Faux Faithfulness | Sunday, May 31, 2026

Good morning, Cross Connection. It is so good to see you all here. You can have a seat. Thank you, Anthony, for leading us this morning.

If you are new to the church in the last three weeks, let me introduce myself. I'm not a guest speaker; I'm one of the pastors here at the church. I am so glad to be back with you this morning. I was hoping to be here last week, but while I was gone on a trip, I got a sinus infection. I have this inner ear disorder, and it causes vertigo. Has anybody ever had vertigo before? I kind of have it this morning, too, so if I'm holding on to the table, these men are not drunk as you suppose; it's just vertigo.

I am so grateful for our team here at Cross Connection Church. A few weeks ago, on Mother's Day, you got to meet Jason, whom I refer to as Jason the Younger, from our youth ministry. It is so cool to see what God is doing, and this is not new here at Cross Connection Church. You may not know this, but I really am a product of our youth ministry as well. I grew up at this church, and we are part of a family of churches that truly believes in what is called the priesthood of all believers. We believe that God has a call on all of our lives, and He does an awesome thing in raising people up from within the church.

Our youth ministry has been doing a great job in raising up leaders, and one of them is Jason. He did a great job on Mother's Day. Then we have Jason the Elder, Pastor Jason, who taught for me the last couple of weeks. I am so thankful for the team.

For most of the last few weeks, I was in Europe. You may or may not know that back in 2004 and 2005, I taught at a small international Bible school in Northwest Germany, in a town called Siegen, located between Frankfurt and Cologne. I developed some great relationships with the church there. Calvary Chapel Siegen is an amazing church. It was planted by a friend of mine back in the 1980s, named Nick Long. He was from the Pacific Northwest and went to plant a church there, which has grown to be one of the largest churches in Western Europe. It is a very dynamic church with an awesome worship team and great teaching.

Nick handed the church off to a German man named Alex about 15 years ago, and the church has just continued to flourish. I have had the privilege of going back there from time to time to teach at a conference they hold every May. I went there in 2023, and my older daughter, Addison, has wanted to go to Paris since she was really little, so I took her with me to Germany in 2023.

We took the train, which was only about a three-hour ride to Paris. My younger daughter, Evangeline, told me, "If they ever invite you again, you're taking me to Italy." Pastor David Guzik invited me to come with them to speak at the conference at the beginning of the year. After the conference, Evangeline, Andrea, and I took the train to Lucerne, Switzerland, and then from there to Venice, Italy, followed by Florence, and finally Rome. We spent a few days in Rome, which is an amazing place if you've never been there.

This was, I think, the fourth time that I've been to Rome, and it reminds me of what Paul noted when he was in the city of Athens, as recorded in Acts chapter 17. In Acts 17:22, Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus in Athens and said, "Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious; for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: 'To the unknown God.' Therefore, the one whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you." When I go to Rome, this passage comes to mind because you see the objects of their worship everywhere.

This time, I noticed two other things while I was in Italy. First, my crazy hair is not considered crazy in Italy; it seems quite normal there. Second, I hadn't noticed before that they had no problem spelling "De Benedictus" in Italy at all. Here, people often struggle to say it or spell it, but there, it was not an issue at all.

Rome has been, for millennia, and still is today, a very religious city, much like Paul observed in Athens. We toured the Vatican, visited the Sistine Chapel, and went to St. Peter's Basilica. This time, Evangeline really wanted to see the Mamertine prison, which is traditionally believed to be the prison where both the apostles Paul and Peter were held before their execution. We visited several of these different places, and if anything dominates the landscape of Rome, it is indeed religion. You see it everywhere you turn.

When you think about it, this brings you back to the fact that we, by nature, are very religious. Religion is very much a human universal, and this has been observed for a very long time.

There was a notable book that came out about 20 years ago by a geneticist named Dean Hemmer. The book was called The God Gene. He basically said that there is something innate within us, an inclination toward transcendence, spiritual experience, and worship. You have probably experienced this too, even if you've been out in the desert late at night and seen the beauty of the cosmos. It's like what David saw; he speaks about it in Psalm 8 when he says, "When I consider the heavens, the moon, and all the stars," just the grandeur of it.

