in this expository series that we will be reading from this chapter. I'll be preaching from the last three verses, verse 45 through verse 47. But again, to have our context, let's begin our reading at verse 1, remembering that all of this is the Word of God. Now, it happens. On one of those days as Jesus taught the people in the temple and preached the gospel that the chief priests and the scribes together with the elders confronted him and spoke to him saying, tell us by what authority are you doing these things? Or who is he who gave you this authority? But Jesus answered and said to them, I also will ask you one thing and answer me. The baptism of John, was it from heaven or from men? And they reasoned among themselves saying, if we say from heaven, he will say, why then did you not believe him? But if we say from men, all the people will stone us. For they are persuaded that John was a prophet. So they answered that they did not know where it was from. And Jesus said to them, Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things." Then Jesus began to tell the people this parable. A certain man planted a vineyard, leased it to vinedressers, and went into a far country for a long time. Now at vintage time, he sent a servant to the vinedressers that they might give him some of the fruit of the vineyard, but the vinedressers beat him. and sent him away empty-handed. Again he sent another servant, and they beat him also, treated him shamefully, and sent him away empty-handed. And again he sent a third, and they wounded him also, and cast him out. Then the owner of the vineyard said, What shall I do? I will send my beloved son. Probably they will respect him when they see him. But when the vinedressers saw him, they reasoned among themselves, saying, This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, that the inheritance may be ours. So they cast him out of the vineyard and killed him. Therefore, what will the owner of the vineyard do to them? He will come and destroy those vinedressers and give the vineyard to others. And when they heard it, they said, Certainly not. And Jesus looked at them and said, What then is this that is written? The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. Whoever falls on that stone will be broken. But on whom it falls, it will grind him to powder. And the chief priests and the scribes that very hour sought to lay hands on him, but they feared the people, for they knew he had spoken this parable against them. So they watched him and sent spies who pretended to be righteous, that they might seize on his words in order to deliver him to the power and the authority of the governor. Then they asked Jesus, saying, Teacher, We know that you say and teach rightly, and you do not show personal favoritism, but teach the way of God in truth. Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not? But Jesus perceived their craftiness and said to them, why do you test me? Show me a denarius. Whose image and inscription does it have? They answered and said, Caesar's. And Jesus said to them, render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's. But they could not catch him in his words in the presence of the people. And they marveled at his answer and kept silent. Then some of the Sadducees who denied that there is a resurrection came to him and asked him saying, teacher, Moses wrote to us that if a man's brother dies having a wife, and he dies without children, his brother should take his wife and raise up offspring for his brother. Now, there were seven brothers, and the first took a wife and died without children, and the second took her, his wife, and he died childless. Then the third took her, and in like manner the seven also, and they left no children and died last of all. The woman died also, therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife does she become? For all seven had her as wife. Jesus answered and said to them, the sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are counted worthy to attain that age and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage, nor can they die anymore for they are equal to the angels and are sons of God. being sons of the resurrection. But even Moses showed in the burning bush passage that the dead are raised when he called the Lord, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, for he is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him. Then some of the scribes answered and said, teacher, you've spoken well, but after that, They dared not question him anymore. And Jesus said to them, how can they say that the Christ is the son of David? Now David himself said in the book of Psalms, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool. Therefore David calls him Lord. How is he then his son? Now the last three verses of this chapter. Then in the hearing of all the people, Jesus said to his disciples, beware of the scribes who desire to go around in long robes, love greetings in the marketplaces, and the best seats in the synagogues, and the best place at feasts, who devour widows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayers. These will receive greater condemnation. May God bless to us now the reading, hearing, and the preaching of his word. As a title, I've got kind of a theme here for these words, don't follow Pharisees. Now godly people can be tempted to this. The Pharisees then