Let's open our Bibles to Matthew chapter 23. Matthew chapter 23. Now as we've been going through chapter 22, we know that a lot of those events took place on the Wednesday of Passion Week. And this is the week between Palm Sunday and Good Friday. Saturday, the Lord Jesus is in the tomb. Friday, of course, he died on the cross. This is Wednesday. On Thursday night will be the Last Supper. And on Thursday night, Judas will betray The Lord Jesus to his enemies, he'll be arrested, tortured, tried, and eventually nailed to a cross. And there he'll die for our sins. And so it is Wednesday. And the Lord Jesus has defeated his enemies, the Pharisees, the scribes, and others, and all their trick questions. Remember, they came to the Lord Jesus with a series of three trick questions designed to cause him to stumble and commit some kind of serious offense and get himself in real trouble. Well, now the Lord Jesus turns his attention to the people, the people who were there. And what we have here in chapter 23, verses 1 through 12, is Jesus' final message before the cross, his final public teaching before the cross. There are things he's going to say to the Twelve, but as far as public teaching, this is the final message. And in this message, He's speaking to a mixed group of committed believers and others who are curious. And in this message, he gives several guiding principles for his followers at that time and principles for us today that show them and us how we are to live as followers of Jesus Christ. So how are we to live as followers of Christ? Number one, be a student. Be a student. Now again, the Lord Jesus has gone through three tests at the hands of his enemies, the Pharisees, the scribes, and others. He defeated them completely. Take a look at chapter 22, verse 46. No one was able to answer him a word, nor did anyone dare from that day on to ask him another question. And so it is the Lord Jesus three, and the Pharisees, the scribes, and their group, nothing. The Lord Jesus won in all three of those tests, those test questions that they posed. And so they're defeated. They're now silenced. He's turning his attention to a different group. Verse 1, it says, then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to his disciples. Now, it's important for us to remember the setting here. He's either at the temple or in the vicinity. And imagine the tension in that scene. Because, of course, the scribes, the Pharisees, others are there. What is their goal? Their ultimate plan is to kill the Lord Jesus, or have him killed any way they can. Now we know the cross is coming, the Lord Jesus knows the cross is coming, but his enemies don't know, the crowds don't know what's going to happen or how it's going to happen. As far as the Pharisees are concerned, if he could be killed on the spot, that's what they would like. But the Lord Jesus knows that nothing will happen until Friday, because that is God's plan and purpose for him. And so they're there, and it's a very tense situation. The enemies are there. His followers are there. Jesus is there. And this is like a mixture, an explosive mixture, ready to blow. And yet nothing has happened, but it certainly is a tense situation. And the Lord Jesus now is going to speak to the crowds and to his disciples. And these are two different groups. The crowds are the curious. These are people who've not yet believed, but they're interested. They're wanting to know. I remember before I was a believer, I looked into different spiritual systems, not Christianity, but I was looking for something. And eventually, I had some friends who shared the gospel with me, and over time, it came to the point where I trusted in Christ." These are the crowds, they're curious about the Lord Jesus and who he is and what he's all about. And then the disciples would include the twelve, perhaps others who are committed followers of Christ. Two different groups, the Lord Jesus is speaking to them. Now, in this last public teaching session, the Lord Jesus is answering the question, how should his followers live in a time when the temple and the synagogue ministry are compromised? Remember, and we'll see this later in the chapter, next time, Lord willing, the Lord Jesus is going to bring a scathing rebuke and criticism of the Pharisees. And what you find is that spiritually, they're corrupt. And people know this. When the Lord Jesus came to the temple, After his entry into Jerusalem, what did he do? The first thing he did is he broke up that religious marketplace that had taken over the temple and really perverted the temple from its basic purpose as a place of prayer, meditation, fellowship with God, Bible teaching, and they turned it into this bazaar, this marketplace, and the Lord Jesus immediately changed that. So he made lots of enemies, and people began to realize and kind of knew that the Pharisees, the scribes, were corrupt as people. corrupt spiritually. But not all of them were. There were some who were very faithful to the Lord, and some who were believers, and we find that. Think of Nicodemus. He was one of the group, and he came seeking the Lord Jesus, and we know that he believed. And so, again, what the Lord Jesus is saying is that he is going to depart. He doesn't mention this here, but we know he's going to depart. He's going to the cross. He'll die. He'll rise again. Sometime