In the sermon 'Straining Out Gnats While Swallowing Camels' by Jason Dohm, the focus is on Jesus' critique of the scribes and Pharisees, highlighting their hypocrisy. The sermon is based on Matthew 23:16-24, where Jesus condemns the religious leaders for focusing on minor aspects of the law while neglecting its weightier principles such as justice, mercy, and faith. The sermon outlines two main sections: the binding and non-binding nature of oaths and the neglect of the law's weightier matters. Jesus accuses the scribes and Pharisees of valuing external adherence to the law over its true intent, emphasizing the need for integrity and truthfulness. The sermon connects the commandments to love for God and neighbor, urging believers to live authentically and repent from hypocrisy. Dohm calls for self-examination, urging the audience to address the gap between public persona and private reality and to seek Christ for redemption.

Jesus says, Woe to you blind guides who say, whoever swears by the temple, it is nothing. But whoever swears by the gold of the temple, he is obliged to perform it. Fools and blind, for which is greater, the gold or the temple that sanctifies the gold and whoever swears by the altar it is nothing but whoever swears by the gift that is on it he is obliged to perform it fools and blind for which is greater the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift Therefore he who swears by the altar swears by it and by all things on it He who swears by the temple swears by it and by him who dwells in it and He who swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him who sits on it Woe to you scribes and Pharisees hypocrites For you pay tithe of mint and annas and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done without leaving the others undone. Blind guides who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel." These words, Lord, it's words you intend for our ears today and for our heart and soul.

And I pray now as Jason comes to us that your Holy Spirit would deliver your truth through his words, that you'd fill him with grace and mercy as he comes and blesses us by just hearing what you have for us today. Thank you Father, in Jesus' name. Straining out gnats while swallowing camels. That's the title of the sermon. It comes directly from this last verse that we will be considering today.

Pretty much sums up everything you need to know about this text. That's what Jesus is speaking about Straining out little itty bitty gnat and swallowing the biggest land animal in Palestine. There are two sections in our text. In verses 16-22, Jesus is going to talk about swearing oaths, and specifically the system that the Jews had for swearing oaths and what was binding and what is not binding. And then in the second section, verses 23 and 24, Jesus talks about neglecting the weightier matters of the law, doing fine points of the law but completely neglecting the more critical things.

So it's two sections, but it's really just one point that Jesus is making. It's worthless. It's completely without value to skim on the surface of the law while subverting the whole intent of the law. This is When Jesus starts talking about the things that they are doing that are hypocritical, this is what he is talking about. Just skimming along the surface of the law.

And meanwhile, the whole intent of the law, the whole spirit of the law is obliterated. So it's a particular attention to the letter of the law and doing the external things associated with the law, but ignoring the purpose for it, the reason for it, the spirit behind it. Now what's the context of this? Two weeks ago we covered verse 13, verse 14, verse 15. That really starts the section.

And it's Jesus pronouncing woes. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. All three of those verses start with exactly the same words. That's it. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.

And Jesus is going to pronounce eight different woes. So we covered three already. We're going to cover two more this week. And then after this week there will be two more Sundays where we're talking about the woes, the condemnations that Jesus is announcing against the hypocrisy of the scribes and the Pharisees. So last time there were three kinds of hypocrisy that Jesus identifies.

The first kind of hypocrisy is the hypocrisy that shuts up the Kingdom of Heaven against men. It's a kind of teaching, and it's a kind of living that's worse than just rejecting the Gospel. It's bad enough that the scribes and the Pharisees had rejected the Messiah that Jesus had sent to Israel. It's bad enough that they had rejected him for themselves. But they were not content with that.

They were actually shutting up the Kingdom of Heaven against other men. They were dragging other people away from receiving the Messiah that God had sent as a Redeemer. So that's the first kind of hypocrisy that Jesus deals with. The second kind is the kind of hypocrisy where you would devour a widow's house, you would devour a widow's substance under religious pretense. The actual Greek that Jesus uses in verse 14 is, under a color of long praying.

So You've set up a color, a banner. You've set up a banner which is a public reputation for godliness. And then you're operating under your banner, your carefully cultivated public reputation. And you're using that as a pretense to devour the substance of a widow. And then finally, the third kind of hypocrisy that Jesus addresses in verse 15 is making a convert and then discipling that convert so that they are twice asana of hell that you are.

