Ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. This is the revelation, not of a mere observer of men, but of a Divine Heart searcher, a Divine Thought reader.

I. MAN JUDGES BY THE OUTWARD APPEARANCE, AND MAKES MISTAKES. When Samuel saw the handsome eldest son of Jesse, he said, "Surely the Lord's anointed is before him." But he was reproved. "The Lord seeth not as man sooth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7).

1. Man can only judge by the help of appearances, because he cannot read the heart.

2. Man is disposed to judge of religion by appearances, because he is daily judging everything in this way.

3. Man is always liable to make mistakes, because appearances often accidentally, and more often intentionally, fail to present realities. The peril of trusting to appearances may be illustrated by the way in which goods are dressed up to attract sale. The same thing is found in religious spheres. Credit is gained by the show of piety; and the hypocrite is ever over-anxious about his external observances. Our Lord's figure of the cup is common to every age; his figure of the "whited sepulchres" belongs to the East. Sepulchres were whited so that Jews might not unconsciously walk over them, seeing that this involved ceremonial defilement. The outsides of burial places were whitewashed once a year. It is not enough to see a man's devoutness at church. See him at home. See him in business. See him in private prayer. See him as God sees him.

II. GOD JUDGES BY THE INWARD REALITY, AND MAKES NO MISTAKE. He looks inside the cup. He knows what is inside the sepulchre. He reads the secret life of the fastidiously devout Pharisees. He finds David right hearted, and chooses him rather than his handsome brother. St. Paul intimates that the Christian man should be so absolutely sincere and true, that he could readily stand out in the sunshine, and let it look him through and through, and round and round. See how the good man comes altogether to prefer the Divine appraisement, and to say, "Search me, O God, and know my heart." Impress that when the man is heart right with God, he is properly anxious about his appearance before men. He wants that to tell, as fully as possible, the truth of his inner life. - R.T.

By this allusion to the cup and platter the Saviour taught that it is necessary to cleanse the heart first, that the external conduct might be pure.

I. WHY must we cleanse ourselves from sin?

1. Because it renders us injurious to our fellow-men.

2. Because it hinders prayer.

3. Because it renders us offensive to God.

4. Because it is destructive to ourselves.

II. How may we cleanse ourselves from sin?

1. Not by merely desiring to be cleansed.

2. Not by external reformations.

3. Not by scrupulous attention to religious ordinances.

4. Not by mere repentance.

5. But by faith in the only cleansing element — the precious blood of Jesus.

III. WHEN may we cleanse ourselves from sin? Now!

1. Delay increases the difficulty.

2. The present the only time of which we are sure.

3. God's commands brook no delay, etc.

(A. Tucker.)

Hypocrites are like pictures on canvas, they show fairest at farthest. A hypocrite's profession is in folio, but his sincerity is so abridged that it is contained in decimo-sexto, nothing in the world to speak of. A hypocrite is like the Sicilian Etna, flaming at the mouth when it hath snow at the foot. Their mouths talk hotly, but their feet walk coldly. The nightingale hath a sweet voice, but a lean carcase; a voice, and nothing else but a voice: and so have all hypocrites.

(Adams.)

As a thick wood that giveth great shadow doth delight the eyes of the beholders greatly with the variety of flourishing trees and pleasant plants, so that it seemeth to be ordained only for pleasure's sake, and yet within is full of poisonous serpents, ravening wolves, and other wild beasts; even so a hypocrite, when outwardly he seemeth holy and to be well furnished with all sorts of virtues, doth please well the eyes of his beholders; but within him there lurketh pride, envy, covetousness, and all manner of wickedness, like wild and cruel beasts wandering in the wood of his heart.

(Cawdray.)

