Matthew 23, 13 through 39, this is the word of God. But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men, for you neither go in yourselves nor do you allow those who are entering to go in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you devour widows' houses and for a pretense make long prayers. Therefore, you will receive greater condemnation. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you travel land and sea to win one proselyte, and when he is won, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves. Woe to you, blind guides, who say, whoever swears by the temple, it is nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the temple, he is obliged to perform it. Fools and blind, for which is greater, the gold or the temple that sanctifies the gold? And whoever swears by the altar, it is nothing. But whoever swears by the gift that is on it, he is obliged to perform it. Fools and blind, for which is greater, the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift? Therefore, he who swears by the altar swears by it and by all things on it. He who swears by the temple swears by it and by him who dwells in it. And he who swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him who sits on it. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done without leaving the others undone. Blind guides who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs, which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. Even so, you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous and say, if we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Therefore, you are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up then the measure of your father's guilt. Serpents, brood of vipers, how can you escape the condemnation of hell? Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes. Some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city. That on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her, how often I wanted to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. See, your house is left to you desolate, for I say to you, you shall see me no more till you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. The reading of God's word, and we pray that you would bless it to our hearts. Amen. I have to say, there's one point Bill Sermon this morning that to take conscientious objection to. Two people, two elders came after the service and said, that was a good prayer, you said, I like that. I kind of liked receiving that. Now, these two elders, I'm not going to name them by name, but I'll just tell you, they were the ones that were recently elected. They noted that not only did I have a long and eloquent prayer, but that I was trying to hold a almost three-year-old in my arm while I was doing it. They're saying what prowess and what skill I must have had. I kind of like that, and I think that we shouldn't. Anyway, you know that I'm joking, right? But what if I hadn't been joking? What if I started speaking here and objecting to everything that Bill said, whether this morning or anything. Or not just Bill, any authority or teacher who is in a position, a legitimate position of authority. Think of the awkwardness that would cause, to say the least. Think of the trouble that would stir up. Think of the audacity people would reckon or impute to me. Jesus is doing just that here. Jesus is a man who's a little bit, just a year or two older than I am now, as they reckon it, and I think it's pretty close to being true, about 32, 33 years old. And he is saying these things in much stronger terms than I just said, against people who were not just leaders, but looked up to as spiritual guides, looked up to as, in one sense, legitimately, as Jesus himself said at the beginning of the chapter, as the rulers and the ones with authority. They sit in Moses's seat. They are teachers, legitimately. It must have been a severe grievance that Jesus had against them in order for him to speak in such a way. Because as you've noticed, as I read this I'm sure, these are some harsh words. So what was it exactly that Jesus accuses the Pharisees of? and what kind of condemnation or effect will it have on them, and by extension, those who also do this type of conduct. That's my purpose this morning, is to first understand what exactly Jesus is accusing the Pharisees of. And secondly, to see the negative effect of this type of conduct. Just two points, but they will have many different sub-points. And so, we'll begin with the accusations that Jesus has against the Jewish authorities. That is from verses 16 through 32. Before we get into those exactly, I want to note a word about the form of this. The type of speech this is. In the Old Testament, as Bill noted this morning, we read it from Ezekiel 34, but it's also in many other places. In Isaiah particularly, but in also other Old Testament books, there is a genre or a way of speaking, I would just say, called a woe. Genre or a woe woe prophecies and basically all that is our prophecies of judgment which begin with the word woe and You see this in the Old Testament in many places again in the prophets but it's also in the book of Revelation which is called a book of prophecy and It's right here. So when Jesus uses this form, it may be a little bit odd for our ears because no one around us generally stands up in a congregation or assembly and says, woe to you, you and you. They usually have a different formula for denouncing others. But this was a common way of doing it, especially if you knew the scriptures as the Pharisees did. So what Jesus is doing here is more than just a speech against the Pharisees. It is a prophetic judgment in which he is placing himself in the long line of Israel's prophets who prophesied judgment, not merely against other nations. It did plenty of that, but also against Israel itself. I think of Isaiah in Isaiah chapter one, it begins with an Oracle of judgment or prophecy of judgment against Israel, calls them Sodom and Gomorrah. which is quite a epitaph. It's quite a name, obviously. It's quite an accusation. So Jesus here is acting in his function of prophet. This is what he's doing right here. And as the prophet, he denounces the ruling leaders of his day and accuses them of