As we read from the book of Luke chapter 11, we're gonna be reading verses 45 through 54. Then one of the lawyers answered and said to him, teacher, by saying these things, you reproach us also. And he said, Woe to you also, lawyers! For you load men with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers. Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets, and your fathers killed them. In fact, you bear witness that you approve the deeds of your fathers, for they indeed killed them, and you build their tombs. Therefore the wisdom of God also said, I will send them prophets, apostles, and some of them they will kill and persecute, that the blood of all the prophets who was shed from the foundation of the world may be required of this generation, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the temple. Yes, I say to you, it shall be required of this generation. Woe to you, lawyers, for you have taken away the key of knowledge. You did not enter in yourselves, and those who were entering in you hindered. And as he said these things to them, the scribes and the Pharisees began to assail him vehemently and to cross-examine him about many things, lying in wait for him and seeking to catch him in something that he might say that they might accuse him of. May the Lord bless the reading of his word. Let's bow our heads in a word of prayer. Our Father, we come before you this morning and we just come asking for your help. Lord, these were people from the religious society of their day. And yet, Lord, when they stood before you, they found they were under judgment. Father, I ask that you may be with each person that is here, and Lord, that we may hear the truth of God's Word, that the day would come when we will stand before you. We would not be under judgment, but under blessing. Father, I ask for myself, Lord, that you would work with me, that you would lead me, that you would guide me in your Word. Father, that you would order the thoughts in my head and the speech from my mouth. Lord, that I would not add to or take away from your Word. But Lord, that I would be faithful in all that is said, done, thought in my life with you. Father, I ask for your help, for on my own I know I can do nothing. Lord, I ask for your Holy Spirit to bless each one who's out this morning. We ask for this in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen. Thank you. You may be seated. We are returning to where we left off in the book of Luke after our two-week break over Christmas. And we are in an interesting section, just to give you the thoughts again. The beginning of Luke is the witnesses to who Jesus would be. There were 13 or 14 of them. Then we had a section on proofs that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, was this perfect man as he defeated Satan in the wilderness, cast out demons, did many mighty miracles. Now we're into the section of doctrine. This started in, I think it was Luke chapter 9, and it's continued up until today. And we have seen recently that the Pharisees have set themselves against Jesus, and Jesus has called them out. He has warned them with graphic descriptions that when the demon comes back, if they have not repented, it's going to be worse after he leaves than even at the beginning. And they had asked for a sign and he warns them again that it's an evil and adulterous generation that seeks a sign, that the only sign given them would be the sign of the son of Jonah and that they are going to be held in judgment by both the queen of the south who came to see Solomon and the men of Nineveh who repented at the preaching of Jonah the prophet. He talked about this and then a certain Pharisee comes and asks him to dinner. And again, this Pharisee is not asking him with a heart that's open to learn and to listen to Jesus. He's asking him to continue kind of plotting against Jesus. Jesus comes in and he deliberately does not wash his hands. And, you know, I was reading this this week, and in Matthew chapter 12, which is the parallel passage to what we've been reading for the last two months, two, three months, Matthew 12 starts with a very similar incident. Jesus and the disciples, you will remember, were walking through the fields, and the disciples were hungry, so they pulled some of the heads of grain, probably some wheat. They, you know, rolled it in their hands to get the chaff off of it, and then they ate the grain. This was not easy to do. If you've ever eaten wheat berries, you know that they are hard. Even the softer varieties are still very hard. But it is something that you can do to fill your stomach if you are really, really hungry. You would not have taken many handfuls, but you might have taken two, maybe three, you know, enough to put something there. And the Pharisees in Matthew 12, Ask Jesus why he allows the disciples to violate the law. because they are eating with unwashed hands. Now, I bring this out because this was the start of this whole section as they are now coming against Jesus. After this, they're going to plot to destroy him in Matthew 12. Then you're going to have the parallel passage where he casts out a demon and they say, oh, he's