The Weight of Worship

We must use the law lawfully. The law is good.

We just spent the whole summer reading Psalm 139 over and over again, delight in the law. The law is good for us. It is light for us. The law serves as a mirror, a curb, and a guide. Avoiding the law leads us to being foolish in our own way. Leads to only doing what's right in our own eyes, most likely making gods with our own hands.

This morning we're looking at Jesus. He's already told the disciples to be aware, be warned of the Pharisees. Now he turns to the Pharisees and he declares woes. These are judgments. There's a warning for us here. God calls his people to a higher, holy, happy life. which is the opposite of what these woes represent. Warning against woes, warning against these woeful counterfeit worships is how God, we can see what is right and good. There's two ways to live. There's this false worship, and then there's a true way of Christ.

We are a people of the book

This morning as we look at the text, if you're noticing, you're looking at the ESV especially in front of you, I want to go ahead and just make sure we recognize something. Verse 15 isn't there. So I want to give a quick explanation because we are a people of the book. God's word is what we seek to trust and know and to handle his word lawfully.

There's two different text traditions. There's the majority text or the textus receptus. There's a minority text or called the critical text. The majority texts are later. and numerous, there's different families. And these would be monasteries who copied and copied and copied multiple texts. And it's kind of cool if you get into the majority texts, because you can see these traditions had one error, and you can see how they kept making that copy of that same error. And then the other traditions within that same majority text group would not make that error. What's amazing is we have so many copies in so many different locations, we can recognize where a scribe made an error.

Well, the numbering of the chapter and verse, they're not inspired by the Holy Spirit. They weren't produced. They were added afterwards. And then we discovered many of the minority texts, the earlier texts after that. And we recognize there's probably 17 verses in question. This is one of those verses.

So the earliest manuscripts do not have it. Now, it'd be cool if it was obviously in the text, because there would be eight woes. And those eight woes would correspond with the eight blessings from the Sermon on the Mount. You'd have eight blessings and eight woes.

I don't believe the rule is always the earlier, the more clear it is absolute this verse doesn't belong in the text. So let me be very clear. If I were to preach verse 14, I would do so with fear and trembling. Not convinced it's in the text of Matthew. As I'm not going to preach it, I do so with fear and trembling that it might be in that text. We want to make sure we have great reverence. Because it's not in the earlier text, we're not going to consider it this morning. I'm going to look at the first two woes together. A false religion not to be replicated. False religion not to be replicated. It cannot be replicated. If you have questions about that majority text, please talk to me afterwards.

False religion not to be replicated

Here Christ is turning and he's now speaking to the Pharisees and the scribes. These are the religious leaders.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees.

And we see that key word from two weeks ago, kind of the introduction to this, you're hypocrites. God in his word, he has not prescribed this office of Pharisee or scribe.

Uh, after the, the, the Greeks and now the Romans are ruling, uh, in, uh, Israel, uh, in order to keep the traditions as, as Hellenization, the, the Greek ideology is coming in that the Pharisees came and they were seeking to be preservers. The Pharisees would be the more conservative of all the different groups and leaders. They're often in Jesus' target. because they've taken up the weighty responsibility of teaching God and his word. Very clear, not all Pharisees were wrong, not all Pharisees were of this kind of judgment, especially historically, but the norm of how they have trained each other and taught, they move further and further away from the word of God.

You know what a woe is? It's a sharp rebuke. We don't even have to say that, right?

Woe to you blind guides. Woe to you blind fools.

It's a sharp rebuke. It's a judgment on them for this taking up weighty responsibility. And it's also a warning for all who are hearing it. Now, God gives blessings. We need to hear these kinds of warnings because of how dangerous it is to take up the wrong religion. But God's religion is a blessing. Woe, hear the warning. It's a call to repentance. They put heavy weights on the shoulders of others. They do not lift a finger. They were hypocrites last week.

They preach but do not practice.

Let's look at verses 13 and 15.

Woe to 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 a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

Now both of these are about how they're seeking to stand in a place of authority and lead God's people or refuse God's people. They're standing at the door as if they're the authoritative gatekeeper of God. And these two show the contradictory nature of them as hypocrites.

Those who are near, who want to come in, they shut the door on them. But then they'll go far away to make a big effort to convert one person, but that one person has led to the wrong religion, theirs. They're contradictory in this way. They refuse to let people in. They make it impossible for people to come into the kingdom. Now, they're hypocrites. They're not true, they're not genuine rulers of the kingdom of God. They cannot lead because they've not been led.

