Amen. Well, if you turn in your Bibles to the Gospel of Matthew chapter 23, we're going to be looking at verses 12, sorry, verse 13 through 22, Matthew 23 verse 13 through 22. Last time we saw Jesus exhorting His disciples who were in the crowd to respect and to heed those religious teachers that God had really raised up for them. As corrupt as they were, but to never imitate and be taken in by their hypocrisy whereby they substituted their own traditions and the word of man for the infallible and errant, the perfect, lovely, beautiful word of God. Even as they continued to say and give lip service to how much they believed in revered sacred scripture, the root of their sin, this hypocrisy was pride. They thought that they could bring something to the table and convince to this, that they could solve the sin problems of God's people as they were leading, and they thought they were leading rightly by adding to scripture their own words and deeds rather than by humbling themselves, or basing themselves, and looking entirely and only to the grace of God for any and every deliverance from the guilt and power, and yes, from the effects of sin in their world. That was their sin. They could add things, and things would get better for themselves and God's people, and that was their responsibility in any way, right? To use their own wisdom and understanding and to not simply say, we need God's word and only God's word can save us from our sins because all that we do is polluted. That's not their attitude, that's not what they did. Well in today's text we consider therefore the first half of Christ's prophetic oracle of woe upon the scribes and the Pharisees who have stuck around throughout the entire ministry of Christ, but they've not believed in Him. They've not believed in Him, made the Lord grant, that we would not do likewise. Let's praise, we turn to God's word. Father, we want to pause one more time, we're about to hear your word, and though by your common grace we can hear it, we can understand it, we may even outwardly do it. Father, we can't believe in it, we can't love it, and we can't embrace it and embrace you but by the saving grace purchased for us by Jesus Christ on Calvary, and so Father give us the grace to be hearers and lovers, believers in and doers of your word, make your word, cause us to hear you and to be changed. We pray this in Jesus name, amen. Here now the word of the Lord from Matthew chapter 23 beginning in verse 13, this is the holy and perfect word of our 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 widow's 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 one you make him twice as much as son of hell as yourselves. Woe to you blind guys, you 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 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. In the Lord established the sword in our hearts this morning I pray. I have to say when I, one of the things when I decided to pick the gospel of Matthew to preach verse by verse through a couple of chapters I thought of instantly, I thought of Matthew twenty-four that everybody wants to hear and jump to and I thought of Matthew twenty-three. There is not another chapter like this in the Bible. Our Lord, the Son of God speaking like this, I am going to look at that and save that from my last point as to why indeed and what God is showing us by speaking this way. We are only halfway through at this point, I have only done four of the eight woes and I don't think there are too many ministers that would preach this text or if they did would dance around it and not try to really apply it to you. This is the Lord of glory, the Son of God saying these things to people who profess to be not only believers but leaders in the church. We have got to really deal with this. So I want you to know this first of all this morning, false doctrine. I want you to know this false doctrine. There are two kinds of prophetic pronouncements that God would send his prophets to make to his people and that is the oracle, an oracle is just a spoken word, the oracle of woe and the oracle of wheel. And the oracle of wheel we have and wheel means blessing. So it's a declaration of blessing, that's what an oracle of wheel is. And we have eight of them in the sermon on the Mounts, and we looked at that a couple of years ago, I think now, eight oracles of wheel, eight, what the beattitudes, right? Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the meek, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness to say, actually, that one's repeated. So you'll see nine blessings, but it's really eight blessings, eight conditions of blessing that Jesus pronounces the last one, getting a double portion, those who are persecuted for righteousness, and say Christ blesses twice, and we find that in again, the sermon on the Mount, the beattitudes, we're all familiar with that. Well here in Matthew 23, we get eight oracles of woe and an oracle of woe is a declaration by the command of God of an approaching and inescapable do, a punishment of God that's coming swiftly and coming certainly upon those to whom the woe is pronounced. Perhaps the most famous woe oracle of woe in all of scripture is from Isaiah chapter 6, right? We all know that passage. When Isaiah in the year of King Isaiah's death sees the Lord lofty and exalted with the train of his robe, filling the temple, this picturesque image that we get in our mind, and these seraphim stood above him, seraphine fiery ones, literally in the Hebrew, and they stood above him six wings, right, with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, with