Matthew 23:1-36 | Kingdom Now: Repentance Before Transformation

Just a quick question.

Everybody here, the yard work that's going on back there.

Listen,

let's try to be good witnesses to our neighbors.

Sometimes they get a little upset at what we do, especially on Sundays.

So they schedule

tree work on Sunday mornings during service

and had a little bit of an issue this morning.

So anyway, just let's just be praying that we're super gracious and good neighbors.

Is that fair?

Yeah.

Don't park in front of his property on Sunday mornings.

Let me just say that.

Hey, next week is our 21st birthday.

As a church, we finally are legal.

And so we can start using wine in church now.

So for communion, I guess that's what that means.

No, it's just so I was I talked to I talked to the church this morning

and my prayer time and the church said that all at once for its birthday is

new chairs. So

by the

church of birthday present, $60 a chair.

And we'll celebrate our birthday next week with brand new chairs.

They show up on Tuesday, so I'm excited about that.

The the entryway is coming.

It it got delayed a couple of weeks again, but it is coming.

And so I'm excited for kind of how we're able to make this place a little bit

more accessible and deal with first world problems like comfortable chairs.

When you talk about what's going on in Guatemala,

these chairs are going to be given to one of our church plants

in Fresno, inner city Fresno called Remedy Chapel with Pastor Sean.

So we're just going to give him all these chairs they are in need to.

So by your generosity with new ones, we're given the old ones away

and blessing another church.

And it's all good.

I want to warn you right up front now, as you get into Matthew 23,

we're all big people.

We can handle it.

But I just want to I want to warn you up front that

at some

point this is going to turn offensive

and some of you are going to be maybe offended by it.

You're going to be okay, you're going to handle it.

But I don't know what another way

to teach this passage of Scripture,

this is this is the point in Jesus's earthly life

where he really turns a corner and he's he's confronting

religious establishment

because they just don't get it.

This is the final week of his life.

From Matthew 21 through 24 or so is all takes place on Tuesday, all in one day.

It's a huge day.

And in chapter 22, sorry, chapter 23 is the follow up of chapter 22.

And what happened in chapter 22 is you had these four religious groups

the Pharisees, the Herodians, the Sadducees, and the religious lawyers

who were questioning Jesus's authority and challenging his authority.

And he handles all of it.

He's very gracious, but he's very he's very firm.

And in chapter 23, he's done.

He's done with their questions.

He's done allowing them to challenge his authority.

And in chapter 23, he draws a line in the sand.

And the term, if you read chapter 23, if you read it in

its totality, you're going to see one word over and over and over.

And it's the word hypocrite.

It's the word hypocrite.

And it's the key term that he uses for religious people,

religious leaders, I should say, over and over and over.

He calls them hypocrites.

He calls them a lot of other things as well.

He calls them snakes.

He calls them a brood of vipers, which is a family of little baby snakes.

He calls them blind guides.

He calls them whitewashed tombs.

He calls them fools, and he calls them sons of hell.

And so he's,

he's he's drawing a line in the sand.

And I want to I want to

simplify chapter 23 because it is profound.

It's it's difficult for many.

It feels offensive.

And it may for some of you this morning.

But I want to boil this down to one simple big idea.

And the simple, big, big idea is this true discipleship begins

with repentance in the heart and produces transformation in life.

So here's here's what happens with religion.

Religion tells you to change your life

and oftentimes doesn't deal with the internal.

Jesus says, I want to start with the internal,

because if the internal changes, the outside will be transformed.

Religion says, just look, do better.

Our problem is we can't do better for very long, right?

We try and we do well for a little bit.

We don't do this.

And you're not supposed to do we do this, we're supposed to do.

So we think for a little bit and then we we fail.

And a life of that is a religious life.

And that's what Jesus is pushing up against here.

He said, listen, the outside should change, no doubt,

but the outside should change because the inside has been transformed.

And to address this, he uses this word hypocrite of religious leaders.

Now the word hypocrite is used seven times

in this one chapter in the book of Matthew.

It's used 15 times outside of Matthew and the rest of the New Testament.

It's used a total of 19 times.

So 15 of the 34 times it's used in the book of Matthew.

And every time Matthew records the word hypocrite,

he does so in quoting the words of Jesus.

