FOLLOW | Confronting

You're going to remain standing for the reading of God's Word. This is Matthew 23 verses 13, 15, and 23 to 32. It says, "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You shut the door of the kingdom in people's faces. Do yourselves, do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You travel over land and seed to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much child of hell as you are. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You give a tenth of your spices, mint, dill, and cumin, but you have neglected the more important matters of the law, justice, mercy, and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter without neglecting the former. You blind guides, you strain out a gnat, but swallow a camel. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside, you appear to people as righteous, but on the inside, you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, if we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part in them with them in the shedding of blood of the prophets. So you testify against yourself that you are to the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Go ahead then and complete what your ancestors started. This is the word of the Lord.

You may be seated. Downtown. What's going on? You guys doing all right? Well, we have a fun teaching tonight from Jesus. If you picked it up from the teaching text, this is a hard, hard teaching. If I haven't met you yet, my name is Tim. I serve as one of the pastors here on staff. And we're pressing forward in our summer teaching series called Follow, where we're just paying attention to how Jesus lived and asking the question, what does it actually mean to follow Jesus as New Yorkers in Manhattan in 2026? And today we're going to be in Matthew 23, looking at Jesus' confrontation with the religious leaders. Now as you've probably already gathered, this is one of Jesus' most intense moments in the Gospels. This is a text that one commentator called, quote, "the most troubling chapter in all of the Gospels." Another scholar wrote that he stands next to this text in a, quote, "state of shock," and sometimes wishes that it wasn't in the Bible. And so the reality is that this is a hard teaching from Jesus, and oftentimes even in my own walk with God, I've found that there is a right way to receive a difficult word, and there's also a wrong way to receive a difficult word. And so the title of today's talk is confronting, and the mistake that we can make is believing that Jesus is handing us, like, a how-to guide for confronting sin in the church or sin in our brothers and sisters. The mistake is that we walk away from tonight and go on a confronting campaign where we just start calling people out and just diving into confrontation. That's actually the trap that this text is surfacing. And the right way to read it, I think, is actually best illustrated in a story that comes from the life of King David in the Old Testament.

So there's this moment in 2 Samuel where David the King, he's committed a terrible, terrible sin. And he didn't come clean, he covered it up, he started living kind of a double lifestyle, and God gives him chance after chance to repent. But David has a heart issue. And so what God does, because he loves David, is he sends David a prophet named Nathan. And Nathan doesn't just instantly march in with this accusation. He actually tells the king a story, and it goes like this. There were two men in a certain town. One of the men was very wealthy. He had lots of livestock and sheep and herd. There was a second man who lived in the town and he was the poorest. He had no herds, he had no sheep, he had no livestock. All he had was one baby lamb, and he loved this lamb. It grew up with him, he raised it. He loved it like it was his own daughter. And one day, the rich man had a guest come in his town and instead of taking one of his own sheep to prepare a meal for the guest, he steals the poor man's only lamb, he kills it, and he serves it to his guest. Now, what do you think King David did when he heard this story from Nathan? He's furious, he was angry, it says he burned with anger and he said, "The man who did this must die. He must pay for this four times what he took." And then there's this moment where the prophet Nathan looks King David square in the eyes and he says, "You are that man, you are that man."

And the point is is that David, in this story, could see the evil perfectly when he thought that it belonged to someone else, he just couldn't see it in himself. And I think this is how we have to approach Matthew 23 today. Not who do I need to confront, but God, where do you want to confront me? A couple of weeks ago, our church of the city staff team, we did a whole day of seeking God where we just spend the entire day in prayer. And Pastor Sam Gibson led us through the day. And one of the first questions that he asked our team to think about and to pray about is to ask God the question, God, where do you want to confront me? And so I pray that prayer and I'm sitting with this text, beginning to think about it and pray through it. And it was almost hard for me to get through the sermon because God was confronting so many places in my own heart. And so I just want to encourage you guys, you want to pray a dangerous prayer. God, where do you want to confront me today? And just open up your heart to how he may want to speak to you. So we pick up in Matthew 23, and this is a really important moment in scripture. Jesus is in the final days of his life, and there's just a level of seriousness and conviction that he's speaking with because in Jesus' mind, he knows that the cross is coming soon.