Or if you've ever stood on the edge of the Grand Canyon, you see the greatness of it and are reminded of your littleness. When we witness this, we are compelled to feel awe or to be drawn into a sense of worship. This author, back in 2004 when he wrote the book, is not the only one who has observed this. Paul observed it too, 2,000 years ago in the opening words of the book of Romans. He talks about how humans, when we perceive the grandeur of creation, are drawn to worship.

The unfortunate part is that because we are fallen, we often end up worshiping the creation over the Creator, tending toward idolatry. However, there is something profound about seeing the awe of what God has made or sometimes witnessing the amazing things that humans have created. We are made in God's image, so we have the capacity to create.

One of the places where you can see this is when you tour a place like the Vatican, where you encounter all these wonderful works. This time, we were in Florence and saw the great statue of David that Michelangelo made. When you see these things, you appreciate the amazing artistry of someone made in God's image. It pulls you in the direction of worship and awe.

There is something about worship and that place of awe that makes us feel complete. I think that's part of what God has built into us; He has wired us in that way. We are made for worship. If we do not worship God, which we ought to do because He is the maker of all things, including us, then we will inevitably be drawn to worship other things, which is invariably idolatrous. There is an aspect of worship that fulfills us.

Religion often makes us feel good and gives us a sense of righteousness. However, the problem is that these feelings of completeness, goodness, and righteousness are just that—feelings. There is a sense of virtue when we are in a place of awe or worship, but that sense does not equate to the actual state of being good. Having a sense of goodness does not make you good.

One of the real downsides or dangers of religion is that it can create a moment of completion, pulling you into a place of worship. This feeling of goodness can lead us to believe that we have entered into true goodness. However, the feeling of goodness is not the same as actually being good, even if the feeling is strong. This challenge with religion is particularly evident in places like Rome, where every turn reveals another magnificent church, cathedral, or basilica.

Throughout my travels in Europe, I have had the privilege of visiting many cities, and often the most dominating features are grand cathedrals. For instance, we visited the Cologne Cathedral in Germany and ascended to the top of the tower. The sight of these awe-inspiring cathedrals, with their beautiful stained glass, intricate carvings, and various statues, is truly remarkable.

However, the devastating reality is that virtually every one of these places today functions more as a museum than an actual church, and they are often nearly empty. This is one of the sad remnants of religion that can be observed in many parts of Europe today. We see this in Rome, and Paul observed it in Athens 2,000 years ago when he remarked that he perceived many people as very religious. If you were to visit Jerusalem in the first century during the time of Christ, you would witness the same phenomenon.

It is important to acknowledge that religion is not necessarily bad, but it can be dangerous. It provides a sense of goodness or rightness, yet that sense does not inherently make one good or righteous. Many people are drawn to religion because of this feeling, and that attraction is a significant aspect of the human experience.

Throughout all times of human history, there is a kind of hardwiring of that in us. Now, we're at the close of the 11th chapter of the Book of Luke this morning, and this chapter actually zeros in on this point. Jesus is going to focus on the problem with religion—the danger of religion—with a prophetic proclamation against the very religious in this passage.

Before we read Luke chapter 11, I want to highlight that we will be pausing our study in the Book of Luke this week. This will be our last study in the Book of Luke through the summer. Our tradition here at Cross Connection for the last many years has been to have a summer series. So, we will be shifting our focus out of the Book of Luke until we come back in September. Through the summer, we will be doing some other things, which we will talk about next Sunday.

This is a good place, I think, to stop in Luke for now because, in this section, Jesus is confronting what I believe was a problem in His day, a problem in our day, and a problem in every age of humanity. He confronts religiosity. When I say religiosity, you can think of it as religion for religion's sake—just doing religious things because that is what you do and what you are supposed to do. There are many places in the world today, even in our own nation, where it is like, "Well, that is what you are supposed to do. It’s Sunday; you have to go to church."

Maybe we don't feel it quite so much in Southern California, but there are other places in the South where that is still very much the case. We can fall into religion for religion's sake, and this is a really important issue that Jesus addresses in this passage. As I said, religion is not all bad, but it can be dangerous. It can leave us in a place where we feel like everything is good, but everything is not good because there is still a deep issue that needs to be addressed.

This was important to me. I remember 20 or 25 years ago, when I was just starting out in ministry, there was a resurgence of what was called Reformed theology. That resurgence was mostly among younger people. I was younger at the time; I don't feel very young anymore. But in my early 20s, I saw this happening with a whole bunch of my friends who were being pulled into this resurgence of Reformed theology. The whole movement got labeled the "Young, Restless, and Reformed." We were all young at that time in our 20s, and a whole bunch of my friends were restless. Why? Well, they grew up in the Evangelical American Church in the 1990s, which was very consumeristic. It was all about...

