I hear about the threat of secularism. The pressure of an immoral society and how we’ve got to battle on all of these fronts. But communism and secularism and humanism and immorality and all of that put together does not pose as great a threat to Christianity as to false spiritual leaders.
Without question, this is the most significant issue facing the church, and it always has been in God’s redemptive history. And that’s why our Lord saves His most blistering words, His most strong condemnation for false spiritual leaders.
Exodus 19:16-21:21
Matthew 23:13-39
Psalm 28:1-9
Proverbs 7:1-5
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New Testament: Matthew 23:13-39
Jesus’ last public sermon: A Message of Warning
“But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. ~ Matthew 23:13
You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? ~ Matthew 23:33
Summary:
Seven Woes to the Scribes and Pharisees
Lament over Jerusalem
Overview: Matthew 14 – 28 – Click Here
Grace to You
Why it is that the threat of false religion is so much more severe than any other threat that could possibly face Christianity in the world or face the world itself.
Let me begin by reminding you that Isaiah said, “and it shall be as with the people so with the priests. In other words, people follow their spiritual leader. However it is with the priests, that’s how it’s going to be with the people. Jeremiah put it this way. “The prophets prophesy falsely and the priests rule by doing what they prophesy and my people love to have it so.” Give them lying prophets and lying leaders and they’ll love it. And God condemns the false leaders of Jeremiah’s time when he says, “many shepherds have destroyed my portion underfoot. They have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness.”
In other words, they have trampled down, as it were, the garden of God. You see people follow their leaders. And false spiritual leaders have followers. And many of their followers are those who are seeking spiritual answers. Those who are seeking religious answers. And they have been turned away from the truth to a lie. A severe threat. Now in this text, the Lord Jesus confronts and reveals the true nature of the false spiritual leaders of Israel, the scribes, and the Pharisees.
They were the religious leaders. Jesus attacks them head on directly beginning in verse 13. He has already warned the people about them in verses 1-12 along with warning the disciples not to be like them. In the first seven verses He said, you are to be warned about them. And then in verse 8 to the disciples, you’re not to be like them. You be true spiritual leaders manifesting the true attitude and the true heart of one who really serves God.
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