Matthew 23:1-12

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, 2 “The teachers of religious law and the Pharisees are the official interpreters of the law of Moses. 3 So practice and obey whatever they tell you, but don’t follow their example. For they don’t practice what they teach. 4 They crush people with unbearable religious demands and never lift a finger to ease the burden. 5 “Everything they do is for show. On their arms they wear extra wide prayer boxes with Scripture verses inside, and they wear robes with extra long tassels. 6 And they love to sit at the head table at banquets and in the seats of honor in the synagogues. 7 They love to receive respectful greetings as they walk in the marketplaces, and to be called ‘Rabbi.’ 8 “Don’t let anyone call you ‘Rabbi,’ for you have only one teacher, and all of you are equal as brothers and sisters. 9 And don’t address anyone here on earth as ‘Father,’ for only God in heaven is your Father. 10 And don’t let anyone call you ‘Teacher,’ for you have only one teacher, the Messiah. 11 The greatest among you must be a servant. 12 But those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

The Pharisees desire to feel important and valuable led to the first trap:

1. Seeing church as a place where OTHERS should change.

Jesus said the Pharisees were prone to “…tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.” Matthew 23:4. They saw worship as a place to pass judgment on others, instead of seeing their own sin. Now before we pass judgment on the Pharisees we need to recognize that we are all prone to seeing the sins in others while being blind to our own. You know how that works, you are sitting in church listing to a sermon and you think to yourself man that was a great message I just wish that Bob had been here to hear it. What we are really saying is there are those who are failing in their faith and need to hear the Word but it’s not us because we have it all together. Jesus confronted this self-righteous attitude, calling it sin. So why did the Pharisees do this? Because it made them feel powerful, righteous and holy because compared to others they felt better than everybody else. So how do we sidestep this trap so that it doesn’t trip us up, first recognize it as sin, and second we need to commit to applying all Biblical warns to ourselves first. We need to consider how we should be obeying the Bible before we ever consider applying it in the lives of others. As Pastors, we need to be careful that we are practicing what we preach and not just preaching principles we never apply. When we practice the passage in our own lives instead of passing judgment on others we protect ourselves from tying heavy loads onto the shoulders of others that we don’t care about ourselves. We need to be careful not to condemn others for things that we ourselves are guilty of. The second trap that the Pharisees fell into was:

2. Serving to be seen

Verse 5-6 says, “Everything they do is for show. On their arms they wear extra wide prayer boxes with Scripture verses inside, and they wear robes with extra long tassels. 6 And they love to sit at the head table at banquets and in the seats of honor in the synagogues.” We all struggle with wanting to be seen, and it starts at a very early age. Just listen to little children, who often say “look at me, look at me.” This is where we have to check our motive for ministry, why are we serving is it because we love the Lord or because we love the looks? If we are not careful we will become people who love the limelight more than we love the Lord. Now we need to remember that anytime anyone serves to be seen they are not only seen by others but also by God. And you can be assured that the Almighty will be appalled, that we would attempt to use HIS worship to show off. So how do we protect ourselves from this temptation? We need to remember who we are serving, so let me ask you are you making ministry about serving or about self? We also need to remember the purpose of praise, it’s about God’s glory not ours. That means its imperative that we cultivate a humble heart and we become a conduit of praise instead of a consumer of praise. So let me ask you, are you in it to reflect God’s glory or receive the glory. Corrie ten Boom once told a friend, “… people thank me so much and it used to worry me because I didn’t want to get a big head. So I began to collect those compliments like flowers. ‘Thank you,’ I’d say. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’ And then at the end of the day, I’d kneel down and I’d say, ‘Here You are Jesus, they’re all Yours.'” She learned to give God all of the glory. What about you are you giving God all of the praise or just part of it and holding back the rest for you? I’m always amazed at pastors who think they are superstars based on the sermons that they preach when in reality they have such great material to work with. If their preaching is based on the bible then the one who deserves the applause is the author. The third trap is:

3. Trying to use worship as a way to gain a reputation.

Jesus said of the Pharisees: “They love to sit at the head table at banquets and in the seats of honor in the synagogues. 7 They love to receive respectful greetings as they walk in the marketplaces, and to be called ‘Rabbi.’ 8 “Don’t let anyone call you ‘Rabbi,’ for you have only one teacher, and all of you are equal as brothers and sisters. 9 And don’t address anyone here on earth as ‘Father,’ for only God in heaven is your Father. 10 And don’t let anyone call you ‘Teacher,’ for you have only one teacher, the Messiah.” The temptation to seek power, position or prestige in the church is a very real problem. If we don’t have the proper perspective when it comes to our self-worth we can end up trying to use God to gain those things instead of giving God the glory. It’s here that Jesus addresses the trap that comes when we are tempted by titles. Many preachers are referred to as reverend and while it is ok to be respectful of the position of pastor we have to be careful that we don’t revere the person. To “revere” someone means to hold them in awe. The only one who deserves to be held in awe is the Almighty, as Isaiah declared: “I am the LORD; that is my name! I will not give my glory to another…” Isaiah 42:8 and in Isaiah 48:11, “…I will not yield my glory to another.” If we are not careful our position will get in the way of our praise. When you know whose you are you don’t need power or prestige or a “reputation” to feel significant and special. And if we do, it’s a sign that we’ve got an ego problem. Maintaining a proper perspective will protect you from the poison of pride. We need to remember that serving in God’s kingdom is a privilege, not a position. That it is an honor to serve; we don’t serve to be honored. What about you are you like the Pharisees trying to use worship as a way to gain worth or are you using it to give glory to God?

