Matthew 23:13-24 - Religious but Wrong Part I

That's beautiful.

Well, I invite you to take your Bible and turn with me over to the Gospel of Matthew.

We're going to be in chapter 23, Matthew chapter 23.

Matthew 23 · chapter mention

Wasn't too many weeks ago we were in chapter 21, which is where you might find the triumphal entry of Christ.

We've been going as a church through the Gospel of Matthew together.

And if you want to listen to the passage about the triumphal entry, you can go to our YouTube channel and you can hear that message.

But for this morning, we're going to continue on uh through our study of Matthew.

Next week on Resurrection Sunday, we'll spend some special attention on the resurrection of Christ.

If you don't have a Bible, then you can turn to page 878 in the Pew Bible in front of you or near you, 878, and just feel free to turn to there.

And I just want to give you an invitation.

If you don't have a Bible and you would like to have a Bible, please just take one of those pew Bibles with you when you go home.

Feel free to do that.

Now, if you have a Bible but not a CSB Bible, I can tell you where you can buy one.

But if you don't have a Bible at all and would like to have a Bible, please feel free to take that Bible.

It's yours.

So last week we entered into Matthew chapter 23, and where Jesus begins by warning the crowds that are around him about the dangers of the religious leaders in Israel.

Matthew 23 · chapter mention

And last week we looked at the passage of scripture in chapter 23 from verses 1 through 12.

And Jesus highlighted several practices of the religious leaders that he warned the people about.

That they were hypocritical by way of being inconsistent with what they said and did.

The commands that they gave were not the commands that they followed, but they were the commands they expected other people to follow.

That's hypocrisy.

He also talked about the heavy loads that they would lay on people, putting all these demands upon others without even lifting a finger, Jesus said, to help them.

And then he also talked about their hungering for recognition.

They loved the applause of others.

They loved the places of prominence.

They wanted to be seen by everyone.

And so in their dress and in the places of prestige that they chose for themselves or pursued, they wanted others to know just how important they were.

All of these were examples demonstrated by them of things that the Lord warns about.

And here in our day, we can certainly take this to heart by looking for leaders in churches that are sincere, who try to align their life with what they preach, who are helpful, who are giving up their life in ministry for the betterment and help of others, who are devoted to God's praise and don't care a whit about whatever accolades they might receive, and who live humbly with an eye of service to others.

But these are also characteristics of all of us as believers in Christ, that these are things that we need to be as well, because we stand as representatives of our Lord Jesus Christ in this world.

And so we too are to be sincere, we too are to be helpful, we too are to be devoted to God's glory, and we too should be filled with hearts of humility and service.

This is the last few days of earthly ministry of Jesus.

One of the last things that he will talk about on this earth.

And it's remarkable to me that here on the cusp of his approaching sufferings and his death, that he reminds us all of the characteristics of himself as the Savior and of those who must necessarily live like him as part of the kingdom.

Jesus wants us to have no part with the ways of the world that are troublesome and sinful, those characteristics of pride, of showmanship, of one-upmanship, of profiting off of our own position, and certainly of hypocrisy.

And so as we go deeper into Matthew 23, Jesus' words of warning in the verse 12 verses, as he speaks to the crowds, now become statements of woe as he addresses the religious leaders directly.

He moves from the focus to the crowds by way of warning, and he now moves to the religious leaders themselves and speaks to them with a series of woes.

Now, we're going to ask and answer the question what is a woe?

But I want you to notice with me just how significant this is.

Take a look at verse, several verses, and we'll see this word woe show up a lot.

Verse 13, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees.

Drop down to verse 15, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees.

Verse 16, woe to you, blind guides.

Verse 23, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees.

Verse 25, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees.

Verse 27, woe to you.

Again, scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites.

And then lastly in verse 29, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.

Seven times in this translation, we hear this word woe.

Well, what is a woe?

It's not a word we might use very often.

And if we use the word woe, we say it a different way.

Whoa! You know, we're kind of like surprised and shocked.

That's not this word.

