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Truth and false religion
This site describes in detail the conflict between our Lord Jesus Christ and the priesthood in ancient Israel, it's the conflict between good and evil, between truth and false religions.
You will understand why Jesus call them sons of hell.
One of the real paradoxes of religion is this: that those who are the greatest enemies of God are those who are the most religious.
One would assume that the more religious you are the closer to God you are; the more religious you are the more favorable to God you are; the more religious you are the more God would approve of you. But just the opposite is true.
The archenemy of God is false religion. The most vile and violent enemies of God are those who reject His truth and substitute anything else. Those who will suffer the severest eternal punishment in hell are those who have rejected the truth and embraced a false religion.
In fact the most overt and aggressive mockers of God and of Christ are religious. Anyone who denies the gospel and the God of Scripture and the Christ of Scripture is the archenemy of God and has taken his place with Satan in the propagation of false religions for the purpose of attacking God and the advance of His kingdom.
It is an ironic reality that those who are the recognized representatives of God are actually filled with the greatest contempt for God and will receive from God the severest judgment.
False religion and false teachers stand at the head of the parade of the anti-God force in this world. They are victims and participants in systems of religion designed by Satan, who is disguised as an angels of light... an angel of light and who is aided and abetted by demons who seduce people with damning doctrine; religion then that people propagate for the purposes of Satan and not at all for the purposes of God.
Sad to say, but true, that the religious leaders of Israel fit into this category.
The Pharisees were the religious leaders of Israel. They had the people. The temple practices were operated by the Sadducees but they were sort of confined. They were the religious liberals, didn't have strong influence with the people, basically they ran the power structure in Jerusalem.
But the leaders of the people in the synagogue scattered throughout the nation Israel were the Pharisees. It
was their system that was basically propagated, believed and embraced by the populace.
They are, throughout the life and ministry of Jesus, clearly to be seen as His archenemies. They are
the instruments of Satan all the way through. This is crystal clear.
There is a movement gaining momentum right now, even as we speak, in evangelism, that wants us to embrace the Jews as they are under some kind of special covenant which God has within that does not require that they believe in Jesus Christ. This is being aggressively propagated on television, TBN, other television stations, books, conferences that we need to embrace the Jews; we need to embrace Israel because Israel is the kingdom of God. Israel has a special, unique covenantwith God that does not require that they acknowledge Jesus as Messiah, as God, as Lord, and as Savior.
This is in clear opposition to the clear conflict that existed in the New Testament between Jesus and the Jews who were the most religious of all Jews, namely the Pharisees; the most studious of the law, the most fastidious in interpreting the law and applying the law, the most relentless in giving attention to the law, and the most eager to observe the ceremonies and the rituals that indicated that they were worshiping the true God.
But as time goes on in the ministry of Jesus their hostility grows and grows and grows until the last months of Jesus' life are just a non-stop conflict between the Pharisees and the Son of God.
Luke 16 (KJV):
13 No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
14 And the Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all these things: and they derided him.
15 And he said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.
16 The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it.
17 And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail.
18 Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery: and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery.
They were scoffing at Him; curiosity once, hostility, kind of a mixture.
There was a period of time when some of the Pharisees were inviting Jesus to their homes because they wanted to ask Him questions and they wanted to find out about what He was teaching, and they wanted to know about Him. We saw Jesus at the home of a Pharisee in chapter 7, again at the home of a Pharisee in chapter 11, again at the home of a Pharisee in chapter 14.
Here they are again always surrounding Jesus but by now there are no more amiable meetings. There are no more lunches. There are no more dinners with Pharisees. He no longer is going to be an invited guest. There is never again a record in the gospel of Luke that there was a meeting between Jesus and the Pharisees in one of their homes.
Because what started out as curiosity, what began to develop into animosity because Jesus was saying things contrary to their religion and calling the genuineness of their commitments into question... What began to turn into hostility eventually became anger.
