The Danger of Religion, Matthew 23:1-5

 

We are back in our study in the flow of Matthew. We have taken a few weeks off from Matthew to look at Psalm 110, which fits within the context of Matthew as our Lord referred to it as he was confounding the Pharisees and his confrontation with them at the end of Matthew chapter 22. In this particular chapter now in Matthew 23 the Lord is going to really expose the errors and the dangers of religion. It surprises people at times when you talk to them and you say God doesn't like religion. Well that is exactly true once we understand what religion is, which were going to do this morning as a result of our study.

 

In the introduction this morning I want to cover about three things. First of all, what kind of a reminder of where we are in Matthew and where were going in the coming chapters in Matthew. And then just to focus on this immediate context these are the the last two sermons in Matthew of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

 

Now John 13 to 16 is the upper room discourse. That comes later and is actually the last private teaching that the Lord gave to his disciples. But in Matthew the last two are Matthew 23 and then Matthew 24 to 25. And were going to look at a little summary of why this is significant—Jesus' harsh condemnation of religion in Matthew 23. 

 

It is important to note that the last public sermon that Jesus gave was not a feel good sermon. It wasn't positive; it was extremely negative. It didn't focus on atonement; it didn't focus on forgiveness; it didn't focus on the gospel. It focused on a warning and a condemnation of legalism and of religion, and a warning to the disciples and to those who would come in future generations not to follow the examples of the legalism of the Pharisees. 

 

What we have seen so far, just in terms of a reminder of the flow of Matthew towards the end, is that starting in chapter 21 through the end of chapter 25 is a section that presents Jesus to Israel as her messianic King and His rejection. Jesus is presented formally as He enters into enters into Jerusalem as her messianic King in chapter 21 in chapter 21. There, He is presented to Israel as a messianic King and there is a tremendous response by many in the multitude, some of whom came with him from Jericho. It is what is called the triumphal entry; it is the public presentation of Jesus as a messianic King. That part of the chapter that sets the stage for the confrontation that follows. 

 

Now if we think in terms of chronology, and there's a lot of debate over just exactly what days this occurred, I am of the view that Jesus entered on Sunday. This was of the day after Shabbat, He would not have entered on Shabbat because that would have violated the principal of Shabbat, and the rest of the people would not have been out. So this would have been on Sunday when that took place.

 

But there is a reaction by the religious leaders who are the leaders of the nation at that time and they reject him. This is covered in the next few chapters.   The leaders of the nation but not all of the people reject him, and that is covered in the remainder of chapter 21 and all of chapter 22. In that section it is the next morning after the triumphal entry, which would have been Monday morning, and He cursed the fig tree as He is going to the temple. The fig tree is a representation, a symbol of Israel. By cursing it He is, as it were, giving a visual aid of what is about to transpire through these confrontations with the religious leaders, His announcement of condemnation and rejection of the nation in chapter 23, and a warning of the coming in time judgments that would come on Israel and Matthew 24 and 25; what is known as the Olivet discourse. 

 

So in these two chapters we see that Jesus as the messianic King is rejected by the nation, and we went through all of the various conflicts. There was a challenge to his authority in chapter 21:23-27. He responded to that through three parables showing that this is the essential problem of the religious leadership. They have rejected Him as Messiah and His authority as the Son of God.

 

That conflict then continued in chapter 22. From chapter 22:15 down through the end of the chapter there were three episodes where the Pharisees and the Herodians and the Sadducees have come and challenged him directly, and He confounded them each time. Then He followed that up with the question in verses 41 through 46 where He said: "What do you think about the Christ, the Messiah? Whose son is He?—with a direct allusion and then a quote from Psalm 110:1.

 

We studied that for the last few weeks were He shows from Psalm 110:1 that the Messiah is the greater son of David, who is in fact both human and divine. This completely confounds the Pharisees and shuts them down. And then Jesus in chapter 23 rejects the nation and announces eight (or seven, there's a textual problem with one of them) woes against the religious leaders. This is an announcement against them and it ends in the last couple of verses with an announcement of judgment against Jerusalem in verses 37 to 39. 