later, he'll ascend into heaven. So what are his followers to do? The church hasn't arrived yet. The church hasn't been born yet and won't be born for some time. So what are his followers to do? Well, in this interim period, Jesus says, don't abandon the temple, don't abandon the synagogue, but participate in these things. And that's what he's saying. Be a student of the word. And so he tells them how to do this. He says in verse 2, the scribes and the Pharisees have seated themselves in the chair of Moses. Now, Moses was the original teacher of the law. We're studying the book of Exodus on Thursdays in our Bible study. And soon we're going to see how Moses received the law of God. He received the basic Ten Commandments on stone tablets. The other parts came orally from God. Moses received it all. And he was the original teacher, along with the priests. of the law. That's what he would do. And so the chair of Moses is the position of teaching authority. And the chair of Moses is what the Pharisees and the scribes occupied really as self-appointed individuals. And so they occupied that position in the synagogue, in the temple. They taught the Bible to the people. That's what they did. Now the scribes were the teachers, and the Pharisees were really the ones who committed themselves to living out all the details of the law. The scribes were the law experts. They were the teachers. And they had a long history. During the 70 years of exile, centuries earlier, this is in Babylon, the Jews realized that the temple and its ministry were gone. They were destroyed by the Babylonians. And they turned their attention to the law, to the scriptures. And they began to study these really intensely. And out of this process emerged a group called the scribes. And they became experts in the law. They became the teachers of the law. They would teach the law to the people. And this was a good thing. This was something that really had not been done that faithfully in a previous time. Now, there is one great example of a scribe, and that would be Ezra. And we read about him in Ezra chapter 7. And Ezra went from Babylon to Jerusalem to function as a Bible teacher. Ezra went up from Babylon, where he was a scribe skilled in the law of Moses, which the Lord God of Israel had given. And so Ezra was a scribe, an expert in the law. Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord and to practice it. and to teach his statutes and ordinances in Israel. So Ezra was the model of everything that a scribe should be. He, first of all, was one who studied the word. He was an expert in the law, an expert in the scripture. And then also he practiced what he studied. He not only studied it for information, but it also ruled his life. The Bible governed his life. He wanted to do what God wanted him to do from what he learned from the scriptures. And so he studied the Word, he practiced the Word, and then he taught the Word. All three make an expert scribe and a really expert Bible teacher. Someone who studies, someone who practices what they have learned, and someone who is able to communicate that to other people. And so now we have the scribes and the Pharisees of Jesus' time. They are now seated in the chair of Moses, and they taught the law accurately, which is very interesting. The scribes and the Pharisees had added multitudes of rules and traditions to the law, but when they were in Moses' position, Moses' chair, and this might be a literal seat, in a synagogue or at the temple, or it's a figure of speech saying he is in that position of teaching authority. But when they taught the scriptures, they taught them accurately, and they explained what they said. The Lord Jesus modeled this when he visited the synagogue in Nazareth. And he read from the prophet Isaiah, and then he gave a brief explanation saying this was fulfilled here today, meaning that he was the fulfillment of that prophetic prediction in Isaiah. And that's what the scribes and Pharisees would do when they were sitting in the chair of Moses. They would teach from a seated position is what they would do, and they were teaching with Moses' authority. And so they were actually faithful in their teaching. And actually the word here is what they're saying. And when they would shift over to teaching, that's when they would add lots of extra things that are not in the law. And they would add these things that are not in the scripture. But when they're basically teaching the law, when they're talking from the law, then at this point it's faithful teaching. And Jesus says they're capable of this. You'll find this faithful teaching in the synagogue, you'll find it in the temple, you'll find it wherever you find the Pharisees and the scribes. And so what Jesus says is this, all that they tell you do and observe. So he's saying don't abandon the synagogue, don't abandon the temple, but continue to participate in those ministries. And he doesn't add this, but we know it's for the time being until the church is born. Don't abandon these things, don't rebel, don't cause trouble that way, but continue to go. And you will hear the truth when it's taught. And so hear what's taught, believe it, and live by it. And that's what they are to do. 1 Thessalonians 5 says, examine everything carefully and hold fast to that which is good. And that word examine is a word that is