The Only People Jesus Attacked

Well, good morning. My name's René. I'm one of the pastors here. I want to invite you to grab your message notes from inside your bulletins. They look like this. If you're joining us on Facebook Live, you can also download these notes. If you're joining us on our website, there's a link for you there, too.

Today, it's gonna get intense. This Series 77 is 77 Days in the Life of Christ. We started Super Bowl Sunday. We're ending on Easter. We want to give you the plot line that led to the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus so you can understand sort of the main themes and the main arc of the ministry of Jesus. We're trying to really help you understand what Jesus was all about in this series so that when Easter happens and when Good Friday happens, it's going to have an emotional impact like maybe, I pray, it might never have had before in your life.

Now, so far, we've looked at the parts of Jesus' ministry that you might think, "Well, that's cool. That's comforting. I love to listen to that." But today, as I said, it gets intense. What we're used to seeing when we see pictures of Jesus is Jesus kind of like smiling at people and he's got little kids on his lap and he's pointing to flowers and the lilies. Today's picture of Jesus, he's doing more like this. And there's sweat on his brow and he's angry.

What we're used to seeing painted on walls of nurseries or on cross stitches at grandma's house is sayings of Jesus like, "Do not worry and consider the lilies." There's never ever, ever been a cross stitch made of the verses we are going to look at today because in these verses, Jesus says, "You brood of vipers. You whitewashed tombs full of dead men's bones and everything unclean." You will never see that on a cross stitch at grandma's house.

And yet this is such a major theme of the ministry of Christ, but it makes people uncomfortable. So in some churches, they never get to what we're going to get to this morning. And that's a shame because we're going to look at the only people Jesus attacked. He was a friend of sinners. He was a friend of children, but there is one group and only one group that he relentlessly criticized. He attacked their logic. He critiqued their lifestyles. He warned their followers.

What group was it? Well, it wasn't the Romans and it wasn't the criminals and it wasn't the sinners. I think the reason this passage is hardly ever talked about in church is that the one group he attacked were the religious people and specifically the religious leaders. Is it any wonder that pastors don't want to preach on this passage? It might be just a little bit too close for comfort.

But here's why you and I really need to hear this today. If deep down you are always trying to do better spiritually, but you somehow never are feeling anything inside of you but tired, then this message is for you. If your Christianity has ceased being joyful, then this message is for you. And especially if you have had past negative church experiences with religious leaders who were hyper-authoritarian and hyper-judgmental.

And in fact, let me just specifically address the Facebook live audience. There's always hundreds of people who join us on Facebook live in every service and you might be watching on Facebook live because frankly, you are a little once bitten twice shy when it comes to actually sitting down inside of a church building because you still bear wounds and although Jesus attracts you, frankly church frightens you and even repels you, then you have got to know that Jesus consistently criticizes just one group. And that's religious leaders who teach performance-based religion.

And I want to explain what I mean by that. But this is such a major emphasis of Jesus that any series on Jesus has to cover these verses because Jesus talks about this again and again and again. So what I want to do is I just want to hit the key passages. I can't possibly hit every time Jesus talked about this because if there was one theme to the ministry of Jesus, it was this criticism which makes it doubly ironic that it's often never talked about in churches.

I want to show you how Jesus starts with this emphasis, continues with this emphasis, and then in the last week of his life before his crucifixion, it just reaches this crescendo. And I think this is going to challenge some people here today and I think this is going to bring amazing comfort to some people here today. So let's have open minds and open hearts as we look into the scripture very early on in his ministry in the Sermon on the Mount.

Jesus kind of stakes out his ground on this fight when he tells the people, "Be very, very careful." Be careful. He's about to warn them about something that is dangerous. He's about to warn them about religion. Be very careful not to do your acts of righteousness before men, before people, to be seen by them.

Now interestingly, that phrase to be seen is the Greek word "theatinae," and just look at that word up on screen. Guess what English word we get from that? "Theater." Jesus is saying, "Oh, be on your guard against something." Don't make your faith into a theater. Then he goes on to describe how that can happen. When you give to the needy, don't announce it with trumpets as the hypocrites do.

Now press pause for a second. That word "hypocrites," that's a word that Jesus uses no less than 17 times. Always in reference to a specific group of people in his society, the most religious people in his culture, the Pharisees. We've talked extensively about the Pharisees a few weeks ago in this series, but he describes them as hypocrites, these very religious people.