 

ÒJerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling. Behold, your house is being left to you desolate! For I say to you, from now on you will not see Me until you say, ÔBLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD!ÕÓ

 

Notice the emphasis on God's continuing grace despite the rejection by Israel. God is constantly taking the initiative. And notice the judgment isn't because they were "elected to damnation". The rejection is because they were not willing to respond to the grace initiative of God.

 

Then Jesus said: "Your house [a reference to the temple] is left to you desolate, for I say to you, you shall see me no more until you say, Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord".

 

This is what sets up the second part of the introduction, and that is the relationship between Matthew 23 and Matthew 24 and 25. When you look at something like this it's important to sort of understand the structure, and if you look at Matthew 23 the way, if you especially if you have a red letter Bible—

 

Now, I'm not a big fan of red letter Bibles because the red letters are the words that Christ spoke but if all of the Bible is the inspired Word of God (1 Corinthians 2:16 says that it's all the mind of Christ) then that gives the impression that those red letter words are more important than the rest of the Bible. All of the Bible is breathed out by God and it's all important, but one part of the value of the red letter is it shows you where Jesus long discourses are, where His sermons are in these Gospels and you see that all of chapter 23 with it except for the first verse is in red letter, all except for about two verses in chapter 24, all of chapter 25 is in red letters, and then you finally get to more narrative when you get to chapter 26. Chapters 26 and 27 which describe the arrest of Jesus and his trials, and then his crucifixion in chapter 27, and his burial in the tomb, and then his resurrection in chapter 28. So that is where we are headed.

 

—what we need to understand is that there is a distinction in time and place between chapter 23 and chapters 24 and 25, and that is significant. Chapter 23 takes place immediately following the confrontation with the religious leaders. There were the three parables that were against the religious leaders and then the three confrontations that occurred in chapter 22 from verse 15, down through verse 40, and then Jesus shuts them down with his argument from Psalm 110.

 

Then we read in 23:1 NASB "Then Jesus spoke to the multitudes and his disciples É" So He is primarily talking to His own people, His disciples, and the multitude that is there, but that the scribes and Pharisees are within earshot as He announces His rejection of them and announces these woes against them. 

 

So chapter 23 belongs as the conclusion to what we've seen in the section that began in verse 21. There is a shift in time because it takes a little while to walk from the temple down to the bottom of the Kidron Valley and up the other side onto the Mount of olives, which is what takes place.

 

At the beginning of chapter 24, Jesus went out and departed from the temple and his disciples came up to show him the buildings of the temple. Then in verse three it says, "Now as he sat on the Mount of olives É" So it's a different location. 

 

If you read all of the scholarly commentaries you will see a lot of argument to try to connect these two, and as I was thinking about this passage and Jesus' reputation of these false teachers it reminded me of a lot of what's going on in seminaries today and in evangelicalism today. 

 

There is a lot of false teaching. What is needed in a seminary is the ability to teach critical thinking skills from a sound theological perspective and that is what we are trying to do with Chafer Seminary. I don't think that's going to be accomplished until we get a full-time president and four or five full-time faculty members to really pull it together. That takes time to develop. It took Dallas Seminary from the time that it was founded in 1923 until the early 50s for things to really gel and come together for the seminary. It takes time to develop and build these things.

 

But what you have today is an environment where liberal ideas have been gradually filtering into evangelical seminaries for the last 30 or 40 years. And you can probably think in your mind of two or three evangelical, conservative, dispensational seminaries that have been around for the last 60, 70, 80 years and they are, sad to say, no longer the bulwarks of biblical truth. We were going to need to address the question of what makes a false teacher a false teacher. And I think one thing that what makes a false teacher has to do with their understanding of authority, the understanding of authority of Scripture. 