familiar to gold miners. We saw a little video last night of a guy who had a gold mine. And he actually mined for gold. They went in and they drilled holes in the rock. They blasted it. They took the rock, hauled it out. He had all these crushing machines and stuff and different processes. And finally, out of a ton of ore, he had something that looked like a $20 gold piece, which was about less than half an ounce, but at today's prices, worth quite a bit, actually. And it was tested and tested and tested and tested. until he got down to some percentage of gold, which was worth quite a bit. And so what happened to all the ore? Well, it just ends up in bins, and it's spread out somewhere, but you can't take that scrap to the bank. But they went through all of it. They tested it. He found that round. They call it a gold button. And when you're all done, at the bottom of this vessel is a gold button. And that's the end result. And the same thing is true for Jesus' hearers. He said, listen. Examine everything carefully and hold fast to that which is good. And when the scribes and Pharisees were speaking from the law of Moses in Moses' seat, so to speak, with his authority, 90% of the time they were teaching the truth. And Jesus said, don't abandon that system at this time, but instead listen to what is said, believe it and live by it. But again, Paul says in another place, test it and make sure it's all true. And that's good counsel for us today. Now, Jesus' time was a confusing time, and true and false were mixed together in the temple and the synagogue. And Jesus said, don't abandon these, but listen and test and believe and follow what you hear. Jesus' words to his followers of that time are sound advice for us today. Sometimes a person might be tempted to say, I think I'll just have my Christian life at home on my own. I can get as much value from my Bible by myself as I could get in any church and listening to messages. But in fact, Jesus says, no, there's good in many places. Go to a good, solid Bible teaching church, as we have here, and just listen to what's taught. You can test what you hear, believe it, and live by it. That's what Jesus is saying. Don't abandon the ministry of the Word, but participate in it. Be a student, and we should be students of the Word. We had an interesting comment in a Bible study one time, and we were talking about Bible prophecy. It was a little complicated. And someone said, how am I supposed to know this? And I said, well, that's why we have teachers. God gave us teachers. I have teachers. You know, I'm helping to teach you here. We need teachers to help us understand the things from the Word of God. And so again, very helpful for us. So be a student. And then also, be selective. Be selective. Now the Bible is actually not just a book, it's a library. And part of this library, much of it, is history. It is the true stories of people and events that teach practical lessons for us today. And as we read the life stories in the Bible, we find that some of them are great examples to imitate. Think about Moses, Joshua, Daniel, Joseph, the Apostle Paul, and of course, the Lord Jesus. But then there are also negative examples, examples to avoid, and we could list certainly many of them from the Bible. And the same is true in the Christian life. There are people who we can look to as mentors, as teachers, as examples, people whose lives we should imitate. And then there are others whose lives and examples we should avoid. And the Lord Jesus says, and this is interesting about the scribes and the Pharisees, verse 3, All that they tell you, do and observe, but do not do according to their deeds, for they say things and do not do them." Now, remember Ezra? His goal was to study the Word, to practice the Word, and then to teach the Word. Well, this broke down with the scribes and the Pharisees. They studied it, they taught it, but they didn't practice what they preached. And Jesus said, you'll meet people like this. The Pharisees and the scribes are this way. They faithfully teach the law, but they don't practice what they preach. And Jesus said, listen to what they say when they're teaching from the law, but don't follow their example because they don't practice what they preach. In our world today, there's constant pressure on us to compromise our faith, whether it's from a negative example or the pressure from the world. Think about Romans 12. It says, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And again, the world puts constant pressure on us to squeeze us into its mold, and it does it in a lot of ways, through the culture, through entertainment, through lots of different ways. The world puts pressure on us to compromise our faith. Perhaps examples of people who we might be tempted to follow, but they're not following the Lord. And the Lord Jesus says to his followers of that time, and to us today, be selective. Don't follow every example that we see, but resist the pressure of the world to compromise our faith. And we need to choose examples that we would follow from scripture, from history, from the world around us, people that we know, people who are truly godly and committed to Christ. And then number three, there's a third principle here, and that is be a helper. Be a helper. Verse four. The Pharisees and scribes had taught the word accurately, but also