This was the era of the Christian music industry in a huge way. Everybody was starting a Christian brand. You had Christian ska bands, Christian punk bands, and all sorts of other Christian bands. There was a driving consumerism of Christianity, and on top of that, a lot of superficial things came along with it. The worst possible thing you could do in the 1990s as a Christian was listen to secular music. People felt they had to destroy all their CDs and similar items. There were all these superficial things that made people feel right.

Now, don't look at the fact that guys were still sleeping with their girlfriends, but they didn't listen to secular music, so they were considered good, and everything was just right. It’s like, well, maybe that's not quite what Christianity is all about. There was a reaction, a response to that in the early 2000s with the young, restless, and reformed movement. The focus of that group was intellectualization. It was all about the intellectual side of theology and philosophy. People got pulled in the direction of loving God with all their minds.

While that’s not a bad thing, it then became the true test of whether or not you were right if you could describe and define concepts like soteriology. That makes you right? Well, obviously, that's not true. Fast forward a quarter century, and now we have a new thing happening. There’s a resurgence among a younger group of people. I’m not part of that young group anymore, but in their 20s, there’s a pull towards not the intellectual side of Christianity, but back to very traditional forms.

There’s a pull towards orthodoxy and Catholicism, and there’s a resurgence among those things. Now it’s not just about the books and the learning, but also about the Eucharist and the different ritualistic aspects of those traditions. These are the really important things. I’ve had many conversations with people in the last couple of years about this. It’s been said that for every mile of road, there are two miles of ditch. There are pitfalls on either side, and I think both of these are pitfalls of religion, where one thing is deemed the most important.

I heard it said years ago, and I think there’s a lot of truth to it, that if you take a truth and make it the truth, it becomes a lie. You take this idea that it’s all about your mind, that you have to know these things and understand the deep aspects of theology. While that’s not a bad thing, it doesn’t complete you. It doesn’t make you good or righteous. If you think that knowledge makes you righteous, then you’ve fallen off into a ditch. But on the other side of that is...

It's gotta be the ritual. It's gotta be the incense. It's gotta be the confessions. It's gotta be the holy days. If I do those things, then I feel right and righteous. Those things are not bad, but if that becomes the focus, if that becomes the end and not the means of grace, then you've lost it.

There are these pitfalls, the two miles of ditch on every mile of road that we need to be aware of. I think that Jesus, in some respects, is addressing that here in this passage. The hyper-rationalized and the hyper-ritualized religion are seductive to our flesh. They make us feel good, but the feelings of goodness do not equal true goodness and righteousness. Jesus is dealing with that because these feelings of goodness are like the comforts of a paper blanket. They are not actually going to do anything for you.

When I was thinking about this this week, I was reminded of a great verse in Isaiah, Isaiah 28. Isaiah says, "For the bed is too short to stretch out on, and the covering so narrow that it cannot wrap yourself with it." It's kind of like, I'm six foot two, and every time I fly on a long flight, I'm reminded of how terrible that is because you can't get comfortable. They give you this blanket that was basically made for a two-year-old, and you think, "I can't do anything with this thing." You're in this chair where you can't quite fit your legs underneath the chair in front of you. If you're over six feet, you understand exactly what I'm talking about.

There are some people here today who are five foot five, and you might say, "I have no problem." Yes, you're right, but I do. It's terrible. That's what religion is like. It's like a blanket that doesn't fully cover you or a bed that's too short. It's never quite what you need.

In this passage, Jesus addresses this. If you would open your Bibles to Luke chapter 11 and stand with me. If you don't have a Bible, you can raise your hand, and an usher will bring you one. Luke chapter 11, the last section, beginning at verse 37. It says, "As Jesus spoke, a certain Pharisee asked him to dine with him." So Jesus went and sat down to eat. When the Pharisee saw it, he marveled that Jesus had not first washed his hands before dinner. Then the Lord said to him, "Now you Pharisees make the outside of the cup..."

And dish clean, but your inward part is full of greed and wickedness. Foolish ones, did not He who made the outside make also the inside? Rather, give alms of such things as you have, and then indeed all things are clean to you.

