In the sermon titled 'First Cleanse the Inside of the Cup' by Scott Brown, the focus is on the teachings of Jesus from Matthew 23:25-28. The sermon explores the theme of hypocrisy, specifically criticizing the scribes and Pharisees for their emphasis on outward appearances while neglecting the inner purity of their hearts. Brown emphasizes that true Christianity starts with internal transformation, which then manifests externally. He illustrates this with an analogy comparing unseen physical ailments to hidden spiritual sins, which pose the greatest threats to the soul. The sermon explores two main perspectives: the unsaved, who outwardly conform but lack inner conversion, and Christians, who must continually repent and cleanse their hearts. Brown underscores that true conversion involves recognizing one's sins and embracing the gospel of Jesus Christ. He warns against superficial religious duties and encourages genuine repentance and obedience to the gospel, emphasizing that God sees beyond outward appearances to the true condition of our hearts.

Matthew 23 verses 25 through 28. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, But inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also. Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs, which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. Even so, you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

Let us pray. Father God, Thank you, Lord, for teaching us from your Word. We are a very needy people, Lord. We pray that you would peel back layers of hypocrisy, that you would show us ourselves, that we would know you better by knowing ourselves to be in such need of a great and mighty king. Father God, I pray that you would help Scott preach boldly, clearly, and that you would help us to hear what you have to say to the church today.

In Jesus' name. These words that we've just read take us down to the depths of the most important issue for every person. And that happens to be what's on the inside. And this is why the Lord says here, first cleanse the inside of the cup and of the dish. Here's a great, you know, sorting and prioritization that the Lord Jesus Christ does for His disciples and for us as well.

And it bears witness to the truth about the way the world is and the way that our hearts are that the most important issues are those that begin in the heart. And just to give you an illustration of this, You know, the greatest threats to Dan and Kendra and their family after their accident were the things that no one could see. And they were in the hospital while infections were attempted to be detected, where aneurysms were attempted to be seen, broken bones that could not be seen on the outside, fevers, concussions, internal bleeding. You can't see any of these things on the outside, but they can kill you. And the Lord Jesus Christ is bringing us to this very, very same principle here.

And you know, here, you know, you can have many bruises and wounds that no one can see. You can have many sins that no one can see. And while you can feel them, you know, with every move, they cannot be seen. Dan said to me yesterday that he felt like he'd just been completely beaten, his whole body had been beaten. He can feel that, but it's all from the inside.

And so what we find here is that the greatest threats to our souls are unseen matters. They are matters of the heart. The secret sins, the wrong thoughts, the unclean soul. These are the most harmful things. And so this passage holds out to us a right understanding of life.

The way of truth, the way of healing, really the way of personal sanctification, and really satisfaction in life. It's all here in this passage. You know, this is the way that Christianity proves itself to be the very best internal medicine that there is. And it points us this morning to how much we ought to be rejoicing in the gospel, the depth of the gospel. The penetration of the gaze of God goes so deeply.

It goes to the infections and the aneurysms. It goes to the broken bones. It goes to the wounded parts, the bruises. It goes down to the very depths of the soul. This is the love of Jesus Christ for mankind.

That He would look into the soul, nothing would escape His sight. And He's there with healing in His wings. And He doesn't come with a surface fix, a band-aid. He comes with a complete transformation from the inside out. And so this passage, as Jesus is saying these things to the Pharisees, He's already been speaking about this.

If we go back to Matthew chapter 15, he said, he said, it's not what goes into the mouth that defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth that defiles a man. And then the disciples asked him what he meant by that. And he said, whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach as an eliminated. But those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart. They defile a man.

For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things that defile a man. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man." So the Lord Jesus is further explaining things to his disciples. I think that he's further illustrating what it looks like to strain out a gnat and swallow a camel. Except, you know, the illustration shifts from camels.

You can imagine this gigantic camel that you've swallowed, this hairy, bumpy animal that's in your body there, defiling presence. He shifts from that and he speaks about uncleanness and lawlessness and hypocrisy as the thing that's inside the cup. He hasn't stopped dealing with this matter of the inside and the outside. But he's giving a different twist. And there's so much that we can speak about that comes from this passage.

But just, you know, if you start with the outside of man, you'll always lead him astray. If you call for outward obedience without heart obedience, you get hypocrisy. Now Jesus did command His disciples to teach one another to obey all things that Christ commanded. But if you teach obedience without the heart, which is the center of it all, then you've only made little Pharisees. You've made one twice as much a son of hell as the Pharisees were.