two he flew, and one called off to another, holy, holy, holy, as the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory, and the thresholds of the temple were shaken, and the whole place was filled with smoke, and that's when Isaiah cries out, and he says, woe is made. An oracle of woe, a self-imprecatory oracle of woe, woe is me for I am undone. For I am a man of unclean lips I dwell among the people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts, beloved, he was right to pronounce that woe. He was doomed, he saw God and no man shall see God and live, but God acted supernaturally on that occasion to remove the woe. He sent a seraph, a single seraphim, over to the altar he takes it with tongs, this fiery being needs tongs to take this coal, and he presses it against Isaiah's lips telling him, I have removed your iniquity, I have removed your sin, you're not going to die. He removed the woe. Christ is not going to remove this woe, these woes. That's because the only way they can be removed is by their repenting and believing in Jesus, and this is the very thing they won't do, that's why the woes are coming upon them. So there's not going to be relief for them, unless they would repent and believe, and it's not to say that some of them didn't. We know from acts that there were Pharisees who did believe, and maybe some here, maybe some here took this final warning from Christ and repented and believed. But these woes were curses, and they're terrible. Matthew Henry says, quote, the gospel has its woes, the gospel has its woes, as well as the law, and then he says this, and gospel curses are of all curses, the heaviest. To be cursed by the saving message of the gospel, what hope is there for you at that point? So let's look at this first woe in verse 13, 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. Now we've looked at scribes and Pharisees repeatedly, and if you need to know that, if you haven't been here for that, then I would encourage you to go online and either listen to or watch the previous sermons, because I explain who they are, and we just don't have time to do that again this morning. What I want to notice is this woe begins with Jesus calling them hypocrites, right, and we've seen what hypocrisy is, we've talked about that. The essence of hypocrisy is to say and act one way outwardly, for the sake of people, to give it impression, to give people to think or believe something, that you know in your heart is not true, you don't really mean, right, when you're really nice to somebody that inside you're all aggravated and upset with them, and you're giving that impression that you're this nice person who cares about them, and inside you're really mad. That's an act of hypocrisy. When we do that, when we act on the outside one way for people's sake, but on the inside and we don't even think of God, we're completely different, we're presenting a false front. It's a mass, that's what hypocrisy literally was, it's a mass that you put on, so people don't see what you really think, what you really believe, right? Your culture's big on transparency. All that means is that your people can actually see into the inside, you're not lying to them, you're not being hypocritical, you're not hiding the truth. And in general, that's something that we want in conversation and so forth. This is why the Geneva study Bible of 1599, which is the culmination of the Calvinistic reform fathers says this about hypocrisy, quote, there is nothing more detestable than hypocrisy and falsehood and religion, nothing more detestable. Why two reasons I've said this before, only the Christian, only the professing Christian can be a hypocrite. The unbeliever at least is forthright and is unbelieved. I don't believe. That's no hypocrisy there. It's only the one who professes to know God and professes to live for him, but on the inside is not. Only that person can be a hypocrite, so that's why it's such a damnable sin, but also because it's the root of all others. If I am actually practicing my faith deceitfully, hypocritically, for the purpose of people thinking certain thing about me, without even considering that God sees my heart, then everything I do is an abomination, damn. Everything I do is false and fake and alive, and I'm using the saving power of the gospel, the saving message of the gospel, I'm using it for my own personal lie to people to gain something, because they think I'm religious, they think I'm a Christian. That's why hypocrisy, as the Geneva Bible says, the most detestable falsehood in religion. Well, how did these hypocrites, how did they shut the kingdom of God? Well, we know it was chiefly by false doctrine. By their false doctrine, as we've seen repeatedly, they added their traditions to the Word of God for the purpose of invalidating the Word of God. We've seen repeatedly. This doesn't talk about it repeatedly. They added their traditions, their words, so that by keeping them, you could not keep the Word, the Word of God, and they legitimized that, and they even made their Word, the keeping of their doctrine, which invalidated God's Word, of the ligatory. You had to keep their traditions, or you were out of the synagogue, and by being out of the synagogue, you were, as they were declaring it, in a state of damnation until you came back and kept their traditions. They made their false teaching obligatory, and by that false teaching, what was it? Works righteousness. You have to keep all of our traditions, and all of our additions to the Word, and only by keeping them, can you be a good Jew, and therefore be right with God, and