Thank you for Steadfast Baptist. Thank you for your work. Those who came tonight, getting here safely.
Help us to apply the message to our lives tonight. Fear it. Preach boldly from your word.
In the name of Jesus, I pray. Second song this evening, page 314, love to thee.
Page 314, more love to thee. 314, more love to the first.
Thanks for coming to Steadfast Baptist Church. If you didn't already get a bulletin, you'd like one, just lift up your hand nice and high.
One of our viewers can come by and get you a bulletin. We're on Jude, verse 6.
If you can quote that this evening, you can get an ice cream on the inside, service times, soul winning times.
We have a lot of regional soul winning times, our church stats, and we've been doing really, really good.
We want to keep up the hard work on our salvations and baptisms.
On the right, we have a list of our expecting ladies.
Please, please be in prayer for them who are expecting upcoming events.
This Saturday is going to be the Durant, Oklahoma soul winning marathon.
Is anybody going and is not signed up? Alright, go sign up.
Alright, then you signed up. What do you mean?
If you haven't signed up, you can sign up right now in the foyer.
We don't mind. We want to make sure you get signed up for that.
I think we're going to have like a big turnout, so I'm really excited about this.
And we've got like a fajita bar set up for lunch. It sounds really, really good.
And so we'll be meeting at a park location.
The park location down below is the address for, I think, coffee and donuts just in the morning.
And then we'll go out soul winning, have some really good lunch, and then go out soul winning again in the afternoon.
So that's exciting.
The previous soul winning results were there in Cleburne.
Really, really awesome soul winning numbers.
I don't know that we'll necessarily have that many salvations, but I think we're going to have more than double the soul winners.
And it's still great to go up and get to see Anchor Baptist Church and see Pastor Oz and them.
I highly encourage you if you can participate in the Durant Oklahoma Soul Winning Marathon.
Father's Day floats on June 15th. Soul Winning Marathon Shreveport, that's another awesome opportunity.
June 28th, it's also a very receptive area, so if you get opportunity to travel, that's a great one.
I think it's about a three hour drive from the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and so that's a great opportunity too.
Back is the prayer list. We have several here that we're going to cover real quick.
If you'd pray for the Carlson's for their health and then their parents' health, and then also for the Miller's friend's mom's cancer treatments.
If you'd pray for Brother Scott's parents, and also it's really a praise report for Ms. Olivia.
They recently gave birth to their son Elijah Scott as well and it's not Elijah, it's Elisha.
It sounds similar, but it's pretty cool. I guess Elijah was first and then we got Elisha, so that's really exciting.
We'll put their picture and everything in the bulletin on Sunday.
Ms. Garcia, if you'd pray for Brother Tony's health, we'll continue to pray for Ms. Larky's arm, who's been healing.
Pray for Brother Brad for his work.
And then also pray for Brother Diego's friend, Ms. Sheila Morris.
If you'd pray for Ms. Cindy's friend, Angela.
If you'd pray for another coworker, Josh, of Brother Jared's.
And then Brother Samson did have a surgery. He said it went well.
So we're continuing to pray for his recovery.
Also, if you could pray for Brother Fur's dad, who's recovering from surgery.
And then if you'd pray for Miss Foley's dad who has kidney disease.
Sorry about that. We'll be praying for him.
There's one other that's not in the bulletin.
But if you'd pray for Brother Hackenberg's wife who had to go to the hospital.
And so we'll be in prayer for them as well.
So that's pretty much all I had as far as prayer requests.
Let's go ahead and just pray as a church family.
Thank you, Heavenly Father, so much for our church.
Thank you for all those ladies who are expecting.
I pray that you please just bless them during their pregnancies right now.
Please help them with their delivery.
I pray that you would also just help our church family that's struggling
with illness or sickness, especially these serious issues of cancer.
I pray that if possible, you could just give them a miracle.
Please just heal them.
I pray that no matter what, you'd give them patience
and that you would comfort them during this difficulty.
I pray that you would also just bless our church family
that needs help with either their finances or their job or their work.
I pray that you would just please help them right now.
I pray that you would bless our upcoming Soul Winning event in Durant, Oklahoma.
I pray that we could just travel up there safely,
that you would help prepare the hearts of many people there,
that you would help us to find people that want to get saved,
and you'd give us the boldness to preach unto them and help them to get saved.
I pray that you would just help continue to bless our church and the upcoming events
and that we do all these things in the honor and glory of your Son in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
We'll sing our third song. It's our Psalm of the Week.
And I don't remember which one it is. 149, sorry, 149.
Psalm 149. Psalm 149.
We've seen this evening as the offering plates are passed around.
Let's turn our Bibles to Matthew 23. Matthew chapter 23.
Matthew chapter 23, the Bible reads, "Then speak Jesus to the multitude and to his disciples, saying,
'The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do.
But do not ye after their works, for they say and do not. For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be born,
and lay them on men's shoulders, but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.
But all their works they do for to be seen of men. They make broad their flacteries,
and enlarge the borders of their garments, and love the uppermost rooms at feasts and the chief seats in the synagogues,
and greetings in the markets, and to be called of men Rabbi, Rabbi.
But be not ye called Rabbi, for one is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren.
And call no man your Father upon earth, for one is your Father which is in heaven.
Neither be ye called Master, for one is your Master, even Christ.
But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant, and whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased,
and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.
But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
For ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men, for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
For ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayer; therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
For ye come best to see it and land, to make one proselyte; and when he is made ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.
Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing.
But whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor, ye fools and blind.
For whither is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold?
And whosoever shall swear by the altar, it is nothing.
But whosoever sweareth by the gift that is upon it, he is guilty, ye fools and blind.
For whither is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifieth the gift?
Whoso therefore shall swear by the altar, sweareth by it, and by all things thereon.
And whoso shall swear by the temple, sweareth by it, and by him that dwelleth therein.
And he that shall swear by heaven, sweareth by the throne of God, and by him that sitteth thereon.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
For ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law,
judgment, mercy, and faith, these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.
Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat and swallow a camel,
woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
For ye may clean the outside of the cup and of the platter,
but within they are full of extortion and excess.
Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter,
that the outside of them may be clean also.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
For ye are like undivided sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward,
but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.
Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men,
but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
Because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchers of the righteous,
and say if we had been in the days of our fathers,
we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.
Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets.
Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers, ye serpents, ye generation of vipers,
how can ye escape the damnation of hell?
Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes,
and some of them ye shall kill and crucify, and some of them ye shall scourge in your synagogues,
and persecute them from city to city, that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth,
from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, son of Baruchias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.
Verily I say unto you, all these things shall call upon this generation.
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee,
how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and you would not.
Behold, your house is left unto you desolate; for I say unto you, ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say,
Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, thank you for allowing us to be in church. Thank you for this church. Thank you for our pastor.
I pray that you bless Pastor Shelley, fill him with your Holy Spirit, to preach your word unto us,
and help us to receive it with an open heart. Praise in Jesus' name. Amen.
Amen. We're here in Matthew 23, and Jesus really turns up the heat in this particular chapter,
and it makes sense because this is pretty much his last public teaching before he's going to be crucified.
This is really like leading up to the fact that he's going to be crucified.
I believe this is on Tuesday, but Wednesday, I don't think we necessarily see him in the temple.
I could be wrong on that, but someone could correct me, but he does a lot of teaching to his disciples.
Then later that Wednesday is the Last Supper, and then he is essentially betrayed into the hands of the Pharisees,
and then goes into the Romans, and he's crucified.
And you can kind of see after reading this chapter why they really wanted to kill him so bad.
Because Jesus Christ, before, a lot of this is teaching a lot of parables.
When he's preaching against Pharisees and Jews, it's a little bit more vague.
It's a little bit more subtle than it is in this chapter.
He finally kind of lets loose and really is just calling them on the carpet.
Just really calling them out by name.
Making it really clear what these people are like.
He's kind of just exposing them for who they really are.
And that's why you can kind of see they get so, the Jews and the Pharisees are just so quick to want to put them to death.
Additionally, the feast is coming up and they don't want to kill him on the feast day.
They don't want to kill him later in the week because they're afraid people will be upset about it.
So they feel rushed to do it.
It's funny how they've gone through these rituals their whole life of performing this Passover sacrifices
and going through all these rituals and they just do it so, so often
that they're not realizing that they're going to end up doing all this to Jesus.
That they're going to kill Jesus Christ at the same time they would kill that actual Passover lamb
and they have to do this all in haste.
The Bible talks about how they are supposed to do these things in haste.
They have to do these things in haste in the same way so as to be able to eat the feast.
So it's just kind of interesting a lot of the parallels obviously that Jesus Christ
fulfills in the Passover week and how these Jews, even though they've known about it,
God's showed it to them, they've gone through these rituals, they just can't see it.
Because when you're spiritually blinded you just can't see the things of God
even if they were told to you plainly.
Now it says here in verse 1, it says,
"Then speak Jesus the multitude unto his disciples, saying,
'The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat.'"