If you preach obedience without a heartfelt love for Christ, you get a false gospel. And so what we learn here is that true Christianity, it begins on the inside, and it works to the outside. And if you don't understand that, you can't be saved. You will never enter the kingdom of heaven unless you understand that part of it. So we find ourselves really at the heart of the gospel in this passage of Scripture.

Now, there are two planes of understanding that we need to be navigating as we are going through this passage and this whole section on the Pharisees. And the first plane is the plane of the unsaved, the outwardly religious, hardened hypocrite who knows he's living a double life and he's pretending and he doesn't care, And he has no inward witness of his conversion. There's no inner love for God. There's no desire in the inward parts to love him or to obey him. He does, however, want to appear in a particular way.

And he has not a changed life. He has no joy in the presence of the Lord. His heart does not love the words of truth. And he hates his brother. And he walks in darkness.

These are the marks of the hardened unbeliever. So when you read this, you have to read this from the primary perspective of the unsaved religious hypocrite who's living a double life. This is actually the primary meaning of this message of Scripture. And for this, Jesus says, clean the inside of the cup. And he says, This is your only hope.

That your only hope is to say, Oh Lord, have mercy on me a sinner. And then the second plane is the plane of the Christian, who hears these things about hypocrisy, who hears the language of the inside and the outside, and recognizes sin inside. This is what a Christian must do. You know, if you look at all the commands of Scripture, Or if you look at all the 1, 050 commands in the New Testament, all of them are designed to identify sin, to help us know who we really are, so that we would repent of our sins. Christians should be repenting of their sins.

They're not perfect. And I know there are people who claim they haven't sinned in a week or a month or something like that. And the Lord Jesus though says to his children to cry out, create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me." This is the right cry of a Christian to deal with sin. You know, we have been saved, we have baggage, don't we? We have lots of baggage.

Religious baggage, worldly, lustful baggage, we have all kinds of baggage here in this room. And there's much to be cleansed here in the room. And most of these things are things of the heart. And so our cry is the cry of David in Psalm 19, where he said, Cleanse me from secret faults. Let them not have dominion over me.

This is the cry of the Christian. This is the second plane of understanding of this. All of the Christians here should not check out and say this is just real as rotten Pharisees. Because there's always lingering in every believer an inner Pharisee. He speaks, he acts, he hides, he does every single thing that the Pharisees do except, except, there's love in the heart, there's desire for holiness, there's a genuine replacement from an old heart to a new heart.

Now, as we know, we're in a very long context. The entire chapter is about the subject, and we're just dealing with just two little sections here of this whole passage. You remember the Foundation of hypocrisy has been laid in the first 12 verses in verses 1 through 3 Hypocrisy is characterized by saying and not doing Secondly in verse 4 it's binding heavy burdens on others, but not yourself Thirdly, it's doing works to be seen by men. That's in verse 5. If you have your Bibles, you can follow these with me.

Number four is love for preferential treatment, verses 6 through 9. And then fifth, exaltation, verses 10 through 12. And then the eight woes are delivered. We are doing woes 6 and 7, and next week we'll move into the eighth woe. But the first woe is in verses 13 through 15, demanding from others but not of themselves.

Number two, using people for your own gain, verse 14. Number three, using energy to reproduce a fake and hypocritical life, verse 15. Number four, using smooth words to cover up sinful neglect, verses 16 through 22. And the fifth, neglecting important matters of love, verses 23 and 24. And Here in the sixth that we'll be dealing with today, satisfied with outward cleanness and inward fill.

And then the seventh, possessing outward beauty but inward death. And then finally next week, praising past prophets while despising current prophets. And then the chapter ends with that famous plea of Jesus Christ, oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem. So our text here helps us to answer a number of questions. Question number one, what is God looking for?

Question number two, what does false religion look like? Question number three, what is true conversion? Question number four, what is inside the cup of my life? Those are the questions of this passage. So we deal with this sixth low, outward cleanness with inward fill.

Now, I want to give you a number of things about these two verses. I want to explain first of all the true situation. I want to explain the opportunity that Jesus Christ is giving them. I want to explain their character and how they appear outwardly, their inward reality, and the hope that there is for them that's expressed in verse 26. So the first is their true situation.

And the true situation is really characterized by one three-letter word in English language, woe. Woe, that is their situation. And one Greek lexicon defines woe as intense hardship and distress. And so in this one word is perhaps the most compelling argument for turning to Jesus Christ and repenting of your sins. And that is the hardships, the sorrows, the difficulties, the dangers, the depression, the broken relationships, the hardness, the angst, the anguish that comes from sin.