you did it entirely by your works, by keeping those traditions. And the very essence of the message that John the Baptist began to preach, and then Jesus preached, was not, keep the traditions of the scribes and Pharisees, and you'll get to heaven. That was what? Repent, and believe, repent of your sins, believe in me. John said, believe in the one to come after me. Jesus showed that he was the me that John was talking about, and John pointed them out. The Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world. So their answer was, repent, believe because you can't do it. Your works can't do it. And the whole symbolism of John's baptism was, you the Jews, because the baptism went out to the Jews. You the Jews are unclean. You the Jews are unacceptable. You need to be supernaturally washed even as we are doing symbolically with this water. You need that, or you can't enter the kingdom of heaven. That was what Jesus and John were preaching, and that's why the Pharisees were shutting off the kingdom of God, because they opposed that message. They themselves did not go out to be baptized, and they themselves were offended by it. They added their own Word, and they opposed the Word of God. They opposed the preaching of Jesus. They opposed the ministry of Jesus. They were constantly slandering him, saying that he's a glutton. He's a drunkard questioning his miracles. They were never enough. Do us another one. We need another one. How about another one? Oh, you did that one? That was by the power of Satan. Blast theming. Blast theming his powers, blaspheming his miracles, and dispensing with them trying to discredit him in front of the crowds. He's a Samaritan. He's a glutton. He's a drunkard. Everything they could to oppose him. We know from the gospel of John that if anyone confessed to him to be the Messiah, John, John, chapter 9, they put them out of the synagogues. So if anyone confessed to Jesus to actually be the Christ, he was excommunicated. Put out of the synagogue. So this is how they shut off the kingdom of God from others. They themselves did not believe in the gospel of grace. They opposed the gospel of grace, and anybody they saw beginning to believe the gospel of grace. They threw them out of the synagogue and all of that pressure, beloved, shut off the kingdom of God from the people of God, because they shut off Jesus, and Jesus is the door. No one enters heaven except by me. You have to be born again. You have to be born again so that you believe in him for righteousness and that you repent from your sins. That's only when you even enter the kingdom. And so they were saying, no, and shutting it off. You know, I can't help but think, can you imagine how it would have been if the Pharisees in the scribes would have heralded Jesus as the promised Messiah? I don't want to obviously discount and object to the sovereignty of God in the fact that they did what they did. But in the sovereignty of God, if they would have proclaimed Christ and heralded him and said, yes, Daniel's weeks are up, the 490 weeks are up, the Messiah has to be here. Yes, the scepter has just departed from Judah. Judah has been incorporated into an entire Roman province. The Messiah has to be here. All those prophecies that said the Messiah has to be here, then hearing John the Baptist and saying, yes, this is the prophecy that God promised in Malachi, but he would send before the Messiah, before the way of the Lord, to make his past straight. And then when they saw the miracles of Christ and said, yes, here is the Son of God, clearly because he's doing what the Bible says, could you imagine how the nation would have been transformed? Because God uses means. He uses means to harden souls, and that's why false teachers will be held responsible for the damned under their ministries. We're not discounting the sovereignty of God, needed in regeneration and all that, but God uses means. And that false teacher who leads someone into false doctrine will be held accountable for that damned soul, but likewise, if these guys would have told the truth, there would have been so many more saved in the sovereignty of God because if God would have willed the one, he would have willed the second because he uses means. And the nation would have been transformed. And I can't help but thinking that today in America. We have it still, 50% of Americans go to church from what I understand. And you imagine, if in those churches, the ministers really believed in all of them and really proclaimed the word of God, repent, believe in Christ, trust in His grace, file before God's sovereignty, keep His commandments, don't buy into what the world is saying, could you imagine what our nation would look like? Those false teachers will be held accountable for the false doctrine that has brought the judgment. All those things are connected. Again, God is sovereign. He wills the one, though, as the cause of the other. And therefore that one that causes the other, that one is responsible. And that's the way we have to understand these things. False teachers of false doctrine are responsible for the damage that they cause. And they can't just say, oh, in the sovereign name, God. Just like when the word goes out and God uses that, God blesses and prosperous the word. So this is false doctrine. Secondly, I want you to notice false devotion. I want you to notice false devotion. Look at verse 14. Now, if you have an ESV, you don't have anything in verse 14 because in the critical text, this verse is missing. But in Mark and in Luke, this verse is right where it is here in Matthew and it's in Matthew in the