And Jesus says, you go across the land and see. There's nowhere you won't go to make a convert. You'll go to the ends of the earth to make a convert. But it's not for the Kingdom of Heaven, it's for your own kingdom. So when you make this disciple and they become like you, you've turned a heathen into a hypocrite, and they're worse off than they ever were to start with because they were an enemy of God and now you have made them into a self-righteous enemy of God and you have called that doing good.

That is doing evil. That is the hypocrisy of it. So Jesus has pronounced a condemnation against those three types of hypocrisy. And now he's turning towards the type of hypocrisy that would have us swallowing the littlest bug or straining out the littlest bug but swallowing the largest land animal in Palestine. And this is what he begins speaking about in verses 16 through 22.

He's talking about the system of binding oaths and non-binding oaths that had been developed by the Jewish leaders. Some oaths are binding and you're obliged to keep what you've said and some oaths are non-binding and you can get out from underneath those oaths. It was depending on the object standing behind the oath. In other words, there are different objects that they would be swearing by? Is it the temple?

Are you swearing by the temple? Are you swearing by the gold of the temple? Well, the temple wasn't considered to be so near the name of God, and so it's non-binding. But the gold in the temple was considered by the Jewish leaders to be closer to the name of God. And so that's binding.

The altar? Not so binding. The gift on the altar? Binding. So they had a system where some things were binding and some things were not binding.

Jesus has already taught about this. He taught about it in the Sermon on the Mount. He taught about it in Matthew 5. It's the text where Jesus ends up by saying, let your yes be yes, let your no be no. Anything more than that is from the evil one.

So if you want to dig deeper into all about what the Jews were teaching and doing regarding oaths, go back to that sermon in Matthew 5. My intent is not to re-preach a sermon from a year ago, but if you're curious about the ins and outs of it, go back to that sermon. There will be a lot more content in that. During that sermon, I had pulled down off the internet and printed out and brought the tract from the Mishnah that deals with vows and oaths. And if you remember this, it was 81 pages, 12 point font.

So it's a book. And during the sermon, you know, I just let it go and it just comes crashing to the floor. It's 81 pages about what O's are binding and what O's aren't binding. And The Jews had created this system that was so complex to determine whether you had to do what you promised to do or not. Well, what's lost in this?

What's lost in 81 pages of 12-point font? Telling the truth! Telling the truth! That's always the heart of the matter with an oath is telling the truth. Binding oaths and not binding oaths, 81 pages.

Tell the truth. And this is just what we're talking about here, skimming along the surface of the law, meanwhile trampling, running over the spirit of the law. They missed the whole point in those 81 pages, which is that God's people tell the truth. You don't need 81 pages. God's people tell the truth.

If you're going to be a follower of Yahweh, if you are going to be like God, if you are going to say that you obey God, then you tell the truth because God is truth. Jesus has been calling them hypocrites. In verse 13, He calls them hypocrites. In verse 14, He calls them hypocrites. In verse 15, He calls them hypocrites.

Now He changes in verse 16 to blind gods. Blind gods. And then in verse 17, he's going to say, Fools and blind or as the ESV renders it, You blind fools. And he's going to say the same thing again in verse 19. You blind fools.

Now you've gone, it's family vacation, you've gone to the Grand Canyon. I've not been to the Grand Canyon, but I've heard a lot of stories. And you hear the stories about these donkey tracks. These trains, a lineup of donkeys, and you can ride along the edge of the Grand Canyon on a donkey. That apparently sounds like a good idea to some people.

So you've gone on family vacation and you're in the office and you're hiring out for a donkey track. And your team leaves in half an hour. And your guide is Doug. It's interesting, you're looking across the room, and Doug's getting ready for the trek, and He's tapping around with the long white king. This is cause for concern.

And you can see where Doug is pointed so You kind of get in the line and you motion and you can look at those eyes and there's no response you can tell. It's not registering. Doug's eyes don't work. That's why he's tapping around the office. So when Doug says, mount up, are you getting on that donkey?

I don't know about you. Every couple of years, there's a news story about somebody who either gets really seriously hurt or somebody dies. Now donkeys are really sure-footed animals, so it's not all that dangerous, but you're near big drop-offs on these donkey trains. When Doug says mount up, I'm not mounting up. But this is what it's like to follow these scribes and Pharisees.