Hypocrites seem as glow-worms, to have both light and heat; but touch them and they have neither. The Egyptian temples were beautiful on the outside, when within ye should find nothing but some serpent or crocodile. Apothecaries' boxes oft have goodly titles when yet they hold not one dram of any good drug. A certain stranger coming on embassage unto the senators of Rome, and colouring his hoary hair and pale cheeks with vermilion hue, a grave senator espying the deceit stood up and said, "What sincerity are we to expect from this man's hands, whose locks, and looks, and lips, do lie?" Think the same of-all painted hypocrites. These we may compare(as Lucian doth his Grecians) to a fair gilt bossed book; look within it, and there is the tragedy of Thyestes; or perhaps Arrius' Thalya; the name of a muse, the matter heresy; or Conradus Vorstius' book-monster that hath De Deo in the front, but atheism and blasphemy in the text.

(J. Trapp.)

If yon go into a churchyard some snowy day, when the snow has been falling thick enough to cover every monument and tombstone, how beautiful and white does everything appear! But remove the snow, dig down beneath, and you find rottenness and putrefaction — dead men's bones and all uncleanness. How like that churchyard on such a day is the mere professor — fair outside, sinful, unholy within! The grass grows green upon the sides of a mountain that holds a volcano in its bowels.

(T. Guthrie, D. D.)

A very capital painter in London exhibited a piece representing a friar habited in his canonicals. View the painting at a distance, and you would think the friar to be in a praying attitude. His hands are clasped together, and held horizontally to his breast; his eyes meekly demissed like those of the publican in the gospel, and the good man appears to be quite absorbed in humble adoration and devout recollection. But take a nearer survey, and the deception vanishes. The book which seemed to be before him is discovered to be a punch-bowl into which the rascal is all the while, in reality, only squeezing a lemon. How lively a representation of a hypocrite!

(G. S. Bowes.)There is a spice of hypocrisy in us all.

(S. Rutherford.)The hypocrite — the man that stole the livery of heaven to serve the devil in.

(R. Pollok.)

The hypocrite maps out the road to Zion, knows it well, has sounded with plummet the depths of the promises, can talk about them. But he has accepted a two-parts Christ; there is perhaps a little pet sin, snugly tucked up in a warm corner of his heart, that he is unwilling to part with. Christ is his Priest, his Prophet, but he will not have Him as his King.

Formality frequently takes its dwelling near the chambers of integrity, and so assumes its name; the soul not suspecting that hell should make so near an approach to heaven. A rotten post, though covered with gold, is more fit to be burned in the fire than for the building of a fabric. The dial of our faces does not infallibly show the time of day in our hearts; the humblest looks may enamel the former, while unbounded pride covers the latter. Unclean spirits may inhabit the chamber when they look not out at the window.

(Archbishop Secker.)

I. A SERIOUS CHARGE.

1. A too late recognition of goodness which, when living, was ignored or persecuted.

2. A pretended veneration of the characters of the pious dead.

3. In truth a signalizing of their own goodness.

II. A FALSE DEFENCE.

1. Their character belied their profession — persecutors of Jesus would hardly have been defenders of Isaiah, etc.

2. Betrayed great ignorance of their own character.

III. A SOLEMN VERDICT.

1. Pronounced guilty of the righteous blood shed by their party.

2. Hypocrites for pretending a veneration for departed worth while they persecuted living goodness.

Tombs are the clothes of the dead: a grave is but a plain suit, and a rich monument is one embroidered. Tombs ought, in some sort, to be proportioned, not to the wealth, but deserts of the party interred. Yet may we see some rich man of mean worth loaden under a tomb big enough for a prince to bear. There were officers appointed in the Grecian games who always, by public authority, did pluck down the statues erected to the victors if they exceeded the true symmetry and proportion of their bodies. The shortest, plainest, and truest epitaphs are the best. Mr. Camden, in his "Remains," presents us with examples of great men who had little epitaphs. And when once I asked a witty gentleman what epitaph was fitted to be written on Mr. Camden's tomb, "Let it be," said he, "Camden's Remains." I say also, "the plainest; " for except the sense lie above ground, few will trouble themselves to dig for it. Lastly, it must be "true;" not, as in some monuments where the red veins in the marble may seem to blush at the falsehoods written on it. He was a witty man that first taught a stone to speak; but he was a wicked man that taught it first to lie.