majority text. So there's no question that it's inspired scripture. There's no question that it's one of the woes that Jesus pronounced on that day so that there are eight woes on that day and not only seven. So no question about that, even with the manuscript issue, we know that because of the presence in Mark and Luke. And by the way, in Mark and Luke, this is the only woe. Only Matthew gives this list of woes. Now, Luke does have woes in the sermon on the plane but not as many. But only Matthew does this in this kind of personal way and calling out these, as he calls them, hypocrites. Now, verse 14 says this, 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. House of stands for worldly goods, all that they possess in this world, the material possessions. And what this means is under the guise of ministry, these clergy, these thieves would ingratiate themselves into the people who were suffering, who were in mourning, who were hurting widows, it specifically names, but they would have prayed upon anyone that they saw that they had a door to that was weak or that needed someone. And they used religion and they used the faith of God's people to get them, to give them their money. That's what they did. Paul warns Timothy against false teachers who pray upon widows, those who are her suffering, who are hurting, who are looking for a good word on all these guys are there to give it, and to tell them what they need to do, to feel better, it involves money, and they pray long prayers. They use prayer, they use prayer again in a hypocritical way for the sake of men. We've all heard people do this. Unfortunately, I've heard people do this in the church courts, right, guys will stand up and want to pray for something and they'll basically make an argument for their position and their prayer. They're praying for men to hear, not for God, I've heard it many times, heard it in other situations where people would try to, you know, pray this long prayer, this flowery prayer, and they're doing it for people, to get people to think they think one thing, when really they actually don't, to look like they're so pious, so righteous, false ministers have done this for years, for centuries. The time of the Protestant Reformation, you could purchase prayers to be said for your dead loved ones, or of whole masses to be said for your dead loved ones. The Protestant Reformation begins with the controversy over indulgences which were cheaply geared to your departed loved ones, that you could pay enough money to purchase them out of purgatory, where they were suffering when Luther goes to Rome, for example. He actually writes that he was sorry that his parents were still alive because he could have purchased so many years out of purgatory for them if only they were dead. Who gives money to get dead loved ones out of purgatory, widows, widowers, people who have lost somebody? It's been going on since the true religion has gone on. Parasite charlatans who see pain as a door and a false show of piety and compassion as a key in order to deceive in order to get the money, to get the possessions, to look good before men as they use the possessions, or at least are in charge of them in some way. It's all for show, it's all for a fact. Now we should say this, long prayer is actually good. You actually are commanded in Scripture in many places to spend a long time in prayer. We're told to pray without ceasing. We're told to pray at all times. We know Jesus spent all night in prayer before he chose his 12 disciples all night long. We know in other occasions he would go out before daylight to a solitary place to pray. We know that our Lord Jesus Christ in the night in which he was betrayed prayed for hours in the garden with such intensity that blood came from his pores. And he prayed for so long that three different times it came back and his disciples were asleep. And he exhorted them to stay awake and no doubt they tried. But he prayed for hours. He prayed until Judas came because he knew what he was doing. And he was in that long prayer and Calvin says that the longer we pray, the more we pray that shows our holiness, that alone. Your prayer life according to Calvin shows your holiness, your sanctification level in the faith. Long prayer is good. The more we pray, the more we want to be near God and fellowship with God. Likewise, for a ministry to be supported by widows, financially is good. There's nothing wrong with that. Widows like everyone else should give to the church, should give to what God is doing in the world. The only thing that God has promised to build in this world is the church, it's the most important. The only divine ministry. And it's interesting that in the gospel there's only one place in all the scripture where it mentions how Jesus was financially supported during his earthly ministry. And it's entirely by women who are supporting him of their substance. Now we don't know if any of them were widows, but it says women from their substance. So clearly they were either single or they were widows. And that verse, those verses are in Luke, chapter 8, verses 1 and 2. And there were with him the 12 and certain women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities. Now listen, Mary called Magdalene out of whom it comes seven demons and Joana, the wife of Kuzah. So there's one who was married, Herod's steward, and Susanna, Mary, a single Susanna, we don't know where she has a husband as she widowed. And many others who provided for him from their substance, there were many women, according to scripture, who provided, who supported, who endorsed and