Matthew 23, 27 and 28. A little context here. Jesus is talking to the Pharisees and the
scribes, the experts in the law. These would have been the really religious people of the
day and certainly some of them probably really were obedient to God but as we see in the
scriptures there were a lot of them that really looked the part. They looked the part. They
spoke the right words but Jesus called them out pretty harshly here in Matthew chapter
23. And we're just reading a couple of little verses here but that might be good homework
for you this week if you want to go through and read all of Matthew 23. It's pretty stern
the language that Jesus uses. So let's read through the text, Matthew 23, 27 and 28.
Then we'll pray and get started. Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You are
like whitewashed tombs which appear beautiful on the outside but inside are full of a dead
man's bones and every impurity. In the same way on the outside you seem righteous to people
but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. Let's pray. Father God we come to you this
morning and we thank you for your word and dear Lord this is a heavy word. It was heavy
for the Pharisees and dear Lord maybe it's heavy for us today. Maybe we fall into this
same category dear Lord. Maybe we do a good job of looking good on the outside but being
pretty rotten on the inside dear Lord. So God maybe we are hypocrites today. If so I
pray that your word would speak to us to let us see that. That you would encourage us through
this word dear Lord that we would learn from our hypocrisy and God be those who genuinely
trust you and serve you and live for you. God I pray that you would hide me behind the
cross that you would take away any pride or any fear I have today that I would be able
to preach and teach your word in a way that brings glory and honor to you. I pray that
your Holy Spirit would speak the words that you want me to speak that you want us to hear
and that we would listen to him dear Lord and that they would transform our lives. And
I ask these things in Jesus name. Amen. When you read through Matthew 23 you will see in
this short little section here in 19 verse span Jesus calls this group hypocrites seven
times. Now this is kind of a dirty word. This is not a word that any of us would like to
be called. None of us would like to be called out in our hypocrisy. We wouldn't like that
especially this religious group. Especially this group that Jesus was talking to because
they would have really considered themselves to be something special. They really would
have said that they were probably a little better than everybody else. They were better
at following God's laws than everybody else. They were better at doing what God said than
everybody else. But Jesus saw through that. He saw through their religion. He saw through
their outward actions and he knew that their heart was not right. That's pretty evident
to tell as you read through the New Testament as you see these encounters that Jesus has
with these Pharisees. Quite often it's easy to see that their hearts are totally from
where they need to be. They are far from being hearts that are focused on God. And here in
Matthew 23 Jesus really calls them out for it. So you can understand why it wasn't long
after this point that Jesus was nailed to a cross. They didn't like Jesus and then Jesus
goes and really gets on them here in Matthew 23. And certainly that would not have been
well received by this audience. But what does he say in this scripture? What does he compare
them to? He says in verse 27 that they are like whitewashed tombs which appear beautiful
on the outside but inside are full of dead men's bones and every impurity. Now whitewashing,
that might be something that you're familiar with or maybe not. If you watch HGTV you see
a lot of home restoration shows. Sometimes you see that's a popular thing. It kind of
became popular here in the last few years. And it's a good way to take something that's
old and particularly brick if you want more of a fresh look to whitewash it. Now whitewashing
is predominantly made up of lime. Now a lot of times what you see on these shows they'll
just water down some paint and scrub it on there. But traditionally speaking when you
talk about whitewash it's a lime. It's kind of the main ingredient and it can be a little
thicker than what we may think of as whitewash today. And it was common especially in those
days to wipe it and smear it along and around the entrance of a tomb or a rock that covered
a tomb, whatever it may be. That tomb would be covered in whitewash. Now that may have
been for a couple of different reasons. Some have suggested that tombs in those days were
marked with whitewash to make them stand out. That way nobody would get too close to a tomb
and be unclean because they touched something from a dead body. And so some have suggested