There's an important concept, if we were to think about what's really wrong here, there's a lack of stewardship. If you want to be a good student of God's Word, if you want to be a faithful Christian, you have to understand it's stewardship. Stewardship is the opposite of ownership.

Ownership says, this is mine. I can do with it whatever I want. Stewardship says all that God has given me that's good, I need to consider how I'm going to use it according to his word. How can I use it to enjoy it the best way and enjoy him? You're supposed to steward everything God gives you. So an important question, what does God give you? Everything good. Everything good is given to you by God. They, the Pharisees, they're hypocrites. They're dangerous because they have God's good word. They're just not using it according to what God has instructed. They're not teaching lawfully.

They're not opening his word to help people come into the kingdom. They're trying to make it as impossible and difficult for others to come. Now, I want you to see the most significant problem. It's at the end of verse 13.

for they neither enter themselves or allow those who would go in to enter.

They're pretending to stand at the gate of the kingdom, but they don't even know the king. They're pretending to be the authority as to who gets to come in and how they come in, but they don't know the king. They don't belong, therefore they don't have an ability to even let people come in. They don't know the king, so they can't make him known. They keep people outside, their neighbors who are near.

And then they travel far off, and if somebody converts to whatever they're teaching, they're twice condemned, because now they're confused and believe they're on the right path, but it's a path of destruction. There's a basic principle lying behind 13 and 15.

You cannot give what you do not have. You cannot bring somebody into a kingdom if you're not in already. All you can do is stand at the door and push people away. It's a principle we see throughout Christianity. You cannot forgive if you've not received forgiveness. You cannot love one another as Christ loved you unless you've received and rejoiced in the love of Christ. You cannot lead people to Jesus without knowing him.

We know this is true. Hurt people hurt people. Liars lie. Sinners sin. Holy people practice holiness. We are what we eat and we produce who we are. Bitterness comes out of a bitter heart. Truth, trust come out of a heart that is attuned to God. But remember, what comes out of us defiles us.

In another confrontation of the Pharisees, that's Matthew 15. Next week, we'll look at the woe that they only clean the outside, not the inside. These hypocrites are misleading people because their hearts are still corrupt, still twisted. They cannot bring people into the kingdom because they're not in because they don't know the king.

Hypocrites are never happy

Significant declaration here, hypocrites. Again, how do you know if you are or someone is a hypocrite? The important diagnosis, how do you know if you're a hypocrite? Well, my simple answer from experience is hypocrites are never happy. That's the one first question. Hypocrites aren't happy. It's actually right here in the text.

It's a woeful existence. It's woeful to be a hypocrite. It, by definition, is a state of not living in the blessing of God. It's living a lie. Practically, you can see how their values would be so corrupted they couldn't be happy because they're living for the praise of men. They're living for the approval of others. They're insisting that others must obey, but they themselves refuse. That is a woeful existence. They're not happy.

And again, from a couple weeks ago, we're all hypocrites of some sort. Because none of us have obeyed God's word truly and fully. We must teach the standard of God. That isn't the kind of hypocrisy that Christ is judging and rebuking here. This is the intentional saying, this is the weight you must bear, but I myself do not have to. That's that loophole legalism that's so dangerous. So the diagnosis, hypocrites, they They kind of know the things of God, but they don't really believe them. They don't want to practice them. They don't know the king. Well, what's the prescription?

Repent and turn to the God who is the fount of every blessing. Believe the blessing,

blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.

Recognize you have nothing to bring but your own sin. And when you bring your sin to Christ, he forgives you. When you bring your nothingness to God, he fills you with all joy and goodness. Hypocrisy is something that's too easy to fall into, and hypocrisy is a self-deception that entangles too easily.

Value promise making

The prescription there is clear, look to Christ. Know the King of all grace. The next woe is longer. Verses 16 and 19, value promise making. The blessing here would be know how to make promises, and keep promises and recognize the importance of oaths. The problem is they have separated different kinds of promises. Here verses 16 to 22.

Woe to you blind gods who say if anyone swears by the temple it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple he is bound by his oath. You blind fools, for which is greater?