gave money to the ministry of Christ on earth. And that was good. And that's good for any ministry, as long as it's legitimate and as long as it's not seeking to flee God's people and to take everything from them, that they give freely and that they give and still meet their responsibilities in life. And it's very interesting, and I've got to bring this in at this point. But as I said, Mark and Luke only give this verse, verse 14. But immediately after that, both Mark and Luke give a passage that Matthew doesn't give. Immediately after verse 14, at this time in the temple, both Mark and Luke tell this story. So right after we read, they'll receive the greater condemnation, I'm going to give you Luke's version, Luke 21, and Jesus then says, and he, and he looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury. Listen, right after he said this, they devour widow's houses. He saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury, and he saw also a certain poor widow putting in two mites. So he said, truly, I say to you that this poor widow has put in more than all, for all these out of all of their abundance have put in offerings for God, but she, out of her poverty, listen, put in all the livelihood that she had, give a grace to say, this woman put her last two pieces of money. And one of those trumpet shaped horns, and they had so many of them lined up in the court of the women where you would give, you know, you're offering. She didn't have any more money, Christ the God man knew that. She had not a penny, she had no money to buy food, she had no money to pay rent or taxes or anything else, or to buy anything else, she put her last coin in the coffer. Now I know how this passage has been preached, it's a great example of giving, and I think Jesus is not saying that at all. He just got done scolding them for devouring widow's houses and then he sees it happening. He sees an example of this devouring of the houses of widows as this woman throws her last substance in the world into the coffers of these ministers who were taking it from them. They should have been giving her money, they should have been giving her support, that's not what they did. And I think Christ is sitting there exasperated by the hypocrisy and the shameless leasing of God's people, and he just speaks out loud and he says, and here's an example. Here it is, the leasing of this woman, what's she going to do when she goes home and gets hungry? What's she going to do now? Maybe they promised her God will provide somehow, get everything, that's not what Christ says. This is why verse 14 says, therefore you will receive greater condemnation in hypocrites. Matthew Henry says, quote, the damnation of hypocrites will be of all others the greatest damnation. Third day, I want you to notice false disciples, I want you to notice false disciples. Verse 15, woe to you scribes and Pharisees hypocrites, for you travel land and sea to win one cross the light, and when he is one, you make him twice as much the son of hell as yourself, did anyone ever speak so plainly and so accurately and so truly as our Lord, the living word of God. Before we begin to look at this, well, we have to notice something here. These people had missionary zeal, did they not? You cross land and sea to make one convert. We just said Benny Baker over to Croatia, and we sent a team not too long ago, and we have Christ the King church that we support over there. We have ministries that we support, ministers, we have the seminary, Christians, we're going to support this Christmas ministry that they do, and we're so grateful to God that we can participate with them in furthering the ministry, the work of the church, the thing that we should all be giving to, the thing that God commands us to give. We thank God for that, that we can do that, that we can, that we can give to this ministry, but I want to say something, if there was only one person over there in Croatia that we had a connection in ministry to, I don't think, I don't think we would have sent any Baker over there. I really don't, I don't think the session would go for it, I don't think I would go for it. I don't think we would have spent all the money and do all the planning because we have one, but you know what, the Pharisees did, the Pharisees would, Jesus does it, she would cross the land and you would cross the sea to make a single convert, you know, Judaism was never an exclusiveistic religion, a lot of times people get that wrong and they think, oh, it's just the Jews and they shut everybody up, that's not true. When Abraham goes down into Egypt, he takes service and when they come out of Egypt, it's not just the Jews that come out, Exodus 1237, then the children of Israel journeyed from Ramses to Sukkoth, about 600,000 men on foot besides children, a couple of million people, and that's not all. A mixed multitude went up with them also, not a mixed few, not a mixed several, multitude. They went up with them with the Jews, why? Because they saw the mighty works of Jehovah in the land of Egypt and they repented and they worshiped Jehovah and they became people and members of the kingdom of Israel, and we know this, and their flocks, it hurts a great deal of livestock, this was a great host that came up with Israel, how do we know this? Because the word prosolite in our text, it just means convert, it's only found in the New Testament four times, that's surprising, you'd think, well we talk about conversion all the time, four times in the New Testament, prosolite occurs, 84 times in the Old Testament, Septuagint that Jesus and the disciples would