 

This is why this coming March the focus of the Chafer Conference is going to be on the inerrancy and the infallibility of God's Word, because this is foundational. If the word of God is not inerrant and infallible, then God is not speaking with the solid voice of authority. If it's not infallible and inerrant, then what parts are infallible and inerrant and what parts are not? Once you ask that question then you have to come up with some kind of criterion to make that distinction. And once you do that then anything can mean anything. One person says this is God's Word, another person says this is God's Word, and how do you know? God is no longer speaking with authority through every part of His Scripture, every jot and tittle, as Jesus said. What happens is you don't you see things go along good, and then one day they turn a corner and everything is bad. It takes a long gradual process.

 

This is what happened between 1850 and 1930, a period of 80 years before you, you saw the complete fall of all of the mainline denominations to liberalism. It slowly creeps in and one of the first areas of attack is on the authority of Scripture and on the infallibility of Scripture.

 

I just thought to take this as an example. Here you have something that appears very simple to people and the average person. You say well we look at this and you say well I can see where they would have this argument or that argument, and that these could go together because actually if you look at the text it seems to flow. I pointed out some reasons why I think they should be disconnected, but as I was reading through a number of commentaries the majority of them were trying to connect these two together, one flowing out of the other. While there is a broad connection, the writer Matthew and Jesus, Jesus by His actions of movement and Matthew by emphasizing the distinction in place show that they are not really related. There is a clear distinction here.

 

And so you might say, well, why are you making this point? Why is this so important? Well, if you look at this, what you have to have as a pastor or any student of the Word is the ability to think critically and understand that when you're reading commentaries these guys are not just popping up out of a vacuum, they've got backgrounds. And one of the things I try to teach the men that I work with on Friday mornings via an online pastors group is you have to know about the authors of these commentaries. What is the background? What is their denominational background? What were the influences on their life? Even people we know and we trust, whether it's somebody like Charlie Clough, Arnold Fruchtenbaum, Andy Woods, etc., what are their backgrounds? What pastors, what teachers, what seminary professors influenced them? And as I began to mentally organize these commentaries I realized that the vast number of those who are taking position related to how these related were also men who were weak on inerrancy.

 

We've studied in the past that there are those who will affirm inerrancy in their doctrinal statement, but then the way they treat the differences between the gospel passages and other things that Jesus says, they are in effect denying inerrancy. So that one of the foremost evangelical theologians and one who has written a commentary on Matthew, and one who is a professor at a and evangelical seminary made the comment related to the Evangelical Theological Society, that if all of the men who are members of ETS had to affirm, sign a doctrinal statement that they believe in the inerrancy of infallibility of Scripture,  if they were forced to interpret that doctrinal statement, The Inerrancy and Infallibility of Scripture in light of the Chicago Statement of the Inerrancy of Scripture, then over 90% of them couldn't do it. 

 

Now that's important, because the Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy was worked out by over 300 theologians toward the end of the 1970s (or 1977, 1978) and they represented a number of different theological traditions. They were Baptist, Methodist, Episcopal were conservatives, conservatives all, summer dispensational, some were covenant, but they came together in agreement to this statement. And it is an extremely precise statement going through the Scripture and also explaining what the doctrine says, and also countering a number of different arguments. And in 2004, the Evangelical Theological Society officially said that is the interpretation of their doctrinal statement, of their line on the inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture. 

 

So what this shows is you got a high level of a lack of integrity among a lot of seminary professors today at a number of different institutions who are really waffling. It comes to it comes to credibility and it comes to the ability to have critical thinking skills, why we have to have a solid seminary.

 

But it's also relates to this whole idea of false teaching because the erosion of truth is not something that happens overnight. It takes it takes decades for this to take place. And a lot of times people are completely unaware of what is happening until one day they wake up and see, "That's not exactly what I was taught". That's how it developed with the Pharisees. They didn't come to the positions they held at the time of Jesus overnight. It took 200 or 300 years, and will look at that as we go through this.  