It eventually became a plot to kill Jesus, which is already escalating and moving Him toward the cross and this is all being orchestrated by the leaders of religion in Israel, the leaders of Judaism.
We see something of the escalation of their attitude because in chapter 15, verse 2, it says, "They began to grumble." They were complaining about Jesus openly, complaining about His behavior publicly.
They were convinced in their minds that He was not from God because what He said was different than what they said. It was a clear-cut contest and this would be the bottom line: Who speaks for God? Is it Jesus or is it the Pharisees. That is the contest.
And because of what Jesus said was an attack on what the Pharisees taught, it was clear that they did not agree. One was right and one was not. Who was it? Was it Jesus or was it the Pharisees?
Well the Pharisees came to the conclusion that it was they who were speaking the truth and it was Jesus who was the imposter. It was Jesus who was against the law, who was relaxing the law, who was, in a sense, defaming the law, depreciating and diminishing the law by spending His time with lawbreakers such as sinners and tax collectors.
They had come to that conclusion and it was now time to get the people on board with their conclusion, and so openly, for example earlier in the gospel of Luke, people would say, "He does what He does by the power of Satan."
They didn't want to keep it in. They wanted to shout it so that everybody who was inclined to be attracted toward Jesus would understand that this was a horrific decision to make and a shameful thing because Jesus was satanic.
So this lifting up their nose and treating Jesus with mocking scorn, sneering disdain, and public disgust is now going to be the pattern. They've worked through all the other things and they've reached this point where they just openly, incessantly deride and mock Him.
And they do it publicly for the purpose of deterring anyone who might regard Him as the Messiah or might regard Him as a prophet from God or might believe that He is, in fact, the true interpreter of God's law.
Our Lord's archenemies then, our Lord's most hostile antagonists are the self-appointed guardians of the true religion of Judaism. False religion is always the most severe hater of God, always.
They denounce Jesus publicly because they reject what He is and what He says, and all false religion that will not accept the true saving gospel of Jesus Christ does exactly the same thing. They may not do it publicly. They may not do it openly.
Most of them will if you press the issue of the true gospel and true Christianity against a false religionist, they will finally come to the place where they will treat the truth with scorn. But whether they do or not, anybody who takes a position that does not acknowledge the truth of Jesus Christ and the gospel is the enemy of God.
And as a purveyor of false religion becomes the archenemy of God because as is said of the Pharisees, "Not
only are you sons of hell," Matthew 23, "but everybody you convert becomes twice the son of hell that you are."
Who would have ever thought that the Pharisees, the guardians of Old Testament truth, they thought, the gatekeepers of Judaism, the representatives of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who would have thought that they would be not sons of God, not sons of the kingdom, not sons of heaven, but called by Jesus sons of hell?
There's no truce to be made with false religion in any way, shape, or form whatsoever. It is a contest: Who speaks for God? Is it Jesus or is it the Jews? Is it Jesus or is it anyone who says something different than Jesus? Is it Jesus or anyone who has another religion and another gospel or another version of the gospel?
And by the way, that's why in Galatians 1, the apostle Paul says,
"If anyone preaches any other gospel let him be cursed, damned, consigned to hell."
The conflict is the issue here, the conflict continues to be the issue until finally Jesus is executed and on the surface it looks like the Pharisees won the contest.
Not so, however, as we well know when they face their eternal judgment. Jesus is not abrogating the law as they accused Him of. Jesus is not relaxing the law as they accused Him of. Jesus is not inventing some new religion as they accused Him of. He is not condoning sin and sinners as they said He did.
He was upholding the law, clarifying the law, restating the law, reaffirming the law, if anything expanding the law, as He did in the Sermon on the Mount when He said, “You’ve heard it said this, but I say unto you," and he made the law even more stringent and more demanding than the Pharisees were ever willing to make it.
They were reductionists of the law. They had to reduce the law because they had to be able to keep it to earn their salvation and so they had to twist it and turn it into something that was manageable.