So Jesus uses this word a lot

to talk about the religious leaders of his day.

Let me ask

this question just to get our minds straight.

Do any of you have any of you ever known a hypocrite

you like? Does someone come to mind?

You think about word hypocrite. Yeah, yeah.

Have any of you looked in the mirror?

Let's get our minds right.

I know that many people in this

who can hear me are going to think, yep, hypocrites.

You're going to think of somebody else.

You're going to think of something

they've done, something they said how their life doesn't match up.

Our tendency is to think of somebody else.

So here's the challenge.

Let's let we can all let's not do that.

My prayer in this, in this passage is that

that God's Word would cut the messenger before it becomes a cutting message.

You don't have to look very long in the church to find a hypocrite.

You just have to look in the mirror at the church.

So let's just acknowledge that many people are going to have

their reasons and their excuses. That's why I don't go to church.

That's why I don't believe in God.

That's why I don't trust Jesus. That's why I don't like religion.

That's why that's why. That's why we're all going to have those excuses.

But please understand this. And I understand those excuses.

But please understand that regardless of the excuse, nobody

but you will have to stand before God one day

and give an account for your excuse.

And there's a lot of people

use the excuse of hypocrites.

And so let's just understand,

let's let's let this cut us first.

The word hypocrite comes from two Greek words.

It's the Greek word hypocrites.

And it comes from two words hypo, which means under or and which judge.

And so literally the word hypocrite is to under judge oneself

and thereby over judge somebody else.

That's what is to be hypocrite.

I'm going to judge myself.

I'm on over judge others.

It was used of in the theater world of someone who lived behind a mask.

So the mask is in the one thing,

but what was behind the mask was something different.

Hypocrite.

It being hypocritical always involves

inconsistencies in one's life, either in thought and word or deed.

There's just inconsistency there.

That's the idea of hypocrites.

The truth is

that if we define hypocrite,

as I point out in others, what I choose not to acknowledge it myself.

This hits every one of us.

And the Bible says in

Isaiah nine, for everyone is a what?

Do you realize the Bible said that every one of us

hypocrites and an evildoer, and every mouth

speaks folly.

First Peter two once is therefore

rid yourself of all malice and all the seat of what?

Hypocrisy, all kinds of hypocrisy, envy,

and slander of every kind.

I appreciate a pastor.

His name's Gary. I listen to him a lot.

I study a lot of his his his his, his writing, his teaching.

As I look through this passage, I tried to find a gentle way

to go through Matthew 23, and there just isn't.

And what I learned and kind of leaned into

is this idea of hypocrisy.

We live hypocritical lives in three different ways.

One is just the hypocrisy regarding others

that I have a standard for you and an exception for me.

That's it.

And we do that with others all the time.

When when I hold you to a standard, I'm unwilling

to live at myself or when I'm never wrong.

Wrong. And you always are.

Tipple critical.

The second way we live lives of hypocrisy is hypocrisy.

Regarding myself, when there's a contradiction

in what I claim to believe and how I actually live.

So not only is there a different standard for the two of us is standard

for you and exception for me, but even what I claim, I don't live.

So there's a hypocrisy regarding others in a hypocrisy regarding myself.

And then thirdly, there's a hypocrisy regarding God

when I call right what God calls wrong.

And so we live in these three arenas of hypocrisy.

And until we start to turn the mirror on ourselves.

We will forever remain unchanged

and untrue.

Now, now, please hear me when I say this.

When we fail,

there is no hypocrite where there is repentance

in our failure.

When there's repentance and we allow the Holy Spirit to transform

us, we're not living hypocritical lives.

We're living human lives that are repentant

and saved by the mercy and grace of God.

But when I live in sin and refuse to call to such and refuse to repent of it

and act as though I'm righteous and right, that is hypocritical.

Do you follow?

So though every one of us can claim, yeah, I'm the hypocrite

when I claim that and repent of that and allow the Holy Spirit to transform me.

Now I'm no longer living hypocritically.

I'm living in repentance and in repentance.

God gives all that grace will allow.

And so the safest place we

can be is to live with the realization and the admittance.

Yes, I am hypocritical, but I repent of it and I allow God to do it.

Only God can do which is transform me and then give me unmerited

grace and favor.

And so Matthew 23.