 

It is important to understand this, and you have to have a pastor who is educated enough to be able to think critically about these issues. And just because somebody has been to seminary doesn't mean they have critical thinking skills. Trust me, there a lot of people have gone through seminary and have not developed these kinds of critical thinking skills, and I've also seen a lot of people who come out a solid churches and they go to seminaryÉ.

 

You listen to me, and others like me, for most of your Christian life, but if you were to go off to seminary you would start hearing a lot of professors who had a doctorate, a double doctorate. They've been to Dallas Seminary or they've been to one of the other schools, evangelical schools, got a doctorate there and then they've gone someplace else in Europe or on the northeast or somewhere, got in the second doctorate, and they know Greek and they know Hebrew. And I've seen so many men over the years going within a year or two completely changed their understanding of the Bible because they get their eyes on a person. They put their eyes on somebody else and then they go to seminary and they hear others who are educated and they shipwreck their faith. 

 

I can't tell you how many people I've seen do that. They hear other opinions and they just they crash and burn. They can't handle the fact that there are different views by different people, and they don't have the critical thinking skills to say, okay this person says X, Y, and Z. This person says W, X, Y, what are the differences? How can I outline their positions so that I can truly understand who has the more biblical argument and who doesn't, and be able to get past all the smokescreens of what is being put out there?

 

This last week I was having a discussion with a pastor I've known for about 40 years. We don't agree on everything but we agree on a lot of things, and we were disagreeing over something. I said: "How did you come to that conclusion?" He said: "I read my Bible". I said: "That's what Joseph Smith said. I've read my Bible too. What is your argument? We have to break this thing down into every component".  

 

The reason I'm going through this is because we've reached the same kind of situation in modern evangelicalism that Jesus was facing with the Pharisees. We have a religious establishment that in many cases has divorced itself from grace, they are expressing as their own opinions as if they are have the authority of the Word of God, and they don't, and they are leading people astray. They are false teachers. They are wolves in sheep's clothing. 

 

This is what Paul warned the Ephesian elders about in Acts chapter 19. He says that there are going to be those who come from within you, from your midst, who are false teachers and who will lead people astray. And the only way that you can come to be watchful for arror is to really understand the truth, but that's not a guarantee. I know a lot of people who understand the truth but they just can't think critically, and so they have to rely on somebody has some critical thinking skills and really understand what's going. That's important. 

 

This last week as most of you know we went to Albuquerque to participate in a very short a prophecy conference, and the other speakers were Charlie Clough and Andy Woods. We represent three generations. In first Timothy 2:2 Paul talks to Timothy about the fact that "I committed to you this Word of truth. That's two generations—Paul and Timothy—and you commit this to faithful men also. Those "faithful men" is the third generation that will be able to teach others also. That's 1/4 generation. We went to this conference and Charlie Clough was there, and I first heard Charlie 50 years ago. My how time flies when you're having fun! Charlie would just wasn't even out of seminary. He was on his pastoral internship here in Houston and that's when I first heard him.

 

Charlie Clough gave me a love for the Old Testament. As he became pastor of Lubbock Bible church and taught the Old Testament I thought: "I've never heard anybody who really understood and put it together like that". And that gave me a desire to really know the Old Testament. He did such a fabulous job it gave me that hunger for it. 

 

And then in the late 90s or mid 90s a young lawyer in Southern California met George, Meisinger, and George gave him a desire to know the Scriptures. So Andy Woods then enrolled in Chafer seminary took his first year chafer seminary. Right after that he moved to Dallas to finish his degree there, and he was mentored by Charlie, by me, by Tommy Ice, and by number of others. So you see this progression, and the three of us were together. And we've got men in Chafer Seminary coming up as a fourth-generation, and this is what is needed. 