The gold or the temple that has made the gold, sacred. And you say, if anyone swears by the altar, it is nothing. But if anyone swears by the gift that is on the altar, he is bound by the oath. You blind men, for which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred. So whoever swears by the altar, swears by it and everything in it. And whoever swears by the temple swears by it and by whom who dwells in it. Whoever swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him who sits upon.

Now here, Jesus is citing their own teaching because they've said certain kinds of oaths and promises are greater than others.

We've already seen this kind of teaching a long time ago in the Sermon on the Mount. But notice this repetition, woe to you. blind guides, blind fools, blind men. And with each of these, he's ratcheting up his argument over and over again. He's repeating a similar concern. First, he just says, you blind guides, you say, swearing by the temple is nothing. But swearing by the gold in the temple is a binding promise, a binding oath. That's him repeating what they've said.

This might seem odd to us because our culture has really said we shouldn't make any promises and we've got to remove the idea of honor and shame of not keeping your word. Our word must mean something. Here the Pharisees are creating loopholes and trying to heighten how they would swear and make oaths. Our culture is trying to remove us from actually making promises and keeping promises as much as possible. That's a real problem for us. So it might seem odd that they're going to such extent of how to make the right promise. I think we need to consider how far we've moved from even seeing this as the right and good thing to do. Our words matter. How we give our word, who we give our word to.

Now they're making divisions within the kind of oaths. So they're trying to make a division that if you swear by the temple, That's a lesser promise than swearing by the gold in the temple. That already seems kind of odd. The gold in the temple is more sacred than the temple? That's exactly what Jesus says. The key turn here is for which is greater.

They're saying one oath is greater than the other. And they did this to make their oaths more important. They would try to say, these oaths we're making, we're really going to show out, and we're going to swear on the greatest thing when we make promises, because we're really holy and righteous. And then they'd have loopholes for other promises that people don't keep. But Jesus asked them just a rhetorical question. Which is greater? Is it the gold, or is it the altar that makes the gold sacred? Now, the obvious answer is the altar would be greater. The gold is nothing without the altar, but more importantly, it's one holy thing. Because God has created and ordained this temple, and the gold in it and everything in it is holy because of God.

See, the problem with the Pharisees with this question, which is greater, they're bad at evaluating. You can't evaluate and be lawful. You can't evaluate this wrong and be lawful. So verse 17, you blind fools, that's really digging in. Which is greater, the gold or the altar that makes it sacred? Because you say it's not the altar, but the gold. And he now gives the correct absolute in verse 19. Again, for which is greater, the altar or that which makes it sacred? 20 and 22 is where he makes it clear. Everything that God makes holy is to be treated as holy. If you swear by the altar, you swear by the gold on it. If you swear by the whole temple, you're swearing by him who dwells in it. You're taking Yahweh's name.

Whoever swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him who sits upon it.

This is the same correction he gave earlier in Matthew 5, 36 and 37, where the conclusion is,

let your yes be yes and your no, no.

Don't pretend there's some promises that you make a certain way that are more sacred and more important. No, if you give your word, it's your word.

Let your yes be yes and your no be no.

The Pharisees tried to make loopholes with this greater problem or error, and they tried to make themselves more holy with this greater error.

Christian. How much do you reflect to recognize the importance of making the right promises and keeping the right promises? If you're not, you're probably really prone to foolishness. Here's why this matters. If you're a child of God, you're an ambassador of God, God doesn't lie. That's one of the greatest assurances we have. Doesn't lie. He's a God of truth. He's a God who speaks truth. Last week,

God is light. There is no darkness in Him at all.

God is truth. There's no deception in Him at all.

We are to walk in His light and be ambassadors of His light. We're to speak His truth and love to expose the darkness and destruction of man. Your word is a testimony of who you are, but more importantly, your word is a testimony of who God is. We are his ambassadors.

Too often Christians will use these texts about oaths and warning of oaths to not make any promises. Oh, I'm convinced more and more life is made up of promises. You must make the right promises. You must keep the right promises. I'm not sure if you've ever heard this before. Happy and blessed is the life where you know what to put in pen versus pencil. You use pen to put down the promises that are most meaningful. Even when it hurts, you keep those promises.

Your promises reveal a significant amount about you, where you are, what you're committed to. How easy is it to break a promise, to give yourself a loophole in a promise? Again, there's a confusion of what's greater here with these Pharisees. They have an evaluation problem.

