This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome to day four of our look through chapter 23 of the book of Matthew. We're
going to be looking at verses 25 to 36 today, and we're continuing to look at
how to fight against what ruins your faith, these seven woes and what they teach
us. The first lesson was don't be an expert, instead be a fellow struggler.

Number two, don't rely on your own actions, instead trust in God's power. Number
three, don't get caught up in arguments over words, instead live the truth.
Number four, don't major on the minors, instead major on the majors, major on
love.

And now we come to the fifth woe, verses 25 and 26. Woe to you, teachers of the
law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You clean the outside of the cup and dish,
but inside they're full of greed and self-indulgence, blind Pharisee.

First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be
clean. Fifth thing that Jesus teaches us here, fifth warning is don't neglect
your heart. Don't neglect your own heart.

Hypocrisy is cleaning the outside of the cup, the outside of the life, and
neglecting your heart. First, Jesus says clean the inside. Nobody wants to drink
out of a cup where the outside is really clean, but you're not sure about the
inside.

If your kids, if you're a parent, if your kids bring you a cup of coffee in the
morning and say, "I really washed the outside of the cup, Daddy," there's going
to be a question in the back of your mind. What about the inside? It's not going
to be too joyous to drink out of that cup if you're not sure about the inside.

And Jesus is saying here, "I want you to understand that hypocrisy is about
being more concerned about the outside than the inside. It's not taking the time
to care for your heart. Clean the inside.

" A cup with only the outside clean, that's the cup that maybe is a pretty cup
that you put up on a shelf that you look at all the time. My mom used to call
those knick-knack shelves. Remember that phrase?

Are you a knick-knack Christian? Clean on the outside but dirty and dusty on the
inside because you've been on the shelf for too long, nice looking on Sundays
but useless in his service the rest of the week? It can happen to any of us when
we stop caring for our heart.

And the question I've got to ask is, do I want to impress the world with my
sparkle or do I want to be available to be used of God, to quench the world's
needs? Clean the heart. Let God speak to your heart.

Give your heart to him. Don't be so concerned about the outside looking good
that you're not willing to share your heart, share your hurts with other people.
That's where it really hurts us.

I'm so concerned about how people think of me that I won't share my heart, I
won't share my hurt with other people. And part of cleaning the inside is being
vulnerable with the other people in your life, other believers in your life.
Clean the inside, Jesus says.

Clean the heart. Care for the heart. It's one of the keys to live in a life
without hypocrisy.

And Jesus has another picture of this same thing and another lesson in this in
the sixth woe that he shares. Verse 27, "Woe to you teachers of the law and
Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful
on the outside, but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything
unclean.

In the same way, on the outside, you appear to people as righteous, but on the
inside, you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. " Number six, sixth warning is
don't be concerned about appearances. It's really another way of saying the
fifth warning.

Don't be concerned about appearances. Appearances are the most concerned about
appearances. The washing of the outside of the cup or here.

The reality of what's on the outside of a tomb is to them was the whitewashing.
How pretty it looked. But Jesus says really it's still a tomb.

The reality of a tomb is there's dead people there. And whitewashing a tomb
doesn't cover up what's dead inside. The problem with being concerned about
appearances is pretty soon that's all you're concerned about.

And because you're so concerned about appearances, you're not caring for your
heart and you become dead on the inside. Hypocrisy is being dead on the inside.
The horrible curse of hypocrisy is working hard to look alive on the outside
when you're dead on the inside.

There's a huge cost to try to make something that is dead look alive. You begin
by being alive on the inside and only Jesus can make you alive on the inside.
You begin by letting him bring new life, resurrection life to you.

And then that life shines through to the outside. Don't let the outside become
all that you have. Don't let a concern for appearances keep you from allowing
the resurrection of life of Jesus into your life daily.

Daily. Because I need it. You need it.

Now there's a seventh warning in this seventh woe that Jesus has to share. It's
the longest one that he shares. Begins in verse 29.

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You build tombs
for the prophets and you decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, if
we had lived in the days of our forefathers, we would not have taken part with
them in the shedding of the blood of the prophets.

