The harshest sermon ever preached, Part 2

Sermon for Holy Monday

Matthew 23:23-28

Now that we’re in Holy Week, turn your thoughts back to the Tuesday of the first Holy Week, as Jesus continues His tirade against the hypocritical scribes and Pharisees. He has three more curses to pronounce upon them in this evening’s verses, and three more lessons for us to learn from them.

The fifth curse: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law: judgment, mercy, and faith. These you ought to have done, and not leave the others undone. God’s Law required the Israelites to set aside a tithe or a “tenth” of their produce and give it to the priests, as part of their wages. But the Pharisees were so meticulous with their tithing that they didn’t just focus on the regular fruits and vegetables. They focused even on the lesser produce, like herbs and spices and tiny little seeds. Every minor detail of the Law they were careful to observe. And that would have been praiseworthy, except that, in “majoring on the minors,” as some call it, they neglected the majors. In other words, they spent so much time counting out each tiny seed from their fields and gardens that they neglected the much-more-important and weightier things like justice in their courts, and mercy toward their neighbor, and faith in God. To truly keep God’s Law, you have to keep all of it. And you also have to recognize and imitate God’s priorities. Throughout the Old Testament, God makes it clear that justice and mercy toward one’s neighbor, and faith in God—which we call the moral Law—are the big things, while the details of the ceremonial laws were lesser things, and would eventually pass away entirely. In fact, even the tithing laws sprang out of justice and mercy. Tithing wasn’t a goal in itself. The goal was making sure that God’s priests and Levites, along with the poor, were properly taken care of. But the Pharisees made it all about their meticulous obedience to every detail of the Law.

Jesus illustrates it with this memorable picture: You blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel. Flying insects were technically unclean for the Israelites and weren’t to be eaten. So the Pharisees were very careful to strain out even the tiniest gnat that might have fallen into a cup. Meanwhile, they “swallowed a camel.” Not literally. But again, while the Pharisees were busy focusing on the tiny things, boasting about how obedient they were, they neglected the huge things, and taught others to do the same. Instead, they should have taught the people about God’s grace and goodness toward sinners. They should have taught the people to love God, to trust in Him, to love their neighbor and have mercy on him, to repent of their sins and to look to the Messiah to provide atonement. And then they should have practiced what they preached!

The sixth curse: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you make the outside of the cup and of the platter clean, but inside they are full of extortion and excess. You blind Pharisee! First clean what is inside the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also. Again, the Pharisees were meticulous with their ceremonial washings of pitchers and cups and platters and hands. And they taught people, that, if they truly wanted to be pleasing to God, they had to do the same things. But it was all about externals for them. They failed to point people to the inward sins that flowed from their corrupt and sinful hearts, the greed, and the selfishness, and the love of excess drinking and eating and partying. Jesus made this same point earlier in Matthew’s Gospel: For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man. God wasn’t concerned with clean cups! He was concerned with clean hearts, and those only come from God who cleanses the filthy hearts of penitent sinners and creates a new heart in a man. Sinners are cleansed from the inside out, not from the outside in.

And finally for tonight, the seventh curse: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs that indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and of all uncleanness. Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. Whitewashed tombs. What a perfect analogy! People back then, like people now, made tombs and crypts and gravesites look beautiful. But everyone knows what’s on the inside of those tombs and coffins: dead things, rotting things. That’s what Jesus accuses the Pharisees of being, looking righteous and beautiful on the outside, while inside they were full of corruption, uncleanness, hypocrisy, and wickedness. It’s the definition of hypocrisy—making yourself appear to be one thing, while, actually, on the inside, being just the opposite.

Oh, take these curses to heart! The ministers of Israel had all but destroyed Israel through their hypocrisy and wickedness, and Jesus was fed up with them. He pronounced these curses upon them, but even then, it was only the sword of His mouth that attacked them, no lightning from heaven, no fire and sulfur raining down, no fistfights or brawls or anything of the sort. Neither Jesus nor His followers respond to wickedness in that way. Instead, the Son of God preaches harshly against them, to expose them for all to see, and to reveal God’s righteous anger against hypocrisy and those who practice it.

Now, there is such a thing as hypocrisy among Christians. There are many who pretend to be Christians, when, in reality, they don’t live according to the Christian faith or believe the teachings of the Christian faith. And if that’s true among laymen, it’s even more true among clergy, with scandal after scandal revealing far too much hypocrisy among those who pretend to serve Christ but actually serve only themselves. If you find any hypocrisy within yourself, admit it immediately and turn to God for forgiveness.

But remember this: To be a Christian does not, by definition, make a person a hypocrite, as some wrongly accuse. A hypocrite tries to fool people into believing he is something different than what he truly is, something better, something holier. That’s not what Christianity is about, though. Christians try to be sinless, struggle to be sinless, and holy, and righteous, but we don’t pretend to be sinless. On the contrary, what do we confess openly and publicly every Sunday? O almighty God, merciful Father, I confess to You that I am by nature sinful and unclean, and that I have sinned against You in my thoughts, words, and deeds. For this I deserve nothing but Your wrath and punishment. There’s no pretending there, only blunt honesty. No, when we approach God, unlike the Pharisees, we approach Him not because of our goodness but in spite of our wickedness, trusting in His promise to be merciful to sinners who approach Him through faith in His beloved Son, who called out His enemies for the hypocrites that they were, and then submitted Himself to those very hypocrites, at the end of that week, to be condemned and crucified, for love of His sheep, for love of us all. Amen.