doing this by the power of Beelzebub. All of this is going to come out, and Jesus, with all of His warnings and this exact section here, you know, is coming back to them. Now Luke tells, gives us this dinner with the Pharisees. It's not here in Matthew, but this happens right after this. They have, all this has happened. They've already heard, the reason I went back there is they've already heard Jesus' teaching on washing your hands and the need to wash your hands. You remember his conclusion. Sin does not come from unwashed hands. It's not what goes into a man that defiles its man, but it's what comes out of the heart. Out of the heart comes evil thoughts of adultery and fornication and covetousness and everything that defiles comes from the heart. And he also pointed out he was Lord of the Sabbath and his disciples could eat on the Sabbath, harvesting grain with unwashed hands. Obviously they had not liked it. So when Jesus comes into this man's house, there is a history and a background of how he's been working with the Pharisees in this time frame and he deliberately does not wash his hands. There seems to be no hint that the Pharisee did not give him the option to. The pot would have probably have been there and the ceremonial washings would have been done by the Pharisee. and possibly by the disciples even. And Jesus, as they are all washing, simply comes in and has a seat. And the man marvels that Jesus has not washed. And again, this is putting it mildly. He's actually considering that Jesus here is about to become unclean. Here's dirt from the outside and he has not washed it off. And this is a moral unclean, a ceremonial moral uncleanness. And he addresses this immediately in verse 39. Now, he said, you Pharisees make the outside of the cup and the dishes clean, but your inward parts are full of greed and wickedness. Now, obviously Jesus is God. He knows what the heart of man is. And so he cuts straight to the chase here, goes right into the heart of the matter. They have invited him here, but they are not redeemed, forgiven, walking with the Lord, even though it's in Judaism, not under Christ. They're not. He identifies their heart, that their heart is full of greed and wickedness. This was a man who loved money. He will actually be counseled to give alms as a remedy against the greed in his heart. And then he calls them out as foolish ones, telling them they're clearly unsaved, foolish ones. And this is kind of the subject matter here of this whole chapter. I think it's a good principle. Did not he who made the outside make the inside also? But rather give alms of such thing as you have, then indeed all things will be clean to you. Okay, he's talking to this man whose heart is full of greed and he says, did not God who made the outside also make the inside? In other words, God knows your inside. And Jesus has just identified it, clearly showing he is God. And he says, if you're not gonna take care of the inside, the outside's not gonna do any good. And he says, if you take care of the inside, give alms from the inside. And he says, what? Then the outside, all things will be clean unto you. If the inside is right before God, that will lead us in different situations to do the right things at all times. But if the inside is wrong, no action on the outside is going to make it right. You can dress it up. I don't know if it's a saying, but you can dress up the pig, but at the end of the day, it's still a pig. You know, it hasn't changed. You have to change the inside first. So Jesus then proceeded to go ahead and he rebuked the Pharisees and he gave them three woes. The first one seems to be the sum of the whole matter. He says, woe to you Pharisees, you tithe mint, rue, and all manner of herbs. In the Middle East and in many places in rural areas, they actually grow their own spices in small kitchen gardens. We have mint and thyme and maybe something else in our house that grow in little pots that my wife occasionally harvests or has harvested in the past. And this was very common practice, that they would have their spice gardens. And he said, you Pharisees, you're so particular, you even tithe from this. You bring in the first fruits, you bring in a tenth, you do this and that. But then he says this to them, he says, and you pass by justice and the love of God. Now justice is actually the love of your neighbor. It is truly the love of your neighbor. When you see your neighbor being persecuted, being oppressed by someone else, and your love for your neighbor rises up within you, and you say, this is wrong, this is unjust, and you do something about it, that's justice. You call the police, you know, the neighbor is being robbed, and you get up, you call the police, you turn on your lights, and you go to help. This is justice. This is love of your neighbor. Now, if you think of love of your neighbor and you think of love of God, that should remind you these are the two of the great commandments. This is what was on the phylacteries that they would tie to their wrists and write on a roll that they kept on their heads and would be written on either side of the door that you were to love your