(N. Rogers.)

Momus, the heathen god of ridicule, complained that Jupiter had not made a window in the human breast, so that it might be seen what was passing within. To an omniscient God no window is needed, every thought, and wish, and intention being perfectly discerned.

The tombs of saints in Egypt are held in great veneration. They are covered with a circular building in the form of a cupola, and are regularly whitewashed, repaired, rebuilt, and decorated, as was the case with the Jews. In the larger tombs lamps are kept constantly burning, as amongst the Romanists, and no Christian is allowed to enter. At Pera the tablets are all upright, and surmounted with turbans, tarbooshes, or flowers. The dignity of the person in the grave is displayed by the kind of turban at the top of the stone. Most were of white marble, and many richly gilt and ornamented. They are about the size of our railway mile-posts, and are as thick on the ground as nine-pins. The flowers denote females. Some are painted green, these were descendants of Mahomet.

(Gadsby.)

In the plains of Sahrai-Sirwan Rawlinson noticed many whitewashed obelisks placed on any elevations which occurred conveniently, some rising to the height of fifteen feet, a modern example of "whitened sepulchres." The custom of "garnishing the sepulchres" prevails more or less throughout Persia.

I. It is a characteristic of fallen men that they are apt to content themselves with cleansing the outside. They are at greater pains to seem pure than to be pure.

II. Though outward purity is desirable, and even measurably praiseworthy, yet, if it be not the fruit of a purified heart, it is unreliable and comparatively valueless. For the welfare of this life it is better that one should be winning than repulsive, moral than immoral. It is better to have a washed outside than to have both outside and inside filthy. If outside only it is unreliable; has no inherent permanency.

III. A cleansed heart is a sure producer of genuine and permanent purity of life. Learn:

1. That God estimates character by the state of the heart.

2. That man has a corrupt heart, and is therefore loathsome in God's sight.

3. That to have God's favour man must be cleansed, and that to be effectual it must begin in his heart.

4. That there is such a thing as being effectually cleansed and rendered acceptable to the Holy One.

(T. Williston.)

So it ever comes to pass that we are punished for deceiving others by being ourselves deceived. Our success secures our delusion. When an act which is properly an indication of some good motive is repeatedly performed in the sight of those who cannot see the heart, they take for granted the motive and give us the credit of it — provided only the act be of the class which it is the fashion of the day and place to applaud as religious. We are assumed to be what, at first, we know we are not. But in time this knowledge fades away; we accept as the independently formed judgment of others that which really rested upon our own successful deception; we come to consider our conduct as in itself sufficient proof of the motive which is universally assumed to be its source. We move in a circle of hypocrisy, and it becomes difficult to decide whether we are the authors or the victims of the delusion. We are, in fact, both.

(J. C. Coghlan, D. D.)

Abel, Barachias, Berechiah, Hen, Jesus, Zachariah, Zacharias, ZechariahJerusalemAppear, TRUE, Disregard, Eye, Full, God's, Honest, Human, Hypocrisy, Indeed, Iniquity, Inside, Insincerity, Inwardly, Law, Lawlessness, Outwardly, Righteous, Righteousness, Seem, Thus, Wickedness, Within, Wrongdoing1. Jesus admonishes the people to follow good doctrine, not bad examples
5. His disciples must beware of their ambition.
13. He denounces eight woes against their hypocrisy and blindness,
34. and prophesies of the destruction of Jerusalem.