And so he's standing in the temple courts in Jerusalem, and he's coming off of a series of heated confrontations and debates with all the religious leaders. They were called the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Herodians. Now I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago in our talk around loving God, but it bears repeating. There's a tremendous temptation when reading through the Bible to distance ourselves from the Pharisees. But we have to remember that in the first century, they were the serious ones. They were the ones who took scripture seriously. They were the ones who cared so deeply about holiness and faithfulness to God. Very few people would have assumed their hypocrisy and self-righteousness. Most people would have assumed that they're the ones that are getting it right. They're the leaders that we're trying to follow and model our lives after. And so in this text, Jesus repeats this phrase several times. He says, "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees." And this raises a challenge because oftentimes, we do not see ourselves as first century teachers of the law and Pharisees. There's one commentator, Frederick Booner, who translated it, and I really like this. He's basically saying that if Jesus were to say this to a room of Christians today, here's how he would say it.

Woe to you leaders in the religiously serious. So if you're in here today and you find yourself in a position where you take your walk with Jesus seriously or you desire to take your faith seriously, just be careful, just be careful not to put too much distance between yourself and the Pharisees. So in the previous chapter, Matthew 22, the religious leaders are raising question after question to Jesus, they're trying to test him and catch him in his words with the main purpose of attempting to discredit him as the Messiah so that they can sway the people away from him. And this goes on until chapter 23 when Jesus finally says, "Man, enough is enough." And he's ticked off and he turns the mirror away from himself and he puts it on these leaders and he confronts them. And as you read through it, it's not like a gentle correction or a gentle rebuke. He rails against these leaders. He calls them snakes, brood of vipers, which is like a nest of baby snakes, blind Pharisees, so insulting. But there's one word that he repeats seven times. And this is just the word that I wanna focus today's teaching around. Does anyone know what it is? Hypocrisy, hypocrisy. He calls them out for being hypocrites. Now, the word hypocrite is mentioned 19 times

throughout the Bible. And what's interesting is that 15 of those mentions all occur in the gospel of Matthew. And each time Matthew shares the word hypocrisy, he's directly quoting Jesus. So I mention that because there's very few words in the Bible that belong as exclusively to Jesus as does the word hypocrite. So it begs the question, well, what is a hypocrite? I think most of us have a generic understanding that a hypocrite is someone who doesn't practice what they preach. Their actions don't align with their words. I like how Honest Abe, Abe Lincoln, defines hypocrite. He said this, "Hypocrite is the man who murdered his parents and then pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan." So let me say that again. Hypocrite is the man who murdered his parents and then pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan. The Greek word for hypocrite comes from the word hypocrite, and it was a theater word. It literally referred to a stage actor, someone who would hide behind a mask and they would speak someone else's lines. Now when you break that word down even further, it breaks down into hippo, which means under, and creno, which means to judge. And this is so important, don't miss this

because a hypocrite is not just someone who pretends and hides behind a mask, but it's someone who under judges self and by nature oftentimes over judges others. And so the basic idea of hypocrisy is it always involves some sort of contradiction or inconsistency between what's presented versus what is actually true. And that contradiction typically shows up in three forms, and this is just what I wanna build this talk around. I'm gonna call these the three masks of hypocrisy. So the first one is hypocrisy towards others. And this is when there's a contradiction between the standard that I hold for myself and the standard that I place on other people and that I hold other people to. The second is hypocrisy toward ourselves, and this is when there's a contradiction between what I say, what I think, and what I believe, and how I live. You can have hypocritical thoughts that never actually leave you through how you speak. The third way is, and I think arguably probably the most dangerous, is hypocrisy towards God. And this is a contradiction between what I say is right and wrong and what God says is right and wrong. So why are we talking about this? We've been doing this incredible series on following Jesus, on discipleship. And man, it's so nice to preach on loving God

with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength. So why did we put in the woes to the Pharisees? Why is hypocrisy a problem? Well, we live in a cultural moment that has largely gotten rid of God. Now I just wanna say that there are some beautiful, beautiful changes that are happening, especially in the younger generation. But by and large, words like sin and judgment in hell, words that would have been very common in culture, even as recently as 50 years ago, have mostly disappeared from public life. And what's ironic is at the same time, there's very few cultures in human history that have been more obsessed with criticizing and canceling the unrighteous. So in other words, we've gotten rid of the judge, but the judgment is still alive and well. There was a guy named John Ronson, who wrote a book called, So You've Been Publicly Shamed, which is kinda sad that there's a book called that, but that is the reality of our culture. And in the book, he spent years interviewing people whose lives were just devastated by social media-driven public shaming. He says this, there's a great renaissance of public shaming that's sweeping our land. We've created a culture where people feel constantly surveilled, where people are afraid to be themselves. He basically describes a world where one mistake,