the scribes added many, many countless rules to the scripture. And we'll look at some of those rules in just a bit. But these rules became an unbearable burden for the people. We live in a time now where there's lots of regulations and they're hard to deal with. Well, the scribes and the Pharisees added what we might call regulations, rules, to the plain teaching of the law. And we'll see some of these. Verse 4, it says, they tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger. Now, this is a picture everyone would be familiar with in the ancient world, a picture from everyday life. Imagine a burrow or a donkey that is going to be loaded to carry some cargo. And this is how it was done. And in our ongoing study of Western history, we've seen this, how they load donkeys and prospectors will do this, and they've got everything. piled up on their draft animal. And the picture here is an animal that's being loaded with a cargo, but it's too high, it's too wide, it's too heavy, and this poor animal is trying to carry this without falling over or collapsing under the load. Totally overloaded. I remember we were cutting firewood one time And I think we overloaded a pickup, but we didn't think about it. We filled it up with firewood, and I was driving behind them with my buddy. He says, look at those tires. And they were like half flat. They were up to the regular pressure, but there was so much firewood in the pickup bed that the tires were getting flattened out. And so you could see it was an overloaded vehicle. Well, this is an overloaded animal. And what the Lord Jesus is saying is that the followers of the scribes and the Pharisees were overloaded people, not overloaded with a load of firewood or things like that, but overloaded with a load of rules that were piled on top of the plain teaching of the law. And that's what they would do. And they had heavy, heavy burdens, and they would lay them on people. Here's a good example of it in Matthew 12. At that time, Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath. And the grain fields at that time were laid out in a certain way, and there were paths in between the fields so you could get around. And you were allowed to walk through these paths. And the law actually allowed a passerby to take some ripe grain. You could take this. I've tried this. You take a head of wheat that's getting close to harvest. break it off of the stalk, and you probably try this, you rub it in your hand, kind of blow out the chaff, and you've got, you've got wheat berries, which if they're not totally dried out, you can actually kind of chew on these. And I had a friend, he made something called emulsion. And it was peanut butter, wheat berries, and honey. And then the recipe ended with consume vast quantities. And he lived to be 99, so there must be something to his concept. They never baked bread. In fact, they thought that maybe bread and baked goods were not so good for you, but they would use wheat berries. and they would cook these up kind of like rice, and that's what they would do. These are uncooked, but you could take a handful for a quick lunch when you're out in the country, you don't have anything with you, and that was the idea. And the Bible made provision for that. So it says, the disciples were hungry, began to pick the heads of grain and eat. But then the Pharisees saw this, and they said to him, look, your disciples do what is not lawful to do on a Sabbath. What happened? They didn't break the law, but they broke a rule, a rule that the Pharisees added. Now, the basic rule for the Sabbath was very simple. Don't work. It was a day of rest. But then, of course, the Pharisees had to figure out, well, well, what is work? And they began to argue and discuss and debate. And they said, well, work is traveling from place to place. And so they said, well, if it's the Sabbath, you're allowed to travel, but only so many paces, a Sabbath day's journey. And then if it's the Sabbath, and you're out, and you're hungry, and you grab some heads of wheat, and you take out the wheat berries and start munching on those, That's breaking our rules. That's harvesting a crop. And that's work. And you're not allowed to do that. And you can imagine the burden. There were many other things. They criticized the disciples for not washing their hands. The Lord Jesus healed a man who was sick. And in fact, multiple people, a man with a withered hand. Imagine that, someone who had a hand that they had lost the use of for who knows how long. And the Lord Jesus healed him on the Sabbath. And they criticized him for breaking the Sabbath because healing was prohibited. So stop and think about it. If there was a hospital on that day, it was closed on the Sabbath, but there was a sign in the door. If you're about to die, come in. If not, come back tomorrow. And that was kind of the idea. And it was work, it was prohibited work to heal on the Sabbath. These are just a couple of examples, but you get the idea of the burden that this placed on people. Multitudes of these laws. There are volumes of the rules that are added to Scripture that were done at that time. Now, this burden was tremendous. We read this in Matthew 9. The Lord Jesus is often followed by crowds of people. And we read this in chapter 9. When he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted and were scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd. Now, the language here describes people who are under a heavy burden, they are discouraged, and they're exhausted with the rules and the rituals that were imposed on them by the Pharisees. Now, their leaders had abandoned them like unfaithful shepherds, so they were just adrift. They had no one to guide them or help them or try to lessen the load. They just kept piling the rules on, and they were struggling under this tremendous weight. And so what happened was the Pharisees made salvation an impossible task. You had to keep all the law and all the rules in order to have a chance at salvation. So what was the result? People began to realize, I can't do this. Ever take a course in school and you just couldn't get it? And you're falling farther behind, farther behind, farther behind, farther behind. Now that happened. That's what they were doing. They were falling farther behind in their efforts to earn salvation by keeping the law. What does that do to a person? They're totally discouraged and really despondent and filled with a sense of guilt. They said, I know I'm lost. I know I have this sin, but I can't even do anything about it. And that's how they were. And the Lord Jesus saw this in the people. They were burdened that way. And the same is true today. There are religious people today in various systems who are laboring under a burden of rules and laws and rituals that are imposed in addition to on top of the Bible. And yet when you ask them, are you going to heaven? Well, I hope so. And you think, oh, What an awful thing that happens. There are many people like that. And then there's the person who isn't saved, but they have a sense of their guilt. They know what they've done. They know they've done some things that are wrong, and they're terribly, terribly burdened by that. And that's where we come in. The Pharisees set the negative example. They did not lift a finger to keep the rules themselves. They had all kinds of legal loopholes that they had constructed, but they also don't lift a finger to help their people, to reduce the load on them. That's where we come in. We can be that helper. We're the ones who can help that person who's burdened under a load of religion, or a load of guilt. And we do that when we are gospel messengers. We offer the simple message, by grace you have been saved, that is, you were and you are today, saved by faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. I had a friend who served in wartime, and he had to do some things that left him really disturbed. I mean, very disturbed. In fact, he felt guilty. What he did was right, but he felt guilty for what he had to do in wartime and the violence of wartime. And it bothered him for many years. He was tormented by this guilt. And then someone, a believer, came along and shared with him that He wasn't guilty, that there was no guilt involved. He was serving his country. And he began to realize, yeah, I'm forgiven for this. I never sinned in this whole thing. And the burden was lifted. And we can do that for that burdened person. We can offer them the gospel and really lift the burden away as the Lord saves them, the burden of guilt is removed. So if you know someone who's laboring under that kind of burden, be the helper that they need. Share Christ with them and give them a chance to be set free from the burden of religious rules and the burden of guilt. And then also number four, be real, be real. You may have heard this quote from Shakespeare, all the world's a stage and the men and women are merely players. Ever hear that? All the world's a stage and the men and women are merely players. Well, I have the Pharisees version of this. All the world is a stage and the men and women are merely players. And here's the Pharisees edition. And I am the star. And the Pharisee would think of himself as a star on the stage, on the religious stage. And they would act like actors to appear to be something that they're not. What is an actor? Someone who takes on the character of someone else. And they were like actors. And that's really what they did. So their motto would be, it really is all about me. They live their lives as spiritual actors, as performers, actors on the stage. Their goal was not to please God, but their goal was to impress other people, that they were more spiritual than anyone else. And they would do this with their clothing, their words, their deeds, all designed to impress other people so that people would think that these Pharisees were the most spiritual people they had ever met in their lives. Take a look at verse 5. says they do all their deeds to be noticed by men. This is the word that gives us our word theater. And the idea is when you go to a theater, what do you do? You watch and you look and you're absorbed by what you see and you're thinking about it. And they're walking around like they are the main attraction in the theater. That's what they are. That's how they live. And they do this in how they dress, what they say, all these different things, what they do. Well, what do they do? Well, verse five, and thank you, Willie, for pronouncing that word, difficult word today. They brought in their phylacteries. What is a phylactery? What is that? Well, that is a little leather box. And the Old Testament law said we should keep the law in our