The Characteristics of False Spiritual Leaders, Part 1 (Matthew 23:1–4) [Audio Only]

let's open our Bibles together to Matthew chapter 23 Matthew chapter 23 it is our privilege this morning to look at one of the most fascinating provocative stirring portions of Matthew's gospel as we Embark upon this 23rd chapter we're going to begin this morning a look at the first 12 verses and if I were to entitle this particular section I would simply entitle it false spiritual leaders false spiritual leaders there have always been and there always will be in this world false spiritual leaders who pretend to represent God but in fact do not represent God the

Old Testament talks about them identifies them and warns people to stay away from them the New Testament does the same in fact Moses was in conflict with them in Egypt Jeremiah was fighting with them in Judah Ezekiel faced them and called them foolish prophets that followed their own spirit and have seen nothing our Lord warned of them as false christs and false prophets who shall show great signs and wonders the Apostle Paul struggled against them as preachers of another gospel in Galatians chapter 1 and purveyors of the doctrines of demons he called them in writing

to Timothy Peter said they were false preachers who secretly bring in damnable heresies and they are like dogs who return to lick up their own vomit John the Apostle saw a coming Antichrist and many antichrists already present who deny Jesus as the true Christ Jude saw them and called them uded dreamers who defile the Flesh and Paul may have summed it up well when he said they are wolves Whose desire is to enter in not sparing the flock they're always present and they're always eager to counterfeit the work of God in the second coming of

Jesus Christ as the great event unfolds we see the false prophets amass and congregate that's portrayed for us in those apocalyptic visions of scripture that look to that future time and it seems to us that that may be the time when they flourish as it were in their Heyday but if there is a Time equal to that time for the working of false prophets it must have been in Palestine during the time of the Lord Jesus Christ for in his first coming all hell amassed its forces for a three-year assault on him and his truth

therefore false spiritual leaders take a very high profile a very great visibility in the gospel record and in this particular chapter we hear the Lord Jesus Christ confront them with a enunciation that blisters and burns as it comes from his lips right through verse 36 is this scathing rebuke of false prophets and only in the last three verses of the chapter are there words of tenderness and words of pity now as we look at this particular text I want you to note that it falls into three sections does chapter 23 the first 12 verses are

spoken to the crowd and the disciples from verse 13 to 36 is spoken to the Pharisees themselves and the last a moment of tender compassion over the plight of the Lost of Israel now we're looking at the first 12 verses and to get the scene in mind let's look at verse one then spoke Jesus to the multitude and to his disciples saying now the word then just hooks us up with the past we know we're on the same day it's Wednesday still as I said last time a very long Wednesday a Wednesday that began in

the morning with the Lord coming into the city from Bethany where he had spent the night near or with Lazarus and Mary and Martha and along the way they had pass the cursed fig tree and he taught his disciples a lesson then coming to the temple which he had cleansed the day before he began to teach and as he was teaching the massive multitudes collected for the Passover he was stopped by the religious leaders and they began this dialogue which has gone on now for several chapters they wanted to know by what Authority he did

and said the things he did and said and he didn't give them that Authority at first but rather gave them three Parables which condemned them and told them they would be shut out of the kingdom of God and replaced by others they then countered those Parables of condemnation with three questions meant to discredit him Each of which he answered in such a way as to discredit them and then he finally asked them a question about the Messiah which proved Beyond shadow of a doubt that the Messiah was both man and God and at this point

they stopped asking anything at all and so the dialogue as such has ended and beginning then in verse one of chapter 23 the Lord gives his last sermon to the people of Israel this is it his ministry to them is over this is the last public speech and is it it is a denunciation of these false religious leaders and a warning for the people to stay away from them it is a very severe a very serious presentation but a very necessary one they are false Shepherds they are wolves in sheep's clothing they damn people and

they must be avoided and our Lord pulls no punches and making that abundantly clear now it isn't the first time that he has denounced them a year earlier he had and a few months before as recorded in Luke 11 he had said some very similar things to what he said says now so he's already confronted them and called them what they truly were but now he warns the people particularly to stay away from them because they damn men's Souls now there's another thought that you need to have the Lord knows that he's about to die

