I get to hear y’all sing every Sunday, but it’s a little bit different. I get to sit and sing with you and listen. It’s a sweet sound. Before I came to the Lord, I was into rap and trap and hip-hop and boom-bap and heavy metal and all this stuff. I think that was a reflection of something else that was going on in my heart. I walk into my grandma’s house smelling like a certain type of smoke because I didn’t care about her or anyone else. I was doing my thing, but there’s something about sweet gospel music as a soothing to the soul. I’m just thankful for that this morning. I love hearing you sing and minister to me. I’m thankful for it. I’m glad you’re all here this morning. The Lord is good to bring you all back yet another Sunday. The Lord, I pray that you would speak through me, Lord, that I would just get moved out of the way. Lord, I’m here to build up and edify your saints, Lord. Would you enable me to do that, Lord? Would you open our ears and our hearts, even mine, Lord, to hear your word? Lord, I pray that you would move this morning and be with us. In Jesus’ name. We’re going to be in Matthew 23. Verse 13.

Last week, Pastor Chad preached on the pursuit of godliness. And it’s going to be a bit of overlap this week, and I would hope to compliment his sermon. And I believe what the Lord has for you today is an escape of ungodliness. So if you’re in Matthew 23, you’re going to be in Matthew 23. Turn with me there. Verse 13. That’s the word of the Lord. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You neither enter yourselves, nor allow those who would enter to go in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you travel across sea. And land to make a single proselyte. And when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. Woe to you, blind guides, who say, If anyone swears by the temple, it’s nothing. But if you swear by the gold of the temple, he’s bound by his oath. You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred? And you say, If anyone swears by the altar, that’s nothing. But if anyone swears by the gift that is on the altar, he’s bound by his oath. You blind men! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? Whoever swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it. And whoever swears by the temple swears by it and by him who dwells in it. And whoever swears by heaven swears by the throne of God. And by him who sits upon it. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees! Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they’re full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean. Woe to you, you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within, are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within, you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, saying, If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets. Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers, you serpents, you brood of vipers. How are you to escape being sentenced to hell?

Sometimes a good butt-whooping is what we need in life. I mean, we get out of line, start acting up. And I thank God that He disciplines us when we need it, but also He warns us before we need the discipline. And right here is a great warning, a great caution to not be ungodly. And He over and over and over again tells you what the consequence is. Eight times, woe to you, so here is warning this morning. Take it seriously.

There’s a great danger in being a hypocrite, a pretender. The Bible would describe it, a fake one. He says, woe to you. Woe. What does that mean? Woe to you, or for you, it’s a great sorrow. It’s a judgment on you. It’s a great grief, and a burden, and a darkness. That’s what’s for you, the pretender.

So the lot, the prize of the pretender, the reward of the pretender, for someone who would fake play to be a surgeon, and wear a white coat, and walk around with a scalpel, pretending he knows his way around the human heart. He doesn’t even know where the operating room is. He’s a pretender. He shows up to the hospital, putting people on his schedule, looking all dignified, yet he has no ability to give you what you’ve come for. None.

The text says that they slammed the door of the kingdom in people’s faces. They didn’t enter in themselves. They didn’t allow other people to go in. And it’s because they didn’t know the way themselves. I can’t show you how to do something, or show you where to go, if I know not how to do it, or where to find it. Jesus makes it clear in His interaction with the Pharisee, with Nicodemus, that you can’t see the kingdom, you can’t enter into the kingdom, unless you’re born again. The Pharisees, as Pastor Chad talked about last week, were adorning themselves with their broadness, knowledge of Scripture, and their tassels, and they love to be seen in their praises of men. But they knew nothing about the kingdom. They would have you believe they do. But they knew nothing about it. Jesus said, you must be born again. They would put a great burden on you and tell you, you have to do this, or to do that. You have to be like me. You have to be like me in order to get into the kingdom. And so they slammed the door right in your face. If you follow that way, a great heap of sorrow is waiting for you. A great burden is reserved for you.

