The Most Dangerous Sin

We're coming up with the Feast of Unleavened Bread from the Passover. And, of course, soon everybody will be busy removing physical leavening from your house. And everybody will go around. I had to get a new car this week because the motor went out of my car. So I went and bought a used car, and I had to admit, I looked at it and thought, wow, this is nice. This will be the easiest car to clean from the days of the beloved bread. I just don't eat anything in it between now and then. All I had to do was vacuum. Then I went and looked at my other car, which has no motor in it, at once, but I still have to clean it from the days of the beloved bread if I don't sell it between now and then. And it's a disaster because I hauled the grandkids around in it, and it's, you know, it's like, wow, it'll be forever to get all the crumbs out of there. Anyone want to buy my sin? I mean, you can. I sell why I'll save my son. Of course, that ritual we do to remind us of sin, you know, it's a physical ritual. If it doesn't teach us the spiritual principle, it's really a waste of time. You might get a cleaner house, but we have to learn the spiritual aspects of it, which is the seriousness of sin, and that Jesus Christ is our sacrifice, and that God wants to remove sin from our lives. It's not just a matter of Him forgiving sin, it's to remove it from our lives. How would you answer this question about sin? What is the most difficult sin to overcome?

You know, I've had people tell me that they believe that homosexuality cannot be overcome. Homosexual is just doomed to the lake of fire, and they can't overcome that. Some people will say, well, you know, alcoholism has to be the most difficult sin to overcome. Or maybe a sin that you've committed that you can't take back. I mean, what if you've murdered somebody? How do you ever repent of that? Some people say, what is the most difficult sin? What is the most dangerous sin to commit? Well, we're going to talk today about one of the most dangerous sins.

Here we are coming up towards the Days of Unleavened Branch, and I want to talk about the sin that may leaven us the most. When I say us, I mean people who are called by God, who are following God, who are committed to God, who look at the rest of the world, it's so easy for us to condemn their sins. And yet we may be participating in the most dangerous sin of all. The sin that we don't see. Because this sin is an attitude. It's an attitude. So it doesn't necessarily come out in actions, although it will appear in actions, but we don't see those actions actually as sin. But it's the reason, it's the motivation, it's the attitude behind what we do that is actually sin.

Now to cover this, to discuss this, we first have to go back and look at God Himself. And how God describes Himself, and how God describes Himself, and what it means by that He is righteous. What does God mean when He says, throughout the Scripture, it says that God is righteous. You know, righteous just means being right. It means you're right. It also has to do with justice. Righteousness was used especially in the Hebrew, a lot to do with judicial decisions.

Whether something was a just decision, whether it was justice or not. Mercy could even be part of righteousness, because even though mercy forgives, therefore it doesn't seem just in the terms of the law, you actually look at the Old Testament and you'll see that mercy is part of the law. So, righteousness has to do with being just, and it is being right. You're right. The Bible reveals God's justice a lot in different ways. It talks a lot when you read about God's righteousness. It's talking about His moral judgments. He makes moral judgments, and they're true. In fact, righteousness will sometimes, descriptions of righteousness in biblical terms, will have the word true in it, or truth.

It has to do with true. It's right. It's true. God is not divided, but it comes to right decisions about right and wrong. He's always right. He's always right. So, God is not divided. God's righteousness also, when you read through the scripture, has to do with His faithfulness. You can count on God. He will be faithful to what He promises. And you'll see, righteousness in the Old Testament really used a lot in terms of the covenant relationship God had with Israel. He was righteous to fulfill it.

He even told them, this is what happened not because of your righteousness, but because of mine. In other words, I will be faithful, I will be right, even when you're wrong. And then sometimes you'll see that it denotes everything that God does that is good and right and just in our relationship with Him and our relationship with each other. We can be doing righteousness when we approach God the way He wishes to be approached. And we are performing righteousness when we treat others the way He commands us to treat others.