that whitewash tombs was simply a way for people to easily identify that there was a
grave there. Now we kind of, in our day, most of our graves are in a graveyard. It's easy
to tell where the graves are. They're usually within a fence of some sort and they're usually
well-kept and they're usually marked by a tombstone. But in Bible times there might
have been a grave here and a grave there and might have been a hole in the rock somewhere
here that they were stuck in. And so these tombs were kind of all over the place. And
so whitewashing might have been one way to establish that there was a tomb there that
everybody would easily be able to see those traveling from out of town. Perhaps there
were some other purposes for it too though. As far as lime goes, lime is good at killing
disease. It's a good disinfectant. And so it might have had some disinfectant qualities
too. After all, you've got a tomb there, you've got a dead body, the dead body begins to decay,
there could have been some disease there. And so perhaps part of it was simply we want
to make sure to disinfect this area and to take care of everything. And you still throughout
the centuries whitewashing is something that you see some places in the world. It's kind
of a part of their style, part of their building structures, the cyclades, some islands off
of Greece. Those islands are known for the fact that they have whitewash buildings. Every
building there is whitewashed. Every one of them is whitewashed with blue doors and blue
shutters and blue everything. That's kind of their style. And so throughout the years,
people have used whitewash for a variety of things. And whitewashing in and of itself
is not bad, but Jesus is using this term to make a comparison here, to say, okay, there's
a contrast between what you think you are and what you really are. And so when he tells
these people that they're hypocrites, and he's already said it several times before
we get to this verse, they're probably already steaming. And then he simply uses something
that they're all familiar with and he compares them with tombs. Now, they would have been
proud if they would have been considered whitewashed, if they would have been pure and clean and
disinfected, so to speak, from all the sin around them, they probably would have wore
that title proudly. But what Jesus said is, you are like a tomb. Now, anybody that knows
about tombs and about graves know that it doesn't matter what you see on top of the
ground. And the truth of the matter is this, that what's in the ground, it is rotting and
it is decaying. And we might not like to think about that, but that is the cycle of life.
That's the way things go. I was walking by the cemetery the other day and I saw some
beautiful tombstones. And there are some people probably in your family and maybe when you
die, you're going to have a beautiful tombstone and maybe on top of the ground, your family
is going to keep it well manicured and it's going to have the most beautiful flowers kept
up all year round for every season and your tombstone may be encrusted with diamonds.
I don't know. It may be as beautiful as it can be, but in the ground, we are going to
decay to the point to where we will eventually turn back into dust. And Jesus tells his audience
here who thought that they were really holy, really special. Jesus says, you are like a
tomb, like a whitewashed tomb. Jesus says on the outside, you are beautiful. You are
spotless and it's easy for everybody to see who you are. They can see you from a mile
away by what they see on the outside and they can say, oh wait, there's those holy Pharisees.
And then Jesus tells them the hard part, the part that they don't want to hear, the part
that maybe you and I don't want to hear today. And Jesus says on the inside, you are rotting
away. On the outside of that tomb, it's beautiful, but Jesus says inside of that tomb is nastiness
and dirtiness and filth and gross stuff and it is rotting away. And Jesus says, you look
the part on the outside, but inside you are a dirty, rotten, nasty sinner. Whoa. Well,
those are pretty heavy words that Jesus uses here. And maybe he picks this term whitewashing.
Maybe he's trying to call his audience back to Ezekiel 13. There's a large section in
Ezekiel 13 where God is condemning the false prophets, those who are acting like they are
God's people, but really they are leading people astray from God. They are leading people
in the wrong direction. And the same illustration is used there. It's used of the false prophets
to say, oh look, you've made whitewashed walls, but one day those walls are going to crumble
because they're not built on God. And then you'll gather around and say, but what about
all the beautiful whitewash? What happened to these beautiful walls? We see the same
language in Acts chapter 23 when Paul is, he's always on trial. He's always under attack.