So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who
murdered the prophets. Fill up then the measure of the sins of your forefathers.
You snakes, you brood of vipers, how will you escape being condemned to hell?

These last words. You snakes. Read those and think, how could Jesus speak to
someone that way?

How will you escape being condemned to hell? He's trying to help them to see the
error of their ways. The only way to escape is through his power, not through
their power.

But there is a warning here, a seventh warning, when he talks about how they
treated the past. They say we would not have taken part in what happened in the
past. Number seven, don't live in the past.

Hypocrisy is using the past to justify the present. Hypocrisy can do that
personally when you say, look at the sacrifices I've made for God over my life.
It's okay if I let this little sin in.

It's okay if I have that lack of integrity. It's okay if I steal that money.
It's okay if I cheat in this way on my taxes.

All the sacrifices I've made, certainly God will understand. You use the past to
justify the present. You can do that personally.

You can also do it culturally in the back of your mind. You can look back on
your culture and you can say, what a great country we have. All that we've done,
all that we've built.

What a great denomination of churches we have. What a great church I've been in.
All that we've done, all that we've built.

And you apply that to your life as if you had done it, as if you had built it.
It's the story of someone who thinks that they're a Christian because they grew
up in a Christian home. Parents who were Christians, maybe even a descendant
line that has a lot of pastors in it.

No, you have to make your own commitment. You cannot live in the past or on the
past. Don't let history replace reality.

Because when you live in the past, you can easily live a lie. We forget our
faults and we magnify our victories when we look to the past. It's a very easy
thing to do.

When you look to your past, you tend to forget your faults and you tend to
magnify your victories. Instead of this living in the past, Jesus challenges
them and he challenges us here to be honest about our need for God right now, in
the present. Jesus challenges them to be brutally honest with themselves, with
their own hearts about their faults.

Listen to what he says in verses 34 to 36. "Therefore, I am sending you prophets
and wise men and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify.

Others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. And so
upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the
blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Barakiah, whom you
murdered between the temple and the altar. I tell you the truth, all this will
come upon this generation.

" Jesus goes back to the whole Old Testament here, from A to Z in English, from
Abel to Zechariah. Zechariah, we know Abel, the martyr in the book of Genesis,
the first who died. Zechariah, killed in 408 BC, was the last chronological
martyr.

So he's saying from first to last, from A to Z, all that blood is going to come
upon you as you martyr the new Christians. Now, in calling them snakes and
hypocrites here, a lot of us would consider it very unchristian for Jesus to
talk to them this way, to warn them this way. But Jesus had a different way of
relating to people.

He could call somebody a snake and a hypocrite with love. I don't know that I
can do that so well, but he could do that. Because here he's inviting them to be
honest about themselves.

He's inviting them to a life of change. Jesus said, "I didn't come condemn, I
came to call the world to salvation. " He is calling them to salvation here.

He's warning them about the heart directions that will ruin our faith. And here
he says, "Be careful of the sense that the past, I'm going to build my life upon
the past. " No, you've got to build your life upon the faith that you have in
God right now and today.

Now, with these three warnings, as with the three we looked at yesterday, we
need God's strength to avoid these things that ruin our faith and to instead
make the choices that grow us in him. So let's pray for strength right now. Our
Father, we do pray.

We do ask for strength from you. The kind of strength that only you can give.
God help me not to neglect my heart today, but instead to look to you for
forgiveness and cleansing and purity.

God help me not to be concerned about appearances today so that it causes me not
to be able to share who I am and what you're doing in my life. Give me the
freedom to be honest about who I am in you and what I need in you and the work
that you're doing in my life. And Lord, I don't want to live on the past.

I don't want to live in the past. I want to live the reality of faith today. So
while there might be some things to rejoice in in the past, to remember in the
past, some lessons to learn, help me to live based on who you are today, based
on the life you want to give me today.

I ask for this in Jesus' name. Amen. Join us tomorrow, our last day of this
week.

We're going to get to look at the heart of Jesus.