In his sermon 'Draw Near to God,' Scott Brown explores the theme of genuine worship versus hypocrisy, as illustrated by Jesus' confrontation with the Pharisees in the Gospel of Matthew. The Pharisees are criticized for prioritizing human traditions over God's commandments, exemplified by their adherence to rituals like handwashing, which they mistakenly equate with spiritual cleanliness. Brown emphasizes that true worship and nearness to God come from the heart, not mere outward appearances or adherence to man-made traditions. He discusses the importance of discerning between traditions that uphold God's commandments and those that nullify them. The sermon also highlights various responses to Jesus, contrasting the faith of a Gentile woman with the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. Brown calls for self-examination, urging believers to align their practices with Scripture and to seek a heartfelt relationship with God, free from the fear of human traditions.

Then the scribes and Pharisees who were from Jerusalem came to Jesus saying, Why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they Do not wash their hands when they eat bread. He answered and said to them, why do you also transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition? For God commanded, saying, honor your father and your mother, and he who curses father or mother, let him be put to death. But you say, whoever says to his father or mother, whatever profit you might have received from me is a gift to God, then he need not honor his father or mother.

Thus you have made the commandments of God of no effect by your tradition. Hypocrites, well did Isaiah prophesy about you saying, these people draw near to me with their mouths and honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain they worship me, teaching as doctrine the commandments of men." Let us pray. O Heavenly Father, I pray that you would give us ears to hear and eyes to see what you have for us today. Lord, I pray that you be with the preaching of the Word.

Lord, I pray that we would not teach as doctrine the commandments of men. Amen. As we've been walking through the Gospel of Matthew in the last couple of chapters, we've been seeing the different ways that people respond to the Lord Jesus Christ. On the one hand, you have Herod, who's fearful. You have John and his disciples.

You have those who are being fed with bread, that was multiplied by a miracle, you have the disciples in a boat, you have chapter 14 closing with the multitudes begging to touch the hem of his garment. And that's the pattern of the section that we're in now where there are these various responses to the Lord Jesus Christ. And, you know, once you read of the Lord Jesus Christ or hear from Him, you have to respond. You can't simply let Him lie because His claims are so comprehensive and the things that he says are so binary and divisive in so many ways. And so, All of these things here show us how do you respond to Jesus Christ.

And how do you on the one hand understand if you even love him and want to follow him or not. All these things have been paraded before us here. And now the Pharisees are coming and they're challenging Jesus. The contrast can be more stark. You have just in the previous verses you have found the multitudes, they want to touch the hem of his garment.

But now you have the scribes and the Pharisees, the theological hitmen coming down from Jerusalem to come to try to destroy him with an argument and with a question. And so the Lord answers the Pharisees here on what it looks like to be near to God. He's showing them and his disciples what it means to be a hypocrite. He is the searcher of the hearts. And so here in this section, our Lord is doing all of those things right here.

You know, I think it answers so many really important questions. I mean, what does it mean to hunger and thirst for righteousness in your heart? I mean really hunger and thirst for it. Not with outward appearances or what does it look like to seek first the kingdom of heaven? Or what does it look like to draw near to God?

Because the contrast is, there's people who draw near to God with their lips, but their hearts are actually far from him. And so this is the issue here. As you can see in the outline that you have, I've divided this into three sections. And all really to answer the question, what does it mean to be a hypocrite? And of course you can ask the question the other way too.

What does it mean to genuinely draw near to God? And You know, as we continue to move in Matthew, we'll see this being played off one to another over and over again, like we already have so many times in the Gospel of Matthew. Our Lord continues to bring this issue before us. When we get to chapter 25, one of the most vivid illustrations of this happens in the parable of the ten virgins. All ten virgins were carrying a lamp.

All ten virgins seemed, at least from all outward appearances, ready to come into the wedding feast. But they, even though, even though they all looked the same on the outside, they weren't the same. And five of them had no oil in their lamps. They seemed to all be one kind of people, but they weren't one kind of people at all. They were actually two kind of people.