Now our English word "hypocrite" has a specific meaning, but you've got to understand that the word used there in the original Greek Hippocrates, that simply meant an actor or a stage player. That's what it meant. And theater was a big part of the culture in that day. In any first century Roman province like Judea where Jesus lived, you would find theaters everywhere. They find ruins of these giant theaters in all these little towns.

And I want to show you a backstage glimpse. This is a mosaic of a bunch of actors getting ready for a play backstage at one of these theaters. They're putting on their costumes and look at this. You can see how in those days to play their characters in the play, they didn't wear makeup, they wore masks.

Now often what they would do is they would put on their masks and go to busy street corners like this street corner. This is in the town of Sephora, which is just around the corner from Nazareth where Jesus grew up. So he would have seen this all the time. And what they would do is they would put on public previews of the play that they hope people would pay to see.

And the way that would happen is this. They would employ trumpeters who would play a fanfare to stop traffic and get the attention of the crowd. Then the actors would come out with their masks and perform a teaser of the play for a couple of minutes. Then they'd say to see the rest come on over to the theater tonight. Just exactly like a movie trailer today.

In fact, I want to show you a little statuette. This is about the height of an action figure of an actor doing this. Can you see how he's posturing kind of like I'm the masta thespian? And if you look closer, he's holding up a mask with a handle. And in fact, you can even see his eyes through the big eye holes in the mask.

So that's the picture Jesus is painting when he says when you give to the needy, don't announce it with trumpets as the actors do. But they're not in theaters. These actors are in synagogues, churches, places of assembly and on the streets to be honored by men. And in verse five and when you pray, don't be like the actors. They love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others.

He's saying, man, man, guys, guys, be very, very careful. The worst thing that can happen to your religion is for it to become a theater, a performance. You end up performing for other people so that wow, look at him. He's super spiritual. Listen to his prayer. Lang was just fantastic or you're performing for God.

He goes on in the next verse and he says when you pray, don't be like those people. They think they'll be heard by God because there are many words. You know, I God's going to hear me because I pray long and because I pray with all these beautiful words and because I'm praying in a certain, you know, position, I'm performing the right way. So God's going to hear me now.

Why is Jesus so against this? What is wrong with a little performance-oriented religion? I want to listen carefully to this. If you don't get this, you just don't get the ministry of Jesus. What Jesus came to earth to give us, what Jesus came to earth to be the bridge for, is a personal relationship between you and God, a personal relationship between you and God.

And it turns out that the biggest, listen, the biggest obstacle to a personal relationship with God is religion that is performance-based. Now follow me here because any relationship that's performance-based becomes toxic. Think about this. If I think you love me based on my performance, you know, if I think you gauge me as a good friend based on whether or not I was funny when we chatted today or based on whether or not I saw the latest movie so we could talk about it.

If I think that's how you gauge me as a friend, then pretty soon, I'm not really thinking about our relationship anymore. I'm not really thinking about you anymore. I'm thinking about me and my performance. And that's exactly what happens to so many people and their relationship with God. Our relationship with God is supposed to be like in those worship songs. We're caught up with awe at God's love for us and His majesty all around us in nature and through what Jesus did for us on the cross and the resurrection.

We're caught up in that. But instead, when religion becomes performance-oriented, you stop thinking about God and you start thinking about yourself and your performance. Am I doing enough? Performance-based religion is toxic. It is toxic faith because it poisons everything else in your faith.

This is why this is the one issue that Jesus returns to again and again and again and again. When your performance-based in your relationship with God, then that poisons your traditions in your faith. It poisons your service to others. It poisons your Bible reading. It poisons your prayer life. It poisons your church attendance because all of those things, instead of being a blessing to you, become ways for you to earn God's approval because you're seeing them as ways that God is gauging your spiritual performance.

And that's why, having started with this criticism, Jesus keeps returning and keeps intensifying this theme all throughout his public teaching ministry. He specifically keeps circling back to these three characteristics of performance-oriented religion that he keeps warning us against.

Now, I'm going to give you these three things and I want you to do two things with these. Please do not go, "Oh yeah, those bad Pharisees who had these three faults." Yes, he's criticizing them because those are the people in his culture, but this has been preserved for us in scriptures that we can both look at those things and say, "Am I doing this? And have I been set free from this in my life?"

All right, so let's dig into these. Number one, it invents extra rules. It invents extra rules. One time Jesus says about the Pharisees, their teachings are but rules taught by men. What's he talking about? The Pharisees added to the Bible's rules all their own rules too.