Promises and oaths, they make up everything that's good. Be very clear, marriages are built on promises. The marriage ceremony is made up of covenant promises. A healthy marriage makes the right promises and keeps those promises. Friendships should be understood as promises.

Two friends seeking to care for one another, walk with one another. Businesses are built on promises. A product is sold, a product is bought. An employee is paid and he produces what he is supposed to produce. Churches are supposed to be built on promises. Devoted to the apostles' teaching and fellowship. A promise to one another and to God. The more important the relationship, the more important the promise needs to be explicit, clear, and in pen. What do your promises say about you and how you make them and how you think about breaking them?

Neglecting what is weighty

This last woe is about neglecting what is weighty.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice, mercy, and faithfulness. These you ought to have done without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel.

The fourth woe here says what they do, They tithe mint, dill, and cumin. Now all those are herbs. All those are from your garden. Those are also the smallest plants. So there are tithing commandments in scripture. You are to tithe what is produced from the ground. And there's actually debate on if you even needed to tithe herbs, because they're just for seasoning. The whole point here is that you tithe to this extent.

They're trying to show how they measure out even the smallest thing they could tithe to show how religious they are. They go to great extent to be very scrupulous on the things that really are the smallest. To pretend it makes them more religious. They're tedious about the small giving. That's an evaluation problem. You've neglected the weightier matters. They've created loopholes for the weightier matters, but they're scrupulous and tedious on the smaller matters. Now let's just pause there.

All of God's word is good. There are weightier teachings. We just saw a couple of chapters ago, Jesus asked, what is the greatest commandment? No hesitation. There's a greater commandment. There's a greatest commandment.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart. Love your neighbor as yourself.

These summarize the whole law. Here, Jesus is pointing out, you've been meticulous in public show to show the smallest kind of worship, but you've neglected what is weightier, justice, mercy, and faithfulness.

Christian, we have to understand there's two basic kinds of sin. There's sins of commission, sins of omission. Sins of commission is what we normally think about with sin. Because the Bible makes prohibitions.

Do not lie, do not steal, do not covet.

And we normally think of sin as when I commit those sins. When there's a line in the sand and I'm going to cross it, we think of that as sin. That's sin of commission. There's also sins of omission.

It's not practicing what is commanded. Because there's numerous instructions,

honor your parents.

Do not neglect is a key word here. They're doing this meticulous, active obedience to even the mint and the dill, but they're neglecting what's weightier. Now, this is a made up statistic.

At least half of our sin is probably sins of omission. I think it's actually more than that. I think it's easier to excuse sins of omission. I think it's easier to excuse and not even realize we get in habits of not doing what is right, good, and true. We get in habits of not doing what is just, merciful, and faithful. And we think we're okay because we're not doing the things God has prohibited. They're blind gods. Look at verse 24.

He says this with an interesting illustration.

Straining out a gnat while swallowing a camel.

A gnat's the smallest and a camel's the largest. It's like they get their fork and knife out and they're gonna cut up the gnat in different parts as the smallest thing, but they're gonna try to swallow the camel whole. They've mis-evaluated what is weightier. They treat the smaller things as the most important and the more weighty matters as not important. They neglect what's weighty. They neglect what brings truth and goodness of God in your life.

Justice, mercy, and faithfulness

Notice these three things, justice, mercy, and faithfulness. These three things are worthy of your meditation all week. Maybe your whole life. Jesus just said, these are the weightier matters that are being neglected, at least by these Pharisees. Justice, mercy, and faithfulness.

I believe he's echoing Micah 6, 8 here.

He has told you, O man, what is good. What does the Lord require of you? But to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.

Mercy and kindness are clearly equivalents with the translation of Greek, Hebrew, and Septuagint. There's something to how we need to recognize anytime God says, this is good, this is my will, that is a weightier matter. That's an important matter to focus on. What is good? What pleases the Lord? We have to recognize the weightier matters are going to be harder. It's easy to tithe the smallest little plant in your garden. It's easy to fulfill a simple task that makes you feel like you checked off a box.

But these are characteristics and traits that we're to be striving for over against our sinfulness and selfishness constantly to pursue justice, mercy, and faithfulness. Why these three? Simply, it might be because he is echoing, I think, Micah 6, 8. But these three, what do these three all say individually and together? Justice.

