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Our Lord continues to denounce woes against hypocrites, both for what they do and for what they are. The relation between doing and being is constant. These things are written for our learning.

I. THE HYPOCRITE IS WOEFULLY GUILTY.

1. He is guilty of heart wickedness.

(1) Under the utmost ceremonial strictness, like the garnished tomb enclosing "dead men's bones and all uncleanness," is concealed the greatest moral laxity. Thus -

"Nature, like a beauteous wall,
Doth oft close in pollution."

(Shakespeare.)

(2) As an adorned tomb is but the garniture of death and corruption, so is the external sanctity of the Pharisee in disgusting contrast to his inward turpitude.

(3) The meat and drink in the platter and cup, externally so scrupulously cleansed, are the nourishment and refreshment of the hypocrite. His luxuries are procured by means nefarious and corrupt (see ver. 14). The hypocrite is selfish to cruelty.

(4) The nourishment and refreshment of the Pharisee is, in the estimation of Christ, filth and poison. Luxury punishes fraud, feeding disease with fruits of injustice. The disease and death thus nourished are moral more than physical.

2. He is guilty of deceiving others.

(1) The cleansed outside of the cup and platter, and the whiting on the sepulchre, are intended to be seen; and so is the piety of the hypocrite. The purpose is to divert attention from the filth and rottenness within.

(2) The success is often too well assured. Man surveys surfaces. His vision does not search substances. To do this requires experiment which he is too lazy to institute.

(3) Hence the professed belief in human nature.

(a) Unconverted men must be hypocrites to be endured. Society would be intolerable but for its veneer.

(b) The children of nature are readily deceived in a world of hypocrites. Their pride and self-conceit leads them to credit themselves with virtues; and the Pharisee deceives them.

(c) But that religious persons should "believe in human nature" only shows how successfully the hypocrite may even "deceive the very elect."

(d) The believers in human nature are liable to trust in it instead of Christ for their salvation, and perish in their delusion.

3. He is guilty of insulting God.

(1) He ignores God. While he strives after the praise of men, he leaves God out of the account. Is God to be treated as nobody with impunity!

(2) He degrades God. Affecting the praise of men rather than the praise of God, he treats the Creator as inferior to his creatures. Will this insolence be endured forever?

(3) As the whitening of the sepulchre was intended to warn passengers to avoid its defiling contact, so should the sham piety of the Pharisee warn honest men away from the sphere of his moral infection (see Luke 11:44).

(4) Let the sinner be alarmed at the formidableness of the impending woe. Let him repent, amend, and sue for mercy.

II. THE HYPOCRITE IS CRIMINALLY BLIND.

1. God requires truth in the heart.

(1) He is himself essentially holy. This means that his nature must repel from him everything that is unholy. God must needs wage eternal war against sin.

(2) But his grace has made possible his reconciliation to the sinner.

(a) In the provision of the atonement.

(b) In the gift of the Holy Spirit.

(c) Through faith the righteousness of the Law may not only become "imputed to us," but also "fulfilled in us."

(3) The life will be holy when the heart is clean. "The heart may be a temple of God or a grave; a heaven or a hell" (Slier). The cleansing of the inside affects the outside, but not contrariwise. "Cleanse first the inside of the cup and of the platter, that the outside. thereof may become clean also."

(4) There is a cleansing that is external even after the heart is clean. This our Lord evinced when he washed the feet of his disciples.

2. The hypocrite imposes upon himself.

(1) He is criminally blind to the folly that avoids those scandalous sins which would spoil his reputation with men, while he allows the heart wickedness which renders him odious to God (see Psalm 5:9). Jesus saw the filth within the cup and platter, and the rottenness within the sepulchre.

(2) He is criminally blind to the fact that in imposing upon his fellows he does not impose upon his Maker. The same Jesus who showed the Pharisee the extortion and excesses of the heart will show these things to him again in the day of woe.

(3) The hypocrite is criminally blind to the fact that the life is cleansed in the heart. Those only are externally clean who are inwardly pure. Christ views the profession in relation to the state of the heart. In this light he will judge the works of men at the last great day. - J.A.M.

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KJV: Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.

WEB: "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and unrighteousness.