In the sermon 'Posers Exposed and Judged,' Scott Brown explores Matthew 23:29-36, where Jesus condemns the scribes and Pharisees for their hypocrisy. Brown emphasizes the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, who outwardly honored prophets but rejected contemporary ones, highlighting their inward unrighteousness. The sermon underscores the importance of inward reality over outward religion, urging listeners to avoid getting caught in movements disconnected from genuine faith. Brown presents seven lessons from the woes, illustrating the depravity of man, holiness and justice of God, need for a sinless Savior, and the power of Christ's atonement. The sermon concludes with a call to repentance, urging believers to align their hearts with God, escape condemnation, and experience true joy and salvation through Christ.

Matthew 23, 29 through 36. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, and say, if we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Therefore you are witnesses against yourselves that you are the sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up then the measure of your father's guilt. Serpents, Brutal vipers, how can you escape the condemnation of hell?

Therefore, indeed, I send you the prophets, wisemen and scribes, some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city. That on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of the righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Barakiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Assuredly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. Would you pray with me? Oh Lord, a man can receive nothing unless it's given from him from heaven.

And so, oh Lord, give from heaven to all of us today. That we might understand your will, that we may walk in your ways, and that we might say in our hearts, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Amen. Today we come to the place in Matthew where the Lord Jesus Christ delivers His final woe to the Pharisees. And of course the main subject here in the words of Jesus and in the entire chapter of Matthew 23 is the hypocrisy of the spiritual leaders of Israel.

And God is actually setting Israel aside And Jesus is setting, is taking one step after another to declare the apostasy of Israel. And what we're encountering here is the penetrating eye of Jesus Christ to see what is real. This is one of the great values of the Word of the Lord Jesus Christ in the world today, is that it's a Word that shows you what's real. It shows you what's genuine. And here the Lord is peeling back the veneer.

He's looking through the institutions. He's looking through all the activities. He's looking through all the words. And he sees what's real. And he's declaring what's real about the Pharisees.

Matthew 23 is perhaps one of the great hypocrisy detectors in all of Scripture. Because the Lord Jesus Christ goes and he tells us what hypocrisy looks like in the heart and how it can look in outward appearance. And what the Lord Jesus is saying is that they had a religion, But they did not have reality. And they did not have hearts that hungered for Him, that longed for Him. They did not have hearts that loved Him.

And they could not say in their hearts, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. And this is very important for all of us who live in an era of great movements, who live in an era of great books, great theologies, great leaders. And to be careful that we haven't just got ourselves caught up in a movement, but that we know the joy of His presence. There's something real there, not just a life, not just a way, not just an identification with something that's actually good. Now One of the most striking things about this passage here is that it's just absolutely loaded with condemnation and with woe.

And again, the Lord Jesus is bringing before the Pharisees and to us here this morning, the most important question, and that is, what is on the inside? Because man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks in the heart. And that's why the Lord Jesus Christ, in the previous section that we studied said first clean the inside of the cup and the dish. And that will take care of the outside. And so here we find that the Lord Jesus Christ provides real medicine that goes down to the depths, that really deals with what needs to be dealt with.

But here in this passage, what we see is a profile of imposters, of posers. And he shows us the difference between your outward identity and your inward identity. Yes, They have their WWJD bracelets on. Yes, they have their Christian t-shirts with their cool sayings. They have their bumper stickers.

They identify with great institutions and theologians, but outwardly, there's no inward reality. So the value for us is twofold. For the true poser, for the person who has outward religion but they have not tasted the kindness of the Lord, they have not said in their hearts, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, who cannot say genuinely, oh how I love thy law, who cannot say out of their innermost being shall flow rivers of living water. For anyone who can't say that, Jesus Christ is calling. And He says, come to me.

Come to me, all you who have that kind of weariness and heavy ladenness. I'll give you rest, true rest, in your heart. And in that sense, it's the getting out of the leaven. The words of the Lord Jesus Christ here are designed to get the leaven out of the church, to get the hypocrisy out. And there's a second kind of hypocrisy, and that's the kind of latent hypocrisy that we all struggle with.