Jesus.

This chapter begins with Jesus.

He's surrounded by all these religious leaders

and by all these people and disciples who are listening

to these exchanges that he have with all these religious leaders.

And so Jesus began.

Chapter 23 begins with Jesus addressing the people and the crowds,

not the religious leaders.

And this is what he says.

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples,

the scribes and Pharisees sit on Moses's seat.

So do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do.

For they preach, but they do not practice.

So he's addressing the people, and he's he's going to turn his

his anger and confrontation against the religious leaders.

But now he addresses the people

and he says, listen, these leaders sit on Moses's seat.

Now, Moses's seat was the term that they used in every synagogue,

which in their day was like their local, their local gathering place

or their church, if you will, where they would learn God's Word.

The rabbi would sit on a stone seat and all the people would stand.

So if you really wanted to be biblical, you would all stand up while I'm teaching.

Aren't you glad we're not back then?

Or maybe it's that they couldn't afford $60 chair, so they had to stand.

I don't know which it was, but.

So they called it Moses's seat because that was the place of authority.

And the rabbi would teach from that stone seat.

And what they would teach was primarily the law of God recorded by Moses.

So it became authoritative as Moses's seat.

And so what he said, they teach from Moses's seat, the, the, the law.

In other words, they teach with authority not because they are

people of credibility, but because the word is authoritative.

We use this same term in our day.

For instance,

the Catholics.

The Pope is said to speak X cathedra from the seat or from the chair.

It's the position of authority.

The word cathedral used primarily by the Catholic Church, that is, the,

the, the, the place of authority of the bishop of the area.

That's his seat of authority,

even in our universities systems, the lead of a department

is called the chair of the department, the authority of the department.

So we use this same idiom today. It was used back then.

They sit in Moses's seat.

They sit as someone speaking the authority of God.

And what God, what Jesus says is listen to what they say,

because what they're saying is

because it's God's words just don't live like they live

because they don't practice what they preach.

In other words, don't let

the Word of God lose its authority

because the person who's teaching it doesn't live that way.

The word still has authority, even though the one who's giving you

the word is not credible.

The person's lack of practice doesn't

nullify the power of the Word of God, is what he's saying.

Second Timothy 316 is still true regardless of the person.

The Word of God is breathed out by God.

It is profitable for teaching, rebuking, correcting,

and training in righteousness regardless of the one who's presenting it.

The authority comes in the word, not in the presenter.

Do you follow?

Do you follow?

And so this is his warning to everybody right up front.

Don't invalidate the truth of the and authority

of God's Word because of the broken vessels who teach it.

So this is the danger right now.

This is the danger right now with some people even in this place,

you're going to say, I see too much contradiction

between those who teach God's Word on what God's Word says.

So I don't believe God's Word.

That's a mistake.

The authority comes from God's Word, not from the prisoner of it.

Do you follow?

And so he's going to say, these people, they're giving you truth,

but they don't live it. So don't.

So listen to them, but don't copy them.

And then in verse five.

They do all their deeds.

He was seen by others, for they make their full actors broad in their fringes.

Long. Okay.

So how many of you brought your full actors with you?

Does anybody know what a full actor he is?

Yeah. So?

So I need to translate this into our verbiage.

He's talking about two to the full actors and fringes.

And what is referring to is what was what was in in Scripture

back in Deuteronomy 11 and numbers 15.

And in those two verses the word of God says, Keep God's

Word on the front of your forehead and on your right hands at all times.

In other words,

let's keep it in the front of your in front of your face and at your hand.

Do it.

They understood that to mean by the letter of the law

to take Bible verse, scripture verses and put them in boxes

and fix them to their foreheads and headbands, and wear them

as tassels on their or as bracelets, so that they would

keep the Word of God forever on their foreheads and off the right hand.

And so they made these little leather boxes

and had a couple different scripture references in these boxes.

One was the great hero of the Lord, was one of the Lord is God.

And they would put that in a little box and fastened to a headband on their front

on the foreheads.

And where is it? Dangly box on their wrist.

And so Jesus is saying, some of them love this so much,

they're like, hey, I'm going to be real spirit.

I'm gonna get a real big box.

So everybody would see, wow, they love God's Word.

Look how big that flattering box is.

And these tassels, old Testament law.