minds and in our hearts. And the Pharisees took it literally. They said, well, what I'm going to do is I'm going to keep the law right there on my head. And this box would have a place inside for little strips of parchment or whatever the writing material was. And there were verses of scripture, certain verses that they would do. They put them in here, and they're tied on with a strap. There are still people who do this today. You'll see this. And so then the goal was, who is the most spiritual? And so if someone had a phylactery that was small, he was kind of OK. But then they would enlarge them. I don't know how big the biggest phylacteries were, but you could imagine, you know, I'm more spiritual than you because my phylactery has a lot more verses in it and it's just much larger. And then they also had one on their left arm to be close to their heart and these would be enlarged as well. So what are they doing? Well, they're using a spiritual symbol to send a message. I'm more spiritual than you and how do you know? Because I've enlarged the box that holds these scriptures to my head and to my arm. And these symbols are designed to say I'm more spiritual than you. It doesn't say anything about who they are as a person, but it really is a disguise to disguise who they really are. We recently had a Halloween here, and there's all kinds of people running around in disguises, and you can't really tell who they are. They're wearing a costume. And this was part of a costume, and it was a spiritual costume. And then also, they lengthened the tassels of their garments. Now, these served a practical purpose. A tassel is just a few strands of yarn, colored yarn. And what the law said was, you should have some of these on the hem of your garment. Remember, everybody wore these kind of robes. That's what they would wear at that time. And so you'd have these tassels dangling from the bottom. Why are they there? Ever tie a piece of string on your finger to remind yourself of something? I have not figured out how to tie a bow with one hand, so I've never done it. I guess you could hold it with your teeth. These tassels are a reminder. A reminder of what? Well, they're a reminder to remember God's commands and to follow them faithfully. That's what it was. Every time you'd see those, oh yeah, I'm to know and to do the will of God. That's what that was all about. And it's a great idea. Jesus had them on his garment. And you'll see sometimes prayer shawls today, and these shawls will have tassels on them. Again, they serve a practical purpose. But what did they do? Well, they supersized their tassels. Why? Again, it was a spiritual status symbol. It was to show, I am more spiritual than you. I have the biggest tassels on my garment of anybody you've ever seen. And that's because I am more spiritual than you. It was a spiritual status symbol. So nothing wrong with tassels, but when they're used as a costume, there is a problem. And so the Pharisees dressed to impress, to look spiritual when they're not, and we'll see later, starting at verse 13 next week, Lord willing, we'll see that they were not spiritual at all. And Christian symbols are common today. You can wear a cross, a pin, a bracelet, a t-shirt, a hat, all kinds of things that say something about our faith. Nothing wrong with that. as long as the label matches the contents, as long as the symbols are not hiding who we might really be. Very, very important. And this can happen. Sometimes people use spiritual symbols, Christian symbols, to say, I am very spiritual, when maybe they're not. So whatever we do with spiritual symbols and wearing them, we need to be careful to make sure that they are communicating a true message about who we are. And Jesus says, don't live the Christian life as an actor on a stage, be real. And then number five, be an equal, be an equal. In any organization, there's always someone who wants to be first. They're not elected or appointed, but they want to be first. They want to be the boss. This happened in a church. John says this in 3 John, So here's someone. who appointed himself as boss in his church and appointed himself above the apostles. Think of that. And so he was a self-appointed boss. He was someone who thought he was higher than other people. And he had this hierarchy. And he said, I'm at the top. I don't know who's on the rest of the pyramid, but I'm at the top. And that's where he saw himself. Well, the Pharisees and scribes were this way. The Pharisees craved power and influence. And what they loved were privileged positions. Verse 6. It says, they love the place of honor at banquets. And of course, in any large event, there are preferred seats. I made this mistake myself when I was an elected official. I went to a large banquet. luncheon for people in government. And I saw a friend of mine. I sat down at their table, and they looked at me like they'd seen a ghost. They said, you can't sit there. I said, why? This is the governor's table. I said, OK, goodbye. And I went to another table. But you know, there are sort of prime seats in any event. And the Pharisees made sure that they got the prime spots. They always wanted to be seen in the top spots in any event. and in also public recognition, verse 7. says they love respectful greetings in the marketplaces. And it's interesting how much the ancient world is