The Inside of the Cup | Matthew 23:25-26 | Noah Graves

And so if you were here last week, we got to kick off our summer sermon series called Summer in the Scriptures.

So we're going to be spending a whole summer looking at different passages in the Bible and learning from different scriptures.

And so another thing that happens to be going on this summer is the Formula One World Championship is in full swing right now.

And if you don't know what Formula One is, it is the highest level of motor racing.

And so they travel all across the globe, uh race in different countries, different cities.

They have the best drivers, best cars.

It's the top class racing division.

And of course, the most famous team is Ferrari.

I think all of us know Ferrari.

We've seen the fast red sports car in the movies, we've seen them pulled over on the side of the highway, and they're everybody's favorite team.

And for Formula One, they have the most world championships, the most race wins, and they're just the most iconic team.

And for them, in the 2010s, it was just a big drought for them.

Other teams like Red Bull and Mercedes were dominating, they were getting all the wins, all the world championships.

And then it came to 2019 where Ferrari brought in the best young driver named Charles Declare.

He was a Monaco-born boy, and so he was just ready for the scene.

So they finally had the driver, and then in 2022, they had the fastest car on the grid.

So there it was.

2022, fastest car, one of the fastest drivers, six races in, they're in the lead.

They have this huge lead over all the other teams, and it looks like it's finally gonna be Ferrari's year.

They're gonna be back on top and they're gonna get the world championship.

And so in this race, in the sixth race of the year in Spain, Charles Declare is out there, he's in the lead for Ferrari.

It's looking like they're gonna get another win and take another step towards winning the championship.

But then, about 20 or 30 laps into the race, they cut to Charles Leclerc, and he's out there driving.

He he notices that his screen on his steering wheel just goes black.

And then he says on the radio, like, oh no, oh no, what just happened?

And so his team radio comes back to him and they say, Retire the car, retire the car.

We had a mechanical failure.

So there he was, pulled to the side, out of the race, done.

So that was the first domino for Ferrari that fell in the wrong direction.

After that, they had multiple other races where their engine just died in the middle of the race and they went on to lose that year.

So for Ferrari in that year, on the outside, everything looked good.

They finally had that fast red car again, they had one of the best drivers, they were in the lead.

But on the inside, not so much.

On the inside, it was a different story.

They had an engine that just couldn't make it through a whole race without breaking down.

And so the reason I share that story this morning is that in our spiritual lives, it's possible for us to have something very similar happen where on the outside everything can look good, everything can look great, but then on the inside, like Ferrari that year, we can have a faulty spiritual engine that, if we're not careful, might break down in the middle of our spiritual race.

So today, as we come to Matthew chapter 23, verses 25 to 26, Jesus is going to be addressing exactly this issue.

Matthew 23:25–26

And so starting in verse 25, Jesus says this Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.

You blind Pharisee.

First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean.

So it probably helps to get a little bit of context here, because if you're not familiar with it, you might be wondering what's going on here.

Did the Pharisees just have bad dishwashers?

What's going on with these cups and plates that are dirty?

And so, if you're not familiar with the context here, Matthew 23, Jesus is addressing these groups of people called the Pharisees.

And so the Pharisees were the spiritual elites of the day.

They knew all the scriptures, they were the hotshots, everybody looked up to them, but they had this problem.

They had this spiritual issue, this spiritual pride going on inside.

One of Jesus' most well-known parables is the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, in that two people go into this temple, one a Pharisee and one a tax collector.

And this tax collector was this sinner, and the Pharisee looks at him and thinks, oh, thank you, thank you, God, that I'm not like that tax collector.

Thank you, I'm not like him with all his sin.

Thank you, I'm not like that.

Pharisees were blind.

They were blind to their sin, to their pride, and ultimately to the dirty cups that they had.

So the temptation is the same for us today.

To have a dirty cup.

And I think a lot of us might think, well, okay, that's not me.

I'm not that far off the deep end like that Pharisee.

I've never come into church and looked down and judged people that harshly like that Pharisee.

And while that may be true, I think that probably is true for most of us here that we're not quite like these Pharisees exactly.

But is it possible that in some little ways and subtle ways that each of us have a little bit of a Pharisee creeping out ourselves?

Or maybe even we too have been slightly blinded to things like the Pharisees.

I know for me for college I went to Liberty University down in Virginia, and my freshman year, I got this electric longboard, and it was my mode of transportation all across campus, and it would just get me to class on time, get me everywhere.

It was a ton of fun, fly around campus.