Jesus came and pushed the parameters of the law back to where they began and even extended them beyond what people did to the way people thought. But the contest is the same. Who speaks the truth? Does Jesus or anybody else who says anything other than what Jesus said?
And Jesus didn't say things that were His own, although that would have been fine since He was God, but in the incarnation, submitting Himself to the Father, He said, "I speak only to you that which my Father speaks." So either you receive the truth of God through Christ or you oppose that truth. And there is no middle ground.
Focus on that little phrase, “they were mocking at Him,” scoffing at Him, turning up their nose at Him, because this text is going to uncover the motives for that. What's behind it?
There really is a pathology in this text. There is an underlying assessment here of the nature of these Pharisees, and of course of anybody who is in a false religious system.
Why did they scoff at the truth? Why did they sneer at the truth? Why do they mock at the truth?
Why do they laugh at the truth? Why do they deride the truth?
And by the way, even today evangelicals want to embrace, many evangelicals under that rubric want to embrace everybody who believes anything and nothing and something and throw their arms around whoever, whatever view, if you're just willing to talk about Jesus at all we'll get you in, and even if you never heard of Jesus we'll get you in somehow. We're all going to be in there.
That's sort of the mindset now. We don't want to be divisive. The only way you can perpetrate that, see the only way you can perpetuate that, the only way you can make that sort of unity work is to never say anything that offends all the people who are outside the truth, because if you start speaking the truth in that context they're going to sneer at you, they're going to mock and they're going to scorn.
And so in order to make that work, on the broad level, whether it's to create a cultural morality, or
whether it's just to be a nice guy and be loving and not divisive, in the end you pull out everything
that could produce any kind of resistance. That's the mentality we're dealing with today.
And it's no wonder, when Islam, homosexuals and feminists step by step begin to dominate your church.
But Jesus goes right to the core of this issue and obviously will not tolerate anything other than the truth and does not wish us to either, and so He uncovers the motives for people in false religion.
Motive number one: Why do people scoff at the truth? Why do people sneer at the truth? Why do they reject the truth?
Well very clearly here the first thing we can say about it is that it's against the inclinations of their own heart. It's against the inclinations of their own heart. Clearly, look at it.
They were motivated by greed. They were motivated by avarice.
That's why Judas became an apostle, a disciple. He got in because he wanted money and when he was one of the disciples he manipulated himself to get into the place where he became the treasurer and he held the bag and then he was beginning to become very concerned when money was going out of the bag and he made a point of that, you remember. And he only made the point, it says, because he held the bag and it was depleting his potential income down the road.
He was in it because he thought Jesus would bring the kingdom and he would be wealthy and rich and prominent in it. Pretty typical; he was moved by avarice.
All false teachers function like that. They operate thinking that godliness is a means of great gain, 1 Timothy 6:5 and 6. They think that religion will make them rich, or maybe not filthy rich, but religion is a good way to make them comfortable. Religion will provide their money. You get into it, you use people, you abuse people, in order to satisfy your own needs, to meet your own needs.
This is absolutely typical of false teachers. That is why anyone who is to serve in spiritual leadership is warned against it.
In 2 Timothy 3:2, "Men will be lovers of self, lovers of money." It just goes with being fallen. You're going to want what you want to satisfy your own needs and your own comforts. Opposed to that, if you're going to be an elder or a spiritual leader in the church, 1 Timothy 3:3, "You must be free from the love of money." Titus 1:7, "You must be free from the love of money." First Peter 5:2, "You must not minister for sorted gain." Jude 16, the same thing. You don't do what you do in order to take financial advantage of people.
This is a corrupt motive that was characteristic of the Pharisees. And there it is. They were lovers of money. They were in it for money. That means their motives were impure. It wasn't for God; it wasn't even for the welfare and the benefit of people, they were dishonorable, they were not to be trusted, they only pretended to love God, they only pretended to love people, they were in it to get what they could get out of it. They were devourers of people.
They were devourers of widow's houses. They took advantage of the poor. They only gave as a dramatic show, not sacrificially, not out of their own heart.