one slip up can just become this verdict over an entire person's character. It's like one wrong sentence in an even. One screenshot of a message, one post from 2015, and it feels like your character is put on trial. And the reason why this is a problem and why we're talking about it is that as a culture, we live in a world where we are becoming increasingly skilled at spotting what is wrong with everyone else while becoming increasingly blind to what's happening with ourselves. And it's not just happening in the culture, it's also sadly happening in the church. In 2023, the Barna research group did a study where they pulled all these non-Christians asking them the question, what is it that causes people to doubt Christianity? Like what are the issues that are keeping people from coming to faith in Jesus? And they asked about issues like science in the problem of good and evil, and the problem of human suffering. And what's shocking is that among all non-Christians, the number one issue above and beyond that caused them to doubt was hypocrisy. Hypocrisy in religious people and people who would call themselves Christians. A 42% said that it's the hypocrisy of religious people that causes them to doubt. And this matters because hypocrisy

is not only hurting Christians, but it's also damaging our witness to the outside world. It's hurting our ability to bring the light of Jesus to every business place and every apartment complex in every home. Now some of you, you walk in through these doors tonight and you don't need a statistic from Barna to prove that that's true. You have a story. There's people who walk in here tonight who have been hurt by the church. There's people who have had a really bad experience with a Christian or someone who would call them a Christian. And if that's you tonight, just two things I wanna say, number one, I hate that happened to you. I'm sorry. I genuinely think that it's fair to expect the church and to expect Christians to be a community of love that looks more and more like Jesus. But number two, and more importantly, Jesus hates that. There are very few people in human history who have loved the church more and yet been harder on the church than Jesus, especially in this area. John Ortberg who wrote this book Who Is This Man? It's one of the books that we have on the stand in the back. Incredible apologetic to the person of Christ. He writes this about Jesus' sermon on the woes.

If you've ever been bothered by religious hypocrites, if you've ever wanted to post a scathing blog about how much they turn your stomach, you'll have to get in line behind Jesus because I don't know of any address by any enemy of religion that is more stinging in its rebuke. What Ortberg's saying is that even Christianity's most intense opponents don't speak the way that Jesus speaks in this text. Why? Well, I think Jesus knows something. I think that he's tapping into a deeper reality of the human heart and it's this is that hypocrisy is unique in the sense that it's one of the few sins that causes the human heart to defend its own righteousness, its own rightness at all costs. And thus it puts a person in a self-imposed prison that Jesus himself cannot break into. And not only that, but it brings other people into that prison with them. And this is why he speaks so intensely with such words towards these leaders. In Matthew 13, Jesus says this and he's quoting Isaiah six talking about this issue. He says, "For these people's hearts have become calloused." So it's about the heart. That they hardly hear with their ears and they close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts

and listen to the heart of Jesus and turn and I would heal them. Do you hear the mercy of God coming through the lament of Jesus and his desire to see these people and these leaders know him? So let's just break this down, the three mass of hypocrisy. So the first is hypocrisy towards others. And this is a contradiction of standards between ourselves and other people. So this is when we hold others to a higher standard and we expect more out of them than we do for ourselves. Verse 13, this is the first time the word hypocrite is used. Jesus says, "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees. You hypocrites. You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven and people's faces and yet you yourselves, So this was about the religious leaders making rituals and tradition more important Than loving God and his word and I just want you to notice the contradiction They're telling other people how to enter the kingdom of heaven and yet they themselves do not enter They had rejected Jesus as the Messiah, but still positioned themselves as the spiritual authorities over everyone else And so what Jesus is saying is it's one thing to be led astray But it is an entirely different thing to then lead other people astray He continues verse 15 What do you teachers of the law and Pharisees you hypocrites you travel over land and see to win a single? Convert and when you have succeeded and I can't believe he says this you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are It's intense language And again notice the contradiction they went to great lengths to change other people While they themselves remain fundamentally unchanged. They went to great lengths to correct Somebody else's beliefs and yet. They can't correct their own beliefs