on Friday and soon after that he will Ascend to heaven and the work will be left with his disciples and it is essential that the people be warned to stay away from the false religious leaders and to be turned toward the true spiritual leaders and he knows that the true spiritual leaders will be his disciples who after his Ascent to heaven will be filled with the spirit of God and will go everywhere preaching the gospel and he wants the people to be ready to listen to them and so he warns the people about the false

spiritual leaders so that their hearts will be open to the true ones and in a sense he setting up his disciples for their ministry that's why down in verses 8 to2 he calls his disciples to be distinctly different than these false spiritual leaders are so it isn't just a denunciation of the leaders it isn't just a warning of the people it is both of those with a purpose that the people might listen to those who are true spiritual leaders who manifest in fact the very opposite kind of characteristics to the ones that he will Den

anounce in the false leaders by the way he succeeded in calling the people away from them to some degree and to his disciples because you'll remember the very first day they preached on the day of Pentecost 3,000 people believed and were baptized and that is in Acts chapter 2 and you don't move much beyond that in the book of Acts until you see even greater things occurring thousands more coming to embrace the Savior and perhaps by chapter 4 there are as many as 20,000 who have heard and believed in Apostolic preaching and by chapter 5

and verse 28 they complain that these preachers have filled all Jerusalem with their teaching and so the Lord paved the way here for the true spiritual leaders his own disciples to do their work and called the people away from the damning doctrines of the false leaders now notice in verse one that he speaks to the multitude and his disciples this doesn't mean that the scribes and Pharisees didn't hear because they did the religious leaders were all gathered they were there because they had been there for the whole questioning process they heard but the message was

directed to the multitude and the disciples primarily the disciples are in view in verses 8 to 12 as we'll see next time but they heard and in verse 13 when he directs his words eyeball to eyeball to these false leaders the rest of the crowd heard as well so they are denounced publicly in the presence of the multitude and in their own presence also this then is an electrifying scene and again it helps us understand why they had to get rid of Jesus why they had to have him killed by the Romans especially after such

a blistering public denunciation which threatened their own credibility and career now notice in verse two it says he said the scribes and the Pharisees Etc they are the subject of these first remarks now not all the scribes were equally deserving of this rebuke there may have been some scribes that had some Integrity not all the Pharisees were either there must have been some of them that had an honest heart toward God like Paul Apostle who was a Pharisee and who had some genuiness and did what he did ignorantly in unbelief but for the most part

they are generally characterized by the words of Our Lord there were some and few I suppose exceptions now keep this in mind there were various sects in Judaism but the dominant sect was the Pharisees they were the religious spiritual leaders the Sadducees were primarily into politics and into m passing fortunes they weren't really involved in the Theology and the spiritual leadership though they had some positions of authority in the hierarchy of the temple theirs was pretty much a political and economic operation and there were the zealots who also were political nationalists and there were the

essenes who were monastics and they never really had an impact on society because they utterly separated from society and then there were the herodians and they were a political party that was Pro the herods that leaves the the the bulk of spiritual leadership to this group called the Pharisees of which some say there were no more than 6,000 but highly influential now they were the ones committed to the law you remember back in 586 when Judah was taken into captivity into Babylon they were there for 70 years they came back from Babylon they started to

reestablish life in the land and you remember that Nehemiah and Ezra brought the scriptures to the people again and the scriptures were discovered and in Nehemiah 8 there was a standing and a reading of the scripture you recall that and this was this was after all these years of not having that and the people all stood up and heard the reading and they swore to obey the scripture and they swore to be committed to God's Authority and God's word and the law was put back in the center of their life the law was put back

in clear Focus for them and it became that which they were committed to now at that time a group of people then became committed to studying and teaching the scriptures out of this group grew this Pharisee mentality where the scripture was everything the scripture was everything and over the years from the time of nehemiah's reading of the scripture Nehemiah chapter 8 right down to the time of our Lord these people had studied the law and interpreted the law to the point where there were in excess of 50 volumes of their commentary on the law and

they had added all kinds of things ceremonies rituals regulations at infinum adnasium myriads of them and they had enjoined them on people and for them life was all about the law now not all Pharisees were scribes but within the group of Pharisees were a group of scribes who were among the Pharisees the experts in the law all the Pharisees were committed to lawke keeping but the scribes were the experts they were the ones who cared for the law they were the ones who dispensed the law the old Jewish saying was that God gave the law