Even when their parents were destitute rather than give their parents what the Old Testament required they would say, "Oh it's korban, it's korban, it's korban,” which is a way of saying it's devoted to God, I pledged it to God, I can't give it to my parents.
So they would let their parents suffer and not help them. This is old stuff. Jeremiah 6:13, "Everyone is greedy for gain, from the prophet to the priest, everyone deals falsely." Verse 14: “Saying, ‘peace, peace,’ but there is no peace."
Why did they say, “Peace, peace”? Because that's the message people will pay to hear.
If that's all you've got to say people will pay. You look at television, you see those stadiums filled with all those people and you listen to those guys that are talking and you say, "Why are they there?" Why are they there? They don't say anything. What they do say is how you can feel good, how you can be prosperous, how you can think good about yourself, how you can have a happy life.
They say peace, peace, peace, peace, and people will pile into hear that. But the motive, the underlying motive is wrong. It's warped, and it's for their own sake.
We could say point number one is they operate out of impure motives; they operate out of corrupt, self-aggrandizing motives.
Secondly, then: Because of this they are antagonistic to God's demands. They're antagonistic to God's demands.
And this is kind of what we've been mentioning already. There they are listening. And what triggers this scoffing, what triggers this outburst, which is very public here? They're scoffing at Him publicly, He hears them and everybody hears them. What triggers it is what He says in the prior thirteen verses. They were listening to Him and what He was saying was you need to use your money for the purchase of friends for eternity.
You need to use your money to win friends for eternity. You need to invest in the kingdom of God, which would be to give your money to spiritual enterprises. You need to be faithful with using the little that you have and using it to the glory of God and then God will reward you and give you much.
You need to love God, not money. You need to serve God, not money. It's pretty straight stuff, really straight stuff.
And this indicts them because they were lovers of money. Don't think for a minute that corrupt people don't know they're corrupt.
Even saved people know they're corrupt. It's all an illusion. People know their own hearts.
The apostle Paul says, "Who knows what's in a man except the spirit of the man."
People know their hearts.
And when Jesus was telling them to do with their money things that advance the kingdom of God they did not like what He was saying because they were in their religious operation for money. And it was money to come to them not to go to somebody else. The only money they gave is what they did publicly to put on display their hypocrisy.
So the Lord was teaching things they didn't want to hear. And the response is ridicule, the response is scorn, the response is an all-out attack on the truth.
This is a very important principle, folks, mark it. You can always mark it. Anytime you see an aggressive reaction to what the word of God demands, you know you're dealing with false people, because they have no receptivity to the truth.
They have no capacity. They are blind, they are dead.
"The natural man understands not the things of God,” 1 Corinthians 2:14.
He can't know them, he can't understand them. Even the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness. It is an offense to them. It is a stumbling block to them, to preach the word of the living God, to preach the truth. It offends them.
In John chapter 3, for example, is the best and most core illustration of this. In John chapter 3, Jesus says very simply,
"Light has come into the world," verse 19, "and men love the darkness rather than the light for their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light; doesn't come to the light lest his deeds should be exposed. But He who practices the truth comes to the light that his deeds may be manifest as having been wrought of God."
Somebody who belongs to God, somebody who has the life of God in them, someone who is truly God's is going to hear the truth, embrace the truth, love the truth, run to the truth and when you preach the truth and it raises hostility and anger and animosity, you know you have just brought the light shining on the darkness and you've got a bug looking for a rock to crawl under to get away from the light.
Very religious, but when the light went on they hated the light because their deeds are evil. They resent it. That's false religion.
That's the only way you can make an alliance with people who have false gospels and false religions, the only way you can find a way to get along with them is to make sure that the light is turned off. You just dim the revelation of God. They didn't want to accept what Jesus said. They weren't allowing that conviction to do its work in their hearts.
They had no interest in using their money for purposes that Jesus brought to their attention. The simple principle is false teachers have no ability to respond to the word of the Lord. They're antagonistic to the truth.