No one escapes these things. And so Jesus says, whoa! And there are woes of nursing sin in the inward parts. No one ever escapes the corrosive, hardening, destructive, disappointing effects of sin. No one does for a second.

No one really gets to enjoy sin for much of a period of time. They're the passing pleasures of sin. All of them, even those pleasures contain a barb. Even those pleasures have poison in them. And so the woe is there.

There's woe for the current heart of filthiness, but even perhaps greater than that is the final woe of eternal damnation and fire and destruction. And so Jesus pronounces this woe. This is why We ought to turn to Christ and to repent from the heart. This is why we, it's so much sweeter to have the word of God implanted. This is why we ought to mortify the flesh because the flesh poisons you, it hurts you, it stabs you, it sickens you, it makes you unhealthy.

You get no comfort or love from sin. Its path is the path of the dead. And so Jesus says, whoa, whoa to you. Whoa to you who would remain in that state even this morning. If you remain in that state, you will be punished.

We would punish for all eternity. You're being punished now. Absolutely you are. Everyone who's turned to Christ knows the punishment. Because they see the difference.

They see what Christ does in your heart and how he replaces your mourning. How he takes the ashes and he turns it into something beautiful. And so Jesus says, whoa. And this should be a warning for anyone who is hardened against Jesus Christ today. Whoa.

Whoa to you. You know the whoa. It will only increase in intensity. And then there's their opportunity, because there's always an opportunity. There's always hope in a woe, because it gives time for repentance.

If Christ first says woe, right? He says woe, and then he calls out. He cries out for repentance and he says, clean the inside of the cup. It's a call. It's an appeal to come.

So there's even hope in the woe. Christ does not just leave sinners without a call. As he's calling now. This is a call to repentance. This is a hope for deliverance from hardened rebellion or dead religion.

And it isn't the end of the line for the hypocrite. Here in Jesus' scheme, it wasn't the end of the line for Nicodemus, who Jesus said, you must be born again. And he was born again. It wasn't the end of the line for the apostle Paul, who was one of these hardened Pharisees to whom he was saying, whoa. And Jesus Christ appeared to him on the road to Damascus in a flash of light and said, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

Jesus Christ says that to all those who have sinned, to the heart of those same words, why are you persecuting me? So there's always hope in a woe. At least there is in this one, because the woe is followed up with a call to clean the inside of the cup. And then their characters are revealed here. They're called hypocrites.

These are actors. These are the two-faced. In this case, there actually are two faces. There's the face on the inside, and there's the face on the outside. The outside face is so sunny, it's so appealing.

The inside face is ugly. The inside face is sick. But it is masked by all the other things that God has given to mask sin. And you know, this is our natural inclination. It is in our nature to mask.

It is, what the Pharisees were doing is natural. The natural man does this naturally. This is one of the subjects of our discussion on Tuesday morning. It's in our sin nature to put on airs, to appear to others what we are not. We do naturally, based on our nature.

You should never get upset with your dog if you put the plate of food on the floor. Because the dog's just gonna do what dogs do. He's gonna eat that gourmet meal of yours. It was so pretty and your dog defiled it. Well dogs just, dogs do what dogs do.

It's in their nature. And it's in our nature to be two-faced. This is one of the struggles of all human beings. It is in our very nature to appear something that we're not. And this is the natural condition of man's hearts.

We want to make the outside look clean so that men will praise us. And this is why our lives are sort of like these rich neighborhoods where you drive down the street and the lawns are perfectly manicured but inside there's divorce and hatred and there's dishonor inside those doors it looks it just looks so fantastic on the outside somebody said that you know everybody's life is really like a junk drawer. When somebody's coming over to your house, you just sort of scoop everything into the junk drawer. Or the junk closet. Or the junk trunk.

Does anybody have one of those? The Browns have always had a junk trunk, a junk closet, but the Browns also have junk hearts, just like their closets and just like their trunks. And this is true with all human beings. And we major in improving our appearances, but not our hearts. And so you can see it.

You can see it in the bright but fake smile. You can see it in the polite and the insincere response. Have you ever known someone who just looks so sharp, they're so put together, they're so well-shaven, But right under the skin, it's like crawling with vipers and daggers and fires and dissatisfaction and tumult and discontent right under the surface. That's because beauty is only skin deep. Because there's something greater than the skin.

