Humbly Follow Christ

There's three different movements in our text. The first is a warning. Don't be like the Pharisees. in the way they practice. The key is that they do not practice righteousness rightly. The second is more instructive, eight through 10. That's for us to think about who God is and what he's made us to be as a new kind of people. There's a new order. And then finally, that last principle. As Jesus' teachings often conclude, a last principle, Jesus gives us guidance for greatness. If you're taking notes, the one simple summary statement, practice true godliness that leads to greatness. Practice true godliness that leads to greatness. First, we need to hear the warning.

The foil of the Pharisees and the scribes, the hypocrites. Hear the warning, the dangers of hypocrisy. Again, chapter 23, verses one to seven. Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, the scribes and Pharisees sit on Moses' seat. So do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. This is the operative. Declaration here, for they preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.

They do all their deeds to be seen by others, for they make their phylacteries broad, their fringes long. They love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues. and greetings in the marketplace, and being called rabbi by others. Key here is that kingdom living must be practiced, but it's not a performance for others. It is to be practiced as we hear the word of God, trust the word of God, and obey the word of God.

Jesus has come after the Pharisees and the scribes because of the way they have misled the people of Israel over and over again. Have you not read? is a regular rejoinder as he questions the Pharisees. Now, that phrase, they sit on Moses' seat. They themselves have taken up the place to teach and conserve the right teaching of God's word.

Now, there's some question as to the meaning of this. Is it that they've taken it, or is it theirs? But we do have to remember that the Pharisees, they were the conservatives. They were the conservative teachers. They're the ones who wanted to preserve God's law, and they did so by adding their traditions. The real problem comes in when those traditions make void the word of God, and they make themselves above the law of God. They find themselves loopholes to not obey the law of God, but they bear, they give great burden to others. There's a bugaboo. It's a technical theological word. You can spell it however your heart desires. A bugaboo.

Did they take the seed of Moses? It's not theirs, so it's a sarcastic teaching that says, do what they say. Observe what they say. Because the problem is, if they're supposed to hear what they say, but not do what they do, that's confusing. So one option is that they've taken the seed, it's not theirs, it's sarcastic.

The other option is they do sit on the seat of Moses, it's been given to them. What they say is true, respect their position, but do not follow the practice. That'd be kind of a straightforward reading. The third option is they are in the seat of Moses, truly. Listen to them, but only as much as they teach what Moses said.

Be careful, they don't actually quite get it. Now I'm between one and three there, so you know. It's a boogaboo, there's an interpretive issue. But I want to make sure we understand that the key focus on what he's really warning is practice. What are they doing? What are we doing? Here, the grace of God has given us truth that we must believe and that must work out somehow. Their works deny what they say they believe. Their works deny what God's grace has given us in the very word of God. Again, the key phrase, they preach, but they do not practice.

This is a warning he's given to the disciples not to be like the Pharisees. We've seen this before. In the story of the mountain, he said your righteousness must exceed that of the righteousness of the Pharisees, which for the crowds and even the disciples at the time would sound wild because the Pharisees, they were really righteous. They really performed externally. But as Jesus continued to teach, he showed that it wasn't an internal religion they had. They didn't have the law in their hearts.

It was mere performance for the praise of man. We know we must have right doctrine and right practice that corresponds to that doctrine. These two go hand in hand. We're gonna lean in on this call of right practice. There's two ways that the Pharisees mislead the people of God with their practice.

First, they demand much of others while not being willing to do the smallest act of obedience. That's verse four. And here the contrast, they put great burdens on the shoulders of the people, but they're not willing to move their finger. There's great burdens they weigh other people down with, but they're not willing to use the smallest of their instruments for doing what is right. And second, when they do practice religion, it's mere performance for their own praise.

Truth must be practiced. Truth not practiced is not really believed. Something is altogether often someone does not practice what they preach. You can say the right thing, they cannot do the right thing. The danger of preaching and not practicing makes the truth harder to trust because of their behavior. It confuses what the truth is. There's no such thing as abstract theological truth. There's no such thing as a good, right doctrine that does not have a real application. Every teaching of the word of God is good for godliness.

The warning, do not be like the Pharisees. They preach, but they don't believe because they don't practice. They come up with their own loopholes that excuse them. They burden the conscience of other followers, but they themselves cannot bear the burden they teach.