Only it's worse because these scribes and Pharisees are willfully and obstinately blind. They've shut their eyes. They've shut their eyes to the truth. It's willful blindness. It's obstinate blindness.

And The people of God are following these men who have advertised themselves as experts, only they are leading the donkey train along the edge of the Grand Canyon and they can't see. And this, what Jesus is talking to, their practices regarding oaths, is a great example of this. They're teaching this elaborate system and they've represented themselves as experts and they're missing the whole point. The whole point is telling the truth, the importance of God's people having integrity, doing what they say they're going to do, Being honest. What does the Old Testament teach about oaths?

Here is a refresher course. An oath has two human parties. It's me and you working out a deal. And we're calling God as witness. A vow, on the other hand, is there's no second party.

It's a commitment that I'm making directly to God. God, I'm going to give up meat on Fridays or whatever. That is a vow. An oath is two human parties with God as witness. Now here is the cornerstone of what the Old Testament teaches on oaths.

It is Deuteronomy 6 verse 13. Deuteronomy 6 verse 13 says this, You shall fear the LORD your God and serve Him, and shall take oaths in His name." Deuteronomy 6 verse 13 gives what you need to know about the Old Testament's teaching about oaths. It's based, foundationally based on the fear of the Lord. No point in people who don't fear the Lord taking an oath. It is based upon the fear of the Lord and it invokes the name of God.

Listen to it again. You shall fear the Lord your God and serve him, and shall take oaths in his name. Only in his name. There is only one kind of lawful oath, And that is an oath in the name of God. So swearing by the temple is not consistent with what the Old Testament teaches about oaths.

Swearing by the gold of the temple isn't. Swearing by the altar, swearing by the gift of the altar, swearing by heaven, swearing by the throne of God, this list of things that we have in Matthew 23. None of those things are consistent with the Old Testament teaching on what it means to take a lawful oath, to swear lawfully. Because in a lawful oath, you are calling God as a witness and as judge. You are calling God as witness and judge.

Why? Because He is omniscient. He sees you make the oath. He sees you enter into it. And He will know if you kept it or didn't keep it.

He knows everything. So he knows you've entered into it and he knows whether you've kept it. He's omnipotent. His arm is never too short. He can always do anything that he wants to do.

So you'll never be able to escape him if you take an oath in his name. You're in the fear of the Lord. You're to invoke him as a witness and as a judge because he's omniscient, he knows everything, and he's omnipotent. He can always do what he wants to do. So there are unlawful oaths.

And this is a list of them in Matthew 23 of unlawful oaths. So we know that so. Now, are there non-binding oaths? Is an unlawful oath a non-binding oath? Never, never, never.

There's no such thing as a non-binding oath. Whatever you swore by, You didn't want to make it in the name of God because that's too heavy duty so you swore by something lesser. He made it, whatever it was. If it's the altar, He made the altar. It's holy because He's holy.

If it's the gold of the temple, if it's the gift on the altar, if it's heaven, if it's the throne of God, All these things have a relationship to God. They only have meaning because He is their Maker. They are not omniscient. An altar will never know that you entered into the oath, and it will never be able to enforce the oath, but Almighty God knows you entered into it, and Almighty God will be able to enforce it. And because He is holy and because He made it, that oath that you thought you would be able to wiggle out of by invoking something less than God, rolls up to God because God made it.

This is what the later verses here in 16-21. 21 and 22 you see it all rolling up to God. The temple. Oh, God inhabits the temple. Heaven.

God lives in heaven. His throne. God sits on that throne. These oaths are rolling up. You intended to take a secondary oath so you could wiggle out of it with no repercussions, but it rolls up to God.

That's what Jesus is teaching here. So there are unlawful oaths that you shouldn't have entered into, but once you entered into it, you are bound by it. God stands behind that oath and He has witnessed it And he will enforce it. The question isn't, can I find a rabbi who will let me off the hook? The answer to that question, by the way, is yes.

You'll be able to find a rabbi who will say you're off the hook. The question is, will God let you off the hook? The answer from Matthew 23 is no. When you take an oath, God won't let you off the hook. You are bound.

He saw it. He will enforce it. You cannot leave God out of your oaths, even if you want to. Even if you intended to, You cannot leave God out of your oaths, even if you intended to. You cannot leave God out of your oaths.