You know, some people are actually born with smiles on their faces. Have you ever noticed that? Didn't you just wish you were born with a smile on your face? Where when someone saw you they would just naturally have a you know, a gleeful response at your gleeful face that you were given at birth. But everybody, some people's faces actually are turned down.

And you think, how come that person's always so sour? Well, actually they were just created that way on the outside. It's only skin deep. So it is true that the face reflects heart. But we actually have faces that don't reflect heart often.

They don't completely reflect heart. And so they are two-faced. They are hypocrites. And then how do they appear outwardly? Well, they cleanse the outside.

They maintain an outward appearance. It's appearances that matter. And then their inward reality is that they are full of extortion and self-indulgence. Now, in order to understand how the Lord Jesus is penetrating into the innermost depths of the hearts here, we should take time to consider these words. First, extortion.

He identifies two things that are inside the cup in these two verses, extortion and self-indulgence. So I would like for us to take these one at a time. First extortion and then self-indulgence. And while one might have been born with a smile on their face, there might be actually something like extortion inside. Extortion is plundering, taking by force.

Noah's 1828 dictionary defines it like this, the act of extorting, the act or practice of wrestling anything from a person by force, duress, menaces, authority, or by any undue exercise of power. This is, you know, getting a vision of what you want and going and getting it from other people. That's extortion. And you can be an extortioner and pretend that you're not an extortioner. This is the classic blindness.

Remember Jesus said, you blind Pharisee, that you don't see it. Remember in Luke 18, verse 11, there's the Pharisee that stood and he prayed, and he said, God, I thank you that I am not like other men. Extortioners. He was thanking God that he wasn't like all the other extortioners out there. But in fact, He was an extortioner who was praying like he wasn't an extortioner.

That's the problem with sin We like to identify extortion in other people, but we are so blind to it in ourselves Just like that Pharisee, you know, you know the Corinthian church had former extortioners in that church. The Apostle Paul, in that really familiar passage in 1 Corinthians chapter six, verse nine, he says that, you know, that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God, and that you should not be deceived because neither fornicators nor idolaters or adulterers or sodomites, and then he says, or extortioners, or extortioners will enter the kingdom of heaven. And then he says, but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus by the Spirit of God." So the inside can be cleansed through a work of grace by the Spirit of God. The Word of God revealing the fill. There's hope for an extortionist.

And then self-indulgence. Now, I mean, back to extortion, extortioners are people who use people. They don't love people. They don't, when they talk to someone, they always have a different motive. They don't love them.

They don't care about them. They really have their own agenda, not God's agenda for them. And then self-indulgence. This is lack of self-control. This is being unrestrained in one's desires, being undisciplined in dealing with desires.

And the apostle Paul in Ephesians chapter two speaks of this as a major quality of the unconverted. And he says that you were made alive, you who are dead in trespasses and sins, of which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience." So there's these things at work freely in your hearts, and he says, "...among whom also We all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. And here, the apostle is appealing to the Ephesian church to turn from the lust of the flesh but recognize that these lusts have an absolute grip before conversion. And then he lists a number of those desires there. When you see selfish ambition, when you see indulgence in food or drink or a desire for wealth, for sexual gratification, these are the kinds of indulgences that scripture speaks of.

A lack of discipline, lack of self control. And then notice in verse 26, the hope, the hope that is there for them. Blind Pharisee first cleansed the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also." And here the Lord is again speaking, you know, of the inside and the outside. Remember in Matthew Chapter 25, where Jesus said that murder was something that was in the heart. And that when you hate your brother, you're a murderer.

And then he said, committing adultery is not just a physical act, It's in the heart. There's the inside and the outside. Which is why Jesus said, The good man out of the good treasure in his heart brings forth what is good. And the evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth what is evil. For out of the heart, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks." And so he's just affirming this whole matter, that it's from within, out of the heart of men, that proceed evil thoughts of adulteries and fornications.

And this is why the Apostle Paul said to Timothy He said in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay, some of honor and some dishonor. Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself, " same kind of language, "...cleanses himself from the latter, He will be a vessel of honor, sanctified and useful for the master, prepared for every good work. There's wood, hay, and stubble in this whole equation of the inner heart, and whether it is clean or whether it is unclean. This is why in Isaiah chapter 1, Claudia, can you get me some water? That would be great.

Where Isaiah said, cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Again, you have the same, you cleanse the heart and the hands, it's both. That's what Jesus has been saying. He's saying continue to tithe the dill and the mint, but remember the heart of mercy and compassion. Don't leave any of it out.

