Hold Fast

but give as alms those things that are within. and behold, everything is clean for you.

Yeah, I think we see maybe the heart of Augustine's ethic.

Love God and do what you want.

You see, the principle there is if your heart is clean, if you give up as alms the things that are in, you're giving to God love, you're giving to God your affections, you're giving to God your desires, your thoughts, then you're being purified. One of the other instances where the Pharisees are challenging Jesus and the disciples, not from their traditions, Jesus makes it very clear. What defiles you? Is it the food you eat that goes into the inside? Or is it the sin that's in the heart that comes out? Now, the internal is so important. What do we set our minds upon? What do we set our loves upon? What are our loves being drawn to? What is it that we are promoting within that's good? No, give us alms, those things that are within. Give us alms, give us a thank you offering, a praise offering, our hearts, our love, and then everything is clean for you. It doesn't say just love God and then worry about what you do. No, then it's all clean for you, then you practice godliness. Jesus has pinpointed the problem. They're living as man-pleasers, not God-pleasers. They're living as those who merely want the praise of man. They do not want to praise God. Now, we're really getting at the most basic problem that we call hypocrisy, that everybody hates a hypocrite. Right? Everyone recognizes hypocrisy is wrong because if you say one thing, you don't do it. Well, you definitely are wrong. If you're not a Christian this morning, I want to be very clear. You're sitting, Lord willing, among a lot of Christians this morning. And we're all hypocrites. If that's your reason for not becoming a Christian, well, we're all hypocrites. We acknowledge it. You see, a hypocrite is somebody who says this is right, but doesn't do it. A hypocrite is someone who recognizes this is good and right, and then doesn't do it. The most basic fact of a Christian is that we recognize God is good and right, what he says is good and right, and then we realize we don't do it. We're worthy of judgment. That's why he sent his son, to be judged for us. You see, Christians aren't more moral than others. We recognize, no, there's a good God who's given us good truth. And we fail. And we take that failure to the cross. And we ask him to forgive us. And we ask him for the grace so that we wouldn't just be better and better. No, we would be more faithful in loving God and being obedient. By definition, Christians are all hypocrites. That's not why you shouldn't come to Jesus. It's why you should come to Jesus. Because if you see the goodness of God, you'll recognize you're worthy of the judgment. And the only forgiveness is found in Christ. Christian, as we wrestle with this, I thought about the way I try to instruct my children. When we talk about obedience, we have three characteristics we want obedience to have. We want them to obey fully, quickly, and happily. Fully and quickly, we can kind of make that happen, right? Pop, pop, let's go. You know what I want, you know what I want it. But the happy, that's the hard one, isn't it? That's that internal part. We can expect in the children, we can even pretend to do it quickly and fully, but the happy, that's that internal part. That is the hard part. Will I quickly obey God? Will I fully obey God? Well, I set my heart to happily recognize what is good and right and do it. That is the hard part and this is what the Pharisees are lacking. Those are our first few verses. We now get to the hard part. This has been difficult. The Pharisees are coming, they're astonished at Jesus. He tells them, you're fools because you pretend to be religious even though it's only external, it's not internal. God has designed you to have all of you. Now we get to these woes and notice there from 42 to 44 and then 45 to 52, there's two sets of woes. He first gives woes to the Pharisees and he gives woes to the lawyers. The Pharisees, the primary focus seems to be their lack of love for God. For the lawyers, it seems to be a lack of love for God's word. There are two different kinds of woes here. They seem to be connected in that way. There's a no love for God and no love for God's word. Now what is a woe before we get into these different things? It's not necessarily a condemnation. It's a judgment, but it's more of a grieving, a disappointment, an understanding that there was an expectation of what you would do, and then just a grief, a mourning, a complete disappointment that they haven't been doing what's expected. If you go back throughout the Old Testament regularly, God's people need God's word and God appoints God's leaders to promote that godliness through the teaching of God's word. We see different offices, prophets, priests, kings, and different stages have good priests and bad priests and good kings and bad kings. And regularly we see God declaring to those who were supposed to be caring for God's people, give a special kind of judgment on those false priests, those false teachers, those bad kings. Ezekiel 34 is one of those important moments. The priests are taking the offerings meant for God and they're using them for their own greed, their own self-consumption. And one of the great promises God says, what are you? I'm going to come and I'm going to judge you. And I, will be your priest. I will come and be your shepherd. This is important here. God despises the false teachers, the false priests, the bad kings. God will give a certain judgment. Here, they aren't given an absolute condemnation, but if they do not repent, they will be condemned for it. I believe it's more of a grief with the invitation. Repent. One last thing before we begin. How are you going to relate to the story? This is an important question to ask in a story. Are you going to sit in the place of Jesus and then think of all the different ways that other Christians have disappointed you? I can tell you that's not going to work out well. If our goal is to think through all the different ways Christians have disappointed, that isn't the right position. No, God is speaking. And while he might not be a religious leader or might not be a Pharisee, might not be a lawyer, the goal here is to ask, how can I see hidden sin? How can I be more faithful to love the one God who made the inside and the out? First, the three woes to the Pharisees that again focus mainly on there's no love for God. If we're actually paraphrase a diagnosis here, they love the praise of men more than loving to praise God. They love the praise of men more than they love the praise of God. Notice the first one and how it relates so much to that first declaration of Jesus.

