This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

[Music] Welcome back to our second day of looking through chapter 23 of the book
of Matthew. We're going to focus on verse 13 today as we begin a look at what
are called the seven woes in chapter 23. Jesus seven times says to the
Pharisees, "Woe to you," and then tells them what they're doing wrong, tells
them what it is that's stealing faith, stealing joy from their lives, tells them
how they're struggling with hypocrisy.

Jesus talked a lot about hypocrisy. He was not afraid to talk about it.
Hypocrisy, Jesus said, is looking at the speck in another person's eye while
ignoring the log in your own eye.

Hypocrisy, we just saw him say it yesterday, is putting requirements and burdens
on other people that you're not willing to live up to in your own life. There's
a lot of pictures of that kind of hypocrisy that you can think of in your mind.
Hypocrisy would be running an AA meeting and then going to a bar on the way
home.

Hypocrisy would be like having a Weight Watchers meeting and ordering in pizza.
It's saying one thing, doing the other thing. When you come right down to it,
hypocrisy is all about putting on a mask.

That's the idea behind the word "hippocritos," the Greek word, putting on a
mask. It's what they would do in the Greek theaters. You put on a mask because
you think that people will be more impressed with the mask than they are with
you.

You put on a mask because you're afraid of what they might see in the real you
that's behind that mask. You don't want them to see it, so hypocrisy is putting
on the mask. When you think about this, it really has to do with the road that
you choose to take in life.

You can take the road of hypocrisy. You can take the road of putting on a mask,
thinking that people will think well of you because of what you're pretending to
be, and you might even get pretty good at it. But in the end, it's a very sad
road because the truth of the matter is you've got a mask on.

Even if people are impressed with you while you have that mask on, even if they
say that they love you, there's something inside of you thinking you wouldn't
say that if I didn't have the mask on. You wouldn't say that if you knew the
real me. If you're pretending all the time, it is a wearying, it's a
bone-wearying way to live.

Your head hits the pillow every night and you are worn out because putting on a
mask, it's a tough thing to do. You can take that road if you want, or you can
take a different road. You can take the road of the freedom of a life without
secrets, a life where you know that people respect you and love you for the real
you, warts and all, sins and all.

Jesus deeply warns us of the dangers of hypocrisy here. He's warning so that the
Pharisees can hear. As they hear these seven woes, they were very aware of the
woes that God had against people that were not following him in Scripture.

As Isaiah chapter 5 and other places in the Old Testament, they knew that many
times God said, "Woe to you if you do this. " And now Jesus looks at the
Pharisees and he says to them specifically, "Woe to you. Here are the dangers of
a life of hypocrisy.

Here are the dangers of religion. " As we look through these next few days,
we're going to be looking together, thinking about our own lives, not thinking
about some Pharisees who lived a long time ago and how hypocritical they must
have been. What about you and I?

Where do we struggle with this? We're going to look at seven ways together to
kill your faith, seven things that will kill your faith, seven things to not do.
Instead of doing those things, do the things that bring your faith back to life.

In verse 13, here's the first of those woes. "Woe to you, teachers of the law
and Pharisees. You hypocrites.

You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces. You yourself do not enter, nor
will you let those who enter who are trying to. " First warning Jesus gives here
is don't be an expert.

Don't be an expert in spiritual things. Hypocrisy is acting like an expert
without becoming committed yourself. Acting like you're above it all.

You've got it all figured out. You don't even have to do it anymore because
you've got it so figured out. You understand it all, even everybody else
doesn't.

The truth is you can become an expert in the Bible without knowing God. God
doesn't ask us to become experts, to lift one above the other. The truth of the
matter is don't be an expert, be a fellow struggler.

We're all struggling together, first to find God and then to grow in faith in
God. And so the warning here is to the Pharisees, he said, first make sure you
enter God's kingdom before you talk to other people about God's kingdom. People
who have to be experts sometimes, to have to do everything right and get it all
right, they're not able to admit any wrongs in their life.

How are you going to enter God's kingdom that way? The only way in is to admit
that you need God, that you have sinned, that you need His forgiveness. There
are people, even preachers and teachers of God's words, who are experts in the
things of God.

They can talk about forgiveness, but they've never entered in. So you don't
teach what you haven't done. You don't teach what you're not doing because
hypocrisy keeps you on the outside looking in.

If you have to be the expert, you'll end up relying on rules instead of your
relationship with God. You'll end up being a legalist. Legalism is when people
are more concerned about the rules than they are about God and what God wants to
do in the hearts of people.

Legalism says it's not about the relationship, it's about the rules. As long as
you get the rules right, the relationship will get right. Legalists always have
this huge list of rules and regulations and rituals and policies, and that's
what you can become an expert in.

But the truth is, faith, following God, it's about a relationship. And there's
no one who's an expert in a relationship. You can be married 20, 30, 40 years
and realize, I'm still not an expert in this woman and this man.

I've got a lot to learn because relationships are messy. Relationships bring out
the struggles in our lives because they want to be an expert. Legalists love
rules.

They love things that they can be an expert in. The question you and I have to
answer is, am I going to live by rules or am I going to live by a relationship?
And the truth of the matter is, the greater the relationship, the fewer the
rules that you need.

The greater the relationship, the fewer the rules that you need. You can see
this in a marriage. Usually when newlyweds get married, they have a lot of
rules.

You've got to do this. You've got to do that. This is date night.

We've got to fold the towels just like this. We've got to do this. We've got to
do that.

And you sort of keep score based on those rules. How are you doing? But the
longer you know each other, the more you trust each other, the less the rules,
the less you talk about rules because you've gotten to know each other.

You know how she wants the towels folded. You don't do it because of a rule
anymore. You just do it because you love her because you've done it for 20 years
because you love her.

What was expressed maybe originally as a rule is now expressed in a
relationship. Same thing is true in our relationship with God. In the Old
Testament, there's a lot of rules, but they had very little relationship with
God.

They struggled in their relationship with God. But in the New Testament, well,
Jesus said it can all be summed up in love God with all your heart, mind, soul,
and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Now, we still do the commands
of God, but we do it out of love.

It's no longer the keeping of a rule. It's an expression of love. You can always
spot a legalistic Christian because they're the ones who are always getting
offended because somebody didn't keep the rules the way they thought the rules
should be kept.

They're the expert. You've offended their expertise, and so they are offended.
They get offended by everything.

They got their rules. They got the time you got to do it, the when you got to do
it, the way you got to say it. And any time you violate one of those, they look
spiritually offended.

They look down their nose at you spiritually because you haven't done it the
right way. Well, if you look at the life and ministry of Jesus, he always
offended the legalists. He offended them because they couldn't control him.

He offended them because he had truth to teach instead of their rules. They
couldn't handle him because he had a totally different God-centered perspective
on life, but life is not about rules and regulations and rituals and policies
and performance. It's about love.

It's about love. So when you look at how you relate to God, if you're trying to
become an expert and get it all perfect and get it all right, you're going to
fall into the trap of legalism. Don't do that.

Instead, be a fellow struggler and keep struggling to love. Keep struggling to
deepen your relationship with God. Our Father, as we pray today, we pray exactly
for that.

That you'd help us to grow in our relationship with you this day. That today we
would love you with our heart and mind and soul and strength and we'd love our
neighbor as ourself. We pray in those places where we've allowed rules to begin
to take over for a relationship that you'd show us that.

You'd warn us on our own hearts of what's going on, what we're doing. And help
us to go back to the relationship because that's where the joy is. Help us to go
back to the relationship because that's where the life is.

We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Tomorrow we're going to look together at
three more ways to watch out for those things that can ruin your faith.