Matthew 23:1-12

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, 2 “The teachers of religious law and the Pharisees are the official interpreters of the law of Moses. 3 So practice and obey whatever they tell you, but don’t follow their example. For they don’t practice what they teach. 4 They crush people with unbearable religious demands and never lift a finger to ease the burden. 5 “Everything they do is for show. On their arms they wear extra wide prayer boxes with Scripture verses inside, and they wear robes with extra long tassels. 6 And they love to sit at the head table at banquets and in the seats of honor in the synagogues. 7 They love to receive respectful greetings as they walk in the marketplaces, and to be called ‘Rabbi.’ 8 “Don’t let anyone call you ‘Rabbi,’ for you have only one teacher, and all of you are equal as brothers and sisters. 9 And don’t address anyone here on earth as ‘Father,’ for only God in heaven is your Father. 10 And don’t let anyone call you ‘Teacher,’ for you have only one teacher, the Messiah. 11 The greatest among you must be a servant. 12 But those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

I want to start today with a poem by Saxon White Kessinger called the Indispensible Man:

Sometime when you’re feeling important;

Sometime when your ego ‘s in bloom;

Sometime when you take it for granted,

You’re the best qualified in the room:

Sometime when you feel that your going,

Would leave an unfillable hole,

Just follow these simple instructions,

And see how they humble your soul.

Take a bucket and fill it with water,

Put your hand in it up to the wrist,

Pull it out and the hole that’s remaining,

Is a measure of how much you’ll be missed.

You can splash all you wish when you enter,

You may stir up the water galore,

But stop, and you’ll find that in no time,

It looks quite the same as before.

The moral of this quaint example,

Is to do just the best that you can,

Be proud of yourself but remember,

There’s no indispensable man.

We all want to think that we have value, that we are needed and that we are indispensable. But the truth is someday someone else will take your place. In my case there will be another pastor counseling people from my chair, and there will be another pastor preaching from the pulpit. Because even though it might be my chair it’s not my church it’s Christ’s. You see if we are not careful we will define ourselves by what we do, and we will use our work to try and gain our worth. But our work is not about gaining worth it’s about giving glory to God. You see someday our work will come to an end and someone else will fill our shoes. While the name of the organization on the sign may stay the same the name of the one in charge will change. The truth is we all have value, we are special and unique but it’s not based on our work it’s based on God’s Word. We are special because Genesis 1:27 says we’ve been made “in the image of God.” Because Psalm 8:5 says We’ve been “made just a little lower than the angels” And have been “crowned with glory and honor.” Not only do we have value based on God’s Words but also His works, you see God thought we were so valuable to Him that He sent His only begotten Son to this earth to die on the cross for our sins. Think about that, the creator of the universe was willing to be crucified on a cross for you. And, once we accepted that truth and respond and receive Jesus as our Savior, God regards us as being so valuable that He places His Spirit inside of us and calls and commissions us to serve in His kingdom, as Ephesians 2:10 says: “… we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” That means that we are special and valuable because God made us valuable. But we need to remember that our worth is not tied to our work it is tied to His Words and His work. It is His ownership of us that gives us value and significance. To help you grasp this truth I want to ask you this question, how much would you pay for a toothbrush? Would you give five dollars, two dollars or 50 cents? Now let me ask you what would you pay for a used toothbrush? Most of you would respond by not only refusing to pay anything but by rejecting the used toothbrush all together. But what if that toothbrush was once owned by Napoleon? How much would you pay then? Well, at auction, somebody paid $21,000 for it. Or how much would you pay for a set of fake pearls? Twenty or thirty dollars? But what if that set of pearls had been owned by Jackie Onassis Kennedy? You see her fake pearls went at auction for a little over $200,000. Or how much would you pay for a piece of sheet music to a song you could play on the piano? In 2003, an original autographed piece of sheet music by Beethoven went for over $1.5 million. You see the toothbrush was used, the pearls were fake and the sheet music was just a piece of paper. They weren’t valuable because of what they were, there was nothing intrinsic to them that gave them worth. They were valuable because of whose they were not because of what they were. God’s Word says the same thing about our worth, we have value because we belong to God and He has made us in His image. The problem is that there are many who don’t understand this truth and as a result they don’t look to God for their worth. They look elsewhere and when they do they end up warping the value God has placed on them instead of being wrapped up in Him. That’s the story of the Pharisees in Matthew 23, instead of finding their value in their relationship with God they tried to find it in their religion. They got wrapped up in performing instead of being wrapped up in a personal relationship. It’s here that we see Jesus confronted the Pharisees, men who were so righteous that, they fasted often, prayed regularly, went to church all the time and tithed religiously so why did Jesus condemn them? Because their righteousness was all about them and not about God. The Pharisees didn’t look at God for their self-worth, they looked at themselves. They used their worship like a mirror, not to reflect God’s glory, but to reflect their own. Worship became about gaining self-worth instead of giving God glory. Back in the 70’s Carly Simon wrote a song entitled “You’re so vain” about a self-absorbed lover who was so caught up in himself that when he went to parties she sang that he “had one eye in the mirror as you watched yourself go by.” But he is not alone, how many of us have pretended to preen in front of a mirror so we could look at ourselves? It’s easy to get caught up in our own reflection. In fact it has been said that the reason hotel lobbies are often designed with large mirrors is because people complain less about waiting for slow elevators when they’re preoccupied looking at themselves. We all want to be noticed, we all want to feel important and valuable. But that desire can cause us to become warped Christians, and if we’re not careful, our faith can be deformed by the very traps that tripped up and ensnared the religious and self-righteous Pharisees. Instead of focusing on your reflection focus on your relationship with the Redeemer. Not only does God notice you but He longs to spend time with you and show you that you are special. What are you putting your energy into, performing so that others will see you and say wow or pursuing the Savior and soaking in His words of worth?