And so here, the words of the Lord Jesus, again, as we have seen so many times in Matthew 23, He's helping us see our inner Pharisee. He's helping us to see the latent hypocrisy that's there, so that his reality would be replaced with our sham that's there. And so there are a number of things that ought to happen to us as we finally conclude the woes to the Pharisees. And first, that it would send us running into the arms of God, admiring Him, seeking refuge from Him, from our hypocrisy. It would have the effect of raising our compassion for the lost, where they grope at noonday as the blind men grope in darkness, as Deuteronomy 28 describes the curses of unbelief.

And that it would just make us a more genuine, a more real, and a happier people. So all of chapter 23 is about this. And so we saw the whole foundation of hypocrisy in verses 1 through 12, saying and not doing, binding heavy burdens on others but not taking them up themselves, by doing works to be seen by men, by loving preferential treatment, and by self-exaltation. And then the eight woes that are listed, you know, demanding from others but not from ourselves, using people for our own gain, using energy to produce fake hypocritical lives, to use smooth words to cover up our sinful neglect, to neglect the most important matters of the law, like love, like justice, to be satisfied with outward cleanness and inward filth, to be possessing an outward beauty but an inward death. And now, here, in this one, in verses 29 through 36, praising past prophets while despising the current prophets.

So those are the woes. Now, we're not here for academics. We're here to hear the Word of God, to be transformed, to have truth in the inward parts. I pray that's what will happen to us, that more truth in more of the inward parts would result as our studies continue. Now the first thing that we see here is that the woe is delivered.

The woe is delivered in verse 29. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. We've encountered the word woe several times, and here we are again at it. One Greek lexicon defines woe as intense hardship and distress. And in this one word here, we hear one of the most compelling arguments for why a person should turn to Jesus Christ.

Because of the woe that is upon the Spirit that does not believe in Jesus Christ. The difficulties, the sorrows, the hardships, the dangers, the depression, the broken relationships, the hardness, the angst, the anguish that comes from sin. No one escapes the damages of sin and woe, woe explains it and this is why one should turn to Christ, why we ought to mortify the flesh to recognize that the flesh only stabs you and poisons you and sickens you. You get no comfort in your soul. You get an outward appearance.

You get an image, but that's about all you get because everyone knows what's really going on in their hearts. And so this is the life of the two faiths, the hypocrite, the stage player. Now these woes, these woes that have been delivered one after another are so important for us to understand. And I want to give you seven lessons from the woes before we leave them. The first lesson is this.

The woes expose the depravity of man. As the apostle Paul said in Romans 3.23, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Or as Isaiah said in Isaiah 64 verse 6, For all of us have become like one who is unclean, and our righteous deeds are like filthy rags. The woes show us that. They show us the rags.

They show us the things that are falling short. Or as the Apostle Paul says in Galatians 3, For as many are as of the works of the law, are under a curse, for as it is written, accursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law to perform them. The woes just expose the depravity of man. You cannot read these woes one after another and say, isn't this in my heart? And It exposes our abject depravity.

Even the greatest Christian is not untouched by these heart-level sins that are there. And so the woes are a blessing to us, because they expose our true depravity. And they tell us who we really are. The problem with the world is that it doesn't want reality. But Jesus Christ comes and He tells you who you really are so that you can be saved, so that you can be healed.

And this is the glory of the Gospel. It's a lightning bolt of truth to tell you who you really are and where you're really at, your status in life. It exposes the depravity of man. The second lesson of the woes, it brings out a sense of the holiness of God. It brings out a sense of the holiness of God.

Isaiah 59, 2 says, but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear." This is the condition of the separation, a broken relationship with God. Or as it says, as the prophet Habakkuk says in Habakkuk 1.13, your eyes are too pure to approve evil, you cannot look in wickedness with favor. Here is the holiness of God is set next to our unrighteousness, our vileness. And vile cannot exist with holy. And that's the problem of man.

That's my problem. That's your problem. And without some way to become holy, to be declared righteous. There is no hope for me or you. But the woes teach us of the holiness of God.

Thirdly, the woes explain the justice of God. The woes explain the justice of God. Psalm 117 says, The Lord is righteous, the upright will behold his face. How? How in the world could unrighteous flesh behold the face of God?

Because God is a righteous judge, as Psalm 7 says, and he has indignation every day, Which says, if a man does not repent, God will sharpen his sword. He has bent his bow and made it ready. Our transgressions, our transgressions call for the justice of God. God will right every wrong. God will punish every sin, every single sin.