This is why the law of God is righteousness. It tells us how we're supposed to relate to Him and how we're supposed to relate to others. So it really has to do with goodness. Being right, being just, and being good. So that's what righteousness is in the terms of the description of that, how that word is used, both the Old and the New Testament in relationship to God. And once again, that's why His laws are so important. Now, when we compare God's character of righteousness, it's a quality of His. It's not just something He does, it's His quality of character.

He is righteous. He is right, He is good, and He is just. And then you compare that to human beings in the Bible. And from the very beginning, human beings are shown that once Satan entered into this picture, we all became corrupted. And our human nature is partially just and partially unjust. In fact, we're usually really concerned with justice, but it's the other person. And we're really concerned with mercy when it's us.

Same way with goodness. We're really concerned with goodness when it's how people treat us, not how we treat others. We're really concerned with truth and all these issues that are part of the righteousness of God's character, being right. We're always concerned with us being right, but not always concerned with what is right. And that is a really important point. Human beings by nature are concerned with being right, but not always concerned with what is actually right. I must be right. Whether it's actually right or not, I don't have to consider that. I feel it, therefore it is right. In fact, human beings define truth much of the time by how we feel. What we feel is right. The Apostle Paul defined the problem in Romans 8-7. He said, The caral might is an entity against God, is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. In other words, naturally we revolt against God's righteousness. That's Romans 8-7. We revolt against God's righteousness because it doesn't seem right to us. It doesn't feel just. We feel God is a just. And it doesn't feel good, thank goodness.

And so we're automatically at war with God in terms of His righteousness.

This is called... y'all know where I've taken you now? What's it called? There was a couple of whispers. Self-righteousness.

Self-righteousness.

What I feel is just and right and good is right and just and good. That's what we believe. You know, leavening... and here we'll talk about leavening a lot. In two weeks I'll be giving... I gave the sermon on the Passover types. In two weeks I'll be giving this sermon on the types of leavened bread. We'll talk about leavening. There's two ways to introduce leavening into dough. One is to put in a leavening agent. The other is just to set it out in the air. You set dough out in the air long enough it'll collect spores and it'll leaven itself. That's a lot more subtle way of being leavened. And to think about self-righteousness. It's much more subtle because it feels right, it feels just, and it feels good. But you are righteous. You are right.

And it is for Christians one of the most dangerous sins that we can have. You know why? Because when you're self-righteous, the one thing you're absolutely sure is that you're not self-righteous. You know you're right.

You know you're right. So you get to be self-righteous, you're right. And of course, because God has given us truth, because God has opened our minds to the Scripture, because we have a relationship with God, it's so easy to say, look how right I am.

I'm talking about four symptoms. Actually, I call them syndromes of self-righteousness. And all of us have experienced these in one degree or another at one time in our lives. Sometimes all four of them. Sometimes all four of them at the same time. But they're all symptoms of self-righteousness because as you examine yourself as we prepared for the days of 11 bread, look for this subtle form of 11. That's in our lives. It's so easy for us to slide into it. I'm not even knowing it. It's so dangerous because we won't acknowledge that it's there. See, this is why it's easier. It's easier for someone who is a liar. It's easier for an alcoholic. It's easier for a homosexual sometimes to repent and change than it is for the self-righteous person. The self-righteous person can say, but father, I don't lie. I'm not a homosexual. I don't drink. I'm good. I'm right. And the thing is, we're not doing those things. Remember, this is an attitude. It's so easy where we can judge the actions. It's much more difficult to judge the attitudes. I call this first one, I would never have Bungs syndrome. You ever go to someone's house and you look, you know, maybe you're sitting at dinner and you're looking up to the kitchen. There's a bug crawling across the floor. You get in the car, did you see that bug? Wow! I would never have bugs.