to Moses Moses gave the law to Joshua Joshua gave the law to the elders the elders gave the law to the prophets and the prophets gave the law to the men of the synagogues and the men of the synagogues were the scribes who were a part of the Pharisee party whose job it was to interpret and bind the law to the hearts of the people and that was their task so they were the spiritual leaders they had the law they said it wasn't just the law of God it was the law of God and all

the rest of that stuff and they bound it on the people William barklay who spent a part of his life in the land of Israel researching background material says there were seven kinds of Pharisees and he described them with these terms first there was the shoulder Pharisees socalled because he wore his Good Deeds on his shoulder he paraded the good that he did when he prayed he would put something ashes on his head and he would look sad so everyone would know how Pious and spiritual he was he was the shoulder Pharisee and then there

was the weight a little Pharisee this was the Pharisee who could always come up with a spiritual reason to put off doing something good he always had excuses but they sounded very Pious and then there was the bruised and bleeding Pharisee who thought it was a sin to look at a woman and so whenever women were around he bent over and closed his eyes and he kept running into walls and according to the Pharisees the more bruises you had from walls the more holy you were and then there was the humpback tumbling Pharisee and the

humpback tumbling Pharisee was called that because he wanted to demonstrate his humility so he slouched way over and bent his back and walked around all day in that humble position and thought it was wrong to lift his feet so he shuffled his feet and he kept tripping on things and tumbling and he was called the humpback tumbling Pharisee then there was the ever Reckoning Pharisee he was the Pharisee who kept count of all of his Good Deeds so he'd know what God owed him in terms of blessing and then there was the fearing Pharisee who

did all that stuff because he was scared to death of going to hell and then William Barkley suggested there was the God-fearing Pharisee who did what he did because he thought it was right to do it and he had Integrity to some extent he was the one out of the seven who was a really good guy and that's the group to whom our Lord speaks in this chapter and of whom he warns now in looking at verses 1 to 12 I want to suggest to you that a good way to see this section is to

see it as a description of the characteristic of a false spiritual leader and there are five elements that false spiritual leaders lack and I believe the Lord gives them to us right here they lack Authority they lack Integrity they lack sympathy they lack spirituality and they lack humility now conversely beloved those are things true spiritual leaders possess Authority Integrity sympathy spirituality and humility so it's a study in contrast now listen this is historic this is a description of false spiritual leaders in that time and that place but you can take the principles right out of

here and apply them today as if our Lord was standing here and saying it in relation to our time they are truly the marks of false spiritual leaders and they are important for us to know so that we can identify these people first of all it is implied in verse two that they lacked Authority that they lacked Authority you notice it says that Jesus said the scribes and the Pharisees and the text says sat in Moses seat sat in Moses seat now in the synagogues there was a special seat it was called Moses seat it

was the chair of Moses and in that chair which may not have been a real chair but stood for a a place of authority was the leading teacher the leading Pharisee the leading scribe if you had the seat of Moses in your synagogue you were the chief teacher you represented the authority in fact the word seat is the word cathedra from which we get cathedral but maybe more significantly than that the Latins took that Greek word cathedra and made a phrase out of it ex cathedra out of the place of authority and they said in

the Roman Catholic system that when the pope speaks he speaks ex cathedra it is then binding on the conscience it is binding on the life because it's out of the Throne of Authority or out of the seed of authority and so cathedra has to do with the SE Moses has to do with the law and so they spoke as the law Authority they were the authority like our modern universities have a chair of philosophy or a chair of history or a chair of biology or a chair of whatever so the synagogue had a chair of

Moses a seat of Moses a place of authority a person occupying that seat would have great weight and great Authority however there is nothing in this verse to indicate that they had a right to sit there that they had a right to pontificate about what the people should do that they had a right to represent God in that place or the law of Moses there's nothing to say they had earned it that it had been given them by God that they were qualified to take it all it says is they sat in it they took

it in fact they did everything they could to try to keep Jesus from taking it from them and when he did go into their synagogue and teach they were infuriated just as they were when Paul did that and that's why John 16 says the day is going to come when Jesus talks to his disciples he says the day is going to come when men think they do God's service by killing you and they're going to throw you out of their synagogues because a truth teacher who has real Authority is always a threat to someone who's