neighbor as yourself and love God with all your heart, mind, and soul. the greatest and the second of the commandments. And he's pointing out that they have missed the very things they are standing for. There is no righteousness that they have before God. God is not happy with them and they are under condemnation. And again, I pointed out how this woe within the Greek and the Hebrew language, the way the Bible uses it is so much stronger than we use it. It is a declaration that judgment has been issued and is on the way. Judgment has been issued and is on the way. It is not something you use lightly. When Isaiah would say it in Isaiah 6, he would see himself as under the curse and the judgment of God, and having seen the Lord, he says, woe is me, I am a man of unclean lips. And he immediately identified some sin that he had just sinned with his lips, and is forced to cry out, I am condemned, I am guilty as charged. And this is one of the few times where God will provide for the atonement and will clear when you hear this word, woe. It is the last warning that these men are going to get. The end is coming. God has been reasoning with them about light. And if the light that is within you is darkness, how dark is it going to be? If your eye has become dark, you have no light in your body, no hope of getting light in your body. And this is where they were. And now he is warning them that not only have they had darkness, but they are not saved, they are foolish, and they are under the judgment of God and judgment is going to come. And he's pointing out why, that they have missed the weighty measures of justice and love of God. He continues in verse 43 that you, Again, pointing to their hearts, you love, you love. It is the desire of their heart that the best seats of the synagogue and the greetings in the marketplace. This is why they're there. It is for the praise of men, not for the worship and love of God. And finally, he adds the scribes to this list. He says, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees. And he says this, they're hypocrites. They have two faces, one for the outside when men are watching, where they appear pious and they give their tithes and their offerings in front of men, and another when they're at home between themselves and God. He says, you are like graves which are not seen. In ancient Israel, a grave, people were buried. There were no graveyards. Each family and area had its own graveyard. And graves were considered unclean places. You could be defiled ceremonial by walking by a grave or stepping on something that was part of a grave. And so he accuses these men of defiling those around them unknowingly. unknowingly. Anyone who comes in contact with them is defiled. And this is powerful because this is what false teaching does. It defiles all who come in contact with it. Now, I say that because we have a statement that I have heard so many times. You know, this author's off on certain things and you just gotta, you know, eat the meat, pick out the bones and throw the bones out. But when you get to true false teaching, it is defiling. It is defiling. It is impossible to be involved with someone like the Pharisees, unsaved. Even though they give all this lip credence to God, their lives testify that they don't know God in their heart. And so those that came near them are defiled. They're defiled. I wonder on myself, I mean, there are times that I'm challenged in arguments with the lost. And there is a certain point where I can genuinely respond and I can answer your questions if you are seeking to know truth. But when you are an apologist for Satan, standing against truth, there is a limited amount I can do. I can point out your error and rebuke you, but if I continue on with you, I am becoming defiled with your sin. I thought of the men who have tried to bring about the ecumenical movement between different denominations of the church. We saw this in the 1990s when evangelicals and Catholics together came out, where three evangelical churchmen J.I. Packer was one of them, Bill Wright was one of them, and I can't remember. Oh, Chuck Colson was the other one. Gathered together with three cardinals from the Roman Catholic Church and tried to find unity. Now there's a problem with that because we have different views of salvation. We have different views of how a man is accredited with righteousness before God. They are diametrically opposed. We, as believers in God's Word alone, as the authority of the Bible alone, believe in a salvation that God gives to men, free of any external work. It was completed in Jesus Christ. It includes God coming and revealing himself to us, giving us a new heart with new desires, and changing us within. That change is identified multiple places throughout the New Testament. We are a new creation in Christ, a new creature sometimes people put it, but it is still from that root word of creating. We have been made into something that we were not. That is an internal change, not an external obeying of the law, but an internal change. When the Holy Spirit comes in, He takes out our heart of stone, He gives us a heart of flesh, He writes God's