But on all outward appearances, by the things that they were doing and saying, they were one kind of people. But our Lord is explaining to us that there is something deeper than outward appearances in terms of our relationship with Him. And so, you know, this is all, this section here and as we go on in Matthew, we see these illustrations of those people who think they're doing the right thing. But in reality, they have nothing. And that's what's here in this chapter.

And in chapter 15, you know, this theme of what does it mean to be a hypocrite? Or in the next section that we'll handle next week, what does it really mean to be clean and unclean? What does it really mean? Is it just a feeling in your heart? How do you discern these things?

And so with all these illustrations, the Lord is explaining what it means to be a child of God, to be near to Him, to be one of the virgins that has oil in the lamp, rather than a virgin that just looks like. There might be oil in the lamp, because there's such a tremendous difference. So this chapter forces us to ask the most important question that anyone can ever be asked who's sitting in a church. And that question is, am I a hypocrite? Or as we'll ask next week, am I clean or unclean?

And so this chapter is about the dividing line between those two states of being of human beings. And there really are only two states of being in the whole world. Not only in this room, but everywhere. Now I want to give you a flyover of the chapter, and then we'll go into it. So first of all, in verses 1 through 9, which is our section this morning, the Lord is being confronted by the Pharisees for breaking their traditions, but he then comes and shows them how actually their traditions caused them to break the commandments of God.

And then, and it really, it answers, you know, you are unclean when your heart is far from him. That's, I think that's the summary. You are a hypocrite when your heart is far from him. So that's this first section. And then next week we'll go into verses 10 through 20, where we learn about the true source of depravity.

We think that we can clean the outside of our cups to take care of our depravity. But unfortunately, that never works. You can't fix up the outward aspects of your life and be clean. It's impossible. And so, the Lord speaks of the source of depravity and He says, that's not what goes into the mouth that defiles a man, but what comes out of his heart.

And then he explains that in more detail. And the whole idea in that second section is that you're unclean when you think that your outward observances can make you clean. And then in the third section, verses 21 to 28, Jesus heals a Gentile woman's daughter, and this is the whole story of the crumbs, eating the crumbs from the master's table but she comes to him and she says Lord help me with a with a genuine heart of worship and she is a Gentile and then the Lord Jesus responds and he says woman great is your faith let it be to you as you desire because it was her desire for God it was her hunger and thirst for righteousness in her heart that justified her. And you're unclean, not because of your genealogy or your background, but because of your lack of faith. Because you do not desire Him.

You do not treasure Him. You do not love Him. You do not love His words. There's only terror in it. There's only hardship in His law.

You cannot say, oh, how I love your law. In fact, You're always trying to find ways to dodge it. You don't want this to be true or that to be true. And then finally, in the last section in verses 29-39, we see our Lord's compassion for the multitudes on the mountain. Now this is the feeding of the 4, 000.

In chapter 14 we had the feeding of the 5, 000. Now it's the feeding of the 4, 000 as the multitudes are coming to him. And he is healing the lame, the blind, the mute, and many others. And they were laying these people down before his feet, and he was healing them. And here we learn that you are not unclean because you are ceremonially unclean.

And God does make clean the lame and the blind and the mute and the maimed. I don't know if you've ever asked yourself, how have I been made lame by the work of the devil? How did I become blind? How did I become mute? And then our Lord healed me.

Well that's what that's all about. So that's sort of a brief flyover. You know all of these things place in juxtaposition the hypocrite and the true faithful from the heart. Our Lord is dividing, He is dividing Israel into the sheep and the goats, as He has been doing in this whole Gospel of Matthew up to now. So with that kind of introduction, I want to sort of spring the final question of application.

And it's this question, are you playing the hypocrite here this morning? And also to recognize what a blessing it is to be delivered from hypocrisy, from formalism, from trying to make your brother think you're somebody that you're not, but to be real. And what a blessing it is to be in a church where people are not playing a game, where their hearts really are drawn toward God and deep from the wells of their hearts is flowing out of it rivers of living water by a work of the Spirit of God. And what a blessing it is to be like that. So here our Lord in this section is answering the question, what it looks like to be far or near from God, to be a hypocrite or to be real before Him and before man.