But woe to you, Pharisees, for you tithe mint and rue and all manner of herbs, and you pass by justice and the love of God. These you ought to have done without leaving the others undone. Woe to you, Pharisees, for you love the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplace. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like graves which are not seen, and the men who walk over them are not aware of them.

Well, then one of the lawyers answered and said to Him, "Teacher, by saying these things, you reproach us also." And so He said, "Woe to you also, you scribes or lawyers, for you load men with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers. Woe to you, for you build the tombs of the prophets, and your fathers are the ones who killed them. In fact, you bear witness that you approve the deeds of your fathers, for they indeed killed the prophets, and you build their tombs.

Therefore, the wisdom of God also said, 'I will send the prophets and the apostles, and some of them you will kill and persecute.' And the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the temple. Yes, I say to you, it shall be required of this generation.

Woe to you, lawyers, for you have taken away the key of knowledge. You did not enter in yourselves, and those who were entering in you hindered.

And now, as He said these things to them, the scribes and the Pharisees began to assail Him vehemently and to cross-examine Him about many things, lying in wait for Him, seeking to catch Him in something that He might say that they might accuse Him.

God, I pray, give us wisdom. This is a challenging text of Scripture that speaks to the heart of the religious. Two thousand years ago, it spoke to the Pharisees and the scribes, but Lord, it can most certainly speak to us because we have the inclination towards religiosity, religion for religion's sake.

So God, I pray that You'd give us wisdom, knowledge, and understanding from the text. But God, would You please give us soft hearts to receive from You? There might be something You want to say to us individually today, so that he who has an ear, let him hear what Your Spirit wants to say.

God, speak to us. My deep desire is that each of us would be right with You, not right with the church, not in good standing with an organization or institution, but right with You. So, God, would You minister to us today? Speak to us as You spoke 2,000 years ago these words. We ask this in Jesus' name. And all those agreed said, Amen. You may be seated.

I'm sure you noticed, as we were going through this text, the word that Jesus repeats. He repeats it six times: "woe." This is one of the words that made people in Jesus' day assume that He might be a prophet because "woe" was one of the favorite words of the prophets, especially the prophet Isaiah. In Isaiah chapter five alone, he uses the word "woe" seven times.

"Woe" is an interesting word. The original word, both in Hebrew and Greek, sounds similar. In Hebrew, it is "hoy." You ever heard "oy vey"? It's the "oy" in "oy vey." Literally, that's what it is. It's kind of an exasperated sigh. It's the same word that comes to your mind when you see something striking and shocking. In our day, maybe you look at the culture around you and just go, "hoy, I have no words." That's kind of what it is. I don't quite know what to say, so I just say "hoy."

It is the word that you use when you have no words and you're in awe at the audacious, tenacious blindness of a sinner. You can see the bridge is out, and they're running headlong towards it. You're just stunned that they can't see that it's out; it's right there. This is exactly what Jesus is expressing when He says that.

Now, the Pharisee—this hyper-religious figure—is what you need to think of when you think of a Pharisee. Let's recognize that there's a certain part of Phariseeism or hyper-religiosity that is respectable because there is a commitment to it. It's not cost-free. There is a commitment to it, like when the person shows up on your doorstep and knocks on that Saturday morning and they want to talk to you from the Watchtower Society or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

You have to at least commend the commitment, and I certainly have before. I've had conversations with some people from the Watchtower Society. I'll never forget a conversation I had. They don't come to my door anymore for some reason; I don't understand why. But I remember years ago when they came to my door and had a conversation with a few very nice, lovely ladies on a Saturday morning from the Watchtower Society.

At one point, I asked them, "Are you doing this honestly for you, or are you doing it for me?" There’s a certain part of the good works that they're doing for themselves. It's like, "Are you doing this because you're genuinely concerned for my eternal future, or are you doing this because you're genuinely concerned that you may not be good enough?" That’s the compulsion, the push behind so many religious efforts. Some of you came from a background like that, where the religious service, ritual, or mass made you feel the compulsion: "I must do this because if I don't, then I'm not right. I'm not where I ought to be."

As I said, there's a part of it that's respectable. This Pharisee does a very neighborly thing; he invites Jesus to dinner. This is a nice gesture. The hyper-religious man says, "Jesus, I'd like you to come over to my house for a meal," which was a big deal in the first century. In that culture, it's not just having tacos together. There’s an aspect of breaking bread with someone where you are becoming one with them by partaking of the same thing. There’s a communion, a koinonia, which would be the word used in Greek to describe it.