As the apostle Paul told us, he said, for God did not call us to uncleanness, but to holiness. These are the things of the inward heart. This is the aneurysm. This is the fever. This is the infection.

This is the broken bone. These are the things of the heart. These are the things of internal medicine that Jesus Christ is bringing to us here today. And then the seventh woe is like it, but mentions different kinds of things. In verses 27 and 28, woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.

The same language as the setup. And then he says, for you are like, now he's making a comparison, you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones. Even so, you also appear outwardly righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness." So there's an analogy here of whitewashed tombs and Pharisees. Now, the two are compared. A tomb and a man are being compared.

A tomb that's been freshly painted and a man who has a sunny and law-keeping outward appearance. Those are the two things that are being compared here. And remember the Pharisees' apparel? You remember how they dressed? Well, they actually wore long white robes that had tassels on them and they were very visible.

They were very eye-catching. For anyone who desires to be eye-catching, then this is what you have here with Pharisees. They were glistening, almost like these white sepulchers walking around. I don't think the Lord Jesus was throwing away this analogy. They were whitewashed in their apparel, and they were like the whitewashed tombs.

You know this is a very famous you know imagery you know that was used and It really comes out of the book of Ezekiel, but what would happen in Israel during the time of Passover is that the tombs would be whitewashed in order to be made more visible because you wouldn't want to defile yourself by getting near a dead body. So there is this matter of ceremonial uncleanness. And here the Lord Jesus is just identifying the hypocrisy of dealing with all these outward things, getting that tomb whitewashed so that you can see it and you're not going to be defiled on the outside. This is straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel, you know, being full of hatred, being full of false motives and all kinds of expressions of hypocrisy with different kinds of snakes and insects and poisons in the heart, but at the same time just looking so put together, so well, so much so that even the apostle Paul in Acts chapter 23, he said to the high priest, God will strike you, you whitewashed wall. So this was imagery that the apostles were very well aware of.

You know, I remember when I was a young man reading a news report of the Pope coming and visiting a large South American city. And the Pope's motorcade was going to go down, I believe it was Lima, Peru. And the motorcade was going to go down a particular street, but there were all these decrepit, filthy barrios on the hillside. And so the city fathers deployed painters to paint the one side of the building that would face the Pope's motorcade as the Sun was shining on those on those barrios and glistening you know reflecting a good image back down you know to to this event that was taking place. This is what the heart of man does.

It wants to clean out just the part that people can see. And then there's this identification of what is on the inside, and there's a different list. They are full of dead men's bones. That's what he said, dead men's bones. In other words, they are unconverted.

It brings up imagery of Ezekiel in the Valley of the Dry Bones, where there's deadness and the bones are parched, but they come alive. Only by the gospel only by a miracle of God can they be can they come alive and These these are the dead men's bones that he's that he is speaking You know their bones are mentioned in the Bible fairly frequently. It's an interesting study. But you remember Elijah's bones? A man was revived just by touching the bones of Elisha.

So it was as they were burying a man, that suddenly they saw a band of raiders and they put the man in the tomb of Elisha. And when the man was let down and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived and stood at his feet as the figure of Jesus Christ, the one who gives life to the dead men's bones. You know, there's nothing more hopeless than dead men's bones. Nothing can bring them back. Only a miracle from heaven can bring a dead man and his dead bones.

And then he also identifies hypocrisy and he adds lawlessness to this list. You see how the lists are a little bit different in the second section here. He identifies lawlessness. He says, you appear outwardly righteous to men, but inside you're full of hypocrisy. Again, the two-faced condition, and then lawlessness.

And the term that he uses is the word that has appeared in the New Testament. Lawless, it appears a number of times. You know, there's the man of lawlessness, there is lawlessness that is increased, there's the lawlessness that creates lack of love in the New Testament. But lawlessness is the rejection of the law of God. Jesus is not abrogating the law of God.

He's saying that lawlessness is bad. Thomas Brooks says of this verse, This lawless man, he may offer sacrifice with Cain, he may fast with Jezebel, he may humble himself with Ahab, he may lament with the tears of Esau, he may kiss Christ with Judas, he may follow Christ with Demas, he may be baptized with Simon Magnus. And yet for all this, his inside is as bad as theirs. A Jacob on the outside, an Esau within, a David on the outside, a Saul within, a John on the outside, a Judas within, a saint on the outside, a Satan within, an angel on the outside, a devil within. So here the Lord Jesus Christ is penetrating into the innermost depths of the souls of his ears as he is here today.