So let's get into the text. Verses 1 through 3 is the first section in this Where, you know, how do you know if you are a hypocrite? And this first section is you know because the traditions of man are exalted. That's how you know you're a hypocrite. You exalt the traditions of man above the traditions of God.

And so in verse 1 we read that the scribes and the Pharisees who were from Jerusalem came to Jesus. So this delegation shows up, you know, they're out, you know, they're evangelizing and healing the sick, raising the dead, casting out demons. And the Pharisees come and they have a question for the Lord. Why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread.

He answered and said to them, why do you also transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition." So what's happening here is it's obvious the Pharisees are confronting Jesus for breaking their traditions and you know the Lord had stepped outside of many of the traditions that they had made. Now, the traditions that they're speaking about are not traditions from Scripture. They're traditions from the Talmud and the Mishnah and other kinds of traditions that they had accumulated that they felt were implications of Scripture. And what the Lord was doing is he was challenging the traditions of men. It's always problematic when you challenge the traditions of men.

Just try it once in a while. I don't know if you've had any experience challenging a tradition of man. But it doesn't always go well, you know. Because people have their emotions wrapped around the tradition, and it's very difficult to even have a rational conversation because we get so embedded in our traditions. Just try to have a conversation about Christmas, and you'll know exactly what I mean.

Because the traditions of men and the commandments of God have to be considered and you have to dissect whether something is from man or from God. And then once you've decided it, you have to ask, is it evil or does it cause me to set aside the commandment of God? Because I don't think any of us would say that every single human tradition is necessarily evil, but they can be. Depending on what they do to you, do they cause you to set aside the commandment of God or not? That's a very critical question for any human tradition.

But The Jews had concocted various laws about cleanliness. There were washings that were required for different situations. But the Pharisees had ended up taking these laws from scripture and ballooned them into gigantic proportions to be something they never were intended to, intended when they were written in scripture. Now, these laws of washings, they weren't really primarily designed to keep you from germs. And the term unwashed hands didn't have a hygienic meaning at that time.

So don't think of the reason you wash your hands. You wash your hands today for reasons entirely different. Although it's interesting, many of the washings, as we'll see in a minute, that they demanded really did have to do with basic hygiene that all of us would try to practice on one level or another. But they were misusing the Old Testament law, particularly in Exodus 30 verse 20 that applied to the priests alone. And this was the washings of the priests in the temple service.

And what the Pharisees had done, they had taken a law for the priests that was ceremonial and they applied it to every single person in the society. They had misinterpreted the law and had applied it in a wrong way. And you can find this same in Leviticus chapter 15 verse 11. Perhaps they were thinking of Psalm 26, verse 6, that says, I will wash my hands in innocence, so I will compass thine altar, O Lord. So they took a principle of the ceremonial law and they applied it to everybody and it included pouring water on your hands three times a day and holding your hands up so the water would drip down below the hand onto your wrist.

And if it didn't drip there, it wasn't effectual, it wasn't praise to God, because you were lifting your hands in praise to God. So if the water didn't run all the way, you didn't get it. You had to get that water down there, or it wasn't real. And so there were all these washings that were going on for this purpose. There were washings before and after meals, before and after worship, before the priest pronounces blessing on the congregation.

After sleeping, after visiting the bathroom, after cutting one's hair or nails, after touching a private part of the body, like your armpits, after touching the inside of your nose or your ear, after touching your scalp before you go and do the work of a scribe. Now some of these we can all understand they make sense but these were these were these were commands that were laid on the people and they they were operating by the whole principle that these things make you clean. If you can just get your hands right, then you can be made clean. It's ritualism. It's formalism.

And so the Lord is dealing with this. Now remember when the Lord Jesus turned water into wine in John chapter 2? And remember those big water pots? These water pots were for that purpose. They were for purification of hands.

So it was widely practiced and our Lord, our Lord's disciples were not following all of these to a T. And so the Pharisees were upset. And so the Lord asks a question in verse 2. He says, well, he just fires right back. It's a really interesting exchange.

Why do your disciples transgress the tradition of elders? And so the Lord is telling them that they are transgressing, they are transgressing, going beyond the limits, to go outside, to sort of, to go off the reservation. That's what was happening. And, You know, there are all these traditions that are created by mankind. And that's the issue that's on the table here, your traditions.