So what does that mean? He's talking about his position of authority.
So in the past, at the very beginning,
Moses is kind of their leader, he's their primary authority.
Now the scribes and the Pharisees seem to be the leaders,
the ones in charge, you kind of have this high priest.
And so it's talking about their position of authority.
Verse 3, "All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe,
that observe and do, but do not ye after their works,
for they say and do not."
One thing we can learn here is that
you should have respect for authority
regardless of how bad the people are.
If this chapter doesn't convince you
that you should obey bad authorities,
then nothing will,
because the whole chapter is about how bad the Pharisees are,
how bad the scribes are,
yet Jesus is saying, "Hey, these people in positions of authority,
whatever they bid you, observe and do."
And for the most part, what He's trying to say is
they're going to teach a lot of things that are good.
You know, love God, love your neighbor.
They're going to say these things, these platitudes,
but they themselves don't actually love God.
They don't actually love their neighbor.
And so He's trying to say, "Man, a lot of things
you've been hearing are pretty good from these people."
Not all of it. There's obviously a little leaven.
But generally speaking, what the Pharisees and scribes say,
most of it, a lot of it is good.
It's just they themselves are hypocrites.
They don't actually do it.
That is their huge problem.
That's what it means to be a hypocrite.
"For they say and do not."
If you want just an easy definition of the word hypocrite,
it's someone that says and does not.
That is generally what a hypocrite is.
Verse 4, "For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be born
and lay them on men's shoulders,
but they themselves will not move them
with one of their fingers."
So what are they constantly doing?
They're constantly encouraging other people
to do really difficult things for God,
make really big sacrifices for God.
But he's trying to say these people
don't actually make any sacrifices themselves.
They don't take any hardships.
They don't take any burdens on themselves.
And in fact, even if it was offered
to them, they wouldn't even use a little bit of effort.
Like the finger analogy is just kind of like
they would put almost literally no effort in
in serving God whatsoever.
But they would love to just lay huge burdens
on other people.
And we can kind of see what's a bad leader
is someone that doesn't take any burdens.
A bad leader is someone that doesn't do any work
or doesn't do any of the job himself.
Whereas in Christianity, Christ is constantly
reminding us that, you know, we shouldn't be here
to put burdens on others, but rather,
we should put burdens on ourselves,
and we should be a servant,
and we should serve other people.
Just as Jesus washed the disciples' feet,
we should wash other people's feet in like manner,
not so much of literally, but as an analogy
of the fact that we should serve other people.
The higher you get up in Christianity,
in theory, you should be doing more work,
not less work.
Whereas, being a slave master in Egypt,
the more you elevate, you could argue,
the less you're having to do.
Because now you have more slaves,
you have more servants,
more people to do your bidding.
And again, even in the secular world,
there's technically nothing wrong.
If you own a business,
there is nothing wrong with you doing no work
and making all your employees do all the work for you.
There's nothing wrong with that.
That's just not how Christianity should operate.
Christianity shouldn't operate that the higher you get up,
the less work you do, it should be that you do more work.
And we see good leaders like Moses did a lot of work.
He felt very burdened.
He was constantly serving the people and doing a lot of things.
That's what it should look like.
Whereas the Pharisees, even though they sit in Moses' seat,
they're not doing any of their work.
They're constantly putting the heavy burdens on other people
and not doing any of the work.
The Bible says if a man desires the office of a bishop,
he desires the good work.
So a bishop should be someone who works.
That doesn't mean they don't have authority.
And again, some people get confused about this.
We're not talking about the authority.
Bad leader, give them authority.
Good leader, give them authority.
Servant leader, give them authority.
Authoritarian, give them authority.
We don't want to strip authority away from authority.
We're just simply saying the mindset of someone in charge
in Christianity should be to serve and work hard,
whereas the mindset for a lot of people in the secular world,
they want to elevate so they can do less work.
They want to elevate so they don't have to do the grunt work
or whatever they're hoping to make it easier on their life,
whereas in Christianity, the higher you get up,
it's a harder life.
The apostles didn't have the easy life.
The apostles had the hardest life.
They were the off scouring of the world.
And if you think, "Man, I can't wait to be a pastor someday
so that my life will be easy," wrong!
Your life won't get easier if you're doing it right.
Obviously, maybe some of these false prophets or something,
their life maybe got easier, but you know what?
Someone that's actually in the real fight, serving Jesus,
trying to do the right thing, it is hard.
Being a Christian is hard.
There is work, there's persecution, there's opposition,
because the devil wants to take down Christianity.
And you know what? Going to a good church,
you should expect opposition, and you should expect work.
Yes, we will put you to work.
And I think sometimes, you know, a lot of people,
you know, they're going to come and go,
and one of the reasons is maybe they're just tired of working.
And it's not so much that they're necessarily like into some sin,
or it's not so much that they just don't love Jesus anymore.
They just kind of get a little faint-hearted,
a little bit burnt out, and they just don't like working.
But here's the thing, we're supposed to work till Jesus comes.
And you know, I have a job.
You know what I don't like?
I don't like it when my boss doesn't have any work for me to do.
I feel awkward. I feel uncomfortable.
I'm not sitting here thinking like, sweet, I don't have to do much work today.
I kind of feel uncomfortable.
And you know what? I would feel uncomfortable in the Christian life
if I just felt like, hey, there's not really anything for me to do.
You know, and that's how we should feel.
We should feel uncomfortable if we're not being put to work.
We want to be put to work.
God created us to work, and we need to get out there
and do something for the Kingdom of God.
We don't want to be the person that's just giving everybody else a job,
giving everybody else work, giving everybody else a burden.
We want to be the person that takes burdens away.
Hey, you have this burden?
Let me, you know what? I don't have that burden.
I can carry it.
You know, think about it, if we're just going on a journey, let's say we're walking 30 miles,
you know, that's a, I can't remember.
I think most towns are about 30 miles apart
just because that was an average day's
journey in times past, maybe
with wagons and stuff. But let's say we're walking
for a day's journey, 30 miles, you're
carrying 50 pounds worth of, you know,
material, and I'm carrying
nothing. I say, "Hey, give me 25 pounds."
And I carry 25, you carry
25. Maybe it's a young child,
I'll carry 40, you carry 10, right?
You're trying to bear other people's birth, as opposed
to saying, "Hey, I got this heavy thing I'm carrying." How about
you carry it? And then you're just not carrying
it. In fact, you know, can you get a chair
and put me in it and lift me up and just carry me around?
I've literally seen
apostles, so-called, of Pentecostal
churches, their churches bearing
them on their shoulders
in a chair and like carrying them
around like a king or something like that.
That's weird. Okay, that should not
be what's happening in the house of God.
People that are in positions of authority here,
if you become an usher, it's to work.
If you become the song,
the music ministry, it's to work.
If you want to become an evangelist, it's to work.
If you come work for me, it's to work.
Okay? One thing I've never
been accused of,
of anybody that's worked for me, is not giving them
work to do. Okay? So, it's usually
the opposite. It's usually
what I'm accused of. But you know what? I like
having work to do, and we should have work to
do, and that is the goal
of Christianity, is to work.
Not be a Pharisee and just
give it to everybody else. Verse 5,
"But all their works they do for to be
seen of men, they make broad their phylacteries
and enlarge the borders of their garments,
and love the uppermost rooms at feasts
and the chief seats in the synagogues,
and greetings in the markets to be called of men, rabbi,
rabbi." Now, it's saying, hey, technically
they do have some works. The only thing
they will do is if, if they can
somehow get some recognition, then they
will potentially do that work.
And a lot of their works, so called,
aren't even real works, because what are
they doing? They're making broad their
phylacteries. Now, I don't know exactly what that
is. A lot of people are just not
exactly sure. But you can kind of see,
like, sometimes you'll see these orthodox Jews.
They'll literally, like, strap things
on their body. These, like, leather straps
or whatever. Or sometimes they'll literally put a
box and they'll, like, put it on their
forehead and they'll, like, strap it down.
You know, or sometimes they have these cords.
A lot of people call that phylacteries.
If you just look it up online, they'll call those kind of things
phylacteries. I'm not real positive.
I don't know exactly what it is.
I don't think it matters, though. What matters is
an outward thing. They're doing something outwardly
to make it seem like
they're just so godly. I'm going to literally
tape a bible to my forehead.
I mean, talk about a holier than thou.
I mean, instead of actually putting the word of
God into your heart and your mind, they tape
a bible to their head. But yet,
they don't even believe it. That's how
satanic and weird they are.
They enlarge their garments, too, right?
They enlarge the borders of their garments.
So, you know, I have a coat on.
It has, this is what we call
the skirt of my garment.
The skirt means the edge.
You know, don't get confused. Sometimes I'll talk about
the skirt of a man's garment in the Bible.
It's not talking about him wearing a skirt.
It's talking about the skirt being the edge of his garment.
What would it mean to enlarge it?
For it to go, oh, it's a little bit longer,
a little bit longer, and then pretty soon it's just
a dress that they're wearing. Okay? It wasn't
a skirt, and then it turned it into a skirt.