For example, the Bible said on the Sabbath day, the seventh day of the week, you are to rest and not work. That is the command. That's a gift, people. That's a blessing. You get to rest on the seventh day. God gives you a command to rest. Are you kidding me? That's like the best gift ever.

And then what the Pharisees did is they made up all these rules about what it means to rest on the Sabbath. All these rules about things you could not do on the Sabbath because if you did them, then you'd be working like you couldn't pick up a bucket for any reason. You couldn't pick up a certain weight of fork to your mouth. You couldn't gargle because all of that was considered work and they had hundreds more rules just like this.

See, they added to God's good rule all their own extra guidelines. And then the key mistake they made, maybe it would have been okay if this would have been for their own instruction. Like, you know what? Just to make sure I'm keeping God's commands. I'm not going to do these things because I just want to make sure I'm keeping that command. But what they ended up doing was they applied this to everybody else in the whole nation. This is what it means to be a good follower of God. You can't gargle on the seventh day of the week.

Now before you go those stupid Pharisees, one quick question I've got is do we ever do this? Do you and I ever turn our personal preferences into God's rules and then gauge everybody else's spirituality based on how well they keep my rules? No, we never do this, do we?

Let me just give you the three examples that popped in my head when I was writing this. How about cigarettes? I don't like cigarettes. They're expensive. They give you cancer and they make my wife allergic. If there's like an atom of cigarette smoke anywhere in our neighborhood and anywhere in the block, she swells up and gets all horse I call home. She sounds like Lauren Bacall. Hello. So I kind of like it actually. I'm taking up smoking because of that. No.

So my preference is for those reasons, I don't like cigarettes, right? But I can't lift that up to God's law and say thou shalt not smoke and if thou smokest thou are the bad Christian because that is not in the Bible. What I can't say is I don't like cigarettes. I don't think it's healthy for you. Here's all my reasons. Please don't smoke around my wife. But I cannot call it a sin. Do you see the difference? You see how easy it is to slip into that?

You might not call it a sin. But do you judge people for smoking cigarettes like they're a lesser Christian than you? Don't they? Here's another one. Politics. Yes, an uncomfortable murmur passed through the crowd. Now you're leaning forward and based on what I'm about to say, you're thinking this may be René's last weekend here at Twin Lakes Church.

Okay. You can passionately believe in your candidate and what he or she is doing and you can passionately believe in your party's platform. But the minute you say or think, I don't see how someone who calls themselves a Christian could oppose my candidate or oppose this policy, you have crossed the Pharisees line. Because you're associating your personal preferences with the rule of God.

Now, if you think that got uncomfortable, this one may get even more uncomfortable. Quick show of hands. How many of you have kids or grandkids? Can I see a show of hands? Okay. I got three kids. How did you or are you educating your children? And here's some of the options. Public school, private school, homeschool, Christian school, charter school. There's lots of options, right? So which option did you take with your kids? If there was more than one, shout them all out. Just shout out right now. What'd you do with your kids? Let me just hear.

So five of you sent your children to school. Shout it out. What? What did you do? Where'd you send your kids? What kind of a school? Let me hear it. So everybody had a preference. You probably had a passionate preference. For my kids, this is what is right. But you can't raise it up to the level of the Bible and declare war over it and judge others people, other people's Christianity based on it.

And believe it or not, sometimes people do. I have as a pastor seen men and women turn into cage fighters on this issue and be like, no, this is the best way to educate every single child. It says so right in first and second homeschoolalonians, right? There it is in Scripture. This is so easy to do.

I've told some of you my story. I was not raised in a very legalistic church, not for its era. But for some reason, I was personally very legalistic, very performance-oriented with my Christian life and I had all sorts of gauges to gauge whether or not I was truly being a good Christian.

I would literally time how long my morning prayers were. This is like when I was in high school. I would pray and look at the clock and then when I finished praying, I felt better about myself if I'd prayed 20 minutes instead of 15. And if I prayed on my knees rather than comfortably sitting. And if I read my Bible 10 minutes instead of five. Now, was I actually changing? That was beside the point. I was performing.

And what was worse was I definitely judged other people based on my rules for me. And when people ask me, you know, my spiritual life is growing cold. What do you think I should do? I would say, well, how long are you praying? Are you kneeling when you pray? How long are you reading the Bible? It would be all about my gauges instead of really the root problem. And that leads to the second characteristic of a performance-based religion.