So here this morning, you know, The Lord is bringing up the subject, the ungainly subject of your traditions. So I'm hoping you're thinking about your traditions and where they come from and what they do to you. Now, I think it was John Calvin who said that the heart is a factory of idols. That's true. Then the mind is nothing but a gigantic construction site for the construction of traditions, because we just, we do that.

And again, I think it's important to say, you know, is it evil to construct a tradition? Not necessarily, but it might be, depending on what it does to you and how it either helps you or deprives you of fulfilling the commandments of God. So, there were these traditions of elders, these things passed down. You know, this really was the essence of, or is the essence of the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church has its authority in tradition, the traditions of the churches and the popes.

That's where they get their authority. That's why every conversation with the Roman Catholic always goes back down to the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture. Is Scripture sufficient or not? It always goes there. Because you have two different sources of authority.

In the Roman Church, the source of authority is the Church. In Protestantism, the source of authority is the Word of God alone, sola scriptura. And the Roman Church was so afraid of Scripture that around the 13th century, it was unlawful for you to read it in your native language which is why people were burned at the stake who were translating it into people's native language. The Roman Church was terrified of Scripture. It had such a fear of it that it was locked up so that the people couldn't get to it.

That's because they exalted their traditions over the Word of God. They did not want people to read the Word of God. They feared the Word of God. And a question you might ask yourself, do you fear the Word of God in that same way? Because of your tradition.

Are there things that are part of your life? You do not want to read this book because you know that you may run into something that will contradict it, and you will have to change your life. And you fear the Word of God. Your heart is no different than a Roman Catholic, because you fear this book, because it may challenge your traditions and have you be a different person, something that you've loved so much, some tradition you've just wrapped your whole soul and happiness around. But God may want to deprive you of it, as if somehow He ever deprived his people of anything truly good.

So we have to ask ourselves, how are we like the Asperger's? Do you remember the story in Amos, chapter 7? Amos brought the plum line, you remember that? The plum line to give a symbol of discernment, whether something was out of plum or not. And of course, obviously, everything was out of plum in Israel.

And Amos, he's a simple fig picker. He says, I'm not a prophet. I'm not a son of the prophet, but I got a plumb line. And Amaziah was so upset because he was bringing the Word of God, He actually commands him to leave. He says, do not prophesy here.

Go prophesy over there. And that's what our Lord is confronting. He's confronting that desire to say, no, this doesn't belong here with me because I may find something that will cause me to change my life. And so the heart of the hypocrite does not want this, does not want to read the Word of God and to be honest about what it says. The heart of the hypocrite wants to dodge it and be careful not to read too much of it lest it contradict what's happening in life.

And we become just like Amaziah who says, who says, go over to the land of Judah and prophesy over there. That's the heart of someone who fears the Word of God. That's the heart of a hypocrite who fears the Word of God. And when Jesus is talking to the Pharisees, He's speaking to people who fear the Word of God. They love their traditions so much.

And they've accumulated all kinds of things on top of the Word of God. And that was what the issue was. So, you know, how does anyone differentiate at any time, including our time, between the authority of the elders and the Word of God. Well, you have to be good Bereans. You have to ask, what does the Bible say?

And we might disagree about what the Bible says, but we have to at least ask ourselves, what does it say? And try to find out what it actually says. Now, what the Lord is confronting here is man-made traditions that cause you to neglect the commandment of God. Now, In Mark, in Mark chapter 7, the parallel passage here of this one, Mark just frames it a little bit differently. He says, you nicely set aside, you set aside the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition.

That's the language that he uses. Now, so let's just think in terms of application of what's going on here. I think we have to recognize that every tradition is religious in nature, because it engages the human heart. So every tradition is religious in nature. I hope we can agree about that.

And I hope we can agree that all of our traditions should be examined by the Word of God and the Word of God alone. So when we are converted, we bring a lot of habits along with us. And we have to ask, what traditions of mine are there that cause me to break the commandment of God. Now, I'm getting pretty old, you know, and honestly, I haven't reached the end of finding things in my own life, my own traditions that break the commandments of God. And I pray God is kind to continue to reveal them to me as time goes on.