law on it, He pours out the love of God into this new heart, and we are changed because we're a new creation from the inside. We become a new tree that will bear good fruit. Roman Catholicism believes that there is grace given for past sins, but there needs to be a grace given for all current sins through coming to the church, through partaking of the Lord's Supper, through works, and that you can work your way to righteousness. And actually, that if you become a saint, you have enough works that they overshadow your sin and you are more good than you are evil, the Bible gives no reference to this at all, no credence to this. Their authority is in the Pope. They give lip service to the fact that they also believe the Bible, but it's simply that, lip service. When it comes down to it, the Pope is who rules. And you cannot approach that without becoming contaminated by it. There can be no fellowship between light and darkness, between what is whole and what is rotten. Can you imagine having a plate of food and you have a delicious meal and there is some good meat and some good vegetables and then somebody takes something out of a cesspool, puts a spoonful on your plate. How much of that food are you willing to eat? Yeah, zero. Not a bit. We are getting rid of it. It is all going away. And this is exactly what it is when we mix heresy with God's Word. I have listened, in fact, just the other day we had another example. I played it for all me and we both cringed of a man who said, just imagine. I want you to think just for a minute and imagine And the words he went to is, what if God worships us? And I just cringed. Because he loves us. Because he knows we were made in his image. And he proceeded to give verses that took this heresy and seemed to point to it. When God looks at us, we are sinners. Romans 3 is what he sees. Genesis 6 is what he sees. He tells us what he sees. Right here, talking to the Pharisees, the men who have built this huge religious system, he says, you are under judgment because you have ignored God. You have not loved Him as you ought to have. And instead of repenting of that, you have created your own religion to worship self. And the idea of somebody saying with those words, trying to get us to understand, that will corrupt you as you come and you listen to heresy. Of course, it doesn't end there. There's three groups. There's the Pharisees, there's the scribes, and also there's the lawyers. Now let me just tell you who the groups are in this story. The Pharisees were part of a denomination of Judaism, a sect in Judaism, that were conservative. They believed the entirety of the Old Testament was God's Word. The problem was they added to it the rabbinical traditions that went along with it. Rabbi so-and-so taught this, and Rabbi so-and-so taught that, and Rabbi so-and-so taught this. And so they would have three and four interpretations of different passages in the Old Testament. If you go and you take the Passover meal in Israel today, there's a little brochure that comes with it from the Orthodox Jews that you can read about the history of Passover. And you will read about the miracles of coming out of Egypt. And you know, there were 10 plagues? Well, they wouldn't say 10, because God delivered them with his hand, which has four fingers. So there were 14. But that's what Rabbi so-and-so says. And Rabbi so-and-so says, no, there were 15, because it has a thumb. And this is what it said, neither one of them said 10 plagues. He delivered them with his right hand. So there's either 14 or 15. And this is what happens. They went back and they followed the judition more than they followed the word of God. Now, That was like a sect or denomination of Judaism. And then outside of that we have scribes and lawyers. Those were job descriptions. A scribe was someone who wrote down God's word, like a printer would now. He would make new books. And a lawyer was one who would study the law on how to apply it in different situations. They would spend their whole lives, some of them, studying one of God's law. One law. Their entire life devoted to the study of one law. So that they would have this incredible knowledge to draw on. So remember that as he gets to these lawyers, these are men who invest their entire life in studying the law of God. They should have known it. And he says to them, and you shouldn't be surprised by this, Jesus is calling out the hearts of men. And they have turned, this is part of the religious establishment, that has already started to plot, from Matthew 12 again, to plot against Jesus. How to destroy Him. These are not friendly discussions. This was not a friendly dinner. This was a plot to draw Jesus in, to ask difficult leading questions, to try to get ammunition to destroy him. And so Jesus is taking the gloves off. He's done beating around the brush. He is talking to them straight to their face, telling them they are under judgment. It is hard, and yet it is also a gift of God. You must understand when God speaks and He says something that is hard and it comes to you, it is good for you to hear that. It is needful for you to hear that. You should seek that out. I