here, but also elsewhere in the future, this is a passage that should be very near and dear to leaders in the body of Christ. This is the passage about leadership. Secondarily, secondarily, it is a good thing to leaders in the body of Christ are not called to is something fundamentally different or other than what all Christians are. They're just called to do it more maturely, to do it more consistently, to do it more devotedly. So there's nothing here that you can say, well, a leader shouldn't be like that, but it's okay for me to do everything in order to be seen by others. Every critique here should be understood as I'm not supposed to be like this. I think at our best, both in Judaism and in Christianity, one of our best features, when we're healthy, is that there is an instinct rooted in scriptures themselves that we are to be a primarily self-critical people. One of the reasons I always wanna stay away from the pulpit, being a place where I comment on the national and global events of the week, is I think when churches start becoming one more version of, we're just gonna criticize all the bad stuff out there, is we miss the point, which is that our main energy of critique should be self-critique. It should not be critique of those outside of the people of God. So I do encourage you to hear this, Lynette jokingly, but rightly reminded you of my love for Sauron Kiergart. I actually have two quotes here, from Sauron Kiergart, as you will not be surprised, and Kiergart is really great on this. So I'm gonna give you two of my favorite lines from him, is he says, "We are all very critical. "Almost all of us have some basic level of cynicism "and pessimism, at least on some level in life, "towards the world, towards other people, "towards certain ideologies or other groups." And Kiergart says, "One form of being wisdom, "one form of wisdom and growing in it, "and here's the quote, is to learn to see yourself "as a suspicious character. "Learn to see yourself suspiciously. "The same suspicion we naturally have for our political enemies "or people who have heard us or people who are different from us, "is Kiergart said, our first and foremost suspicion "should be towards ourselves. "And the two main words, by the way, "the Jesus will use for the Pharisees in this passage "is Hippocrite, which is a favorite word of Matthew "throughout the gospel. "But over half of the occurrences of the word Hippocrite "and the gospel of Matthew show up in this chapter "and then the word blind. "That they're blind, they're blind gods, they're blind fools. "You're gonna hear as I read this in a moment, "Hippocrite and blind over and over. "In both of these words, remind us, "the Pharisees are not villains twirling their mustaches, "being like, we're pretending we're one thing in front of you, "but deep down we know we're just robbing you, "we're deep down we don't even really believe in God. "Like the Pharisees perceive themselves "in a completely different way than Jesus does. "They think they are in the right. "They think they are loving God. "They think they are loving their neighbor. "And yet Hippocrite means that there is a discrepancy "between what's happening on the outside "and what's actually going on the inside. "In blindness means they don't see what they actually are "and they don't see what they're actually doing. "Even the possibility that that could be true of each of us "should give more credence to what Kierghar says, "let's learn to treat ourselves as suspicious characters. "The second one, from Kierghar, very similar, "but very memorable is he says, "Of all possible deceivers, fear yourself the most. "I think there's something in the teaching of Jesus, "the example of Jesus. "And ultimately, all of the scriptures that should form that, "which is I should not be surprised "if it turns out a year from now that I see the past year. "There were some things going on "that I wasn't admitting to myself. "I didn't even see but that we're not what I thought "I was actually doing or not what I actually was. "We all have examples of this for me. "I don't think this is an unusual one. "I think many people do. "I'm more aware of it, both because I am a deep down. "I really am. I am a painfully introverted person "at the end of the day. "Even though slowly I've learned to be "more of an extroverted ministry over the years. "But I also spend a lot of my time standing "in groups of people, making gestures like this and speaking. "And it's more likely for me over the years audio "that like a book will send me last week's sermon "and be like, can you listen? "And I get like three seconds in and I'm like, I can't stand this. "I cannot stand this because I hate hearing "what I actually sound like." Now, this is not exactly the same thing, but it is my perception of myself and whatever single one of you is noticing right now are pretty different. If this doesn't happen as often, but if anybody, Barbara and Kirk, I don't know as actors, Seth and Wario, how you do this, but anytime anyone has ever filmed me teaching, I watch it and I struggle with suicidal thoughts afterwards. I'm like, I hate the way my body moves. I hate my facial expressions. I hate the, and again, for me, as goofy as that is, as very secondary, it isn't a reminder that my perception of myself and what other people perceive in the same room can be pretty different from each other. That's part of what Kirkard is saying. Be open to the idea that Jesus sees some things more accurately about you than you currently see