But I'm confident I'm not done yet. So, you know, consider all kinds of traditions that you have. You know, everybody here has certain kinds of traditions that they engage in for birthdays. You just ought to ask yourself, is the way that I do this, does it cause me to break a command of God? Does it cause me to just unrighteously exalt my child and make a monster out of him?

That happens. I don't know if you've ever been to Chuck E. Cheese. I know things run good at Chuck E. Cheese.

But I'm just saying, I don't know if you've seen these, just massively indulgent. They almost reach strange proportions sometimes. But what should a birthday look like? Or what should Christmas look like? Should there even be a Christmas?

That's a whole other question. But you have to ask yourself, what does my tradition have to do with the Word of God? Everything that we do is like that. We're people who gather together, and all of us come almost all the time. We have a really high intensity.

But when we come, do we fall into our own traditions? Or Does the commandment of God inform us for how we even come together? How about how we take the Lord's Supper or how we fellowship together? You know, we have all these patterns that we've developed. And I mean, my experience is I have patterns that have to be broken.

And all those areas. And sometimes I go off the reservation I've got to get back. So this just causes us to ask a really important question about our traditions because everybody has traditions and they're all religious in nature And they all have the potential for causing us to neglect the commandment of God for the sake of our tradition. So there are traditions that individuals have, you have to think about it that way. There are traditions that families have.

Now, when we get to the next section in just a moment, The Lord is going to use an example from family life. He's talking about tradition. It's actually a church and family tradition, Corbin. There was a tradition that families practiced with the church. So there are these two traditions that caused both to set aside the commandment of God, particularly the family.

So there are individual traditions, and then there are church traditions, and then there are family traditions. There are so many traditions in our society that we have to examine. In our society, it's five days of work and two days of rest. Is that what the Bible says? There are so many traditions that we have.

We just have to ask, do they seem to be consistent with what God says? So the Lord said, you know, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments. So, that's the issue that's here. And, Before we leave this section, I just want to try to capsulize it like this, with a question. Are you practicing your own individualistic tradition, or one that came out of your family, or one that came out of your family or one that came out your last church you were in or one from your society or is is your practice governed by the Word of God and your genuine delight in the Lord.

Do you desire God, or are you working a formula? Are you in kind of a formulaic routine here in this church? Or does it arise out of a genuine heart to obey God and to delight in Him as your greatest treasure? I think it's really easy to get caught up in your own traditions as a church person and lose this very thing that the Pharisees have lost. It's really easy to just say, those Pharisees were ridiculous.

But the truth is that we are like those Pharisees. Their tendencies are the tendencies that we might have. This happened over and over again in Israel. One of the great examples in the days of the prophets with the Malachi, they were bringing their blind and lame animals. And they were saying, look, we're doing our sacrifices.

You told us to sacrifice. We're bringing the sacrifices. We have our lamps. We're all dressed up. We look like everybody else.

But no. There's something deeper than that. There's a heart that desires to obey. It's the essence of what Moses was communicating by the Lord when he said, Oh, that they had such a heart in them, that they might fear me and always keep all my commandments, that it might be well with them and with their children forever. That's the heart of a true Christian.

So, if you're a hypocrite, If you're a hypocrite, then the traditions of man are exalted. That's point number one. Point number two, hypocrisy is also exposed when the commandment of God is nullified. The commandment of God is nullified. Jesus is giving an example of how children set aside the commandment of God for the sake of their tradition.

Verse 4, for God commanded saying, so he starts with the command, God commanded saying honor your father and mother And he takes another verse from another place, whoever curses father or mother, let him be put to death. But you say, whoever says to his father or mother, whatever profit you might have received from me is a gift of God, Then he need not honor his father or mother. Thus you have made the commandment of God of no effect by your tradition." So here the Lord does another act of kindness. He's interpreting the law. How do you interpret the law?

Do it just like Jesus did. I don't care what you call the way you interpret the law, but you should find yourself interpreting it the way Jesus did. And he's now interpreting these two laws, the laws of death through the dishonor of parents and also the law of honoring your father and mother. And... So here, what had happened with the Pharisees is that they were they were taking lightly the commandment of God to honor for the sake of their tradition.