Teachers of God's good truth, they free people. If someone truly teaches the word of God, Jesus tells us it relieves the soul. It gives rest to the weary. We just spent the summer reading Psalm 119 where the law of God is a delight. It gives liberty. It gives freedom that the law of God has given us so that we would cease sin and repent of it and flourish in the way of God.

The burdens of the Pharisees added to the word of God, even sometimes made void. There's a reality we must all embrace that is true of every human being. We are all practicing a kind of religious commitment that is shaping who we are becoming. Everyone is practicing a religious commitment that shapes who you are becoming. Here's the scary thing.

If you practice hypocrisy, you actually get better at it by design. If you practice self-deception, you go further into the darkness. If you practice perversity, you become more twisted. If you practice self-love without the love of others, it becomes a twisted self-abuse. If you practice love without the love of God, you become distorted.

God has designed us to practice truth. We are being shaped by what we practice. This is why that danger of they preach but do not practice is so significant. because it's not just confusing it, it can be very dangerous. Secondly, verses five to seven, there's a performance without piety that seeks others' praise. If they do practice something, if they do perform, it's not before God. It's not for the praise of God, it's for their own praise. They tie up heavy burdens, they bear on other's shoulders, they're not willing to move a single finger. for they make their phylacteries broad.

That's the little box that would have scripture in it. They would want to make sure they're full of show, that people would see their religious emblems and tokens. And Jesus says in other places, be careful of how you would dress to be seen by others in righteousness. They love to take the place of honor at feasts. They take the best seats in the synagogues. They like to be greeted as rabbi.

Now let's be real clear. It's not sinful to have a seat of honor. We have a problem in our culture that we don't actually believe in honor or authority, and we try to tear it down. So if you are planning a wedding, maybe this weekend, you're going to have a place of honor for the people who are to be honored. Right? There's right places of honor. The problem is saying, I must have that seat.

There's a right way that you have proper titles. Mrs. Kiner. Mrs. Kim, I just messed up making fun of Jim. Man, we're going to erase that from the recording. I had you, James. You're to have proper titles. Professor, you have right titles that are important.

The problem is they're grasping and demanding. If you think about our culture, we hate honor. We flip this around, instead of saying people need to honor me, we kind of do the playground thing. We tear people down so we are above them. The whole problem is a superiority complex. They need to praise me or I'm going to tear them down. Both of these fail the great love command of Christ, love your neighbor as yourself. Fails to see we're equal.

It's egregious and ungodly to demand praise or to tear down and defaming. The goal of the Christian church, we're all rejoicing in the same truth. We're all seeking to grow to obey the same truth, growing up in the same godliness with the same practices. It's a picture of the people of God in verses eight and 10. People of Jesus, we don't perform for the praise of others. We don't perform as mere people pleasers. We don't seek to just get attention for pity. We're not trying to get people to see us. We're constantly acting like John the Baptist. We're pointing beyond us to Jesus with our words and our practice. The whole picture, last week we saw Jesus must be called and obeyed as Lord. We must all come to serve him.

Maybe think about the Pharisees. I believe their self-deception leads them to think they're religious. Their self-deception leads them to think that people who are praising them are telling the truth. So they actually are continuing to believe their own lie.

That's incredibly deadly and dangerous. So if you have a sensitive conscious, we want to think about what does it mean to be a hypocrite? How do you test if you're a hypocrite? Or how do you think through what a hypocrite looks like? First, I think it's a universal truth. Hypocrites are never happy or satisfied.

They can't be. If you're seeking to be fully happy and satisfied with your own laws and your own truth and your own kind of godliness, it is not happy or satisfying. Only God truly brings happiness and satisfaction. They get some kind of temporary joy when somebody acknowledges them, but there's not a true happiness.

And let's just be real honest, any Christian who is striving for godliness feels like a hypocrite at some point. Because we know we fail. I have to bear the burden of being a serial hypocrite every Sunday morning because I can't teach you just what I've accomplished, I have to teach you the word of God. constantly having to point beyond anything I have set a standard for.

No, it's God's standard we're all striving for. See, the big difference is we're pulling each other up versus putting each other down. That's the difference. The hypocrite separates himself from the others, either with degrading or seeking praise. No, all of us striving or longing to help each other grow up to a greater standard of godliness, knowing we all need the grace to do so. Hypocrites produce gossip, judgment. Hypocrites be warned that inconsistency leads to a dangerous self-destruction.