But woe to you, Pharisees, for you tithe mint and rue and every herb and neglect justice and the love of God.

You can hear there, you do all the externals, but there's nothing good inside.

These you ought to have done without neglecting the others.

All right, so they worship without love. Tithing, this was giving a tenth. They would measure out meticulously a tenth of their mint and a tenth of all their herbs. And what's interesting, rue grew wild. You didn't need to tithe it, but they did it anyway just to make sure they were meticulously measuring everything. Why would you do that? I think it's probably for the same reason that when I make a checklist of things to do, I like to put things on there I've already done. Is that silly? Yes. But does it make me feel good? Yes. We like to think, I can check off the boxes. And there's something helpful to see. There's an expectation. There's a clear high bar of expectation from God. But we don't think through, how do I check off the boxes if that makes me righteous? Notice you're meticulous with the outward expressions, and these would be outward expressions that others would see, but notice what they neglect. Justice. Love for God. They neglect that internal cleansing. Now justice, that probably relates to loving your neighbor. The right and fair treatment of other human beings, to love them as my neighbor, as myself. Loving God, this is the high command of all scripture. We can think back to how this echoes Micah 6.8.

Do justice, love, kindness, walk humbly with your God.

They've neglected the most important things. They're doing the meticulous, they're doing the external, but the external work has not had the proper fruit. Now let's look at very clear the second half of that verse, that sentence. These you ought to have done. Again, tithing is actually commanded in Scripture. They're going above and beyond what the tithing is commanded in Scripture. God loves a cheerful giver. The problem is they're not giving out of a heart of love and charity and cheerfulness. They're giving it out of a miserly, measured self-righteousness. Go back up to the diagnosis. Look at the end of verse 39. What are they full of? Greed. They're not giving out of the alms of their hearts. They're not giving out of a love for others, not giving out of a way of saying, I wanna bless others and bless God. No, it's measured. Greed is still what's controlling them, a selfishness. You see, the root problem is their greed that isn't actually being affected by tithing. There's a helpfulness in that when you give, you're teaching your heart that money is not meant to be an idol. Money is a root of all kinds of evil. It is not the root. We oftentimes must quote that. But we can think of all the different ways in which we get wrapped up with a money problem. Too little money is a significant problem. We get overwhelmed with debt. We get overwhelmed with burden. We get overwhelmed with worry and anxiety. We get overwhelmed with a desire for more and more. How much are you regularly revolving around conflict with money? How many major life decisions are based upon mere money? We have to recognize it's a gift from God. It's a gift not to be greedy for, but to recognize it's a, like everything, to be used and stewarded for God's glory. Here, they're wanting to be measured and meticulous with greed and wickedness, merely externally acting in worship, not truly loving God or their neighbor. Notice there's a second woe.

Woe to you Pharisees, for you love the best seat in the synagogues and greeting in the marketplace.

Notice they did not have love for God. They neglected the most important commandment. But they do love something, the best seat. They love being called Mr. Pharisee, Most Holy Reverend. They love the prestige, they love the benefits, but notice how dangerous this is. Without a love for God and his word to care for the people, they're just sponges taken from others. This is where that man-pleasing is so clear. What they're doing is not for the benefit of God and worship, it's not for the benefit of the community and praise, it's for themselves. They're man-pleasing. Their labor is to be loved by others. Their labor is not to love God. Now, this is real for us. How much of our lives are revolved around what others think? We can go back, and if we were to study these people and think about the shame honor culture, we'd be overwhelmed, and that would be nothing compared to what we do with social media. The amount of weight we put on presenting ourselves a certain way, or the amount of weight we think about how others present themselves, what the real life is supposed to look like. And pleasing is a real burden. It's a real temptation. And the most dangerous part is if others actually condone and praise you for the wrong things, it just adds to the self-deception. And the last woe.