And they became Catholic. And, of course,
why did they do that? To be seen
of men. To appear
different. Because they just want to
look different. They don't want to just wear the garment everybody
else is wearing, because then if someone walks in, they're like,
"Who's the pastor?" It could be anybody.
It could be this guy, this guy, that guy. I mean,
if we're all just, all the men in us that are
wearing suits are just standing up here on the stage,
no one's going to be like, "That's the pastor,
obviously." Why? Because
I'm not doing anything different than you are. What about the guy
wearing a dress? Then you'd be like,
"Okay, well, that must be someone that's special,
right? That one's someone that's important."
And think about it.
That kind of garment's not even practical.
It's weird. You can't even do, like, real work
or real labor. You might trip
or fall. So it's obviously
designated to just be a
trophy guy. But you don't want to be a
trophy guy, alright? You get a trophy wife.
Don't be a trophy guy.
It's like, to be all delicate
and walk around all delicate.
Have you seen a woman in the wedding dress?
I mean, she has to walk real careful in that thing.
Not to trip, not to fall
because it's a real special thing.
Why would I want a guy, the man of God
to be walking around like that?
You know, men in the Bible are running around.
You know, in the book of John,
you know, basically, John's basically bragging
that he ran to the tomb faster than Peter.
They're not wearing dresses and skirts running around.
Now, it's funny 'cause in order to teach this doctrine,
you know what they'll say?
They'll say like, "Oh, yeah, they were wearing 'em."
But what they'll do is they'll take the garment
and they'll tie 'em around their legs
and then these weird pictures of guys with dresses on
tying their dresses around their legs
and they'll quote, "run."
And they're saying this is like girding up your loins.
No, girding up your loins is to tighten your belt, okay?
Not tying the dress around your ankles or something like that.
I mean, it's the weird stuff people teach, I'll tell you, man.
But what do these Pharisees do?
They have these long garments and, of course, today,
modern-day Pharisees are no different.
The Catholics, the Orthodox.
In fact, if you just look at a council of all the false religions
of the world, they all kind of look the same.
Have you ever noticed that?
It's like you got the imam, you got the Orthodox,
whether that's Russian or Greek, doesn't matter.
You get some guy from the Catholic, the Roman Catholic Church.
You get some other Hindu, you get whatever.
They all have this like weird garment.
It's all different colors, but they all kind of look the same.
And then you have a Baptist, he just looks like a normal guy.
And he doesn't fit in, he wasn't invited.
Okay, he's the prophet besides.
That never prophesies good in the name of the king or whatever.
And at the end of the day, these false prophets,
you can almost pick them out of the crowd
because they make a show of themselves.
They're like a peacock, a peacock guy
where they have to constantly just show themselves off
because they don't have any works.
Here's the thing, why would someone point somebody out of the crowd?
It's because, "Hey, this guy's a nice guy. He helps me.
He does good stuff for me. He teaches me good things.
He's there with me when I go through hard times.
He's taking burdens of me. Let me tell you all about this guy."
But when you have no good works to show,
no one's going to pick you out of the crowd,
no one's ever going to praise your name,
no one's going to say anything nice about you.
So then they have to peacock,
they have to put on a show to make it seem like,
"Hey, I'm someone special."
So let everybody give them attention, give them recognition.
Because why?
They love, what does it say?
They love the uppermost rooms at Feast.
Think about it.
If you walk into a room, it's a party,
you want to sit by the host,
or you want to sit by the guy that you like,
why would he pick you to sit there?
Because you're his friend.
Why are you someone's friend?
Because you work.
Friendships require work.
You hung out with them.
You picked them up.
You bought them a meal.
You did something with them.
But think about it.
The Pharisee never did any of that.
So they have to wear their little special garment to peacock again.
So they'll be like, oh, I guess we have to give this guy this seat.
It's not because he actually did any work.
It's not because we actually know him.
It's not because he actually helped us.
But look at the little peacock.
I guess we have to put it up front center.
And they really love that uppermost room, that fee seat.
They want to be in a special place, the chief seats in the synagogues.
And notice they just love it.
They love attention.
They're all about attention.
They want to say it's all about them.
And they love greetings in the markets to be called of men.
Rabbi, Rabbi.
That's what they want to be called.
Now, Rabbi, Rabbi is not really an English word.
It's like being transliterated in here because what it really means is master.
So it's just kind of their way.
It's kind of being transliterated in our language.
It's like a borrowed word.
But in more, you know, our language, it's master.
And then it says another way, even Christ, meaning specifically Christ.
So it's saying, "Be ye not called rabbi for one is your master,
specifically Jesus Christ, and all ye are brethren."
So there's only one master in the universe.
There's only one master of the universe.
It's Jesus Christ.
And so it would be wrong to be going around calling yourself
master or taking the title of rabbi that's off limits spiritually speaking.
Now you have to understand the word master is used in the Bible often.
And the Bible talks about believing masters, unbelieving masters.
It says to be not many masters.
Why? Because the word itself isn't off limits.
The context of the word is off limits.
We're not allowed to call someone a master spiritually speaking.
We can call someone our master though if they're literally our boss
because that's equivalent.
Boss, lord, something of that nature, sir.
All those are synonyms with master and you should call your boss.
Boss, sir, lord, whatever title that they have.
Chief, sergeant, commander, I mean whatever title they have you call them.
But spiritually speaking, the pastor, the leader should not be called a master
because we only have one master and that's Jesus Christ.
Yet, how many Baptists a day will bring someone into their congregation
and say hey, we brought in Rabbi Jonathan Cahn,
really Rabbi Jonathan Cahn artist to come and speak to everybody.
I mean, is this the verse he's going to start off the chapter with?
Be not called Rabbi, my name is Rabbi Jonathan Cahn.
I mean, how do Baptists do that?
How do non-denom churches do that today when the Bible is literally saying
don't call this person Rabbi and then like so and so Rabbi is going to come
and speak to the whole congregation.
I mean, I grew up in a non-denom church where they would have Rabbi Jonathan Cahn
literally come and preach to us and they'd have other, you know, weirdo
Rabbis or whatever come in and preach and give their little spiel.
You know what, it's unbiblical and let me tell you something,
if they got Rabbi in front of their name, they're not saved.
Never heard one that's saved. I don't believe that they're saved.
There's something wrong with those people and it's just so anti-biblical.
I don't think these people are saved at all.
It would be no different if, I mean, what if I just started calling myself Master?
They like to hide it in Rabbi because you don't know what that means.
What if I just said, "I am Master Shelley."
That would be weird if I said from now on call me Master Shelley.
You know, that would be terrible.
You can call me Brother Shelley because what did he say?
What did he say?
"And all ye are brethren."
Hey, we're on the same level here.
Jesus Christ is our one Master.
We got one Master, one Lord.
Notice he also says in verse 9,
"And call no man your father upon the earth,
for one is your father which is in heaven."
Again, the word "father" is not off limits,
but in a spiritual context, it's off limits.
Yet then the Catholics adopt this, don't they?
The Catholics adopt this language,
and they call most of their priests,
if not all, "Father so-and-so."
And then you ask Catholics, like,
"How is this not a violation?"
"Oh, well, this just is, like,
meaning, like, a spiritual deep meaning."
A spiritual deep meaning of what?
It's just a spiritual deep thing
that Jesus is talking about here.
What does that mean? I even asked Grok.
I said, "Grok, how is this not a violation?
How are Catholics not just obviously
in violation of this verse?"
He was like, "Well, what you have to understand
is that some Catholics really hold
to the sincerity of Scripture,
and they say that this is really deep."
And I'm like, "You didn't answer the question!
This is a violation!"
I said, "I feel like you're just saying words
and you're not really explaining this."
He's like, "Well, kinda."
I actually like talking to AI
because usually it's very logical.
And when you call it out after a BS answer,
sometimes it's like, "Yeah, well..."
My master said, "My raster rabbi so-and-so
told me I had to say this is okay,"
or whatever.
But it's like, look,
you shouldn't be calling a pastor or priest father.
It's super clear.
The Mediatrics aren't saved. They don't believe the Bible.
In fact, they pretty much do the opposite of what the Bible
teaches all over the place.
It's like, don't have graven images? Graven images
of Mary. Hey, you only have one mediator
between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. Oh, and also
a Mediatrix called Mary again.
Oh, Jesus Christ is the
only one that's sent into heaven. Oh, and also Mary.
Why are they so into women?
It's like feminism is just off the charts
with Catholicism.
And then, oh yeah, another Catholic doctrine.
It's like, hey, having relations with your wife
is somehow now a sin, so let's not
have relations with your wife again.
I mean, what? Feminazi came up with Catholicism.
I'll tell you what, it is a disgusting,
awful religion. Hey, salvation
is by faith alone. They're like, no, it's by
works. I mean, the Catholics just
pretty much just don't understand the Bible.
Do the opposite. Don't call anybody father.