 

But it's interesting, when I get together with these guys and each one of us knows different things that are going on in our broader world, and I learned some things this weekend about what is happening among many of our seminaries. And that outside of Chafer and Tyndale I can't recommend any other seminary anymore because they have slid into false teaching in ways you can't imagine. It's just horrendous.

 

This is what Jesus is warning against in this in this particular chapter, and the problem that we have is what Jesus gets to in Matthew 23:12 as He concludes the first part of this condemnation of the Pharisees. 

 

Now if you are a product of our culture, especially if you're younger, if you're millennial, this doesn't sit well with you because everything supposed to be positive and build a good self-image. And Jesus is about as harsh as he could possibly be in His discussion of the religious leaders. This is His last public message. This isn't a feel-good message. It's not a motivational message. It is not an evangelism message. It's a warning that there are going to be people who come up in your midst, who are going to lead you astray, and they are, motivated by arrogance, and by a power lust and a desire to control people. They are motivated by gaining their own recognition and their own fame and are focused on exalting themselves.

 

As we look at the first part of this chapter, when we come to the last verse, it gives us the sort of the unifying theme that Jesus is focused on in this condemnation and He says whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. He is emphasizing the fact that the core problem with legalism, the core problem with false teachers is arrogance. And arrogance is always a rejection of divine authority and the assertion of one's own personal authority. 

 

Peter learned the lesson well as he was sitting there and in 1 Peter 5:5 he says, NASB "You younger men, likewise, be subject to {your} elders; and all of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, for GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE.

 

Peter is very focused on understanding submission. Submission is related to authority orientation and to humility. That's the foundation for it and it's interesting the word for submission is the word HUPOTASSO in the Greek. The root verb there is TASSO and submission is this idea to put yourself under the authority of someone else and he said he be "submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility É" Then he is going to quote from Proverbs and Psalms: "God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble". The word for "resist" is the Greek word ANTITASSO [HUPOTASSO = submit; ANTITASSO = not just resist but the word was used in extra-biblical literature to indicate the massing of troops to establish a battle line to fight against the enemy.] It was the idea of going to war, that God is going to go to war against the arrogant.     

 

God does not put up with the arrogant and He is going to be hostile to the arrogant. So Peter concludes, "Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time". 

 

James, who is the half-brother of our Lord's humanity, says, "but he gives more grace". James 4:6 NASB "But He gives a greater grace. Therefore {it} says, 'GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE'. [7] Submit therefore to God."  

 

And so the emphasis that we see here is that we have to start with humility. But it's really easy for leaders, for pastors, for other spiritual leaders, to succumb to arrogance. Arrogance is the greatest enemy of anyone who is in the pastoral ministry or theological professorship because we often believe our press reports. We talk, we teach, people say how wonderful we are, and we think that they're actually right.

 

One of the things a young pastor has to learn right away is you never believe what anybody tells you after class, unless they tell you that was a rotten sermon. Then they're probably right. But in 30 years of ministry nobody's ever quite said that, so that's not the problem. The problem is arrogance and what we see in ministry that has been a problem and was a problem with the Pharisees is people who are creating their own power base, their own fiefdoms.

 

Often people who are in congregations unwittingly feed that. They might say, "Well my pastor [fill in the blank], this is what he teaches." There's a fine line between having a congregation that has good esprit de corps and is proud of their pastor— There's something that should be there, that's good for any congregation—but you can cross the line and all of a sudden whatever that pastor says takes on an authority that is above the Scripture almost, and takes control over the Scripture. And I can name you a dozen examples of this, of pastors around the country and many more. There are some that are much more egregious than others. With some, it just happens unwittingly. 