And on one of those occasions he's brought before the high priest and he uses the same
language. He says that they are like a whitewash wall, the Sanhedrin and the high priest that
Paul has brought before. Now, certainly it seems as though Paul is referencing that story
in Ezekiel in the same way that Jesus is here. And what Jesus tells his audience and what
Paul told his audience and what God told his audience in Ezekiel is this, is it does not
matter what's on the outside. It matters what's on the inside. This is a simple and basic
truth that we see throughout the New Testament. We see this in a few ways maybe that Jesus
reveals the same truth to us in his teaching. And that is we don't want to be those who
simply look the part on the outside. We want to be those people who live for God on the
inside. And so we have a simple question that we have to answer today and I can't answer
that question for you and you can't answer that question for me. We can all look as good
as we want to look on the outside. We can fool everybody. We can do all of the religious
things and we can say long prayers and we can do a lot of really religious stuff and
come to church and put lots of money in the plate. All to be seen by people and we may
have every appearance of good in our life but we need to look at our heart because within
our hearts there may be every appearance of evil in our life. And so perhaps today we
need to look at ourselves and we need to see is there sin there? Is there evil there? Is
there rottenness there that we're simply trying to cover up? Are we simply trying to cover
it up? Are we trying to whitewash our lives? Are we trying to fool everybody in this building
today? And you may can fool everybody in this building. You may have done a good job of
that but you can't fool God. And no matter how we look on the outside one day we will
stand before God and God always looks at the heart. God doesn't look at what man looks
like. It looks at God looks at our heart. So what's on our heart today? Are we whitewash
tombs today that are rotten on the inside? Are we those who are on the inside who are
doing the will of God? Living in obedience to God. If we're not today we need to stop
pretending. We need to ask God to change our heart. We need to go before God with the things
in our heart that shouldn't be there, the things that we struggle with. And maybe today
we need to acknowledge a hard truth that we would rather not admit and that is that we
are hypocrites. That we come to church on Sundays, that we say we love the Lord, but
yet we don't live it out. We don't show it in our actions, we don't show it in our attitudes,
we don't show it in the way that we treat other people. And maybe today if we're honest
with ourself, maybe there are more of us in here than we care to admit that we are a bunch
of hypocrites today. And praise the Lord. If we come to that truth today, if we hear
this passage today, if we hear the words of Jesus today, how will we respond? Well the
Pharisees, many of them at least, it doesn't appear responded very well. Wouldn't it have
been great if they would have said, Jesus, you know you're right, we are a bunch of hypocrites.
But they didn't. They continued in their hypocrisy and did their best to get rid of Jesus. What
about you and I this morning? We hear the words of Jesus here, are these words speaking
to us today? Yes, they were spoken to some Pharisees, but Jesus is speaking to us today
too. Will we hear these words and respond to them? Will we ask him to forgive our hypocrisy
and will we strive to live in obedience to him? Or will we simply walk away angry at
the Word of God today? Let us not be those who walk away from the Word of God, but walk
to the Word of God and trust in Jesus Christ. And not those who live in hypocrisy, but those
who live in the Word and obedience to God. Let's pray. Father God, we come to you, we
thank you for your good word today. I pray that you would help us to consider this simple
truth. Dear Lord, maybe we fooled ourselves. Maybe we've whitewashed ourselves so good
we think we're a little better than we are. Dear Lord, maybe we think just like the Pharisees
today. Maybe we fall into the same traps. We don't like to admit it, we don't like
to think it no more than they did. God, maybe if Jesus come in here today and preached to
us, we might not receive this word any better than they did. We think we would, dear Lord,
but the problem is, God, we have sin in our life just as they did. So dear Lord, I pray
that you would help us to examine ourselves, to see the areas of hypocrisy in our life
that we have, that we stop pretending, that we don't put on a mask that we're something
better than we are, but dear Lord, we just come to you and just lay it all out. God,
we are broken, we are a mess, we are rotten, we are sinners. And God, I pray that you would
just help us to see that, to be convicted of that, to confess that to you today, to
repent of our sins. God, that's what your word calls us to, that we would repent of
our hypocrisy. Yeah, if we're hypocrites, God, that's bad, but we don't have to keep
being a hypocrite. So I pray that you help us, because this is a struggle, dear Lord.
There are some parts of our life that we live in hypocrisy, we don't even realize it. We
don't even know it. So help us to see those things and be made aware of those things,
to repent of those things, God, and not to just look apart, dear Lord. We don't want
to just come to church on Sunday and look apart. We really want to know who you are,
dear Lord, and live for you. We really want our hearts to be changed so that people wouldn't
see us on the street and see us as a hypocrite, but people would see us on the street and
see us as people who love you and who love others, dear Lord, that you would receive
all the glory from that. So God, help us to be a good example, because, dear Lord, what
a tragedy it is that those of us who are supposed to represent you sometimes fail so miserably,
God. We have to be a light to the world, dear Lord. And if our light is nothing more than
hypocrisy, then, dear Lord, we're not doing a good job of turning people to you, and even
worse, dear Lord, we may be turning people away. So I pray, dear Lord, that you would
just help us during this Christmas season, that we would remember the light of the world
in Jesus Christ, that we would seek to be a light in the world with the people we encounter,
dear Lord. Forgive us of our sinfulness, dear Lord. We can whitewash the outside, but, dear
Lord, we pray today that Jesus would whitewash the inside with his precious blood, that we
would be cleansed as white as snow, and if there's one in this room that doesn't know
Jesus, God, I pray today that they would repent, confess their sins, and ask forgiveness. And
I ask these things in Jesus' name, amen.