Let's call our priest the father.
And it's like, the Bible says, get
married as a pastor. They're like, let's
not get married. It's like, hey,
everything should be eaten. Let's not
eat meat on Friday. This makes me mad
because I didn't know this. And I went to a barbecue
restaurant on Friday night and all they had was catfish.
And I left. That's
the right move, okay, is the lead.
I said, what in the world?
I said, where's the beef? Because
like, they had good brisket. Like, it was
really good. And I'm showing up and I'm thinking
like, I can't wait to eat brisket. It's Friday.
You know, on Friday, you're kind of excited for Friday.
Like, Friday is like the exciting night.
You get to finally go out to eat. And you
show up and it's catfish. And I was just like,
what? I don't know if you like catfish or not.
It's not about catfish.
It was just that I wanted beef.
You know what I mean? And then I'm also thinking
like, why can I eat fish and not beef?
Like, why is that okay?
Like, where is this in the
Bible? Like, none of this even makes
sense. That's because they're spiritually
blinded in the same way that
the Pharisees are blinded and they go around
wanting to be called rabbi
when it's off limits, it's wrong.
They take these unbiblical
titles. Verse 10, "Neither be called masters
for one is your master in Christ." That's a repeat
in a sense of rabbi, but he's just
making it clear. It doesn't matter which language
you're saying master, it's wrong.
And it's funny, again,
pretty much you've got a few different categories.
You've got the Jews who call themselves rabbis.
They're a bunch of false teachers. You've got the
Catholics calling themselves fathers.
They're a bunch of false teachers. And then you've got a bunch
of seminary graduates, all calling
themselves masters of divinity.
And they're also a bunch of false prophets.
Is that a coincidence?
That the three people called out
don't be called a rabbi, a father, or a master.
All three all seem to be false prophets
and false teachers in today's world.
Nope. Jesus knew what he was
saying. And the Bible is timeless, folks.
There's no new thing under the sun.
The rabbis back then
were false. The fathers back then
were false. And the masters back then
were false. Just like it is today.
And the false teachers, they can't
understand the Bible, so they just make the same errors
over and over again. And
it's even called out in this
particular chapter.
I'll go back to this
verse, but notice what it says in verse 30.
It says, "And say," this is
them saying, the Pharisees, "if we had been in the days
of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them
in the blood of the prophets." Isn't this funny?
Two days before they're going to
literally crucify Jesus, they're saying
we would have never killed a prophet. And then
they're going to literally kill Jesus. Right?
Because they think like, hey, we would never
make these mistakes. We would never do
these things. And then he says in verse 31,
"Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves
that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets."
He's like, no, no, you're exactly like those
people. And this is what's even funny.
If you kind of think about
how he words it, a little bit
further down, let me see. It says in
verse number 35, just look at the
last part, talking about the blood of Zechariah,
the son of Barakaius, whom ye slew between the
temple and the altar. Now, Zechariah
has died hundreds of years ago.
None of them were the literal people
that murdered him. But notice he attributes
the murder of Zechariah to them.
He says, "Ye slew." So he's
just saying, like, you're the same kind of
person that would kill
Zechariah. You're the same kind of person
that would have fought against Moses.
You're the same kind of person that would have tried
to kill Jeremiah and threw him in the dung pit.
You're the same kind of person that would have put Daniel
in the lion's den. You're the same kind of person
that would, in the future, stone Stephen
and try to kill Paul, because
they have the same spirit, because it's that
anti-Christ spirit. It's a spirit
of false prophet, and they're just
like their fathers. And you know,
I've always wondered about this
in other contexts too, and
it would always make me cringe when I think,
you know, in America, we used to not let women vote.
So you know what that means? Somehow,
somewhere, some man decided that
a woman should vote. Because if women couldn't
vote, then no woman ever gave
herself the right to vote. You know what happened? Men
voted for women to be able to vote. That's how it happened.
That's just how it happens, right? And I kept
thinking, like, what man is
living in a time where women can't vote and
thought, like, man, you know what's really missing out
on our voting? Is women getting into
the game? And then said, like, I'm
voting for this. I'm pro this. You would
think, like, all the guys would just band together and be
like, pros, okay? You know, come on.
We're not gonna do this, right? But
somehow they did, and I'm thinking, like, what kind of man would do
that? And in the last few months,
I've realized there's a lot of guys that I know
that would've done that. That would vote for these kind
of things, and would kind of say these things, and I'm thinking,
man, you are a feminist! I'm
so shocked. You know, there's people that
are literal communists. People that get up
and teach, hey, the government gets to decide who
raises your children. What? What kind of
communism is that? Coming across
pulpits? That's not the Bible.
And you constantly think, like, where do these communists,
where do these feminists, where do these people come from?
But you know what? The same spirits
that have dwelled in people in the past
are similar today, and they dwell in
them today. The same communist devils
are in people today. The same Feminazi
devils are in people today. The same
Antichrist spirit is alive
and well today as it was back then.
And the Bible even said it is the last time,
and we know the Antichrist shall come,
and there's many Antichrists,
and even today in 2025,
there is many Antichrists
right now, and the Antichrist spirit
is alive and well. And you know what? This
Rabbi spirit and Father spirit
and Master spirit is also
alive and well in a lot of people today, and
they're leading them astray. And as Jesus
got up and ripped and screamed about
it, you know, we need preachers to get up
and start ripping and screaming today. About
what? Jews, about Catholics,
and about these seminary
people that are leading people to hell and destroying
people's lives. And teaching
false doctrine. They might have positions
of authority, but you know what? They're bozos,
they're not legitimate, they're hypocrites,
and they need to be called out.
And of course, what do they love? They love to be seen
of men, but they never help people in private.
In fact, they never want to help anyone.
They're only in it for attention. And I'll tell you
something, it really does rub me the wrong way
when I see a pastor or preacher or anybody
who seems to be more about attention
than actually helping people. Making decisions
for themselves and not for
other people. It's disgusting,
it's the wrong kind of attitude, it's the
wrong spirit. Verse 11 says, "But he
that is greatest among you shall be your
servant." If you desire
a position of authority, you should have
a desire to serve. And
you know, there's a lot of great people
that'll probably never become a pastor, but
man, one thing that just really
irritates the fire out of me is when people start showing
their pride. If someone starts showing their
pride, I just don't really want having
to do with them as far as ordination
is concerned. And another thing
that, you know, I was taught this,
but it's a really good principle, you know,
in our preaching class, when I went to
Faithful Word Baptist Church, Pastor Anderson,
he told me this later, he didn't tell the class,
he was just, it was a private thing in
his head, but he was saying, if he would
ever correct somebody and they couldn't
take the correction, he would just,
he would mark them mentally and say,
"I'll never work with this person. I'll never
ordain them, I'll never do anything." And so he
took it so serious that, man, if you give them
correction and they can't take it, then he would
just immediately mark that person. And I'm telling
you, it is right, it is right on. People that
can't take correction are bad people.
And especially, you know, you're supposed to come
to a church where you're supposed to actually have respect
for a pastor, for an authority figure, and he gives
you correction and you can't take it, you have
serious problems. You should take
correction from the authorities in your life.
You should take correction from your parents, you should
take correction from the Bible, from your boss at
work, and especially your pastor.
You should take correction from
authority figures. But at
the end of the day, the authority figures,
you know, are there to help serve.
You know, I offer correction to people
not just to beat up on them or because
I don't like them, it's actually because I love them.
You know, if I don't really like somebody, I don't really offer them
that much correction. I don't ever try to like
do something like that, it's just like
I just want to get out of there as fast as possible,
move on, yeah, sure, fine, bye.
You know, if someone's giving you
a lot of correction, you need to realize that
that person actually loves you. If your parents are correcting
you a lot, it's because they love you a lot.
If your boss at work is giving you a lot of correction,
it actually means that he thinks you're worthwhile.
Because if I had an employee
and I'm just sick and tired
of them, I'm not going to keep giving them correction,
I'm just going to fire them. Everybody would.
The person that's actually constantly trying to help you
and show you things,
they're investing in you and they love you
and they actually care about you. God is constantly
investing in us. He's constantly correcting us
and reproving us. And of course,
the Word of God is constantly correcting us
and reproving us. And we need to take that
correction. And of course, that's a way to be
served. Being criticized is
a blessing. People
that actually want to get good at stuff and learn
stuff, they beg and crave for
correction. They beg for someone to help
them. Now, why would someone show up at a church
like this? Why do people like hard preaching?
Because they actually want to get better. They have a desire
to get better and they're kind of sick of going somewhere
and asking for it and not getting it.
And so one of the things that's mainly served
at this church is called hard preaching.
Now, this is what most people think
hard preaching is. Preaching against fags
and Jews. That is not hard preaching.
How many of you are a fag or a Jew in here?
That is not hard preaching. You know what's
hard preaching? It's stuff that you are
guilty of, that you have an
issue with, that you have a blind spot.
And I'm just going to say like
all of us struggle with hard preaching
because true hard preaching is
calling you out where you need to be
called out. And that's a service.