Kim and I would be buried about eight years. We moved to an apartment complex in East Texas. Now, East Texas is absolutely famous for roaches. I mean, the little ones that move in herds of like 10,000 and those great big ones that fly. The first time I saw one, I thought there was a bat in the house. You know, they just fly. They buzz. Okay. Well, we moved to East Texas and we got this apartment. And we soon found out that this apartment had lots of roaches and we couldn't get rid of them. So the people that the management, we told them about it, they said, don't worry, we're going to take care of it. So they came in and they sprayed the whole section of the apartment complex. And of course, we got sick from the spraying. I mean, they just came in and they didn't. They just came in spraying everything, you know. And for about two weeks, we had no bugs. We were bugless. We could really judge those who had bugs because we used to have bugs. We have no bugs. But it's a funny thing. It's not like they killed all of them. They simply moved to the next section of the apartment complex. And as they went around, they just moved. So eventually, they all showed up back in our building. But now there was like three times more of them because they picked up all their buddies as they went through every place. There were bugs all over the place. The day I said, we got to move out of here, as I was drinking my coffee and realized there were roaches drowned in my coffee. You know, of course, Kim kept the spotless. She cleaned everything. It was like the greatest insult. There's bugs. So what did they do? They sprayed it again and they all went away. And they moved around. And it was just this ongoing merry-go-round. So after six months, the lease was up. And we said, we're out of here. We got bugs. Okay?

I would never have bug syndrome. Is that, oh, we may know that we have a few imperfections. We don't have bugs like they have bugs. We don't have bugs like our neighbors, like the people in the apartment next to us. They must be dirty people have that many bugs. We soon found out that in that complex, whether you had a clean or dirty apartment meant nothing. The bugs came. But what happens is, what this syndrome is, you literally see the bugs that other people have. You see their faults. We all see each other's faults. It doesn't take long. You know, just spend the whole time with somebody and pretty soon you'll figure out their faults and where they don't maybe understand the Bible quite as clear on this point as they should, or maybe not as clear as you think you do. Or they do something differently than you do. Then you might think, well, that's not the way God wants it. Or you find out they actually have a sin, a problem in their lives. Maybe they do have a drinking problem.

And now you have to, what do I do? Well, boy, look at that person's bugs. And what happens is, it makes you feel a certain way about yourself. Remember, God's righteousness has to do with his being right and just and good. Self-righteousness has to do with you being right and just and good. Turn to Luke chapter 18. Luke 18 probably describes self-righteousness as well as any passage in the scripture. Now, what I find interesting here, of course, this is a parable given by Jesus. We all know it. But it's the commentary given by Luke. And remember, Luke wasn't there. Luke wrote his gospel afterwards. He wasn't there. He was a Gentile doctor, physician. So he had gathered the stories from the people who were there, and he wrote them down. And every once in a while, he'll add a little commentary. They came along with what he was told. And what he says here in verse 9 is, And he spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others. What we have here is the motivation for self-righteousness. Self-righteousness is what we trust in ourselves.

We trust in our own goodness. We trust in our own justice. We trust that we are right. And we trust in that so much that it gives us permission to despise other people. We just feel so better than them. We feel so superior to them. And then he gives us a exaggerated story in order to make his point. Verse 10, Two men went up to the temple to pray. One a Pharisee, the other a tax collector. Pharisee would have been one of the most respected religious people in society. The tax collector was one of the most despised. Think about it. The tax collectors collaborated with the Roman government, the pagan Roman government that occupied the land and you collected taxes for. What's interesting is when you read the Roman side of this, many people were tax collectors throughout the Roman Empire were tax collectors by chance. They were forced to do it because they couldn't get people to do it in some places in the world. Most tax collectors ended up making good living out of it because they skipped off the top. And people knew it. Now, the important point here is to understand this tax collector is a practicing Torah observant Jew. This isn't a pagan and this isn't somebody who doesn't obey God's law. He's in the temple. Jesus, in every aspect of this story, is making a really important point. The Pharisee is in the temple. Beside him, in the same temple, worshiping the same God, you know, is a man who also observes the Sabbath, doesn't worship idols, but despised in society for his job.

The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself. That's interesting, with himself. Basically, he was talking to himself. He was praying to God, but really was talking to himself. His prayer wasn't going very far.