Even though a friend of mine, whenever he wants to use the woe word, he uses this one.

And I just laugh every time I see it.

But I'm not going to correct this misspelling.

He knows what he's trying to say.

And I know what he's trying to say.

What is this?

Well, it's a mixed cry of mournful sorrow with denunciation and condemnation.

It's a bewailing of the miserable condition of these religious leaders who have missed it so terribly.

And yet, at the same time, it's more than just a bewailing their miserable condition, it's condemning them for putting themselves into that terrible condition.

So it's mixed together, pronouncing their fate and yet crying over their just condemnation.

The Lord says in Ezekiel 33, as I live, this is the declaration of the Lord God, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked.

And here we can see that here.

We hear this mournful cry, and yet this condemnation of people who have so determinatively turned their hearts away from God, even though they're religious, the most religious people in society.

Tragically, these men are unaware of the judgment that awaits them.

They're living a life in a fantasy world of their own making, secure in their own thoughts, that they're living a life of pleasant and future blessedness and heavenly reward.

But the reality is far from the case.

And Jesus' woes are meant to be an abrupt, perhaps even rude awakening for them.

Giving them the recipe of repentance.

What are the areas that need correction in your life?

Religious leaders, here they are.

And if they would only listen to that, their hearts could have been moved the right direction.

But instead of this being a recipe of repentance, it becomes an indictment of judgment.

Well, we're going to look briefly at each of these woes this week and also the next time we come back to Matthew 23.

Next Sunday, we're going to look at an Easter passage, a beautiful passage out of the Psalms that speaks of the resurrection of the Savior.

The week after that, we have our missions conference, and so we're going to have some special speakers here.

And then in a the week after that, we'll come back to the latter part of this chapter.

But we're going to do like we did with the first 12 verses, taking these indictments against these men, these denunciations of their horrible behavior, and seeing what kind of positive encouragement we might receive and how we ought to live our lives, and what kind of focus we should present as representatives of our Lord Jesus Christ.

There are several positive, contrasting encouragements to be found in these woes.

But let's walk through them.

We're going to look at the first four this morning.

The first woe is found in verse 13.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, you shut the door of the kingdom in people's faces, for you don't go in, and you don't allow those entering to go in.

Now, before we look at this passage, I want you to notice something that I think some of you will ask.

There's no verse 14 here, right?

You go from verse 13, it jumps directly to verse 15.

If you have a New King James Version, for instance, you will see verse 14.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you devour widows' houses and for a pretense make long prayers.

Therefore you'll receive the greater condemnation.

The reason why we don't see it in this version and many other versions of the English Bible, and also other versions in other languages, is there are some internal and external reasons why this passage, verse 14, is not included here.

Verse 14 is derived from two parallel passages where it does show up without question in Mark 12, 40, and Luke 20 and verse 47.

But if you were to read those passages, you would discover that the substance of what's said there is in the context of the warnings to the crowd rather than the woes to the religious leaders.

Let me read it.

Mark 12.

In his teaching, he was saying, that is Jesus, beware the scribes who like to walk around in long robes, like respectful greetings in marketplaces, and chief seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets, who devour widows' houses and for appearance' sake offer long prayers.

They will receive the greater condemnation.

So you can see it's a statement about them, not to them, in that passage.

And again, Luke 20 and verse 45 to 47 says exactly the same thing.

So there's some internal reasons here why we would say that this passage in Matthew was added by a scribe at some later point.

Additionally, in some of the manuscripts that we have of the Gospel of Matthew, that verse is sometimes placed before verse 13, and sometimes it's placed after verse 13.

So those are internal, what we call internal reasons, why we would wonder whether or not that verse itself is placed here.

There's also some external reasons, and that is that the manuscripts themselves often don't have this passage until you get to later ones, upwards into the 1200s rather than in the early years.

It's a true statement.

It's true about these men.

It's recorded in Mark, it's recorded in Luke.

It's not here, but it's a just condemnation against their behavior.