Matthew 23:28

     8157   righteousness, as faith
     8767   hypocrisy

Matthew 23:1-32

     8767   hypocrisy

Matthew 23:1-33

     5381   law, letter and spirit
     8749   false teachers

Matthew 23:1-36

     5379   law, Christ's attitude
     7552   Pharisees, attitudes to Christ

Matthew 23:2-33

     7464   teachers of the law

Matthew 23:13-33

     9250   woe

Matthew 23:13-39

     2318   Christ, as prophet

Matthew 23:23-28

     8761   fools, in teaching of Christ

Matthew 23:23-33

     2009   Christ, anger of
     5943   self-deception

Matthew 23:25-28

     5173   outward appearance
     7340   clean and unclean
     8720   double-mindedness
     8774   legalism

Matthew 23:27-28

     1025   God, anger of
     5132   biting
     5514   scribes

The Morality of the Gospel.
Is stating the morality of the Gospel as an argument of its truth, I am willing to admit two points; first, that the teaching of morality was not the primary design of the mission; secondly, that morality, neither in the Gospel, nor in any other book, can be a subject, properly speaking, of discovery. If I were to describe in a very few words the scope of Christianity as a revelation, [49] I should say that it was to influence the conduct of human life, by establishing the proof of a future state …
William Paley—Evidences of Christianity

Jesus' Last Public Discourse. Denunciation of Scribes and Pharisees.
(in the Court of the Temple. Tuesday, April 4, a.d. 30.) ^A Matt. XXIII. 1-39; ^B Mark XII. 38-40; ^C Luke XX. 45-47. ^a 1 Then spake Jesus ^b 38 And in his teaching ^c in the hearing of all the people he said unto ^a the multitudes, and to his disciples [he spoke in the most public manner], 2 saying, ^c 46 Beware of the scribes, ^a The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat: 3 all things whatsoever they bid you, these do and observe: but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not. …
J. W. McGarvey—The Four-Fold Gospel

Christianity Misunderstood by Believers.
Meaning of Christian Doctrine, Understood by a Minority, has Become Completely Incomprehensible for the Majority of Men-- Reason of this to be Found in Misinterpretation of Christianity and Mistaken Conviction of Believers and Unbelievers Alike that they Understand it--The Meaning of Christianity Obscured for Believers by the Church--The First Appearance of Christ's Teaching--Its Essence and Difference from Heathen Religions-- Christianity not Fully Comprehended at the Beginning, Became More and …
Leo Tolstoy—The Kingdom of God is within you

First Attempts on Jerusalem.
Jesus, almost every year, went to Jerusalem for the feast of the passover. The details of these journeys are little known, for the synoptics do not speak of them,[1] and the notes of the fourth Gospel are very confused on this point.[2] It was, it appears, in the year 31, and certainly after the death of John, that the most important of the visits of Jesus to Jerusalem took place. Many of the disciples followed him. Although Jesus attached from that time little value to the pilgrimage, he conformed …
Ernest Renan—The Life of Jesus

For which Cause Our Lord Himself Also with his Own Mouth Saith...
4. For which cause our Lord Himself also with His own mouth saith, "Cleanse what are within, and what are without will be clean." [1813] And, also, in another place, when He was refuting the foolish speeches of the Jews, in that they spake evil against His disciples, eating with unwashen hands; "Not what entereth into the mouth," said He, "defileth the man: but what cometh forth out of the mouth, that defileth the man." [1814] Which sentence, if the whole of it be taken of the mouth of the body, …
St. Augustine—On Continence

Relation of the Pharisees to the Sadducees and Essenes, and to the Gospel of Christ
On taking a retrospective view of Pharisaism, as we have described it, there is a saying of our Lord which at first sight seems almost unaccountable. Yet it is clear and emphatic. "All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do" (Matt 23:3). But if the early disciples were not to break at once and for ever with the Jewish community, such a direction was absolutely needful. For, though the Pharisees were only "an order," Pharisaism, like modern Ultramontanism, had not only become …
Alfred Edersheim—Sketches of Jewish Social Life