You might be concerned about the sin of that man who raped that girl that you know. Of course you should be concerned about that. God will make that sin right. He will punish that sin. He will punish every theft.

He will punish every wrong thought. He will punish every slander, every murderer, every thief, he will punish every sin because God is just. By his own nature he must judge unrighteousness. And this is one of the great lessons of the woes, that they explain the justice of God because they show man's unrighteousness in juxtaposition with God's righteousness. And the two cannot exist together.

One must go. The sin must go. There must be an atonement. There must be a punishment. There must be a hell in order to deal with sin.

And then number four, the woes illustrate the love of God. They illustrate the love of God because God is love. By this love, the love of God is manifested in us, that God sent his only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. That's 1 John 4, 8 through 10.

The woes illustrate the love of God, because the love of God is for those who cannot love God. And then fifth, the woes highlight the power of the atonement for sins on the cross of Christ. Well, it is true that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, but we were justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Jesus Christ, whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood through faith. This was to demonstrate his righteousness because in the forbearance of God he passed over the sins previously committed for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, so that He should be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus Christ. So there is hope, There is an atonement waiting for those who have faith, who repent and believe in the Gospel.

And the woes tell us this story of the power of the atonement for sins at the cross of Christ. Because he is just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus Christ. And he passed over the sins previously committed. And then number six, The woes demonstrate the need for a sinless Savior. The woes demonstrate a need for a sinless Savior.

Jesus Christ was sinless. He never broke a single law of God. He never had a single hypocritical second. He always kept the greatest commandment. He always kept every single commandment of God.

He was sinless. And we just have to ask, have we ever loved God like we ought to love Him? Have you? Have you ever loved God like how about today, on the Sabbath day? Have you loved God today like you ought to love Him?

Well what has happened with a sinless Savior is that He lived the life that you should have lived. He lived the life that you should have lived. He lived the life That was perfect. Number seven, the woes stand. The woes stand like Mount Everest as a testimony of God's love for repentance centers.

He has swallowed up all of your woes. He has swallowed them up. He drank the bitter cup of all of the woes that you deserved. He drank it to the dregs, the shards of glass and nails and garbage and poison that you deserve to drink and die on the ground, He drank them up. While we deserve to drink the cup for all of our posing and all of our hypocrisy, all of the outward appearance.

He took the punishment for it. 2 Corinthians 5, 21 said, He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin. God sent his son into the world to be sin, so that a repentant sinner could escape the punishment of sin. And that is what justification is all about.

It's a legal transaction that declares someone legally just before God. That all of the punishment has been abrogated. It has been stopped. It has been drank up. It has been swallowed by someone else.

And all of the woes that this congregation of Christians deserve are swallowed up by Jesus Christ. And that's who we are. We are a people whose woes have been totally swallowed up. They are gone. They are put as far as the east is from the west.

They are made as white as snow. They are in the bottom of the ocean. That's where it is. And that's the freedom that Jesus Christ is declaring here. And you are treated as being right with God.

Your whole position has been changed, and your sins are forgiven and forgotten. And now there's a miracle going on in your life. It's an internal miracle of change. The inside of the cup is being cleansed. Truth is in the inward parts.

Out of your innermost being is flowing rivers of living water. God has begun a work of grace. He has broken the power of sin and it no longer has dominion over you. Yes, you still struggle with sin, but you make progress against sin. And there will be that day when the Lord Jesus Christ will take you home and the struggle will be completely over.

But He has justified and He will glorify Himself in your body. Those are the lessons, the great lessons of the woes. The woes tell us so much. You know, last night our family was reading Isaiah 42. Would you please turn with me there?

Isaiah 42. And I was just so struck with the power of the gospel, the beauty of Jesus Christ. Look at verse 3. A bruised reed he will not break, and smoking flax he will not quench. He will bring forth justice for truth.

He will not fail nor be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth and the coastlands shall wait for his law." Look at verse 7, to open blind eyes, to bring out prisoners from prison, those who sit in darkness from the prison house. Look at verse 10, Sing to the Lord a new song and His praise from the ends of the earth, you who go down to the sea and all that is in it, you coastlands and all you inhabitants of them. Verse 16. I will bring the blind by a way that they did not know. I will lead them in the paths they have not known.