And there is this practice that Matthew, he doesn't mention the name, but he speaks of it. It was the practice of Corbin. Matthew calls it a gift of God. But we learn from Mark, chapter 7, that he's talking about Corbin. And It was a treasured tradition among the Jews, where a son could take his resources and dedicate it to the temple, because the temple was a money machine.

The temple needed money. And so a child could put money in a trust, dedicate it to the temple, and then when his parents got old and had needs, said, sorry, you don't get any help. I've already given it away. The way it was structured, it was a little bit different than a trust in the sense that you could use the resources until that time. But once there was a death, then the money went straight to the temple and the parents received no help from it at all.

And the Lord is saying, you're breaking the fifth commandment. There's something in the church that's causing you to break the fifth commandment. So he's using an illustration in family life how often traditions in the church cause you to break the commandments of God regarding your family. We see that today. There's so many ways the modern church has laws and traditions that cause you to destroy your family.

Now, I don't think that's a rabbit trail in this passage, but I think you all know what I mean when I say that. So we won't go into depth on that issue. But let's be really clear about what's on the table here. There are traditions in the church that cause you to break the commandments of God. You've got to better figure out what they are.

In this case, it was this law of Corbin. It was kind of like the Roman Church in the 16th century. Everybody in the church believed that children should honor their parents. But then the Catholics said, no, a child can take a monastic vow and not work and become elites of society. And they had set aside a commandment of God for the sake of their tradition.

Plus a bunch of other broken commandments by the monastic vow itself. So in Europe, in the 16th century Europe, 25% of the population had taken a monastic vow. They weren't getting married, they weren't having children. Their tradition was causing them to break the commandments of God, regarding their family, and regarding really the most natural calling of not every single person in the world, but most of the people in the world, to be fruitful and multiply, and to raise up a generation. They'd broken that commandment for the sake of their tradition.

Now, I believe there is a gift of celibacy in that, but They weren't practicing that. It was something completely different. David in Psalm 119 speaks of making the commandment void. He says, it is time for you to act, O Lord, for they have regarded your law as void. It's not a new problem, it's a really old problem.

Making your commandment void. And then he says, He gives the counterpoint of making it void. He shows what it means, sort of what the wellspring of the heart is that keeps you from making it void. And he says, therefore, I love your commandments more than gold, yes, than fine gold. Therefore, all your precepts concerning all things I consider to be right, I hate every false way.

Your testimonies are wonderful. Therefore, my soul keeps them." for my soul keeps them." He says, I love your commandments. So there are these two ways. One is the hypocrite way, and the other is the real way that the Lord is dealing with. So you might think about how your traditions cause you to break the commandment of God.

You know, in the modern missionary movement, particularly beginning in the 19th century, and it really mastered this practice in the 20th century, where missionaries were dedicating themselves to God and they used it as a reason to abandon their children in missionary schools. And they abandoned their children, they didn't raise them. And There's a legendary generation of missionary kids who had no parents. They set aside the commandment of God for the sake of their tradition. And it's always a tragedy when we do that.

So this is, this really is a category of Bible doctrine. And the reformers called it sola scriptura. And then later on, the sufficiency of Scripture. And it's taking the Word of God lightly in the face of your traditions. And the truth is that all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.

That the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped to do every good work. That's what scripture does for us. And that's why it's so helpful to us to save us from our own traditions and manufacturings, this gigantic tradition construction site that exists in our brain to help us to understand how we ought to please the Lord because God has given us His word. You know, Our own confession, the Baptist Confession of 1689, and of course the Westminster Confession, has a chapter on good works. How do you know if you're doing a good work?

And this is part of this whole discussion. Your tradition always has to be questioned by is it a good work or not. Here's what the Confession says, good works are only such as God have commanded in His holy word and not such as without warrant thereof and are devised by men out of blind zeal or upon pretense of good intentions." Now, we think, the whole American mindset is that we think we can make up any good work and just any work and just call it good. But it's not that simple. It needs to be informed by the Word of God.