about yourself. I think it's just good wisdom in general, and in third, and I'm gonna say most importantly, yes, this is for me, in Lynette and Trevor, this is for leaders and the people of God across the country, across the world. This is for all of us to grow in these ways, but here I think is the most important way and the most helpful way to hear this, which is when I got married to Helen almost seven years ago, this is absolutely normal in marriage and even in different friendships and in family, but all of a sudden, you begin to notice that each of us is sometimes hurt by the other, and is speaking criticism towards the other that we would never speak to almost anybody else in the world. And one of the things I've learned over the years is that listening to Helen's criticisms is not just important because I am often wrong, I am often immature, I need to grow, it's not just important because I love her, it's important because it gives me a window into what she really cares about. It gives me a window into her priorities and what's important to her. And so as we hear these criticisms, this is from about to get into, I do want you to above all else see the heart of Jesus revealed that this is the stuff he cares about. This is the stuff that's really important to him. If we are gonna know him, if we are gonna receive his love, respond to his love, we need to know that these things are important to him and that he is not unbothered by them when they happen. Okay, it's a lot of setup. Now let's get back to verse 13. There are seven woes, I'm just gonna give you a little kind of structural overview and then we're gonna look at them. Almost certainly a couple of things, one, I think rightly Christian commentators and preachers on this passage have almost always noticed that this is the very end of Jesus' ministry and it correlates to the Beatitudes at the beginning of this ministry. Nonetheless, there are nine Beatitudes, there are only seven woes and they don't line up very well together. So I think it's a mistake to try to connect each of the woes to each of the Beatitudes, which sometimes people do. Like maybe the first woe is the opposite of the lesser of the porn spirit. I don't think that's the case. But the other thing is that even though there's seven woes and this is much more practical, is there's really only three woes. Woes one and two really go together, woes three and four are really just the same woe restated in slightly different ways and then woes five and six go together see three main criticisms and then the seventh woe is a kind of climactic declaration of criticism in a fundamental way of the Pharisees. And so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna read the first two woes, comment about them for a few minutes and then we'll move on to the third and fourth woe. Just a quick reminder because criticisms from Jesus have already arisen back up with me if you're in Matthew 23, back to verse two. I just want you to hear these again. Describes in the Pharisees sit on Moses's seat so do and observe whatever they tell you that is by and large they're preaching good sermons. This in and of itself is very, very practical Jesus 'cause I'm to say, so observe whatever they teach you, whatever they say about God and about what it means to obey the law but don't do the works they actually do. Here is already I think a really good shift. I think about 80% of our criticism as a culture is ideological. That we criticize people who adopt different positions than we do on hot button issues and then we're like, you're wrong or you're evil because you think this about this issue and all of Jesus' criticisms in this chapter are non-ideological, non-theological. Not a single thing is how you say this but God actually commands this or you affirm this but God actually forbids it or you forbid this but God actually affirms it. It's all attitudinal and it's all behavioral. None of it has to do with you guys are dotting your eyes and crossing your teeth wrong. This is not a theology spanking. This is a criticism of attitude and of behavior. And then again he says they tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, lay them on other people's shoulders but they themselves are not willing to move one finger again, like I won't lift one finger to do this comes from this verse. So the idea is they are very harsh towards others and what they expect and they are so complacent and so kind of addicted to come. They're so gentle and easy on themselves but they're very harsh and challenging towards other people. They do all of their deeds to be seen by others that they like I do in a moment like this. They have an audience both before God and before people. The word hypocrite, I've said this before in the season. literally comes from the mass that an actor wore on stage. It's not a criticism of actors. She's saying when an actor wears a mask on stage, you know that's not who this person really is. And Jesus says they present one thing, but what they're really doing is performing for the human audience to get praise from the human audience. They make their factories long. They love the place of honor. And now let's go to verse 13. But woe to you, here's the first woe. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. The first two woes, hypocrite is the guiding word, whereas number three and four will be blind. For you shut the kingdom of heaven and people's faces. For you neither enter that door yourselves, nor do you allow others to go in. And so they're gatekeepers and yet they keep both themselves and other people from entering the kingdom of God. Nobody gets closer to God because of these people. The end result of their ministry is they are far from God and other people are far from God. And we have seen that throughout the gospel of Matthew, as Jesus has described them. For you travel across sea and land, this is them as missionaries extending their faith to those who don't currently hold to it. You travel across sea and land to make a single convert, a single proselyte and when they enter your religion, when they enter your movement, the result is that you may hammer her twice as much of a child of hell as you are. These are very strong critiques. I want you to notice, again, from the hypocrite language, this is not what they're trying to do or that this is what they think they're doing, but what Jesus is saying is that they engage their lives in such a way, they lead and they teach and they live in such a way that one, everybody is farther away from God at the end than they were at the beginning. And for those who do come under their influence, they are worse versions of themselves than they were before they entered into this. And so this is a classic intention and impact discrepancy. Their intention on some level is to honor God and to help other people and to proclaim the truth, but the impact of what they are doing is that it is harder for people to actually believe in God on the other side of their ministry. People are deformed and now formed. In this dominion summer reading project that we have done, it has been a theme that weighs heavily on my heart for a long time. I hear it from non-Christians all the time in our culture and I think there's something helpful about it to know this, there is an encouragement indirectly in it but it is so heartbreaking and so hard that it's real. The number one thing that makes believing in God hard is when religious people are hypocrites. And specifically when religious leaders live in such a way and engage and walk through the world in such a way that it's just, it brings harm and misrepresent God, it's all just flesh, it's all just selfishness, it's all just lots of ways that can happen. But nothing makes believing in God harder than having bad experiences with people who are deeply convinced they are representing God and yet who are toxic in their impact. Jesus doesn't flesh out exactly how that's happening. He does earlier in the gospel but it is just to say they're not actually representing God, they're not actually teaching people in living in a way that that causes people to grow and love for God and love for their neighbor. And so Jesus says, whoa, that at the end of your ministry you are farther away from entering the door and the people you have taught are farther away from entering the door and you are all more selfish, more nasty, more ungodly than you were on day one when you became a member. There are very few things as a pastor that I desire than that not to be true of my ministry. That people are not farther away from God, that people are not less like Jesus because of the way that I not just teach but primarily live my life. And again, the word hypocrite sums these criticisms up. Again, it is connected to the word criticism but specifically here, I just think this is part of having wisdom being open to treating yourself in a good way as a suspicious character. Sociologists and psychologists talk about this all the time. It seems to be a universal human dynamic in a fallen world. Men and women equally, if somewhat differently, every different culture, ancient modern, that we tend to judge other people by their impact and we tend to judge ourselves or evaluate ourselves by our intention. And the Pharisees clearly are doing this. Jesus judges them by their impact and not by their intention and part of them laying heavy burdens on other people but being very easy and soft on themselves is that they are harsh with people because they are suspicious of other people. It's very easy for them to ask hard things of other people and yet they're not gracious towards them but they are very overly gracious towards themselves. All right, let's look at woes three and four, starting and oh, by the way, real quick, I'm not gonna talk about this, which I had more time to do it. If you're following along, I don't think you can see it up on the screen unless verses are there. But is anybody noticed in the first two woes that verse 14 is missing in your Bible? Anybody notice that? Jump from verse 13 to verse 15. If you have a footnote, you can look at this later. It is certainly not part of what Matthew wrote but there is a footnote here that verse 14 originally said until it was taken out a while ago from all translations. It says this, it's an eighth woe and it says woe to use scribes and Pharisees. Hippocrates, for you devour the houses of widows and for a pretense you make long prayers therefore you will receive the greater condemnation. There's two reasons we know this doesn't come from Matthew. One is it doesn't appear until centuries later in the manuscripts but two is it's just ripped out of Mark and Luke where I actually love this story. I have no idea why Matthew doesn't include it but Jesus praises and Mark and Luke this widow who comes and drops like two dollars in the offering plate and says she has done something more impressive than a billionaire right in the check for $100 million because this is all she has to live on. And he praises that act. What's