Ms. Kathy shared a little with us the other night, and it was, powerful to me. She came to a priest with Ephesians 2, 8 and 9. The priest says, for by grace I’m saved. Can you explain this to me? Can you show me what this means? And she said, he slammed the book in her face, and that’s not for you.

When somebody calls me out on my hypocrisy, I tend to get defensive. If somebody asks me a question that I don’t know the answer to, it’s not for you to see anyways. Like the Wizard of Oz. Nothing to see here. Don’t mind the man behind the curtain. He didn’t know what to give her. He didn’t know the way in that passage. He couldn’t lead her to the kingdom because he didn’t know where it was himself.

But Ms. Kathy, the Lord’s good. He’s good. Because just because someone fails to lead her, to lead you to the kingdom, doesn’t leave you without hope. The Lord is the hound of heaven, as Spurgeon would say, and He’s coming after you. And if the Lord wants you, He’s going to get you. And He’s going to bring somebody that knows where the operating room is and that can show you how to get in there. I’m not a doctor. I might be able to give you an aspirin or tie up your broken arm with a splint, but I can’t operate on you. But I can show you where to go to get what you need. I say this in great humility. I’ve been in the kingdom. I come in and out and find pasture. And when I start to stray, thank God that there are other sheep that start batting and neighing at me saying, hey, hold on, where are you going? And if I make it too far outside of the gate, the good Lord, my shepherd, is there to bring me on back in.

There are countless religions and even in our own circles, real close to home, that would have you believe you need to do something to make it into the kingdom, to be righteous. Yes.

We have… We should have no tolerance for that here. There is no gospel there. There is no good news. If I have to do anything because I’m not capable of doing it, I have nothing good in me. I need to be brought to the One who can put it there. I need to be brought to the One who can make me righteous. You don’t need to be righteous to come into the kingdom. You can’t. You have to come to the kingdom and be made righteous. Amen. A pastor talked to him on the phone yesterday and it was an encouragement to me. He said it to me like this one time. He was in Romania. He was a missionary there. Him and his wife were given a ride to this lady. Romania is heavily Roman Catholic. The lady asked him. They started talking about the gospel. She was like, what’s so different about what you believe and what I believe? He summed it up like this. You do good things in order to be good. In order to be saved. I do good things because I am saved. Let that be the case for you. Don’t do good things in order for God to love you or to save you or to be brought into the kingdom. You can’t. That’s a false religion. That’s self-righteousness. It will get you grief and sorrow and judgment. You have to come empty-handed with nothing. Naked and ashamed. And when you come, you’ll be clothed with everything you need to sit at that feast and eat like we talked about the other day.

There are also… That’s a… That’s a… A spitting in the face of grace to say that I need to bring some of my own merits to the table with grace. God, I have nothing to bring there. That’s a spit in the face of God’s grace. But there’s an abuse and a fake grace, a cheap grace on the other side of the aisle. You tune in to any modern church around this country for sure. Pull up any YouTube video. Search on Facebook for five minutes. And you need to come to the kingdom how you are. Let me preface this. Are you a drunkard? You need to come a drunkard. Are you partaking in a twisted view of sexuality? You need to come to the kingdom just like that. Come. Just like you are. But you don’t stay that way. You have to come that way. But you can’t stay that way. And I shouldn’t… You shouldn’t prevent anyone from coming if they’re that way. Because that’s the only place they need to be. There’s nowhere else for them to go. Where else are you going to take them? If you send them anywhere else, you don’t know the way yourself. Because you know, if you know Christ, that is the only place that they need to be. On the other side of the aisle, there are those who would say, yes, come to Christ and we’ll not only overlook your sin, but we’ll celebrate it.

God loves everyone. You just come like you are and don’t let anybody tell you what kind of marriage you need to have or what kind of lifestyle you need to live. That’s cheap grace. Christ saved me not only from the penalty of my sin, but from the love of my sin.

That’s what happens in the kingdom. My debt is forgiven. My heart is changed. I’m given new passions, new desires.