It produces passionate commitment to the wrong things. It produces passionate commitment to exactly the wrong stuff. In these next verses, Jesus says this to the Pharisees and these next verses are from Matthew 23. This is during the last week of Jesus life. This is this may have been his final public sermon. And people call it the seven woes because seven times he says to the Pharisees in this public sermon, whoa to you like this.

Whoa to you, you hypocrites, you actors. You give a tenth of your spices, mint, dill and cumin, but you've neglected the more important matters of the law, justice, mercy, faithfulness. He's talking here about tithing and tithe literally means a tenth, 10%. And these guys were so serious about the tithe that Jesus says they tithed out of their spice rack in their kitchen. Now, that's a religious person with OCD and a lot of free time.

Okay, you go into your spice rack and Jesus says you tithe out of your spice rack, but you don't help people. He's saying it's good to tithe, but don't forget to treat people with love and with justice, with mercy, because if you don't do that, you're missing the whole big idea of what the kingdom of heaven is all about.

Now, let me ask you one question. Why would people even do this? Why would it occur to somebody to go to their spice rack and stress over whether they've given a tenth of their dill weed in the off rig? Listen, because in a performance-based mentality, you have to be able to gauge performance. Do you see that?

In a performance-based system, it is crucial to be able to measure your performance. You have to have metrics. You have to have measuring points and giving a tenth of your dill weed is measurable. In fact, the more rules you have, the more measuring points you've got. So the more rules, the better in a performance-based system.

But here's the problem. It is ultimately self-defeating because it quickly gets to the point where no one can ever keep all the rules. Nobody can even memorize what all the rules are. And so, you pretend. And that's why this image defines performance-based religion. It becomes theater, an act. You wear a mask. You pretend to be more holy than you really are.

But again, I ask, why would this ever appeal to people? Who would ever want to be in a legalistic religion? Here's the truth. Legalism is measurable. It's nice. It's tidy. I got a tenth of my milk mint, you know, a tenth of my dill, I got a tenth of my parsley, sage was merry in time, whatever. I'm a, therefore, I'm a good person.

But grace is messy. My life was changed when I understood that the Christian life was about bathing myself in an awareness of God's grace to me. That means his unconditional love to me. And the more I'm aware of that, caught up in that, have my imagination transfixed by that, the more it is going to change me. But it was a rough transition because how do you measure grace?

How do you measure whether or not you're responding more to God's grace now and you're more in awe of God's grace now than you were last year and you're treating other people with more grace now than you did? What are you going to do? Yeah, last year I was definitely a seven, but this year I'm definitely a nine on grace. You can't do that. And so grace drives performance-based people like me crazy. Because it's not as measurable.

More on that in a second. And then the third theme of Jesus that he keeps circling back to as he attacks toxic religion is this, it focuses on the external, not the internal. It focuses on the external, the outside, not the inside. Look at this from that same sermon. Whoa to you teachers of the law and Pharisees. You hypocrites, you actors, you're wearing a mask. You clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside they're full of greed and self-indulgence.

Blind Pharisee. First clean the inside of the cup and dish and then the outside will also be clean. You have to start with the inside because the heart issue is the issue. That's the problem. Whoa to you teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You're and look at this image. You're like whitewashed tombs which look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean.

Now, I don't know what you think of when you think of a whitewashed tomb, but when Jesus says that phrase, it means something specific. When he says this season Jerusalem and Jerusalem was full of these monumental tombs, you can still see some of these massive tombs from the time of Christ to this day. Some of these are six stories high carved out of solid rock because a real status symbol in those days was to have an ornate tomb for when you die and they discovered over 800 of these from Christ time all around Jerusalem.

These would have been exactly the tombs that Jesus would have been walking by as he says these words. He's saying look up at that massive thing over there. That's a picture of your religion right now. That's a picture of your faith right now. Beautiful impressive ornate and dead and full of uncleanness and that would have been the ultimate insult because the Pharisees were all about not being unclean.

Jesus is saying you're full of uncleanness. See legalistic systems always end up masking the real problem. Don't they? Because image is everything. Imagine being in a system like this and having real say marriage problems. You can't reveal it because that wouldn't look good. What would people think? And so you pretend you pose and you wear a mask and the tragedy is you get no help because on the outside you look just fine. While on the inside you're dying and this is why Jesus says back in Matthew 5 blessed are the poor in spirit blessed are the broken because they're coming to God saying God I can't do this anymore. I don't need more paint on the grave. I need a resurrection because I'm dead. Those are the people who find life.

