Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces, for you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you travel across sea and land to find a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. Woe to you, blind guides who say, If anyone swears by the temple, it is nothing. But if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath. You blind fools, for which is greater, the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred? And you say, if anyone swears by the altar, it is nothing. But if anyone swears by the gift that is on the altar, he is bound by his oath. You blind men. For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? So whoever swears by the altar swears by it and everything on it. And whoever swears by the temple swears by it and by him who dwells in it. And whoever swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him who sits upon it. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, For you tithe mint and dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a net and swallowing a camel. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee, First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside may also be clean. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within they are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanliness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, saying, if we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding of the blood of the prophets. Thus you witness against yourselves that you are the sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers, you serpents, you brood of vipers. How are you to escape being sentenced to hell? Therefore, I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of the righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it. How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you are not willing. See, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. A mirage is an optical illusion. An illusion, of course, is something that you look at and you wrongly perceive it. So a mirage is a visual effect that is wrongly perceived. The most common mirage I think that comes to mind is if you're watching an old western sometimes, you'll have a guy in the desert trying to get back to the town where he can get water. He's heading in the right direction, but then off to the side, he sees a mirage. He sees an illusion. He thinks water's over there, but it's not. And if he deviates off course, that illusion becomes very dangerous because he may never make it to the town that he was heading for. Sometimes when you're driving along on a hot day, you see the same thing. Down the road ahead of you, it seems like there's a water puddle on the road, but there's not. It's just an illusion. An illusion can be dangerous. And in this sermon, we'll see that there are and have been spiritual leaders who are nothing more than an illusion, a very dangerous illusion, who lived back in the time where Jesus walked the earth, who lived in the time before that, and who live in this day and age too. So dangerous that they can encourage people to become the children of hell. And we're talking about churches, leaders in churches who lead people into hell. Also, I want to encourage you to be a bit introspective, as I said a little earlier. Who are you? Who do you reflect? An image you've created or your creator? I'm gonna start reading at verse 13. But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces, for you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. So here, obviously, Jesus is focused on the spiritual and civil leaders of Israel, the people who should have recognized the Messiah, but didn't even recognize him. This is who Jesus is talking to. In the first century, scribes and Pharisees were two largely distinct groups, though presumably some scribes were Pharisees. Scribes had knowledge of the law and could draft legal documents, different contracts for marriage, divorce, loans, inheritance, Mortgages, sale of land, and all that sort of things. That's who the scribes were. And generally, there was one scribe in every town, so that people could go to the scribe, and that scribe would understand the law. Pharisees, however, were members of a party that believed in the resurrection, and in following legal traditions. Not so much scripture, but traditions, that were ascribed, not to the Bible, but to the traditions of their fathers. They were huge on tradition. Like the scribes, they were also well-known legal experts, hence the partial overlap of the membership of the two groups. It appears from subsequent rabbinic traditions, however, that most Pharisees were small landowners and traders and not professional scribes. So this gives you an idea of who the people were that Jesus was talking to. They were the people in town that everybody knew, that everybody recognized, that really were supposed to be the ones who understood scripture. and were able to lead them in a spiritual way that was right. But they were also civil leaders, so they had a lot of power, and people were a little bit afraid of that. Kind of like teaching elders and ruling elders today in the church, they were the spiritual leaders. Jesus here is addressing them, and He pronounces seven woes. And when Jesus pronounces woes, demonstrating his righteous anger. And I think as I read the scripture, you could pick that up real quick. Jesus was very angry and he was venting on the scribes and Pharisees. But woes also indicated imminent doom if people didn't respond to the message. And this is what Jesus was doing to these leaders of Israel. In his first woe, he reveals their hypocrisy. because they didn't even recognize the Messiah who was standing in front of them. They failed for themselves and they were also blind guides. Yet they acted as though they could see. They acted as though they could understand. They acted as though they would have recognized the Messiah, but they didn't. They were an illusion. They were a very dangerous illusion. And that's what Jesus is trying to point out here. Not just to them, hopefully for their sake, but also for the people who were listening. When the people looked at the scribes and Pharisees, they thought they were seeing godly men, but they weren't. What they were seeing, as I said, is a dangerous illusion. Now you may notice that verse 14 is missing in the passage that I read. And when a verse is omitted, it generally is a verse that was there at one time, but was not found to be in the original manuscripts. So they just removed it, but let you know that at one time it was there. Verse 15. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte. And when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. So a proselyte would be a person like a stranger, perhaps, who was convinced to accept something. And in this case, it would be the Jewish religion. The Pharisees were big about converting Gentiles into the Jewish religion. trapping them in the traditions and additional laws that they had created. They added laws to God's Word. They added to the Mosaic Law. They added something like 600 laws of their own, and they generally thought they were more important than God's Word. That's what they were luring people into. Consider the weight, though, of Jesus saying here, men of God are facing condemnation in themselves. Rather than leading these new converts to peace with God, they're leading them to hell. Now we think that's terrible, and Jesus is pointing it out, but what we have to realize in this day and age, the same thing exists. There are churches that lead people to hell. We should be very happy, because we're fortunate that we're in a church that respects God's word. We won't compromise God's word for anything, and we won't apologize for it. You'll have the whole truth here and nothing but the truth. Matthew 7, 21 through 23 tells us something about these people that Jesus is talking to, these Pharisees and scribes. They may well fit into this that Jesus is talking about. Jesus said, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name? And then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. Sadly, there are a whole lot of people who will stand before our Lord in judgment, thinking full well that they will be accepted into heaven. And Jesus will say this to them. And many of these scribes and Pharisees that Jesus is talking to here will be among those people, the spiritual leaders who will never make it to heaven. Not all. We can always hope and pray that some of them found the truth and came to Christ. But we don't know. We can only hope. The scribes and Pharisees looked righteous and they said the right things, but they were hypocrites who were leading people and their converts to hell. And some things never change. Verse 16. Woe to you blind guides who say, if anyone swears by the temple, it is nothing. But if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath. You blind fools, for which is greater, the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred? So Jesus points out their absurdity and even their depravity. What a warped thing to say. They're perverting the truth. In the first place, if they had listened as we do to Jesus' teaching, what did Jesus say? Don't swear by anything. There's no need for an oath. As Christians, our word should mean something. You should be able to count on it. If we say something, it should be the truth. What does an oath do? Why would anyone have to give an oath? An oath is almost like saying, well, I usually lie, but this time I'm not going to. It really doesn't make any sense. And the Pharisees actually created a level system of oaths. One oath was more binding than another. What sense does that make? An oath to the temple or to the altar was not really binding. So you could swear to someone, I'm telling the truth, and it doesn't have to be binding according to them. Yet an oath by the gold or the gift was binding. How does that make sense? You can certainly see what their priorities were. It certainly wasn't the discovery of who God is and what His salvation was, the redemptive story that goes through the whole of Scripture. Every bit of our Bible from Genesis through Revelation is about the gospel, the salvation that God afforded us. And they completely missed it. Verse 18. And if you say, if anyone swears by the altar, it is nothing. But if anyone swears by the gift that is on the altar, he is bound by his oath. You blind men, for which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? So whoever swears by the altar swears by it and everything on it. And whoever swears by the temple swears by it and everything on it. and by him who dwells in it, and whoever 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 tithe mint and dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done without neglecting the others, you blind guides straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel. Leviticus 27.30 actually talks about this, the basis for tithing various herbs. It was actually part of what they should be doing. It was used for seasoning, basically. That's what those herbs were supposed to do. It was a requirement that should be followed, but Jesus' point was you're following that, but you're not following the more important things, mercy and faithfulness and such. You enforce the prior rather than the latter. They weren't doing their job. The Pharisees' priorities were very much mixed up. Now, a gnat was considered to be an unclean insect, and we all know that a gnat is very small. So they were, of course, saying that they're worried about the gnat but not the camel, and the camel, of course, was an unclean animal, a huge animal. They were eating camels and complaining about the gnats, which doesn't make sense at all. They were worried about swallowing a gnat while eating the camel. They were worried about minor issues while ignoring the major issues that were far more important. And he goes on to verse 25. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of a cup and plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate that the outside may be clean. So Jesus is talking about some of the Pharisees' ritualistic traditions. the ritual of purification. Now, this was a rabbinic practice, not a Mosaic law. But, once again, it was important to them because it was their idea. It wasn't the Mosaic law. They gave the appearance of being clean, much like their dress-up. If you read a lot about the Pharisees and the Gospels, you'll see that it was very important for them to put on all the garb and to walk down the street and have people call them rabbi. They loved the attention. They dressed for it. They acted the part. But that's not who they really were. Inside, they were corrupt, greedy, and self-indulgent. Jesus makes it clear that they, and any man for that matter, should be far more concerned about their inner self rather than the outer appearance. Verse 27, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanliness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness." So it was their practice during the rainy season to whitewash the tomb to signify that it was unclean. Because if you touched a tomb or anything in the tomb, you were considered unclean and you would have to go to the priest. So they whitewashed them so that everybody could see that it was unclean. Jesus points out how the Pharisees looked like they're holy men, but inwardly they're lawless hypocrites. They're dead spiritually. Verse 29, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, saying, if we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets. Thus you witness against yourselves that you are the sons of those who murdered the prophets. So the Pharisees, by building and decorating the tombs of the prophets and of the righteous, are trying to show that they would never approve of what happened in the past, what their forefathers did to the prophets and to righteous people. by shedding their blood. Jesus makes it clear that they are of the same nature as their forefathers, that they're no different. They're trying to get rid of and kill the ultimate prophet, Jesus Christ. Their forefathers killed the prophets, but they're about to kill the Messiah, and they don't even know it. The Pharisees were actually worse than their forefathers. Verse 32. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. In other words, do what your fathers would have done. You're about to do it anyway, just do it, because that's who you are. Shed the blood of the prophet Jesus. Shed the blood of the Messiah and prove who you are. Verse 33, you serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? This was the same thing, as you recall, that John the Baptist said. Same kind of words. Brood of vipers. Verse 34, therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town. Now if you couple Luke 11, 49, which says wisdom of God instead of I, we understand that Jesus is saying I, the wisdom of God. Jesus is actually foretelling what will happen to the likes of Peter, James, and others, and himself. Verse 35, so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. When Adam sinned against God, Adam represented mankind, and all of mankind was judged because of it. Jesus is pronouncing judgment on these religious leaders because of their sin, that they've committed and are about to commit against the prophets and righteous people who were killed and abused in all time. Do you hear what he's saying? He's saying, on you guys, all the blood of every prophet and every righteous person who ever was killed or will be killed is going to be on your head. What do you think hell is going to be like to those? It's going to be the most horrific place you could even begin to imagine. We can only hope that they figured out who the Messiah was and repented and came to him before their time was up. When he says, able to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, that includes all the murders recorded in their Hebrew Old Testament scriptures from Genesis 4a through 2nd Chronicles. Now the Pharisees, unlike the Sadducees, had more of our Old Testament than they did. The Sadducees' Bible only included the Pentateuch or the first five books of the Old Testament. You probably know that the Sadducees didn't believe in the resurrection because the first five books of the Bible don't really talk a whole lot about that. I remember one of my first Sunday school teachers telling me, well, you can remember who the Sadducees are because they were sad, you see, because they don't believe in the resurrection. So that's how I always remember it. You have to give props to the Sunday school teachers who are here. Verse 36, truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation These evil spiritual leaders will pay a heavy price if they don't find the truth and repent. So what is the truth that they need to find? You know, when it comes to the Bible, the redemptive story is this. The gospel really is this. The whole book is redemption. The whole book is the gospel. But what do they really need to understand in order to be saved? They need to know the truth of salvation, which is in Jesus' name, the one they're actually persecuting. But we all came by the same means, right? We all understand that God is God. He's sovereign, He's the creator of everything, and there are no other gods. He's loving and He's just. And our part is we get caught up in the justice. Because Adam sinned against God in the beginning, mankind was judged by God because mankind sinned against God in Adam. And so we have original sin established. Every person that was ever born after Adam had original sin as part of their DNA, if you want to look at it that way. But the truth of the matter is we all sin. We all sin and fall short of the glory of God. Even those of us who are saved, we still do. We tend to walk away from God. We tend to have times where we forget about God. Everybody sins. There's not a person who doesn't. The problem we have with God's justice is if you sin against an infinite God, you have to pay an infinite price because justice demands it. That infinite price is eternal separation from God and hell forever, a place of torment, a terrible place where you'll be forgotten and never saved, no chance of ever escaping. That's the price that has to be paid by sinning against our infinite God. Thanks be to God that he provided a way out for us. The salvation that he provided is by having his son come into this world to be born of a woman Jesus, when he was born, was 100% man and 100% God. Lived 33 years on this earth. God required a perfect man to be a sacrifice for the sake of all mankind in order that he would forgive anybody who saw what he did and believed it. Jesus was the only one that could do it. You realize if Jesus had not done that, every one of us would have to pay for our sins ourselves. much like these Pharisees that we're talking about. Every sin we ever committed or ever will commit, every thought we've had, everything, we'd pay for it ourselves. But thanks be to God that he did send his son who became a man, lived 33 years a perfect life, and willingly gave himself up on the cross to be slaughtered for our sake. When we take communion, when we practice the Lord's Supper, we remember that. He gave his body and his blood as a