a usurper and these usurpers had gone in and occupied the chair of authority when in fact they did not delineate the Divine Authority but gave their own tradition and their own ritual and their own routines that they themselves through the centuries had invented and did all they could to keep others out they are parallel to some men identified in the time of Jeremiah look to Jeremiah 14 for a moment and Jeremiah faced the same kind of situation Jeremiah was a true prophet he was really a lonely prophet he was crying out one message when all

the other prophets were crying out a lie he was telling the truth and all these other prophets were lying they were all saying oh it'll all be well everything is fine and Jeremiah was saying it isn't and the people would go to the teachers that said what they wanted to hear they're identified in Jeremiah 1414 the Lord said to me the prophets prophesy lies in my name that is a a fearful thing to use the name of God to propagate lies I sent them not neither have I commanded them neither spoke unto them they prophesy

unto you a false vision and divination and a thing of nothing and the deceit of their heart therefore thus sayth the Lord concerning the prophets that prophesy in my name and I sent them not he goes on to describe what he's going to do he sent them not in chapter 23 several times the same thing is indicated again verse 21 I have not sent these prophets yet they ran I have not spoken to them yet they prophesied verse 32 I am against those who prophesy false dreams says the Lord and do tell them and cause

my people to Heir by their lies and their instability yet I sent them not nor commanded them and you find in chapter 27:1 15 I have not sent them and it goes on like that chapter 28 chapter 29 Isaiah another of the great Old Testament prophets faced the same kind of thing I believe it's Chapter 30 verse 10 it says say to the seers see not to the prophets prophesy not unto us right things speak unto us smooth things prophesy deceits get out of the way turn aside out of the path cause the Holy One

of Israel to cease from before us don't tell us the truth we don't want to hear what God wants us to know that's a an amazing thing one of the reason people go into TR into uh untrue religions go into false religions is because they don't want to hear the truth they don't want to hear what God really has to say and so there's always an audience for false prophets in John 101:2 Jesus said the true Shepherd enters the Sheepfold through the door and those that climb into the Sheepfold and don't come through the door

are thieves and robbers and they have come to steal your life that's another characterization of false religious leaders usurpers who have no right who have no Authority who speak not for God nor are sent by God but they take the place of authority and they put demands on people and they tell things in the name of God that are not the truth of God usurpers quite in contrast By the way to the one sent by the Lord those who have been like Paul made a minister by the dispensation of the Gospel which is is committed

unto them those like Timothy who have been called by God and set apart by the laying on of hands as confirmation those like the apost apostles on whom the Lord Jesus breathed and said receive ye the Holy Spirit and to whom he said go into all the world and preach the gospel so the false spiritual leaders lacked Authority they had taken self-appointed seats of authority filled them with their own ideas fill them with their own Traditions fill them with their own regulations in addition to the law of God obscuring the law of God and when

anyone threatens that seed of authority they become instantly hostile to those who threaten it's the same today there are usurpers all over the place there are liars by the multitude uncountable fostering their falsehoods their diluted dreams making up their supposed Visions saying they represent God speaking in his name and spewing out lies right out of hell that damn men's Souls from one end of this world to the other there's only one Authority and that's the word of God and when they deviate from that they are usurpers as were these now the second thing our Lord

says and this not by implication but by explication directly is that they not only lacked Authority but they lacked Integrity lacking Authority they were usurpers lacking Integrity they are hypocrites a most interesting verse verse three follow it all therefore whatever they bid You observe observe and do but do not after their works for they say and do not now listen very carefully to this or you will you will misunderstand it he says all that they bid you do it now you could stop and say wait a minute wait a minute how comprehensive is the word

all obviously this can't be a a a general comprehensive command to absolutely obey everything the Pharisees and scribes say because we've been told not to do that that's what this whole speech is about and if you go back to chapter 5 in The Sermon on the Mount from verses 21 to 48 the Lord was there saying the the rabbis and your tradition and all of that says this but I say this and you've heard it told this and I say this and you've heard this and I say this in other words he says you're wrong

you're wrong about murder and you're wrong about fornication and you're wrong about divorce and you're wrong about adultery and you're wrong about swearing and your prayers are wrong in chapter 6 and your arms are wrong and your worship is wrong and he condemns so many of the things they taught in chapter 6 and in chapter 15 of Matthew he indict them for having taken the Commandments of God and set them aside and in their place put the traditions of men and he says to them you have substituted the tradition of men for the Commandments of