I will make darkness light before them, and crooked places straight. These things I will do for them and not forsake them." Look at verse 21. The Lord is well pleased for His righteousness' sake. He will exalt the law and make it honorable. Here the Lord Jesus Christ is spoken of as one who breaks the power of sin, who makes the light shine, he sets the captives free, He pulls you out of prison and takes away your chains.

He breaks your chains. This is the picture of the woes for those who would repent. So the woes have much to teach us. Secondly, the sin is identified. Not only are the woes delivered, but the sin, the heart of the sin is identified in verses 29-31.

Because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous and say, if we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Therefore, you are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets." So what were they doing? They were building tombs of the prophets and monuments for the righteous. You've seen opulent tombs in graveyards. Every once in a while you'll see this gigantic, ornate building, marble, gorgeous, as a monument to someone.

That's what they were doing. They were raising money, they were taking temple funds, and they were building these gigantic monuments to the prophets. And we know from scripture there was a tomb for David. But they were building these tombs for the prophets. And they were doing it self-righteously.

They were saying, Jesus said, they were saying, if we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. So they had a very high view of their own faithfulness. They were overestimating themselves. They were boasting. But Jesus knew better.

Jesus can see through the boast. He always sees. He always sees through the sham of the boasting heart. J.C. Reil spoke so powerfully about this, speaking about how it's just easier to like the dead prophets than it is to like the contemporary ones that were sent to you.

He says, ask in Moses' times, who are the good people? They will be Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but not Moses. He should be stoned. Ask in Samuel's times, who are the good people? First, they will be Moses and Joshua, but not Samuel.

Ask in the times of Christ, who were such. They will be all the former prophets with Samuel, but not Christ and his apostles. This is just a reality, a truth. People like the dead prophets better than they like the live prophets. You want to kill the ones who are with you, but appreciate the ones who are not.

You can read what they say and like it, but when God sends you a modern one, you despise them. That's the idea that he's presenting. And he's calling them blind guides. They are blind. They're so blind that they're kind of trying to make the good old guys their friends but they're not living like them and they don't really believe what they say.

They're just identifying with them. It's like connecting with famous people of the past. Connecting with famous dead people, dead prophets, while rejecting the ones who are speaking to you today. Dismissing the live prophets who confront sin. Contemporary prophets are intolerable because they confront real sin in real people, in real time.

And Jesus is exposing the common sin of pretending to be zealous for the truth while aligning with others in other places who are far enough away from you that they can't pinpoint your sin. Matthew Henry says it like this, carnal people can easily honor the memories of faithful ministers that are dead in God because they do not reprove them nor disturb them in their sins. Nobody likes to be disturbed in their sins. That's why we like, we would rather have an internet prophet, we would rather have a theology to appeal to, we'd rather have a book to align with, we'd rather have a movement to be identified in rather than deal with our sin. We would like what's out there So that it doesn't deal with what's in here.

And the Lord Jesus Christ came to deal with what was in their hearts of sin. It's so much more pleasant to identify with the Puritan or a reformer or a movement than it is to be sanctified of our sin. And there are so many ways that we could speak about this. Preacherous elders have a duty. They're under a divine command.

And it's a noxious command in many ways. It's a duty that must be done and it causes ministers so much trouble in their lives. They are commanded to, as the Apostle Paul commanded Timothy in 2 Timothy 4, 2, to reprove, rebuke, and exhort. And these words carry different meanings. For example, to reprove is to tell people that they're wrong.

A minister is required to tell people that they're wrong. To rebuke is a stronger word that indicates displeasure or even censure. Ministers are required to actually rebuke and actually show displeasure at sin. This is a divine requirement that's laid as a burden upon ministers. And then to exhort, it's a different word, to speak with encouragement, with sensitivity and tender exhortation.

These are all imperatives. They are demands of ministers to do these things. They are obligated. It's part of the job. If you don't do this, you're not qualified to be a minister, or maybe you're not quite a minister.

And when pastors begin to, they dare to question a church member, look out, the arrows just begin to fly all over the community. And Jason Doam said it this way. He said, one of the ways you murder the prophets is to reject the counsel of your elders. Do you believe that? Well, it's so much easier to read about something than to hear it with your own ears.

It's so much easier to be supporters of the prophets as long as they don't mess with your life. And the kind of people that Jesus is rebuking are ardent supporters of some other prophet far away, but they reject the appeals of their local prophets who know them well enough to put the finger in the wound and call for repentance and pray for healing. And it is required. And this is often the greatest violation to ministers. They step on your toes and they say things that are offending.