 

There's a pastor in Southern California who has worldwide ministries, a strong advocate of Lordship salvation and he's had a huge role in evangelism and in establishing some schools and seminaries across the former Soviet Union. One of my colleagues on the Chafer board who used to be on the mission field with Jim Myers, Mark Musser, has been over there and the opposition of the Russian Baptist denomination is very, very much focused on expanding the ministry of the Southern California pastor. Mark was there with one of our graduates from The Word of God Institute and was over in an far eastern Russia. And they were teaching through to Romans with the DM2 material teaching of free grace gospel. But this student that was there has virtually been brought up on heresy charges by the by the leader of the Baptist Church there. And his ultimate authority isn't the Bible—Of course, that's what he says. That's what we all say: Well I read the Bible! Like my friend said the other day: Why, I just got that from reading the Bible. It is such a supercilious argument and what are they doing? They are saying, well this isn't what pastor so-and-so teaches. That becomes the ultimate authority. This is exactly what happened with the Pharisees of the time of Jesus. 

 

And if you read the Mishnah they will pose a question: Well what we do in this situation? They will say, Well Rabbi Hillel says this, and Rabbi Shammai says this, and nobody's going to the text of Scripture. We live in a world today where a lot of times Christians get together and they talk, and the say well,  John MacArthur says this, and Charles Swindoll says this, and so-and-so says this. Well what does the Bible say? Gotta get back to the Bible!

 

We can't either as pastors or as congregants elevate the pastor above his station. I mean, we all make mistakes, and every pastor I have focused on and then learned under has gone through a process of spiritual growth and knowledge, and theological growth, as they have come to understand the Scriptures better and better. 

 

I think that the 10 minutes before Jesus takes me home I will have a better handle on what the Scripture says that I had when I started. Don't you think that makes sense? And I will teach more accurately I hope at that time, than I did at the beginning. 

 

I think the pastor is one of those few professions you can go into—maybe doctors are the same way—where you're really better when you're in your 70s and 80s, unless you have dementia, than you were when you were in your 30s and 40s, because in your 30s and 40s you haven't had enough time. Now I wouldn't believe that when I was 30 or 40, but it's true. I look back at how much I have learned and grown in the Scripture in the last 20 years, compared to the previous 20 years. Every pastor goes to growth, but the rabbi at the time of Jesus wasn't the final authority. 

 

This is the problem that that we see. What Jesus is condemning here is religion, and so I want to look at a few things and just summarize some basic principles about what the Scripture says about religion. 

 

First of all, God abhors religion. God hates religion. He despises religion because religion is a product of human arrogance. It is not what God is seeking in His Word. And this often comes as a surprise to too many people; it's a great conversation starter. If you want to and want to talk to somebody you start off about going to church. They'll say, well I'm not religious, and you say, I'm not either; neither is God. What? God's not religious? No, God is not religious; God is God is focusing on a relationship. 

 

We have to understand that it is the way of the world system to think that man on his own always thinks he has the right idea about spirituality. I am using that in a very broad sense. So the right idea about how to be in touch with what ever the eternal is. But human viewpoint thinks more highly of itself than it ought to think. It thinks that it has a handle on truth, and it emphasizes things such as sincerity, devotion, having certain kinds of attitudes, and they label that is being spiritual or being religious, and that somehow that that impresses God.  

 

In human viewpoint, in our own arrogance what we really want when we talk about so many things is, we just want validation and approval, and we think that if we are sincere about what were doing, if we truly, genuinely believe it, then somehow that's going to impress God, and God is going to validate us by letting us come to heaven.

 

One of the ideas that often come out of many religions is the idea that all roads lead to God. I think there's only two beliefs that are exclusive.  Christianity, which focuses on a relation, not a religion; but then there's Islam, which is a religion, and if you don't submit to Allah, then you're not going anywhere. You're just going to come under Allah's condemnation.

 

Those are both exclusive and this drives others, unbelievers, crazy. But we have the statements in Scriptur,e one you hear me quote all the time on Sunday morning: "Jesus said I'm the way the truth and the life. No one can come to the father except by me." Now that is a pretty arrogant statement unless it's true. Jesus is claiming exclusivity, that He is the only way that anyone can have a relationship with God. And if you're looking at this from purely human viewpoint standard you think this guy's gotta be a real nut job. 

