Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Many of you are celebrating Father’s Day today, and a loving father can relate to where Jesus is in our text today.

A while back, I had to bring hard discipline in the life of one of my daughters.

And, it was discipline that I knew was necessary for her good and for her development as a young lady, and yet it was also discipline that she thought was unjust and unnecessary.

Honestly, I didn’t want to bring this hurt into her life.

On that day, I had planned for she and I and to have fun and to make memories, but now, all of those plans were changed and my hand was forced, and I knew that to love her well and to lead her well was going to require discipline, even though it was not at all what I wanted for her.

And so, it was with sadness and a heavy heart that I brought hardship and discipline into the life of my daughter.

And so, for you brothers who are celebrating Father’s Day today who can identify with a story like that, this is a picture of where we see Christ speaking to the religious leaders of Israel.

As the Great Prophet, the long-awaited Messiah who had now been rejected by them, He was now compelled to bring judgment and condemnation upon them.

But, these are not words of hatred, these are words of a loving Savior longing for his people to realize their sin and to turn from it and be delivered!

These are loving words of intended to protect his disciples and the crowd from following the Pharisees to Hell and to call the Pharisees back from the flames themselves.

And so, yes, He’s shouting, but not as one who is abusive and seeking to humiliate, but as One who is urgent is trying to warn them of the train that is soon to run them over!

Turn with me now to as we hear these words of judgement.

God’s Word

Read

Fervent, but Fake

“But, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!”

As we come to verse 13, Jesus shifts from verses 1-12 where He was addressing his disciples and the crowd to addressing the scribes and Pharisees directly, and, man, does He ever.

For the close listener over the last couple of weeks, you’ve probably heard me reference Jesus as being the Great Prophet a couple of times.

In , God promises that He will raise up a New Prophet that will be even greater than Moses, and here we see Christ Jesus speaking prophetically.

Prophets either spoke words of blessing or words of judgement, and very often they began words of judgement with, “Woe to you!”

Here we find seven “Woe to you” to statements given to these religious leaders of Israel.

And, He’s not unclear about why He’s judging them.

Out of seven of those pronouncements, Jesus starts off six of those by calling them, “Hypocrites,” with the only exception coming in verse 16 when He calls them “blind guides.”

The judgement isn’t coming agains them because they’re atheists.

The judgement isn’t coming against them because their partying or living a homosexual lifestyle or philandering.

By all accounts, these men would have given every appearance to be pious, religious, virtuous men.

These would have been men who would have been members of the Baptist church, respected in the community, on the school board, volunteer firemen, family men, and all of us would have been impressed by them.

The judgement isn’t coming against them because of reckless, godless living.

These were by all accounts faithful, respectable, fervent men.

The judgement was coming against them because they were fake.

It was a false front.

Their apparent religion and virtue was nothing more than marble facade on a condemned shed.

And, most terrifyingly of all, is that they all the while, they believed themselves to be right with God, when in fact, God despised who they were, what they did, and what they stood for.

APPLICATION: Brothers and sisters, I cannot think of a more terrifying position to be than to believe yourself right with God all while God himself stands against you.

And yet, what we simply cannot escape is that Jesus finds religious hypocrisy utterly intolerable.

There is a trending thought of cheap grace bubbling beneath the surface of Christ’s church today that says, “every Christian is a sinner; so, every Christian is a hypocrite.

Thus, it’s okay that I’m a hypocrite.

I’m not going to sweat it or worry about it.”

And, brothers and sisters, that’s half right.

But, the two realities that the gospel simply will not allow, that Jesus simply will not tolerate is that 1) we cannot rest and justify and be okay with our hypocrisy.

It shames Christ.

It murdered Christ.

It undermines the mission of Christ.

It clouds the glory of Christ.

And, if you none of those things are significant to you, then you don’t know Christ!

The Spirit of God isn’t in you! 2) But, the second reality that Gospel simply won’t allow, is that it won’t allow you to be fall into despair.

His grace does cover your hypocrisy, brothers and sisters.

But, don’t miss this! Don’t miss this!

His grace goes to the repentant and to the broken-hearted, not to the self-excused and self-justified!

So, don’t rest in your hypocrisy!

Take it to Christ, and take it to his cross; so that it might be put to death yet again!

And, most terrifyingly of all

But, the second reality that Gospel simply won’t allow, is that it won’t allow you to be fall into despair.

His grace does cover your hypocrisy, brothers and sisters.

But, don’t miss this! Don’t miss this!

His grace goes to the repentant and to the broken-hearted, not to the self-excused and self-justified!

So, don’t rest in your hypocrisy!

Take it to Christ, and take it to his cross; so that it might be put to death yet again!

The Pharisees led people away from God.

“For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces.”

Now, as we look at the specific words of judgements themselves, what we see is that Jesus painted a very detailed picture of the hypocrisy in the Pharisees’ lives and that He knew exactly where it was headed.

First of all, Jesus says that the Pharisees led people away from God. Jesus says that they ‘shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces.’

Man, think about that.

Jesus is describing them as being the guardians of a door or a gate that will literally allow people to know God or not know God, to have eternal life or not have eternal life, and Jesus says that they are slamming that door people’s faces!

Now, maybe you’re thoughts go to many of our lives, and you’d be prone to think that they just don’t care, and they just aren’t teaching people and telling people.

But, look at what it says in verse 15, ‘you travel across sea and land to make a single (convert).’

Man, they were getting after it!

They were moving heaven and earth to go and win one person over to what they were teaching!

But, what was the problem in all of this?

What was the problem?

Because man they were going!

They were zealous!

They were working hard!

They were teaching!

They were spreading the word!

They were sincere about their message!

What was the problem with all of this?

They were concealing the truth.

They were concealing the gospel.

They were concealing Jesus.

They had rejected Christ, and every person they were converting, they were not converting to the Kingdom of God; they were converting them to their way of thinking.

They were not making people into the image of God; they were making people into their own image.

And, as a result, the people that were converted were ‘double damned’, as Eugene Peterson says in the Message.

Hypocrisy in God’s people always leads people aways from God.

These Pharisees claimed to know God’s law and love God’s law more than anybody else.

And yet, the entirety of God’s Law is about the revealing of God’s Son, as we see in , and they couldn’t see it.

They were hypocrites!

Their hearts were hard because Jesus didn’t fit their agenda and their mold.

They rejected Jesus, and they led people to hell.

They taught people lies in their churches and with their lives and with their platforms and in their homes through their hypocrisy, and they led people away from God.

And, the same can be true of us.

There’s two forms of hypocrisy that’s crippling the church, as I see it: 1) The self-righteous church that maximizes all of the sins of the world all while minimizing our own sin.

These churches are experts at finding the specks and not so good at recognizing the planks.

2) The secular church church that blends so seamlessly with the culture that they have no way to lead anyone to God because they can’t be identified from the culture to begin with.

Both are hypocrisy.

Both of these churches conceal christ and conceal the Gospel, leading people away from God.

What If We Make More of Us?

APPLICATION: And so, brothers and sisters, we have to ask ourselves an uncomfortable question this morning: What if we make more of us?

What if our evangelism actually works?