Make sure at the edges of the corners, the four corners of your garment,

there's a blue cord to remind you and symbolize the authority of God

in his great provision and comfort and rule in your life.

And so every garment had a blue.

The show would have a blue thread running down it to remind them of this.

Jesus, we believe, had this war the same thing.

And that's actually what the woman

with the issue of blood reached out and touched the hem of his garment,

the blue cord, because that was the symbol of the presence and compassion

and authority of God.

And so Jesus like, look,

some of these guys, they got their big old boxes on their forehead,

like Amazon just showed up and their blue chords are like huge

because they want to look, look out religious.

I am,

you know, we know what those

people are like with their real big Bibles or the real gaudy covers.

So everybody knows that they're carrying, you know what I'm saying?

Like, look at how really look how spiritual I am.

I want you to know how godly I am.

And he said, this is who these people are.

It's all for show.

Nothing's changed inside.

It's this ridiculous.

And then look at what he says verses nine, ten, 11 and call no man

your father on earth, for you have one father who is in heaven.

Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor.

The Christ, and the greatest among you shall be your servant.

Whoever is also in self would be humble, ever humbles himself, will be exalted.

He said, all these guys want to do

is exalt themselves in their spiritual superiority,

and so they make you call them your father.

Now Jesus is not saying don't have titles.

He just say, make sure that the title that you claim

doesn't elevate yourself to some spiritual superiority.

Now, I'm a reverend.

I don't allow anybody to call me Reverend

because it's used one time in the Bible is not used of pastors.

The reverend is the title man gave me to acknowledge

my authority, my education, and my calling.

But it's you used in our culture as a as a spiritual superiority title.

This is one pastors

that Catholics have a real problem with because they don't call anybody father,

because it's used in that context

to indicate someone who has spiritual superiority over laity.

Do you understand?

Listen, quit showing off.

It's not about you.

Quit trying to look ultra religious and spiritual.

And so he's going to press in now to these hypocrites and these religious leaders.

And the first time the hypocrite word is used is in is in verse 13.

And so this first issue, hypocrisy regarding others.

Let me just read a few verses to you.

This is when you're going to turn on the Pharisees and the religious leaders.

But what are you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites?

For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces, for you

neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!

For you travel across sea and land to make one single proselyte.

And when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell

as yourselves.

Now some verses skip what may be in your Bible

or some translation of skip what may be in your Bible as verse 14,

because in the earliest manuscripts of verse 14 wasn't in there,

but some translations included because it is in some translations,

and it just adds more color and flavor to what Jesus said.

So if you have verse, if verse 14, verse 14

says this, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites,

for you to vow widows houses for and for a pretense.

You make long prayers, therefore you receive the greater condemnation.

And he just lays into these guys because they're hypocritical

regarding other people.

Here's what here's what he's saying.

Your religious rules are all about your

tradition and your

spiritual superiority, and you actually keep

people from the kingdom of God by your religiosity.

You're all about winning them to your culture

and to your cause, but not winning them to the kingdom,

because you have not submitted to the Christ, nor the authority

of God's Word.

And you're keeping people from heaven.

And when Jesus uses this idea

in verse 14, you rob widows of their houses.

Here's what we believe was going on.

These widows were in desperate need, and so they would ask the religious leaders

for prayer, and the religious leaders would pray for them for a big donation

and death, because they knew that desperate people

will pay big money for help.

And so that's what they were doing,

literally robbing widows of their livelihood

to get them.

And we've seen this in our day, right?

Just saved your faith with a gift.

And I'll send you a prayer cloth in the name of Jesus.

I could be a televangelist, I think I could pull it off.

I'll get a wig.

I'll wear some, you know, slack.

Like I could do it.

And Jesus says, you're

a bunch of hypocrites, man.

You're you're denying you're

keeping people out of your sin of people to hell by your religion.

You're so hypocritical regarding others.

You're doing all this stuff for show,

and it has no transformative fact on life because it's not test

to the authority of God and the authority of His Word.

It's all for your own well-being.

And then he says this. Look at verse 23.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!

For you tithe mint and Dylan come in and have neglected

the weightier matters of law, justice and mercy and faithfulness.