God, I thank you that I am not like other men. Extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even have this tax collector. Now, he didn't say the tax collector was extortioner or unjust or an adulterer. He just said, I thank you I'm not like this. You know what? The man was not extorted. There's nothing in this story that makes you believe that Christ was saying, oh yeah, he's extortioner. This man was committing adultery. There's nothing in here to make you believe that. This man probably had never committed it in the act of adultery. He looked at the tax collector who's in the temple worshiping with him, and he says, I thank you that I'm not like all the other Jews here either, who aren't as good and just and right as I am. You know, it would be one thing if it would have been a pagan. If it would have been a pagan there, you know what the man would have said, get him out of here, and God would have supported him, get him out of here. Pagans were not allowed in the temple according to the law of God.

So, this is God accepted the tax collector there, but the Pharisee did not. He says, I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all I possess. There was no command in the Bible that says you have to tithe, or have to fast twice a week. This guy went over and above. He says, I tithe even on things that maybe you don't have to tithe on, but I make sure I tithe. I tithe on everything. I'm meticulous in my time.

Look how these points are adding up. You see what he went to God to talk to God about? Well, His goodness, His justice, His righteousness. That's sort of interesting. It's almost like, you know, God, there's you, and then there's us, really righteous people, and then there's the rest of these Jews, and then there's the pagans, and you and I, God, we're just like this. See the attitude? You know what makes this so dangerous? He was tithing. He was fasting. He had never worshiped an idol in his life.

He probably had not taken God's name and faith in an overt way in his life. He'd done it. The Spirit just didn't know it. The man had never committed adultery. He probably never stole a penny in his life. Kept the Sabbath since his birth. It was all true. It's the attitudes of the sins. An attack collector standing afar off would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breath, saying, God, be merciful to me a sinner. Simple prayer. Standing before God, I have no value unless he gives it to me. I have no righteousness of my own, only what God teaches me, only what God leads me to, only what God gives me through his Spirit.

Now I'm adding a little bit. That's not what the tax collector was thinking, but it's what we must think. The tax collector said, I come before the righteous God and I'm just pretty much bankrupt here.

I'm pretty much spiritually bankrupt as I come before you. And Jesus says in verse 14, I tell you, this man went down to his house, justified. In other words, in a relationship with God, his account made zero. His account made zero.

Rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled and he who humbles himself will be exalted. The Pharisees' account still had sinned it, but he didn't give it his adultery. He tithed it. I mean, if we lined up all the overt actions of sin that the Pharisee was making in the tax collector, the tax collector's list was a lot longer, I'm sure. Knowing Pharisees.

His sinless was longer, but at the end of the parable, Jesus said, there's one person whose sinless is wiped out. It's the person who understood his absolute bankruptcy before God. Now that didn't mean that he grew up in sin. That's not the point of the parable. That's the whole thing. In fact, Jesus gives other parables that show, so you now, you just can't go sin. He's talking about an attitude and approach to God. One that says, I'm right, I'm good. God, it's you and me, and the other that says, you're God. And I know, and I understand that.

The second symptom, the syndrome. By the way, how do you deal with this? I would never have bug syndrome. Just something you could do if you really want to face this. Take Psalm 19, 12-13. We won't go there, but take Psalm 19, 12-13, and go get on your knees and pray that to God.

David asks God, he says, who could know his ways? So basically, he says, show me my presumptuous sins, my willful sins, and show me my hidden sins. Show me the sins I don't know anything about.

Go ask that. Go, God.

Show you your hidden sins. The second syndrome, I call this the, there was a book by this time, a number of years ago, the I'm okay, you're okay syndrome. Now, this is actually a twist of the first one that seems to be the exact opposite, because this person says, look, look, you know, God's forgiven me of a lot. Who am I to judge anything? Now, we like this person. They seem so magnanimous. You know, who am I to judge anybody? Well, there's a problem with that. You know, the thing with the, I don't have any bug syndrome, or I would never have bug syndrome, is the person's promoting how good they are by new standards. Many of them are standards they even set. They're not even God's standards. They're their own standards. This one is, basically, I'm so self-righteous and I'm so good that I understand. There's really no standards.