Unfortunately ministers don't always say things rightly. Unfortunately they don't always see things rightly. But they're still required to do their job. I pray that you would accept the job that we have in this church. Honestly, I'm grateful.

I'm grateful for the way that you have responded. There have been times when I've marveled at how you've taken our counsel. And quite frankly, there have been times when I have been so amazed at the times you've rejected our counsel. You've done both. But it's very important to recognize that God means to send prophets And it's easier to like the internet prophet or the guy in the book than it is the one that is in your face and on your toes for the glory of God.

Now the terrifying truth here is that these kinds of people are bound for hell. The woes will fall upon them unless they repent of this kind of duplicity. Posers are everywhere. They're posers in every sector of society. Back when I was a kid, I remember the guys that used to drive around with surfboards on their cars, but they'd never even gotten their toes wet.

They were just posers. If you ever were a skater, you'll know that the terminology of posing is quite illustrious. Posers can be seen in every walk of life. There are posers in politics. There are posers among the punkers and the goths and in politics, in sports, in Christianity.

The posers are everywhere. Nobody gets away from posers. The thing about posers, they think they can buy a brand of clothing and be someone. That's the grand deception. If you just put that on, you'll be somebody.

No, that's actually not true at all. This is the great lie of the devil. Posers are everywhere, not just in the church. Someone who says they can do something but they can't. Someone who pretends to know something but they don't.

Someone who identifies with others but is not like them at all. The guy who straps a surfboard on his car but has never gotten his toe wet. That's what Jesus is talking about. This is just the generic sin of mankind. We want to appear different than who we are, like a chameleon.

The truth is the Pharisees, they were completely unaffected by their heroes. It didn't change their lives at all. That was the problem. Jesus Christ sent His prophets to change the lives of His people, and that wasn't what was happening there. So here in the Pharisees, they're pretending to be righteous by spending lots of money on their shrines.

They were very active. They had this very outward religion. It was very, think of the elaborate buildings. Think of the administrations that went along with what they were doing. Think of the distinctive laws that were associated with this movement of the Pharisees.

It was very active. They had a lot to do. They were outwardly aligning with orthodoxy, but inwardly they were alienated from it. Calvin said they were adoring the shadow of God instead of God. Adoring the shadow of God rather than God.

The veneration of something yesterday to distract us from the heartlessness of today. Appreciation of something from yesterday to cover up the dispassion of today. That's the sin. Here's another question. We would like to say that we love Jesus.

We would... But if Jesus were alive today, would He offend us? Or would... And would we want to kill Him? For exposing our hearts?

Because remember what Jesus was constantly doing? He was constantly going into the inner, He was explaining what was going on in people's hearts. He was peeling back the veneer. He was taking off the costume to show what was really there. Or if Paul were alive today, would he make us uncomfortable?

Would we say, he's too hard to understand, he's too strict? If Peter were here today, would we say, he's just too impulsive, he's too harsh, he's too impractical, he's too hypocritical? It's just so much easier to love a dead prophet than it is a live one. And the prophets were killed as... There are so many things that happen to the prophets.

We can itemize one prophet after another and how they were abused and mistreated. But this sin will be judged, verses 32 and 33. So the Lord Jesus identifies the sin and then He speaks of its judgment in verses 32 and 33. Fill up then the measure of your father's guilt. In other words, just do what you must do.

Just fill it up because that's what you're doing. Because they're treasuring these things up for the day of wrath. And he's saying, like father, like son. One generation begets a son, like itself. The line of evil is being passed on.

And the Pharisees were good disciple makers. They were making people twice as much a son of hell as they were. And then the terrible reality is that there's no escape. There's no escape Because he knows who they are and he actually names them. He calls them serpents, brood of vipers.

So again, the Lord Jesus is taking off the mask, He's pulling off the costume, and he's opening up the window so everyone can see who they are. And he calls them serpents, brood of vipers. Now this is a term that's used all over Scripture. In this context it's definitely negative. Almost all the context of scripture speaking about serpents are negative.

We open this up in the garden, you know, in the Garden of Eden where the serpent was more cunning than any other beast of the field which the Lord God had made. The serpent, the liar, the accuser of the brethren. Jesus is connecting them with who they really are. There's a rich history of the use of serpents in the Bible, that they are a curse. In Isaiah 14, we read, out of the serpent's roots will come forth a viper, and its offspring will be a fiery serpent.