Jesus was constantly offending
people and driving people away because he
was rebuking them, calling them out
for their sin, making it clear where
they're at. And at the end of the day
we should take correction because it'll
make us better. If you don't take correction
well you're going to end up destroying yourself.
You know, I don't have
to live your life
and I get that, but at the end
of the day, like, I want success for you
and most people want success for you
and when they offer you correction you should
take it very seriously because often
it's very easy for other people to see
our faults. It's very hard for us to see
our faults. That's why we have it. The reason
why we have a lot of problems we have is because we can't see
it. If we could see it we'd probably just
fix it. Just like you look in the mirror and you see something
on your face, you're pretty much going
to take care of that right away. The reason
why you have something on your face you're not taking care of it is because you can't see it.
But look, if I had something
on my face, you know who's going to see it
way better than me? You!
I literally can't see something on my face. There's games
designed with this. You put a card
on your forehead and you're trying to guess
what's on your forehead and other people can see clearly.
Look, that is how we live our lives
most of the time. People can see our problems
from a mile away and
so you should take heed to what other people
have to say. You should take heed to what other
people think because often they're going to be a
very good judge of the problems that you have.
We sometimes struggle with our own blind spots
and so, you know,
someone that's a servant is often going to be
helping you by correcting you,
you know, telling you where you're wrong, trying
to improve you. Don't just think of service as like
he's just going to give me money.
Money doesn't help people a lot of times.
Think about the homeless. I don't go to the homeless
and say, "Hey, you just need money? I'm just going to give you
money." Then they're just going to buy more drugs and alcohol
and stay in their stupid condition, right?
You know what the homeless guy needs to be told?
Get a job or offer a job, right?
Offer something to do some work.
And he needs to be criticized. "Hey, you smell bad.
Take a shower. You need to get some good clothes on.
You need to brush your teeth. You need to stop drinking alcohol."
That's what they need. That's serving people.
People have the wrong idea of what it means
to serve people. You know, I can serve
my children. You know how I serve my children?
Telling them how to do things.
Telling them that they're wrong. "Hey, spell
this word." No, you're wrong. This is how you spell it.
"Hey, tie your shoes." No, that's not how you tie it.
This is how you tie it. That's serving them.
What's not serving them is just serving up ice cream
and candy and floats and giving them more
cavities. And so we should have the right
mentality of being served, okay?
You're not going to necessarily being
served in the body of Christ, get ice
cream and rainbows and unicorn
rides. Sometimes you're going to get
reproof, rebuke, exhortation.
But you know what? That's still being served.
You should recognize what's really being served.
You can go to the fun non-denom church and
just, "Hey, they'll serve you ice cream and
candy canes and whatever as long as you're tithing."
But they're not going to serve you what you really need.
And the guy that wants to be great in
Christianity is going to serve people.
He's going to be the one to say the
hard things that need to be said.
What the Bible says, whether it's popular
or unpopular, that's the guy who truly
loves you. That's the guy that's going to be the greatest.
The one that humbles himself and just serves other people.
Verse 12, "And whosoever shall exalt
himself shall be abased, and he that shall
humble himself shall be exalted." We should not
be in the business of praising ourselves,
telling everybody about how great we are,
putting out a post
on Facebook saying, "Look, this is me being
awesome." That's pretty much the opposite
of what the Bible is saying. It's saying, "Hey, you know
what? You should praise other people, lift
other people up, invest in other
people. That is how you're going to be great."
And maybe you won't necessarily get
recognition for it immediately or in this life,
but you will get the recognition eventually.
And often, even in this life, you'll still get
that recognition. But if you really
want to be elevated in any position
you need to humble yourself. This applies
not only in Christianity, every area of life.
Whether it be in your family, whether it be at the workplace,
the Proverbs 31 woman, instead of
flaunting herself off,
demanding compliments.
You know what she does? She just works hard and serves
her family and her husband, and then she's
constantly praised by her children and
her husband. Why?
Not because she demands it, not because she's
trying to flaunt herself off, because she works hard.
And by working hard and humbling herself
and becoming a servant to the whole family,
serving her children and serving her husband
and serving her maidens, and doing all this work,
she ends up getting exalted
to be the Proverbs 31 woman.
To be this woman of high value
and of high praise. And I'll
tell you, women that have raised
a lot of children and served their whole life,
their children will just praise their mom
and praise their grandma and praise the women
in their life, and they have a great testimony.
That's what you should
be doing if you really want that, if you really
want the praise. The woman who
spent all of her time just grooming herself.
Think about this. The woman
that spent all of her time just doing her hair,
doing her nails, doing whatever. When she's
old, she'll be ugly. Because when we get
old, our beauty fades.
And you know what? There's nothing to praise there anymore.
And because she didn't work hard, there's nothing to praise there anymore.
And so guess what? No one's praising her.
Whereas the woman who actually just humbled
herself and said, "Hey, beauty is vain
and favor is deceitful, but a woman that
fears the Lord, she shall be praised."
She just humbled herself and served her family and
served her husband and served her church and
served the people around her. She will be constantly
praised by those around her
and she'll be exalted. Whereas that
dirty whore that just tried to dress herself up
when she was young, you know what? She's going to be
condemned by society and nobody wants to go
visit her in the nursing home where she's
dying alone by herself because she killed
all of her kids through abortion. Sorry, that's a
little harsh, but you know what? That's reality.
And the reality is, hey, you want to be
exalted? Humble yourself. Hey, you go to work
and there's trash on the ground? Pick
it up. I don't care if you're white collar or not.
Pick up the trash and throw it away.
Just serve. Your boss has a job you
don't want to do. You just do it. Don't complain.
Don't say, "Well, I wasn't brought in here to do
this." You just become a servant and humble yourself.
And pretty soon they'll be like, "Well, we don't want to
get rid of this guy. We want to get rid of the peacock
that doesn't do anything, that doesn't
deliver, that's only caring about himself,
because he doesn't really add to the company.
This guy's doing jobs.
We can't replace him because he's doing
jobs nobody else wants to do." That's how you get
elevated and promoted within the
workplace. Same with church.
You want to be exalted in this church?
Humble yourself and just get to work. Don't come
tell me how great you are, show me how great you are.
It says in verse number 13,
"But woe unto you scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites, for you shut up the kingdom of heaven
against men, for you neither go in yourselves,
neither suffer you them that are entering to go
in. Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites, for you devour widows' houses
and for a pretense make long prayer.
Therefore, you shall
receive the greater damnation.
Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites, for you
compass sea and land to make one proselyte
and when he is made, you make
him twofold more the child of hell
than yourselves. I wonder why they kill
Jesus. I mean, he's just so nice,
right? He's just so kind and just
so gentle. You know, they make all these
little TV shows where there's a Jesus. I want to
see this part. Seems like they don't really emphasize
this part. Seems like they emphasize a lot of things
concerning the Bible, honestly. But this is
the Jesus of the Bible is a guy screaming and yelling
and calling them out and calling them out for the
sins that they have. Notice that they're not getting
anybody saved. The people that even want to get
saved, there's people coming to the Pharisees and
Satanists genuinely wanting to get saved and they
give them the wrong answer. They say, "Hey, what do
I have to do to be saved?" They say, "Get baptized.
Get catechized. Join the Catholic Church. You have
to do all the works. You have to do all this. You
have to give all this money." And a lot of people
even try to do that, but they end up still, they
can't go in, because that's not how you get into
heaven. It's not by works. They're not going to
heaven, but then they're trying to keep other
people from going to heaven by being a gatekeeper.
They're a gatekeeper on knowledge. They're a
gatekeeper on salvation. That's why it's going to
be taken from them. He says, "What are they really
like? They devour widows' houses, and for a
pretense, make a long prayer." You know, this
devour widows' houses makes me think of modern
day televangelists. Televangelists constantly
getting on the screen telling women and old
ladies to give $58 or $1,000 or whatever, and
there's so many older, elderly people who just
constantly are giving money to these online
televangelists thinking that it'll help them,
bless them, or in some cases give them more money
or whatever, and all they're doing is just
devouring their house. And they never have to
see these people. They don't know their name.
They'll never help them, but they'll take their
money, won't they? The televangelists put your
hand on the screen, give $1,000. Look, never do
this. You know, give money to the church you're
growing up at and seeing the fruit and seeing the
works. Give money to a church where they're sending
evangelists out to the Philippines getting
hundreds and hundreds of people saved every month,
yay, thousands a year. You know, that's the kind of
a church you should be going to and investing in.
Investing in Mike Murdoch's new mansion isn't really
going to get you very far. And of course, these
people, they devour widows' houses. They're taking
their reverse mortgage payments. You know, this is
disgusting. And for pretense, make long prayer.