want to know truth. And yes, truth cuts, it pierces, it divides because it divides truth from error. And when it pierces me and it shows me my error, I have a choice to make. It's not easy, but I will either leave off my error or I will leave off truth. And that is the last step in line. And Jesus is not, He is opening the door wide. He is saying this in clear, easy to understand language so that they can repent. He says to the lawyers, woe to you also. He's not backing down, he's doubling down. Not only are the scribes and the Pharisees under the condemnation of God, but the lawyers as well. They're part of the system and they're under the same judgment. Woe to you lawyers. Why? You load men with burdens hard to bear and you yourselves will not touch the burden with one of your fingers. I was reading about this and I was thinking about it. I thought, well, what examples could I give? And maybe you have remembered that in Israel, for many hundreds of years, they have had a Gentile servant, and I can't pronounce it. Is it a goyu? I don't know. G-O-I something. And this Gentile servant would come in on the Sabbath day because they cannot turn electricity on, start a fire, light a candle, or do anything. So they would pay, and mind you, you could not pay someone on the Sabbath, so he would be paid during the week sometime. And it wasn't wages, it was a gift, but it was a gift that came every week in the same amount and in the same denomination. They would pay someone to come in, to turn their lights on, to start their stove, to do whatever, put logs on their fire. They could only do it if it was a matter of life and death for themselves, but otherwise it was against the law. Whose law? Not God's law, man's law, the lawyer's laws. They were so concerned with man should not work on the Sabbath that they went beyond what God had said. God had said when you gather firewood, gather enough for the Sabbath. When you bring the bread in, bring enough for the Sabbath. make work on the Sabbath. But they had said, not only are you not allowed to gather firewood on the Sabbath, we don't even want you to touch wood on the Sabbath. They went one step further than God had required. They were adding to the law of God. So this happened all the way up until the last known reference to, you know, this happening that's well known, Barack Obama. when he was a senator, a US senator from Illinois, he had a Jewish senator who was next to him in the Capitol building. And whenever they worked on Saturdays, he would call out to Barack Obama, would you come over here and please turn all the lights on? And he would, he'd come over there and turn the lights on. I don't imagine this happened very often, but it happened enough that he was known for this. This was happening all the way up until there. This is what they would do. They would make a law that was heavy, but for themselves, no. they would find a way around it. So for you, over in your home, that don't have access to this Gentile servant, you are not allowed to put a stick on the fire, to touch a piece of firewood. But for me in my house, we have a servant between the three of our houses here, and he'll take care of that for us, and he'll even cook fresh bread in the morning. You know that you come to Israel, and that was the other thing, you would walk down to Israel on a Saturday, and all the Jewish shops are shut. And all the Arab shops are out on the street corners with their bakery goods, fresh bread everywhere, because they know the Jews want fresh bread, and they can't make any. So the Sabbath, you don't have any, but I go send somebody to buy fresh bread from my Arab neighbor. And this is exactly what they were still doing. That is what was happening. And he points it out. He says, you bind these burdens on others and you won't touch them even with a finger. He goes on to the second point. He says, woe to you. You build the tombs of the prophets that your fathers killed. He says, you know the prophets and you know where they're buried. And you go out and you take care of the tombs and you cut the grass around and you plant flowers. You go, here's the tomb of Elijah, Elisha, whoever it was. And he says, your fathers killed them. He says, in fact, you bear witness that you approve of the deeds of your father, for they indeed killed them and you build their tombs. Okay, now I don't know if this was literally talking about the actual tombs. That is the literal translation. There are some commentaries that say it was the respect of these men, you praise them. And, you know, but then you also praise the men who killed them. Can you do that? No. This is, it shows the two-facedness of this. No, if we had been in that day, we'd have honored the prophets. We'd have listened to the words of warning from Jeremiah. We'd have repented in sackcloth and ashes. And the very God of heaven was there doing works that could not be described. John would write at the end of his gospel that if the whole world were filled with books on what Jesus Christ did, it probably wouldn't contain it all. That's how many miracles he did. Everywhere he went, people would come to him for healing and