often missed is that right attached to it both in Luke 20 and in Mark 12 is a warning to religious leaders to be careful about this. It is very easy for religious leaders to engage with money where people are hurt and they are devastated. Religious leaders, leaders in general in communities but religious leaders have access to people at their most vulnerable. They have access to people on some level and their most transparent reality. And Jesus says the love of money in other gospels is part of the critique here. It's not what Matthew says but to say that is part of what Jesus critiques the Pharisees on in general is that the way they deal with money is not a reflection of love of God or love of their neighbor. That's just an explanation of why. We have no verse 14 there. Let's go down to verse 16. Woe to you blind guides again. Woe one and two, hypocrite was the main idea that there's a discrepancy between what they think they're doing and what they are doing, what their actions are and what their intentions are. Here it's blindness, which is that they have no idea that this is what they've actually become, that this is what they're actually up to. Woe to you blind guides who say, if anyone swears by the temple, which Jesus has spent a lot of time in recently, is there in Jerusalem, it's nothing, but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath. This is very similar to what Jesus said in chapter five in the sermon on the mount when he said, "Let your yes be yes and your no be no." And don't have these artificial distinctions where, well, if I make a promise like this, I do have to keep it, but if I make a promise like that, I don't actually have to keep it. Her to pastor years ago say, this is what elementary kids do on the playground when they cross their fingers behind their back and think that because I cross my fingers down my back, I don't actually have to follow through with what I said. The Pharisees are designing an elaborate theological system to justify their falsehood, to justify lies and not being entirely truthful. If you, you probably all know this, it is not the strength of the church. If you are ever and many of you have been ever summoned into leadership and you're in those closed doors in any organization, most fallen human organizations are filled with leaders who justify a lack of transparency in what they're doing. Like, we're gonna be clear with each other behind the scenes that this is what's going on, but out there, we don't have to tell the full picture. We'll even try to kind of tell a half picture, and that's okay because they can't handle the truth. But if they would be upset by it, or the Pharisees are doing this, is that they are justifying a lack of truthfulness by divvying the temple up in the sacred, in less sacred places. And so again, he goes on, and he says, if anyone swears by the altar in the temple, it's nothing, but if anyone swears by the gift that's on the altar, then you do have to actually follow through, tell the truth, keep your promise. You blind human beings, for which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred, so ever swears by the altar, swears by it, and by everything on it, and whoever swears by the temple, swears by it, and by him, God, who dwells in it. And whoever swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God, and by him who sits upon it. I'm gonna real quick just read the fourth row, which moves from the temple to the law. Then I'm just gonna point out, it's very simple, what Jesus is saying. saying with these two woes. Woe to use scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you tie the mint and dill in human, which are all kind of like secondary periphery laws in the mosaic law, that everything you get, you should take a tenth of it and give it back, but you have neglected the way to your matters of the law, justice, mercy, faithfulness. You constantly feel free to transgress, but you're tithing how much coriander you bought at the grocery store last week, and doing it. I want you to notice, this is the two great institutions of the people of God, Neal, Covenant, the temple and the law, and here's the essence of what Jesus sang. They have completely misunderstood what either of these things are about. They have completely failed to see what the temple is there for. To be a place where heaven and earth are connected and where God dwells with people, instead it's become a refuge for lies and deception. And the law has become something to allow me to show off and to be self-righteous and to show off a sense of superiority of other people, because of how I dot my eyes and cross my teeth. It has not become something that's helped me grow in faithfulness and love and justice and mercy. We would use an expression today, adventures and missing the point. The leaders of the people of God have completely misunderstood why the temple is here, why the law is here, why a sermon, why the Lord's table is here, why we share our faith with outsiders, why we're doing these things, but we are completely mishandling them and abusing them. And this is the essence they are majoring in the minors, and they are minoring in the majors, and they are abusing something that's there for an entirely different reason. And it's at the heart of Jesus' critique of them. Finally, woes five and six, starting in verse 25. Here, both hypocrisy and blindness come to the surface. Woe to use scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside you are full of greed and self-indulgence, you