Now we've been talking, especially since Matthew 22, about a view of the law. How should we view the law? It was important in Matthew 22 because Jesus has been asked, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus says the great commandment is this, Love God with everything that you all are, your heart, your soul, your mind, your strength. Love God with everything and there is a second commandment that is like it.

Love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. So this is how we are to think about the law. We are supposed to take the laws of God and hang them on either love for God or love for neighbor. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

Since Matthew 22 I've started hanging the laws of God on either love for God and love for neighbor. I'm finding myself to be helped by that. To make sure that I understand the relationship between the laws of God that are everywhere in the Scriptures and how it relates to loving God or how it relates to loving my neighbor. So at the top of how we view the law of God is love. Either loving God or loving your neighbor or both.

That's what we find is so many of these commandments have something to do with loving God and with loving your neighbor. So it doesn't have to be one or the other. It can many times be both. So we have love for God at the top. And then we have categories that tell us these categories of what it means to love God and love our neighbor.

It's called the Ten Commandments. Commandments one through four are about loving God. Commandments five through ten are about loving your neighbor. And yes, there's some overlap. The fourth commandment, to honor your father and your mother, has much to do with loving God and has much to do with loving your neighbor.

So again, they're not exclusive. So what about oaths? So if we were going to go and hang God's law about oaths to the Ten Commandments and then trace it all the way back to either loving God or loving our neighbor. How would that work? Well, it's about truth.

It's about telling the truth. Have we got any of the Ten Commandments about telling the truth? Yes, we do. The ninth commandment. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

A violation of truth is a crime against your neighbor. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. When you don't tell the truth, it's a crime against your neighbor. It's a violation of the law of God to love your neighbor. Anything else?

Oh, we took our oath, our lawful oath at least, in the name of God. Is there anything in the Ten Commandments about the name of God? Yes, there is. The third commandment. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

To Invoke His name and then not perform it, not to have told the truth, not to have done what you committed that you would do, is the essence of the violation of the third commandment. You've taken His name in vain. You invoked His name and then you didn't tell the truth, and then you didn't do what you said you would do. You took his name in vain. You violated the great commandment to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

So We can take this commandment of God about oaths and we can trace it all the way back up through the Ten Commandments. The commandment for truth telling, the Ninth Commandment, no bearing false witness, because that's a crime against your neighbor, and about taking the name of God in vain, invoking His name, and then not doing what you said you would do. We can take this law and trace it back through the Ten Commandments and hang it on love. On these two commandments, hang all the law and the prophets. Parents, let's make a pact that we are going to do this with our children.

That we are going to help them understand the law by working with them to track back the laws of God as we hit them in family worship, in our teaching of them the scriptures, that we are going to trace them back through the Ten Commandments to love. So that our children learn how to think rightly about the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are about love for God and love for neighbor. And so we are going to trace it back. And we are going to make sure that they know how the law of God about oaths relates to loving God and loving their neighbor.

They don't think it's just on the to-do list, something that has to be done in a sterile environment, something that just gets done mechanically because For some reason or another God said to do it. It's not for some reason or another, it's because we must love God and we must love our neighbor. Let's train our kids as we come upon these laws of God to track them back through the Ten Commandments all the way to love for God and love for neighbor. Jesus says, woe to you if you do this. If you do what is being described in Matthew 23 verses 16 through 22, woe to you.

It will go badly for you. You are guilty if you do this. Does it mean that people who do this aren't Christian? No, it means they need to repent. You're guilty if you do this and you need to repent.

What about us? We said in verses 13-15, This is not a month to wag our finger at hypocrites out there. It's not why God has us here in this text. This is a month to look inside our own hearts and apply the things that Jesus is condemning. We'll find things there.

We'll find things in our heart. We'll find that there's a gap between the public reputation that we've been carefully cultivating and what's really in our hearts. There's a gap. There's a gap between your public persona, you've been carefully cultivating how people would view you, and there's a gap of whatever size, there's a gap between that and who you really are, between the thoughts that you think, between that and the words that you say, between that and what you do in secret. There is a gap.