Woe to you, for you are like unmarked graves, and people walk over them without knowing it.

Now, this was kind of unusual. If you were to walk over a unmarked grave, you're walking over a dead human, that would cause you to be unclean. And if it's an unmarked grave, the people are doing it not knowing they've just become unclean, and that is a significant problem. Think about how weighty this is. People think they're hearing from a godly person, teaching them godly things, but you're really making them more unclean. The effect of what the Pharisees were supposed to do, they were supposed to love God. They were supposed to love their people in the synagogue, and they were supposed to be a great blessing for them. But because of their love for self, their love of praise, they're a curse. They lack love of God, they desire love of others, and then they're a curse rather than a blessing. This is what a little love for God ends up doing to all. Again, this is weighty. This is a declaration of God, not absolutely condemning. I believe here it's a grieving. It's a disappointment. You're not doing your job. What's so important for God's people? How do we process a text like this? Let me give you five ways to think about this text. Our first response to this text is to praise God because he hates sin. He's a righteous God. Our first response to looking at a law, to looking at a judgment, is first to recognize God is worthy of our praise because he's good. He hates the dangerous sin. He hates those who cause trouble within his people and on this earth. Today, read Jude or 2 Peter 2. There is a condemnation that is certain for those who are false teachers who creep in. There's a judgment. We first praise him because he's just. The second thing we should do as we look at this text, pray that God would help us see our own sins. There's numerous models of this. When you look into the law, you're not supposed to look at it, see it, and then walk away and forget. That's what James warns us of. No, when we look at the law, we ask the Lord to show me my presumptuous sins, show me my hidden sins. Help me, Lord, to get past the self-deception I have. Your law is good, it's right, it's wise, it's true. Help me see where I need to confess my sin. And let me be very clear, you only do that if you believe in a good, gracious God. That's something you only do and the Bible invites us to do only because God is so quick with mercy. His mercies are new every morning. He is so quick with grace and forgiveness. Lord, help me see my sins so that I can bring them to you and be forgiven and feel more reconciled and closer to you because I have removed, you have removed that barrier that kept me from you. So we praise God that he hates sin. We pray that God would help us see the sin that he hates so that we can confess it and be forgiven. The third thing, praise God that he is our good shepherd. I mentioned earlier, Ezekiel 34, when the priests were taking the things of God and using them selfishly for themselves. God said,

I will come and I will judge you.

And then he said to Israel,

I will come and I will be your shepherd.

In John 10, when Jesus says,

I am the good shepherd,

he's saying that I'm the one that I promise to be, Yahweh. who's covenant with us. Yahweh who promised himself to us. Yahweh who came to be like us in every way. Yahweh who came to live the life we failed to live. Yahweh who came and died for our sins. The son of God, he's the good shepherd. He will not abuse. He will not bully. Everything he does is for our good. He cares for us. He gives us good commands. He gives us all of his grace. We know he's good. He lays down his life for us and he knows us. We might be burdened that we've experienced a religious leader that's selfish and abusive. Oh friend, Jesus is good. He is a good shepherd. We praise God that he hates sin. We pray that God would help us see our sin. We praise God that he is our good shepherd. Fourthly, pursue true love for God that transforms us, internally and externally. Notice these three things. It's how we relate to God. We neglect a love for him. It's how we relate to others. We only want their love and their praise. We see how it's a curse for others. No, the Christian life is one that loves God, that desires to pour ourselves out to God, the one that is blessing to God. The only way to be the opposite of the Pharisee is to first love God with all your heart and all your strength and all your mind. Pursue true love for God. The fifth thing, selfishly pray for your leaders. Pray for your elders, pray for your deacons, pray for future elders, pray for the people right next to you. Pray for those who we're going to depend upon to hear the word of God that they would first and foremost be godly. What you need most is godly leaders. What you need most is godly leaders. Pray for a reverence that those who lead, and there is such thing as good authority that those who would lead us would be models of good authority following the footsteps of Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd. Pray for perseverance, faithfulness, that we would be obedient to the good task. We have three more woes. It begins at verse 45, and again, I believe here that a lack of love that the Pharisees had has now turned to the lack of love for God's word. And these are the God's word people. If there's somebody, if there's a group in scripture we're gonna relate to, it's these people. These are the people who are most conservative holding onto the word of God. And they miss it. Now, 45 is pretty interesting. One of the lawyers answered him, Jesus, this is insulting. There's some pretty helpful recognition here. I don't know what he's expecting Jesus to say, but he offers Jesus the opportunity to transition and, well, just add more to what is offensive. The lawyer, again, not sure what he's expecting, but he wants Jesus to know, you're talking to the Pharisees, but we also feel that you're talking to us here. We're insulted. Notice Jesus doesn't stop. He leans in. He leans in because, again, hypocrisy. You burden the people, but you yourself will not be burdened. You've hated the prophets, you've killed the prophets. You do not know how to lead the people because you don't even go in yourself. What does all this refer to? I believe it has much focus here on just what the word of God is. Look at verse 46. This is the first woe to the lawyers. Again, lawyers, scribes, Pharisees, different groups, but very much connected together and very similar.