They truly are taking advantage of weak people, and in their weakness, they don't find a reason to help, but a reason to manipulate.

What a horrible thing that is.

But for now, let's focus on verse 13 and take a look at this.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.

You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people's faces, for you don't go in, and you don't allow those entering to go in.

This is what a horrible indictment this is against the Pharisees.

These men, the Pharisees, were not part of the priestly elite of society.

They were people, however, who held powerful religious influence among the people.

They started out as a group of people about 150 years prior to this moment, who were concerned about trends in their society.

They were concerned about the Jewish nation becoming more and more like the ruling Hellenistic Greeks who were controlling that part of the world.

And they were seeing the move away from the language and the culture and the religion of Israel becoming more Greek in their speech, more Greek in their dress, more Greek in their worship.

And they reacted against that move in society, and they did so by trying to become more committed to the language and the dress and the behavior of Jewish people.

They developed a system of ritual precision by which they would operate as signs of keeping the larger law, and they would find themselves with all kinds of added ordinances and regulations to give a distance, a physical, cultural, and social distance from anything that looked Greek at all.

And so as they scoured scripture, they weren't looking for the heart of what God's word had to say.

Rather, they were looking for details by which they might be able to demonstrate their purity and demonstrate their separateness from everything that wasn't essentially Jewish.

And as they developed as a group of people called the Pharisees, which may have been derived from a word which means the separated ones, they began to hold sway over society.

And Jesus here is speaking with words of condemnation that their whole focus is not in alignment with God's will, and it's having a negative influence upon those that they speak to.

He's telling them that they are wrong, dead wrong, in their understanding.

Not only do they not enter into the doorway of the kingdom of heaven, they are shutting the door for others so that those people might go in themselves.

And so when John the Baptist, for instance, came and preached a statement of repentance to the people to prepare themselves for the Lord who was about to come, these men, instead of listening to John the Baptist, said, What kind of message is that?

And they ignored his ministry.

And when Jesus stood up and preached a message, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, it's here.

Again, they refused because when Jesus began to expand upon the word of God, he talked about an internal change of heart, not forms of religion.

And they didn't want to hear that because they could control how they acted religiously, but they knew, like all of us know, that we actually can't change who we are.

Only God can do that.

And so finding their influence, finding their place in society under threat, they refused John the Baptist.

They refused Jesus.

And when Jesus began to speak favorably to those that they thought they needed to stay separate from, their disregard of Jesus turned into a determined effort to rid this world of Jesus.

So when Jesus began to sit with prostitutes and to sit with people who acted as tax collectors, when Jesus began to embrace the brokenhearted and the diseased, when he began to speak favorably to the Gentiles, they said, wait a second, this guy cannot be the Jewish Messiah because he would be joining our cause and separating the Jewish people from anything that might taint their religious and ethical identity.

So they asserted the right to speak authoritatively about God and missed the whole message about God.

And they were in actuality shutting themselves out and shutting out their hearers from hearing about the wonderful truth of God's rule coming in Jesus Christ.

This long-anticipated and prophesied Messiah, Jesus himself.

And instead of welcoming Jesus, they directed people away from him.

They sought their own power and their own prestige and shut the door of heaven.

What a tragic thing this is.

These men dedicated to the study of scripture and don't even know what it says.

These men dedicated to religion, and God says, I hate what you're doing.

To feel as though they're inside the sacred place of heaven.

And Jesus makes the indictment, you're shutting the door to yourself and others.

Just how wrong-headed they must be here.

What does this teach us?

Well, this teaches us of the temptation to be absolutely deluded in our way of thinking, to be completely contrary to truth, and yet be assured that we own it.

It's also teaching us of the importance of aligning ourselves with God's purposes in Christ.

And one of the things about our generation is that it doesn't matter what we believe as long as you're sincere.

Jesus is bringing that point to a dead stop right here.

These men were sincere, they had that in handfuls, but they were wrong.

And Jesus bewails and condemns how wrong they were.

Paul spoke about his fellow brothers and sisters who were Jewish, and he said, My heart's desire, my prayer to God concerning them is for their salvation.