 

Well that's one of the options. Either Jesus is crazy, but that doesn't seem to fit the scenario of what we know of Jesus life. Or He's lying, and that doesn't fit the scenario of Jesus life either. So if Jesus isn't crazy and He is not lying, then maybe He's telling the truth, and if He is telling the truth then He is talking about the fact that He is the only way. And in John 11:25 he says a similar thing: "I am the resurrection and the life and he who believes in me, though he may die, he shall live".

 

And these verses emphasize that the way to have a relationship with God is simply through faith in Christ. It's not by works.

 

A third verse we can go to is in Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus, a Pharisee. Jesus said to him, ÒTruly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.Ó That's a pretty exclusive statement. How do you get born again? By believing in me. Once again it's showing that exclusivity. 

 

Religion is man doing works and God blesses them, but in Christianity God does all of the work and man receives it. 

 

So the first point is God hates religion because religion thinks everything is going to ultimately work out and we are going to get to be with God. And the second point is that religion is man doing something, whether it's various activities, whether it's moral obedience whatever—it may be certain ritual as man goes through these the jumps through these hoops checks off these marks and then God blesses him—whereas Christianity says that God does all of the work and man simply receives.

 

What I emphasizing here is that in religion God is the ultimate validator of whatever human beings do. There's no real absolute consistent absolute standard of universal righteousness. So as long as we are sincere then God validates us because he loves us so much. And the problem you have with this view is that with most religion it has a very high view of man, and a very low view of sin—a high view of man because they think that man just has to do a little bit more and God's going to pat him on the back, and it's a low view of sin because it doesn't understand the concept that man is spiritually dead and incapable of doing anything good. 

 

Only Christianity has a way of dealing with man's sin. 2 Corinthians 5:21 NASB "He made Him who knew no sin {to be} sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him".

 

Now Old Testament Judaism, in contrast to Pharisaism understood that works were not valid. We have passages like Isaiah 64:6 NASB "For all of us have become like one who is unclean, And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; And all of us wither like a leaf, And our iniquities, like the wind, take us away." Isaiah the prophet understood that all of our good deeds, all of our righteousness is as filthy rags.

 

But the solution was given in Isaiah 53, 10 and 11 talking about the suffering servant: NASB "But the LORD was pleased To crush Him, putting {Him} to grief; If He would render Himself {as} a guilt offering, He will see {His} offspring, He will prolong {His} days, And the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand. As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see {it and} be satisfied; By His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, As He will bear their iniquities."

 

"Satisfied" is the Christian doctrine of propitiation. Justice and righteousness were satisfied by the death of the Messiah. "By His knowledge my Righteous Servant will justify many". It is not that they are inherently good because their works are filthy rages, but because of the death of the Messiah they will be justified. Why? Because He shall bear their iniquities.

 

In the Old Testament the focus wasn't on the ritual, it was focused on the reality that the ritual was supposed to represent, which was mercy and grace. Micah 6:8 NASB "He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you [not all these details and regulations the Pharisees had developed] But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God?"

 

In context that ultimately is grounded on the fact that you have trusted in God and in his promise of a provision of this Messiah in the Old Testament so that now you can walk before God. 

 

The third thing about religion is that Christianity is a relationship with God but religion is a relationship with ritual or procedures or details or regulations and minutia. God told the Jews in the Mosaic Law that they were not to work on the Sabbath. They were not to do normal work on the Sabbath, but that they were to rest in God. 

 

The Pharisees came along and at first they developed 28 principles. The people would understandably say, "What do you mean, don't work? What should I not do?" So they came up with 28 things that you couldn't do and of course as you started to look at those you would say, What about this first thing? When can I do what about this? What about that? What about this other thing? And pretty soon each one of those 28 had 100 different stipulations and regulations related to it until it became impossible to figure out what you could or couldn't do. Their focus was on controlling people through the minutia, of all of these regulations. 

