Spiritual Blindness

I want to use several verses in this passage. I want to concentrate on verse 16 through 22, but I want to use verses 13 through 22. The passage in chapter 23 is a sharp condemnation that Jesus uses of church leaders, preachers, Sunday school teachers, we would say, deacons, people who come to church every week, a powerful act of condemnation, but it's not something that's new because from the very beginning of the Old Testament, periodically God brought great judgment on his own people. He brought judgment not because of the people themselves, ordinary people, but primarily because of the leaders, people who were seen as spiritual leaders in the church. And here in his conflict with the Pharisees, he brings these issues to light again. Jesus' greatest enemy were church leaders. The most difficult people Jesus had to deal with were church leaders, people who saw themselves as educated about the scriptures, people who saw themselves as spiritual leaders, readers of the Bible, explainers of the Bible, teachers of the Bible. He saw in them the most difficult obstacle he had to do his work. Now we could look at the New Testament and say that's an isolated incident, but it really isn't. It was true in the Old Testament that his most difficult people to deal with were the priests. It was true in the New Testament, and it's true today. But what happens is that people, even though we get active in church and reading the Bible and coming to the kingdom of God, we tend to lose sight of the importance and significance of who God really is in our lives. And in this passage, Jesus is describing the result and consequences of spiritual blindness. Woe unto you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces. You yourself do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. Woe to you, teachers of the law, Pharisees, and you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are. Woe to you, blind guides! You say if anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing, but if anyone swears by the gold in the temple, he's bound by his oath. You blind fools! Which is greater, gold in the temple or the temple that makes the gold sacred? You also say if anyone swears by the altar, it means nothing, but if he swears by the gift on it, he is bound by his oath. You blind men! Which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? Therefore he who swears by the altar swears by it and everything on it, but he who swears by the temple swears by it and by everything who dwells in it, everyone who dwells in it. And he who swears by heaven swears by God's throne and by the one who sits on it. This is the third of three sharp denunciations that Jesus makes. I think it's important to go back and look at these because I think Jesus is sort of explaining why these other two are true. Why is it that people, he says, whenever they come to them, the Pharisees and the leaders, they shut the doors of the kingdom of heaven in their face. Now I don't think anybody in the world would say to someone who comes and say, I'd really like to come to know God and I'd like to learn how to love him, would say, get out of here, I don't want to talk to you. That's not what he means by shutting the door in the face of people who are looking for the kingdom of heaven. He said, you yourselves has not entered it. That's how they closed the door. See his charge against the leadership of the church in his day was that those people themselves were really not surrendered to the authority of God. You enter the kingdom of heaven by saying to God, I give you my life and I surrender everything I am and everything I do to your power and your hand. You never enter the kingdom of heaven apart from that. These religious leaders knew the scriptures. They were active in the church. They did everything in the activities of the church they were supposed to do, but in their minds and their hearts, they were not willing to do whatever God asked of them. Therefore they themselves, even though they were religious leaders, had never really entered the kingdom of heaven. He means by that they were not even followers of God. They were not saved. They were not children of God, even though they were leaders in the church and teachers of the classes. The reason was that they had given something of themselves to God, but not everything. They were willing to do some things for God, but not anything. They were willing to participate in some way, but not in every way God wanted. They had good reasons for it, I'm sure, but they were their reasons, and the choice was between doing what they wanted or what God said they should do, and they had not really surrendered completely to that. So when people came to them asking what they should do to enter the kingdom of heaven, they could only tell them what they themselves were doing. One step short of entrance into the kingdom, learn what the Bible says, learn what God says, learn all the laws of the church, and then do the best you can. Not enough. Why did they do that? They were blind. He said there are people that you'd like to see come into the kingdom of heaven, and you go to any lengths to be able to do it. You travel over the land or sea, wherever they are, to be able to bring them into the kingdom, and then when you do make disciples out of them, they're twice the children of hell that you are. He meant by that that instead of teaching them to surrender to the authority of Almighty God and give everything in their lives to Him, they taught them to become the kind of