God so he's condemned much of their teaching he's condemned much of it and he can't be giving a blanket approval whatever they tell you to do do it well what then is he saying well the idea is this the key to it is to understand what he said in verse two they said in Moses seed and listen carefully in so far as they rightly reflect Moses you do what they say if they read as they always did in the synagogue the law you obey it in other words in condemning these leaders there was always the

potential problem that having condemned the leaders he would with them condemn their whole message and the people would therefore throw the baby out with a dirty bath and what he is saying to them is look we will condemn these individuals but even these individuals speaking the law of God are speaking that which you must do in other words the message from God is still the message from God even in the mouth of a false teacher and so it was that when the Pharisees read the word of God it was binding on their hearts and when

they said to love God and worship God and love your fellow man and love righteousness and hate evil they were to do that in so far as Moses law and the law of God was reflected it was to be obeyed you see the word of God is not corrupted even in the mouth of a false prophet it Remains the powerful word of God so if they teach what Moses taught you must respond now he says to them observe and do it says in the King James the Greek words are first word is really do poo

it means it's an arist tense so it's the idea of immediately respond do it if it's out of the law of Moses do it even if it's in their mouth do it and then the second one is the verb to which means to go on doing present tense do it and keep doing it do it and keep observing it so he's calling them to an instant and continuous obedience to the law of God no matter who articulates it I mean when a Mormon comes down the path and reads the Bible and calls people to love

one another that's the word of God even in the mouth of a false prophet it's still the word of God don't throw that away because you eliminated the false prophet so when they say the truth and like a clock that doesn't run is still right twice a day false prophets tend now and then to hit the truth so as far as they fulfill the role of representing Moses you respond because the issue is the word of God and there is no other authority but the end of verse three watch this but do not after their

works if they recite Moses do it but don't do what they do because they say and what and don't do they're Hypocrites I mean follow the word of God but don't do what they do because they say something and don't do it oh my what a telling thing this is they are phonies without Integrity they could teach love God worship God love righteousness love your fellow men hate evil but they didn't live it now I'm going to say something very important listen they couldn't live it no way because the flesh unredeemed has no internal ability

to restrain evil and promote good you understand that it has none they could be outwardly moral and outwardly ethical and they can develop very sophisticated ethics and morality and you listen and you say my that's good it talks about God it talks about love everybody and they're nice to the poor and it's they're they're strong on the family or whatever and all this is really nice the truth of the matter is they aren't even able to do what they're asking you to do because they have no internal power to restrain evil and promote good neither

does anybody else who is unredeemed because it is only in Redemption that you receive a divine nature right it is only in Redemption that you are a new creation that you are in the terms of Ephesians 2:10 Born Again entering into New Life which God has for ordained should be a life which exudes good works it's why Paul in Romans 7 having been redeemed says in my inner man I Delight in the law of God but you see unredeemed people no matter what their ethics are no matter what their morality is cannot restrain the flesh

internally and cannot promote good internally because they have an unredeemed and evil and vile and fallen and vicious sin nature h hypocrisy can't restrain the flesh you look at false religious systems and you see oh they look so moral I think of the Mormons because they're sort of the classic illustration of this they look so ethical they have all these moral codes and all this morality you know their hair is even cut into conservative Manner and they operate their lifestyle very conservatively and they seem so nice and so warm-hearted and the truth of the matter

is on the outside they're making demands on that and even the people who are making those demands on the rest those who sit at the top as the prophets are unrestrained Vice on the inside because there is no capacity in an unregenerate individual to either confine the flesh or promote righteousness and even the things he thinks he does that are good the Old Testament says are nothing but filthy rags they can't do it now this characterization is carried further if you look over to verse 23 in chapter 23 and when the Lord gets into a

direct hit on the Pharisees and scribes he calls them Hypocrites here for about the fourth time in verse 23 he says you pay a tithe of mint that's this little tiny herb anus a small plant cumin that's a little tiny seed you you tie all these little deals you got you got 10 seeds and you're taking out one little seed you got 10 little herbs you take out one little herb and you've omitted the waier matters of the law like justice and mercy and Faith why because they can't handle that I mean they can count

seeds and they can push a bunch of herbs around and fool with some little plants but they can't produce Justice and they can't produce mercy and they can't produce faith in verse 25 he says you clean the outside of the cup and the platter and within are full of extortion and excess and in verse 27 you're like Whited tombs you appear beautiful outside and within are full of dead bones and all uncleanness and then in verse 30 three he says you serpents you Generation of Vipers how can you escape the damnation of hell and verse

