Matthew 23:25-33 “You’re Just Like Them”

Matthew 23: "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence. 26 "Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also.

Please Turn In Your Bibles Mark 7:1-23 (For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they carefully wash their hands, thus observing the traditions of the elders; and when they come from the market place, they do not eat unless they cleanse themselves; and there are many other things which they have received in order to observe, such as the washing of cups and pitchers and copper pots.)

Vs. 25 “full of extortion and self-indulgence” “full of what you have gotten by violence and selfishness.”

Please Turn In Your Bibles Mark 7:1-23 “All of you listen,” He said, “and try to understand. It’s not what goes into your body that defiles you; you are defiled by what comes from your heart.”

Ezekiel 36:26 “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”

2 Timothy 3:1-5 “But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, …lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.”

“Keeping up religious appearances while your private world is corrupt and falling apart.” “ If I take care of my character, my reputation will take care of itself.” D. L. Moody

Please Turn In Your Bibles 1 John 1:5-10 “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from all sin.”

Vs "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”

Numbers 19:11-13 “Whoever touches the dead body of anyone will be unclean for seven days… Whoever touches the dead body of anyone and fails to purify himself defiles the L ORD ’s tabernacle. That person must be cut off from Israel.”

The Message “You’re like manicured grave plots, grass clipped and the flowers bright, but six feet down it’s all rotting bones and worm-eaten flesh. People look at you and think you’re saints, but beneath the skin you’re total frauds.”

Vs "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, and say, 'If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.' Therefore you are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.”

Tombs in Jerusalem

“Religion is the worst enemy of genuine Christianity” Haddon Robinson

Matthew Henry - 18 October 1662 – 22 June 1714 “Carnal people can easily honor the memories of faithful ministers that are dead and gone, because they do not reprove them, nor disturb them, in their sins.”

Matthew 22:1-9 “But they paid no attention and went their way, one to his own farm, another to his business, and the rest seized his slaves and mistreated them and killed them.”

2 Chronicles 36:15-16 “The L ORD, the God of their fathers, sent word to them through his messengers again and again, because he had pity on his people and on his dwelling place. But they mocked God’s messengers, despised his words and scoffed at his prophets until the wrath of the L ORD was aroused against his people and there was no remedy.”

“They think, if they had lived in the days of the prophets, they would have heard them gladly and obeyed; and yet they rebelled against the light that Christ brought into the world. But it is certain, a Herod and Herodias to John the Baptist, would have been an Ahab and Jezebel to Elijah.”

“The deceitfulness of sinners’ hearts appears very much in this, that, while they go down the stream of the sins of their own day, they fancy they should have swum against the stream of the sins of the former days; that, if they had had other people’s opportunities, they (would have done better!) …

Matthew Henry We are sometimes thinking, if we had lived when Christ was upon earth, how constantly we would have followed him; we would not have despised and rejected him, as they then did; and yet (today) Christ in his Spirit, in His word, in His ministers, is still no better treated.”

Vs "Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers' guilt. Serpents, brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell?”

“Go ahead and finish what your ancestors started by killing me too” “keep on sinning, and so prove yourselves to be just as evil as they are.”

1 Thessalonians 2:14-16 “You suffered from your own countrymen the same things those churches suffered from the Jews, who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out. They displease God and are hostile to all men in their effort to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. In this way they always heap up their sins to the limit. The wrath of God has come upon them at last.”

John 8:44 “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” “There is no escape for you.”