It's our job to listen to God as He identifies those things, and to repent, and to pray for progress, and to see that gap shrink. You have a lifelong mission to do that. To Identify, as God would give you grace, the gap between the public perception that you've cultivated and who you really are when you're thinking or when you're speaking or when you're doing things in secret. And over time, to see the gap be less and less. It's a lifelong mission that we're all on.

So what about us with this? This is about playing fast and loose with the truth. Anybody do that? Play fast and loose with the truth. Listen to 1 Peter 2 verses 21 and 22.

For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that you should follow in his steps." So far What Peter has said is Christ is our example, we should follow Him. Now listen to this. Who committed no sin, nor was deceit found in His mouth. When Peter talks very concisely about ways in which we should follow Christ. He says Christ committed no sin and then he gets very specific, nor was any deceit found in his mouth.

So as we follow Christ, as we are trying to be like Christ, one critical way is that no deceit be found in our mouths. Jesus didn't tell the truth. Jesus was and is the truth. We are not like that. Sometimes we tell the truth and sometimes we don't tell the truth.

Jesus is different. He is the truth. He doesn't just tell the truth. That's John 14. I am the way, the truth, and the life.

He is the truth. So Christians, those who take His name, those who follow Christ, do likewise. They are full of integrity. Not because for some nebulous reason, somehow we ought to tell the truth, but because Jesus Christ is truth. And we say we want to be conformed into His image, so we have to tell the truth.

God's people tell the truth because God is truth. So with each other, we probably have a reputation that we tell the truth. How about the people closest to you, who you make the most commitments to, do you speak the most to? Do they know you as someone who plays a little fast and loose with the truth? Are we rightly known as being people of integrity?

Are we really careful how we communicate to make sure that we're telling the truth, not shading the truth, not telling most of the truth, and leaving out a few little things that reflect poorly on ourselves. Ever been known to do that? This is a brutal study. To carefully apply these to our own hearts, not to wag our fingers at those out there, but to carefully apply and ask these questions. Do I shade the truth?

Do I only say the things that reflect well on me and I leave out a few tidbits that don't reflect well on me. As I examine myself, I have to say, I do that. It's not right. It's not like Christ. I have to stop doing that.

And so do you. We have to be careful with how we communicate. And then we have to do what we say we're going to do. Not because we've taken an oath, but because God is truth. Jesus Christ is truth.

And we have to learn to be like Him. Let's read verses 23 and 24 together. We're back in Matthew 23 now. Back in our text, verses 23 and 24. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!

For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, Justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done without leaving the others undone. Blind guides who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel. Jesus now turns to neglecting the weightier matters of the law. He's pronouncing another woe here.

He's announcing condemnation for the scribes and the Pharisees over scrupulously keeping one part of the law while ignoring the more important parts. Like really scrupulously keeping this part of the law. They are tithing down to the garden spices. When you look at the tithing laws in the Old Testament, the thrust of it is about tithing your crops. Harvest time.

Fields of stuff give 10%. Jesus commends their tithing of their garden spices. But the thrust of the tithing laws are about fields full of wheat, vineyards full of grapes. Bumper crop of mint this season. Bumper crop of dill in the garden.

Wow, going to be a big tithe on that. So scrupulous. All the way down to your garden they're doing this. But they're neglecting the weightier matters of the law. Notice he doesn't say they are neglecting the weightier laws.

It is the weightier matters of the law, the principles that stand behind the law, the purpose that God gave the law, the spirit of the law. These are the things that are being neglected by these scribes and Pharisees. Now, Let's do the exercise again. We've got a law. We've got a tithing law.

Let's hang it on either love for God or love for neighbor. Let's go through the exercise again. Tithing. What are the tithing laws? Well, there are three kinds of tithing in the Old Testament.

There's a Levitical tithe, where you're supporting the Levites. The Levites don't get any of the land of Israel. God is their portion, and their support comes from the tithe of the other 11 tribes. They don't get an allotment of land. Their inheritance is God and their support comes from the Levitical tithe.

The second kind of tithing is the festival tithe. We're going to set aside 10% to go and rejoice before the Lord in Jerusalem three times a year, three weeks a year. We're all going up together and we're going to be before the Lord and we're going to have a ton of wine and bread and food of every kind and we're going to rejoice before the Lord three weeks out of the year. It's the festival tide. And the third tide is the poor tide.

