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"The
Weightier Matters of the Law"
Matt. 23:23
In Matt. 23:23,
Jesus, rebuking the Pharisees, says, "Woe
to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and
anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law:
justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without
leaving the others undone."
Let us consider 3
questions that arise from this passage (there are certainly other
lessons to be drawn, but we have limited time and ability).
What are justice, mercy, and faith?
Why are these the weightier matters of
the law?
What are the weightier matters now?
I. Justice,
Mercy, and Faith
Justice
- Justice to others (men), whether as rulers or citizens.
This has to do with dealing righteous
judgment, giving to all their due, according to law and morals.
Mercy
- Compassion and kindness (to
men).
Mercy is having compassion on the
pitiful and needy
rendering justice tempered with an
accurate
Godly understanding of the
circumstances.
It is also forgiveness and tenderness
toward those who are at fault.
Faith
- Piety and confidence (to God); rendering to God that which is due Him.
I believe that faith here is a righteous
faith, and includes righteousness.
It is the type of reliance on God that
would permeate and shape every activity every day.
David's faith as expressed in the psalms
is an example of this.
Ps. 16:7-8,
David writes, "I will bless the Lord Who
has given me counsel; My heart also instructs me in the night seasons. I
have set the Lord always before me; Because He is at my right hand I
shall not be moved."
1st two of the
three "weightier matters" concern behavior directed toward men,
3rd is
on behavior toward God.
This parallels nicely with Jesus' answer
in Matt. 22:37-40, when questioned as to the greatest
commandment: "You shall love the Lord
your God...," and the second, "You shall love your neighbor as
yourself." Then, note the final comment on these two, in v.40: "On
these two commandments hang all the law and the Prophets."
One deals with man's relation to God, and the other, man's relationship
to man.
II. Why are
these, the "weightier matters"?
These principles
comprise the foundation of the whole law of God.
Jesus’ point: Law of Moses was not just
a collection of specific commandments for them to follow,
a sort of "spiritual cookbook" with
which they could earn their way into heaven.
It was a guide, a road map, to the kind
of behavior that God expected from His children. Pharisees, and indeed,
most of the Jews, had missed out on the greatest portion of it,
God wanted their hearts, not just their
physical service.
They thought that if they went through
all the forms of physical obedience, that they were fine, no matter what
their character was.
The Jews were good
about sacrificing, even long after they had ceased to serve God.
Is. 1:10-18,
10
Hear the word of the LORD, You rulers of Sodom; Give ear to the law of
our God, You people of Gomorrah: 11 "To what purpose is the multitude of
your sacrifices to Me? "Says the LORD."I have had enough of burnt
offerings of rams And the fat of fed cattle. I do not delight in the
blood of bulls, Or of lambs or goats. 12 "When you come to appear
before Me, Who has required this from your hand, To trample My courts?
13 Bring no more futile sacrifices; Incense is an abomination to Me. The
New Moons, the Sabbaths, and the calling of assemblies — I cannot endure
iniquity and the sacred meeting. 14 Your New Moons and your appointed
feasts My soul hates; They are a trouble to Me, I am weary of bearing
them. 15 When you spread out your hands, I will hide My eyes from you;
Even though you make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full
of blood.
16
"Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; Put away the evil of your
doings from before My eyes. Cease to do evil, 17 Learn to do good; Seek
justice, Rebuke the oppressor; Defend the fatherless, Plead for the
widow. 18 "Come now, and let us reason together, "Says the LORD, "Though
your sins are like scarlet, They shall be as white as snow; Though they
are red like crimson, They shall be as wool.
God tells them
that He has no use for their sacrifices while their hands are full of
wickedness.
Amos 5:21-24,
21
"I hate, I despise your feast days, And I do not savor your sacred
assemblies.
22
Though you offer Me burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I will not
accept them, Nor will I regard your fattened peace offerings.
23
Take away from Me the noise of your songs, For I will not hear the
melody of your stringed instruments. 24 But let justice run down like
water, And righteousness like a mighty stream.
God condemns their
service to Him, saying,
"I
hate, I despise your feast days, and I do not savor your sacred
assemblies. Though you offer Me burnt offerings and your grain
offerings, I will not accept them, Nor will I regard your fattened peace
offerings."
Why? Because they
had neglected all the weightier matters, as He says in verse 12,
"I
know your manifold transgressions, and your mighty sins..."
They might have said, "But Lord,
what do you want?"
He continues as
though to answer the unspoken question, in verse 24
"But let justice run down
like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream."
Again, in Zech.
7:8-14,
Then the word of the LORD came to Zechariah, saying, 9 "Thus says the
LORD of hosts:
'Execute true justice, Show mercy and compassion Everyone to his
brother.
10
Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, The alien or the poor. Let
none of you plan evil in his heart
Against his brother.' 11 But they refused to heed, shrugged their
shoulders, and stopped their ears so that they could not hear. 12 Yes,
they made their hearts like flint, refusing to hear the law and the
words which the LORD of hosts had sent by His Spirit through the former
prophets. Thus great wrath came from the LORD of hosts. 13 Therefore it
happened, that just as He proclaimed and they would not hear, so they
called out and I would not listen," says the LORD of hosts. 14 "But I
scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations which they had not
known. Thus the land became desolate after them, so that no one passed
through or returned; for they made the pleasant land desolate."
We can read how
that God sent His people into captivity for their failure to have these
traits.
Is. 43:23-24
tells essentially the same story.
In many places, God repeats this theme.
He tells them, "Don't sacrifice to Me if
you are not trying to live like I've told you. I don't want it."
In the story of
Saul and the Amalekites, Samuel told Saul,
"To
obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams."
(I Sam. 15:22).