commitment committed people they were. A partial commitment, a partial surrender, a willingness to do what was convenient or comfortable or what they wanted, something that was in the range of their choices. Never asking them to give everything to the authority of God. So what happened to them was, they said, okay, we're Jewish people, we're followers of God, we're going to make it into the kingdom of heaven, but they weren't. And no one could convince them any differently. If you've ever talked to someone who doesn't go to church, doesn't read the Bible, doesn't live a life which you would recognize in any way a responsibility to God, and you heard them say, yes, I'm saved, I was saved a long time ago, and I know for sure I'm going to heaven, you know the circumstance these people were in. It's very difficult to convince someone who thinks they're saved and going to heaven that they're not. And they may think they're going to heaven because they've been baptized sometime or because they professed faith one time, they went forward into church service or a camp or wherever it was and said, yes, I asked Jesus Christ to come into my life, but they've never really surrendered their will and their emotions and their mind and their heart in obedience to God. Whenever they decide what they're going to do for God, they listen to God and then they listen to themselves and they make the choice based on what they want to do. This is what they did. Now this third charge that Jesus brings I think is sort of a summary to help us understand what's taking place. Why was all this happening? Were they doing it because they were wicked people? No, they weren't. They thought that they were really wonderful servants of God. And why did this happen to them? Jesus starts in verse 16, Woe, you blind guides! You say if anyone swears by the temple, he means nothing, but if anyone swears by the gold in the temple, he's bound by that oath. You blind fools! The word blind the second time. Which is greater, the gold or the temple? That makes the gold sacred. You say if anyone swears by the altar, it means nothing, but if anyone swears by the gift on it, he's bound by that oath. You blind men! Three times he uses that word, blind. He doesn't mean that they have trouble with their eyes in a physical way, that their eyes can't see light or they can't perceive the physical things around them. There is no physical problem with them. He's talking about spiritual blindness. Now you understand if your eye has some kind of problem and you can't see physically, you can't recognize anything. But there are other ways of being blind. Hey, maybe in your marriage you've talked to your husband or wife or your spouse and you discover that they don't see things quite the way you do in terms of values or what ought to be done, and you discover that they're completely blind to seeing the things of the world the way you see them. It's not that they can't see physically, but they just can't recognize things the way you do. They have some kind of a predisposition that causes them to see things in a different way than you see them. And so they look at certain things that are important to them and they ignore certain things that you think are really critical. Both of you trying your very best to make decisions, but you see one thing, they see another. Maybe one of you sees the money it's going to cost and the other sees the need that you have for it, and you have a hard time seeing each other's point of view. Blindness about life. Sometimes it's ignorance, you know, you don't know what that other person sees and you don't understand how they see it. Sometimes it's just focusing on one thing that you want to see. Sometimes it's just because you're not looking very well. Have you ever had anybody in your family who had their glasses up on top of their head running around the house looking for their glasses? They were blind to the reality that the glasses were right here. Why? Because they didn't look in the mirror and they couldn't see them. Spiritual blindness comes for a lot of different reasons. First, it comes because you don't understand or know what the Bible teaches. How can you see something that you've never seen before? You have to see it to be able to see it. And spiritually, you have to know something to be able to see it and understand it. And so if you don't know what the Bible has to say, you're blind to the realities of it. Now these people knew what the Bible had to say. Why were they blind? They were focused on something entirely different than Jesus was focused on. Jesus said very clearly, I only do what the Father tells me to do. I only say what the Father tells me to say. He was focused on the Father first and foremost about everything in the world. He didn't do anything unless he asked the Father, what do you want me to do? He did everything that he knew the Father wanted him to do, even if he didn't want to. All of you remember the story of Jesus, the last days of his life in the Garden of Gethsemane? He knew he was supposed to face the cross, the painful, agonizing death on the cross. He didn't want to. It was going to be painful. It was the end of his life. He asked Father, is there any way that I can avoid this? He didn't want to do what the Father wanted him to do, but then he prayed the prayer that's most difficult for us to do. Not my will, but yours be done. Jesus was aware of what the Father wanted. He kept his focus on what the Father wanted, whether he wanted it or not, whether it was painful to him