Every three years, we're going to set aside an additional tenth of the harvest. And this we'll keep within our gates so that when there are people in our community who don't have what they need there will be resources to pull from. There will be always something for them to eat inside our gates. Every three years we're going to take a tenth and we're going to keep it within our gates. The Levitical tithe, the festival tithe, the poor tithe.

Now how does this relate to the Ten Commandments? What I did was I just went back to Deuteronomy and looked at Moses' exposition of the Ten Commandments. So Moses, he gives the Ten Commandments and then he talks about the First Commandment, and then he talks about the Second Commandment, and then he talks about the Third Commandment, all the way through the Tenth Commandment. So I just went to see, hey, where are the tithing laws in Deuteronomy? And which section is that?

Here's what I found out. The first tithing section is in Deuteronomy 12 verses 5 through 19. This is in the section on the second commandment. You shall not make for yourself an idol or any likeness. Now this is the worship command and it's talking about false worship.

So idolatry is false worship. Making images is false worship. But wrapped up in that, in Moses' exposition of false worship, is the other side of that coin. What does it mean to truly worship God? So the second commandment is not only about false worship, but it is about true worship.

It is about both sides of that coin. And tithing has a direct relationship to that. God has said he wants to be worshiped in a certain way, and he has set aside a tribe for his worship. So tithing is about how God wants to be worshiped. Because he wanted to set aside a tribe specifically to do the things that he is called for in worship.

Tithing is about the second commandment. It's about our worship of God. It's about loving God. And it's about loving our neighbor. If you've got a neighbor who is a Levite, he got no inheritance.

How is he going to make a living? God has apportioned him a living from the tithe. This is about loving your neighbor too. The second Tithing passage in Deuteronomy is in Deuteronomy 14 verses 22 through 29. The section devoted to an exposition of the fourth commandment, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

Tithing is about the Sabbath. The festival laws are within the portion of Deuteronomy about the Sabbath. The festival laws are related to setting aside time to worship God, one day in seven, three weeks a year. It's about loving God. So if you ever wanted to know, is the Sabbath a feast day or a fast day?

This answers the question. It's a feast day. It's a day of rejoicing. The tithe devoted to the festival gatherings is in the Sabbath law. It is buried right in the Sabbath law.

The Sabbath is a feast day. It is a day for the people of God to rejoice. The third and final passage about tithing in Deuteronomy is Deuteronomy 26, verses 1-15, which by the way talks about all three types of tithing. In Deuteronomy 26, 1-15. And this is the section of Deuteronomy dedicated to the 10th commandment.

You shall not covet. Of course, of course it's there. You shall not covet. You're free with your resources. You're free with them.

Jesus said, where your treasure is, what? There your heart will be. So we're not coveting, we're free with our resources and this has everything to do with tithing and loving our neighbor. So it's easy for us to take this old obscure, is it obscure? Now that we've gone through that, you say tithing law is obscure?

I don't, not anymore. But to take this, what we would think of as obscure Old Testament law, and run right up through the Ten Commandments and hook it onto love for God and love for neighbor. So it's easy to do that. But the scribes and the Pharisees have forgotten that And tithing to them has become something that's a way to be outwardly righteous. Look at that scribe.

Tithes all the way down to the garden spices. There's nothing that that man won't tithe. Counting out dill seeds, counting out mint stalks, got to get to 10%. And it's a cheap way even to cultivate a reputation for godliness. It costs you almost nothing.

A tenth of your garden spices, that's all it costs you to cultivate a reputation for godliness. All outward, heart doesn't even have to be engaged at all. It can all be just done, you out in the garden. And you don't have to love God at all. You can just honor Him with your lips and Your heart can be far from Him and you just count out 10% of your mint stalks.

And voila, you are known as a godly person. This is what the Scroggs and the Pharisees are doing. What are they neglecting? Justice, Mercy, Faith. Some of the translations say faithfulness.

That is a bad translation. I'm no Greek scholar, but when I go and I look at the root word and how it's used in other places, faith is a much better rendering. It's not that that Greek word can't be translated faithfulness in some circumstances. But when you look at the other places where it's used in the context here, I think faith is a much better rendering. They've neglected justice and mercy and faith.

So they're really good followers, really good followers of Yahweh, minus the justice, mercy and faith. What if somebody said that about you? What if somebody said that about you? What if somebody said that about you? She's a really good Christian except for the justice, the mercy, and the faith.