28 sort of wraps it up outwardly you appear righteous inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness you see that's the characteristic of a false spiritual leader he tries the best he can outwardly to put a cap on his vice and it just fills him on the inside it pushes its way out somewhere there's no power to restrain evil that's why Paul writing to Timothy characterizing false spiritual leaders says they speak lies in hypocrisy they can't live what they tell and their conscience is seared with a hot iron very very Vivid phrase it's like scar

tissue I was thrown out of a car and on my back I have a whole large area of scar tissue that has it's not sensitive to feeling at all you could stick a pin in my back I'd prefer that you not experiment because if you miss the area I will feel it but you could stick a pin in my back and I wouldn't feel it because of that scar tissue that is there because of the friction Burns as I slid along the highway and here he's saying these false prophets have lived this hypocrisy so long

that their conscience is like scar tissue it's formed a callousness so that they are no longer even sensitive to the hypocritical nature of their existence they are just liars who have lied so long Hypocrites who have lived hypocritically so long that they are desensitized to it the truth is inside is wretchedness and rottenness that they can't restrain in second Peter chapter 2 you have a description of these false spiritual leaders in terms that are so vivid they're almost shocking he says and there are many places to step into this second chapter in verse one there

were false prophets among the people and there shall be false false teachers among you secretly bringing in damnable heresies and then he goes on to describe them and if you look down for example at verse 10 it says they walk after the Flesh in the lust of uncleanness they despise Authority they are presumptuous and self-willed verse 12 calls them natural brute beasts and they speak evil things they don't even understand and will utterly perish in their own corruption verse 13 calls them scabs and flesh spots reving with their own deceiving verse 14 their eyes are

full of an adulterous they're sexually unrestrained even though outwardly they may restrain it inwardly they're not their hearts are exercised with c practice they are cursed children they have forsaken the right way verse 17 they are wells without water clouds are carried with a tempest To Whom The Mist Of Darkness is reserved forever they are Servants of corruption verse 19 that's the cigra folks they are Servants of corruption corrupt to the very core now Jude refers to them in much the same terminology that Peter does he calls them deluded or filthy dreamers they defile the

flesh Jude verse 8 they despise Authority again and then it says they are brute beasts again they corrupt themselves verse 10 in verse 12 again that idea of scabs clouds without water trees with withered fruit without fruit twice dead plucked up by The Roots Raging Waves of the sea foaming out their own shame wandering stars to whom is reserved the Blackness of Darkness forever in other words the point is these aren't just nice folks who have a nice moral approach to life and just happen not to know Christ they are on the outside calling for

a standard which their inside can't live up to they say it they don't do it they can't do it Vice is not restrained nor is righteousness promoted in an unre generate Fallen heart now you look at these systems today I don't care what they are you look at any of the religious systems that you see around the world that are false systems that don't adhere to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and that add to the holy scriptures and you will find people advocating ethical standards and advocating moral standards and binding those standards on people and

the truth is in their own Hearts they're filled with garbage that they can't restrain and there's an utter absence of true righteousness so look at their life the world shouldn't be shocked when a Jim Jones proves to be exactly what he was eventually that stuff's going to ooze out somewhere the filth and Corruption of one who appeared to be so ethical and so moral and so upstanding and so concerned for the poor and the needy and etc etc etc it doesn't always come out however quite that dramatically in fact sometimes we don't even know it

until final judgment there's a third thing that I would call your attention to and I'll stop with that one this morning the Lord condemns him for a lack of authority and he condemns him for a lack of integrity and thirdly for a lack of sympath sympathy for a lack of sympathy they were not only usurpers and hypocrites they were Loveless verse four they bind heavy burdens and Grievous to be carried and lay them on men's shoulders but they themselves will not remove them with one of their fingers unbelievable no sympathy at all no love no