These you ought to have done without neglecting the others, you blind guide,

straining out a net and swallowing a camel

like Jesus knows how much he's pressing.

He's he's doing this to set the religious leaders off,

to drive them out of their minds in conviction.

So they'll have one of two responses either repent, although crucify him

and he knows he has to go to the cross, and so he knows he's being heavy.

And he says,

you guys are so ultra religious that you tithe mint and deal and cumin.

Now here's the thing.

Tithing was a practice

in Scripture 430 years before the law of tithing was ever given.

So it supersedes the law.

But then it was commanded in the law.

But tithing deal and and was never part of the command.

Tithing was never to include Old Testament was in the spices.

And so these religious people are going over and above

in their generosity, their tithing stuff that they're never commanded to tithe.

And Jesus says, look it.

I approve of your generosity.

I disapprove that you're trying to buy your way into the kingdom

because you've neglected justice and mercy and faithfulness, he says.

So you should tithe anybody who claims that tithing is an Old Testament command,

not a New Testament command, has not read the Bible and is not read Matthew 23.

Anybody who says the tithing does not apply to New Testament Christians.

You haven't read the Bible.

If it didn't apply, Jesus could have set the record straight right there and said,

you don't have to tithe, just make sure you love people.

He didn't say that.

He said you should do those former things without neglecting the latter things.

Do you follow every follow?

Not only tithe, you should be extra generous because that's

what they were doing.

Just don't neglect the greater things as well.

So let me just put this in our terms.

It's hypocritical

for the Christian to say Jesus is my Lord.

He's just not the one that rules over my finances.

Hypocrite.

Follow.

Lord means sovereign ruler.

It typically critical to say Jesus is my Lord,

but he doesn't control our family schedule

typically.

Spurgeon says this will you lose anything that you give to God?

Never depend on it.

He will be no one's debtor.

God never fails to see, to record, and to reward.

If you and I

want to call Jesus Lord and not be a hypocrite, he must be Lord.

Of the two most important things in our life our time

and our money.

In our day.

It is hypocritical to have a standard for others that's different for ourselves

or to judge others sin and not our own.

So, for instance,

it's hypocritical to judge someone else for how much do they drink

while we overeat?

Hypocrite.

It's hypocritical to judge someone for their foul mouth

while we gossip.

Hypocrite.

It's critical to chastise someone for cheating on their taxes.

When you steal from your employer by showing up late and leaving early,

hypocrite.

It's hypocritical to degrade people

because they're lazy and yet you're completely out of shape.

Hypocrite.

It's hypocritical to say health is really important to me

and then live and eat unhealthy.

It's hypocritical to live by the law of materialism,

a credit card debt, and then beg God to get you out of financial trouble.

It's hypocritical

to live a sick life and ask God for healing.

A standard for others.

Exceptions for self.

True discipleship

is a transformed life because there's been an interior

change.

D.L. Moody,

one of the great evangelists and preachers

of the 19th of the 20th century, the last century

wanted.

He'd never met Charles Spurgeon, and he really wanted to.

And so Dale Moody decided he would go over to

to London to meet Spurgeon unannounced,

two of the greatest preachers in evangelists

of the last hundred years.

And D.L.

Moody showed up at Spurgeon House unannounced, knocked on the door.

Spurgeon opened the door with a cigar, smoking a cigar, and Dale Moody

said, how can you, man of God, do such things?

And Spurgeon, looking at D.L.

Moody, who was a portly large man,

padded Dale Moody on his belly and said,

and how can you, man of God, do such things?

See, when

we have a standard for ourselves that's different from others?

Hypocritical.

Do you follow?

And so

the same could be said

of worry and fear that you carry

when we claim to trust the sovereignty of God and claim

to believe in Romans 828, that God works all things

together for good, and yet live with worry and fear.

Hypocrite.

Do you see how quickly this hits home?

Therefore, you have no excuse, old man.

Every one of you who judge

for a passing judgment on another, you condemn yourself

because you, the judge, practice the same, very same things.

We know that judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things.

Do you suppose, oh, man, you who judge those who practice

such things, and yet do them yourselves, that you will escape the judgment of God?

All we have to do

is look in the mirror and find a hypocrite.

So the questions we ask ourselves is this what am I requiring from others

that I'm excusing? And myself?

Am I harder on others failures than I am on my own?