And of course, you know, most church leaders believe that you can pretty much make up the church to contextualize to whatever, you know, seems to be desired or helpful to people. It usually turns out it's the idolatry of a leader. That's usually kind of how it boils out. But God has spoken about how He wants life to be lived. The Pharisees were doing something in their family life that was causing them to break the commandment of God, to honor their father and mother.

And then, in this third section beginning in verse 7, we find another way that hypocrisy is exposed, and that is when the heart is far from God. Hypocrites, well did Isaiah prophesy about you, saying, These people draw near to me with their mouth, And honor me with their lips, But their heart is far from me, and in vain they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men." Now Jesus' name for this is hypocrisy. So that's why I've been using that term throughout this message, because he uses the term hypocrisy for this whole kind of way of living. And He quotes Isaiah. So the Lord does what He's done so many times, He goes back to the prophets and He says, this is what the prophet was saying.

This is that. And so go back to Isaiah 29. Go ahead and turn there. Isaiah 29. In Isaiah 29, God is judging the hypocrisy of Israel.

And in the first five verses, he explains this judgment against Jerusalem. Woe to Ariel. To Ariel. That's Jerusalem, by the way. He's talking about Jerusalem.

Add year to year. Let feasts come around. Yet I will distress Ariel. In other words, they're going through their traditional routines. They're doing all the stuff just like they think they're supposed to.

But it's the way that they're doing their stuff. That's the problem. It's the way that they're doing it, not that they're doing it. And then, at Universe 5, there's this prophecy of this sudden cataclysm. They will be punished suddenly with thunder and earthquake and great noise, with storm and tempest and the flame of devouring fire.

This judgment that's coming upon them is a picture of the coming judgment, The coming eternal, the great white throne judgment. All the little judgments in life where you beat your head against the wall because of your sin, they really are there to remind you there is a judgment coming. There's a day coming when there'll be no time left. The hourglass and its contents, it will run out and it will be over. There's a time coming like it will come suddenly.

So there's this prophecy of a sudden judgment. It's a sudden judgment against hypocrisy, against people who got all their moral ducks in a row. They cleaned their houses all up so nicely. And they did the stuff week to week. They said all the right words.

They knew the shtick. They did it. But something was so wrong. And then at the end of verse 7, distress and hunger and emptiness and faintness and blindness and drunkenness. This is what it's going to feel like.

It's going to be horrible. And then in verse 10, the prophets are in a deep sleep. They've got, they just, like their heads are covered, and they can't see anything. And there's no illumination. Where it says in verse 11, the whole vision has become to you like the words of a book that is sealed.

In other words, nobody can understand. They're dead to this. They are dead to it. They read it and it is like nothing. And then in verse 13, This is the conclusion of the matter.

Therefore the Lord said, Inasmuch as these people draw near with their mouths, and honor me with their lips, but have removed their hearts far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the commandment of men." So the only fear that they have is the commandments of men. All they have are the rituals. They're dealing with the rituals. They're doing what they have to do, and that's the only thing that they have to fear, is to do it right. And they go through the routines, just like it's so easy for us to go through the routines.

But their fear is the commandments of men. You know, remember when Jesus said, if the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness? That's the light of the hypocrite. The hypocrite has just a little bit of light, but it's really darkness. The light in him says, I'm going to take to the Lord's Supper.

I'm going to go to church. I'm going to be a better husband. I'm going to be a better dad. I'm going to be a better dad. I'm going to be a better worker.

I'm going to be more disciplined. I'm going to...you know what? It's New Year's. I'm going to take some time now to consider my ways. And I'm going to make some resolutions.

It's the fear of man. It's the fear of man's commandments that's upon you when you're a hypocrite. Because you have to keep all of those to keep yourself in line, to keep yourself together. Because that's all you care about, is keeping yourself together. That's what the hypocrite does.

He only cares about himself and keeping his ducks in a row and improving his life and making another step and making sure he's networked properly. He's got the theology right. He can say it right. His fear is the commandments of men. In other words, his fear is man, not God.

That's the whole problem. That's exactly what Jesus is pointing to. He's saying to the Pharisees, you're doing what you're doing because you fear man. You fear the tradition of man, and you don't fear God. That's why Jesus is quoting Isaiah 29.