and now give us all kinds of wonderful ideas how we can keep God's law. And that's something we all want. If we have new hearts, we want desperately to be more and more holy. We want to be more and more Christ-like. This is an honest thing. And those who are godly, we admire. This is why Jesus, in a parallel passage in Matthew 23, says, speaking to the multitudes and his disciples, saying, the scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. Therefore, whatever they tell you to observe, that observe and do, but do not do according to their works, for they say and do not do. Now, a parallel passage for this, I just started with the first verse or two in Matthew 23. It goes all the way down to verse 36. And you can also see a shorter version in Matthew, no, in Mark chapter 12, verses 38 through 40. Matthew's is by far the longest and most detailed. Maybe because the Holy Spirit used his memory of the event. Matthew was there when it happened. Mark and Luke weren't. Mark and Luke only had it kind of secondhand from Peter and Paul, respectively. Now, as we've read through this chapter, and as we've seen, the scribes and the Pharisees, and we lump those two together, the scribes made copies of the Word of God. And they would write out little portions to put in little tubes that would go on the doorways of houses. And you will find this in observant Jewish households even today. It's called a mezuzah. And it's a little thing right on the doorpost as you go in the front door. And inside this little capsule is a little bit of a parchment with handwritten a portion of God's law in there. The scribes also came up with all kinds of new principles they derived and new ways of keeping God's law so you could avoid going against it. The Pharisees did these things and pushed these things. So the scribes and Pharisees were those who tended to, as we saw before, add to God's law. On the other hand, you had the Herodians and the Sadducees. They thought that the Pharisees and the scribes were all fanatics. They were all against their adding to Scripture, but they took away, as we saw before, saying that the only real stuff that we have that is Scripture is Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The rest is kind of adjunct stuff. And they were the high priest family. They were the chief priest families. They were some head families of Levites and all that. They claimed to be the faithful ones themselves because they didn't add to God's Word. They went along with the Herodians, those who were friendly with the Romans and friendly with their puppet king, Herod. Now, they had all publicly, we've seen this in this chapter, and by word of mouth attacked Jesus. So it was appropriate for Jesus to call them out publicly. Now this was especially necessary to call out the scribes and the Pharisees. Among the people there was very little temptation to go along with the Herodians and the Sadducees. The Herodians were traitors. The Sadducees were full of contempt for the common people. So the common people, well, they didn't have anything that they found appealing with them. The Herodians were collaborators with Rome, the Herod family were Edomites, and they all paid little reverence to common ideas of holiness. And we can put this in quotation marks, Jewishness. Therefore, there was less need for Jesus to confront them because they tended strongly to push the common people away instead of trying to win them to themselves. That's why we hardly ever see Jesus interacting with Sadducees, but he frequently does with scribes and Pharisees. All right, so what's the matter with the scribes and Pharisees? After all, they're just trying to be holy. They're just trying to encourage other people to be holy. If they could only, for example, have a single day in which all of the people would keep the Sabbath properly, Messiah would come. Wouldn't that be wonderful? Well, Jesus points out in verse 46, the first problem, and that's their pride. Beware of the scribes who desire to go around in long robes, love greetings in the marketplaces, the best seats in the synagogues, and the best places at feasts. Let me tell you, religious leaders have certain particular temptation areas. Because of our place in the esteem of the godly. People trust us with their money because they're good men. They're doing holy things. If we give them money, they will use it in a godly way. They trust us with their wives and daughters. That's another thing. because he would never do anything to them. So, money and sex, but there's another, and that is the pride of place. Oh, he's so wonderful. Oh, pastor! Oh, pastor! And I hear this at predatory and synod, not because I am a super pastor, but because I'm getting to be an old guy now. And so these newer, younger ministers come up to me and it's not, hi Phil, how are you doing? It's more like, oh, Mr. Pachris, can I do this for you or that? And there's all this honoring and deference. And in a way, proper for all of us to show that one to another. We are to honor one another above ourselves. And we are told in Scripture to revere the hoary-headed. Well, I'm not particularly that, but hoary-chinned maybe. But it's one thing to have this trust put in you, but it's another to demand it. You talk respectfully to me. That can be the attitude. and you better not question me, you better not contradict me, you better let me have the