four things. You can multiply more, but I'm going to focus on here four things. The first one I'm going to call Making petty distinctions. Okay, and that's verses 16 through 32, and we'll see what that means when we get there. Secondly, it would be majoring on minors. Now we know what that means. Thirdly, it would be focusing on externalities. And fourthly, on idolizing the tradition. Okay, those are the four things here that Jesus is accusing the Pharisees of. The first one here is in verses 16 through 22. I'm going to call it making petty distinctions. You can add the word in order to weasel your way out of God's command, or that phrase, and that's basically what they're doing. And it's in verses 16 through 22. Jesus accuses the Pharisees of saying, whoever swears by the temple, it is nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the temple, or the gold on the temple, he is obliged to perform it. In order to understand this, we need to get back into the culture just a little bit. Jesus had talked about oaths before in the Sermon on the Mount, and his point there was that people were making very frivolous oaths. In a culture where there is no, in many ways there's no way of enforcing people to do what they promise to do, It's important that people fear God, and that's what oaths are meant to do, to instill the fear of God in the people by promising before God that you're going to do something, that's a vow, or promising before God that you are telling the truth, which is an oath. They are very useful in our society, and they had a good purpose. There are plenty of them in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, by the way. Paul says, God is my witness, I'm telling the truth. He's making an oath there. Jesus' condemnation of frivolous oaths earlier in the Sermon on the Mount shouldn't be read, by the way, to say that he condemns oaths in general, as is clear from here. What is he condemning here, though? Well, the rabbis, the teachers, the Pharisees, were often consulted when it came to the proper way of making oaths. And they came to the conclusion that the only oaths that were binding were the ones that were made in the name of God himself, not the divine name, they never said that, but another name of God or an attribute of God. You can swear by God's faithfulness or God's righteousness or something like that, or by a gift which you made on the altar. Okay? And this gift, as Jesus called it earlier, is korban, or it's a gift devoted to God. Now, it seems kind of strange at first for there to be a God and one of his attributes, and then all of a sudden this gift, which seems so much smaller. But think about it. It makes sense. If you're swearing by a gift, that means that gift in some way is a security for the oath to be done, because you'll lose it if you don't do it, if you don't accomplish it. So there were the only three It's the only three ways in which an oath could be validated and function properly or correctly. Now, you could swear by other things and have that oath not binding. You can swear by the temple. Well, that's not swearing by God or his attributes or your gift. And that's a really holy thing, so you can make people think that you're really going to do it. But you can weasel your way out on a technicality, because that wasn't a way that oaths were binding. It had to be God, his nature, one of his attributes, or the gifts by it. Now, the Pharisees weren't the ones necessarily guilty of making these frivolous oaths, these weaseling your way out of these obligations or making these petty distinctions, but they were sanctioning it by their allowing others to make these frivolous oaths. And this elaborate process made it easy and sanctified, you might say, untruthfulness, lying. Because we all know that you can tell a truth and still lie at the same time. And I had an example of this from my early days, which, as you might guess, centers on food. I remember one time my uncle came over and he brought all these, it was Lenten season, he's Greek Orthodox, it was Greek Orthodox Lenten season, and so it was a Friday, so he brought all these fish sandwiches for us. And I don't like, I didn't like fish then, I like it much better now, but I didn't like it. And so my mom knew that we didn't like fish so much, so she also bought pizza too, a few of them, not enough to feed us all, but we just kind of supplemented. And so I remember her saying that you only have one piece of pizza until everyone has their one and then we'll see if it's left and maybe you can have more. So I had one. I looked around. Most people hadn't even, weren't even halfway through their first one. So I had another. And then I looked around again, and then I had another. And then my mom noticed that there wasn't much pizza left, and she knew someone had taken some, illegitimately, and so she asked all of us, and I suspect she knew who it was, but she asked all of us, did you eat two pieces of pizza? And she came to me, I said, no, I didn't eat two pieces of pizza. I didn't eat two pieces of pizza. And she called me on it finally, I said, no, I ate three. The point was she had to thrust the actual intent of what she was saying wasn't to. That's just the way she happened to express it. And I knew that. I knew that. And I still, I justified it to myself because I wasn't technically lying. But I was because I knew the intent. And these oaths were made so people could do just what I did right there. They wouldn't have to be obliged to them based upon a technicality. This fostered a sort of untruthfulness, and really an untruthfulness which is often in contexts where there is no fear of God, because we all know that God sees through these technicalities. And Jesus condemns the Pharisees for doing this, for allowing these things to happen, for making people, their oaths binding only on certain things, but not on the other things which were even more holy. And it looks actually quite silly to have your oath be binding when it's a gift, but not when it's the temple itself. When it's much, the temple itself is much more holy. And Jesus calls the Pharisees out on this because what they were doing allowed people to make petty distinctions in which people therefore can weasel their way out of obligations. This type of untruthfulness is condemned in the scripture. It's important for us to remember that God is on the throne and he sees all things. And even if we could convince ourselves that we weren't lying because of some technicality, God knows that we are lying and basically twisting the truth. This happens a lot, and we are guilty of it ourselves, but it is condemned here as one of the actions which the Pharisees were sanctioning, if not doing themselves. The second thing that Jesus here condemns the Pharisees for would be majoring on minors, and this is something that we are more used to the accusation of when talking about the Pharisees. Verses 23 and 24. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you pay the tithe of mint and anise and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faithfulness, I would say, not faith. It's the same word, very similar idea, but I think it's faithfulness. These you ought to have done without leaving the others undone. Blind guides, you strain out a gnat and swallow a camel. Before we get into the actual, what Jesus is accusing them of, the matter of it, it's important, I think, to understand this illustration that Jesus uses in verse 24. Straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel. That sounds quite ridiculous. And actually, it does sound quite ridiculous, because it is ridiculous, and that's the point of what he's saying. In the ancient Near Eastern world, the camel was the largest animal, okay? I mean, it was the largest animal you can find in the Middle East. And a gnat, of course, is the smallest. And what do you do? You strain out a gnat. If a gnat is, you're drinking a glass of water, and you see a gnat there, and you know from your Bible that gnats are unclean animals, so what you do is you pour it through a filter, and the gnat gets caught, and you drink the water. You're straining out a gnat. And this is fine. You do it. It's not a big deal. But then the problem is, you go with your next bite, and you swallow a whole camel. Now, this is absolutely absurd. Not only is it Completely impossible, but it's absurd. Another thing that we don't get from the English translation, or even the Greek, is the pun Jesus is making here. In the original Aramaic, to say the camel is gamla, and to say the gnat is kalma. Very similar words here. So it's probably Jesus is making a pun on it too, and people would have felt the force of that as well. But the point of this illustration is that The Pharisees were requiring people to do what are considered to be the smaller parts, the lighter aspects of the law, and they were doing it with great force and fortitude, which in itself wasn't so bad. The problem was their focus on the smaller aspects of the law caused them to neglect What Jesus here calls the heavier or the greater matters of the law, which are justice, mercy, and faithfulness. And here, Jesus is most likely alluding to Micah 6, 6 through 8, which talks about what does God desire of you, O man, to love mercy, to act justly, and to walk humbly before your God. This is probably what Jesus is alluding to here. That's the greater matters of the law. That is what the law's main intent is. And that's where the focus ought to be, not on these other things, which are important. Jesus never says to not do them. In fact, he says to do them. But your focus, our focus needs to be on the weightier matters, the matters that matter. Now, this is very difficult when it comes to applying in our lives, and the reason why is clear. What we are most passionate about, we oftentimes think is the most important thing. And many of our beliefs are put forward because our culture is doing something, we want to say something against it. And where our focus is, is then therefore not necessarily where the scripture's focus is. Let me give you some examples. In the Christian church, in our world, how to educate your children is a very important question. Now, I'm not saying that we should ignore that question or that we shouldn't do something and we should think about it and do what's best. However, however, I think it's been made into a bigger deal than it is. In the modern world, this is on my mind lately, as you might have guessed, the idea of children, how many to have, how to have them, should you go to a midwife or should you go to a hospital, all these questions are very important for Christians. And there are a lot who make biblical defenses of both positions in that. By all means, come to a position on it and do it. But that is not the focus of God's law, justice, mercy, faithfulness. That is where the focus is. Or thinking politically, we have. In our political culture, the question of. how high a tax rate should be is extraordinarily important to some Christians. Now, I'm not for high taxes. Trust me, if I had, I mean, you know, I have political opinions as well as everyone else. But first of all, we can't control that. And secondly, Jesus says to pay taxes. He doesn't talk about the tax rate. Very important that we focus on things that matter. And what are things that matter? Justice. Mercy. Faithfulness to God. An issue of justice which Christians ought to be involved in is the issue of abortion. Here, these children who are not technically innocent, but innocent from all crimes, they didn't commit anything, are murdered. They do not belong, they do not deserve to be murdered. That is an issue of justice. A huge, enormous issue of justice that Christians should focus on. There are others, too, and I can speak theologically as well. In our reformed world, we like to make distinctions. We like precision. I think this has served us well in the past. This is good because it's good to think clearly about things. However, there are pitfalls. If you've been in Sunday school, you know that there are pitfalls of overthinking things and putting things in categories that don't necessarily exist. By thinking in our ivory tower and not worrying about people who are suffering in front of us, people who need our help. I think that this is a major issue within the reformed world, this majoring on minors. I think churches are divided often. I'm talking about individual congregations. They're divided, split over issues that should not make a difference. Pride always comes in and we can always make justification for all these of our focuses. But it's important to remember Jesus' definition on what is a weightier matter of the law. Importantly, Jesus does not tell us to neglect what might be called the lighter matters of the law. He tells them to do it. So, by all means, come to positions on these things, but don't stir up divisions based upon lighter matters of the law. Thirdly, focusing on externalities. Verse 25. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisees, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish that the outside of them may be clean also. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs, which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. Even so, you are outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. I cannot think of words that would be more condemning than these ones. To be called a whitewashed tomb It's not Jesus meek and mild. A whitewashed tomb. Think about that. Especially in that culture. Now, it's bad enough for us here. But think about it then. What is a dead body? It is unclean. For people who pride themselves on being ritually pure, to be unclean is the worst thing you can be, especially to the point of being a dead, decaying corpse, although you look beautiful on the outside. This is a heavy criticism indeed. Jesus here uses two illustrations first. He talks about the dish the or the cup in the dish and That one isn't as bad. You're useless. If you're a dirty dish, you can't really be used So your function your purpose is gone when you're dirty, even though your outside is clean, but whitewash tomb is death decay and all of the wickedness of God the curse of the of the curse on humanity and is within that criticism. Death and decay. Lethal. Though it looks brilliant from the outside. Lethal. Deadly. Notice what Jesus says, very importantly, in verse 26. First clean the inside of this, that the outside of them may be clean also. Jesus is not here advocating a sort of inside personal religion where it's all focused on us. There are exterior things that we have to do. The law requires us to love our neighbor and that is an exterior thing. You can't love your neighbor locked away. You have to actually know them and talk to them in order to love them. This is an exterior thing. But Jesus's point here is not that religion has to be inward and not outward. His point is that in order for there to be true religion, the heart must be right first. That's his point. First clean the inside and then the outside will be clean also. I think this one is also something that we always need to be aware of. I think wherever there's a church that is vibrant, wherever there's a church where God's spirit dwells in, there's always the temptation to become like this. Why? Because everyone you see, you look at everyone else, you see them outwardly clean. And some people are, are clean, really, on the inside and the outside. And you want to be like that. So there's a tendency to look outwardly clean, just to keep up with everyone else. To make sure all your ducks are in a row. To make sure your kids are behaving in church. To make sure that you're doing all the right things. You're following all the right steps. You're doing all the right rules. But you're doing it before men. And not before God. Again, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. If we are fearing God, and we know God, we know God can see the heart. Who are we fooling when we behave like that? But if we fear God, this will be a way that we can combat this. God knows and sees all, and he knows the motive to our action. And we need to make sure we are not like this. I think it's for our own spiritual health. Now, for society, it's better to have a society full of hypocrites than a society full of murderers. But for our own spiritual health, You might as well be dirty everywhere, because then at least you know you're dirty. You need something. But if you're self-righteous and you fancy yourself clean, you are very far from the kingdom of God. Lastly, Jesus accuses the Pharisees of idolizing the tradition. Verses 29 through 32. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees and hypocrites, because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous. And you say to yourselves, if we had lived in these days and the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Therefore, you are witnesses against yourselves, that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your father's guilt." In Jesus' time, there was a sort of Fox's Book of Martyrs equivalent of the lives of the prophets. And it was very important, interestingly, Not only did this talk about the lives of the prophets, it is very important to say that they were buried well and that they were buried in a good place. And this is a proof of God's blessing. So this book is really interesting. It's not just one. There are several of them. Of course, with Elijah, that's a little different story because he wasn't buried, but they had all these stories about the prophets. And of course, They talked about their prophets in a very positive way, and there's nothing wrong with that in itself. There's nothing wrong with having heroes in the faith. Just look at Hebrews chapter 11. But what is going on here? The greatest prophet of all time is before them, and yet they are rejecting him. They're saying if we live in the time of the prophets, we would have been with them. We would have been with Isaiah and prophesying against Israel. We would have been with Jeremiah. He would have meant going with him to Egypt. We would have been with Ezekiel, even though he was mocked in Babylon. We would have stood by his side. And yet the greatest prophet of all time was before them. And they rejected him. They testified against themselves. They bore witness against themselves that they belonged with those who rejected the prophets. Again, I see this as a temptation within our tradition because we have such a good tradition. It's easy to look back at our tradition and idolize it. But then the greatest prophet of all time speaks. When Jesus Christ speaks, we say, no, we have our tradition. Of course, we never put it that way. But sometimes I read Reformed