Woe to you, lawyers, also. For you load people with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers.

The hypocrisy's pretty clear. You're adding burden upon burden. And most likely, the Sabbath is in view. The Sabbath, which was a key, important Israelite command, in order to protect the Sabbath, in order to protect something holy, we like to add walls, and we like to add tradition to make sure we're protected. And the Pharisees and the lawyers, they came up with numerous traditions in order to protect the one holy Sabbath. You can only carry so much weight at so much a distance. But the traditions, instead of helping protect it, it made it more of a burden. The whole point of the Sabbath was to be a rest for man, to be a way of reflecting upon the goodness of God and his provision. They made it a burden. They made it a burden in the way that you can only carry this much weight, and if you drop the weight, you can't pick it back up if it's the amount of weight we gave you that day. The laws were burdensome, and the worst part of the lawyers, they themselves would not even follow their own traditions. They bind the conscience with their own teaching, which by definition will be burdensome. Now church, we need to remember and we need to recognize God has given us good words, good truths, good expectations. And it's good to have our consciences bound to God's good expectations as he's given them. The warning here is to add to those expectations, to add with our own traditions, and then the hypocrisy, you put all these burdens on others and you don't even do it yourself. Christ says,

come to me all you who are weary. My load is not burdensome, it's good.

What God calls us to is goodness. So at first there's this hypocrisy, you're loading others with burdens you're not doing yourself, and then notice 47 to 51, when you see this much, this many more words than the others, there's a highlight, there's an importance.

Woe to you, for you build the tombs of the prophets whom your fathers killed. So you're witnesses, and you consent to the deeds of your fathers. For they killed them, and you build their tombs.

Now, the previous prophets, that's going all the way back, we know, from Abel. All the prophets were typically persecuted by somebody. Oftentimes, God would send a prophet, he would say that Israel's not gonna listen to you, but go say it anyway. The people who hate God are gonna hate his word, and the people who hate God's word are gonna hate his prophet. Here he's putting them in the category of those who have killed the prophets, your fathers, those who preceded you. Maybe not biologically, but here it's those who preceded you, they killed the fathers. Now, building a tomb, how is that part of killing a prophet? It appears these men are building tombs to pretend to honor the prophets, but they're just like the fathers who killed them. They hate the truth of the prophets. They hate the words of the prophets. They are participating in the murder of God's word. Look at verse 49. There were also the wisdom of God said,

I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute so that the blood of all the prophets shed from the foundation of the world may be charged against this generation. from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you,

Jesus is repeating himself.

It will be required of this generation.