If anyone would have you do anything, say anything, pray anything, anything in order to get into the kingdom, to the kingdom, you need to flee. Run as fast as you can. Jesus says, come. Just believe. That’s it. Jesus Himself is the door. Jesus Himself is the gate. You cannot enter into the kingdom any other way. It’s belief in the sufficiency of Jesus. What He did on the cross. His resurrection. His power over sin and death. It’s all of Jesus and none of me. None of me.

If I could sum up all of that with a verse. Turn to Colossians 2 chapter 2.

Paul says this is His great struggle. He wants you to know this. This is His great struggle for you. That your hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God. God’s mystery, which is Christ. That’s it. Just know Christ. Nothing else. Nothing else. Just know Christ. There’s nothing else.

Anyone who would claim anything else is not fit to preach the gospel, is not fit to bear the name Christian. Christian. They’re a pretender. Fake. They don’t know the way.

The prize of the pretender who would read off his own script in God’s grand drama. The one who would attempt to orchestrate his own little play while a greater play is going on. You can put it to your heart’s desire. I’ll put it to you by the title that says go to Jesus Christ tomorrow. Find the drive. Go to Jesus Christ tomorrow. Go to Jesus Christ. Pan the goldeniertel. Come into another man’s house and try to make up your own rules.

You can’t come into the kingdomlerini’sgatasavodgil.com woke degrees. So, yeah. I’ll cut you up here. I’ll walk you around. The Pharisees were trying to tit for tat and just, well, if you swear by the temple, that’s not really a big deal. He didn’t really mean that anyways, but if you swear by the gold of the temple, hey, that’s something. I think probably because the Bible says that the Pharisees were lovers of money, and so I would imagine the more gold that got brought into the temple, somehow their pockets got a little heavier and deeper. That’s speculation, but knowing a lover of money and knowing that they’re pretty close to that gold, that’s what was happening. So I think that’s probably why they would try to convince you that somehow that oath means something above swearing by the temple itself. But the truth is, you need not be making up rules in Jesus’ house.

He’s given me the rules of the kingdom. I just need to follow them. Hey, if I come to your house, my wife’s got a sign on the door, take off your shoes, please. That’s the rule at my wife’s house, to take off your shoes. Hey, if you want to wear your shoes in your house, that’s fine. But if in Jesus’ house he says take off your shoes, you take off your shoes. Or don’t come in, right? The Pharisees were twisting things, and if they actually knew something, they would know that Jesus previously said don’t make an oath at all. Don’t swear by anything. It’s better to not make an oath. Just let your word be your word. Be true to what you say. If you say you’re going to do it, do it. If you say you’re not going to do it, don’t do it. Be slow. Be slow. Be slow to make an oath. If you’re going to make one, be slow. Because anything that you would make it by is the Lord’s. The temple is His. The gold in the temple is His. The dirt you walk on is His. The money in your pocket is His. The house you sleep in at night is His. The car you drove to church in this morning is His. Anything that you can make an oath by yourself, anything less, anything greater, is His. So you’re bound to that oath by Him. You’re swearing ultimately by Him. And if you make an oath to God, He’s going to hold you to it. If you go to the bank this morning and you take out a loan and you sign your name on that line and you say, I will do this because you’re doing this for me, guess what? If you don’t do this, they’re coming. Folks will be knocking on your door for long. Hey, and I saw it on my security camera at the house. They’ll come and grab your car without asking you. They’ll hook that sucker. They’ll hook that sucker up and drag it out your driveway. They’re going to hold you to it. If the bank’s going to hold you to an oath that you’ve made, how much more will the God of heaven and earth hold you to an oath that you’ve made? Be slow to make it. Don’t make it at all. Just be true to what you say. Just be true to what you say. Okay.

The prize of the pretender plucks his eyebrows. But forgets to put on his pants.

I spent a lot of time in the mirror this morning polishing it up and combing my hair. I walk out, I ain’t got no pants on. I walk out, I ain’t got no pants on.

Don’t spend so much time. You’ll be all right if you don’t pluck your eyebrows. It might look a little funny. Maybe, some of you.

But it’s going to be ungodly if you walk out of the house without your pants on.