So, he’s willing to open his home, which is commendable. But they don't even get to appetizers, and he's already judging Jesus in his heart and mind. It says he marveled that Jesus had not first washed his hands before dinner. Some of you right now are thinking, "Oh yeah, Jesus, that's gross. At least use some hand sanitizer or something." But let me disabuse you of that notion because that's not what is happening here.

In first-century Judaism, they would have these stone water pots filled with water that had been taken from a running stream because it could not be standing water. They would use that for ritual purification, and they had very detailed specifications about the amount of water and the way in which you would wash to be ceremonially clean. If you were a committed Pharisee, you were ritualistically focused on doing all the religious things.

Of the law and the tradition, you would do this before every meal. Jesus didn't do it. It's not that he's actually unclean in a physical way; he hasn't done the right and righteous thing that you do as a Jew in the first century. Here he comes to the Pharisee's house, and he's not doing something unhygienic. He's doing something unceremonious. He's not unclean; he's uncouth.

He sits down with the Pharisee, and the Pharisee instantly notices it. For the Pharisee, that's all the confirmation he needs. He's been hearing the rumors. Everybody's spreading the rumors that this guy might be the Messiah. It's his job as a righteous Jewish Pharisee to look into these things. So he says, "Well, I'll have him over to my house. I'll do a Messiah test." The guy fails the test in the first moments.

For this Pharisee, let's call him Bob—though I know that's not a Jewish name—he sees this and instantly knows that this is not the kind of person who would be the Messiah. The Pharisee is shocked, and his shock, his disdain, triggers one of Jesus's great responses. It brings forward the amazing awesomeness of Jesus to me. He's at the Pharisee's house for a meal, and he's already committed one faux pas. Now he's just going to straight call the guy a hypocrite and a fool.

Look at it in verse 39. Then the Lord said to him, "Now you Pharisees make the outside of the cup and the dish clean, but the inward part is full of greed and wickedness. Foolish ones! Did not he who made the outside make the inside also?" Jesus's response to the Pharisee is, "You fool." He's the guest of this man, and he says, "You fool." You do all the right things, and you think that they make you all right, but that's not the case.

This is the challenge with religion for religion's sake. The ritual of religion is not all bad. In fact, we're going to do two ritualistically religious things today. We're going to partake of communion this morning.

We have a baptism this afternoon. You can't get much more ritualistic in religion than communion and baptism. The ritual of religion is not all bad, and some of these practices are actually good. The problem with these practices is that they can create a false sense of goodness in the practitioner because they have done something good.

Communion, baptism, prayer, and confession are all good things. However, doing these good things does not invariably lead to making you good. This is where Phariseeism comes in. The mindset becomes, "I did the good thing; I washed ceremoniously, so I am good, and you did not do it, so therefore you are not good."

This is the amazing thing about religion: it tends to lead to arrogance and judgmentalism. The thought process is that because I did the thing and you didn't, your failure to do the thing shows that I am good and you are bad. This is exactly what is happening in this situation.

The moral mechanics of religion are frequently fertile ground for something called moral licensing. What is moral licensing? It is something you have all experienced. It goes like this: "I went on a walk today, so that second piece of cake is no problem, right?" That's moral licensing. It's all about deposits and withdrawals.

For example, "I went to church, I even gave a tithe, I prayed; therefore, it's okay that I'm being very short and obnoxious with my spouse because I did the good things." The good thing outweighs the bad thing. This is the essence of religion in many ways.

One of the symbols of Islam is the scales. What do the scales represent? At the end, your good works will be tested against your bad works. As long as your good works outweigh your bad works, you're good. This concept is not limited to Islam; it exists in virtually every other human-centered religion.

When you ask someone, "Hey, listen, if you died tonight, do you think you'd go to heaven?" they often respond, "Well, I'm a pretty good person. My good works outweigh my bad works." Thus, we judge the goodness of ourselves based on this scale.

We often judge ourselves by how many good works we do and how many bad works we don't do. We also tend to compare ourselves to others, thinking, "Well, I'm better than that guy." You can always find someone you're better than, and even if you're having a hard time, there's always someone like Hitler to point to. You might say, "Well, there's that guy," or look at Congress and think, "Look at them. I'm great." There's always someone else to compare yourself to, which is where religion can lead into the area of moral licensing.