there's a story told by Mark Twain and He basically talks about a wealthy pious businessman from Boston And this man is bragging to all of his friends and all all the people in the community About how he has this grand plan to fly across or to travel across land and see and go to Israel climb to the top of Mount Sinai and from the top of Mount Sinai read out the Ten Commandments and Mark Twain in his classic tone fires back and he says why don't you just stay in Boston and keep the Ten Commandments? Now the reality is is that there is this temptation in all of us towards religious Piety and showing and projecting towards other people and I think that that we can fall into this where there is this contradiction This is when we call someone else out for their sin, but we remain blind To our own and just to share a few examples of how I've even felt this play out We call someone inconsiderate when they're late But when we're late well, there's a whole story right? There's complexity that the subway was delayed and my baby threw up on me had to change my clothes It was all a disaster We call someone else materialistic materialistic when they spend money, but when we spend money, it's because we value quality And there was a real need We can call someone else angry when they lose their temper, but when we lose ours. Well, it's because we were under so much pressure Don't you understand? So often we give ourselves all this context and all this backstory, but rarely do we extend that context to others So Jesus continues he goes into verse 23 Woe to you teachers of law teachers of the law and Pharisees you hypocrites You give a tenth of your spices mint dill and cumin, but you have Neglected the more important matters of the law the things that God truly cares about justice Mercy and faithfulness you should have practiced the latter without neglecting The the former so these Pharisees what they had done is they had resorted to strict obedience where they're literally Tithing and measuring out like teaspoons of kitchen spices The Old Testament law the law of Moses it commanded the tithing of produce and crops and things like grain and oil and wine But the Pharisees they take it one step further and they start tithing the garden herbs that are that are growing in little pots on their windowsills But again notice the contradiction Jesus points out They're incredibly demanding in all of the minor areas

While completely neglecting the major areas like justice and mercy and faithfulness Which ironically are all of the commandments that are geared towards loving other people and what Jesus is saying to all of us Is that it's possible to be meticulous about God's law It's possible to be meticulous about loving God and yet still be merciless towards God's people At this point, I think it's important that we talk about sacrifice little sidebar here And here's why New York City is a city of disproportionate constraining There's constraints on your time. There's constraints on your space. There's constraints on your money Some of you guys right now are living in rooms that most people in America would call a closet It's a shoebox And so to live here to meet the demand of the constraints it requires And so the question for New Yorkers isn't whether or not you're sacrificing. The question is, is what is that sacrifice producing in you? I don't know about you, but I've found that sacrifice, especially of the religious kind, oftentimes will thrust my heart in one of two directions. I'll either move closer to mercy, or I'll move closer to bitterness. Earlier this year, my wife Riley and I, we were coming home from our community group, and we just stayed way too late. Like we ignored the first queue to leave at nine o'clock, then we waited until 9.30, finally it was 10. And we have a nine month old son, which means that it's two and a half hours past his bedtime. Now at this point, I load him up in the stroller, and he's not even upset yet, but he's just kind of looking at us, like taking notes. We'll see how this goes, Tim and Riley. And so we get outside, and of course it's pouring rain,

and the subway's not running, it just says delayed, which doesn't help me out a lot, but I just know that something's not good. So we decide to call an audible, and we just get on a bus. And of course, because it's raining, the bus is packed. Now, some of you guys may not have a stroller, but you gotta understand this, that in New York City, a stroller is not a stroller, it's a vehicle. It's got a wingspan, it's got a footprint, it has to be docked. And so I get on this completely packed bus, and I just like barrel through and I'm hitting people's knees, like a flight attendant with one of those drink carts on a plane, and I finally docked the stroller mid bus, and this like weird angled position as the bus takes off. And my wife at this point is gone, she's pinned between six other people in the bus store, I can't see her, I can just hear her voice giving me commands on what to do with the stroller. And at this moment, there's a guy on the bus, and he asked me something that I thought was a completely reasonable request, he says, "Hey, can you move? "Can I move, move where?" He said, "Move back." I said, "Move back," he said, "Move back." I said, "Where's back?" "Look behind me, and there's no room." And he points to a little area on the floor of the bus that's the size of a coaster, and he says, "Back there." And at this point, I'm fuming.

