Humble Yourself (Matthew 23:1-12) Follow Me: Learning to Live the Commands of Jesus Southern Hills Baptist Church October 20, 2013 INTRODUCTION It is so good to be back with everyone this week. We had a great time in Missouri with our previous church home in Ozark, MO, Sonrise Baptist Church. As many of you know they help support us on a monthly basis financially and they are faithful to pray for us. As we were there we had the opportunity to share all that God is doing here as He is building us up as a church family and changing us through the Gospel of His beloved Son. I certainly want to take a moment and thank you for your kindness towards us as we were traveling. This past Sunday night we were spending some time with some old friends and were catching them up on all that is going on down here. And as we were sitting talking with them my phone started to erupt with text messages. I might have ignored it since we were in the middle of a conversation, but since text after text started to come in I thought I should check it to make sure everything was ok and it was many of you. It was a cool moment to have been talking to others about the church family that God had blessed us with and then all of the sudden many of them were reaching out with kind words of encouragement. It was a cool moment. Thank you for kindly loving us! Series Recap Well enough about me, let’s turn our focus to our series. 2 weeks ago we started a new series called, “Follow Me: Learning to Live the Commands of Christ.” We have been taking a closer look at many of the commands that Jesus gave His disciples b/c, as you will remember, right before Jesus ascended back into Heaven some of the final instruction He gave His followers was to learn to live all that He had commanded. So far we have considered the command to die to ourselves as we are to deny ourselves, take up our crosses and follow Jesus. Last week we considered what it means to Abide in Jesus and depend on Him for all of who we are and all we need. True Greatness In the command we are considering this week Jesus tells us how we can be truly great. I will put the Question out for you to consider, how can someone in our culture today be truly great? What kind of people do we consider truly great? If I asked you to name some people who had achieved true greatness what names would come to the top of your mind? Would you be thinking of billionaires? Famous actors? Star athletes? Well known inventors? People in positions of great power? People who are popular and generally loved? TV personalities? As is usual Jesus defined greatness far differently than the world around Him and in our passage tonight He examines some of the people in His culture that the Jews considered to be great and then what He and God consider to be great. CONTEXT Let me just Quickly share the context of our passage as it will set the stage for what we are to learn tonight. In Matthew 22, Jesus had just had a number of interactions with the religious leadership of the day. He had spent a lot of time talking to the Pharisees. Just as a refresher the Pharisees were Jews who very seriously attempted to live out the law of the Old Testament. While there were a few different religious groups within the Jewish people the Pharisees were the group that primarily led in spiritual and religious matters. In Matthew 22 the Pharisees approach Jesus a number of times and ask Him Questions they believe will either stump Him or get Him to say something that will get Him in trouble. At this point the Pharisees were interested in getting rid of Jesus, even to the point of taking His life and so they were looking for any excuse. After a number of these public interactions and conversations Jesus begins to talk to His disciples and the crowd about the Pharisees and the kind of leadership they provide. In Matthew 23 we actually find the final public address that Jesus gives before His death. What does He share in His final public address? He speaks of what true greatness and true leadership look like. This is an important address. Jesus knows His time leading the disciples and speaking to the crowds is coming to a close. He wants to prepare His disciples to be the kind of leaders that will be able to take His Gospel out to the world. The problem is that most of the examples of leadership in the Jewish culture were very flawed. The great flaw in this leadership was that of pride. In effort to prepare His disciples to go out and be leaders with the Gospel and prepare the crowd in knowing what kind of leadership was truly great and worthy of being followed Jesus shares with us a portrait of pride as seen in the lives of the Pharisees and then gives a true guide to greatness. Let’s start by reading our passage… Matthew 23:1-12 1 Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, 2 "The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat, 3 so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice. 4 They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. 5 They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, 6 and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues 7 and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others. 8 But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. 9 And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. 10 Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ. 11 The greatest among you shall be your servant. 12 Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. So what we see here in verse 1 is that Jesus addresses His disciples and the crowd. Remember this is the last time before His death. What we see in verses 2-7 is Jesus showing us a portrait of pride in the leadership of the Pharisees. Pharisees. Before we dig into these verses and look at the failings of the Pharisees let me Quickly mention that Jesus is generalizing here. He is certainly speaking of the Pharisees in His presence who had been Questioning Him in hopes that He would slip up in the previous chapter. We do have recordings in the Bible though of Pharisees who were learners and who did come to faith in Jesus. I say this b/c the Pharisees are often viewed as the bad guy of the Gospel accounts and that is b/c often they are, but this does not mean that all of the Pharisees held these Qualities, unfortunately there are many who did. So with that said, let’s jump into our text by taking a look at the Portrait of Pride that Jesus shares in verses 2-7. PORTRAIT OF PRIDE (vs. 2-7) As Jesus examines the leadership of the Pharisees there is one glaring fault that they have… pride. As we walk through these verses we can see how pride has infected all that they say, do and want to be known for. As Jesus paints this portrait of pride from the lives of the Pharisees the first place we see it is in their words… In Words (vs. 2-4) Moses’ Seat. We see this in verses 2-4. Jesus states that the Scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat. This was not a physical seat, but a way of communicating that they have taken up the authority of Moses and teach the law with that authority. This was certainly the case as we mentioned before. The Pharisees and the Scribes, who were those educated in the law, were the authoritative teachers of the law in Jesus’ day. ObeY the Law. Interestingly, Jesus does not tell His disciples to blow off everything they say, rather He tells His disciples and the crowd to listen to their teaching of the law and obey it. While the Pharisees and Scribes had a lot of problems something they were good at was studying and teaching the law. They often took it too far, but they did strive to be honest with it for the most part. HeavY Burdens. The warning Jesus gives isn’t around what they teach, it is around how they live as leaders. You see the problem the Pharisees had is that they did not live what they taught. Jesus describes t his further in verse 4 when He says that they loaded people up with heavy burdens that were hard to bear. The word picture that Jesus uses here envisions a servant who is having his arms loaded up with things to carry and the load keeps getting heavier and heavier and even more awkward to carry.