However, point number one is that moral mechanics do not make me moral. That's something to wrestle with. Doing all the good things doesn't make me good. In fact, you can perform all the moral mechanics and still be quite bad.

I'll never forget when I moved to Germany in 2004. I was on a plane flying there, sitting next to an American serviceman. He asked me, "So, what are you doing?" At the time, I was 24 years old. I replied, "I'm going there to serve at a Bible school." He responded, "Like as a missionary?" I said, "Well, I guess so. You could say that." He then remarked, "Germany doesn't need missionaries. It's a Christian nation." I thought, "Okay."

And you know what? It is a Christian nation. It has a state church, and every single town you pull into has signs for both the Protestant and Catholic churches. Every town has a church, and many of them receive state funding. But you wouldn't know it living there because hardly anyone is actually committed to their faith in Christ. They all identify as Christians, but the moral mechanics don't make you moral.

This raises the first question: If the moral mechanics don't make me moral, then why do them? Why not just sleep in on Sunday, like the people who come to the third service? The amazing thing is that not only do they come to the last service, but they frequently arrive late. Don't tell them I said that; I don't need that kind of trouble.

But seriously, if the moral mechanics don't make me moral, then what's the point? What did Jesus say? Look at verse 42: "Woe to you Pharisees, for you tithe the mint and the rue and all manner of herbs."

You pass by justice and the love of God. Note this; this is the key. These you ought to have done without leaving the others undone. Why do the moral mechanics if they don't make me moral? Well, Jesus says these you ought to have done. There is an aspect of the moral mechanics that you ought to do. There is an ethical imperative. You should do that without leaving the others undone.

However, you should keep in mind point number two: faux religion frustrates Jesus. Religion for religion's sake makes Him mad. Just doing the moral mechanics because you think they are all that needs to be done is not what God wants. In fact, it is very clear. I believe it is in Isaiah chapter 56, somewhere around there, that God says to His people, "Why do you fast?" You are doing the spiritual mechanics of fasting, which, if you've ever fasted, is not easy to do. Yet, at the same time, you are being harsh, vindictive, and judgmental towards other people. There is a gap.

Another way that God expressed this through Isaiah is that you honor Me with your lips, but your hearts are far from Me. So what does He say to the people of Israel 2,800 years ago? He said, "I would rather you not even go to the temple. Just close the doors because it's fake. It's not real. It's just faux religion." You know, like faux wood; it's not real. Faux leather; it's not real. That is not what I want. I would rather you just not even go to the temple because, basically, your fake religion is defiling the holy place, as He says to the people.

Now, He says you ought to have done these things, but religion for religion's sake is not what the Lord wants. The hyper-religious Pharisee was hyper-focused on the minutiae of the customs, the laws, and the traditions, but he had missed the weightier matters of the law. Jesus, giving the same teaching as He does here in Matthew 23, says, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you pay tithe on your mint, your anise, and your cumin, and you have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faith." So what does He say? Yes, you might tithe, and you might tithe on the smallest bits of anything.

And yet, you're not being righteous in your behavior towards people. This thing over here doesn't pay for this over here. The debt is too great for this little thing that you're doing. The religious impulse, that religious gene identified by geneticists in a book 22 years ago, pulls me in the direction of doing good things. It is not bad to do those good, religious, ritualistic things, but not for the goodness of those things; rather, it is to just have the appearance of being good. Jesus says that's not what He is looking for.

Through the prophet Micah, He says, "He has shown you, O man, what is good and what the Lord requires of you: to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God." The devastating reality is this: fake religion promotes fakery and not faithfulness. That's exactly what Jesus is dealing with in this passage.

Look at what He says; it is striking. He says, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like the graves which are not seen, and the men who walk over them are not aware of them." In the first-century Jewish world, they would clearly identify where the graves were so that you could avoid them. If you happened to walk through where a grave was, that would ceremoniously make you unclean, as you came in contact with the dead. People didn't want to do that, so they would clearly mark the graves.

What Jesus is saying is that you, scribes and Pharisees, are like unmarked graves. He is saying you are so bad that your fake religion makes other people who come and follow you unclean without them realizing it. You are leading people in the wrong direction because you are doing these things that appear righteous, but you are not actually righteous. Other people look at you as the role model and think, "I have to do that, I have to follow that," but you are actually leading them astray without realizing that you are making people farther from God rather than closer to God. The fakery of the Pharisees was far worse than they realized.