What standard do I proclaim

better than I preach and practice?

Those are the questions.

The sign of a hypocrisy is this I always have a rule

for you and a reason for me.

Listen, I know what time is,

but we're going to get through this.

You blind guy string out a that and swallowing a camel.

This is where Jesus lightens the mood.

This is a joke.

Hebrew Hebrew humor was exaggeration.

So at this point, it's like, look, I know that you're getting,

like, a little uncomfortable, so let me lighten the mood.

And he says, look, it's like straining in that and fall on the camel.

And they're like, that's so funny.

Jesus, you crack me up because this is funny.

And so they would literally cover their cups

with a little cloth so that a gnat wouldn't get in,

because the Old Testament law says you can't have any blood in an animal

when you eat it.

And so they're afraid there might be a little bit of blood

in a nat and accidentally swallow than that.

And so they've ingested blood.

And so break the command.

And Jesus is like, look,

you go to that extreme for some things, but yet you swallow a camel.

Are you kidding me?

So he's just putting the throttle down and watch this.

This the this next.

This goes pretty quickly here.

There's not a lot of explanation

I have to make over these next few passages,

but I want to point out these next two ways that we're hypocrites.

The second way is this

hypocrite regarding myself when my inside life doesn't

match my outside life, where my heart doesn't match my habits.

And so Jesus says here in verse 25 and following.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!

For you

clean the outside of the cup and the plate,

but the inside are full of greed and self-indulgence, you blind Pharisee.

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

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites, for

you are like whitewashed tombs which outwardly appear beautiful,

but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness.

So you also outwardly appear righteousness, or righteous

others, but within your full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

He says, you're outside doesn't match your inside.

Outside you look clean and polished inside your dead.

And this is easy for us to do.

We look great on Sunday morning, right?

We're all smiles and happy and joyful. Trust God. Oh,

and inside we're just.

We're a mess. We're broken, we're dead.

During the Passover time, they would paint all these roadside tombs

so that they were painted white and they looked good

so that people wouldn't accidentally touch

what hell, deadness and defile themselves before they sell the Passover.

That's what I was during this time.

And he says that's what some of you are.

You look great on the outside,

but there's nothing but dead and decaying rot on the inside.

Take care of the inside before you adjust the outside.

He's not saying don't address the outside.

He say make sure the outside his address, because the inside has been transformed.

Because true discipleship is the transformation of the outside.

Because the insides been transformed. Do you follow?

We have to ask ourselves, what do I say?

I believe that my life says I don't.

Hypocrisy.

How far is the distance between my confession and my conduct?

Hypocrisy.

If one were to watch my life without hearing my words,

what would they think is the highest priority of my life?

To follow?

Is there a gap between what I say

and how I live?

Is that football practice last week and there's one of our guys in our team

is wearing this shirt under his pads and says, Jesus is Lord, Jesus is King.

Oh my God, I like the shirt and he's in the huddle.

You get your.

So between plays I walked up and pulled a shirt.

Listen, if you're going to wear that, clean that up.

It just

if there's a discrepancy, there's there's some hypocrisy.

Now here's the good news.

I'm so thankful that God forgives hypocrites,

because if he didn't, I'm damned.

You follow.

Lastly,

hypocritical regarding God.

Look at this.

What do you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites?

For you

build the tombs of the prophets

and decorate the monuments of the righteous, saying,

if we had lived in the days of our fathers,

we would not have taken part with him in the shedding of blood of the prophets.

Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered

the prophets.

Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers.

You serpents, you brood of vipers!

How are you to escape that being sentenced to hell?

Therefore I send the prophets and wise men and scribes.

Some of you, you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues,

and persecute from town to town, so that on

you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth,

from the blood of the righteous, able to the blood of Zechariah,

the son of Bakura, whom you murder between the sanctuary and the altar.

Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.

He just lays into them.

He says, you're bunch of snakes and brood of vipers.

Satan is called the serpent.

Baby snakes are baby Satan's.

You follow? That's what he's saying to them.

He said you've killed every profit from Abel, the righteous one,

whose the Bible says his blood cries out from the earth to Zechariah,

not the prophet Zechariah, but the son of Bakura, listed in Second

Chronicles, which is the last book of the Hebrew Old Testament Bible.