Among the People, and with the Pharisees
It would have been difficult to proceed far either in Galilee or in Judaea without coming into contact with an altogether peculiar and striking individuality, differing from all around, and which would at once arrest attention. This was the Pharisee. Courted or feared, shunned or flattered, reverently looked up to or laughed at, he was equally a power everywhere, both ecclesiastically and politically, as belonging to the most influential, the most zealous, and the most closely-connected religions …
Alfred Edersheim—Sketches of Jewish Social Life

The General Service to a Prophet.
At the Vespers, for O Lord, I have cried, the Stichera, Tone 4. Similar to: Called from above... Thou that hast in the purity of thy mind received the reflex of the God-emitted light and wast the herald of the divine words and seer and divine prophet, thou appearedst as the God-moved mouth of the Spirit, conveying that which was shewn by Him unto thee, O all-honoured (mentioned by name), and declaring unto all the peoples the salvation that was being granted and the Kingdom of Christ; do entreat …
Anonymous—The General Menaion

Of the Power of Making Laws. The Cruelty of the Pope and his Adherents, in this Respect, in Tyrannically Oppressing and Destroying Souls.
1. The power of the Church in enacting laws. This made a source of human traditions. Impiety of these traditions. 2. Many of the Papistical traditions not only difficult, but impossible to be observed. 3. That the question may be more conveniently explained, nature of conscience must be defined. 4. Definition of conscience explained. Examples in illustration of the definition. 5. Paul's doctrine of submission to magistrates for conscience sake, gives no countenance to the Popish doctrine of the obligation …
John Calvin—The Institutes of the Christian Religion

Hints to Teachers and Questions for Pupils
Teacher's Apparatus.--English theology has no juster cause for pride than the books it has produced on the Life of Paul. Perhaps there is no other subject in which it has so outdistanced all rivals. Conybeare and Howson's Life and Epistles of St. Paul will probably always keep the foremost place; in many respects it is nearly perfect; and a teacher who has mastered it will be sufficiently equipped for his work and require no other help. The works of Lewin and Farrar are written on the same lines; …
James Stalker et al—The Life of St. Paul

On Attending the Church Service
"The sin of the young men was very great." 1 Sam. 2:17. 1. The corruption, not only of the heathen world, but likewise of them that were called Christians, has been matter of sorrow and lamentation to pious men, almost from the time of the apostles. And hence, as early as the second century, within a hundred years of St. John's removal from the earth, men who were afraid of being partakers of other men's sins, thought it their duty to separate from them. Hence, in every age many have retired from …
John Wesley—Sermons on Several Occasions

Machinations of the Enemies of Jesus.
Jesus passed the autumn and a part of the winter at Jerusalem. This season is there rather cold. The portico of Solomon, with its covered aisles, was the place where he habitually walked.[1] This portico consisted of two galleries, formed by three rows of columns, and covered by a ceiling of carved wood.[2] It commanded the valley of Kedron, which was doubtless less covered with debris than it is at the present time. The depth of the ravine could not be measured, from the height of the portico; and …
Ernest Renan—The Life of Jesus

The Early Ministry in Judea
113. We owe to the fourth gospel our knowledge of the fact that Jesus began his general ministry in Jerusalem. The silence of the other records concerning this beginning cannot discredit the testimony of John. For these other records themselves indicate in various ways that Jesus had repeatedly sought to win Jerusalem before his final visit at the end of his life (compare Luke xiii. 34; Matt. xxiii. 37). Moreover, the fourth gospel is confirmed by the probability, rising almost to necessity, that …
Rush Rhees—The Life of Jesus of Nazareth

The Crossing of the Jordan
THE CROSSING OF THE JORDAN Just how did you feel at the time you were sanctified? I have heard some tell of how the holy fire of the Spirit seemed to go all through them. Others have told of a deeper, more complete peace. Some have shouted for joy. Others have wept for joy. And I am wondering how one ought to feel. Can you tell me? And how can I know that I am consecrated? Every teacher of entire sanctification that I ever heard says that the consecration must be complete; but how am I to know when …
Robert Lee Berry—Adventures in the Land of Canaan