care the picture is of a guy loading up his burrow his donkey and if you've been in the Middle East I mean it is incredible what they put on those donkeys it's a good thing they're dumb they can pile that stuff high up to the top and hang down over the sides and strap it all in so that you can't find the animal that thing is carrying stuff we saw boxes piled 10 15 feet high some of those slat kind of crates I saw a donkey with chickens hanging all over it in little crates it's

the Arab pickup truck and they would just pile it on and pile it on and pile it on and pile it on and a guy walking alongside with nothing carrying nothing and not even and some of those donkeys are listing 10° to the left or 14° to the right and no movement to straighten up that burden at all that's the picture here that would have been a vivid picture to these people and that's what the Pharisees do says the Lord they pile on regulations and rules and rituals and traditions it's an impossible load so that

you're totally obscured and frankly it'd be better to be asleep or dead than to be alive and try to carry it all and not only that the Guild of not making it and the whole life the biggest burden of all for them was The Works righteousness system that said your God's counting up your bad and he's counting up your good and if you're good gets better than your bad when you die you're going to get to heaven and if your bad beats your good you're going to hell and there was no way to get rid

of the bad pile see the bad pile just stayed there all the time just stayed there and you just kept trying to get ahead of it with the good stuff what a burden what an interminable burden they just piled it on piled it on piled it on heavy burdens the heaviest as I said is Works righteousness the idea that you had to keep piling up your good deeds so religion for them was depressing religion to them was a horrifying impossible life of Demands and demands and demands and there wasn't any hope and they never came

along with the finger of Grace to remove the burden they never bothered to give the gospel that says there is no bad pile that's the good news folks Jesus Takes the bad pile away totally all is left is a good that's all and even when the Apostle Paul preached the gospel in galatia he went through preaching Grace and forgiveness and mercy and here came these same guys dog in his steps and they went in and said no sir you got to keep the law of Moses and you got to be circumcised and you got to

do everything Moses said and keep the traditions and they just wanted to pile it all back and Paul writes to the Galatians and he is livid when he writes and he dispenses with any amenities and he says I don't care who they are I don't care if an angel from heaven shows up and gives you that message that's another gospel they ought to be damned and he goes on to say in chapter 5 listen for Liberty Christ has set us free now don't you be entangled again with that yoke of bondage but the Pharisees with

all their religious stuff we're not interested in talking about Grace and forgiveness and mercy they wanted to pile people up with this morality and then live under the inter terminable guilt of not being able to make it no sympathy No Love No tenderness no caring no helping to shoulder the burden they never heard what Peter said casting all your care on him for he cares for you they didn't know The Tender Shepherd who carries the little ones in his own arms nobody ever picked their load up for them in fact in Mark 12:40 which is

a parallel to this passage our Lord says that it is typical of the scribes and Pharisees to devour widows houses it's like the Simon lree they move in on the Widow who can't pay the rent and eat up her house and make her destitute they abused people they grieved people Paul writing to Timothy in 1 Timothy 4:3 says they come around pontificating and forbidding people to marry what a ridiculous thing how stupid it is to make men who want to supposedly serve the Lord for example in a Roman Catholic system swear never to be married

all their lifelong and to add that kind of bondage to them it's a far cry from what the Lord intended when he said that through the Apostle Peter marriage is the grace of life and then it says in 1 Timothy 4:3 they make them abstain from certain kind of foods they won't they say there's certain things you can't eat how foolish who cares whether you eat meat on Friday or not or whatever else well God has given us all things to be received with Thanksgiving in 1 Peter 2:3 I think it is he says they

make merchandise out of you they just use you just abuse you that's all you're part of the building of their empire you're part of the feeding of their supposed spiritual Egos and it is new Isaiah he saw it the same kind of unsympathetic attitude verse one of chapter 10 woe unto them who decree unrighteous decrees in other words they make laws that aren't even fair that aren't even right they turn aside the needy from Justice if you don't have the money to buy it you can't get Justice to take away the right from the poor

that widows may be their prey and they rob the orphans I mean what kind of people do that or religious leaders do that fleecing the Sheep instead of feeding the Sheep Jeremiah talked about that chapter 7 Trust not in lying words they say the Temple of the Lord the Temple of the Lord the Temple of the Lord are these in other words this is what God requires this is what God requires this is God's truth then he says if you thoroughly amend your ways and your doings you thoroughly execute Justice between a man and his