The point is there's two kinds of religious house. There's a house that has a foundation and a house that doesn't and the foundation is hearing and obeying the word.
The Jews had built a religious house but they rejected the word. They didn't' hear it, they didn't believe it, they didn't act on it and the torrent is judgment and when judgment comes their house of cards will collapse. It's all about who hears and acts, not just professors, but possessors, not just hearers, James says, but doers of the word.
John chapter 11:47, interesting passage:
"Then the chief priests and Pharisees convened a council and were saying, 'What are we doing? For this man is
performing many signs. If we let Him go on like this, all men will believe in Him.'"
That was the problem. They couldn't let Him keep doing this or everybody would...too convincing. Too many miracles, and then what's going to happen? “The Romans will come and take away our place and our nation." It will affect us economically. We'll become a vassal state. We'll all get turned into Roman slaves. "And a certain of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said,
'You know nothing to all...nothing at all' and then goes on to make this prophecy about Jesus."
But the point is their fear was that Jesus was going to do something that would cause them to lose what they wanted out of life, their independence, their freedom, their source of income, their prestige, their power, their position. Then later in chapter 12, down toward the end of the chapter, it couldn't be more clear in the final section of John chapter 12 in verse 47,
"If anyone hears My sayings and doesn't keep them I don't judge him; I didn't come into the world to judge the world, but to save the world. He who rejects Me, and doesn't receive My sayings has one who judges him. The word I spoke is what will judge him at the last day."
When sinners go before the final judgment, stand before God what's going to judge them is whether or not they believed everything Jesus said.
There's absolutely no way around this, there's no commendation of the Jews ever by Jesus. Apart from believing in Him there is no salvation.
Thirdly, it is also true of people in false religion that they are self-justifying, self-justifying. Look at verse 15. This is absolutely unmistakable and is really one of the great definitions of false religion. "You are those who justify yourselves." Now there's a hopeless situation. The idea is to make yourself right. "You are those who try to make yourselves right," to put it another way, to save yourselves, to earn your salvation.
Pharisaic Judaism is a system of self-justification, making your self-righteous by ritual and by maintaining certain standards and laws and ethical codes and traditions, making yourself acceptable to God by your works. And of course we know enough about the Bible to know this is rejected wholesale.
The just shall live by faith, the Old Testament says. That's repeated again and again. In Romans 1:17, "The just shall live by faith." Romans 3, "By the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified. Chapter 4, "Abraham was not justified by works, but by faith." It’s the same thing in chapter 5: "For by grace are you saved by faith.” Ephesians 2. We know this great truth; no one can make himself right with God. That's the reigning deception in human culture. Well I think I'm going toheaven because I'm...I’m a good person, and I believe in God, and I believe in Jesus, and I try to do the best I can, and try to be a good person, and I'm sure I'm more good than bad. That's the typical scenario.
So you're going to justify yourself. The problem with that is explained in Romans 10, and this is one we look at a lot but Romans 10... Here the apostle Paul says something that's really very definitive.
"Brethren," talking to the Jews, "Brethren," he's very concerned, speaking of the Jews I should say, "My heart's desire and my prayer to God for them,” for the Jews who had been the subject of the prior chapter, "My prayer to God for them is their salvation," which is to say they're not what, not saved. I don't know how much more clear that could be. And we're on this side of the cross here inRomans. “I pray for their salvation and I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God." We'll give them that. They have this zeal for God but not in accordance with knowledge, which makes it useless. If you don't have the facts right it's a useless zeal.
And here's what they don't know: "Not knowing about God's righteousness." That is the biggie folks. That's the big one.
In all the things Paul could have said he doesn't say this: "I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God but not in accordance with knowledge and they don't know how sinful they are." That's not where you start because you don't understand what it is to be sinful until you understand how holy God is. So you have to start where you have to start, not knowing about God's righteousness.