they would be healed. There's not a single recorded instance where he failed to heal someone. Amazing accounts. They were surrounded by this and what were they doing? They were plotting to destroy Jesus. While they claimed they would not have crucified and killed the prophets. They would have repented had they been the ones there in that sin. And they gave evidence to it in their life. Now, this is also a very theological portion is it teaches us something about God. In verse 49 it says, therefore the wisdom of God also said. Okay? God in his wisdom said this. This is an important statement. I will send them prophets and apostles. Some of them they will kill and persecute. Now, I'm gonna, my understanding of a prophet is someone who declares God's word. It can have a foretelling event, as Daniel would sometimes have, but usually it was a foretelling event. God has spoken. This is what it is. So there were many prophets in the New Testament who used what God had given them to preach the Word of God. I would literally say these are preachers. These are preachers. I will send them preachers of the Word of God and my apostles, my sent ones, some of them they will kill and persecute. God sent them knowing their end. Remember Peter? When he's talking with Peter, he says, you know, when you were young, you rose up and you went where you wanted. But when you are old, what? Another will raise you up and will take you where you don't want to go. And he said that signifying by what death he would die, that he would die for the gospel. God sent these men knowing their end was to die. That was the planned foreordained knowledge of God. He sent them to suffer and to die. There's so much here. First of all, God doesn't view death the way we do. Everybody dies. We say it's so unfair. This one died when he was eight or 10 or 18. It's so unfair. God looks at us as in the view of eternity, in the view of literally living forever. And in the view of all the hurt and the pain that you have in this life, you think it's wrong that this one's life was taken away when he was young and he missed 70 years of heartbreaks and sorrows and trials and tribulations. That's really wrong? No. God looks at it as a homecoming. And for those that are his in particular, whether it's an early homecoming, a mid homecoming, or a late homecoming, it's a homecoming. And God rejoices when you are home safe. Just like you waiting for your kids to come home on a wintry night, knowing that the driving is treacherous and they walk in the door and you go, they're home. And God knows what's going to happen. I don't think he worries about us that way. He's the good shepherd. But he doesn't look at death the way we do. He sent these men to die. They were to be testimonies for him, declaring the truth of God's word, preaching with boldness until the point came when unbelievers rolls up and killed them. He sent them to die. And He sent them to die for a reason. Verse 50, so that, or that the blood of all the prophets which were said from the foundation of the world may be required of this generation. Okay, everybody who sinned prior to this in killing Cain and Abel. Abel gave a good testimony of offering a better sacrifice than Cain. We do not hear of Abel reviling Cain, preaching to Cain, yelling at Cain. Cain, if you had just followed the Lord. But he must have said something when they were discussing in the field. He said, Cain, we don't know what it was. God does not find any fault in Abel at all. We hear of nothing that he did wrong. and yet Cain rose up and slew him. Now how can that blood from there all the way to the last of the martyrs, Zechariah, how can that blood be accounted to that generation? God was going to send them enough opportunities with Jesus Christ, with the 12 apostles, with the different men who would believe, the deacons like Stephen, who would stand up and preach the gospel, that the light would be so great that the sin against it would be greater than all the sins from there until that time, all the sins of the Old Testament. Because to him that knows good and doesn't, not he will have the greater punishment. So the greater the light is, the greater the sin is in rejecting that light. So to reject the light in the knowledge when you had Christ living there in front of you and the apostles with all their miracles was to reject a tremendous amount of light. To be accounted worthy of the guilt of all time. all of the old time prophets literally from Abel and the sacrifice of a blood offering pointed to what? Jesus Christ. And so in the rejecting of Jesus and of all the messengers that were sent, they are being held accountable for all of the rejection of that knowledge. And he's warning them, this is coming on to you. And it will be required. He even doubles down at the end. He says, yes, I say it will be required of this generation. They would be judged for what was coming. And they were. They were persecuted and they were scattered and the nation as a whole, God withdrew the light. Remember in Romans 11 it would talk about a blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles come in. We are in a time frame where God has