Well, this is insisting and knowing what is right, true, and good. Which based upon the fact that they don't know what's greater and they don't know what's weightier, they have a real problem knowing what's right, true, and good. To please God, you have to have judgment. And speaking of discernment, it means you know what God has said is good, and you've decided that is truly good, and you've committed your life to that good. This is aligning yourself with what God said.

Is it just? Is it true? Is it good? We oftentimes weigh things based upon the way they make us feel, or how much we like them. True justice here is saying this is what God's Word has said is good, is true. That doesn't require some kind of mystical labyrinth. It's learning to recognize what God has said is true. They've neglected what is just.

Mercy, this is showing kindness, compassion, usually in the context of something undeserved. Mercy and grace have a significant overlap. Mercy is forgiveness. Mercy is tender love. Mercy shows compassion and seeks the other person's well-being. All right, we already have some tension. Justice and mercy are side by side. And we usually treat those as opposites. We're gonna be just and we're gonna nail it down. We're going to be merciful and we're going to be compassionate. Those two aren't polar opposites. Those two are not opposed to each other. Those are two things that must go hand in hand.

In order for mercy to be true, it must be just. In order for just to be true according to God, it must be merciful. Here, the truth of God is important for us. We read last week, Exodus 33. God is steadfast in his love. He shows mercy to whom will show mercy. He'll bring judgment on those who refuse. God is always perfectly just and perfectly merciful in everything he does. Everything he does is just, everything he does is merciful. We got to be careful of treating these as either ors because we do have a tendency to lean in on the justice and make sure it's punishing or lean on the merciful and make it enabling. There is no way to know what real mercy is without God's justice.

The beauty of it is when you apply justice, you're doing it in compassion for the person that they're actually closer to God. If you apply true justice to the person, you're seeking to help them line up with what God says, and you're correcting and even rebuking for their well-being. So this is the problem if you go back to 13 and 15. They're shutting the door thinking they're protecting God's justice. They don't know how to show mercy because they themselves don't believe in God's mercy.

In order to be truly merciful, we must understand and embrace and enjoy the justice of God. All justice, if we're all justice, then we become condemning. If we're all mercy, we become enabling. Mercy and justice do not contradict each other. Well then faithful, this is staying true, this is staying in line. As I've wrestled with this a lot this week, once you find God's truth, his justice, and his mercy and his compassion, once you get on that path, well you just stay on it walking for a long time.

Faithful, not random acts of kindness, not periodical obedience, faithful. Loyal. Dependent. Committed. Devoted. See, all three of these are ways in which we would describe who God is. He's perfectly just. He's perfectly merciful. He's always faithful.

It takes you to the cross

We as his people are to be aligned with him and become like him. One of the realities is you will become like who you worship. We should become more and more just and insisting on what is true and more and more merciful as we realize we've received such great mercy and then be more faithful. If you really want to wrestle with these three and meditate upon it, it takes you to the cross.

There you see God perfectly just. He punishes every sin completely and perfectly. And you see God abundantly merciful because He punished Jesus for your sin if you believe in Him. Perfectly just, perfectly merciful, and faithful to complete and fulfill the promise God made at the very beginning of our sin that He would crush Satan and take away death and make us his again in life.

The cross is where you see justice, mercy, and faithfulness most clearly. And if you want to grow in justice, mercy, and faithfulness, the cross has to be the center of everything you think about, mostly yourself. Worthy of condemnation. Shun the grace of God because he's merciful. May we learn to be like Christ. This weightier. Too many Christian lives get what Paul calls tossed to and fro.

And I think it's because we really lack that the weighty matters. We like to do things, but we don't like these weighty matters. I would argue that these weighty matters, they give you what we call ballast. Ballast is what's beneath the water you don't see, but it keeps the boat steady. It keeps the boat level. It keeps the boat in the water not tossed to and fro.

The more we know who God is as the just, merciful, faithful God, the more we become just, merciful, and faithful, the more that ballast keeps you steady in the grace of God. Keeps you steady in the midst of the lies and temptations and accusations. keeps us steady, rejoicing in all God gives us. Will you pray with me? Father, we thank you that you are the perfectly just, always merciful, always faithful God. We thank you, Lord, that you cannot lie. You've spoken truth so that we can build ourselves on what is good, what is true, what is right. We pray that we would know how to make the right promises as we commit ourselves to these weighty matters of mercy, justice, and faithfulness. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.