have read, 84 times prosolite, convert, where do you see it? I don't see it in my Old Testament, that's because it's always translated stranger or foreigner, and you see it all over the place where it says, and you shall have one law for you in the stranger, one law for you in the foreigner, if the stranger wants to keep the passive or let all of his males be circumcised, one law for you in the stranger, you shall treat you in the stranger, you in the foreigner, exactly the same, same boundary, same judgments in the courts, all, because they became Jews, they became absorbed into Israel, this happens with Rahab, literally, with Ruth, literally, a Moe by this, she's a Jew now, she repents and makes the God of Naomi her God, and the people of Naomi her people, the religion of Israel beloved, Judaism was never a race-based religion, fundamentally, it was a faith-based religion, you became a Jew by your faith, by your conversion, not by your blood, exclusively. And we know that the synagogue system that existed throughout the Roman Empire at this time testified to the great missionary zeal of the previous century, the Jews really did go out to make converts. There were synagogues in every city in the Roman Empire, in fact, at this time there's evidence that there were ten synagogues in the city of Rome, and Rome was the, you know, pagan goddess God capital, Zeus, and all those things, and yet ten synagogues, there were many who worshipped Jehovah throughout the Roman Empire, and they were proselytes, there were two kinds of proselytes, there was the proselyte of the gate, this was one who believed in the word, who heard it, who would go to synagogue to hear it, who trusted in the promises, who kept the commandments, who looked forward to the salvation promised in the Messiah, this would be like Cornelius, this was like the Samaritan woman who says, I know when Messiah is coming, he'll teach us all things, these proselytes of the gate, who believed in God, but they didn't become circumcised, they didn't keep the dietary laws, they didn't become Jews, but they were not into the court of the Gentiles, and they offered God worships such as they did, but they were also the proselytes of righteousness, now you became a fool Jew, circumcised dietary laws, and most importantly for our tax, these scribes and Pharisees, when they made proselytes, they made proselytes to Phariseic Judaism, their converts became Pharisees, and just like students always outdo their teachers in zeal and almost never in learning, they become twice the sons of hell of the Pharisees were, twice as zealous to keep the traditions, twice as zealous to trump the word of God, and twice as zealous to crush the gospel of Christ when it came out, when Paul goes around all those synagogues in the Roman Empire, who's dogging him, who's stoning him, who's persecuting him, the Judaizers in all of those pagan cities who were converts from the Gentiles, they were proselytes of righteousness zealous to destroy the gospel even as Paul himself, they were twice the sons of hell, twice as zealous for works righteousness, twice as antagonistic to a gospel of forgiveness for vow sinners through grace, and so forth I want you to notice false teachers, forcibly false teachers, by the way I am keeping up my de alliteration because the word teacher in Greek starts with de, it's the letter delta, the de dask laws, so you can put a little de there before your de false teachers, verse 16 of our text, woe to you blind guys who say, whoever swears by the temple it is nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the temple. He's a blind superformer, notice here he calls them blind guides, guides or teachers, leaders, they're blind, they're blind and they're falling and they're foolishness, they're interested in what the gold, the money, money means power, money means reputation, it's funny the Pharisees didn't have control directly of it, it was the Sadducees, but by participating in this system they too had the the reputation of being those who were doing these things with the money as they could control it by their teaching and participation and it as well, and what they do is they use the concept of vows in order to teach this teaching that it's the money, it's the gold that makes the temple matter or vows on the temple and it's the gift on the altar that makes it binding, right? And that gift was the Korban, remember Korban again, you could say, all right I'm supposed to, the commandment says I'm supposed to provide for my parents when they get old, there's no social security in that system, so that's what you did, right? But you could say, you know the money that I would have given to my parents, I've declared to the temple that it's Korban, which means it all goes to the temple when I die, but that means no one could touch it, no creditor could touch it, you couldn't use it yourself to give, now you live there, you enjoy it and everything as long as you live, but when you die it would all go to the priest, so it's the gift on the altar that matter to them, don't you see? This is what they did, beloved. What is it that makes the offering of the church holy? It's that God is present with these people, it's that when we come together, we give to the work of God, Jesus said, I will build my church nothing else, and I'll be for that, the temple is his church, the Judaism Christians, or Jew believers in Judaism are Christians before Christ comes, that's all they are, they truly believe and understand the scriptures correctly, and Judaism should have embraced Christianity, should have embraced Christ when