blind Pharisee. First clean the inside of the cup and the plate so that the outside also may be clean. Woe to use scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like white wash tombs, death is the ultimate form of uncleanness in the Torah, and so walking over a grave is uncleanness, but they are washing them and making them look really pretty. And so something that is the essence of uncleanness, they're spraying perfume on, and they're kind of putting makeup on it, and it's an absurd kind of image. Outwardly, you appear beautiful, but within you are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness, so you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. I know this is a heavy sermon. This is not the main thing in Jesus' ministry, but this is an important and climactic part of it. This is especially true of religion. It is especially true of religious leaders, but ultimately all forms of morality are susceptible to this, which is the more you take morality, religion, whatever it is seriously, the more you are putting yourself in danger of constantly managing an image externally of what you are to others, when what is on the inside is awful and wretched. And so here's a very simple way to think about it. When in Matthew 8 and 9 lepers and the sick and sinners and tax collectors and prostitutes, they're all coming to Jesus. They know exactly what they are. They're unclean, they're broken. They need healing. They need redemption and they come to Jesus for it. They ask for it and they get it. Jesus is saying on the inside, the Pharisees are leprous. On the inside, they are sick. On the inside, they are sinful. And again, that's not like, oh, therefore this is true of all of us, but they have put on a mass to convince people that something completely other is going on. And this again, I think is each critique kind of grows in its intensity. And what he's pointing out is that on the inside, let's put it this way, these are terrible human beings. These are not good human beings. And they stand before others as leaders in the people of God and say, this is what God wants from us and this is what we should be doing. And they shouldn't be teaching kindergarten to five year olds. And this is Jesus' critique. And so again, this is especially a warning to those of us who are leaders in the people of God. If you pay attention to what happens in American Christianity at all, there are no lack of stories in the last five years in the last 10 years of these exact dynamics being kind of surfaced among leaders. But this is what Jesus critiques them for. Real quick, as we end, and I am going to end on a note of hope and on a reminder of what God is like. Here is a line. If I had to summarize real quickly the essence of what Jesus is saying, I'm going to say two things. They're really the same thing, but I'm going to say it two different ways. One is that the Pharisees in the scribes, Jesus is saying, relate to both God and other human beings as a means to an end to their own applause, as a means to an end to their own desires being satisfied, as a means to an end to kind of being at the center of the story. A second way to say it, which I think is the same way, is that they're really bad at intimacy. The Pharisees are far from God, and they are far from other people. And God is far from them, and other people are far from them, that they're really bad at intimacy, and therefore all of these dynamics show up. Our elders and deacons actually read this, little over a year ago to discuss it. Henry now and has a wonderful little book on Christian leadership, called In the Name of Jesus, and towards the end, he says this. I always come back to this passage. He says, much Christian leadership. He's saying this is an old guy in his sixties, maybe, after a lifetime of working with leaders in the church. He says, much Christian leadership is exercised by people who do not know how to develop healthy, intimate relationships with God or with other people, and who have opted for power and control instead. Many Christian empire builders have been people unable to give into receive love. And so what the heart of Jesus' critique is, they are really bad at loving God, and they are really bad at loving other people, but they perceive themselves to be the best at both of these realities. There is a call to repentance here, but this is there. Final and climactic woe in number seven. I'm gonna read it very quickly, and I just point out one thing about it. Again, this is not one more in the item. This is kind of the climax, this is the conclusion. Woe to use scribes and Pharisees hypocrites. For you build the tunes of the prophets, and you decorate the monuments of the righteous. Saying, "If we had lived in those old Testament days back in the day, when Isaiah got killed, and when this person did this, we also would not have taken part with the people that killed them and persecuted them in shedding the blood of these prophets and of these righteous people." And she says, "Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets." She seems strange, I'll come back to it in just a second. Fill up then the measure of your fathers. You serpents, you brutive vipers, which bulge on the Baptist, and Jesus of earlier used of these religious leaders. How are you to escape being sentenced to hell, to gain a? Therefore, I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, some of whom you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town. So that on you may come all the righteous