And the Lord Jesus Christ does not judge on words or appearances. It says in Isaiah 11, the spirit of the Lord shall rest on him the spirit of wisdom and understanding The spirit of counsel and might the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord His delight is in the fear of the Lord He shall not judge by the sight of his eyes nor decide by the hearing of his ears." Now, it's not what he sees you doing, it's not what he hears you saying, it's what he knows is in your heart. That is how he judges. And he judges all, not according to what is said and done, but what is true in the innermost beings. He says, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and he shall decide with equity for the meek of the earth.

He shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked." So the Lord Jesus looks with penetrating vision into all of our hearts. So that's the exposition. Now I'd like to spend actually the rest of our time in application. First of all, buckle in. I have several here.

This one. Cleanse the inside of the cut. Repent and believe in the gospel. This is the heart of this passage. Jesus said, truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.

And seeing the kingdom of heaven is something that happens in the heart. And to not see the kingdom of heaven is to be excluded from the kingdom of God. And the Apostle Paul spoke of obeying the gospel. This is a call to obey the gospel. To say, cleanse the inside of the cup, is a command to repent and believe in the gospel.

And to disobey the gospel is to refuse to hear, is to refuse to repent, is to refuse to proclaim your faith, is to refuse to privately and publicly confess, is to refuse to become a disciple of Jesus Christ. That's how one disobeys the gospel. The gospel is meant to be obeyed. And all those who do not obey the gospel are lost in an eternal darkness. But true conversion is a matter of the heart.

Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, and He's declared that all of sin falls short of the glory of God. He's declared that He is holy and that He will punish every sin. And that God has determined to punish the sins of repentant sinners by punishing His Son, by satisfying His justice. He is holy and he cannot have in his presence those who are unholy. And so he has decided to punish his son for the sins of the repentant.

All of the anger that God has toward you, all of the anger that you deserve for your lust, for your disobedience, for your rejection of Him. All of the anger and wrath of God is laid upon the Son of God. And He will punish every sin. Jesus Christ does not withhold his punishment of sin. He withholds his punishment of sin toward repentant sinners.

And He who knew no sin became sin for us. And so a person must in their hearts see their sin, they must see the beauty and the glory of the kingdom of heaven. The light of the gospel and the glory of Jesus Christ who is the image of God should shine on them. That means that in their hearts the repentance see the glory of God. They believe in the gospel and it causes them to see and it causes them to have truth in the inward parts, not just cleansing the outside of the cup, but seeing that Jesus Christ can cleanse the inside of the cup.

That's why in 1 John, he says, but if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another. And the blood of Jesus Christ, his son, cleanses us from all sin. It is his blood that cleanses us. We were slaves of uncleanness, as the Apostle Paul says, and of lawlessness, leading to more lawlessness. So now, present your members as slaves of righteousness for holiness.

That's why Jeremiah said, "'Wash your heart from wickedness, "'that you may be saved.'" He says, "'How long shall your evil thoughts "'lodge within you? This is the inward parts. And So the very first and most important application of this passage is to apply it from the heart of the text. And the heart of the text is a call to cleanse the inward parts to the hardened, unrepentant Pharisee. Outwardly, smiley.

Inwardly, like poison and rats and toads and snakes, and let Jesus Christ cleanse you. That's the first and I think the most important application in this passage. And then there are remaining applications for those who have repented, who have believed in the Gospel. And there is hope for recovering hypocrites. I love what John Newton said.

He said, I'm not what I ought to be, I'm not what I want to be, I'm not what I hope to be, but still I am not what I used to be. And by the grace of God, I am what I am. That's the essence of what I want us to deal with now in these remaining applications. That I know the true Christian is never what he hopes to be or wants to be. The true Christian desires more holiness, less sin.

And that's what I want to talk about now. And so the second application and the remaining ones have to do with that. So first of all, clean the inside of the cup in religious duties. Clean the inside of the cup in religious duties. Thomas Brooks said that there's no greater hindrance to secret prayer in the world than secret sins.

There's no greater hindrance to secret prayer than secret sins. Why don't you pray? Why don't you do what you ought to do? Often the hindrances of secret sins are there. And I want to speak about these religious duties that we're involved in.

The receiving of the Lord's Supper. The giving of alms. Prayer and fasting. With the Lord's Supper, we should beware of taking the Lord's Supper without true self-examination. Every week we gather together and we say, examine yourselves.

It's right to do that because we're commanded to do that. A faithful minister must, he must say, examine yourselves. Not in a hypocritical way, but a true way. You know, has there been progress? Have you really turned away from your sin?