it came, unless there's certain sense in which Christianity is just Judaism as it should have been, receiving the Christ when it comes, but it's the presence of God, and that's why the temple makes the gold, oh significant, because it's the temple, that's why it's not ordinary gold, that's why it's not ordinary money, that's why the gift on the altar is just not an ordinary gift you give to someone, because it's on the altar, where God has promised to visit his people and to work and to use, and so in the church as we see it, as we understand it, when we give the ties, when we give the offering, it's holy, it's not ordinary money, it's money for the church, to prosper the church, to build up the church, to support the ministries of the church, the church is not the organization called to give to other organizations, the church is to receive, there's no other work that God is doing, we give to God and then we see, and we want to see those ministries in the church prosper, oh beloved, I think today's leaders of the church are also more interested in the offerings than in the ministries, and what we can do with the money than in what we can do with the ministry of the church, the offerings are for the ministries, the ministries are not for the offerings, and so they take this teaching of oaths and bows, which is critical in Israel's worship, it's critical in honesty and discourse, and they use it to emphasize again how important it is that they get and that they control the money, the gold of the temple, the gift on the altar, and what Jesus does in the rest of this text, it is show versus 2022, by the way, with the teaching of oaths and bows, even here, Christ just diverts a little bit for teaching, even here, the teaching of oaths and bows, whenever you swear, you always swear to God, that's the point of this, right? He was swears by the altar, swears by it, and all things on it, which is commanded by God. He was swears by the temple, swears by it, and him who dwells in it. He was swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by him who sits on it. That's why in Christian society, we only have oaths to God. We never swear to anything less than God, even in our secular courts today. Do you solemnly swear, so help me God? I know some have tried to get rid of that part, but we're only allowed to swear to God, because God is witness to every oath, and we have bows in the church. We've taken bows, especially leaders have taken bows to do what, to make sure that we govern the church as God is commanded and therefore, especially with the offerings, right? Especially with the offerings. That that church's ministry and work would be supported and would be built up. So this is false teachers. Fifthly and lastly, I want you to notice fierce announcement. I want you to notice fierce announcement. All right, let's deal with the big problem here. Three times Jesus calls people hypocrites in this text. In the vocative, by the way, the vocative tense of the Greek is when I talk to you. There's a different form of the words. You can tell when he's talking to someone. Three times hypocrites in the text, right? Two times false, three times blind, one time a son of hell, twice the son of hell as you yourselves are. What do you make of this? What do you make of this kind of talk, this kind of teaching from a minister, from a perfect minister, from a divine minister? Well, that's what most people say. Well, it's an exception because it's Jesus. But love it. If it's morally wrong to do this, then Jesus, the true man can't do it. He can't make an exception for him to do something that's morally wrong. What do you make of Jesus calling people to their faces, hypocrites, fools, blind, son of hell? Is that your Jesus? Is that the Jesus you believe in? Does he have that part too? Because I'll tell you what, the liberal Jesus in the church, the Jesus of the liberal church is all accepting, all tolerating, never judging or condemning, would never raise his voice, would never call anyone a hypocrite, blind fools, or a sons of hell, I'm maybe conservative by believing Christian. But seriously, what do we make of this? Doesn't Jesus himself, and Matthew 5.22, the sermon on the Mount, say, I say to you whoever is angry with his brother without cause, shall be in danger of the judgment, whoever says to his brother, Raka, shall be in danger of the council, and whoever says you fool, Jesus said, shall be in danger of hellfire. How's he get away with it now in the text? Well, it's simple. He's not doing it as the verse begins, whoever is angry with your brother without cause. That's not the context in which Jesus is calling them fools. He's calling them fools in righteous indignation. He's calling them fools because they are fools, and he's calling them fools for the good of God's people as I want to show you in a moment. Is it wrong, therefore, for a minister to strongly denounce false teachers presently in the church? That's what I'm getting at. Is it wrong to do that? If it is, you better throw out Isaiah. Well, he did that all day long, better throw out Jeremiah, better throw out Ezekiel, better throw out all the prophets, and you better throw out the New Testament too, because not only does the Apostle Paul often denounce false teachers, he names names. He names the names of current false teachers in the church, and I'm only going to give you a few examples. Second Timothy 2.17, their message will spread like cancer, hymenias, and philetus are of this sort. Second Timothy 4.4, Alexander the coppersmith did me much harm. May the Lord repay him according to his works. Second