'What Sorrow Awaits! (6)' - Matthew 23:27-28

[Jesus continued his condemnation:] "What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs — beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people's bones and all sorts of impurity. Outwardly you look like righteous people, but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness."

—Matthew 23:27-28 NLT

Key Thought​

Jesus is relentless in his condemnation of the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees. This "woe" or "What sorrow awaits!" does less diagnosis of the problem and speaks directly to the problem: "You are... beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people's bones and all sorts of impurity!"

For Jesus, pretentious externalism is hypocrisy pure and simple. Painting the outside only makes the death of character on the inside worse, because the paint disguises the death.

Today's Prayer​

Father, forgive me for the times that I have faked my piety without repenting of my sin. Please forgive and cleanse me so that I may be pure through and through. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen.

Related Scripture Readings​

• Psalm 19:14
• Matthew 6:1, 16-18
• 1 Peter 2:1-3

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[csaaphill]

Gangstlakers are like this they claim piety and righteousness, but do evil to people and then justify it as justice and or call what they do as some sort of evil principle.
God says he would have mercy and forgiveness not punishment not sacrifice. These people want revenge and call it righteous this is iniquity and what will be said get away from me you workers of iniquity for I knw thee not. They are now slated for the lake of fire!