Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Do You Practice What You Preach? | New Testament | Matthew 23

Episode Date: February 1, 2023

Do you care if your life doesn't match biblical truth? Do you want to appear holy and religious, but fail to accept sin? You might be in danger of the sin patterns that Jesus condemns in Matthew 23. Listen as Jensen shares our only hope. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in 2023. Get your FREE reading plan here. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Matthew 23

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jensen Holt McNair. From a young age, I've read about the Pharisees in the Bible. And every time I heard them mentioned, I put them in my bad guy category. We probably all have this tendency. When we hear a story, we tend to put ourselves to imagine ourselves as part of the story. And as I read the Gospels growing up, I always imagine. myself as a disciple, giving up everything to follow Jesus. Of course I would be one of them,

not a Roman soldier or a passing doubter, and definitely, definitely not a Pharisee. Why would I want to be one of them? They aren't the good guys. But as I've gotten older, slowly I've begun to recognize the sin of the Pharisees in my own heart. I recently watched the TV series The Chosen, and they present an excellent portrayal of Nicodemus, a Pharisee. who, when played out on screen, is easy to empathize with and understand. See, in the end, when Jesus calls Nicodemus to join and follow him, Nicodemus is torn between the life he has built and the person he thinks may be the Messiah. Nicodemus ends up sending money to help out rather than actually following Jesus.

He's unable to give up everything, but offers a smaller gift instead. And at the end of the first season, it was his life that I saw reflected in mind the most clearly. Comfortable in the faith, maybe even complacent, giving bits and pieces of my life, but hesitant to risk giving up everything I've built to go out and follow Jesus. You see, it's easy to put the Pharisees as other, to judge and point the finger, because that is what Jesus often does. but Jesus was and is the perfect judge. And we are not. We are just as broken and fallible as they were, and in many ways in danger of falling into the same sin patterns that they did.

Now in Matthew 23, we see a scathing review of the Pharisees by Jesus, and it would be easy to point the finger at those evil Pharisees, to come up with the modern day examples of who out there, acts like these Pharisees. But for today, I'm challenging us to do a little bit of introspective work. Rather than look out there today, I hope you're up for the challenge of looking inside yourself and seeing if there are ways that you might be in danger of falling into the same patterns that Jesus condemns in these seven rebukes of the Pharisees. Now, starting out in the first 12 verses of this chapter, Jesus warns his disciples to not be led astray by the teachings of the scribes and Pharisees.

For the Pharisees like to teach from the law, but they don't live it out. He says they do all their deeds to be seen by others. They wear certain clothes, they call themselves certain things to show themselves as greater than others, more important, more holy. But Jesus rebukes this behavior, reminding his disciples that it is the humble who will be exalted

in the kingdom of God, and not those who exalt themselves here on earth. Now, while you and I may not call ourselves rabbi or wear tassels on our cloaks, it can be very easy to fall into the same pattern Jesus calls out here when he says that the Pharisees preach, but do not practice. I, for one, am very guilty of knowing truth and yet not living it out. Many times as I prepare lessons or counsel a friend, I'm convicted of the ways in which my own life fails to live out those same,

same truths that I'm telling someone else to follow, which is to be expected because not one of us can perfectly live out all the truths we know. We are fallen, broken. But there is an air of complacency around the lives of the Pharisees. They do not care that their lives don't match biblical truth. Instead, they prop themselves up and make themselves appear as having it all together when they really don't practice the biblical truths they claim to know. When we fall into the trap of wanting to appear holy, important, and religious, but fail to inspect and vulnerably confess our own missteps, we begin to live in the way of the Pharisees rather than the ways of Jesus. Later on in this chapter, as Jesus is going through his seven rebukes against the scribes and Pharisees,

he uses two illustrations for this kind of behavior. First, the Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. See, Jesus rebukes this behavior saying, You blind Pharisee, first clean inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean. And again, in another illustration, Jesus says, Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, 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. So in their hypocrisy, the Pharisees focus only on what the world around them sees.