neighbor if you oppress not the stranger and the the orphan and the Widow shed Not Innocent blood in this place nor walk after other gods to your harm then will I cause you to dwell in this place and so forth don't give me that the Temple of the all that Pious talk go out and be fair to a stranger and take care of an orphan and a widow and stop devouring these people for your own ends and then there's that credible passage in the 34th chapter of Ezekiel which indicts the false Shepherds of Israel just

listen to this and the word of the Lord came to me saying son of man prophesy against the Shepherds of Israel prophesy and say to them thus sayth the Lord God unto the Shepherds woe or curse you Shepherds of Israel that do feed yourselves should not the Shepherds feed the flocks you know that we are criticized so often because religious leaders in the public eye are known to to eat people alive to build great Empires to amass great forts to build great Prestige all at the expense of poor unwitting people how many people have been

built and ripped off by religious charlatans only God knows it's nothing new you eat the fat and you clothe yourself with the wool in other words you're feeding on your own sheep instead of reaching out to meet their need you're devouring them taking everything they've got you kill those who are fed you feed not the flock the disease have you not strengthened neither have you healed the sick neither have you bound up what was broken neither have you brought again that which was driven away neither have you sought what was lost but with force and

cruelty you've ruled over them boy that is such a definition of false religious leadership just brutalize people get everything out of them you can to build your own Empire and when they were scattered because there's no Shepherd they became food to all the beasts of the field my sheep wandered through all the mountains on every High Hill my flock was scattered on the face of the Earth and no one sought after them therefore you Shepherds hear the word of the Lord as I live says the Lord God surely because my FL became a prey and

my flock became food to every beast of the field because there was no Shepherd neither did my shepherd search for my flock but the Shepherds fed themselves and fed not my flock oh Shepherds hear the word of the Lord I am against the Shepherds God's against them and Jesus in his day looked out over the multitude and he saw them as sheep without what Shepherds there wasn't anybody to feed them there wasn't anybody to pick them up and carry them there wasn't anybody to bind up their wounds to restore them to carry them there wasn't

anybody to move a finger to ease the load the phes wouldn't remove the burden the word move there could better be translated remove as the same term is in Revelation 6:14 they wouldn't remove that burden at all they wouldn't preach a Grace message they wouldn't act in love I'll tell you in some people's hearts it must have been a wonderful moment when they heard Jesus say this Matthew 11:28 come unto me as opposed to them come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden in other words you have this big burden come to

me I'll give you what rest take my yoke and learn of me for I'm meek and lowly and heart and you shall find rest for your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is light so that's all in contrast to the horrifying bondage the false spiritual leaders put on the people same today these false religious systems bind people with ethical weight with moral codes with strictures of life from one kind of demand to another they have to do this some of them telling me who they can marry where they can live how many

kids they can have some of them say you got to do this light these many candles or go through here on your knees or crawl up these steps and do that or you've got to come and study so long these kinds of things you got to crank out these rules and make sure you do all of this they bind that on them and never a word of Grace and never a word of forgiveness and never a tenderness and never a caring to meet the need that can only be met by forgiveness it's just the same

and so the first three things we see of a false teacher false spiritual leader they lack true Authority Integrity sympathy let me turn it over listen very carefully you want to know how to identify a true spiritual leader he has true Authority where does it come from where does the authority come from right here never goes beyond this always interprets this properly he has Integrity look at his life look at it over the long Hall and see that he Endeavors to live and love what he calls other people to live in love thirdly is he

sympathetic is his greatest heart desire to feed or to fleece is he building his own Empire or is he carrying those who are wounded father we thank you this morning that we've been able to look beginning L at this we know that it's a rebuke almost unequaled in the gospels and yet at the same time it teaches not just that negative truth but a very positive lesson about what true shepherds are by contrast we have real Authority Jesus told his own all authority is given unto me and in so many words said I give it

to you and that Authority is your word and oh God we must have integrity if we preach it we have to live it and sympathy the compassionate Jesus who showed the tenderness and pity of the heart of God by alleviating disease and pain set the pattern for the tender Shepherds who represent him save us Lord from those false leaders and give us true Shepherds we thank you in Christ's name amen you've been listening to John MacArthur Bible teacher with grace to you for free access to all of John's lessons and a listing of study Bibles

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