Subjects of Study. Home Education in Israel; Female Education. Elementary Schools, Schoolmasters, and School Arrangements.
If a faithful picture of society in ancient Greece or Rome were to be presented to view, it is not easy to believe that even they who now most oppose the Bible could wish their aims success. For this, at any rate, may be asserted, without fear of gainsaying, that no other religion than that of the Bible has proved competent to control an advanced, or even an advancing, state of civilisation. Every other bound has been successively passed and submerged by the rising tide; how deep only the student …
Alfred Edersheim—Sketches of Jewish Social Life

Letter Xliv Concerning the Maccabees but to whom Written is Unknown.
Concerning the Maccabees But to Whom Written is Unknown. [69] He relies to the question why the Church has decreed a festival to the Maccabees alone of all the righteous under the ancient law. 1. Fulk, Abbot of Epernay, had already written to ask me the same question as your charity has addressed to your humble servant by Brother Hescelin. I have put off replying to him, being desirous to find, if possible, some statement in the Fathers about this which was asked, which I might send to him, rather …
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux—Some Letters of Saint Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux

Number and Order of the Separate Books.
The number of the books was variously estimated. Josephus gives twenty-two, which was the usual number among Christian writers in the second, third, and fourth centuries, having been derived perhaps from the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Origen, Jerome, and others have it. It continued longest among the teachers of the Greek Church, and is even in Nicephorus's stichometry.(83) The enumeration in question has Ruth with Judges, and Lamentations with Jeremiah. In Epiphanius(84) the number twenty-seven …
Samuel Davidson—The Canon of the Bible

Elucidations.
I. (Who first propounded these heresies, p. 11.) Hippolytus seems to me to have felt the perils to the pure Gospel of many admissions made by Clement and other Alexandrian doctors as to the merits of some of the philosophers of the Gentiles. Very gently, but with prescient genius, he adopts this plan of tracing the origin and all the force of heresies to "philosophy falsely so called." The existence of this "cloud of locusts" is (1) evidence of the antagonism of Satan; (2) of the prophetic spirit …
Hippolytus.—The Refutation of All Heresies

"The Carnal Mind is Enmity against God for it is not Subject to the Law of God, Neither Indeed Can Be. So Then they that Are
Rom. viii. s 7, 8.--"The carnal mind is enmity against God for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God." It is not the least of man's evils, that he knows not how evil he is, therefore the Searcher of the heart of man gives the most perfect account of it, Jer. xvii. 12. "The heart is deceitful above all things," as well as "desperately wicked," two things superlative and excessive in it, bordering upon an infiniteness, such …
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning

We are not Binding Heavy Burdens and Laying them Upon Your Shoulders...
37. We are not binding heavy burdens and laying them upon your shoulders, while we with a finger will not touch them. Seek out, and acknowledge the labor of our occupations, and in some of us the infirmities of our bodies also, and in the Churches which we serve, that custom now grown up, that they do not suffer us to have time ourselves for those works to which we exhort you. For though we might say, "Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? Who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the …
St. Augustine—Of the Work of Monks.

Repentance and Impenitence.
In the discussion of this subject I shall show,-- I. What repentance is not. 1. The Bible everywhere represents repentance as a virtue, and as constituting a change of moral character; consequently, it cannot be a phenomenon of the intelligence: that is, it cannot consist in conviction of sin, nor in any intellectual apprehension of our guilt or ill-desert. All the states or phenomena of the intelligence are purely passive states of mind, and of course moral character, strictly speaking, cannot be …
Charles Grandison Finney—Systematic Theology

Second Sunday after Trinity Exhortation to Brotherly Love.
Text: 1 John 3, 13-18. 13 Marvel not, brethren, if the world hateth you. 14 We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not abideth in death. 15 Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him. 16 Hereby know we love, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. 17 But whoso hath the world's goods, and beholdeth his brother in need, and shutteth …
Martin Luther—Epistle Sermons, Vol. III

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