Notice verse 8, Jesus turns, and the key turn is with the rabbi. They want to go to the marketplace, and they want to be called rabbi. They want to be praised and exalted with these titles and positions. And Jesus teaches a whole new kind of radical new order in verses 8 to 10. If you're taking notes, that's the heading, the new order, the new people under Christ's rule. There are three statements.

You're not to be called rabbi. You're to call no man your father, neither be called or tell others they must call you instructor. And the foundation, the basis for these three statements is significant because you have one teacher and you're all brothers. You have one father who is in heaven. You have one instructor, the Christ.

There's a wonderful parallelism here with these three declarations. And they're all pointing to this radical new egalitarian unity the church is supposed to have. All equal in Christ. In the garden, there was a wonderful radical equality that the world no longer knows of, apart from the church being renewed, and that every human being was made in the image of God. Same dignity, same value, same worth. Sin distorts that. Sin makes us have some hierarchy in the order of humanity. The order has been brought back with the church.

Now, it's been foreshadowed that this kind of people is foreshadowed at Mount Sinai when all of Israel was said there would be a kingdom of priests. That never happened for Israel. It was foreshadowed even in Jeremiah. It was promised in Jeremiah where we would all be the people of God. We would all know God.

Not all of Israel was saved, you were born into that people. The new covenant people that Jesus is pointing toward is the new covenant people who are saved by faith. You're only part of the people of God by being born again by faith in the Messiah who has come. It's not intentionally a mixed body anymore. It's a radical new people of God. We the church, we're the kingdom of priests.

Here we hold to that wonderful Protestant rediscovering the priesthood of all believers, a central truth that defines us. We all have the same relationship to God, Father. We all have the same salvation in Jesus Christ. We have the same blessings from the Father. We have the same Spirit who unifies us. We all have the same access to the Father and the Son by the Spirit. Jesus shifts from a hierarchy of humans to this wonderful equality that we all have in salvation and access to God.

We're all saints. We're all adopted. We're all loved. We're all forgiven. That's what we actually practiced at the Lord's Supper last week. That's what we practiced. We gather together and sing of the same songs, the same grace. We all come in by grace through faith. We all enter the church publicly being baptized, and we all come to that same table. We all pray to know the same Father. The church is supposed to be this amazing community where we all treat each other as equals because we're all equally blessed. It was one of the great ways the church was a witness early in Rome. Because in one place, men and women and people of different societal distinctions would gather in one place and share one table. Three statements.

They're pithy, but boy, we could unpack them. Do not call each other a rabbi, for you have one teacher, all equal as brothers. Do not call a man your father on earth, for you have a father in heaven. Do not be called instructor, for you have one instructor, the Christ. Okay, let's just pause for a minute.

This is challenging. Is Jesus undoing creation order? Children, is it okay to call mom and dad mom and dad? That's a significant question we gotta deal with. Good news, as Protestants, we can interpret scripture with scripture. Paul commands children to obey their fathers. It seems like creation order is still in place and father is still an earthly office that should be acknowledged according to the word of God. Jesus teaches disciples to teach all disciples as he taught. Paul calls men forth to be teachers. Ephesians 4, we're all to be teachers. There's a pastor teacher that's equipping all teachers. A teacher is a gift in 1 Corinthians 12, 28.

I don't believe he's erasing all offices and distinctions of function. The danger of the hypocrisy is that they said, I'm the ultimate father. I'm the final rabbi. I speak as if God is speaking. We do get to speak as God speaks, but only as we're reverberating what he says. pointing to his authority. The great danger of the Pharisee is they want to be seen as if speaking with all authority, not pointing others to trust God and his authority. The beauty of who we are is how we're united under the Father, in Christ, all one together. What we do with and for each other is learn to listen to him, speak like him. Reverberate his word. Speak his truth according to his love.

Pastor teachers, we need pastor teachers, elders that are gonna help equip believers to know and trust and obey all that good truth. There's no hierarchy in that order. There's different responsibilities that has different authorities. But let's be very clear, there's one teacher, Jesus Christ.