or not, or whether it was difficult for him or not. What does my Father want? The Pharisees were focused completely on the teachings of human instructors about the law. They were experts in the Talmud, which was the instructions that rabbis give about what the law means. They were experts about that. Thousands of pages of instructions that the rabbis had passed down about all kinds of things that were interpreting the scriptures given by Moses. That's what they looked at. And so when they were deciding about their religious life, their first question was not, What does God say? But their first question was, What do the rabbis teach? That's where they went wrong. For you see, the instructions of men, as valuable as they might be, are not acceptable unless they consign with the teachings of God himself. And so because they were so focused on the instructions of men, what men believed or taught or said, they were not focused on what God was saying to them. It was like their glasses were on their forehead. They were looking everywhere except in the mirror. And so they were blind guides. When someone came to them and said, We have a deal to make, and it's with a Gentile guy. You know, on this Jesus Day, they didn't have courts like we do, and memograph machines like Xerox machines like we have, and they make a contract and you sign it, and if you don't fulfill the contract to buy the car, they can come and take you to court and get the money from you. Instead, they made a promise, a vow. I'll buy that 20 acres of land from you, and I promise to pay for it as God is my witness. In the name of God, I agree to purchase this ground. Now they believed in the power of God, all kinds of gods, even pagans believed in it. And they believed if you did anything to make God mad, you would pay for it. So a Jewish man who was going to say to someone, I'll buy your ground, and said, In the name of God, I make this deal with you, believed that if he didn't, God would punish him for it. You see, what he'd made God was his cosigner, and now God is his cosigner, was responsible for enforcing the contract, and so he would never make a promise that he would back out on because he knew that God would make him pay. How can we deal with somebody and get around it? Well you could say to them, the rabbis taught, I promise to pay for that ground, and I swear on the temple that I'll pay for it. But they said, you don't have to worry about that. Anyone who swears by the temple, it means nothing. God's not going to hold you accountable for that. I don't know quite why they thought that way. A lot of suggestions I've read that people say as to why they did. One is, you can't foreclose on the temple. I mean, you're going to buy 20 acres of ground, and you don't, you say, well, I'm okay, I'm going to go repossess the temple. You couldn't very well do that. Now the money you're going to give when you go to the temple, you could take the guy's money that he was going to give as an offering to the temple. So maybe it was because you could foreclose on one and not possess the other, or you could possess one and not the other, I don't know. But what they did was they said, you can make a deal and welch on it and still not get in trouble with God. They were teaching, you see, that God would overlook your lying. He would overlook you telling something and not really doing it. Does God ever say that anywhere in the Bible? No. But they were focused on trying to do something that would help this person, human being, be able to do something they wanted to do and still not get in trouble with God. They were trying to get around God, trying to cut God out of the picture as if He didn't matter, the leader of the church. You couldn't count on His word, you see. What they looked at was not what does God want, but what do people want to do. And so we're going to shape everything we can to let people do what they want to do. Blind guides, you're telling people things that are going to get them in trouble and when they try to lie to God, all hell will break loose in their life. You're blind to the spiritual realities of life. Blind guides, telling them the wrong things. Blind fools, he says. Which is greater, the gold of the temple or that which makes the gold sacred? The altar or that which makes the gift on the altar sacred? They were blind fools. Now, when the Bible uses the word fool, it means someone who uses their own judgment as opposed to using the judgment and teachings of God. A fool is a person who looks at a situation and says, what do I think I should do? The only reference he has is what he thinks in his mind is the right choice. And so he makes it. He's a fool because he doesn't stop to say, what advice and direction does God give me about this? So instead of depending on God, he depends on his human reasoning ability. He depends on the influence of people around him. He depends on what other people think is right. And he makes foolish decisions that end in destructive events in their life. You, church leaders, who encourage people to do what they want to do or feel like doing or what's comfortable for them, instead of demanding what the gospel says, are fools because you're keeping them, you're allowing them and encouraging them to make decisions that are contrary to what God says. And you yourself are foolish because you're encouraging people to be dishonest with God. Leaders in the church, foolish. How could we be foolish? Still believe in God. You can encourage people to make a commitment to Christ and say, I let