I can testify about them that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.

Since they're ignorant to the righteousness of God and attempted to establish their own righteousness, they have not submitted themselves to God's righteousness.

For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness for everyone who believes.

Because they didn't know how holy God was.

They thought they could make themselves presentable enough to God without realizing that those things would only show them their need rather than assure them of their place.

And they never fled to the only one who could bring forgiveness of their sins, the Lord Jesus Christ.

I pray that none of us here this morning might be trying to establish a place in heaven based upon what we do.

Because we are as deluded as these men if we think that's the way forward.

It is not about cleaning up our act.

It's not about turning over a leaf.

It's not about presenting ourselves righteous to God.

It's not about how do I sign up and become a member of a church?

It's not about getting into the water and being baptized.

It's not about keeping the Ten Commandments or being better than your neighbor.

It's about realizing before a holy God none of us deserve to stand and none of us can.

Not a single one of us.

And realizing the only hope for forgiveness and the only way we can be seen as righteous in the eyes of God is through the one who suffered for us and the one who obeyed in our place, the Lord Jesus Christ, and to cast ourselves.

On him.

What is our hope?

Only Christ.

And if we were to be brought into heaven and asked the question, Why should I let you into my heaven?

The only right answer is Jesus and Jesus alone is my Savior, and I'm clinging to Him.

Nothing in my hands I bring.

Simply to His cross I cling.

That's the hope of heaven.

And the wonderful thing is, is the scriptures warmly receive us with promises of hope and life, for whoever will believe on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Doesn't matter who you are, doesn't matter what you've done.

As if we'll hear from Al soon, but Al and I were talking just a few minutes before the service, and he repeated something that he had heard.

Every one of us come to a place where all of us need to be before the Lord Jesus.

But when we look at this passage, we see that on the positive side for us who are believers in Christ, that we have a responsibility to model our life as signposts for the kingdom of heaven rather than to shut the door of the kingdom of heaven.

And it's important that we examine ourselves and ask ourselves is my hand inviting or is my hand shutting people away?

Am I one of those ones who's trying to shut down a curious heart or to point the way of a lost soul?

In John chapter 3, John the Baptist was confronted by some troubles disciples of his who were concerned that he was being sort of overshadowed by this one who was baptizing Jesus across the river.

John 3 · chapter mention

And upset that their mentor was ministry, was kind of deflating a bit, they spoke to him and said, Rabbi, the one you testified about, the one who was with you across the Jordan, he's baptizing and everybody is going with him.

What did John the Baptist say?

He said, He said, This you yourselves can testify that I said, I'm not the Messiah, but I've been sent ahead of him.

He who has the bride is the groom.

But the groom's friend, that's me, who stands by and listens for him.

Well, we rejoice greatly at the groom's voice, at the marriage that the groom and the bride have.

Our joy is seeing the movement forward of this glorious relationship.

It's not about, it's not my marriage day.

It's not my day in the sun.

It's not my day to be exalted.

He said, My joy is complete in people running to the Savior.

He said, He must increase, I must decrease.

And John the Baptist speaks to us of the right attitude that these religious leaders should have had, pointing the way to Jesus Christ rather than to show off who they were.

And we too are to align ourselves with what God desires and for us to be a signpost to the doorway of heaven.

Because what we say and what we do has a tremendous influence on the lives of others.

They look to us many times for direction.

What direction are we sending?

What signals are we giving?

This from our Savior is teaching us to live as an example of God's message of grace and to be a person who through our life and our voice gives witness to the kingdom of Christ.

To be signposts of Him that help people who are in the need of salvation, to show them the suitability of Christ to meet their need, to be the only cure for the disease of disobedience that is destroying their life and bringing them to eternal destruction.

Our life ought to be marked by opening doors, not shutting them, pointing the way rather than putting out our hands.

What are some of the things that we can do to shut doors?

We can live lives of hypocritical disobedience, saying one thing and doing another.

We can live lives of pride like these men were doing, and prejudice like these men were doing.