I'll give you an example to explain this. First Corinthians 5, because this is a complicated syndrome here. First Corinthians 5, it doesn't seem like self-righteousness. First Corinthians 5, in these first verses, part of it, we usually divide this passage into two parts. We read part of it in Days of Unleavened Bread and part of it when we're talking about something else. I want to read where this whole little section fits together. It all fits together. Verse 1. Paul says, it is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, that such sexual immorality is not even named among the Gentiles, so the man has his father's wife. Now, the fact that it doesn't say mother, the indication is it's his stepmother. And it's his mother's wife, his father's wife, yeah. It doesn't have his father, it's his stepmother. Also, the fact that she's not mentioned here as part of the correction, she's probably not a Christian. So this man is having an affair with his pagan stepmother. And the whole church knows about it. He says, look, verse 2 is very, very important, because this is in the context of the days of 11 breath. He says, and you are puffed up. He tells the church there, you're full of leavening. Now, he says they're full of leavening when they see themselves as being very loving. Yeah, we know this man's sitting, but, you know, he grew up the church, and he'll just have to learn. And everybody, all the teenagers, all the kids, everybody who knows, this guy's having an affair with his pagan stepmother. And nothing's done about it.

But you're puffed up, and not rather have mourned. He says, you should be filled with sadness over this. That he who has done this deed might be taken away from among you. Paul says, for I indeed, as absent in the body of the present Spirit, in other words, he wasn't there in Corinth, but he says, I can tell you what you should do, have already judged as though I were present, human who has done this deed. And in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you're gathered together, along with my Spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, deliver such a want to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, that his Spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus Christ. He says, you remove this man from your congregation. Now, you read in 2 Corinthians, the man repented. And now, because they were still puffed up in their own self-righteousness, he had to say, well, the man's repented. You're supposed to take him back. They wouldn't get rid of him, but then it would take him back. So, wait a minute. If the man's repented, he's now restored in his relationship with God. He's supposed to be back in the congregation. He's required to come back to the congregation, and they were required to take him. In actuality, they didn't sit against him. They sit against God. So, as soon as the issue between him and God was fixed, they were supposed to take him back. But they were puffed up. They were right. They were right at first because we're being so back the end of us here. And they were right after he was gone because, well, we finally got that man out of our midst. That's good. In both cases, they were acting out of self-righteousness. You're puffed up. So, look at verse 5. Your glory is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Now, the rest of this is what we read all the time during the days of leavened bread, before the days of the leavened bread, how to purge out the leaven and keep the feast. So, verses 1 through verses 8 are all tied in to the days of the leavened bread. Removing this man was because you've got to get the leavening out, and you're all puffed up. But their leavening was different. They weren't committing adultery. They just felt very good about their own goodness and allowing this to take place in their congregation. And so, you see, this is a form of self-righteousness, but it's not like the first, you know, I don't have any bug syndrome. This was different. I'm okay. You're okay.

It's still a form of self-righteousness. You know why? Because it does not accept God's goodness, God's standards.

God determines what is right and what is wrong. God is right.

Oh, boy! How cruel! You just don't love somebody if you remove them from your fellowship. That's if you're self-righteous. Now, if you're removing from your fellowship, and they're not breaking one of the reasons why, then we do have a problem. But if it's one of the reasons in the Scripture, then they should be removed. And that seems harsh, doesn't it? In today's world, that seems very harsh. But it is self-righteous to believe that we shouldn't. Because we're actually denying God's rightfulness.

The third, I call the Rabbi-Rabbi syndrome.

This form of self-righteousness exhibits itself in an obsessive desire to be recognized as some kind of special spiritual person, as a leader or a teacher. Now, a desire to be a spiritual teacher or leader is not a bad thing. That's not a bad thing. And there'll be spiritual leaders and teachers in every congregation. Some ordain, some aren't ordained.