Jesus into my life. I want God to save me or I want him to help me. And never help them know that the only way they enter the kingdom of heaven is a lifelong commitment to live in obedience to Christ. Being a follower of Jesus Christ is more than one day making a decision to do something good. It's a lifelong commitment. How can you know what God wants you to do unless you read the Bible to find out who he is? Unless you listen to him as you hear teachers who are gifted to be able to teach and preachers who are gifted to be able to preach, explain to you what the truth of God is about. You end up living your life making the choices based on the moment of what feels right at this moment or what looks good to me or what is everyone else around me doing. Haven't you heard a lot of people justify behavior that's taught in the Bible to be wrong because everyone else is doing it? Decisions made by fools and it doesn't stop at the church door. We can be impressed to do the things here that make it comfortable for people. We can encourage commitments that are not total or complete. We can tell people that they're saved when their lifestyle and their nature and their character do not declare it. There are millions of Southern Baptist people who have stood in a church and said, Jesus Christ is my Lord. Some churches don't even ask them to do that. They just ask them to come into the waters and say, I baptize you in the name of Jesus Christ and they put them in the water and bring them up. You can look at them and you can see that they don't read the Bible and they don't pray and their lifestyle does not reflect the integrity of God himself. And yet when you ask them, they'll tell you that they're saved and they're sure that they're going to heaven. We multiply that by all the other churches in this country where people think they're saved because one time when they were a baby, they were baptized because they had membership in a church somewhere. But when you look at their lifestyle, you know that the choices they're making are not controlled by God. And you know that Jesus Christ is not their Lord. They're not asking God, what do you want me to do with my time? What do you want me to do with my money? What do you want me to do with my relationships with people? They're not asking those questions. Jesus Christ is not Lord for them. And yet they're sure that they're going to go to heaven. You can see in reports that are made about surveys that are taken that 80% of the people I've seen some of those in our country believe they're going to heaven. Any given Sunday, 25% of them are in church, 75% are not. How do you get there? Spiritual blindness. Not on the part of people who come to say, I give my life to Jesus Christ, but on the part of those of us who are helping them learn what it means. Satisfied to count the baptisms instead of the disciples. How many people do we have who've come to say Jesus Christ is the Lord, who still come to Sunday school, who still come to preaching services, who still attend the church, but who think on the morning Jesus comes, he's going to say, well done, my good and faithful servant. They don't count that faithfulness as a requirement. Why is it? Because in our spiritual blindness, we have not taught them what Jesus required as necessary. You must enter the kingdom of heaven completely surrendered to the authority of God. The Pharisees were in the same spot. We just do something different. We don't talk about the gift on the altar, we don't talk about making a promise about the church building, but we do the same thing because we have not taught them the importance of complete dedication and surrender of all of your life to the authority of God. So when Ross made the request this morning, he listened to it, and did you say, what do you want me to do, God? And if the thought came to you, well, I could do that, and then the thought came to you, but I don't want to, it's a lot of trouble, what did you listen to? This is where it's at. God tells us what he wants us to do. Not a one of us should ever be doing anything that God hadn't told us to do, teach a Sunday school class, pick up these children, go visit your neighbor, pray for someone. God's authority is our final and first source of life and direction and choices. These were fools because they had fallen away from that and were making instead decisions based on what they'd heard from their previous teachers, not from themselves. Jesus ends this condemnation saying to the church people, you blind men, which is greater, the gift of the altar, which makes the gift sacred, therefore he who swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it. He who swears by the temple swears by it and the one who dwells in it. He who swears by heaven swears by God's throne and the one who sits on it. Every promise or vow that you make if you say you're a follower of God is a sacred vow. That's why Jesus warned his disciples, be careful what you promise to God. If you say to God, yes, I'm going to join the visitation teams, God holds you accountable for doing it. If you say, okay, I'll pray for you, God holds you accountable for doing it. If you say, yes, I'll teach that class, God holds you accountable for doing it because you've made a promise to God. If you vow to give your children to God, that's a serious promise that you make. God holds you accountable for it. If you say to God, Jesus Christ is my Lord, that means that he's in charge of your life. He will hold you accountable for that. You might say Jesus Christ is your Lord, but to live as if it's not true, puts you in the same position that Jesus was talking about with these people. Does the Bible suggest that perfection is what's required? No. It requires that intention be consistent. I intend to let Jesus Christ control my life. Will I succeed at that at all times as a disciple of his? No. But my intention, even in failure, is to be obedient to God because it is the primary commitment of my life. It is the heart that God examines. He knows the difference between your failure to obey because of weakness and rebellion. He knows the difference between the failure of you to obey because of immaturity and rebellion. He knows the difference between your failure to obey him because you're doing what you want instead of what he wants. He knows those differences. And he looks inside of us to see if we're fools or if we're followers. You can't tell about me and I can't tell about you, but God knows about both of us. And what he says to the people who are church people, not talking about people who are not here, that are not in church, he's talking about us. When you live any way except making me the Lord of all that you do, you're a fool headed for judgment. Would you bow your heads, please, for a moment? Jesus records these words and leaves them for us as a guide. It's easy to look at the Pharisees and say, well, those people were sorry guys. They were just people like us. They were deeply committed to religion, deeply committed to their church, deeply committed to do religious things, but they were without the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And they were so blind that they could not see it. What hope did they have? It was because one day Jesus said to them, my friend, you're blind. That was their warning. They had a chance that day to say to him, you're right, Jesus. We never really have said to God, we'll do all that you want. You and I have that same thing. You have no excuse to stand before God and say, well, I didn't know. If in the middle of this God has said to you, you know, you're not doing the things you promised me you should do. You don't read the Bible like you should. You're not talking to me about the decisions you're making. You're not faithful in your job and work at the church that I've given you. You're just doing what you want to do. He's told you that today. He's trying to warn you. Maybe it's time for you to say to God, I strayed away from the promise I've made, but today is a new day for me, beginning right now, Lord, you are the Lord of everything in my life, where I'll go to church, when I go to church, what I'll do at church, and what I do when I'm not at church. All of it is yours. If you confess that and ask for forgiveness, the cleansing of your heart will be immediate and the future of your life will be changed. Lord Jesus, no one in this world can tell me whether I'm your servant except you. I ask if there's anything in my life that's outside of your authority, control, that you show me that. I ask if there's any more of my life that is not yielded to you, that you would take it. I ask that you would prompt every person here to say the same thing. And in this moment of invitation, when you invite us to do what you've asked of us, give us submissive hearts, ready and willing to be wise instead of foolish. In Jesus' name we ask this, amen. We're going to sing this invitation hymn that's on the screen, I Surrender All. It's exactly the message that Jesus wanted these people to do and to say. Now maybe God's told you something in your life not surrendered to him. You sing this song as a commitment of your life to him. Maybe he's told you that you need to come and publicly tell people that you're renewing your vows of devotion to God. Maybe you need to come and accept Jesus Christ as your Lord publicly and openly, follow him in baptism. Maybe you need to come and say, this is where God wants me as a member of this church. You alone know what God wants, you and God. The fool knows that and doesn't do it. The wise person says, yes, Lord. Would you stand please? This is the time God gives you to answer him. I surrender all. I surrender all. I surrender all. I surrender all. All to thee, my blessed Savior, I surrender all. All to Jesus, I surrender. Make me, Savior, holy thine. Let me feel the Holy Spirit. Truly know that thou art mine. I surrender all. I surrender all. All to thee, my blessed Savior, I surrender all. All to Jesus, I surrender. Lord, I give myself to thee. Fill me with thy love and power. Let thy blessing fall on me. I surrender all. I surrender all. All to thee, my blessed Savior, I surrender all. Thank you, Lord, that we can sing these words and have our hearts filled with the joy of that surrender. I urge you, Father, if any one of us could not sing that, or if we were trying to sing it and you kept reminding us of parts of our lives that were not yet yours, that you wouldn't give up on us. Hold before us the necessity of complete obedience and submission to you, that we might experience the fullness of your kingdom and the completeness of your presence with us. We leave to live in this world as changed people, witnesses daily to what it means to follow our Lord Jesus Christ completely. It's in the name of him that we make this vow. Amen. Walking in sunlight all of my journey Over the mountain, through the deep vale Jesus has said I'll never forsake thee Promise divine that never can fail Heavenly sunlight, heavenly sunlight I am rejoicing, singing his praises, Jesus is mine.