The scriptures tell us that all of us as humanity are made in the image of God, that there's not a single one of us that aren't.

And that it doesn't matter what the color of our skin is, it doesn't matter what our educational background is, it doesn't matter what place of society we might think we might be in, God doesn't take a stock in any one of those things.

He looks at us as those made in his image, in need of a relationship with him through Jesus Christ.

And if we act by way of any pride or prejudice, trying to crowd out any person that doesn't look or act or talk or dress like we do, we're door shutters, not door openers.

Paul spoke to the church leader Titus and he said, remind the people to submit to rulers and authorities, to obey, to be ready to do every good work, to slander no one, to avoid fighting, to be kind, always showing gentleness to all people.

Why?

Because through your kindness, through your gentleness, through your helpfulness, through your truthful speech, through your healing words, you're pointing the way to people that are anything but that.

To the hateful, to the proud, to the slanderous.

You're pointing the way to a whole different way of life that they deep in their heart know that they would like to be, but can't.

Woe number two.

Woe number two in verse 15.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, you travel over land and sea to make one convert.

And when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a child as hell as you are.

Well, the Pharisees were certainly enthusiastic about what they believed.

They advocated this sort of sectarian, authoritarian position of the law, this idea of Judaism, contending that their way was the primary way of living a life of true devotion.

They elevated their oral traditions to a place of equality with Scripture, and they tried to press those things upon other people so to bring them into confirmation with those practices and with that identity.

But far from doing the work of God, they were influencing people even further away from God.

Because they were calling people to take up a life of religious devotion that was dedicated to their interpretation of the law code of Scripture.

They would gain their inheritance, adherents, rather.

They were making their proselytes, but they were being more destructive in their influence than helpful.

And Jesus here says, You're making them twice the child of hell.

They were taking people who were separated from God and just moving them even further away.

And he uses this image that everybody in Jerusalem would have known, the valley of Hinnom, down in that deep place where dead bodies were thrown, and where garbage was piled, and where fire burnt and smell lifted up.

There was nothing pleasant about the place at all, as an image of eternal punishment and destruction.

What is our lesson?

Well, the lesson for me is to make sure that people become followers of Jesus and are shaped into his likeness rather than into any likeness of myself.

Which means that I need to squelch any sense of desire for my personal preferences to hold sway over people's consciences rather than the word of God.

So I must be careful about what I say about matters because what I say matters.

And we too must be careful about what we say about matters because what we say matters.

That matters so much that our words have eternal consequences in the lives of others.

And the Lord here is saying to these people that their purpose in life is doing nothing but ruining others, not just for the way they live, but for their eternity.

They've taken up their perspective theological projects and their hobby horses and bringing people not only to error but into judgment.

What was me pursue?

Christ, pointing the way to him, making sure that people are following him.

Paul told the Corinthians, he said, whenever someone says among you says, Well, I'm of Paul, or I'm I belong to Apollos, he said, Aren't you just talking like men?

Like unconverted people?

Christians don't do that.

He said, A person should think of us this way, as servants of Christ, managers of the mysteries of God, and it's required of these managers to be faithful to that.

Servants of Christ.

Sadly, Paul isn't hurt as well in our day as he should be.

Because there's a lot of people with their names all over their ministries and their name on our checks.

Because what they want is the benefit of gathering to people, not the pleasure and privilege of pointing people to Jesus.

Jerry Vine said this.

He said, Many people in America Day are all about building crowds, but they're not willing to pay the price to build God's church.

And so we have these secular standards of success by which we measure ourselves.

How big is our budget?

What is the size of our congregation?

What is the appearance of our church building?

What kind of income do we have?

Who attends the church?

What part of society are they from?

How many programs do we have?

And the question isn't into the basic thing: is Jesus front and center in your church?

Do people sing gladly about him?

Do they seek to walk humbly before him?

Do they encourage others to follow him and to know him?

That's the mark of a true, faithful gospel church, with Christ at the center of it all, with Christ over it all, with people serving through the energy of he who is the head of the church.