Why would this generation have all that weight and all that responsibility for all the prophets who were murdered? They themselves are culpable for murdering. That's who murdered them. But now they're being held responsible. They're gonna have to give an answer. They're going to be part of the participation in the murder. Why? Because the capital P prophet is with them and they hate him and they're gonna kill him. The culmination of every prophet of God has been promising that one is going to come who's going to truly give us all the knowledge of God, all the grace of God, all the wisdom of God, is Jesus Christ incarnate. The word became flesh. God has spoken now through his son. And because they hate him, they're now going to be held responsible for all the hatred of all God's word because all of God's word has been pointing to him. This one needs to fall on us here because we have the fullness of God's word, more than these men did. We have the New Testament, the declarations of Christ, not only who's come, but he's died, he's risen, he's ascended, he will come back. Are we paying attention and holding firm to God's word? Is God's word at the center of our commitments? Do we have more copies in most churches throughout centuries before the printing press? Do we have more copies of scripture in our homes than most churches had? Sitting there collecting dust. Are we consumers? Are we feasting upon, are we loving and seeking to desire and know more of God's word? How do we approach God's word? Is it with reverence? Is it with expectation? Is it with desire and effort? Notice here this last woe, verse 52.

For you have taken away the key of knowledge.

What is that key?

You do not enter yourselves, you hinder those who are entering.

What is the key to knowing this word? It's God. If you do not know God, you will not understand his word. The key of this entire book is that God has made himself known. This book's not about you. It's about God. This book will tell you everything you need to know about yourself, but most importantly, this is God telling you who he is. So you know him, love him, worship him. The key to the knowledge that they've taken away is a true knowledge and a true access to the true God. Notice there, you don't enter. You don't go into the presence of God. You're not doing that most important thing, the most necessary thing, the one necessary thing, communing with God. Therefore, you can't help anyone else enter. Notice the pattern again. It ends with the way they're supposed to be a blessing to the people, but they're a curse. Since they do not know God, they cannot make God known. Brothers, sisters, friends, our goal here is to do one thing, and that is to exalt Christ by preaching him through his word, trusting and praying he will draw everyone up to himself. That's what we do because we don't know anything else to do. I'd love to know if there's something else we should be doing. But as far as I can understand from scripture, the number one goal is to exalt God, Christ the Son specifically, who died for us as sinners, who rose again victoriously, who sits at the right hand of the Father and says, enter in, proclaiming him the only place we know that he's found, and that is in his word, so that his spirit would stir us up, would help us stir one another up, so that we would know him. That's the goal. Can we do it better? Absolutely. This is our goal. This is the legacy we long to hand over to you, the next generations. To know Christ and to know how to make him known. Notice the terrifying ending of this story. Jesus went away. We've seen him depart in disgust before. We've seen him depart offering grace and being rejected. He goes away from there, and then what do the scribes and the Pharisees begin to do? They start pressing him harder to revoke him, to speak about many things, lying in wait for him to catch him in something he might say. They have not responded to this grief, this warning well. They've embraced. their neglect of God's love for God and injustice. Well, this was quite a dinner. Can you imagine sitting there? How awkward this would be. Can you imagine the moment where the Pharisees, if you're a disciple of Jesus, you're kind of on his side, you're trying to figure out who this guy is, he keeps teaching, he gives us authority over demons, who is Jesus? You're sitting there and you notice the Pharisees, who you respect because they're religious leaders, they're acting just annoyed at your master. And then he launches in with these woes. They're sin exposed. Can you imagine if Jesus came and had dinner with us? How awkward would it be? How astonished would he be at what our priorities are? How astonished would we be that he doesn't do what we think he should do? How quickly would he be offended by us? How quickly would we be offended by him? How quickly would we long to just hear A word of correction so we know to love Him more. The most pressing thing for us, are we offering God partial worship? Are we offering Him some kind of external expression but not our love? Are we seeking to somehow satisfy a requirement of God, even a good requirement of God, but withholding our affection, our worship, our love. Do we dare ask the gracious God who loves us, show me my sins, my hidden sins, the ones I masquerade around, the ones I protect, the ones I've even created a whole system and a facade to protect. Show me my hidden sins so that I would love you more. Will you pray with me? Father, we thank you that you are the God who has come. And Lord, you do see our lives, and you do say, whoa, alas, you grieve. We know from your word, you hold out your hands all day long to a stiff neck and obstinate people. Lord, give us the grace we need to see how good you are, how forgiving you are, how merciful you are, how we can love you more. Lord, we thank you that we know you as the God of blessing, that you are the Father that has blessed us with every heavenly blessing in Christ, that we can be assured that while our lives demonstrate something that would be woe, that you have promised and you've proclaimed great blessing to us. who believed in Christ, nor may we know how to walk worthy of those blessings. Thank you, Father, for your Son. Thank you for your Holy Spirit. May you lead us and guide us to know you, love you, and make you known. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Let us stand and sing our song of response, How Firm a Foundation.