You know, I grew up in churches where people would
pray long. I didn't realize it was bad. Like,
they're trying to think about it. They're making
these long prayers, making it seem like they're so
awesome. And the Bible saying you guys suck. And I
kind of hated long prayer. But then I felt guilty
because I'm thinking like, man, you know, I'm not
as spiritual. These people, I guess, you know, I'm
Cardinal because I can't see her and pray for 30
minutes for an hour. And I mean, like these
people, these people, it's just like they don't
even know where they're going in their prayers.
They're just they just sit there and they're just
going on and on and on. Lord, rebuke the devil.
And will you please take the devil out? And devil,
will you go to hell? And you know, the devil
can't stop us. And we rebuke him in the name of
Jesus. And then and then pretty much they start
running out, so they just start repeating again.
And we rebuke him in the name of Jesus and rebuke
cancer in the name of Jesus, and rebuke poverty
in the name of Jesus, and rebuke affliction in the
name of Jesus, and rebuke the enemies of Israel
in the name of Jesus. And you're just sitting
here like how long is this going to be? And then
eventually I kind of do the thing where I'm
opening my eyes but not looking up. I'm going to
just kind of see if other people are, and then
you're kind of looking up, and then you catch
someone else and you're kind of like, alright,
look it down. Like the Bible is saying,
these people, they weren't praying
sincerely. They didn't really care.
They're just for a pretense
making long prayer. You know what?
Look, I'm not against long prayers
if you want to do it in private with yourself.
But you know, in public, you shouldn't be
making these really long, drawn out prayers.
The Bible has a lot of prayers in it.
There is probably hundreds, if not
I mean, I think there's probably hundreds, there's at least
dozens of prayers in the Bible
of people, and almost none of them
take longer than two or three minutes to read.
In fact, some of them are like ten seconds
or fifteen seconds.
Okay? You don't necessarily need to have
these long, drawn out public
prayers. Now, obviously you have a couple
examples, like people didn't stop
praying for Peter when he was in prison.
I think, you know, they're probably just taking turns.
Not necessarily. Obviously, Jesus even
prayed a little bit, came back
to the disciples, then went and prayed a little bit again.
Went and see the disciples. And those are in extreme
situations. Yeah.
Hey, if I get thrown in prison and I'm about
to be executed, I don't mind if y'all
just keep praying until, you know, something happens.
Right? But,
you know, in not these extreme situations,
you know, we shouldn't be going
out for a pretense making long prayer.
Doesn't mean there's occasionally
a justification for long prayer.
But they're not doing it because it's legit.
They're not trying to pray Peter out of being
martyred for the cause of Christ.
They're just praying to be seen of men.
Oh, look how spiritual this guy is.
He makes super, super long prayers.
And notice what they really get is the greater
damnation. They compass the whole,
it's really hard for them to make proselytes,
but when they do, he's a child of hell.
Now, this is, I like this phrase
because honestly I've heard some people say you can never
use the word hell unless it's
literally talking about the place.
But how is that true here? These people weren't
literally born in hell.
What does it mean? It's a metaphor.
It's just a metaphor to say, hey, these people
are going to hell. They're like
the children of hell. It's a derogatory
term and Jesus is calling
people out and saying, hey, you're a child of hell.
Oh man, he's cussing. I don't think Jesus is
cussing. I don't even think that it's real, okay?
Obviously the word hell is used
by Jesus and he's screaming it at
these people. But again, why?
It's serious. People really are
going to hell as a result of these
people. They're really making people children
of hell. This is a serious matter.
He's using serious language. He's using strong
language to communicate a very
important point. These people are evil.
They're wicked. They're of the devil.
They're children of hell. They're damning
souls to hell. They're never going to escape
hell and they're dragging people down with them.
Get far away from them. Don't
be like them. He's getting mad and
angry at these particular individuals.
Verse 16, "Woe unto
you, you blind guides, which
say, Whoso shall swear by the temple,
it is nothing. But whoso shall
swear by the gold of the temple, he is
a debtor. He fools and blind. For
whoso is greater, the gold of the temple, that sanctify the gold."
Now, there's a lot of ways we can apply
this. I want to apply this to one area in a sense
because think about this. He's saying
that the Pharisees emphasize gold
over the temple. Gold
represents money. Pretty easy. What does the temple
represent? The things of God. And he's saying,
"Man, you swear by the things of God, it's like
meaningless to y'all, but if someone
swears by money, it's everything to y'all."
And you know what? That's how our society works today, isn't it?
You want to go buy a house? You know what
they'll do? They'll get a mortgage contract
out. And I'll tell you what, you're going to sign
for like an hour and a half.
You're going to sign all kinds of pledges
and vows and documents.
And you know, people take their mortgage real
serious. People aren't thinking like, "You know,
should we pay our mortgage this month or not?"
I don't know. No, no. People are like, "We are
going to pay our mortgage. It's the first
thing coming out of our paycheck. It's the
first thing that we're going to do." But then
what is Jesus saying? Man, you
really swear by gold. It's really important to you.
But then you think like the
swearing by the things of God, they're not as important.
But it's like the opposite should be true.
We should be more concerned with the temple.
We should be more concerned with the things of God
than the things of gold. More important
than paying my mortgage should be church
and the things of God. More important
than making sure I pay my mortgage
should be making sure I'm paying God.
He's saying you guys act like it's
meaningless to break your word to God.
Oh, well, should I go to church
or not? Should I read my Bible? Or should I
serve God today? You know what? That shouldn't be on the
table. Just like paying your mortgage shouldn't
be on the table. Just like doing
the contracts that you make in the business
world. People honor their business contracts.
How about honor being a
Christian? Hey, didn't you get baptized?
Didn't you have a contract where you said, "Hey,
I'm going to walk in newness of life," where I said, "I'm actually
going to serve God with my life." Hey, you got
baptized and say you're going to serve God with your life.
Honor your word. Honor
what you said. Be a steadfast Christian.
Be someone that's actually going to do
what you said and serve and work hard.
Because it's crazy how people work so
hard for gold, but not for the temple,
for the things of God. You know what? The temple
should be first, gold second. But the Pharisee
said the temple's meaningless and gold's everything.
Why? Because they're covetous and they only care about money.
Verse 18. "And whosoever shall swear
by the altar, it is nothing. But whosoever
sweareth by the gift that is upon the altar, he
is guilty." Again, the sacrifice,
the altar, the things of God.
How about the gospel? That's
the most important thing. These people think
about gifts. Again, money, covetousness,
possessions. They don't
care about the things of God. The rich man
went away because he had many possessions.
He didn't want to get saved.
And again, it's no new
thing under the sun. He says in
verse 22, "And he that shall swear by heaven, swear
by the throne of God, and by him that sitteth
thereon." For sake of time, I can't do this,
but I want to do a whole study on sitting
because the Bible brings up God the Father sitting
in heaven a lot. You know why?
Because God the Father is sitting in heaven. It's not
symbolic of him sitting in heaven. It's because
he's sitting in heaven, alright?
And here's another clear example of that.
Think about this.
When the Bible talks about the temple
or the tabernacle in heaven,
Moses was told to make the tabernacle
like the pattern of the one in
heaven. Not saying like there's a
symbolic temple. No, you're looking
at a tabernacle. You're looking at a
temple and then making the one
here to look like that one. The Bible says
in Hebrews that Jesus Christ didn't
enter into a temple made by hands
but into the true tabernacle
which is in heaven.
Why in the world would there be a
tabernacle, an altar, and a
mercy seat in heaven with no one sitting
on it? That is bizarre. But you know
what? It is a huge movement of
Catholicism and other false religions
to just say everything in the Bible
is symbolic, and there's not really a
God in heaven, and there's not really one sitting on a
throne, and all of this nonsense,
and you know what? I reject all of it, and I think
it's all wrong. I believe that the Father
is really sitting in heaven, and when
we talk about the things of God, we have to realize
He is really ruling from heaven. God
is seated on His throne. There is a real
throne in this universe
that God is sitting on, and
God is ruling from heaven.
You have a real ruler,
a real authoritarian in this
universe that we're subject to. It is God the Father
and He's looking down and He's judging
us every single day. It's not
hyperbole. It's not
symbolic. It's real.
We have a real God that's really
seated on a throne, and He's
the real King, the King of Kings,
and the Lord of Lords, and we should obey Him.
And way more important than
swearing on gold or gifts is
the altar and the temple and the things of God.
That's who we should be concerned with. That's who
we should be focused on. He is the one
we should be dedicating our lives to. But these guys, they don't care. Why? Because they're
like atheists, basically. They don't even believe in God. They have no fear of God.
They don't believe the Bible. The Sadducees themselves don't believe in the resurrection.
I mean, these guys are like the modern day seminary graduates who don't even really seem
to believe the Bible is real at all. Why would I go to them and ask them, "Hey, what's your
commentary say about God's saying in heaven?" It's symbolic. What's hell like? It's symbolic.
What's salvation like? It's symbolic. Now you sound like Jordan Peterson, where everything's
nothing. He doesn't even know what he believes. He doesn't even know who he is. He doesn't
even know if he exists, but he'll know that things are real when he's in hell. It says
in verse 23, "Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you pay tithe of mint and
anise and cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law. Judgment, mercy, and faith,
these ought ye have done, and not to leave the other undone." Without judgment, you
can have no mercy. People always want to talk about, "Oh, guys, why don't you have more
mercy? You guys are so judgmental." But here's the thing, you can't have mercy without judgment.