We're all brothers. We all share in the same inheritance. All born again, adopted into the same blessings. All equal. All right, one more possible thing we gotta wrestle with. Why brothers? Why not brothers and sisters? Ladies, you're included here. In this culture, the brothers receive the inheritance. That's why it's important to keep it as brothers. It's promising you an inheritance. All right, if you don't like that it's not inclusive, the men in the room have to deal with being the bride of Christ.

Okay, we all have an equal share in wrestling with these wonderful, powerful metaphors that tell us about God's grace. We all seek to submit fully and rejoice in what it says, that you're an adopted son in the Son, and that's a unique kind of love and inheritance. We're all beloved as the bride, which is a unique kind of focused love. We're gonna accept that tension and rejoice.

It's a whole new way of thinking about who belongs to God. Remember what Jesus said, your mother and your brothers are calling for you. He says, no, these are my mother and my brothers. There's clues throughout the New Testament and the Old that there's a new kind of people born again, adopted. Our unity is found in accepting there's one instructor that we all are united under. Our unity is found in that there's one father whom we all receive every blessing. We must submit to that one truth. We share that one inheritance.

Now, there's been odd movements that defy this father declaration. I remember when I was in Zambia, they were asking me, have you heard of this thing where it's not just a pastor, but somebody is your spiritual father? It's kind of like this new category. Well, I just told them, well, that's been going on since the fifth century with the papacy. We have to understand the word Pope comes from Papa Father, who's claiming to have all authority. Just wanted to hit being a Protestant with a trifecta.

The biggest danger in leadership is when the office becomes more important in your identity than understanding yourself as a brother. The danger is when you think whatever insight, responsibility, anything that defines you more than a brother, that is the central declaration of who you are. When the father declares from all eternity, you're my son, even though you were an enemy. Because I sent my son to give you that inheritance.

We get everything wrong. If you want to, again, think through what church conflict looks like, it's when we forget we're brothers and we treat each other like enemies. We want to claim an authority that doesn't first focus on how we're all brothers. It ends up leading to some kind of silly argument about who dad loves the most. He loves us all in Christ. If we ever stop thinking of ourselves first and foremost as brothers, We give wrong judgment. To be clear, again, that's that kind of superiority that will lead to some kind of hypocrisy.

When you practice true religion, you use whatever authority you have to bless others, as Christ has given us. Christian, unite in the joy of Christ, who's good, faithful. We have one instructor, we have one teacher, we have one father. We're all meant to be this unique covenant community of believers.

Again, the warning is about not practicing. You have to practice being brothers. Love one another as I loved you. That is how you practice being a brother. Not neglecting meeting together as the habit of some, but encourage one another as to stir up good works. That's how you practice being a brother.

Do we believe we're all equal on this earth as humans made in the image of God? Do we believe that we're all equal as saints and brothers under Christ? Think about how that relieves so many fears and anxieties. How that corrects so much pride and arrogance and self-pity? To know you are that person. God has given it to you. You don't have to strive for it. You don't have to fight for it. You don't have to try to make yourself great. It's yours. There's no anxiety about if you're loved by God.

He shows you he loves you by sending his son to die for you. How many fears and anxieties if we can just remind each other who we are as brothers? under Christ, beloved Father. When we practice true religion before God, it builds others up and lifts others up to rejoice more in this great position God has given us.

The final three declarations there. It's a new virtue for greatness. new virtue, a new rule for greatness. The greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts him will be humble. Whoever humbles himself will be exalted. First thing, let's just be clear. God promises greatness. It's too easy to believe in a false humility that says there's no greatness. It's gonna woe is me and go through all the things that are wrong. No, God promised Abraham, I will make you great. I will give you a great name. Greatness is something God said of John the Baptist. Jesus said he is the greatest and you and the new covenant will be greater than even him.

There is a real greatness. All humanity is striving for this greatness. God promises it and only God gives it. The only real greatness you will ever have for all eternity that's truly satisfying is the greatness that comes from God. We have a lot of wonderful, young, ambitious folks, students. Whatever you have defined as greatness, it must first and foremost be seeking to know the greatness that God alone gives. God created you for a glory. God created you to rejoice in his glory, to reflect his glory. There's nothing greater than that. There's nothing more satisfying than that.