Are you really, have you really hated it on the inside? Or is it still your friend? You know, so often we we play patty cake with our enemies, the enemies of our souls. And we don't take sin seriously. So when we come to the Lord's Supper, He says, examine yourselves.

That's exactly what Jesus Christ is saying in the Pharisees. Examine the inward parts. Is there an aneurysm? Is there an infection? Is there a fever?

Is there an organ that's not working right because you've not been treating it right. Are you in the inward parts cleansed from heaven? And beware of taking the Lord's Supper without self-examination. And I pray that this morning would be a very precious and sweet time of relief for all of us. To identify things that are there, poisons that are there, and to confess them.

That's where the relief is. This is why it's called the cup of blessing. It's the cup of blessing because it's the cup of cleansing and relief, the blood of Jesus Christ that cleanses from all unrighteousness. And I would just so appeal to us here, if you're considering letting the cup pass because of your heart and unrepentant heart, turn. Don't let the cup pass without repenting.

Please repent. It's one thing to let the cup pass because You have not made any progress. And you need to really publicly engage in the first level of church discipline, which is this personal discipline, and let the cup pass. It's right to let the cup pass. But there are times when people let the cup pass because they do not recognize the greatness of the grace of God.

And so they cannot rejoice in it. So when the Lord's Supper comes, examine your hearts. Secondly, the matter of giving and prayer and fasting. The Lord Jesus, I already addressed this in Matthew chapter 6, where He said, take heed to yourself that you do not do your charitable deeds before men to be seen by them. And then He takes charitable deeds and then prayer and then fasting and then riches.

He takes those outward things. The things that men do to sort of, they do them outwardly When inwardly their hearts are wrong. And so, you know, take stock of your prayer, your fasting, your giving, and ask yourself what's going on in the heart. Has this arisen from a heart that loves Jesus Christ? Or is it just for man-pleasing?

Is it just to keep your reputation up? Are any of you giving to the church just to keep your reputation up? Just because you know that the church records and the IRS, you know, are going to make this sense. Is that why you're giving? Cleaning the inside of the cup regarding wealth, your outward expressions of success.

Jesus said, do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, or thieves break and steal. Jesus in this whole chapter is dealing with hypocrisy. One element of hypocrisy is to try to make yourself look so good and so successful. Everybody faces this when they go buy a car. They want to make themselves look so good and so successful and somehow Somehow your car tells the story of it all How do you How do you detect love for money inside of the cup?

Well, Matthew chapter 6 tells you. He tells you primarily the way that you know that is that you worry about money. And he's saying that when you're worrying, your treasure is in the wrong place. And he says, He says, Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink or about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?

He says, Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor they reap nor gather into bars, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much, are much more value than they? And then he says, which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? And he's talking about this whole outward pretentious life. And when the inside of the cup is full of infirmity in the area of money, it overvalues the outward appearance, and it worries about it.

It worries. Is anybody worried about their money? It's just one sign of internal infirmity. The worry is internal. No one can see it on the outside.

Thirdly, look for secret sins in your body, the cleaning of the outside and the inside. Because your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. And this is why in Psalm 90, he says, you have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. Now, All sin, all sin is recorded in heaven. Everything is simultaneously seen.

You know, Google Earth is just a parable of something greater and deeper than that. God sees, God just doesn't see your house from the outside. You know, two weeks ago. He sees everything happening inside your house. And not just inside your house, but in your heart.

That's what God sees. Everything is recorded. That's why Jesus said, for nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest. Neither anything shall be hid, that shall not be known. Everything will be known.

God will make it known. He will bring every work into judgment, every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil, Ecclesiastes 12, 14. Jeremiah said, can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him, saith the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth, saith the Lord. Proverbs 521, for the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and he ponders all his doings.

This is why we should cry out. Cleanse me from secret faults. Let them not have dominion over me. The secret thoughts of the heart, wrath, malice, discontentment, lust, anger, these are the infirmities, these are the aneurysms, these are the infections, these are the fevers, these are the broken bones of the human soul. And you can't see them from the outside.

One of the men pointed out that in the tabernacle, the outside of the ark was covered with gold and the inside was covered. There was a command to cover everything with gold, both the inside and the outside. And you know, we, this is a parable for us. We are the temple of God. We are the temple of the Holy Spirit.

We're not just touched up by the Holy Spirit, that we are to be filled with the Holy Spirit. You can read Hebrews chapter nine to see the imagery there. But you should be looking here this morning for the marks of secret sin in your body. Whether it's anger or lust or lying or laziness or lack of love. Now, one problem with secret sins is that they're not completely secret.