blood. I shed on earth from the blood of righteous able to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Barakai. There's a lot going on here in this paragraph, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. Very briefly, what is Jesus saying here at the end? We, I've even used it a number of times over the years. There's a phrase that's popular today, which is we tend to have main character syndrome that we think were the main character of the story and everything revolves around that. There is a very related syndrome that's just as bad that I think we almost never talk about, but slightly different, which is I'm going to call it good guy syndrome, which is we're the good guys in this story. We're the ones who are on the right side of history. We're the ones who are going to save the day. We're the ones that all of the darkness of the past is overcome by the illuminating light of our brilliance and moral goodness today. And all of human history in the future will be one long retrospective of applause for me and my generation that we have good guy syndrome. We think we're the good guys, and this is what Jesus is saying. You guys think you're the prophets and the righteous men. You're the ones who've been killing them all along. You build monuments to them. You have celebrations to them. Here, as I heard a black pastor say a few years ago, it is the best example I've ever heard. This is someone who today, especially a white person, white pastor, white leader, whatever, who is always talking about reverse racism against white people and all the problems in the black community today are internal and white people are mistreated, but celebrate MLK, celebrate Frederick Douglass, celebrate Harriet Tubman and are constantly saying, if we were there with them, that's what we would've done, but every single thing they do today is just participating in the wrong side of this reality. Jesus is saying, this is what's true of the Pharisees you guys are doing what the leaders of Israel, that the prophets of criticize, have been doing from the very beginning, that he's saying this, that you guys are misrepresenting God, all of this. Now, real quick, who's in? This is a really fierce passage. And even I, I don't have nearly enough time, I can feel that as I go, that there's so much I've gone over quickly here. Now, what I want us to end with, and I do want you to really meditate on and really reflect on, is how it ends. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem. The city that has always killed the prophets that God sent to it. The people of God who have never listened to their Creator and Redeemer, who have always resisted Him, who have always failed to reflect His image, who have always been on some level, hypocritical and blind, who have always stone those who are sent to it. And by the way, not only the weeping there, I hear in this, I don't know if Jesus, I hear David saying, "Absolum, absolum." O Jerusalem, like this is heartbreak. This is disappointment that flows out of love. This is not the self-righteous judgment of standing on the sideline and thinking you're better than somebody else. This is someone that you're supposed to be in a mutual fidelity relationship of reciprocal love. And this person has been utterly faithless in spite of your faithfulness. And then the weeping, the heartbreak, the disappointment, how often I have wanted to gather you and your children together as a mother hen, gathers her brood, the children, the vulnerable, the weak under her wings, but you did not want to. You were not willing. And I want you to hear that twofold desire, I wanted it to be this, you didn't want that. You didn't want my grace, you didn't want my protection, you didn't want my redemption instead and they are about to crucify him. They are about to do what the people of God have always done to God's messengers. And yet Jesus says, even though now your house has left you desolate, this judgment is coming upon the people of God. Notice this whole chapter ends with a note of hope. I tell you, you're not gonna see me again until you say, "Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord." That this is not the final word for the people of God or even for the leaders in it. This, I heard I'm gonna do this real quick 'cause I want us to be able to go to the Lord's table and I don't wanna, but I do want us to above all else see the heart of God here. I have heard, I hear this all the time from different people in our culture, which is the reason I don't believe in God is that basically God has let us down. He has set us up to fail, problem of evil, whatever it is that the world is so awful. And even though we're all trying to be good, God has basically let us down. I heard a stand-up comedian the other day say the Old Testament should be renamed, he's just not that into you because like God is so judgmental and all this stuff. I'm really gonna make the case one more time that Tim Keller was right when he said, God is in the longest bad marriage in history. All day long Paul says, or he quotes Isaiah and Roman, all day long I have held out my hands to a people who are uninterested in being in a relationship with me. Even now Jesus opens his hands and says all I want is to protect you. All I want is to care for you. All I want is to love you and you are throwing stones at me and you are rejecting me and you're saying on the bad guy, this language of I want this but you don't want this. It is shown up in the parable of the talents that they did not