literally withdrawn from them. There's no longer a Holy Spirit convicting them saying, you know, this is sin and you got to repent, you got to repent. He stopped sending prophets to them. There's still a remnant. There's still a couple here and there that know God. But the vast majority of Israel are atheists currently. They're against God. And even those that are Orthodox Jews, their view of who God is and what he desires is so skewed. There's no salvation there. There's no knowledge of the true God there. They've rejected his son. They've rejected a heart work salvation. They've preached a salvation of works. There's nothing here to glorify God. They're in darkness, wandering around, destitute, because they have rejected Jesus Christ. And he comes with the last one. Woe to you, you lawyers. You have taken away the key of knowledge. They had the Word of God, the very words of God, to be taken literally, to be applied in a plain and simple sense. to be looked at as the whole, they were paid their entire life to study this book, and what did they do with this? They hid it. They took that key of knowledge, and they took it away, and they hid it so that nobody even knew what God required. They taught a system of works that deceived men into thinking they could work their way to righteousness. that they didn't need a sacrifice for sin. I don't know all of their heirs. God does. But he said the system that they were teaching was heresy. He says you've hidden the keys of knowledge. And you did not enter yourselves and those who wanted to enter in, you hindered. Anyone who sought truth according to the scriptures. Oh, no, no, no, no. Don't take it that way. You got to understand when God was talking back then, it was in an allegory. I mean, he talked about his hand, right? So it's 14 miracles or 15, depending on which rabbi you follow. How would you know what is right in God's word if you did that? You could not. you are now at the mercy of the teachers. Which teacher do I follow? Which tradition do I follow? And this fills the whole of Jewish orthodoxy, even to this day. Which teacher do I follow? They actually call the writings of the rabbi, they have the Old Testament, and then they have this group of writings that they hold to, almost as if it was scripture. And it keeps them from the Word of God. It keeps them from understanding and knowing God. I could go on, but this is where they were. I'd like to close just with a couple of applications. And let me just ask, do any of these woes hit home to us? Do we neglect justice and the love of God? You know, does injustice really Just make us cry out. It should. This is the true cornerstone of, you know, the fruit of it working out in our lives is that we love our neighbors. We try to help them. This comes from a converted heart. You can't add this to get it to be genuine and you have to be born again. Do we look at our hearts to realize the depth of the problem? Or do we just try to get the outside dressed up? I put a new change of clothes on. You know, I shave my beard, I get a new change of clothes on, I look okay. When it's our heart that God is looking at. We have to look at our hearts. Do we make lists of what is righteousness? Do we add to God's word and say, well, you know, then you got this issue and that issue and this issue and that issue and this one's okay and that one's not okay. Do we make lists? Or are we just motivated by the love of God? Lists are dangerous. Do we seek our own honor first? They desired the chief seats in the synagogue. Do we seek our own honor? Do we teach different than we live? That really comes to me, but it comes to each one of us, too, because we profess we believe these things to the outside world. Are we loading them with burdens that we wouldn't touch ourselves? Do we praise the years that have gone by, older generations, while we fail in our own time to stand? Do we know and do we teach a salvation that is braced on grace alone, through faith in Christ alone, or do we add works to it? You know, those are the things God's judgment was poured out on Israel for. And it's the things we have to ask ourselves about as well. If we miss salvation, we've missed the Bible, we've missed the Lord. There is no, nothing else. We must know Him. Let's stand as we close in a word of prayer. Our Father, we come before You this morning, and Lord, we just want to say thank You for Your Word. We want to ask You, Lord, please, to help us to know You better. Lord, that we would take Your Word at face value, that we would study it, that we would apply it, that we would live it, that we would love You with all of our heart, mind, and soul, and love our neighbor as ourselves. Father, that all of the motivation for our life would be drawn from this love that we would do all to the glory of God. Father, that we would be most concerned about our hearts. And Father, that we would be concerned about others' hearts. Father, we ask for Your blessing. We ask for You to give us knowledge and wisdom and light. Lord, that we would glorify You in how we live. We ask for this in the name of Your Son, Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.