That's opposed to feeling great over others. Oh no, we're great under God. We're great under God. No one needs to seek praise from others because they're satisfied in praising God and seeing his greatness, so you want others to praise him more. There's no need to tear others down so you feel bigger. No, you're satisfied glorifying God and being exalted by him. There's no need to stand over others in judgment.

No, you want to lift others up in forgiveness. Humility. We often think of this as just negative, kind of just beating yourself up. Real humility is confident. Real humility is Another word, sanity. Humility really is just thinking rightfully of yourself. Who you are as an image bearer. Who God has declared you to be. Who God has made you to be. Humility is sane thinking about you in relation to God and others.

It's not thinking of yourself too much and it's not thinking of yourself too little. There are two forms of pride. Arrogance is what we normally think of. Kind of that self-promotion and boasting. The other is self-pity and victimizing. Both are thinking of ourselves in a wrong way. They're both bad self-loves. The greatest among you shall be your servant.

Jesus himself has taught this even more explicitly. He, the Lord, came to serve so that we might serve. He, the Lord, came to serve the lowest and serve in the lowest way, which is why we sang earlier, may the mind of Christ be in us, who did not see the glory of God and his greatness to be a thing grasped, but to empty himself, to take on our lowliness. We need a right perspective of God, so we have a right perspective of us. And praise God, it's all right there in the cross. Jesus. humbling himself to the point of death, even death on the cross. For us who do not deserve that love, he humbled himself and served us with everything he did on this earth. That's our pattern.

Here's a hard thing about this basic principle of being humble. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled. Whoever humbles himself will be exalted. that the hard thing about humility is this. I don't think you can pursue humility directly. I don't think humility is something you pursue in itself.

Humility is a blessing when you actually seek to know God and rejoice in his gifts. Humility pursued directly will become some kind of arrogance where you say I'm the most humble. No, humility is a gift of God when we receive his blessing. Humility comes when we seek to simply receive what we do not deserve. There's something horribly arrogant about somebody who will not receive a gift from somebody else.

You think you've got to earn everything. You must have the humility to receive help. We become this humble person when we realize God is the one who gives greatness and grace and exalts us. Here's the beauty of it, God gives us all we need. That's humbling. We didn't deserve it. God did not give us what we deserve, that's humbling. Humility begins with the blessings of God. And again, to go back to verses eight through 10, We all have the same blessing.

This is fun, y'all ready? You're not special. That was hard for me to wrestle with this week. We're not special, but abundantly blessed. You're not special, but the blessing of God overflows to more than you could ever imagine. We're all one in Christ and united in the Father who blesses us with every spiritual blessing. Believing that lie that we need to be special will lead to some form of hypocrisy, will lead to some form of legalism. We're not special, but abundantly blessed. He calls you by name. He knows you specifically, but he gives us all the same blessing. That is what humbles us with each other. We rejoice together.

God's not stingy. He's not gonna run a blessing for that brother over against you. Abiding in Christ is rejoicing all those blessings and it's not some abstract spiritual event. No, abiding in Christ comes when we actually love one another and help each other abide in all those gifts together.

The greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled. Whoever humbles himself will be exalted. Again, that radical new kind of people. It is a greatness modeled by Jesus Christ our Lord. He is the great and glorious true son of God who set aside his glory the radiance of his greatness, so that he could take upon our humble stature, whom he created in his image. To the point of death, even death on the cross, and he's raised and exalted, now again, the true great glorious God in all of his radiance. He came to serve us, to make us great as designed and even perfected.

What kind of greatness are you pursuing? That's better than him. Christian, this is why the call to discipleship is deny yourself and whatever greatness you think you need and follow him in that model. Practice serving others. Build up humility by serving one another. Practice being in the presence of God with his people in prayer. Practice abiding in Christ, loving one another according to Christ's commandment. Practice true godliness that will lead to true greatness. Will you pray with me?

Father, we thank you for your kindness. You did not leave us alone to suffer what we deserve. Pray that you would bless us to have Humility to rejoice in what you've given us. Pray that we would have the humility, by your grace, to desire to know all the blessings you've given to all of us.

Pray we would know how to stir each other up to enjoy all those blessings, to encourage each other in the blessings, to encourage each other to walk in those blessings. Or may a church so united and committed to your practices see what an incredible witness that will be to the world, that all might come and bow down to the name and confess the name of Jesus. In his name we pray, amen.