Warnings to Hypocrites: The Seventh Woe
Kingdom Come (Matthew) • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
There is a powerful movie set during WWII that tells the story of a boy named Bruno.
He is an 8 year old boy whose father is a Nazi officer who is sent to Poland to oversee a concentration camp.
Bruno lives on the outside of the camp, but one day, while playing in the back garden of his home, he finds the fence that separates his family’s home from the camp.
On the other side of the fence is another 8 year old boy named Shmuel, who is Jewish and was brought to the camp with his parents.
Bruno visits Shmuel, brings him food, and asks him questions.
He doesn’t understand why Shmuel gets to wear PJs all the time, can’t leave the fence, or play games with him.
He doesn’t understand that the fence represents two very different lives the two boys were born into.
Bruno didn’t do anything to be born on his side of the fence. Nor did Shmuel do anything to deserve being imprisoned as he was.
There is a tragic end to the movie that puts into perspective just how similar the two boys actually are, regardless of the family they were born into or how they were raised.
Ill let you watch the movie to find out what happens.
We are coming to the end of Jesus’s confrontation with the religious hypocrites in Jerusalem.
Like the movie, the Pharisees Jesus is speaking against are struggling to see that they are no different than the sinful, pagan people they were so quick to judge...
Actually they were far worse…that is the heart of Jesus’s message, as He ends this section with 3 serious warnings.
Three Serious Warnings
Three Serious Warnings
29 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous, 30 and you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we wouldn’t have taken part with them in shedding the prophets’ blood.’ 31 So you testify against yourselves that you are descendants of those who murdered the prophets. 32 Fill up, then, the measure of your ancestors’ sins!
33 “Snakes! Brood of vipers! How can you escape being condemned to hell? 34 This is why I am sending you prophets, sages, and scribes. Some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. 35 So all the righteous blood shed on the earth will be charged to you, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. 36 Truly I tell you, all these things will come on this generation.
37 “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her. How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! 38 See, your house is left to you desolate. 39 For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’!”
1) It is DANGEROUS to ASSUME.
1) It is DANGEROUS to ASSUME.
The prophets in the OT were sent by God to warn His people to turn from their wickedness and their rejection of Him and to return to Him and follow His ways.
But what you will find in the history books and the prophets is that they did not listen.
Instead, many of the prophets send by God were ignored, tossed away, or even put to death by the people.
Fast-forward several hundred years and these religious leaders are honoring the prophets and adorning the tombs of the righteous.
All the while, they are the ones responsible for John’s murder and will soon be the ones who have Jesus hung on a cross.
These religious leaders placed themselves in the legacy of the Godly messengers rather than seeing themselves for who they really were.
In their refusal to listen to Jesus and see in Him for who He really was, they were clearly following the legacy of the wicked and rebellious Jews that murdered the prophets of old.
The message of the prophets was about trusting God and walking in His ways.
It was about submitting to Him in worship, and yet the Pharisees and Scribes focused all their attention on following rules and observing traditions.
Their relationship with God was intellectual (only head knowledge) and transactional (I do this so you will do that).
They refused to hear Jesus’s message, inviting them to know Him in a way no tradition can reveal.
He was inviting them to know Him personally and to follow Him joyfully, not out of obligation or compulsion.
Application: Familiarity can be a dangerous thing in the arena of faith.
Some of you have grown up in church, you have raised your kids in church, you speak the language of church, and are comfortable in the culture of church.
I am not saying it is a bad thing, I am saying it is a dangerous thing.
The danger in familiarity is in the "assuming".
We can assume that since we grew up in church, learned all the bible stories, went to VBS, were in the church Christmas plays, went to youth camp, youth group, and at some point, prayed a prayer and got baptized that we are all set, ticket punched for heaven.
And hear me out, you can be confident in your salvation if, along that journey, you did surrender your life to Christ and received His gift of salvation.
But here is what Jesus has been challenging the Pharisees and Scribes with through these last few chapters: What difference has it made?!?