writers, and formally at least, inform, if not in content, their position on tradition is the same exact that the Reformers accused the Roman Catholics of having. Our tradition says this, there's no need to look at the matter again. God has no new light to shed on his word through his church and his people. Is that the attitude which even the reformers would be proud of? I doubt it. Certainly not the attitude which Jesus would be proud of, because the Pharisees have a legitimate argument here when it comes to tradition, because they are the ones who knew the tradition the best. They were the ones who are masters of all the tradition, including the scriptures. They knew the scriptures so well, as can be evidenced by not only the outside literature, but the Bible themselves. The scriptures themselves makes clear that the Pharisees know the scriptures, and they are the masters of the tradition. And yet the greatest profit they rejected. I'm not saying to throw out tradition, I hope you know me better than that. I'm not saying that, therefore, we have to do something completely new. But our confession says rightly when it speaks of the scriptures being the highest rule. And yes, we must respect the tradition, that tradition does not, by the way, begin in 1517, begins all the way at the beginning of the church. in the early church as well, but we must respect it. But ultimately, it's the scriptures which is the ultimate rule. Otherwise, we are elevating tradition to the point where it does not belong. We are not honoring it. We're actually turning it into an idol. Those are the four things that Jesus here accuses the Pharisees of, these great woes. And now, I'm going to go briefly over the effect that these have had on not only themselves, but others. First, this type of behavior with the Pharisees are doing brings judgment on themselves. Verses 33 through 36. We saw already, Philip, then the measure of your father's guilt. And Jesus says rhetorically in verse 33, how can you escape the condemnation of hell? This is serious business. The Pharisees in some ways are so close to the kingdom of God, but in other ways they are the most far away you can get, but they don't see it. They're blind to their own sinfulness and they're damaging themselves. It's the same when we act this way. We might be close to the kingdom of God. We might be in some ways in the church and holding the scriptures in high esteem. But if we're behaving like the Pharisees, we are doing great damage to our own souls. But not only does it bring judgment on ourselves, it also brings judgment on others. Verses 13 there at the beginning and also verse 15. We see that. In verse 13, you need to yourself go in yourself, speaking about the kingdom of heaven, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in. It affects others as well. Verse 15, you travel land and sea to win one proselyte, and when he is won, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourself. This is tough language, for sure. But what is Jesus saying here? Our conduct affects not only ourselves, but the others around us. Make him twice a son of hell. Oftentimes that's the case, isn't it? When the proselyte is more zealous than the person who first brought the teaching. I remember when I first was getting interested in Calvinism, I was zealous about it. This happens a lot. But I had a protege, I had a person who followed me, who was one of my... I taught him all this stuff, but he became more zealous than me. And I remember we went to a Bible study, and it was on Romans, and I remember we started talking about these things. And the person who was leading the Bible study made a comment that, if taken in the right way, was true, but also could be taken in, we might call it, an Arminian direction. It depended on what he meant by it. And my friend just went off and said, no, this is wrong, this is this, this is that. And I thought to myself, I cannot do this. I can't allow him to do this like this. First of all, it wasn't even a major point. It was something that was small. And secondly, the zeal with which he held to it was damaging not only to him, but to others. Our behavior affects others and their standing before God as well. And finally, this type of conduct, as we read in verses 37 through 39, brings deep sorrow to our Lord. Jerusalem, Jesus says, Jerusalem, the one who killed the prophets and stones those who were sent to her. How I often wanted to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. But you were not willing. Jesus mourns or laments over Jerusalem. And I believe he laments over those. who behave in a similar vein as the Pharisees. We do not want to grieve our Savior and our Savior desires us to be faithful to him with all of our heart. I know we fall short and that's not my point is to push anyone into perfection or anything like that. On one level, we are all hypocrites. We say one thing and do another. But The scriptures teach us to love mercy, to act justly, to walk humbly before our God, and that these are the major things, and that this is what we should do, and that we should be inwardly clean before we're outwardly, and that we should not idolize our tradition. And when we do that, when we follow God's law and rule in our life by the power of the Holy Spirit, we bring joy to our Lord. And what more incentive can we possibly want? So Jesus here makes a huge scene, really, by bringing woe upon the Pharisees and the scribes, and by extension, those who follow in their footsteps. May we not be them. May we be those who follow God with a true and pure heart, acting humbly and loving mercy and justice. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you for these words, which are In so many ways, difficult to hear. But we know that we can fall into this, it's many times and oftentimes that churches which are healthy, where this spirit first appears because. It is so close to the truth in many ways. But father, we know that it is lethal, it is deadly, and we pray father that by your power we would be kept from it. and that we would walk humbly before you, and love what you love, and be merciful when we are called to be merciful, and act justly before you. In this we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.