I'm so angry, and so I'm a pastor, which means that I obliged, I moved back, and I took up that small piece of real estate. And the rest of the bus ride, I'm frustrated, I'm annoyed, I'm wet, and I just would not speak to this man, I wouldn't give him the time of day, or even look him in the eyes for 15 minutes. We finally get off the bus, and I told my wife, I'm like, "I'm done, I'm done with buses, "it's Uber Black XLs only, from this point forward. "I know we can't afford it, but we're just gonna go "into debt, that's gonna be part of the plan." Now here's my point, is I moved to the city on purpose, it was the mission of Jesus that brought us to New York. I'm working here, I pay rent here, I have a nine month old son here, and somewhere along the way, I felt like after all those sacrifices, I was owed an easier trip home. I had sacrificed, but that sacrifice was producing bitterness in me. And what the religious spirit does is it sacrifices, and sacrifices, and sacrifices, and then eventually, it starts to say, "God, you owe me, people, you owe me." Now this is the moment when bitterness sets in, and we just begin to hold people to this unrealistic standard, and here's what Jesus says about all of this. He's quoting Hosea 6, "But go and learn what this means." I desire mercy, not sacrifice. I appreciate your sacrifices, I value your commitment, but more than that, I desire mercy.

A merciful heart is a rare commodity in a city like New York, and the reason why is because it's the opposite of hypocrisy. Hypocrisy naturally says, "Judgment for them, mercy for me." But what a merciful heart says is, "I give you mercy," because I myself desperately need mercy, and as I extend more mercy, Jesus shows more mercy to me so that I can continue to be a blessing to you. So the first mask is this hypocrisy towards others, and the second is when we're hypocritical towards ourselves. And this is the contradiction between what you say, think, or believe in how you live. So verse 25, Jesus continues in his sermon. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside, you're full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and the dish, and then the outside also will be clean. He continues in verse 27, woe to you, Yeah, you're like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside they're full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way on the outside, you appear to people as righteous, but on the inside you're full of hypocrisy and wickedness. So Jesus brings out this phrase whitewashed tombs. And every year before Passover, the Jewish leaders would cover unmarked graves with this thick, shiny, white chalk.

And the reason why was because to touch a grave meant that you were ceremonially unclean, so they were trying to help the pilgrims who were coming in not to touch the graves. Now again, the contradiction is so clear. The outside of the grave is clean and presentable and even attractive, but on the inside it's dead and there's no life and it's full of bones. And so these people had become so skilled at managing their reputation and what other people saw and they neglected the parts of them that Jesus cared most about that only God could see. And so we see in this text, there's two ways of seeing. And I think that this applies to us today. There's what others saw. They saw these leaders to be successful, like they're doing pretty well financially. They're generous for how they tie. They're spiritually mature from their knowledge of the word and basically they don't have any needs. I'm doing fine on my own. But what God saw was fear and a need for recognition and pride and control and all of the things that we hide as human beings. And what hypocrisy is, it's living for the column on the left and ignoring the column on the right. And the danger in all of this is that if we do this for long enough, we start to believe that the left is actually the true us, the true version of us.

This is where self-deception enters the human story and we literally deceive ourselves. Tim Keller, who wrote this book called What is Wrong with the World, he says this. Self-deception is the tendency to rationalize and justify things that we know are wrong. We have an infinite capacity to lie to ourselves. If we don't like the truth, we develop ways to not know it. That's an incredible statement. So what he's saying is that there's things about ourselves that at some level, we know are true, but they're too painful and they're too threatening to confront and so rather than face them, we develop all of these techniques to avoid them. And just three common ways this happens. Number one, we blame other people, we blame shit. This is what happened in the Garden of Eden. This is where there's something wrong in my life. There's some place of pain or sadness or frustration or anger, but the blame always falls on someone else. We say things like my boss is just unbearable. My church has always let me down. My parents don't understand me. My friends don't get me. The dating pool in New York is terrible, which could be possibly true. Speaking of dating, over the years, I've spent a lot of time discipling men, walking with men, leading men, who have a desire to get married.

And I know there's a lot of people in this room who are in that season of life. And there's a similar pattern that I just noticed over the years that comes up time and time again. And honestly, I noticed this in myself in my own journey of getting married and it goes like this. I wanna get married, but every person I date has some kind of issue. A one person is too ambitious. The other person is just too lazy. They don't take initiative. One texts too much. The other one never communicates. One has great character, but there's no chemistry. The other one, there's incredible chemistry, but the attraction isn't there. And so what ends up happening is they go through relationship after relationship and each time as things start to get serious, it's like a new problem emerges. But sometimes underneath all of the explanations is something that's harder to admit and it's this, I'm afraid to commit. I'm afraid that someone better might come along. I'm afraid of being fully known by someone, even the parts that I don't like about myself. I'm afraid of what this relationship will cost me and how it will change my life and that's self-deception. This is when I have to find something wrong with you so that I don't have to confront the thing that's wrong with me.