So if we never judge or we never said, "This is what it's like," or called people on the
carpet, well, then we can't even show mercy. Really, if you are all mercy, then you have
no judgment. And really, then you make mercy not mercy anymore. It's meaningless. Mercy
means that they're actually not getting what they deserve. They're getting something they
don't deserve. And you have to have judgment first, then you can have mercy. Obviously,
this is kind of a picture of the gospel even. You got judgment, "Hey, we're all damned to
hell. Mercy, Jesus Christ died on the cross. How do we receive that? Through faith in Jesus
Christ." So we need to have that first judgment, admitting that we're a sinner. We have to
realize that mercy, Jesus Christ died on the cross to took our place and showed his love
for us. And then we exercise our faith by believing in him. And that's what actually
saves us. This is the whole essence of the Bible. They're talking about tithing on anise.
I don't even know what that is. I've heard of cumin. I don't even know. I don't even
use it. Sometimes, you know, sometimes when you're cooking and you're experimenting,
you're just looking at spices and you're like, "I don't know what this is. Just throw it
in there," you know? That's how I feel about cumin. Who uses cumin in there? Okay, some
people use cumin. I don't even know why. Like, I'm not looking at it thinking, like, I need
to add this for a specific reason. I don't even know why you'd add it. It's just in there.
I'm just thinking, like, okay, you know, whatever. These guys are paying tithe on that. I'm thinking,
like, I don't know what's going on with this stuff. Cumin, I probably sound weird, but
I don't even know why you use it. Someone can educate me later, alright? Verse 24, "Ye
blind guides would strain into that and swallow a camel. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites, for ye may clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within her
they are full of extortion and excess." You know who this is, is Robert Morris. Full of
extortion and excess. You know what's interesting? Robert Morris, the pastor, former pastor of
Gateway, which was arguably one of the largest, if not the largest churches in America. Probably
now Life Church with Craig Rochelle, but at least at a time that seemed to be very much
in competition. Gateway boasted about 100,000 members across all of their satellite campuses.
Huge, huge church recently had been exposed for committing pedophilic acts with a young lady in
the past. I don't know that he's been convicted yet, but based on her testimony, the circumstances,
a lot of public people kind of admitting this is true. It seems like it's legitimate. So he
stepped down or got fired or some combination thereof, but now he's suing Gateway. Robert
Morris is suing Gateway, saying that they're not paying him enough money. He is claiming
that they owe him or they should pay him $800,000 a year from the ages of 63 to 70. And then after
that, $600,000 a year until he dies. And currently Gateway is only allotted $170,000 a year. What?
Like, I don't even know if you should be paid that much money, even if you were on staff in
a good position. Let alone when you've been charged with criminal charges. I think Oklahoma's brought
criminal charges or thinking about indicting him. I don't know if they've actually done it officially
or not, but he was facing potential criminal charges for pedophilia acts. You know, it's like,
and this church has this huge lawsuit issue of millions of dollars being thrown at them.
And I'm like, I know how to solve your lawsuit issue. Put a bullet in his head. If he's convicted
of pedophilia, he should get a bullet in his head and to receive zero dollars. I, you know,
if you have the largest church in America and you're doing great things, you probably do deserve,
you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars or something here. I wouldn't be mad. 800
seems a little excessive, especially when you're not on staff and you've been fired
for being a wicked false prophet, evil pedophile who led all kinds of people to hell because he
teaches lordship salvation and Robert Morris is a child of hell and anybody that was under him is
probably also a child of hell. He's dragging people into hell with him and of course now all he wants
is money again. What kind of shame and reproach? Why can't you go just bury your head in the sand
after you've been called out for being such an evil, wicked pedophile and everybody hates you now?
Now you have to try and take money, more money? They're even giving, I mean, a hundred and seventy
thousand dollars isn't enough to go bury your head in the sand? I mean, this guy is wicked.
Talk about extortion. Extortion is obtaining money through force or threats. And look,
this seems like a, it seems like a mild form of extortion when you're suing your former employer
that fired you for a pretty legit reason and then you have to just go out there and try to get even
more money out of them. I mean, I guess he just wants to make it real clear he's a false prophet,
doesn't he? Zero repentance. How about defrauding so many people, telling them all kinds of lies
about who you really were and covering up and hiding? How about this young lady who you ruined
her life and her family's life? I mean, the guy is disgusting. You know, we could solve a lot of
false religion in this world if we just put pedophiles to death. I mean, if we just put
pedophiles to death, I mean, the Catholic church would be losing priests fast. Lose a lot of those
fathers. It's disgusting. It's weird. And of course, that's what the Pharisees are like. They're
full of extortion and excess. They don't want to make a good wage so that they can focus on the
things of God. They're just in it for money. Verse 26, "Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which
is within the cup and platter that the outside of them may be clean also." You know, it's like,
would you rather have a cup where the outside's dirty or the inside's dirty? You'd rather have
the outside because you can still drink what's inside. If the inside's dirty, who cares how
nice the outside is? You don't even want to use it. The same, you get saved first,
then you clean up your life. You don't repent of your sins to then get saved. You don't try to
make him the lord of your life to get saved. No, you just get saved. Then you try to repent of
your sins. Then you try to clean up yourself afterward. Verse 27, "Woe unto you, scribes and
Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like unto whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful
outward, but are within full of dead men's bones and of all uncleanness. Even so, you also outwardly
appear righteous in them in, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity." Just like Robert
Morris, he looked really good. A lot of these preachers look really good. But boy, inside,
they're disgusting. You know, I've been around Robert Morris. I've been around his family.
You know, I hung out with them a little bit. You know what they were never bringing up? The Bible.
I was never hanging out with them. They're just like, "Hey, have you ever thought about this in
Leviticus? Have you ever thought about this in Judges? Have you thought about this Bible story?"
It's all about business. It's just like hanging out with a normal CEO or worldly person. They're
not thinking about the things of God. They don't care about the things of God. They're just full
of hypocrisy and iniquity. They get up and preach these sermons about making Jesus the Lord of your
life. That's what Robert Morris said. But then the guy's a pedophile. Shocker. Verse 29, "Woe unto
you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because ye build the tombs of the prophets and garnish
the sepulchers of the righteous and say, 'If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not
have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves
that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets? Fill ye up then the measure of your
fathers.'" What a powerful verse. He says, "Look, hey, you're like them. Fill ye up the measure.
Just go ahead and do the worst thing imaginable. How about killing the Son of God? Just to prove
how wicked you really are." You know, it's like, boy, this guy's a reprobate and steals money from
churches. Well, then he just steals even more money from more churches to prove what he's really
like. A disgusting, filthy reprobate. And you know what? There's all kinds of people like that and
they just have to prove how wicked and evil they are. It's like some bad person in our church,
some Judas, as soon as they get kicked out, boy, then they just come unleashed. And you're just
like, wow, just fill it up, buddy. Just show us all what you're really like then. Just really let
your hair down. Man, it's just crazy how people that go to good churches, as soon as they leave,
they just, the wolf ears just come out and they just show for everybody how evil and weird.
It's like, you thought they're a railer and then they're just like, boy, I'll show you how a rail,
what a railer's like. And you're just thinking like, man, what's going on with these people?
Verse 33, you serpents, you generation of vipers, how can you escape the damnation of hell? You
know, these people are obviously never going to get saved. It's a reprobate. They're twofold more
the child of hell is their proselyte, but also the Bible says some people are twice dead. Notice
that they're serpents, they're vipers. What is a serpent or a viper like? They're a cunning beast.
You can't really see them and they just bite you when you're least expecting it and they usually
are full of poison which will kill you very quickly and that is what a false prophet is like.