They don't understand that God is absolute holy. Well didn't they read Leviticus? "Be holy for I am holy. Be holy for I am holy. Be holy for I the Lord am holy," over and over and over and over and over again, dozens and dozens and dozens of times. Didn't they read that? Didn't they know that to violate the law was to bring death, to violate the law they had to bring a sacrifice to God and make an atonement for their sins and there had to be an atonement made for the whole nation?
Didn't they understand that God is absolutely holy? Didn't they read Isaiah 6, holy, holy, holy? Didn't they read Ezekiel and see the horrific trauma that Ezekiel underwent when he was exposed to a vision of the holiness of God?
But they had to work God down. They had to manage God down because if you're going to save yourself, then you've got to bring God down to a level where you can reach Him. And so they thought God was less righteous than He was. They thought they were more righteous than they were, and so they could make it on their own.
So they didn't know how righteous God is so they went about seeking to establish their own righteousness and didn't subject themselves to the righteousness of God. What they needed to do was say God is so holy He demands absolute holiness, we can't do it, we can't cut it, oh God be merciful to me a sinner, and throw themselves down in repentance and plead with God to save them. That's what they should have done.
But instead they managed God down, made Him less holy than He was in their view, made themselves more holy than they were, did not subject themselves to the true righteousness of God, and never understood that Christ died on the cross to bring an end to the tyranny of the law and to provide righteousness for those who believe since nobody can earn it.
The Pharisees were into this self-righteousness so deep, turn to Matthew 23, that it was the defining character of their behavior. Matthew 23:13, they were, of course, verse 12, the ones who exalted themselves all the time, loved the chief seats, loved to be called rabbi, teacher, father, leader, all those lofty names, but He says in verse 13,
"Woe to you scribes and Pharisee, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from men."
Of course, they didn't have the keys to the kingdom because they didn't have the truth. You can't open the door and let anybody in unless you have the key and the key is the gospel, the key is Christ, and they rejected Christ, they couldn't let anybody into the kingdom.
You don't go in yourselves nor do you allow those who are entering to go in. You bar the door of salvation to everyone, including yourselves, by your efforts to earn your own way in.
"Woe to you,” verse 14, “scribes and Pharisees. hypocrites, you devour widow's houses." Sure you use widows. What does it mean you consume widows? You take advantage of women who are not protected by husbands. You go in and you manipulate these widows for gain. And how do you do it? Well you make a pretense of long prayers. You put on this big pious act, all the time you're ripping off these widows of their money. "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites,” verse 15,
"You travel on sea and land to make one proselyte, when he becomes one you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves." You're no son of God, you're no son of heaven, you're a son of hell and all your converts are double sons of hell. This is where self-righteous religion leads you. This is where works leads you. No one ever will enter heaven by their own works, only by faith alonein Jesus Christ and the grace of God's forgiveness and love.
So, false religion is marked by impure motives, love of money, and personal fulfillment. It is marked by hostility toward the truth and it is clearly marked by efforts to earn one's own salvation.
False religion. We think of it as some kind of elevated thing, very religious, very elevated, the best of people living at a virtuous level, the high level. They've ascended above the hoi polloi, the riff-raff, the scum of society. Jesus felt much more comfortable, much more at home hanging around sinners and tax collectors than He did around Pharisees.
Why? Because it wasn't the sinners and tax collectors who were the architects of the satanic opposition; it was the false religious leaders. Lovers of money with corrupt and impure motives antagonistic to the commands of God, hostile to the word of God, purveyors of a kind of self-righteous system where you make a contribution to your own salvation by your good works, and seekers of honor from people.
That's what marked the Pharisees. And that's what set them in contrast to Jesus. They are outside the kingdom clearly.
There are only two possibilities: You either are in Christ because you accept the word of God concerning Christ and the work of Christ and you believe and you embrace that truth, or in any other religious form you are the enemy of God and the opposition to Jesus Christ and the true gospel.
There is no middle ground and there's no truce that can be struck.