Another way that we avoid this is we focus on our goodness. This is when we look at all the good things that we're doing in order to avoid confronting A person might say, yeah, my relationship with alcohol, not great, but I'm working so hard. And I'm providing for my family. Or yeah, there's compromise in my dating life, but I attend church every week. I'm at my community group. It says, yeah, I was dishonest in that presentation or in that business deal, but look at all the good that it did for other people and the people that it's serving. And what ends up happening is we start using our obedience in one area to negotiate disobedience in another area with God. And this is when hypocrisy sets in. The third way is that we minimize our sin. And man, I am the chief guilty offender of this. This is when we deceive ourselves by making the offense smaller in our minds. Like it's just really not that bad. It's not that serious. Everybody does it, man. You should see the other people that I work with. At least I'm not doing what that person's doing, what he's doing or what she's doing. And this is also just the moment where I think the gospel matters so much because it's so freeing.

It's so liberating. And it's this is that your sin will not destroy you. I think that that's a lie from the enemy. It's not that your sin will destroy you. It's that you're covering up of your sin is what will destroy you. 'Cause that's when you start whitewashing the tomb. That's when you start cleaning the outside of the cup. The good news of the gospel is that we cannot clean the inside on our own, that we need Jesus to do that. And the thing that keeps us out is shame and it's guilt and it's fear of coming in to the light. I like what John Orberg says. He says, this is so freeing. The messed up inside of the cup is simply our fallenness. It's the parts of us that fall short of God's glory. It's the washed up outside that marks hypocrisy. So hypocrisy isn't, the opposite of hypocrisy isn't perfection. It's just honesty before God. And this is why there's so much freedom in confession. There's so much freedom in coming into the light. I love John three on this. He says that this is the verdict. Light has come into the world talking about Jesus. But people loved darkness instead of the light because they had evil deeds. And it says that everyone who does evil hates the light and they will not come into the light for fear

that their deeds will be exposed. But the one who lives by truth comes into the light so that what they have done in the side of God may be seen plainly. And friends, I just wanna say that there's so much freedom in walking in the light. What an incredible opportunity tonight to bring that thing that you've been hiding. To bring that place that you're not proud of in your own story and in your heart before the mercy and the grace of Jesus. So hypocrisy towards others is the first point. Hypocrisy towards self and the third mask of hypocrisy is hypocrisy towards God. And again, this is probably the most dangerous one because this is when there is a contradiction between what you say is right and wrong versus what God says is right and wrong. And so in verse 29, Jesus gives his final warning. He says, woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites, you build tombs for the prophets and you decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, if we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we wouldn't have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets. And so you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Then he's looking ahead to his own death. He says, go ahead then and complete what your ancestors started.

You snakes, you brood of vipers. How will you escape being condemned to hell? Therefore I'm sending you prophets and sages and teachers. And some of them you will kill and crucify others. You will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. And again, the irony is just shocking. The Pharisees are literally building monuments to the prophets that their ancestors rejected and killed and yet they're priding themselves with this thought. If we had been there, we would have listened. If we would have been there, we would have been on God's side. If we would have been there, we would have never killed those people. And so Jesus is saying your words condemn you because you're guilty of an even greater crime. Because not only will you kill the prophets, i.e. me, Jesus the Messiah, but you see yourself as superior to those who committed the crime. This is hypocrisy towards God. This is the reason in Matthew 15, Jesus once again quotes the prophet Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you. These people, they honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain. They're teaching it. It's all just human rules. It's all just hypocrisy towards God. And so this shows up most, even in my own life, when I say all the right things,

but my heart is far from him, or my heart is divided. He's asking me to do one thing, and I'm doing something else. So how do we know if we're hypocrites? And we're going to land the plane here. This is just a simple test that comes from the Great Preacher, Charles Spurgeon. And when I read this, I just thought, oh, this is so freeing. Because some of you guys might be here tonight, and you're feeling just a little bit of tension. It is a tough teaching from Jesus. And this is a simple test of hypocrisy. Spurgeon says this, "He who is true will sometimes suspect himself of falsehood. While he who is false will wrap himself up in a constant confidence of his own sincerity. Put another way, if you find yourself here tonight and you're doubting your motives or you're concerned after a talk like this, the concern itself is likely evidence of the Holy Spirit at work within you. It's the person who says, man, I really hope somebody else hears this talk that probably, according to Jesus, has more reason for concern." So as we close, I just want to take us back to the beginning, the story of King David being confronted by Nathan. So this moment, David's hypocrisy has been confronted. Those piercing words, you are that man had been spoken. He's been exposed. The details of his sin are laid before him. And David replies in a fascinating way.