The heart of the unbeliever fears the traditions of men. But the commandments of God, well, there's flexibility there. Now, in the last, I think it's known by most people here, That over the last 30 or 45 days, there have been a number of people who have felt that they were exactly like that. That they feared they were doing what they were doing because they feared the traditions of men on one level or another. And while they're not exactly the same, most of them share this exact same thing that Jesus is putting his finger on right here in this passage.

And so what's happened is that they say they've been rescued from drawing near with their lips and their heart is no longer far from Him. But something broke in their heart and now it is coming from their heart. And they're not fearing the commandments, the traditions of men, but God. And that it was all about parading before men. It was all about making an appearance and becoming somebody.

And one of the things that was, that some, most were baptized In youth group baptisms where they were asked to pray a prayer, but they never ever were converted. They were doing a tradition of man in that sense. Baptism is a tradition of God, but they did it. They did it by a tradition of man to pray a prayer, rather than to have their hearts really turn toward God. It's a tradition of man to say that you're saved by praying a prayer.

It's a tradition, it's a commandment of God that you repent and truly believe in the gospel. There's a very big difference in those two things. Many had had tremendous trouble in loving their spouses. And many came to the Lord's Supper week after week here in this church. And the way I understand their testimonies, when they came to the Lord's Supper, they came with a mighty self-flagellation and self-condemnation for their sins.

They knew they were sinners, and all they could do was beat themselves at the Lord's Supper. When they examined themselves, all they could see was themselves and not Christ. They did not see the cross. They did not see the hand of mercy. They did not see grace greater than all of their sins.

All they could see was themselves. I think that's the difference between a Christian and a non-Christian, at least in this category, that when a Christian comes to the Lord's Supper, he sees Christ. He does acknowledge his sins, But he does not grieve for his sins like the world grieves without hope. Some of them were intentionally, they were faking. They knew that if they did not take the Lord's Supper, that someone was going to talk to them about it.

Maybe their children were going to ask them, and they just said, we'll delay this problem. We're going to keep going. Some were just intentionally lying. Some were deceived. Some were genuinely deceived.

But what was happening is this right here. Honoring with your lips, but your heart is far, far from him. That's the problem that he's talking about here. Very active in performing duties. Very diligent in learning the theologies.

Very careful to be present at meetings. But all they could see was themselves and not God. That's the difference. That's the difference between a Christian and a non-Christian. I don't want to bring the idea though that once you're a Christian that somehow you never think about yourself again.

Because that's not true. Because there's a sanctification process that's in motion as well. That's in motion as well. He says, and in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. Feeling bad about your sins will not make you acceptable to God.

It may just be concern in vain. You may as well not even do it. If that's where it stops. Feeling bad about your sins will not make you any closer to God. Only the blood of Jesus Christ applied to a repentant sinner who is trusted completely in His grace will be that way, will be separate.

What the Lord says is that He sees into the heart. This is a heart-searching God. He penetrates into the hearts of every person. No one can fake Him out. You can fake man out.

You might be able to fake man out for your whole life long. That's really possible. But you cannot fake God out. And His eyes see into the deepest parts of your soul to know whether your heart is near to God, or whether you're trusting in the traditions of men, and ultimately in your own self, He knows whether you are or not. And so I don't want us to be able to go through this passage of Scripture without just recognizing that God sees.

You know David said, one thing have I desire to the Lord, that will I seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple. Later on in that Psalm, David, he prays and he says, he says to the Lord, he says, when you said seek my face, my heart said, your face Lord, I will seek. That's the heart of a Christian. Now, how good it is to draw near to God. In Psalm 73, verse 28, He says, But it is good for me to draw near to God.

I have put my trust in the Lord God." In Hebrews 10 22, he says, Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. And in Hebrews 7 he says, For the law made nothing perfect. On the other hand, there is the bringing of a better hope, through which we draw near to God." What a blessing it is to draw near to God. What a blessing it is to recognize what James said, draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

Would you pray with me? Oh Lord, let it be so. Oh Lord deliver us from the traditions and the commandments of men from ourselves From the light that is in us being so dark but that you would give us a new heart. Oh Lord, that you would make it known to us as a church what it means to draw near to you. Amen.