 

Whereas the original commandment was very general and didn't go in and spell out every single detail, leaving that up to the individual.

 

But Christianity is not a relationship with regulations; it's a relationship with God. We see this emphasized numerous places. 

 

For example, Genesis 5:24 talks about Enoch, and Enoch walked with God. That's a term for relationship. We also have for example, Isaiah 41:8 that talks about Abraham as God's friend. Also 2 Chronicles 20:7 refers to Abraham as God's friend forever and ever, and James 2:23 says he was called the friend of God. Being a friend is a relationship. 

 

I think we have a problem there we are going to have to deal with in our culture. We are seeing so many relational breakdowns today because in younger generations that have grown up with all their tech devices and their cell phones and everything else, you've all seen this. You go to eat at restaurant and you see a couple out on a date, and they're both looking at their cell phones but they're not talking to each other. They just spend all their time on their cell phone. We are going to see a massive problem with the millennial generation and younger when they get older because they didn't grow up learning how to have a relationship. 

 

Spiritually that can have implications because if you don't learn how to have a relationship with other human beings, except through a device, how are you can learn to have a relationship with God? You don't know how to relate; you don't know how to relate to another person. That's going to be a major aspect of ministry for Christians as we see these millennials come to Christ and talk about a relationship they don't know really what that means. Christianity is a relationship with God, not with regulations.

 

Then fourth, religion appeals to man's sin nature. It builds authorities in human beings where that authority should go to God. That's what we are going to see in this in this chapter. It appeals to approbation lust. People want to be approved by others. They want to get all those positive strokes and they are thinking they're getting these positive strokes from God. 

 

It appeals to power lust. They wanted to have power and control over people in the ancient world. They had fertility religions that emphasized sexual lust.  Today we have it, but it's expressed in other ways. You have religions that appeal to pleasure lust, all kinds of different things, intellectual lust, these cerebral cults that have developed over mind control another things like that.

 

And then the last point in terms of this introduction is that religion is Satan's greatest tool to distract people from God. In 2 Corinthians 11:13-15 we are warned about false apostles and false teachers. NASB "For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. No wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Therefore it is not surprising if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, whose end will be according to their deeds."

 

Nobody claims to be an enemy of Christ. They all claim to be a friend of Christ, representing Christ.

 

Like my friend the other day who said, "Well I got this from reading the Bible". I said, "Well I read the Bible too, I know Greek and Hebrew just as well as you do, don't give me this kind of supercilious argument. Lets break it down and get to the details of your understanding." But he's not a false teacher. 

 

You have false teachers who come along and they all claim biblical authority. And then Paul goes on to say: "No wonder, for Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light." Satan is going to look like a good guy, he's not going to look like a bad guy. He's not going to come out like on Halloween with horns and red skin and a tail, and look like the Devil. He's going to look like a good guy. 

 

Therefore, it is no great thing, Paul goes on to say, if his ministers also transform themselves into ministers of righteousness, whose end will be according to their works. 

 

See, this is the problem with the Pharisees. They are ministers of Satan. They are moral degenerates. They are disciples of the devil. They are promoting religion, but not a relationship with God; and that is why Jesus condemns them.

 

And anyone who says, I can tell you how to get to heaven, and what they tell you to do will take you straight to the lake of fire, ought to be strongly and roundly condemned because that kind of thinking destroys people. And that is what Jesus is getting at, that these shepherds of Israel have turned their flocks that God has given them over to wolves, and it is destroying the nation. This is why he announces judgment. 

 

So next time we will come back and start into the text, looking at what He says, His condemnations. There are a lot of things that need to be understood in this chapter because if you don't understand Pharisaism and the culture of the time it's really easy to take some of the statements completely out of context and misapply them. 

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