Now look at the response of the Pharisees. Did they say thank you so much for pointing this out Jesus? We appreciate that so much. What's interesting is we actually do know that some of the Pharisees did become Christ followers like Nicodemus most famously Paul changed. He was Saul changed his name to Paul ended up writing most of the New Testament and continuing this theme of Jesus. So some of the Pharisees did respond and that shouldn't surprise us because Jesus isn't saying these things just kind of to vent. He's hoping they would have an effect and they did but I want to show you the response that was more typical.

One of the experts in the law answered him teacher when you say these things you insult us. Also, these are the guys the Pharisees worked with the experts in the law that the Pharisees had come up with you. You hurt our feelings classic response of an abusive person. They don't want to deal with the evidence and the issues you bring up. So they say your criticism is hurtful. You're disrespecting my position and you're being rude. The problem is never them. The problem is also always you and how you brought it up.

But Jesus never falls for this. He says hey, I'm glad you guys spoke up didn't know you were here. So let me just address some some of my words to you too. Jesus replied and you experts in the law. Wota you too because you load down people with burdens they can hardly carry and you yourselves are not willing to lift one finger to help them.

Here he is painting another picture of another thing people would have seen a lot around Jerusalem at this time and it's this pack animals loaded down with burdens. These were kind of like the first century version of a pickup truck. Everybody had one. They used them all the time and a common practice was to load these animals with so much stuff that the animal itself could literally hardly be seen and Jesus is saying you religious leaders are like bad donkey owners because you tie all kinds of extra rules onto people and you've never met a rule. You didn't like so you had more and more and more and more and more until they can't handle them. You're killing them kind of like this picture.

I found look at this picture. Poor donkey, right? But I want to leave this picture on screen for just a second because maybe that's a picture of your soul. You've just had it. Maybe that was your soul but you got out you escaped that abusive religious system that you were in and now maybe you're here live. Maybe you're watching on the internet and you're once bitten twice shy. You're so afraid so suspicious because this has been your actual experience with religion and with Christianity.

You know what Jesus says to you. He says come to me all you are weary and burdened and I'll give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. You know my bridle my saddle and learn from me. He's still the Lord when you when you accept Christ. He's still the master but there's a big big difference because he is gentle and humble in heart and he says you'll find rest for your souls for my yoke is easy. My burdens light.

See grace doesn't mean Jesus looks the other way when you sin. Grace means Jesus paid the penalty for your sin. So it doesn't stand between you and that relationship with God anymore. There's nothing there's nothing standing between you. You're since all forgiven a hundred percent and then he comes in and guides you and teaches you gently. What's this feel like? What's this look like?

I'll close with this. Have any of you seen the movie The Horse Whisperer? Have you seen that? I really don't know anything about the movie about the author why it was written but I have some suspicions because in this film there's a horse and the horse is sad and frightened after a string of brutal and abusive owners and you know what the horse is named? Pilgrim.

And now Pilgrim is rebellious and wild and afraid of anybody who approaches. And then a young girl shows up to show Pilgrim love and you know what that girl's name is? Grace. And grace weeps over Pilgrims wounds. Until toward the end of the picture. This is what happens. Watch the screen. Watch the screen. Maybe you are pilgrim. And Jesus is grace and He's saying, "Take my yoke, take my saddle and bridle upon you, and we can run and we can be free."

See, here's the bottom line. Jesus is calling you and me from the burden of performance to the freedom of grace. You know what? I hope you're seeing as we've gone through the life of Christ, in so many ways you could call Jesus the sinner whisperer because He's whispering, "Pilgrim, you can be healed." And He's making this offer right now. Will you take it?

Heavenly Father, it's my prayer that there's-- I know there are people here like me raised in church, and maybe their whole religious lives have been about pretending. I pray that today they would say, "Jesus, I hear You, I hear You, but this is going to be so hard." But I'm so tired of pretending. Help me to put down the mask I've been wearing my whole life and be real with you and broken with you and authentic with you and find freedom with you.

Or maybe there's people who stayed away from church and Christianity maybe justifiably because they've really been hurt. And I'm so sorry for the hurts. But that's not what Jesus wants. So I pray that they would say, "Jesus, I don't understand at all, but I want Your hand to guide me. And I want to take the risk of receiving You now as my Lord and as my Savior, knowing You are gentle and humble in heart and will give me rest. And I thank You for this in Jesus' name. Amen.