much like ours. People love to shop then as now. And they love to go to the market, not just to buy things, but to get the news and to, what do they say? It's a place to see and be seen. And they like to see who's there and to greet. And the Pharisees loved this. They loved respectful greetings, special greetings, public recognition. They also loved distinguished titles. Verse 7. being called rabbi by men. What is rabbi? Rabbi means it's Hebrew just brought over to Greek and then brought straight over to English. It's not even translated. It's a Hebrew word. And it means my great one, my great one. Every now and then we'll meet somebody who gives themselves the title of the great one. Well, that was the rabbi's title, my great one. So they say, greetings, my great one. And the idea is you're the rabbi, you're here, I'm somewhere down here, but you are the great one. They love that. And then also, and Jesus says we're not to, they also, and it was really a status symbol is what it was. And Jesus says we're not to seek out and use special titles as a spiritual status symbol. Verse eight, do not be called rabbi for one is your teacher. The Lord Jesus is the teacher. He is our master, our great one. There's no man who fills that position. And then also, do not call anyone your father in terms of the spiritual authority over us, for one is your father who is in heaven. We have one father, not multiple spiritual fathers on earth. But these titles can be used, but not in the sense of one who stands between us and God. Jesus says, don't establish yourself this way. as someone who has some special spiritual authority, who is the gatekeeper to heaven. He says, well, you talk to me and I will do what I can to get you into heaven. That's not what is to be done. And then also he says, Do not be called leaders or masters. Don't set yourself up as a master or a boss. For one is your leader, that is Christ. And so again, the Lord Jesus says we can learn from the negative examples of the Pharisees. Now, throughout the history of the church, men have amassed tremendous power and have wielded great authority and have used all kinds of special titles to set themselves above and beyond the people in a spiritual hierarchy. But Jesus says we're to be equals. Take a look at verse 8. He says, you are all brothers, or we could say brothers and sisters, but we're all equals is the idea. We're all equals. Now in the church, we may have varying positions and responsibilities, and we know that. But as someone has said, the ground is level at the foot of the cross. We are equals before Christ. We may have varying responsibilities and things like that. And those in higher positions are not to be masters, but servants. Peter says this, I exhort the elders among you as your fellow elder and witness of the sufferings of Christ and a partaker of the glory that is to be revealed, shepherd the flock of God among you, nor not as lording it over those allotted to your charge. That is literally don't rule as a tyrant. but lead as a shepherd." And Jesus would say, lead as a servant. So the Pharisees and scribes worked hard to accumulate power and authority. And the Lord Jesus says, that should not be true of us as his followers. And in the church, we're called to be equals. We have varying roles and responsibilities, but before Christ, the ground is level at the foot of the cross. And none of these things, these roles and responsibilities, should be used as a way to gain power. Jesus says, be an equal. and then also be a servant. Jesus calls us not to be power brokers or set ourselves up as dictators or bosses, but he calls us to be servants. He says in verse 11, the greatest among you shall be your servant, and whoever exalts himself shall be humbled, and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted. Now, the Pharisees and the scribes pursued a false greatness through their costumes that they wore, living as play actors, accumulating titles and those things. false kind of greatness. But the Lord Jesus again calls us to a true greatness, and that true greatness is imitating him as one who is a servant of all. And certainly the Lord Jesus himself, the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, set the example of humble service, and that is the way to real greatness. So in his final public message, the Lord Jesus, this is now before the cross, gives several guiding principles for his followers and for us today. First of all, be a student. Don't abandon the church, but be a student of the Word of God. Test what you hear and live by it. Be selective. That is, there are many pressures and examples for us to follow. Choose truly good examples. And be a helper. There are many people laboring under a burden of guilt or religious rules, and we can be that helper who can set them free with the gospel. Be real. Don't be someone who is trying to be what we're not. But again, be a real, authentic individual. And then finally, be an equal. That is, there's no real hierarchy in the church. We're equals before Christ. And also, be a servant. That is true greatness. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word, and thank you for these guiding principles from the Lord Jesus. Help us to live by them, to understand them, and to be that person who is a helper, who is under the burden of guilt and sin. In Jesus' name, amen.