They make sure to pray loudly, to do the right things publicly so that people would see them as religious and holy, like clean plates and tombs on the outside, but inside they're full of rotten food and death. Are there ways in your life that you resemble a whitewashed tomb or a cup whose outside is pristine, but inside you're rotting away? Maybe your life on Sunday mornings look stellar. You volunteer, you go to the early service, you say hello to the right people, and make donations of the right sizes. But the rest of your life is governed by the need to excel in your job. whatever it takes. You work late, you cut corners, you lose your temper at home because your kids

get on your nerves and your wife doesn't get the pressure you're under. Your marriage is slowly deteriorating, but no one would know because it's small group you put on a smile and know all the answers. See, I'm guilty of the same things. I put on a face. I make sure I have it all together in public, even with my close friends, all the while knowing that my anger is affecting my relationship with my son, and my discontentment with life is putting up walls in my marriage. And sadly, sadly, sometimes I think I care less about the rot on the inside and more about making sure none of it escapes for others to see. And it often comes from a misunderstanding of what scripture is actually calling us to.

See, in the first few woes that Jesus calls out in the scribes and Pharisees, he highlights the ways that they lead others astray by focusing on, elevating, and adding to minor part to the law. In doing so, they teach a false gospel that leads others astray and misses out on the truth of scripture. Verse 23 says, Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, 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. See, the Pharisees were so caught up in the minute details of the law that they tithes even from the smallest bit of their garden. And yet, they completely miss out on justice, mercy, and faithfulness. They focus on making sure that they don't accidentally swallow a gnat, and in the end, they end up eating a camel. It's a humorous illustration that Jesus makes to demonstrate a serious problem. See, the Pharisees, like many of us, get caught up in minute details and elevate certain sins over others,

making sure we don't put a toe out of line in certain areas so we can appear as the whitewashed tombs we so love and the sparkling dishes we work so hard to keep perfected. but neglect the issues that are not on display. And it shows a complete misunderstanding of what building the kingdom of God means. The kingdom of God does not have golden gates from the outside to conceal the rot that exists on the inside. No, the kingdom of God is full of goodness,

full of life, full of love, justice, and mercy. And as Matthew and Jesus have laid out in this first book of the gospel, it is filled with those who seek out these sorts of, things, who live just lives, who seek out the needs of others before their own, who give to the point that it benefits others more than themselves, who live humble and generous lives and who are unhindered by the need to prove themselves important to the watching world. Those, those kingdom values, living by them, growing in them, building an inner life of faithfulness is what the kingdom of God is characterized by. And yet, the Pharisees go about teaching the wrong things,

living out the wrong story, and missing the main point. And in doing so, they lead themselves and those around them away from the kingdom of God, not towards it. Jesus ends by warning the Pharisees that in their hypocrisy, they are guilty of killing the prophets and wise men that the Lord has sent to call them out of their hypocrisy. In their blindness to protect their own image, they will end up killing their Messiah, Jesus. If we aren't careful in our own haste to cover up the sins in our lives, we too will end up with a shining outside and rotting insides, missing the very one who has come to call us out of our sin. Romans 5.8 tells us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

He knew about our brokenness. He came to heal the sick, to restore life to those who needed it. And he is calling us to leave our hypocrisy, our images, our whitewashed tombs behind, and to instead hide ourselves in his very own righteousness. On our own, we can only hope to become like the Pharisees, hiding our sin so that we look clean and whole, but never able to rid ourselves of our brokenness. Our only hope is Jesus, the one who died for us, knowing our brokenness, who never asks us to put on a clean face, but wants us to come to him as we are so that he can heal us and restore life back into us.

It is through Jesus's life, death, and resurrection that we can stand before our king, righteous, and whole. Stop trying to do what only Jesus can do. Don't fall into the same mistakes of the Pharisees made and end up missing the very one who came to bring you life. Heed Jesus's warnings. And instead of rejecting him by your own hypocrisy and pride, place your faith, place your life in him. Before you forget, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talks newsletter. Hit the link in the show notes and you'll get an email every Wednesday that will help encourage you in the middle of the work week and bring you deeper in your walk with Jesus.

Thanks for listening.