You don't see him coming and he'll bite you with all this poisonous false doctrine
and it'll destroy your life. Verse 34, "Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets and wise men and
scribes and some of them ye shall kill and crucify and some of them shall you scourge in your
synagogues and persecute them from city to city that upon you may come all the righteous bloodshed
upon the earth from the blood of the righteous Abel unto the blood of Zechariah son of Baruchias
whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you all these things shall come
upon this generation. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that kills the prophets and stonest them
which are sent unto thee. How often would I have gathered thy children together even as the hen
gathered the chickens under her wings and ye would not. Behold your house is left and you desolate
for I say unto you you shall not see me henceforth till ye shall say blessed is he that come in the
name of the Lord. Now this this ending is kind of interesting they obviously a few people still see
him again but I think he's just saying like by and large I mean he's preaching to a huge crowd
every showing up at the temple is a big feast and for the most part most of these people probably
won't see him again unless they showed up for that hearing for the crucifixion or they journeyed out
to where the cross was but I don't think it's the vast majority it's kind of a smaller subgroup that
are participating in those type of events so the vast majority of these people this is the last
time they're ever going to see Jesus but when it will they see him again they'll see him one other
time when they come out of hell at the great white throne judgment that's when they'll see and their
knee is going to bow and their tongue is going to going to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the
glory of God the father and he's basically saying hey this is the last time you're going to see me
until that great white throne judgment carry day for them they're going to die and go to hell
now there's one thing that I kind of wanted to finish on is it is just kind of this this last
section one of the points that it's kind of bringing up is just if you think about
these people they think that they are righteous they think that they wouldn't be like the bad
people of the past but then Jesus is pointing out you are like the bad people of the past in fact
you're worse in some ways and they just don't really get that and what we have to understand
is that the bible has so many characters and so many stories that it pretty much just covers
humanity as a whole and so while none of us will ever be exactly like somebody in the bible
there's probably a character that we're going to be very similar to. Who are they like? They're
like all of those people they're like Cain who slew his brother. They're like the guys that threw
Daniel in the lion's den. They're like the guy that would go out and kill Zechariah. They're
like all the people in the bible every time you heard a story where the righteous guy got killed
or slain or they threw Jeremiah in the dung pit. They're that same kind of person. They're the
brethren that would have sold Joseph in slavery. But then you have to understand this. You are
also somewhere in the bible. Someone in the bible, some story, some character is like you.
And here's my question. Who are you in the bible? We love to read the story and read and rip on
these people and be like well at least I'm not like them. Okay but let's learn at least one lesson.
They didn't have enough self-awareness to realize who they were. Here's my question. Who are you?
Because they're like Judas aren't they? They're all kind of like Judas. But you know there's other
people in the Bible that aren't just a reprobate. Obviously there's a lot of reps. There's people
like Korah. They you know those people would have been just like these people. But how about someone
like Aaron? Are you like Aaron which as soon as the leader walks away you're going to go and make
a false god? Are you like Demas who for a while serves God but then having loved this present
world is departed on Thessalonica? Are you going to be someone that departs and forsakes Christ?
Are you going to be that Demas? Are you going to be like John Mark who after things get a little
tough you just quit? Are you going to be like the murmurs out in the wilderness where you just
constantly murmur and complain at every hardship that you have to go through in the Christian life?
"Oh you brought us out in the wilderness to kill us. We're in the not graves in Egypt. I remember
all the cucumbers and the garlic and the onions." Is that what kind of person you are? The person
that just is miracle after miracle after miracle and you just keep saying like why do I have to
keep doing this why don't you this is getting hard this is difficult complaining about Moses
complaining about Aaron. How about are you like Joab who boy when the boss isn't looking he just
kills people for a promotion tears other people down. Maybe you're a good person maybe you're like
her who's there and holding up the arms of the leader to win the battle. Her isn't someone that
gets all the recognition he's not the greatest character in the Bible but you know what he was
really crucial to the things of God. How about David? David's obviously a great guy in the Bible.
How about Benaniah? He was much better than Joab. Maybe you're Absalom. You look good you actually
had a good family but then you try to overthrow the kingdom. Maybe you're like Sheba the son of
Bichri where hey well I don't like this leader everybody come follow me we're gonna wait for a
better option. When's that option gonna come? Are you like Daniel? Maybe you're like Lot. Hey you
hung out with Abraham for a while. Lot got saved. Lot had a lot of possessions. Then he went and
lived in Sodom for a while because he wasn't content living for God and he chased after the
money and it ended up destroying him and his family. Maybe you're like Lot's wife. Remember
Lot's wife? Is that who you are in the Bible? Is that who you're going to go down in history as
as being like Lot's wife or would you like to be like Sarah? Go to 1st Peter chapter 3, go to 1st
Peter chapter 3. You know, how about Zephora? Is that the kind of wife you want to go down in history
as as the woman who's throwing bloody foreskins at her husband? Let me ask you something. You are
in the Bible. Who are you? Are you Lot's wife? Are you Sarah? Are you Zephora? Who are you? Because
you are somebody. And again, I'm not saying that it's going to be exact, but you know, just like
they were the children of their fathers. Look what the Bible says in 1st Peter chapter 3 verse 6.
"Even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord, whose daughters ye are, as long as you do well,
and are not afraid of any amazement." So just like they're like their fathers that were evil
and wicked, you could be like a daughter of Sarah if you do well. But what kind of lady are you
trying to be? Are you trying to be a Sarah? Or are you trying to be a Jezebel? Or are you trying to
be Lot's wife? Or are you trying to be like Zephora? Or are you trying to be like my cow,
which is complaining about her husband? I mean she's married to David! Oh I would I would be a
better wife if I was married to David. Maybe you're just my cow. I mean there are some women
that could be married to David and they'll complain about their husband. Can you imagine that? You're
like oh well if you're a good husband your wife will just obey you and respect you. What about
David? Isn't he like a decent guy? I mean like if they can't respect David who are they gonna respect?
I mean you think it's a coincidence that two of the greatest leaders in the Bible,
Moses and David, arguably just the greatest leaders, super awesome men, super manly,
have just screwed up marriages? Oh I think that if you're just an awesome leader your
wife is just going to be awesome. Says who? What chapter and verse is that buddy? Because I see
Mo- I mean oh Moses is a terrible leader now because of hora. Or David's not a good leader
because my cow. No I think God did that on purpose just to show hey everybody has free will. And
here's the question. Who are you going to be? Who are you going to be like? Are you going to be
like Sarah? Are you going to be like Lot? Are you going to be like her? Are you going to be like
Demas? Are you going to be like Joab? Hey maybe you're just a guy that's just not really ever
mentioned. You're the guy that ran away naked in the Bible when Jesus got captured. You know when
Jesus got captured by the Romans the Bible says there's just some guy that just ran away naked.
Is that you? Hey there was nine guys that got saved and never even came back to church to say
thank you. I guess that's not you because you at least showed up once. Hey the Bible says that
there's some people that are going to be immediately offended and just go back into the world. Demis
eventually quit. John Mark quit but then John Mark got back. Hey you could be like Barnabas who at
first is championing the Apostle Paul, makes a lot of good decisions, is with the Apostle Paul,
and then later ends up siding against Paul and then we never hear from him again. He just disappears
into obscurity and then the only mention is in the book of Galatians where it's a negative mention
because he's carried away in the simulation of Peter and the persuasion of James. Why do you
think there's all these names in the Bible and all these different characters? This is what humanity
is like but you know it's so vast and so complete that you're probably like somebody pretty close.
My question is who are you like? Don't read this story and just think like well I'm so glad I'm
not a Pharisee. Yeah but who are you like and who do you want to be? You know what I want to be? I
want to be a steadfast Christian. That's who I want to be. I want to be someone that ends his life
saying hey I was a Christian my whole life. I was serving God. I was trying to do right. I finished
my course. Henceforth there's laid up for me a crown of righteousness which cannot be taken from
me. I don't want to be the guy that at the end of his life it's like hey remember Lot's wife? We
don't even know her name. It's just Lot's wife. Boy is she a piece of work. You know what I mean?
I mean this chick just didn't care about the things of God. Just was just a sore, just a pain in the
rear. Even Lot himself. I mean Lot is just a crummy guy too. And you know I'm not saying that being
a good husband won't be positive influence on your family but you can only affect people so much.
People have free will. And at the end of the day we're all going to be responsible for ourselves.
And there's going to be a day just like when all those unsaved Jews show up at the great white
throne judgment there's going to be day when we're there too. Who are you going to be remembered as?
Are you going to be remembered as a daughter of Sarah or are you going to be a daughter of Lot's
wife Ananias and Sapphira the Jezebel in Revelation that was teaching false doctrine and had usurped
the authority over men? Or do you want to be someone like Titus or Timothy or John or Peter
or Paul? You know I think that there's people today that are very much like Paul today. And I
think there's people that are like Peter and I think there's people like John I think there's
people like Demas and I think there's people like Deotrophes and I think there's people like
Judas. And you know what you're in the Bible ask yourself this question right now who are you
and who do you want to be? You want to be Phura or do you want to be Pharaoh? Who do you want to be?
And you know what we should just settle in our hearts to try and be a good character in the Bible
and be steadfast the rest of our lives. Let's close in prayer. Thank you heavenly father so much for
this great chapter for this great rebuke against false prophets and false religion. I pray that we
that we would also take heed and realize that, you know, you're also looking down from heaven
and you're judging us, not just the wicked, not just the evil, but those who are righteous
that you're going to judge the house of God as well.
There's coming a day when we'll all stand before God in heaven and there's going to
be a judgment seat of Christ where we have to give an account of ourselves.
I pray that you would help motivate us to have the faith to be like the good characters
in the Bible, to be like our father Abraham, to be like Sarah, to be like the men of the
Bible that had strong faith and courage, men like David, men like Daniel, men like Paul,
men like Peter.
I pray that we would have a strong faith and that we could be steadfast so that you could
get all the honor and glory in Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.
Make sure to congratulate our baptisms.
God bless you're dismissed.