And my junior year, I came back and it was about one week in, and I was getting onto my longboard to go around this route that I had done a million times, and so I get out and I go and I'm going through this turn, and I just come through and I turn to the side and I look and I just see this car coming at me full speed.

And I just I can't I can't help.

I can't I can't stop.

And so the car nails me, I go flying into the windshield, it shatters, I go soaring through the air, land on the ground, and just all these people come rushing towards me, checking on me.

Before I know it, I'm in this ambulance, rushing to the hospital, and it was terrifying.

And then thankfully, God protected me, and all the exams, the x-rays, everything came back clean, no broken bones, and it was truly a miracle that I came out okay.

But then, two days later, I checked my calendar and I saw that I had a preseason intramural football game.

And so, like any responsible college student, I decided I'm good to go.

So I suited up, went out for the preseason game two days after being hit by a car, and I was our team's quarterback, and you know, the first few plays went pretty well, threw a couple passes, made some completions, was feeling feeling okay.

And I just remember there was this one play where I drop back into the pocket, I don't really see anybody open.

So then I start to see these defenders are running at me, and so I think, oh no, I have to turn, I have to scramble, I have to run away.

So I spin and then I turn to run full speed to the left away from these defenders.

I just remember when I took that first step, I just remember I felt all this pain shooting up inside my entire body, and I just run straight out of bounds, toss the football to the ref and just ride the rest of the game out on the bench and learned my lesson there.

And the problem with me in that story was that I was only looking on the outside.

I saw, you know, x-rays were clean, no broken bones, no stitches.

I thought I was I was fine.

But then when the rubber met the road, I realized on the inside things were not so fine.

I was completely blind to what was really going on inside of my body.

Is it possible that maybe maybe you've had that same blindness in your spiritual life?

Maybe you look at the outside and everybody, all the exams, all the reports, they they check off, look good.

But is it possible there might be some not so good stuff deep down inside the cup of your spiritual heart?

In Psalm 139, King David writes, Search me, O God, and know my heart.

Try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.

God is the only one who truly sees the inside of our cup.

Others don't.

We can hide it, we can dust it off.

Even we can be blind to it sometimes, but God, God truly sees the inside of our cups.

So let me ask you this morning.

Would you like to allow the spirit to search the inside of your cup this morning?

Like David, are you willing to say, search me, O God, and know my heart?

Is the Spirit searching you and bringing anything to light to you this morning?

Maybe for you it's religion.

Go to church every Sunday, read my Bible every day, go to small groups, check off all the boxes, yet inside maybe there's this spiritual pride.

Like that Pharisee, maybe you look at other people and think, you don't go to church every Sunday?

You don't read your Bible every day.

Or maybe there's certain sins.

Hey, I don't do these sins.

I don't do these big sins.

I don't do anything that big, that bad.

Yet maybe inside there's quite a few sins in there that aren't as big or as well.

Or maybe it's some kind of phony love where on the outside we we appear loving, we we we say all the right things, we we we do all the right things, yet on the inside there isn't that true, genuine love for the other person.

It's bitterness, hard-heartedness, and not real.

Or maybe for you, it's just some way that the outside of your cup looks clean, but the inside has some dirt in it.

So the question we have to ask is what do we do when we see that the inside of our cup is dirty?

Because if we're honest, we all have that problem.

If we're honest, we all have some kind of problem with the inside of our cup.

And so too did the author of Psalm 139, David himself.

And so I'd like us to look at a time in his life where he had an outside of his cup that looked clean, but the inside not so clean.

So here we're gonna be looking at 2 Samuel chapter 11.

2 Samuel 11 · chapter mention

At this point, David is the king over all of God's people.

He was the shepherd boy that wrote all those psalms that we love.

He was the one who knocked down Goliath, and this is what happens next in his life after years of following God.

Verse 1.

In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab and his servants with him, and all Israel, and they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah.

But David remained at Jerusalem.

It happened late one afternoon when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful, and David sent and inquired about the woman, and one said, Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?

So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him and lay with her, and he lay with her.

Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness.

Then she returned to her house, and the woman conceived, and sent and told David, I am pregnant.

This is quite a low point in David's life here.

David's supposed to be king.

He's supposed to be king that leads all of God's people in truth and righteousness.

He's supposed to be the shepherd boy that we all love.

All those Psalms, the Lord is my shepherd, to taste and see that the Lord is good.

Same guy.

He wrote all that before this.

And yet, what is he doing?

He's taking another man's wife, he's getting her pregnant.

David.

And the truth is, David should have stopped here.

As soon as he heard the news that Bathsheba was pregnant, he should have seen what he did, knew that it was wrong, turned back to God in repentance.

But he doesn't.

What does he do next?

Many of us know the story.

He hears the news, he gets scared.

He realizes that his reputation of being God's king is about to be attacked because of the sin that he committed.

The outside of his cup is about to be revealed.

And so what does he do?

He decides to cover it up.

He decides to clean off the outside of his cup.

He says that he wants to have Uriah sent, sent home, send Uriah home so that it can look like this is Uriah's child and not mine.

But Uriah refuses, and David decides he needs to finish things off.

So he sends Uriah out to the front lines of battle where he knows Uriah will die.

There, everything will be cleaned up, and his sin won't come to the light, and his reputation will stay the same.

David is cleaning the outside of his cup and leaving the inside filthy.

What is it Jesus said in Matthew 23?

For you clean the outside of the cup and the pleat, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.

Here the inside of David's cup is filthy.

It's filled with lust, with sinful desires, yet he cleans the outside instead.

Here we see that even the man after God's own heart deep down had a little bit of a Pharisee living in him, too.

Even David.

A seasoned David.

This isn't a 15-year-old David right after Goliath.

No, this is David after years and years and years of following God and being God's king.

Even he can fail so horribly.

That in some way, like David, you've cleaned the outside of the cup, yet the inside.

Not so clean.

So I think we have to come back to the question from earlier of what do we do when we see the inside of our cup is dirty?

What do we do?

A few years ago, Timothy Chalome and Steve Carell made this movie about a true story about this kid named Nick Schiff and his father, David Schaff.

And in this story, we see that Nick grew up close to his father.

He loved him dearly, and they just had this tight relationship every step of the way.

And it came for Nick to go off to college.

He graduated high school, it was time to go off to college, and he developed this bad drug addiction.

He just spiraled farther and farther away from the boy that he once was.

And it just comes to this one point in his life where he just falls the farthest he ever had.

He moved across the country, he was making all these horrible decisions, left his family, and it comes to this one night where his friend is taken away in an ambulance.

He sees all that he has done.

And out in the middle of the road, he has no other choice but to call his father.

He calls his father, his father picks up, and he lays it all out there.

He says, Ted, I know I did wrong.

I know, I know I screwed up.

And I want to come home.

You're the one that's going to be able to help me get better.

I want to come home.

Nick poured out his heart.

He poured out everything to his father that night.

And for David and his life, he reaches this exact same place.

He's confronted by this prophet named Nathan.

His sin is brought to light, and he sees what he's done.

He sees the filth of the inside of his cup.

He sees his sin, and he sees the broken man that he is.

And he brings it and he pours it out before God in Psalm 51, where he writes, Have mercy on me, O God.

According to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

In Psalm 51, David finally sees what he was so blind to.

Finally sees the problem with the inside of his cup.

And he knows that he can't clean it.

He knows that he can't clean it.

He tried to dust off the outside and he realized that wasn't enough.

He could not clean the inside of his cup.

That's why he cries out, Have mercy on me, O God.

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.

David is calling out to his God here to clean the cup that he had made so dirty.

So let me ask you again, is the Spirit opening your eyes to your cup this morning?

Do you see that, like David, you can't clean your cup yourself?

Perhaps you've tried and you've realized it just keeps getting dirtier and dirtier.

The truth is, Jesus didn't come for those with a spotless cup.

Jesus didn't come for those who can clean up their set their cup themselves and come to him.

No.

In Luke 5, Jesus said, Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick, I have come not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

Jesus came for those with a dirty cup.

Jesus came for those who look deep down inside their hearts and see nothing but a broken person filled with brokenness.

That's who Jesus came for.

Stop trying to clean your cup yourself.

See what David did, how he poured it out to his God and he called out to him for mercy and do the same.

Stop trying to do it all yourself and come to God.

Pour out your heart before him.

Jesus Himself is inviting you this morning.

He is telling you that he has come not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.

Say yes to that invitation.

That you are a sinner and you want to come to Jesus, the physician, the only one who can make you well and make your heart clean.

But so often we find ourselves coming back to this place, don't we?

Or maybe it feels like we we take two steps forward in our spiritual race, and then that spiritual engine just breaks down again.

And sometimes maybe it feels like we just we can't get past something.

You know, and that same story with Nick Sheff, that's exactly what it was for him.

He would be seeming to be making all this progress, and then he just kept going back.

Two steps forward, two steps back, and he just couldn't get to where he wanted to be.