It's not about those things.

Here's the right focus, Paul again.

Who is Apollos?

Who is Paul?

You say you follow Apollos, you say you follow Paul.

You're prideful in your arrogance and your sectarian divisions among each other about who's your favorite philosopher and teacher.

Who are these guys anyway?

They're servants through whom you believed.

And each has had a role the Lord has given.

Paul said, I planted, Apollos watered.

God gave the increase.

It wasn't about the cleverness of Paul.

It wasn't about the ingenuity of Apollos.

It wasn't about the eloquence of Peter.

It wasn't about any of those things.

It's about God who gave the increase.

So then neither the one who plants nor the water is anything, but only God who gives the growth.

Now, he who plants, he who waters, well, they'll receive the reward according to their labor.

But remember, we're God's co-workers, and you are God's field.

And you are God's building.

And according to God's grace, we serve.

That foundation is Jesus Christ in Him alone.

And this is where Jesus brings this indictment.

They didn't have the foundation of God's word and God's kingdom and the Messiah who had arrived.

Their foundation was their following, their prestige, their influence, their power.

What a tragic, tragic, tragic situation.

Woes three and four are connected.

We'll move through these a little more quickly.

Take a look at verse 16.

Woe to you, blind guides, who say, whoever takes an oath by the temple, it means nothing.

But whoever takes an oath by the gold of the temple is bound by his oath.

Blind fools.

Which is greater, the gold or the temple that sanctifies the gold.

Also, whoever takes an oath by the altar, it means nothing, but whoever takes an oath by the gift that's on the altar is bound by that oath.

Blind people, what is greater?

The gift or the altar that sanctifies a gift?

What is Jesus saying here?

They're religious gameplaying is what they're doing.

They're making value judgments about what oaths a person ought to be kept, ought to keep or not keep, based upon what they called upon when they gave that oath or promise.

The temple was less than the gold in the temple, and the altar was less than the gift of the altar, and you didn't have to keep your promise if you made a promise by the temple, but you had better keep your promise if you made it by the gold of the temple.

And Jesus is like, away with this foolishness.

What is this?

You can't play little games with God and think you're doing the right thing.

You're going beyond what is written.

This elaborate system of that you've contrived in your own head.

You blind people.

Jesus cuts through this twisted thinking.

What is he telling us here?

Well, one thing he's telling us is this exactly what James said when he quoted Jesus from an earlier place in Matthew.

James 5, above all, brothers and sisters, don't swear an oath, either by heaven or by earth, or with any other oath.

But let your yes be yes and your no be no.

You don't have to make an oath.

The lesson is this that a person who is in the kingdom of heaven ought to live a life of such integrity that their word is no different than a written contract that's signed.

That we should be truthful of heart, full of integrity of character, absolutely believable because we're dependable people.

Let our yes be yes and our no-no.

That's all you need to be.

You don't need to find the special spot in the temple to make a promise over.

Or make sure you got the right spot on the altar to make your promise.

No, just keep your word.

Just do what you say you will do.

Then woe number four.

Twenty and twenty four.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.

You pay a tenth of mint, dill, and cumin, and yet you have neglected the more important matters of the law, justice, mercy, and faithfulness.

These things you should have done without neglecting the others.

Blind guides, you strain out a gnat and gulp down a camel.

The scriptures there in the old covenant talked about them giving a proportion of what they had and what they had gained in return to the Lord for the maintenance of the worship of God among the people of Israel.

And as an indication that their lives were responsible stewards of all that God had given them.

He's saying, Yeah, do that.

But you've brought this down to such nitty-gritty granular details that you're overlooking the obvious things.

You're looking down at your soup bowl and you're you're pouring the broth through a strainer in order to get a gnat out of there, and yet you're like, no, knocking a camel down every time you drink another spoonful.

He said, How can this be?

How can you be so scrupulous in your attention to ceremonial details and not understand how important matters like justice and mercy and faith are?

To bring right where there's wrongs, to bring mercy where there is wrong, to bring faithfulness where there is nothing but apostasy.