Call somebody to stumble. Call somebody to lust. It’s just indecent. It matters more than plucking your eyebrows. Put on your pants. Jesus says you tithe these herbs. And all of this stuff. But you neglect the things that really matter. You should tithe on the herbs. I’ve asked you to do it. But put your pants on. Do the things that really matter. Be about justice and mercy and love. I think for the Pharisees, it was no great sacrifice to tithe some herbs. They were wealthy. When you give out of your abundance, it’s not really that much cost to you. It doesn’t cost you that much. It doesn’t affect your daily life. It’s not a sacrifice. But for the Pharisees to try to do something that they didn’t have in them, and they didn’t even care to ask God to give it to them, to be just, to be merciful and faithful, there’s something wrong there. Don’t allow your preferences and your comfort to dictate. Don’t dictate what you do in service to the Lord. Don’t do the things that are easily seen, as the Pharisees would do, and neglect the things that some people may never see, but get at the heart of God. Some of us in here probably wouldn’t accept the Budweiser from Jesus if He handed it to us Himself. And that’s fine. That’s fine. If that’s your conviction, that’s fine. And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. But don’t be that way and then turn around and gossip about someone that you know struggles with alcohol behind their back.

That’s not merciful. That’s not loving. Why don’t you go and help that brother? Why don’t you offer him some counsel and some advice? I wouldn’t drink a beer if my life depended on it. That’s fine. Don’t backbite and cut down your brother for something that you just disagree with. Don’t come in here and drop money in the tithe box and not lift a pinky finger to serve in the church. Your money means nothing at that point. God recreated you for service. As we learned last week. He created you to do something in the kingdom. You have something to offer. Don’t cut yourself so short. Don’t disgrace God’s new work. If He recreated you, He made you with something to offer the church. So don’t take the easy way out and drop your money in the box and skate out and not offer anything to anybody else in here. Amen.

I heard it with my own… My ears are still ringing from it from last week. Somebody who would volunteer at a soup kitchen. But yeah, we’re sitting in a room. You’re looking out the window. Look at those homeless people.

Can’t they just get a job? You don’t know those people. You don’t know what their lot is in life. You don’t know what God is doing in them and to them and for them. You have no idea. So don’t make a show of it and spend an hour and a half at the soup kitchen and then your heart is some kind of twisted, bent, stinky way towards the homeless folks that you see walking down the sidewalk.

Herbs ain’t nothing when you don’t have justice

and mercy and love and faithfulness and truth.

Put your pants on.

The pretender would have his house repainted and his shutters redone. But when he walks inside every floorboard creaks in that thing and when you lean on the wall they kind of bend in a little bit and after a little bit of investigation the house is infested with termites. Every stud in that thing is barely standing up because the termites are just ravaging it. I’ve got to paint my siding and what are the neighbors going to think?

Who cares what the neighbors think about your siding if that sucker’s about to fall in? You get an inspector from the city of Huntsville to come over and look at your house and he starts tearing out sheetrock and sees all these studs eaten up by termites. You know what he’s going to put on the front of it? Condemned.

And if we were true with ourselves in our fallen state that’s what’s labeled over us because we’re termite infested nasty, rotten no good sinners. You don’t need new siding. You don’t need a sun tent. You don’t need some new clothes. That house needs to be mowed down and rebuilt. It needs to be built by God Himself.

I hesitate to say this but I’m going to say it anyways because I think the Scripture uses more graphic illustrations it’s reading through Zechariah and I found one the other day. It shocked me. I think sometimes when you’re trying to get your point across like Jesus is trying to get his point across to the Pharisees you have to use some illustrative language. I used to work on this construction site I know you’re all like what’s he going to say? Come on. How bad could it be?

My cousin Pete used to tell me this all the time. Chase you can polish a turd but when you’re done guess what? Guess what? It’s still a turd.

You can sit up there and buff and polish and wax that thing all you want. It still stinks like a turd. It looks like one. It’s dead and decaying like one. That’s right. I’m just speaking the truth. It might be a little bit funny but it’s true. It matters not what you look like on the outside. It matters not what people perceive of you. What matters is what is in and coming out of your heart.