This is the danger of false religion: the faux righteousness or superficial spirituality does not merely fail to help people; it actually harms them. It leads individuals to a place where they think they are right because they did all the things they were told to do, but those actions are actually pulling them away from God. This is a challenging issue, and we've all seen it. This is why so many times the outside world looks at people who are religious and says, "Oh, the church is full of hypocrites."

Jesus is actually addressing this here. I despise hypocrisy, and I know you do as well. I don't want it to be the mark of my life, but I have to be very honest with you: there have been many times over the years when I felt I was not a very good pastor. You might say, "Oh, no, you're great," but let me explain why I feel this way. I have been around good pastors, the ones who are just so much better at praying and remembering to pray than I am. There are times when I forget to do my devotions. Yes, the pastor does, and I'm not great at it. You can ask my children; you don't have to. I'm not great at family devotions or those things.

However, I have sought to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk in humility. That is what I want to do. I don't think I will get to heaven and Jesus will say, "You know, those family devotions? You could have been a lot better at that." Maybe He will, but I don't think He will. What I do want to hear is, "Well done, good and faithful servant." I want my life to be marked by doing justly, loving mercy, and walking in humility.

One of the things I love about Jesus is that He made the faux righteous really angry. This theme is present throughout the Scriptures. How did He make the faux righteous angry? By being real, by just being normal. You see, He is fully God, but He is also fully man. Real people really liked Jesus, while the faux righteous despised Him. In fact, we see that even at the end of this passage. But notice one other thing that Jesus does here.

In this third woe, which is the third of six, Jesus doesn't just say, "Woe to you, Pharisees." He says, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees." There happens to be a scribe right there who speaks up. The scribe says, "But then one of the lawyers, verse 45, answered and said to him, 'Teacher, by saying these things, you reproach us also.'" It's almost as if he's expecting Jesus to say, "Oh, I beg your pardon, you're right, I shouldn't have lumped you guys in there too." But he doesn't do that. Instead, he says, "Well, now that you bring it up, I got three woes for you too. Woe also to you, lawyers. For you load men down with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one finger."

"Woe to you, for you build the tombs of the prophets whom your fathers killed." Verse 52 continues, "Woe to you, lawyers, for you've taken away the key of knowledge. You did not enter in yourselves, and those who were entering in you hindered."

These are Jesus's three woes for the scribes. These are the guys who wrote down the law. Not only did they write down the law, but they were also experts in the law. What does it mean to be an expert in the law? They would dissect the law, parse it, divide it all up, and then inflate it.

How did they inflate it? Jesus says to them, "Woe to you, lawyers, you make obedience harder than God." How did they do that? They would take this commandment, known as the fourth commandment: "Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy." They would dissect it, parse it, and then inflate it, saying, "Well, here's how you actually do that. You need to make sure that you don't bear too much of a load."

Well, how much is too much? They would specify, "This much is too much." Then they would say, "You need to make sure that you don't go this far on the Sabbath day because that would be too far."

If you go to Israel today, some of the most religiously observant communities have poles outside their community with a wire along the top. It's not a telephone wire or a telegraph wire; it's a wire telling you how far a Sabbath day's journey is. You can only go that far, and if you go beyond that, you've broken the law.

Jesus said, "Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy." That's it. Yet, we see that in Israel, they require the elevator to stop at every second floor because you can't push a button on the Sabbath day, as that would be doing work. I'm not kidding you; that's how it is in Israel. They make obedience harder than God. They memorialize the prophets whom their fathers killed.

You continue to misuse and misunderstand their message. You have locked the door to the understanding of the law, so that you don't even comprehend it, and those who want to understand it cannot. The law, which is an expression of God's nature, is no longer something by which you can comprehend who God is; instead, it has become just a list of rules of do's and don'ts. By doing so, they demonstrate that false religion becomes a barrier and not a bridge.

You would think this hard prophetic message might induce some sort of conviction leading to repentance. I mean, that's what the prophet's aim was. If you read Isaiah, Jeremiah, or Ezekiel, the whole point of their message, as they pronounce woe, is that perhaps by the message, a person might be convicted and repent. That's the response you'd hope for.