I think that's how a lot of us feel in our spiritual lives so often.

We just can't seem to get that true lasting change.

A cup that is cleaned and stays clean.

So, how can we get that lasting change that is true and real and lasts longer than just a day or two?

Or we need to look at someone else other than.

David, whose reputation was once at threat, like David.

For David, his true sinful reputation was coming to light, and everyone would see him for who he was.

But this other person never did anything wrong.

His cup on the inside and out was spotless.

Yet his reputation was being attacked by others.

And this person is Jesus in Matthew 27.

Jesus had lived a perfect, sinless life.

He's arrested unjustly.

He's put on this trial where people are hurling these false accusations against him.

He's accused of being this blasphemer, even though he's not, he's the true Messiah.

And this is what we read next in Matthew 27, 11 to 14.

Now Jesus stood before the governor, and the governor asked him, Are you the king of the Jews?

Jesus said, You have said so.

But when he was accused by the chief priests and elders, he gave no answer.

Then Pilate said to him, Do you not hear how many things they testify against you?

But he gave him no answer.

Not even to a single charge.

Jesus is being accused of having a dirty cup here.

Do you not hear how many things they testify against you?

And yet, what is Jesus' response to being accused of having a dirty cup?

But he gave him no answer.

Jesus is silent when his reputation and his cup is being attacked.

I think the question we're all asking is why?

Why doesn't Jesus speak up?

Jesus knows that he's never done anything wrong.

He knows that he is sinless and spotless.

Why does he not speak up and tell people who he really is?

Why doesn't he stick up for himself and say, no, I'm not a blasphemer?

Why doesn't Jesus say something here?

It's because Jesus wasn't standing there for his cup.

Jesus wasn't being accused for his cup.

He was standing there for David's cup.

He was standing there being accused for David's cup.

And the truth is, he was also standing there and being accused for your cup as well.

Jesus knew how dirty David's cup was, and Jesus knew how dirty all of our cups were.

And Jesus came down here to live a spotless life and to have a perfectly clean cup.

And to give that up for us.

To be accused of having a dirty cup and to take the punishment for a dirty cup in full on the cross.

That is what Jesus came to do.

Lift your eyes up from your cup.

Stop trying to clean it yourself.

Stop looking at how you keep stumbling and falling back in the same old thing over and over again and lift your eyes up at something much, much better and see the perfect spotless cup that Jesus had and how he died on a cross.

And if you have trusted in Jesus Christ as your King, your Messiah, your Savior, and believed in your heart that God raised him from the dead, that perfect spotless cup Jesus had on the cross is now your cup.

And that cup is now your new identity.

You don't need to look at your old filthy, dirty inside of your cup.

You can now look at a much more pleasing cup.

That is the cup of Jesus Christ.

And it's from that place, it's from that cup, that you can live a holy, clean life that honors and pleases the Lord in a way that lasts, that doesn't break down after 15 laps of our spiritual life, but lasts on and on and on.

That is what Jesus came to do, to give us his cup and to give us new life.

I have come to give them life to the full, abundant life.

That is what Jesus came to do.

Look to the cross, see what he did, and live in that new freedom, in that new identity.

So as we close this morning, I'd like to invite the worship team up for one more song.

And as we close, I'd like to look at one more part of Matthew 23, and may seem like somewhat of an odd verse to close on, and it's verse 26, where Jesus just simply says, You blind Pharisee.

You blind Pharisee.

The problem with the Pharisees in Matthew 23 was that they were blind.

They were blind to their own pride, they were blind to their sin.

But ultimately, the Pharisees were blind to Jesus, the one standing right in front of them.

And the temptation is the same for us.

To allow our eyes to be blinded in some way and to not see Jesus right in front of us.

So I want to encourage you this morning to lift your eyes up and to see Jesus on the cross.

See him hanging up there for your dirty cup.

See the love that your God has for you.

How deeply the Father loves you, that he would send his own precious son to save you, to take the full punishment for your sins.

And live in that freedom.

Live in that new life.

See the one who died for your dirty cup to give you his spotless cup.

Would you pray with me?

Father, we come before you this morning and we see our cups, Father.

We know that we can't clean them on our own.

We we need you.

Like David, Father, we all cry out, have mercy on us.

Clean our hearts.

So, Lord, this morning, as we come to worship you, I pray that all of our hearts may be open to the glory of your Son on the cross.

Fix our eyes on you this morning.

I pray that we may all bring our hearts to you and worship you together as the body of Christ.

Lord, we thank you, we love you.

We come to worship you this morning.

Amen.