want the parable of the two sons, they did not want to go into the field. At the very heart of Jesus's critique is that God wants to be with his people but his people do not want to be with him. Especially the leaders. But this is the way to make money or this is the way to look really good. This is a way to just make a name for yourself, whatever it is. And so as a reminder and as an insistence of hope here, all of this is flowing out of God's heart because of love, not because of anger or a sense of superiority. All of it is open-ended so that we would return this not the last word in the relationship and when you look at this, this is just how the world has always been. It's how the people of God has always been. There's so much evidence in the last 2,000 years we haven't learned much. The church is so often like this too. I want you to remember as we come to the Lord's table that where our hope really is and what the center of the story is, is Jesus said in the Lord's prayer that central to what we pray is not that our will, our desire but that God's desire would be done. And the Pharisees have just centered their own desire and we are about to move, although we'll be months before we get there because we'd take a break from the Gospel of Matthew after today. We are about to enter a moment in the story where Jesus being rejected by God's own people and especially the leaders of God's people will be in a garden as he waits for what's coming and he will say, "God, I really don't want this, I really don't want this, I really don't want this, but not what I want but what you want." And so as we come to the Lord's table, it is always a passage that is very appropriate for the Lord's table. But I haven't read it in a while and so I'm gonna read it here. O Jerusalem, O Jerusalem, even though I've held on my hands all day long, even though I just want your good, you are not interested in that. Here is what's about to come and the story's incomplete unless we remember this every week. Isaiah 53, "Surely he has borne our griefs and he has carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. He was pierced for our transgressions and he was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace and by his wounds we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every single one of us to our own way and to our own desire, but the Lord has laid on him, the iniquity of us all. This is where O Jerusalem, O Jerusalem can take him. That in this moment when he lays down his life, not just for the world but for the people of God, this is when the wings of the mother hand come out and he says not what I want but what God wants, not what I want but what you need. The critique is here and it is important. It's not the center of the story but this critique leads Jesus in a redemptive way. It flows out of his heart and it reminds us that the story always is open ended with the next page and so I hope that we have heard even though it's really hard. It's a darker sermon today because of the passage, the critique of Jesus. I hope you will hear as you come, own neighborhood church, how I long to spread my wings over you and to bless you like crazy, how I long to be with you, how I long to protect you, how I long to guarantee your future and it is always that what do you need to come to this moment and the simplest explanation is you have to want this. You have to desire what Jesus has done for us. You have to desire not to just continue to be and to do what we are and what we've done but to open our hands to His mercy to long for healing from our sickness, for cleansing from our inclinus and from protection in our weakness. I hope that you have had some sense, especially at the end with the weaving. This all flows out of the love of God. I wrote this in the newsletter this week and with it, it is a scary thing that confesses Christians have always confessed that God is the one to whom no secrets are hid and to whom every desire is known. And He is also the one that loves you anyway. And I hope you will come and respond to that love. Let me pray and then I'm gonna invite you up. Father, there are, as we talked about all too briefly at the beginning, there are dangers to criticism, there is a danger of just thinking this for other people or to receive it in a condemning, despairing way. But I pray that we would hear this as arising out of the love of God for us and for our well-being. And then we would hear it as hopeful, as open-ended, as an opportunity to continue to grow, to enter into the freedom that you have given us in creation and redemption. And I pray that as we would come, that we would know that as prodigal sons and daughters come home, they find that the father has open arms and that he is running towards them. I do pray above all else that we would know and see your heart accurately in this moment. Thank you Lord Jesus, that in your love, you not only wept in Jerusalem, but you laid down your life for your people who have always rejected you and have always do on some level that in spite of our resistance, in spite of our lack of desire for you in this moment, we see and experience your desire in your love for us. And I pray that that would transform all of us in this moment and in the future. And I ask this in Jesus' name, amen. And so neighborhood church, this is the body of Christ that is broken for you. This is the blood of Christ that is shed for you, come and receive the grace of God, which arises out of the love of God. The table is open when you're ready.