Exemplary Christian, minus justice, mercy and faith. What is left of our faith when you strip out justice and mercy and faith? What's left? Just a shell. Just a shell.

And this is the point of what Jesus is saying. All that's left for these scribes and Pharisees is just a shell. They've evacuated the heart of the faith right out of this religion. Just sucked the heart of the faith right out of this religion. And it's just like one of those locus shells that you find.

It's just a husk. There's nothing in there. It's light as a feather, but it sort of still has the form of it. That's what they've done. They've evacuated the heart of the religion right out of what God always intended.

Turn to Micah 6. So Micah is right at the end of the Old Testament. If you get to Nahum or Zephaniah or Zechariah or Malachi, you've gone too far otherwise. Those are the only books that are further in the Old Testament than Micah. So it's in the Minor Prophets right before Nahum, Zephaniah, Zechariah, Malachi.

Micah 6, verses 7 and 8. Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, Ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He is showing you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?

To do justly. This is justice. Jesus says justice. To love mercy. Jesus says mercy.

It's an exact match. To walk humbly with your God. That's a pretty good working definition of faith. It's not an exact match like justice and mercy were. But how do you like that as a definition for faith?

Walking humbly with your God. I can live with that as a definition for faith. You can see how closely related those things are. Jesus is teaching what Micah taught as a summary of the law. What's the summary of the law?

To do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with your God. Jesus is speaking of the things that God is, so they are also the things that He loves. That's the principle. The things that God is, He loves. In other words, His nature and character are the perfect embodiment of all that is good.

So if you want to know what is good, you look to God, because His nature and character is the perfect embodiment of all that is good. You want to know what it means to be loving? Look how God loves. Or to be just? Look at God's justice.

Or faith? Look at how faithful God is. God is a God of justice. So His people love justice and His people do justice. That's pretty broad.

What does that mean? Do to other people what you want them to do to you. Pretty simple. God's form of justice. That's all the law and the prophets, right?

Isn't that what Jesus said? Do to other people what you want them to do to you. This is all the law and the prophets. So what is the justice of God? That.

Now there are these laws that help us to understand that, but essentially that's what justice is. God is a God of mercy, so His people love mercy and His people are merciful. Listen to Hosea chapter 6 verse 6, For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. You see this over and over and over again in the New Testament. I desire mercy and not sacrifice.

I want your hearts, not a tenth of your mint stalks. I don't need your mint stalks. God loves the things that are consistent with Himself. Justice, mercy, faith. Faith, because He is the most trustworthy being in the whole of the universe.

No one is more trustable, trustworthy, than God is trustworthy. So He loves faith because He can be believed in completely. It's right. It's only right that he would be believed in completely. God loves those things because they are consistent with his character.

Do we love those things? We talk about this every week. Are we learning to love the things that God loves and are we learning to hate the things that He hates? Here in this text God is teaching us to love the things that He loves. What does He love?

He loves justice. He loves mercy. He loves walking humbly, that we would trust Him and believe Him and obey Him. He loves those things. Here's a note out of the Geneva Bible.

Hypocrites are careful in trifles and neglect the greatest things of purpose. So we are careful about counting out the mint stocks. We don't care anything about justice and mercy and faith. It's called gaming the system. Gaming the system.

Working the system to your own advantage. Working around the system. Knowing all the loopholes so you can squeeze the most advantage out of it without actually doing what the system was designed for. It's called gaming the system. Only you can never fool God.

We can fool each other. So when you game the system, I'll never know it. But you've not fooled God. And so Jesus is here in Matthew 23 saying, I've not been fooled. I've not been fooled with your counting out of the mint stalks.

I've not been fooled by that. I know that you're those who honor me with your lips but your hearts are far from me. I've not been fooled with how you treat oaths and truthfulness. I have not been fooled by that. I see your hearts.

We are guilty of this when we meticulously keep a fine point of the law, but we neglect justice and mercy and faith. For the scribes and the Pharisees, It was their tithing of garden spices. It was their devouring widows' houses. All the while they're saying the long prayers so that they can get into the trust and the affections of these widows so they can then exploit them. For the scribes and the Pharisees, it's in binding up heavy loads and then putting them on the shoulders of their disciples.