He says, Don't you see how important those things are?

Micah chapter six.

Mankind, he's told you what is good, what it is the Lord requires of you to act justly, to love faithfulness, to walk humbly with your God.

These men were attending to the minutiae of legal details, straining out the smallest little bug, and yet in one swallow putting down a camel.

The gnat and the camel were both indicated in the Old Testament as unclean animals.

They were stepping all over and neglecting the true heavyweight issues of God's word by having this burdensome preoccupation with the smallest little details.

And they were getting caught up in these legalistic demands and expectations and not seeing the big picture.

So, as a body of Christ here, it's important that we understand what is essential to life in Christ, what is primary in God's word, those things that are necessary for life and godliness.

And to realize that there are certain things that are attendant to the Christian life that are issues of conscience, and that some of those issues even get down to the point of personal preference, depending on our backgrounds, our age, our experiences.

And we might have a discussion gladly about whether or not we like the organ, or whether or not we like the piano, or whether we'd like or not have a drum set up here, or someone playing the violin, or whatever.

But how dare we make any kind of comment about any of those things in a way that would destroy the life of someone Christ died for simply because we'd rather.

Have one instrument over another or something along those lines.

Here the Lord is telling us lift up your eyes and see the bigger picture.

Vie with a wider scope what God is giving his emphasis to in all that he has said.

And Jesus gives us the biggest hints.

Let me tell you what those are.

They are justice and mercy and faithfulness.

Give yourself to those things.

Make those your priorities.

Let the rest fall in line.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind, and love your neighbors yourself, Jesus said just a few verses before this.

And all the other things fall under those two.

As we come to the end of this message, in the middle of this hard, hard, hard passage, we see some things that are helpful and encouraging, meant to be engendered in our life as believers.

These are lessons I've had to learn the hard way in my early walk as a believer, giving emphasis to things that were of no account in God's eyes, calling people to do things that God would never tell them to do.

And the rush of anguish and humility that it brought in my shame when I realized what I was doing as a young believer.

I pray you'd never have to experience.

Or no, and you don't.

Or those who realize the priorities of the kingdom of heaven and where your own particular interests lie with respect to those things.

As we come to the close of this, let's remember that in Jesus' stern warnings against men who utterly disregarded these things, that we're under the sound of the same word, not so that we can point a finger at them, but so that we might learn a lesson for ourselves, right?

Let's pray.

Father, thank you for this passage.

Thank you for helping us see the heart of our Savior, not just in his warnings, but in his cry of woe against things that dishonor you.

That what he is all about is justice and mercy and faith and righteousness and love.

That he has come.

And we, as we read earlier, we will say, The Lord our righteousness.

Help us to be, Father, I pray, careful people.

Prayerful that you would protect us from being obsessed with outward signs of religiosity that do nothing more than mask a proud, arrogant, hateful, malicious heart.

Father, we pray that we would truly love the Lord with sincerity and love others fervently.

We pray that we might be indicators of all that we meet, the ones that are in our homes, the ones that are in our neighborhoods, the ones that we work alongside of, the ones that we interact on social media with, the ones that we drive past or are driven by, that we would give them the signpost of Jesus.

That we'd open the door for them to enter and not shut it out.

That we would be people of integrity from our heart.

Lord, that we would understand just those things that are the highest priority to you and they become our high priorities also.

Hear our prayer, Father.

We can do this only by the power of your spirit as you work with the word to mold and change and transform our very being.

And Lord, I pray that if there's any here this morning who doesn't know the Lord Jesus as their Savior, that they would not walk away from here thinking they can establish their own righteousness and be accepted by you, or think that by their sincerity that it gives them a pass, no matter what they believe.

May them realize that their only hope is to come to Jesus, that there's no other name given among men under heaven whereby we must be saved.

Lord, show them yourself and show them the reception and life and forgiveness that comes in Christ.

And may they repent of all those things that they trusted and cling only to Him.

And we pray this in Christ's name.

Amen.