sacrifice to anyone who will accept it. Jesus himself said, believe this simple gospel, just believe it, and repent. That's where some people miss it. True repentance means sorrow. You have to turn away from the things that you thought were so important at one time and turn toward God and refuse to stop heading toward him. That's what true repentance is. I always think of the Apostle Paul You probably remember the passage where he's really wrestling with that. He says, I keep doing these things I don't want to do, and the things I want to do, I don't do. What a wretched man I am. I can't stand it. He hated the fact that he was trapped in this body of sin, but he knew where his hope was. He knew that he had relief coming. He knew that he had to keep the work up. One of Paul's sayings is one of my favorite sayings, and that is, to live is Christ, to die is gain. That's one of my favorite sayings in all the scripture. And then moving on. Verse 36, or no, verse 37. Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it. How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings and you are not willing. Jesus set up this comment back in verse 34. Jesus had made many attempts to bring the good news of his arrival and his plan of salvation to Jerusalem. It was the right thing to do, because Jesus is the Messiah, the Savior of Israel. He went to Israel first, and that was right to do. But they rejected him. They didn't accept him. They didn't even recognize him. Jerusalem was and still is an important city, but it should have recognized their own Messiah, and they didn't. Jesus here is genuinely lamenting over the religious city of Jerusalem and what it should represent. It should have recognized Him. Then verse 38, see your house is left desolate. Jesus utters similar words when he leaves the temple for the last time in Matthew 24, verses one and two. This is what he says. Jesus left the temple and was going away when his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple. But he answered them, you see all these things, do you not? Truly I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down. That's why he said in verse 38, See, your house is left desolate. Symbolically, when Jesus left the temple at that time, it no longer was His. It was theirs. Jesus left the temple. The book of Revelation talks about what would take place some 37 years later, in 70 AD, when the Romans completely destroyed the temple and Jerusalem. Symbolically describing the toggle, the pivot, from the old covenant to the new in Jesus' name. Verse 39, For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Jesus' public ministry is completed here. After His resurrection, however, He did appear to a lot of people. What lesson can we learn from this passage? First and obviously, watch out for wolves in sheep's clothes. Because they exist. A lot of people say, well, you know, if one of those wolves in sheep's clothes was in my church, I'd make sure they left. My answer would be, how would you even know that they're there? Because they look like sheep. They act like sheep. The people back here in this day thought the Pharisees were all that. They thought they had it together. They thought they were the leaders who they should follow. You can't recognize a wolf in sheep's clothes unless you very well know God's word. You have to know the scripture. If you know the scripture, then you know our father in heaven and our Lord Jesus Christ and the spirit within you that he's given us will reveal it to you. But you can't recognize him unless you do. Matthew 7.15 says, beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothes and outwardly are ravenous wolves. Second, it's time to be introspective. The question we have to ask ourselves is, who are we? Who are you? People like to put up a facade, an image. They act it out in life. But really, we might ask ourselves, what is it that we really relate to? And if it's not us, we certainly have seen people who do this. They do it in a big way. What do they identify with? What do they value? To some, it's money. Money is who they are. And they talk about it, and they act like it, and they show it off. A big house, maybe. An expensive car? A job or career? A hobby? A peer group? Fame? Our looks? Our clothes? Our travel experiences? What do we really identify with? What do people see when they look at us? Listen to what Solomon, the wisest man aside from Jesus himself, had to say about these things. Find it in Ecclesiastes 1-3. Chapter 1, verses 1-3. The words of the preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. Vanity of vanities, says the preacher, vanity of vanities. All is vanity. What does man gain by the toil at which he toils under the sun? I actually like the NIV version of this a little better. The NIV version says meaningless, meaningless, utterly meaningless. Those things that we chase sometimes in life are utterly meaningless. They don't mean anything. And the last thing we want to do is have that represent who we are. These idols really are the things that we should put aside when we truly repent. We have to ask ourselves, do we represent, do we reflect the image of God? Or do we reflect the image of ourselves? or our stuff. As Christians, we have to reflect Jesus and bring glory to God. We have to. Christians are different. Christians look different. Christians act different. Christians see and understand things the rest of the world can't possibly grasp. And that changes us. As Christians, by the Holy Spirit, we are actually being transformed into the image of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. What a thought that is, being transformed into the image of Jesus himself. Wouldn't it be great to be there at this point in life where you could actually be that? I know personally I have a whole lot of things I have to work on. I know Jesus did a whole lot better in a whole lot of ways than I do. So the work goes on, but I go along with the work of the Spirit. We should never be hypocrites like the Pharisees, pretending to be holy and pretending to be good just to look good while ignoring the truth of God and the work of the Spirit that transforms our minds and transforms our hearts and makes us something different. If we ignore the truth and put on a show in our lives, like many of the scribes and Pharisees, we'll be nothing more than a dangerous illusion, dangerous to ourselves and dangerous to others. Amen. Let's pray.