And I think that we can really learn from David and how he replies. He doesn't blame somebody. He doesn't focus on his goodness or minimize his sin. He doesn't defend himself. He doesn't argue with God about what's right and what's wrong. He simply steps into the light. And he says these few words in 2 Samuel 12, 13, I have sinned against the Lord. Period. No more qualifications. No commentary beyond that. I have sinned against the Lord. Now, out of that moment, David writes a prayer. And one of the beautiful things about having the Old Testament scriptures is that we actually get to see the prayer that he writes when he was in this horrible season of failure. Now, I think that we could call this Psalm 51, the hypocrites prayer. So I'm just going to pray this and read this out over the room. And I just want you guys to think about what God is speaking to you and pay attention to the words that resonate. Have mercy on me, oh God, according to your unfailing love, according to your great compassion, blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin, for I know my transgressions and my sin is always before me. Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.

And so you're right in your verdict and you're justified when you judge. Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. And yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb and taught me wisdom in the secret place. Cleanse me with hiss off and I will be clean, wash me, and I will be wider than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness and let the bones that you have crushed rejoice, hide your face from my sins and blot out my iniquity. And I love this next part. Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Don't cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me, but restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me. Then I will teach transgressors your ways so that sinners will turn back to you. Now in this prayer, we see the good news of the gospel because the answer to religion and hypocrisy and self-righteousness and sin is never to clean ourselves up. It's just simply admitting that our righteousness doesn't do it. It simply means that we need someone else who had the righteousness that's required to close the gap between us and the Father. And in Jesus we see the perfect sacrifice. I find it so incredible that Jesus speaks this sermon

on the woes and then three and a half days later, He goes to the cross and He dies for those same leaders. I love reading the rest of the Bible in the book of Acts. ended up putting their faith and trust in Jesus. Thank goodness that God forgives hypocrites and sinners alike, that's the good news. I remember when I was in my early 20s and I had just come to faith. I was so plagued by a sense of guilt. I didn't know that the devil was called the accuser. I had no concept of the voice of accusation. And day after day, I just felt like my sins disqualify me. If you're feeling that today, if you're coming in here and you're carrying something, there's maybe a mask that you've been wearing. I just wanna say that your sins do not disqualify you. God is so committed in his use of imperfect human people. That's why it says in Hebrews, let us approach God's throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. The throne is titled grace, not judgment. If the throne was titled judgment, we would hide and we would cower, but it's a throne titled grace. And so the good news of the gospel needs only to require of you to come to Jesus, to take off the mask, to let go of pride and just to throw yourself on his mercy and say, Jesus, I need you to do something for me that I cannot do for myself.

Jesus says in Matthew 11, come to me, all who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest. Jesus says, come to me sinners, hypocrites, prostitutes, tax collectors, alike, all of you are welcome at my table. Jesus says, come to me, all who are tired of pretending, take off the mask and I'll heal you. Jesus says that it's not the healthy who need a doctor, but it's the sick. I haven't come to call righteous, but sinners to repentance. So all around the room, I just want to invite you guys to stand. And if you're on our prayer team, just invite you guys to come forward. We're gonna have some prayer counselors that are gonna be up here who would love to pray for you and anything that you feel like God brought up, any place that you need prayer tonight. And before we do that, I just want to pray a prayer, a blessing over all of you. Well, Father, we just come before you right now as the church and as your people and we pray the words from Psalm 139. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Test me and know our anxious thoughts. See if there's any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. And so, Father, right now we just pray

that you would sin the promised holy spirit to this room. We just pray, Father, for the spirit of wisdom and revelation, God. I pray that where people are hurting you would comfort them. I pray, Father, where there's a mask, God, that you would give them the ability to step into the light. I pray, Lord, that you would confront us in the places where we need confrontation. I pray Jesus that you would advocate for us, that you would teach us. And I just pray right now, God, that all across this room, that there would be encounters with the mercy of Jesus, encounters with the true and the living God. And so, Father, right now, these next minutes, God, however long it is, we just give this time to you and we pray that your kingdom would come and your will would be done. It's in Jesus' name that we pray, amen.