INTRODUCTION
• SLIDE #1
• All you have to do is turn on the television, look at a billboard, or look at a magazine and you will see that we are fixated on looking good.
• There are shows in television that focus on helping you to look good, shows like “What Not To Wear”, “How Do I Look” among many other shows. My wife watches one show where they grad someone off the street and tell them they need a make over.
• There is a big emphasis on looking good on the outside. In fairness, we do see a lot of self-help books out there, but it seems that the emphasis in on the outer appearance.
• There is another aspect to appearances. When I worked for the company, I saw a lot of people that would do things they thought would make themselves look good in the eyes of the higher ups. They would out on a show to try to make themselves look good.
• I have seen those who claim Christ change the way they act in front of a church leader or when they come to church.
• There is nothing wrong with wanting to look good physically nor is there anything wrong with wanting to make a good impression.
• The religious leaders of Jesus day had a real emphasis on external appearances. They took things to the extreme.
• The problem we can have and it is not much different from what the religious leaders struggled with, is that we can put so much emphasis on looking good on the outside or putting so much focus on appearances, that we neglect to work on what is inside of us.
• Today we are going to look at the seventh of eight ways we can be a bad Christian.
• Putting all of the emphasis of our lives on the external will cause us to struggle in our walk with Jesus.
• We will be in Matthew 23:25-28 this morning.
• Let us start by looking at verse 25.
• SLIDE #2
• Matthew 23:25 (ESV)25 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.
• We will start by looking at an example Jesus gave to illustrate His point.
• SLIDE #3
SERMON
One example of focusing on the outside is:
I. EATING ON DIRTY DISHES.
• I want you to think this one out. Imagine you are out for a nice dinner at a fine restaurant. The atmosphere is great, the menu looks great. Your food comes to you. First the salad, oh it looks good. As you start to eat it, you see OLD FOOD encrusted in the bowel.
• Next comes the main course, smells good, looks good, you start to eat and you notice OLD STEAK sauce under your steak.
• You go to take a drink and you see food particles floating in your drink. You are so sickened, you skip dessert.
• I was at a Chinese restaurant the other day…
• The Greek phrase behind dish was often used of a platter on which exquisite delicacies were served. The idea is of a person who offers a guest a seemingly lovely meal served with the best wine. But it turns out that, although the utensils are beautiful and ceremonially purified, the food served on them was putrid. (MacArthur Jr)
• Jesus told these guys they had a serious problem.
• The Pharisees were diligent in observing all the washings and obligations required by their traditions. Drinking cups and dishes were carefully washed on the outside. Ceremonial cleansing was commanded in the Law and kept with a lot of zeal by the Pharisees.
• Can you imagine eating meals off of plates that were clean on the outside but on the inside they were never washed?
• This goes deeper than cups and dishes.
• Jesus told them they were so focused on things looking good on the outside, that they were neglecting what was going on in the inside of the cup and dish.
• Jesus hammered these folks for disregarding greater Laws about keeping their lives from wickedness.
• Jesus says they were full of greed and self-indulgence on the inside.
• Greed carries the ideas of plundering, pillaging, and extortion, and self-indulgence has the basic meaning of lack of self-control and was often used to denote unrestrained self-gratification. The unscrupulous religious leaders robbed the people they were supposed to serve in order to satisfy their own greed. They plundered both the souls and the wallets of the people and used the ill-gotten gains to serve themselves. (MacArthur Jr.)
• These folks were a mess inside, they were poor dishwashers, and they left nasty food on the inside of their cups and dishes.
• They were careful about all that man could see of their lives and careless about that which only God could see.
• They did all the right things on the outside and took great pains to do so, yet they never worked on what was important, their hearts.
• Let’s take it to us today.
• How easy it is for us to keep the outside appearances looking good, while ignoring our inside condition. Is your marriage dissolving? Are your friendships hurting? Is your job on the line? Is your attitude toward life disintegrating?
• I love the commercial, I cannot remember what it was for, but this guy had it all, it all looked good, then he says HELP ME, I AM BROKE.
• Did you put on a smile this morning; did you put on your “Christian” clothing so you could look good this morning?
• We HAVE to make sure that do not live a life that is designed to cover up what is really happening in our hearts.
• How much time did we spend getting ready to come to church this morning? Hygiene, hair, clothing? How much time did we spend on preparing our hearts so that we could be here to WORSHIP!
• We should not spend our lives eating out of dirty dishes.