best, because that's what I deserve, because I'm holy. I hope, my friends, that I do not come across this way, and I hope that I never do, because what gifts, what graces I may have are only from God, they're not from me. I'm very thankful you don't know the thoughts and imaginations of my heart at times. How I can get so prideful. And I have to stop it now. For you see, Jesus points out here that what they really love is not holiness in themselves or others. What they really love is respect and deference. Despite the love and adoration that the people had for them and for their teaching, they wanted to be seen in a way strangely similar to the Sadducees, whom they hated. They wanted to be seen as being above common people. And this showed up in their dress. Now online I've been seeing ads for this long sleep shirt that says, and it's fleece lined and everything, nice and heavy, and says, and you can wear it around the house, doesn't have to be just in bed. And it says, I'm still freezing, me 24 colon 7, like it's a scripture reference. So yeah, a long robe there, but that's not to appear more holy, more wonderful. Let's just try to get warm. Well, the reason these men wore these long robes is because that's what the priests and Levites wore. That's what the high government officials were. These long mantles. Common working men. Who were out in the world doing something useful. They had short stuff so they could gird up their loins and get to work. Whereas these guys, they didn't want to appear as if they did common things like making shoes. or farming or anything like that. No, no. They were holy. They spent all their time in the special place where they studied the sayings of the elders, what we call now the Talmud. In fact, it's still this way today in Orthodox Jewish communities, you will have men who are on welfare, and their wives and children are on welfare, because they spend all their time in the yeshiva, at the shul, and there they are learning fine points of the Talmud. They hardly deal with scripture directly. So they are uncommonly holy, you see, and it shows in their long gowns, their long robes. They weren't out in the world like common profane people, getting unclean with all their time in an unclean working world. They were actually touching people who might have touched a dead body. Or maybe it was that they did some other unclean thing and so they were made unclean. No, we don't want to be associated with that. No. Not only did they love showing off how holy they were to get more and more respect, why they loved the perks of the place where they were. They loved being called Dr. Pincus or Holy Teacher Yaakov and so on. They really enjoyed being shown to the seats, being taken up to the front in the synagogue, at the platform at the front, where they were close to the Torah scroll. They were close to the worship leader and the leader of prayer. From there, they could and did watch over all the congregation. They could watch people walking out. They could watch people fidgeting. They could see that maybe they were playing around with something. Not a phone back then, but... They could watch and go... And they could correct. At banquets. Because they were holy and distinguished guests. They weren't the common people. They got the best food. They got the highest honor, a habit that Jesus had already condemned six chapters back in chapter 14, verses 7 through 11. Now again, Matthew relates all of this far more fully, including Jesus' pronouncement of woes upon them in chapter 23. Let me have you, this afternoon, when you get home, read Matthew 23. You will see that what Luke has here is a kind of a summary of it. The full thing is in Matthew's Gospel. And so, what sort of application is there here for you and is there for me? We must yield up our pride particularly when we're dealing with people out in the world. We must not be thinking we are covenanters when we're among other biblical Presbyterians. And look down upon them. Do we have a better understanding of Scripture in some areas? Well, I think so, or I wouldn't be in this denomination. But if we do have a better understanding of Scripture on some areas, in some areas, than other Christians, how did we get that? Is it because we're so smart? Is it because we're so holy? Is it because we can follow out from a set of propositions to a proper conclusion and that these other dummies are too stupid or too lazy or too filthy to do? No. It is only by grace. Let me tell you, when I was in college, I was one of the few kids in my inner varsity group who believed in the so-called five points of Calvinism. And I was so proud of myself. These people, they just don't know their Bibles. I got seminary at Westminster, and I was in a dorm with a bunch of other guys who had had the same experience. And we're all used to being the spiritual elite, and we found out, no. Right in this place, we're all a bunch of similar guys. And it finally dawned on me, being a proud Calvinist is about the stupidest thing ever. Because we profess to have anything that we have, everything that we have, by God's grace. It is his gift. It is not us. And finally I saw I'm being an idiot, I'm being a fool. Now the sad thing is, friends, when we have areas of sin in our lives, it's often a very long time that we get rid of it all together. And we don't pay attention and we fall into holes or whatever