Brutal viper, serpents, is not a new term for Jesus. He's already used it. John the Baptist used it as well. But he's connecting them with who they really are, with the devil himself. And their destiny is described, it's the condemnation of hell.

He says, how can you escape the condemnation of hell? And the Bible speaks clearly about hell. Jesus speaks about hell many, many times in Matthew. Perhaps someday we'll go back and look. But Jesus is now speaking of the doctrine of hell and connecting it with those who are posers, those who look so good on the outside, who build the great temples, who have the elaborate religion, who have heroes, who have theologies, who have books, who are trying to connect with them to gain strength from them, to have somebody else's image shine on them.

And he says, no, you are bound for the condemnation of hell. The Apostle Paul said that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. The suppression of the truth is the heart of the matter. They are serpents, they are broods of vipers, But they're calling themselves something different. And Jesus Christ is shining the light.

He's taking off the costume. And He's telling them of their true destiny. Revelation speaks of it as a place for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, for the murderers, for the sexually immoral, for the sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars. Their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death. Jesus said in Matthew 8 that they will be thrown into outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

And in the next chapter, Matthew 24, verse 51, Jesus says that they will be cut in pieces and be put with the hypocrites in the place where they'll be weeping and gnashing of teeth. There's no escape without their repentance. Some of the Pharisees did repent, like the Apostle Paul. He was one of these. He did repent.

He did escape the wrath to come. God came and blinded his eyes and spoke to him. And his heart heard and he turned and he became a lover of Jesus Christ from his heart. There's only one way to escape the condemnation, and that is through faith in the Son of God who atones, who sacrifices, who swallows up all of the woes from all those who repent and who will be able to say, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death." So Jesus is saying they are bound for hell, And then their future is explained here in verses 34 and 35.

Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes. Some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city." So the Lord Jesus is telling them of what they are going to do and what He is going to do. That He is going to send them more wise men. He's going to send them more prophets in the form of the apostles, in the form of those who would be converted and believe in the gospel. These are the ones he's speaking about.

He's speaking about the people who depart from the day of Pentecost and are scattered throughout the world. And he's prophesying that these Pharisees will do certain things to those people. He's giving them a view of the coming days when the Gospels preach to all the nations, and particularly in a close proximity of time. And he says, some of them you will kill. Kill, crucify, scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city.

Those are the four different categories that Jesus Christ prophesies will be seen when He sends his converted ones into the world. Those four things. And they will be persecuted everywhere. First of all, in the church, in the synagogues, in the cities. All over the place.

Some of them will receive crucifixion. Some will be killed in different ways. And we see so many examples of this. In Acts chapter 22, verse 25, we see that they were scourged. As they bound him with thongs, Paul said to the centurion, and stood by, who stood by, is it lawful for you to scourge a man who is a Roman and uncondemned?

In Acts chapter 22, they were beaten. In Acts chapter 16, they were flogged and many stripes were laid upon them and they were thrown in prison. In Acts chapter 12, verses 2 and 3, we read, And they killed James, the brother of John, with a sword. And because he saw it please the Jews, he proceeded further to seize Peter also. Now it was during the days of unleavened bread.

In the midst of all their religious activity, they continued their feasts, they continued their readings of Scripture, they continued in the synagogue having people opening up the scroll and they would kill the saints in the synagogues. Some were stoned in Acts chapter 7. Stephen is stoned. Some were crucified. Some were persecuted.

False witness was born by many of them. There were plots to kill them. Mobs attacked them. They were harmed in many, many ways. You know, Paul himself was a fulfillment of this prophecy.

In Acts chapter 26, Paul says, This I did in Jerusalem, and many of the saints I shut up in prison, having received authority from the chief priests. When they were put to death, I cast my vote against them. I punished them often in every synagogue and compelled them to blaspheme. And being exceedingly enraged against them, I persecuted them even to foreign cities." The Apostle Paul was so active in his persecution, he would travel to foreign cities to persecute the church. The Apostle Paul was a fulfillment of Jesus' prophecy here.