• Let see what Jesus has to say in trying to help the situation.
• Let’s turn to verse 26
• SLIDE #4
• Matthew 23:26 (ESV)26 You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean.
• SLIDE #5
II. JESUS HAS A CLEANING TIP.
• Jesus told them they needed a reversal of practice.
• If you clean the inside of the cup, the outside will be clean also.
• No utensil is clean that holds ill-gotten food or drink.
• Throughout history false religious leaders have become rich and fat by fleecing those they pretend to serve. Outwardly they appear righteous, caring, and exemplary but inwardly they are greedy wolves.
• They needed to get rid of the things that were making them rotten on the inside.
• These guys needed to be better dish washers. When you clean your house, is sweeping the dirt where it cannot be seen really clean or is jamming it all in the closet really cleaning the room?
• The Pharisees compensated for having a heart that was a mess by trying to be as outwardly righteous as possible. Remember counting seeds?
• I wonder if we sometimes may come to church looking for things to bother us because we did not spent enough time preparing to come to worship? I know my attitude can not be where it is supposed to be if I do not spend enough time cleaning the inside of my cup.
• Our lives are truly about what God sees, not what man sees. The truth is that if God likes what He sees, then what other see out of us will be real.
• I do not spend my ministry preaching against the sin of the week. You know, this week we will talk about what you cannot drink. Next week why you cannot smoke, then the next week…
• I believe that Jesus teaches us that if the heart is pure, the actions will follow.
• I can look as dedicated to my wife as I want people to think, but if my heart is set on loving, and being dedicated to my wife, then it will be real. I will be there with her and for her no matter what.
• You see, if you are growing in your relationship with Jesus, then your actions will follow.
• As you learn what pleases your Lord, you will do it and when you find something that does not please your Lord, you will work as hard as you can with the Holy Spirit working within you to eliminate the problem.
• Personally, I do not fret over a person who is struggling with sin in their lives. We all struggle, I will pray for them and I will be there to try to help them.
• The ones I fret over are the ones who just do what they know they ought not to be doing with no conscience about it. They think they can do their own thing and it will be fine with God.
• Jesus knew what resided in the heart of those whom He was speaking to, and do you what else He knows?
• He knows what resides in my heart, and He knows what resides in yours.
• Did you know that when we do not clean the inside of our cups it can affect those around us?
• Let’s look at verses 27-28.
• SLIDE #6
• Matthew 23:27-28 (ESV)27 “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. 28 So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
• SLIDE #7
This issue can have affects on those around us.
III. FOCUSING ON THE OUTSIDE CAN CONTAMINATE OTHERS.
• At first reading you may not pick up on what Jesus seems to be saying in verses 27-28.
• In the previous passages, He uses the analogy of dirty cups and dishes. Now He seems to be on the same subject, but a different aspect of the subject.
• Now we are talking about whitewashed tombs?
• Once per year, about a month before the Passover celebration, the Jews would whitewash the tombs and the places where corpses were buried around Jerusalem.
• They did this for two reasons. One, out of respect for the dead, but the second and main reason was to protect people from stepping on the grave of a dead person.
• If a person stepped on a grave, they would be considered unclean and then not be able to participate in the Passover Celebration.
• SLIDE #8
• Numbers 19:16 (ESV)16 Whoever in the open field touches someone who was killed with a sword or who died naturally, or touches a human bone or a grave, shall be unclean seven days.
• The religious leaders were contaminating those whom they came in contact with because of the way they were living.
• Jesus cursed the scribes and Pharisees for spiritually contaminating everyone they touched.
• These guys were full of lawlessness, meaning they had a reckless disregard for the very law which they professed to be interpreters of.
• Their facade of external righteousness, like whitewashed tombs, only concealed an inner “lawlessness” that led to the contamination of all that came into contact with them.
• When we look great on the outside, but are dead on the inside, others will follow our example.
• The outward conduct appeared well, but their hearts were full of hypocrisy, envy, malice, pride, lust, among other things.
• WE do not want to be beautiful on the outside, yet rotten and dead on the inside.
CONCLUSION
• How much time do we spend on making sure the inside of our cup is as beautiful as the outside?
• When we fail to clean the inside of our cups because we are spending all of our time trying to make the outside look good, we are missing what God wants from us.
• We not want to be careful about all that man could see of our lives and careless about that which only God could see.
• Let’s be careful about what God can see and the rest will take care of itself!