In Psalms 51,
David's outpouring of grief at his sin with Bathsheba, he says in
vv.16-17,
"For you do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it; You do not
delight in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, A
broken and a contrite heart--These, O God, You will not despise."
Hosea 6:6, God says, "For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and the
knowledge of God more than burnt offerings."
But why would God
not delight in sacrifice, when He commanded it?
It is because the sacrifices are a
concession that God makes for our sakes, not for His own.
He does not desire the sacrifices from
us, as though He needed them.
They are the means
that God gave us to allow men to escape His just punishment when we err.
It is not His desire that we
offer sacrifice.
His desire for us is that we
should emulate His character, which would remove the need sacrifices
Thus, any person
who was sacrificing for sin was doing so to appease the wrath of God,
Whom they had affronted, while a person
who served Him was well-pleasing in His sight.
Mic 6:7-8
7
Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, Ten thousand rivers of
oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, The fruit of my body for
the sin of my soul?
8
He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of
you
But
to do justly, To love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God?
God told them, in
the plainest language of all, what He desires.
Yet they did not understand
not even the Pharisees and Sadducees and
rabbis who claimed to be teachers of the law.
In Matt.
23:16-19, Christ tells them that they failed to show discernment in
their oaths; they missed the point.
They had done the
same thing with the keeping of the commandments.
He quotes a proverb
in v.24, Blind guides, who strain
out a gnat and swallow a camel!
Wraps it up in
vv. 25-26,
Woe
to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside
of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and
self-indulgence. 26 Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the
cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also.
He is explaining
that they are approaching righteousness from the wrong side.
"First cleanse the inside
of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also."
They had spent all their time scrubbing
and painting the outside of a filthy, despicable cup
thinking that God wouldn't look at the
inside.
We know from the
Old Testament that this is not the case, as they should have.
God sent Samuel to anoint a successor to
King Saul, watched seven likely candidates pass before him
God told him to anoint the youngest son
of Jesse, the boy David.
God explained to Samuel in I Sam.
16:7, saying, "For the Lord does not
see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord
looks at the heart."
III. What are
the weightier matters now?
Eccl. 12:13
Fear God and keep His commandments."
What God expects
from His children has not changed
In the New
Testament, there is more detail given about what our character should
be.
This reflects the change in God's
covenant nation from a physical to a spiritual one.
Gal. 5:22-25
lists the fruit of the Spirit, but there are many other passages that
teach the same thing.
The dual purpose of
Christ's coming to earth was to provide perfection:
the perfect sacrifice
to provide us a way of escape
the perfect example
to show us how we should live
His example was not
in minute, everyday detail the way the Law of Moses was, but in
character
giving us a full account of the
character of God Himself.
There is no denying
the connection between our physical acts of obedience or disobedience
and our acceptability to God.
In Matt. 7:15-20,
Jesus teaches us that "by their fruits ye
shall know them."
In Matt.
12:33-35, He says that "The fruit shows
what is in the heart."
In Jn. 14:23-24,
Jesus tells us that "If any man loves Me,
he will keep my commandments."
The New Testament
gives us the clearest picture of all of how we should live.
Not a new way to
live in the New Testament. God's character never changes, as we can read
in
Jas. 1:17.
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down
from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of
turning.
Neither, then, has
God's desire for us changed,
He has desired from the first is that we
serve Him, and try to be as He is.
No dichotomy
between a law that is a list of commandments and a law that is a
spiritual one.
The new law does
not free us from the responsibility to obey.
It frees us from the otherwise
inescapable consequences of our imperfections.
And yet, if we miss
the point of God's requirements, as the Pharisees did, then we, too,
will leave undone the "weightier matters" of the law.
Justice, mercy, and
faith together make up the basic fundamental aspects of the character of
a servant of God, as they always have. They are not "weightier" in the
sense of coming first on some list of commandments to keep. They are
weightier because all else depends on these.
1 John 5:1-5
Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone
who loves Him who begot also loves him who is begotten of Him. 2 By this
we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His
commandments. 3 For this is the love of God, that we keep His
commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome. 4 For whatever is
born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has
overcome the world — our faith. 5 Who is he who overcomes the world, but
he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
We can read that
the person with the proper attitude and character will keep the other
commandments.
If our hearts are right with God, our
lives will follow.
So what does this
have to do with us?
Jesus never said
you didn’t have to do the minute detail things, you had to obey him
But he
DID say these “details” were of lesser importance to God than the
weightier matters
Are we like the
Pharisees?
Do we
spend so much time sweating the details we miss the big picture?
Are we
so intent of obeying every dot and tittle of the law, that we are afraid
to make a mistake and do nothing?
We try to have
authority for everything we do Book, chapter, verse for everything
We try to be
absolutely true to biblical teachings
Many believe we
are the only group that lives by these rules
Say
1,000,000 c of c members vs 150,000,00 of everything else
Who is
right? How do we know?
Other groups live
by other principles
Authority isn’t as important as doing good, loving your fellow man, and
showing it
Do a
better job:
of taking care of the poor
getting involved in things that matter
to their youth
taking care of senior citizens
almost anything that is not done in a
worship service
If we lead a number
of souls to believe they are saved and then don’t teach them salvation,
have we done any of them a favor?
If we bring in 1
soul to the church and teach him to be like the Pharisee, to obey
without love, will we likely hold him?
Imagine if we could
find a group that would do both:
Adhere
strictly to the word of God for all we do
Study the Bible regularly, testing the teachers
and their lessons to make certain it is of God
Love
our brothers and even strangers the way Christ did
We would feed the poor, clothe the naked, help
those who are in need (just like Christ did)
What would we
have? The church the Lord built and was worth dying
for.
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