else. We need, we must give up our pride, our self-asserted goodness, We must give up our willful rejection of and rebellion against Jesus. We must run to Him, not from Him. We must take Him, as He is offered in the Scripture, as our Savior and our all, and give ourselves fully to Him. Now, a second thing. that Jesus mentions that's a problem with the Pharisees is their hypocrisy. And I've kind of alluded to this already. In verse 47, we read about those who devour widows' houses and for a pretense make long prayers. These will receive greater condemnation. I was talking out in the kitchen before we started worship about how our son Nathaniel, when he was a little guy, And he kept Judy up to like two or something of the sort. And she'd had to get up to feed him and all. I took care of diapers. And so he'd wake up at five and he'd want to go downstairs. He wanted to watch Grandma Mary next door, get her school bus ready and leave. And he'd wave to her standing on the couch through our side window. And he would want to get on the TV to WGN. And he wanted to watch Bozo. But before that, there was a guy on named Robert Tilton. And we called him the money grubber. He was a evangelist. And he was constantly not talking about the gospel, but getting money. And he promised, if you'd send him money, God would bless you with much more. If you would make a faith pledge, it was a seed that God would plant and you'd get much more. He's not the only one with that gig. There are plenty of those around. This is how modern day Pharisees tend to devour widows' houses. And then for a pretense, make long prayers. They didn't care for the widow and the fatherless. A commandment that is all through scripture. We just sang about it, friends, in Psalm 146. What they see is a widow, seeing a widow, they see a cash cow. All that her husband and maybe her father had left for her is taken and is generally by religious fraud. The Pharisees would show how godly they themselves were, and they could be trusted. They would urge these women to support some so-called worthy charity case or situation, and then pocket the money. Now, it might be a needy student, quote unquote, or support for a godly but poor Pharisee. He can't work. He has to spend time studying the Talmud. Or it might be that they would be demanding a contribution that a truly holy woman should be giving for ornamenting the temple. Or there could be all kinds of other things. And I've got my notes. These tactics still occur, and they work 2,000 years later. And they cover up their greed and theft. by showing how wonderfully godly they are by long and flowery prayers that seem so pious, so pure. Surely they must be godly men, not con artists. They go on, well, as Matthew notes in chapter 23, verses 3 through 5, they weigh people down. with supposedly extra godly rules, but they don't follow them. There's a teacher who's been very popular. He's not Reformed Presbyterian. He's been very popular in some of the congregations in our Presbyterian years past. A guy by the name of Bill Gothard. And he has been notable for usurping authority, being a false prophet, and weighing down people with his principles. He is a modern Pharisee and should not be heeded as a trustworthy teacher. Too many people have. He has weighed down people with supposedly extra godly rules, but he doesn't follow them. Now, let's be clear. There are what we might call expedient things for Christians that are fine for individuals to do for themselves, but we have no right to put them on others. So, for example, if I have trouble with pride, maybe what I ought to be doing is dress in ripped up clothes and stuff like that. And maybe that would help keep me humble in a way. But for me to say, you should too, or else you're a proud, horrible person, that's wrong. Or to think that outside things somehow can affect our standing, that's wrong. To think that abstaining from certain things that make us sin is wrong. When we put sin on things, that's wrong. This is part of the problem with guns today. People think, oh, they're terrible. No, it's the people who misuse them. And alcohol is not a sinful thing. It is the sinful misuse of it that is wrong. It is not rich and tasty food that is wrong. The problem is sin in the heart of those who misuse and overindulge. And we could go on and on and on here, but so often those who add on the extra rules don't even bother with keeping them. Now, be sure of this. Those who add to God's law for others, take it away from where it will benefit them. That was the case for the Pharisees and it's still the case today. The only godliness, the only justification before God available to us, is not an extra diligent keeping of the law. We can't. We certainly can't give that which is here in the Word of God, let alone all the extra little things, the hedges and the principles and the fences. We can't keep those as well. The only way we can be right with God is through the God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ, and his once-for-all death on the cross. It is to Jesus whom we must look, not our keeping of the law. It is to Jesus to whom we must look, not our wonderful intelligence and spirituality. We don't have it. Only Jesus does. Put your trust in Jesus. Don't follow the Pharisees. Follow the Word written. More to the point, before you can do that, you must follow the Word become flesh.