And Jesus says they will be judged for their bloodshed. Verse 35, that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Barakiah, whom you're murdered between the temple and the altar. What Jesus is saying is that all of the judgment for the persecution of the prophets is going to be laid on that generation. From the beginning of time, from able to the present time, the judgment is going to be laid upon them. And the woes, the woes will be heaped upon them, and they will drink down the shards of those woes, all of them, from the beginning of time.

Why was Cain martyred? Because his works were evil while his brothers were righteous. 1 John 3, 12. Not as Cain who was of the wicked one who murdered his brother. And why did he murder him?

Because his works were evil and his brothers were righteous. The hatred of the wicked is always to those who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus. And they're always persecuted. Whenever you see godliness, you'll see persecution. If you wonder why you're not being persecuted, you should ask, are you godly?

This very first persecution was because of a godly life, a loving man, a sincere man, a real man offering sacrifices, and he was murdered by his brother because his ways were evil. Why was Zechariah martyred? Zechariah was martyred because he accused the people of unfaithfulness. Zechariah said, you've not learned anything from your fathers. Here's what he said, Zechariah chapter 1 verse 2.

The Lord has been very angry with your fathers. Therefore say to them, Thus says the Lord of hosts, Return to me says the Lord of hosts, And I will return to you says the Lord of hosts. Do not be like your fathers, to whom the former prophets preached, saying, Thus says the Lord of hosts, turn now from your evil ways and your evil deeds, but they did not hear, nor heed me." And Jesus is just giving these two examples. The first one in recorded history, and then the last one in the Old Testament, in the Hebrew Bible, which is recorded in 2 Chronicles 24, 21 through 22, where we read, So they conspired against him, And at the command of the king, they stoned him with stones in the court of the house of the Lord. Thus Joash the king did not remember the kindness which Jehoiada his father had done to him, but killed his son, and as he died he said, The Lord look on it and repay." These are hardened Pharisees.

And then the timing of it, the timing of it, verse 36. But Surely I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. He's speaking of the lifetime of the hearers. Jesus always uses the term this generation in exactly the same way. When He's talking to people of that time, He never uses it any other way.

The Geneva Bible says this age, the generation or age is the men of this age. So the timing of the judgment will happen in their lifetime. They will not be able to escape the judgment. Okay, let's talk about some applications. Brothers and sisters, you can get caught up in a movement and forget Christ.

You can align with the principle and lose your love in your heart for Jesus. Remember that was like? Jesus talked about remembering your first love. Return to your first love. It can be a movement or a book or a theology or a principle or some kind of alignment.

There's something outside of Christ. And you can get caught up in a movement and forget Jesus Christ. And you can quit hungering for His presence and basking in His love, knowing the goodness of His joy in your heart, the satisfaction that comes to know that He will never leave you or forsake you. That He said, I have come that they might have life and that more abundantly. That He said, you know, out of his innermost beings will flow rivers of living water.

Do you remember that? Do you remember the living water? Do you see how easy it is to get disconnected from the life of Jesus Christ? From the eating of the living bread to the drinking of the living water to standing at the door of the sheepfold and saying, I'm in. And not remember the light of Jesus Christ.

It's not a bad thing to align with people who have truth. That's a good thing. But where is your heart? And are you allowing those prophets also to expose your sin, really? It's not a bad thing to align with a good theology, but do you really believe it?

The Lord Jesus is saying to all of us, unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, He cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven. And we have to ask ourselves, do we really believe the prophets, or do we just like to quote them? Like, is it easier to stand up and declare some good truth than to have it in your heart and have it actually change your life? Or is it just an intellectual exercise? Your Reformed Christians are often accused of having fat heads and skinny hearts.

So the Lord comes And he says that the beauty of it all is that you can say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, with your heart and love him from the heart, And see the inside of the cup and care for it, and see the outside changing because you've cleaned the inside of the cup. And so the Lord here is just calling us here to repent of this sin of the Pharisees, to align with some principle, but not really have a heart that is pierced for the real sin that is confronted by real prophets. And He is designed to expose posers, deliver them or judge them for all eternity. Those are the only two options. Would you pray with me?

Lord, I thank you that you have swallowed up the woes, lined up against us through the sacrifice of Your Son. And Lord, that You would restore to us the joy of our salvation, that You would pour out the spirit of gladness, that we would say in Your presence this fullness of joy at your right hand or pleasures forevermore. You would deliver us from the hardness and the lack of reality to sham the costume of the Pharisee and open up our hearts to eternal life. Amen.