From beginning to end,

he says, you've killed the prophet, you've killed those, you've crucified him.

And I think he was pointing to himself because he knew what was coming.

And he says, you have the audacity to say, how do we live?

Back then, we wouldn't have been as bad as they are hypocrites, he says.

We say the same thing.

How could they miss it so badly?

If I'd have been a disciple,

if I'd have seen Jesus move, I would have done what they did.

He says. Hypocrites.

You're worse than them because you're redefining what God has said.

See, we have to understand.

Isaiah 29,

these people draw near to me with their mouths and honor me with their list.

But their hearts, they're so far from me,

hypocritical towards my father.

So the questions are these

where have I decided that my opinion outrageous.

God's word

critical.

What does God clearly call right and wrong

that I want to redefine?

Tip critical.

The question is, am I submitted to Scripture

or am I editing scripture until it agrees with me?

Hypocrites.

Every one of us.

The great sign of hypocrisy

is calling Lord, calling Jesus Lord, while over

reserving the right to override him.

So clear a sign of hypocrisy, calling Jesus Lord

while reserving the right to overrule him.

He cannot be Lord.

If we have the right to overrule him,

it's a clear sign.

Hypocrisy.

So may our prayer be the prayer of David.

Teach me your way, Lord, that I may rely on your faithfulness.

Give me an undivided heart.

A hypocritical heart is a divided heart.

Give me an undivided heart that I may fear your name.

I will praise you, Lord my God, with all my heart.

I will glorify your name forever.

My dear friends.

We ought to make it our prayer.

God revealed to me

the duplicity and hypocrisy of my own life

that I may repent.

And friends, in repentance is wholeness and forgiveness,

and in repentance God gives all that his grace can allow.

But it doesn't come without repentance.

No one in the Bible who repented was ever turned away by God.

Everyone in the Bible who repented was shown mercy and grace

and the unmerited favor of God, but it came through repentance.

Hypocrisy is not just

messing up because we didn't live up to our beliefs.

That's human and that's sin.

In repentance is forgiven

because of God's grace, because of the blood.

Jesus said on the cross,

when you and I fail is not hypocrisy.

If we repent.

And plead the blood of Jesus over our sin,

please understand this that God's grace

is infinitely greater than my sin and your sin.

And God loves to forgive more

than you love to sin.

That's good news.

So repent

and be made new.

Aren't you?

Pray with me.

Father.

I thank you that you love us.

And regardless of our hypocrisy and duplicity,

your love for us doesn't change. Thank you.

We're doomed if you would love us based on our performance.

So thank you that your love remains.

And because your love remains, you offer us a way for healing and wholeness.

And that comes through repentance.

And so I pray in this moment,

Holy Spirit, I ask in this moment

that you would convict us who need to be convicted,

that we would set aside our pride, set aside our arrogance,

set aside our hubris, set aside our agendas, set aside

everything that would keep us from repentance.

That would be authentic

with ourselves and before you,

and repent

of our sin and hypocrisy.

Every one of us, father.

And father, in repentance,

would you grant all the favor and blessing that your grace will allow?

Jesus, thank you for sharing your blood on the cross so my sin could be forgiven.

I admit my hypocrisy.

I know I'm a hypocrite

and I'm pulling the blood of Jesus over me in repentance.

Father. Forgive me.

Thank you.

Father, I ask for me that you give me all that your grace will allow.

I don't want to leave.

Live a hypocritical life, a life of duplicity.

Father, I want to be full of integrity

as far as my relationship with you is concerned.

So thank you.

And I plead the blood over me and over us.

Lead your people to repentance.

In your name I pray. Amen.

Friends, I realize what time is. All right.

Don't worry about it.

This is.

This is more important than a clock right now.

There's going to be people up front.

There'll be people in the back to.

You can absolutely go to God.

It's in your own life, in prayer, 100%.

But it is even more powerful when we solidify that with somebody else.

So I encourage you, set aside whatever is holding you back from just approaching.

Someone said, just would you just pray with me?

I want to get rid of some of this.

Would you just pray with me and let them pray with you?

While we sing

during the song and after.

I just.

I feel like

some of you are on the verge of God doing some incredible stuff in your life.

If you would just

repent.

Man, don't miss it.