Meanwhile, they won't even move those loads themselves. Jesus says, woe to you if you do this. It will go badly for you. You are guilty if you do this. So what about us?

What about us? Men, do you love parsing fine points of theology at the lunch table after the service. Meanwhile, your home is lifeless and loveless. You love talking theology? But you've got a lifeless home and a loveless home.

You're consistent. You're solid as a rock on family worship, only it's task work and there's no passion for Christ. I don't know what that is, but it's not family worship. It's family torment, family torture. And you're inoculating your wife and your children against the Gospel because you've given them a distaste for the faith.

Because it's task work. And there's no passion for Christ in your family worship. Now, like Jesus, you should have done the former without neglecting the other. So I like talking theology. I'm not discouraging that.

We ought to have family worship, but we need to do the former without neglecting the latter, as Jesus says. Men, have you taken the unlawful activities out of the Sabbath, but not put in the pleasant things? How are your families viewing the Sabbath? Have you taken out all those things that we used to think were lawful activities on the Sabbath? You're not engaging in economic activity and you're not doing all those recreational things that we used to just take for granted in it, but you've not replaced it with any of the delights of the Sabbath.

It's to be a day of savoring God. If you Just set aside those things and now it becomes a day of things that we don't do and we're not savoring God. It's the same thing. It's giving those who are entrusted to us a distaste. A distaste for the things of God.

Shame on us. Shame on us for doing that. That one hurts. I've got a couple of people in the front row who are saying, uh-huh, I know about you. I know.

I want the pleasures of God in my house on the Sabbath. I want to savor him on the Sabbath. Ladies, are you careful about hemlines and necklines, but there's a total lack of mercy for your husband. Never wear anything tight. We're thankful for that, sisters.

Thank you. But you have no mercy in your heart for your husband. You're so pleasant among the other ladies of the church, just as nice as nice can be. But when you speak to your children in your house, it's like you don't even love them. And you've not applied the golden rule.

And you would never let anyone in the world speak to you that way, but you speak to your children that way all the time. Children, yes ma'am, no ma'am, but you have a heart of dishonor towards your parents. Yes ma'am, no ma'am, but you'll lie to your parents on the drop of a hat. Truth means nothing to you. Here's the deal.

Here's what we're learning in Matthew 23. Hypocrisy always works its way out. Hypocrisy is supposed to be the secret sin, but it's not really. You can keep it under wraps for a little while, but it always works its way out. So you're not telling the truth anymore, and people will notice when you're not telling the truth.

Or you're devouring widows' houses. People catch on to that in time. It's a secret sin, but only for a while your hypocrisy will work its way out. Your hypocrisy will blow the whistle on you sooner or later. So you can deal with it when God brings us to Matthew 23 and He is putting His finger on some of the areas of hypocrisy in our own life or you can deal with it when it works its way out and somebody looks you in the eye and says, you're a fraud.

Parents, two exhortations. Make the connection to the weightier matters of the law. Behind every one of these commandments are the principles of justice, mercy, faith, loving God, loving your neighbor. They're lurking right there on the other side of the commandment. Make the connection.

Make sure your children know how these commands of God connect to the weightier matters of the law. So they are not just doing the external things and missing justice and mercy and faith. Finally, we are finding hypocrisy in there, aren't we? God is putting His finger on the gap between the public reputation that we have carefully cultivated and what we think and what we say and what we do in secret. There is a gap and God has identified it.

What do we do with that? We flee to Christ. We need a Redeemer. We repent. We have to help our children with this.

Not just to press it down so we can't see it anymore, but to know to flee to Christ so they can be free from it. To be free from it. To be free from these sins. Not just get them off the surface so that we're acceptable to each other. What is that?

Teach them to flee. Teach them that you are fleeing to Christ as God identifies this hypocrisy in your heart. Teach them that you are fleeing to Christ. That you don't know anywhere else to go for relief. Teach them to do it.

Let's pray. Father, I thank you for this text. I thank you for the time that we have in here. It's been so good. Now, through the first five woes, to see the things that you hate.

Teach us to hate those things, God. Identify them in our hearts. We welcome you to put your finger on our hypocrisy, on the gap between our public reputation and our thoughts, our words, and what we do in secret. Come relieve us, God, of our sin, through Christ. Give us a gift of repentance.

Make us turn towards you Lord in Jesus' name, Amen.