Sometimes you have to go to the doctor and get some outward physical ailment dealt with because of an inward sin, of rage or discontentment or something like that. Because secret sins become public sins. This is what happened to Ananias and Sapphira. They lied. And their secret sin became public.

God made it public. And you should be very careful to make sure that you deal with your sacred sins so that it's not made public. Be sure your sins will find you out, numbers 32, 23. Next application. Clean the secret sins from your mind through the word of God.

Through the word of God. Hebrews 4.23 makes it clear that the Word of God reveals secret sin. And so he says, For the Word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the vision of soul and spirit and joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from his sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. So the word of God reveals secret sin.

And this is the power of the word of God. It's a discerner of the thoughts and the intents of the heart. When you sit down to read your Bibles privately and in your families, recognize one of the most important things that's there is that it's a revelation of secret sin. It's there to discern the sin. If all you're having are technical discussions about the Bible, you should be afraid that you've lost a sense of the purpose of your time.

But it's meant to root out sin. It's meant to discern the thoughts and the intents of your heart. Not just give you perspective. Not just to give you an understanding of the history and make all the connections. That must be done.

But it's so much easier to do that than to allow it to be the discerner of the thoughts and the intents of the heart. So in your family worship, I'm here to appeal to all of us to make it deeper, to make it more real into the thoughts of our hearts, to penetrate deep. It's not just a mind game. We're not just talking about education here. We're talking about spiritual work in our families.

Here's another one. Clean the inside of the cut in your family, of your family. Now, again, you know, our Motivations are everything. Why are we here today? Why are we here?

Did we come to come to rejoice? Did we come in order to To be taught and become under the mighty hand of God and become to come under the authority of Almighty God and to place ourselves there and to pour out our hearts and genuineness. Or what about you younger ones? Did you come here, do you like coming here because your friends are here? Is that why you're here?

The thoughts and the intents of your heart matter. Your reason, the reason that you're here matters. Even if you're nine, even if you're 19, even if you're 89, it matters. Clean the inside of the cup in your life planning. This is the next one.

In your life planning. Even the planning and scheduling of our lives is meant to come out of a heart toward God. Psalm 90 says, teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom. The numbering of our days is all about something deeper. It's deeper than just your days.

It's about your heart. It's about the condition of your heart in the midst of your days as you're numbering them. Here's the next one. Clean the inside of the cup in your civil obedience. Clean the inside of the cup in your civil obedience in Romans chapter 9 we learn that Even our obedience to the civil government is meant to come out of a heart of Submission It's not enough just to obey the law.

Romans 13 reads this, Let every soul, that means your inner self, your mind, it means your inner being, let every soul be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists, Resistance starts in the heart. It starts inside of your heart, and it works its way out. Nobody disobeys a law just on the outside. It always starts in the heart.

It's a lawless heart. That's the beginning of it. He says, therefore, you must be subject not only because of wrath But but also for conscience sake this is verse 5 Conscious is the end has to do with the inner workings of the mind and the heart. It's from the inner, from your inner being, from your soul, from your suke, from the resistance that rises up in your heart, from the inner workings of your conscience. And then he says in verse 8, oh no one anything except to love one another.

And this is all in the same context. We owe the civil magistrate obedience. Love is something that begins in the heart. It's an act of love. It's important that we're faithful in our secret thoughts toward authorities, all authorities, from the government down through your boss.

This is why Solomon said in Ecclesiastes 10-20, do not curse the king, even in your thought. Do not curse the rich, even in your bedroom. Even our obedience to the civil government is meant to come out of a heart of submission. So all of this to help us to consider our hearts on these two planes of the unconverted and the converted. To find ourselves under the ministry of the internal medicine of the Lord Jesus Christ to deal with the fever, the broken bones, the aneurysms, the infections, and to say to here today with all of our hearts, Search me, O God, and know my heart.

Try me and know my ways, and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. This is our calling today, to be a real people, genuinely, not proud, not self-righteous at all, but understanding our frailties, recognizing the mercy of Jesus and this glorious gospel of peace that he's given to cleanse sinners from their sins to lay his wrath on his son to save them. Would you pray with me? Oh Lord, we recognize our blindness. We desire Lord that you would come and fill us, I pray that you would fill this church with reality and genuineness and humility and truth in the inward parts.

That you would, Lord, make us such a treasured possession who would go out into the world and preach this glorious gospel of transformation of the mind and the heart. Amen.