Timothy 1.15, this you know that all those in Asia have turned away from me among whom are phygellis and homogenes. Peter does the same? John does the same, especially in the letters, to the seven churches, Jude rails against the false teachers of his day, and in John 3 John, John writes verse 9, I wrote to the church, but diopter fees, who loves to have the pre-evident among them, does not receive us. Therefore, if I come, I will call to mind his deeds, which he does, trading against us with malicious words. They called out, they rebuked, false teachers, they did it directly, they did it strongly, and they did it by naming names, and you know what we've done that here? And we've lost people for doing that here. Some people don't like that. Some people say you shouldn't do that. Some people, it's usually those who are strong, aren't susceptible to being deceived or preyed upon by these predators, who aren't in a week in condition, they're mourning, they're poor, they're susceptible, they're vulnerable. But you say they're strong. You have a problem with this. They don't like to be reminded that there are wolves, among the sheep, that it's all not hunky-dory and perfect, but that bothers them. They feel uncomfortable. The minister calls out a false teacher, talks about false doctrine. And isn't that political anyway? That's the other thing. Since it has everything, it has political ramifications. But when we call out false doctrine and false teaching, from the scripture, that's not politics. It's doing what Jesus did. That's doing what Paul did. That's doing what Peter did. That's doing what James did. That's doing what Jonathan Edwards did. And that's doing what John Calvin did and said, we must do. We must do this. Calvin says, this is why reformation ministers quote, must thunder loudly against the papal clergy, who were the false teachers of his day. So Calvin says, and then he has this to say, and I love this person, I want you to seriously consider this, especially if you're susceptible to believing that we can never call out false teaching. Calvin says this quote, how cruel is the mildness? It's not interesting. How cruel is the mildness of those who dislike our vehement? Do you know why it's cruel? Because the wolves are debouring the sheep. And they're not going to leave with the minister. Everybody be happy. They're not going to leave. They have to be driven out. Jesus is not giving this strong denunciations for the sake of the scribes and Pharisees to have one last chance though they get that. He's doing it for the sake of the sheep. He's doing it for the weakest, for the frailest, for the vulnerable, for those who are mourning, for those who are new to the faith, for those who are susceptible to being deceived by the wolves. He's doing it for them. He's driving the wolves out because they're taken sheep to hell. And that's not fun in games. And if that makes you feel uncomfortable, that's too bad because I'm here to drive out the wolves. And I'm here to protect the vulnerable and the weak and the mourning and the sick. Oh, Jesus did it. And this is how Paul did it. And this is how John Calvin says, we must do it. Quote, we must follow out the design of Christ by copying his example in severe threatening against wicked despisers that those who are capable of being cured may be led by the fear of destruction to withdraw from them. We're saving the sheep. We're pulling them out of their mouths. When we preach against false teachers and false teaching in the church. And I am so proud of this section. When we endorsed, when we adopted the social statement on social justice, it came out of John McArthur and a bunch of other godly men and women. And we signed that. And we said, we're not putting up with that false gospel here. And we're calling it out. And yeah, we lost people over it. And I was sure we'll lose people over the next sin that we call out that people are starting to embrace. But we're going to do that because we're against the wolf here. Because we believe in real love here. Because we believe in real mercy here. And we need to be horrified and shocked by the false teaching and the false doctrine that really does take people to hell. We need to be horrified and shocked by it. And we need to rebuke it as the Lord Jesus Christ, as Paul, as Peter, as John, as Calvin. And that's what we have to do. And by the grace of God, if we have the courage, if we have the love, if we have the mercy. We'll do it. And God's people will want it because they too will care not just about how they feel and they don't want to be uncomfortable. They'll care about those who are suffering, who are struggling, who are weaker than they who might be led astray. They'll care about them and they'll want to save them. That's great. Father, we thank you for your goodness. We thank you for your word. I pray that I've preached it faithfully today. And if I'm not, I pray you would teach me better. And I pray Lord God that you would cause us all to fear you, to love you, but especially to love the weakest among us. And to remember that we are in a spiritual war. We know you've won it, Jesus, for the salvation of all your people, but we are called to take every thought captive. We are called to be the church militant. And we are called Lord God to be on the alert and to drive out the wolves. And so, Father, I pray you continue to bless providence with faithfulness, with the love for the weakest that would never shirk our duty, the uncomfortable, though it may be, to stand up for your word and your word alone. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.