Saving faith isn't passed down from generation to generation.
Just because your parents brought you to church and you know the answers to a lot of the bible questions on Jeopardy isn’t proof you really know Jesus.
We can guide our children toward faith and give them opportunities to hear the call of God to trust Jesus, but we are saved when we personally trust in Jesus.
Saving faith isn't accomplished by the number of hours we put in or whether we have checked the boxes of believing the right doctrines and following the right traditions.
We are saved when we surrender our lives to Jesus and trust Him to save us.
Do you know Jesus?
Or do you know how to do church?
That is a serious question to ponder!
And it lead directly into the 2nd warning.
2) A DEEPER CHANGE is due.
2) A DEEPER CHANGE is due.
I doubt many of you have called someone a snake before. It isn’t a common diss today, but it carried a lot of weight in Jesus’s day.
Jesus didn’t call them snakes because they were slimy and gross, but because they are like their father, Satan, the serpent in the garden.
44 You are of your father the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he speaks from his own nature, because he is a liar and the father of lies.
They were sons of the evil one, agents of the devil, serving the ruler of the power of the air (eph 2).
These guys everyone assumed were the first ones to be welcomed into Heaven, Jesus was asking “What in you, about you, or by you can save you from hell?”
Their problem wasn't that they weren't doing enough, or even that they were doing too much.
Their problem, and it is the problem every person ever born since Adam in the garden faces...
Their problem was: they refused to listen, were blind to see, and failed to understand the message of Jesus and see Him as the one that could save them.
The source of their problem was far deeper that their outward obedience or who their parents were.
Their problem was deep down in their hearts.
And it is our problem as well.
They were dead in their trespasses and sins, and their only hope was a new heart and a new life.
Jesus tells one of the leaders of the Pharisees in John 3 that he needs to be born again if he hopes to know God.
This possibly explains why people who have been in church for years, and seem to be solid, faithful, and committed to Jesus, can, as if they had never opened the Bible, they turn their backs on what they have said they believed for so long.
It possibly explains how the person we are on a Sunday morning is barely recognizable when we walk through the door of our house Sunday afternoon or show up to work on Monday morning.
It is possible that we are like those Pharisees and Scribes, a sons and daughters of the snake.
It is where we all start, and it is only through faith in Jesus that we can be born again, given a new life, a new heart, and genuine, eternal hope of salvation.
The question to consider is simple, but it is deeply serious: Have you been born-again?
Have you surrendered your life to Jesus?
Why not right now?
Because here is the final warning.
3) REJECTION has TRAGIC consequences.
3) REJECTION has TRAGIC consequences.
The bible offers us a few descriptions of hell.
There is fire, darkness, punishment, weeping, and gnashing teeth, to name a few.
It is far worse than we likely can imagine, and it was something Jesus talked about a lot throughout the gospels.
Jesus wasn’t a hell-fire and brimstone preacher, He was a compassionate messenger.
“How can you escape being condemned to hell?” wasn’t a final judgement from Jesus, it was a logical consequence.
For thousands of years, God has sent prophets to warn His people to flee from sin and turn to Him.
He has expressed His love, His mercy, and His grace to them, and yet they turned their backs in rebellion and murdered the ones God sent.
How can they escape Hell if they refuse to listen?
And yet, Jesus’s compassion for those far from Him, and His sorrow over their rebellion does not run out.
“How often I wanted to gather your children together…” God’s chosen people, specially loved and specially blessed, are now rejecting and killing his true representatives.
But how can they escape hell if they refuse to listen? BUT YOU WERE NOT WILLING...
God doesn’t force us to love Him, or force us to obey Him.
“God was abundantly willing for Israel and all men to receive and follow His Son, but most of them were unwilling. They did not turn from Christ because of fate but solely because of their own unwillingness. When a person rejects Christ, it is never God’s desire or God’s fault but always his own.” — John MacArthur
And so, there are consequences to rejection, tragic and eternal.