He says hypocrisy and lawlessness and filth are in you. But you look so pretty and your garments are so beautiful and you’re not you know so much scripture and you can quote so many Bible verses to me and you can sing all the hymns and you can do all this stuff but your heart is rotten. Lord, I need a new heart. Create in me a clean heart because if you don’t I’m still just a wretched sinner underneath your judgment. I need to be remade.

Don’t worry about your shutters. Take care of the framework. And there’s only one

who can create a heart. The one who created it in the first place and you can recreate it. It is not your work to recreate someone’s heart. You can’t do that. You can plead and you can beg and you can pray for them and you can say and you can speak truth to them but at the end of the day there’s only one. The Holy Spirit of God must move in you and blow through you and remake you.

You got to die. Be buried so that you can spring up something new.

The prize of the pretender the one who would

scream and shout and yell and turn blue in the face trying to convince you he’s an orange though he’d be laying right underneath a lemon tree. Just take a bite of me I’m so sweet. Like a somebody ever had a Satsuma? They got them in Louisiana. They’re Asian. I’ve never seen them anywhere but Louisiana. I’ve never seen them other than overseas but they’re really sweet. There’s a citrus I don’t know if it’s technically an orange but they’re sweet. They’re delicious. Have you ever bitten into a lemon? Some of you may like lemons but it’s pretty stout. It’ll make you cringe. You know? It’s not pleasant I wouldn’t say to me. If you got a lemon trying to convince you that he’s a Satsuma but he’s laying right underneath the lemon tree you’re going to scratch your head a little bit. Because as the old saying goes the apple does not fall far from the tree.

So when you got the Pharisees saying well, you know if it was us we wouldn’t have killed the prophets. You’re a son of your dad. You’re the fallen race of Adam. Yes, you would have. On what basis would you not have done it? You put the Lord to death. You hypocrite. You said you wouldn’t. You were lying. It was fake. You wouldn’t have killed the prophets but you killed the Lord Jesus for claiming to be the prophet. You liar.

The prize of the pretender is hell. Nothing short of it.

He says you brood of vipers. You serpents. Snakes. Rats. You ungodly. How are you going to escape the sentence of hell?

There’s only one escape. One escape from ungodliness. It is the man God Christ Jesus and Him alone.

There is nothing that you could bring. Nothing that you could offer. No amount of dressing up yourself. No amount of good deeds however good they may be that would get you out of the sentence of hell. Nothing.

I’m picking on you today Ms. Kathy. She said it the other night. I’m saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ Jesus alone. That’s it. That’s it.

I hope you know where the gate to the kingdom is. It’s not far. It’s right here. Come to it. I’ll show you where the gate is. Would you come? Come to the gate. Jesus says, He’s the door of the sheep. Anybody else that comes in any other way is a thief and a robber, a liar, a fake one. And He’ll do away with them. The sheep must enter through Jesus Christ alone. How do I come to Jesus? You just come. You don’t need to say a magical prayer. You don’t need to turn flips. You don’t need to go to confession and go through the sacramental system. You don’t need to pay penance. You don’t need to be purged in purgatory.

You just come to Christ a wretch and you leave a saint.

Or you’re kept a saint, rather. That’s it. Grace alone. Can you hear it? Can you hear that? Can you hear that? How sweet the sound. A saved, a wretch like me. Amazing grace. Come to Christ. Lord, we thank You for Your stern warnings. Thank You for loving us so much that You would correct us and guide us and teach us and remake us and all the things that we need, Lord, to make it on, to make it on home. It’s none of us, it’s all of You, Lord. Lord, we thank You that You not only save us, but You keep us. For we’re not able to save nor keep ourselves, Lord. We need You. I pray that we would be forever in awe of Your grace, Lord, that would bear the sins of many. That we would atone completely for those sins and love those same sinners, Lord. Thank You for loving us. Lord, I pray that You would be in us and with us and around us and among us, Lord. Help us, Lord, to be lights and preachers of Your amazing grace. We love You in Jesus’ wonderful name. Amen.