So, is that the response from the Pharisees and the scribes? Look at their response in verse 53. As He said these things to them, the scribes and the Pharisees began to assail Him vehemently and to cross-examine Him about many things, lying in wait for Him and seeking to catch Him in something He might say that they might accuse Him. Obviously, that's the wrong response.

But the bigger question is, how should I respond? I am prone, and so are you, to the same religiosity, the same superficial spirituality, the same sort of impulse that says, as I drive home and look at all the people who slept in today, "Well, at least I did my religious service. I went to church. What's wrong with you?"

This is actually where I find that the ritual of religion is a good thing, like the ritual we are going to partake in shortly. We are going to partake of communion. How is it a good thing? Well, communion and baptism, which we will have later on this afternoon, are sacraments. They are really the two sacraments that Protestants observe.

And they're the two institutions or sacraments that Jesus himself instituted. That's a big part of the reason that we observe them. But it's such a good thing. Why is it such a good thing?

Communion reminds me at least of two things. Number one, I did this. His body that was broken, I did that. My sin. He was on that cross. His blood was shed because of me. It wasn't the Romans. It wasn't the Jews. It was your sin and mine. So when I partake of communion, I'm reminded that I did this. This is my body broken for what? For you, for me. This is my blood shed for you. So it reminds me that I did this.

But secondly, it reminds me that I need this. You see, there's no sacrifice, there's no ritual, there's no thing that I can do to undo the debt, to deal with the sin. And so when we come to the bread and the cup, as we do every seventh Sunday here at Cross Connection Church, I'm reminded I did this and I need this.

The same thing is true with baptism. Baptism reminds me that I'm dirty. It reminds me that I need to be clean. It reminds me that I cannot clean myself. And it reminds me that I am only clean by the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. It's not the water of baptism that cleaned me; it's what that water represents. You are buried with Him in baptism and raised as He was raised to newness of life. I'm dirty. I need to be clean. I cannot clean myself. I'm only clean by the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.

That's why these things are so important. They've been called traditionally means of grace. They're not the ends. You came to church on Sunday morning, you partook of the bread and the cup, and you go, "I did it! I partook of the body and blood of Christ."

Yes, I'm good. No, these are not the ends; these are the means. They're a reminder that His body was broken for me and His blood was shed for me. By His stripes, I am healed. He was wounded for my transgressions. The chastisement, the punishment for my peace was upon Him. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

I'm going to invite Anthony to come up here and lead us in another chorus for a moment. As we do, the ushers are going to be coming around to give you the bread and the cup if you don't already have them. In a moment, we will partake together. I encourage you during this moment to remember that this is not just a religious ritual, though it is. It is a reminder: I did this; I need this. Only by His stripes am I healed.

God, thank You. Thank You for the value of what these things point to—not the value of what these things are in their very nature, their ontology, grape juice and a stale cracker—but what they represent, what they point to. Lord, in this moment, I pray that we would recognize Your presence. You are here in this place. Wherever two or more are gathered, there You are in the midst of them. You inhabit the praises of Your people. So I pray that You would stir our hearts to praise You. You are here desiring to commune with us. We are not just fellowshipping with one another; we have communion with You because You have broken down the middle wall that separated us from You. God, we rejoice in that today. Would You stir our hearts to praise You? We ask this in Jesus' name. And all those that agreed said, "Amen." Let's worship.

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11:23, "For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus, on the same night in which He was betrayed, took bread. And when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, 'Take, eat; this is My body, which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of Me.'" Let's partake together. In the same manner, He also took the cup after they had eaten, saying...

This cup is the new covenant in my blood. This do as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. Let's partake together.

Let's stand together. Lord, thank you. As we just sang, you did it all for us. Lord, we stand before you today forgiven, redeemed, and adopted, not because of the greatness of who we are, not for our goodness, nor for the way in which we perform all the rituals, sacrifices, and duties. But because you, who knew no sin, became sin for us, that we might be the righteousness of God in you.

Lord, thank you. We have a new identity in you. If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation. All the old things have passed away; everything has become new. We renounce those hidden evil things of old, Lord, that we might walk before you in righteousness by your grace and by your Spirit. We know there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in you.

Lord, help us to walk after the Spirit. God, thank you for your cleansing blood. Though our sins were as scarlet, you have made us as white as snow. We rejoice in you. We praise you, Jesus. We thank you for your goodness and your grace.

And now may the Lord bless and keep you. May He make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May He lift up His countenance upon you and give you His peace. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of His Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.