As I've said before, some of the greatest spiritual teachers I've ever met in my life were widows who had been in the church a long time and had a great amount of spiritual knowledge and wisdom for everybody. And they taught through their example. They taught just by talking to them. So, being a leader or a teacher in a congregation is a good thing. And desiring it isn't necessarily a bad thing. The two points that are very important here in the little definition I gave was this brand of self-righteousness exhibits itself in an obsessive desire to be recognized. It is an obsession to be recognized at all costs. To be recognized one way or another, no matter how much damage it does, no matter what it does to other people, it is a demand. And it really is a strange, emotional obsession. That you're obsessed with it. Now, it's true that teachers teach, right? I actually have a coaching personality. I coach no matter what I do, you know? When I'm with my grandkids, pretty soon Ralph, throw the ball, you know? No, throw the ball this way. Catch the ball this way, you know? Just coaching personality. Some people are just natural leaders. We could all be sitting around talking about something, and there's a few people that pretty soon would all just be following them, wherever they go. Hey, let's do this! All we go. Because they're just natural leaders. But, you know, spiritual people have that guided. They're not obsessed to be recognized. Not obsessed to be recognized. This obsession leads people with the Rabbi-Rabbi Syndrome that they can't be taught and they can't be led by anybody.

Except themselves. Matthew 23.

Once again, many times, the person with the this kind of self-righteous problem actually has a great deal of knowledge.

And many times, can recite Scripture in a way that the rest of us are enthralled with, or amazed at. Wow! This person really knows the Bible. You know, they're quoting Zephaniah, entire chapters, and tying in entire places from Josephus by memory. And you go look it up, wow, they get it right! So they do tend to have a great deal of knowledge.

Here's the problem. Matthew 23, verse 1.

And Jesus spoke to the multitudes and to his disciples, saying, The scribes of the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. Now the Pharisees had a certain authority in the synagogue. Therefore, whatever they tell you to do, observe, that observe and do. But do not do according to their works, for they say and do not do. What he's basically saying is, you know, when they teach you the law, when they teach you God's way, when they open the scrolls, difficult for the scrolls, do it. But don't follow their example.

I have to give a sermon so they just own the Pharisees. The Pharisees are a fascinating group of people. The Pharisees formed because of the Babylonian captivity, and they decided that Israel would never go, or Judah would never go into captivity again. They would never let the nation turn its back on God ever again. They would protect the law, they would protect God's way, and they would protect the scripture, and they died to do it. They died to protect the scripture and to protect God's way, and in order to protect it, they built a whole system of oral law. You can't commit adultery if you can't see her.

Understand the thought process. Because, well, adultery comes from lusting. You can't lust if you can't see her.

Now, they didn't do like Muslim zoos where they cover a woman's face, but they were incredibly strict on modesty. Where were the other extreme? We live in a world where sometimes we're not strict enough on modesty. They were very strict on modesty for that very reason. Men and women could not sit together in a synagogue because the men could get distracted, and their thoughts would be wrong during Holy Sabbath services. So the women sat someplace else. You know, they made these things up in an attempt to say we're going to protect God's law. Because never again will we be in such a bad spiritual state that God will turn His back on us. In keeping of the letter of the Ten Commandments, they were outstanding.

Paul even says, as a Christian, you want to know about my background concerning the law? I was a Pharisee. In other words, you can't get any better, Nat. You can't get any better in keeping the letter of the law. Their problem was they did all this stuff until they got to the point where all they could think about was their righteousness, their goodness. They were right.

They were just, and they were good. But they really weren't, because no one is 100% right and good and just before the Almighty God. We're all still flawed, and we also have sinned. We all still struggle. But you wouldn't think a Pharisee did, because it is mine. He didn't. See why self-righteousness is so scary? I have nothing to repent of. And they can be doing a lot of good things, a lot of things that we all should be doing.

He says they're hypocrites. There's forces where they bind heavy burdens hard to bear, and they lay them on men's shoulders, but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. In other words, they kept setting up these more and more and more of these ceremonies and these rituals to keep people obeying the law. But they didn't have to do all the ceremonies themselves all the time, because, well, let's say that they were already righteous.

We might tell these people they need to throw out leavening during the days of lemon bread. Now we sort of do it, but we're not, you know, we already know that we're just doing it. We're doing it. They need to do it in order to earn some kind of status with God. We're doing it because we already have status with God. See the difference? It's all about earning status.

So they would do the things, and they would do it to an extreme. And then sometimes they would put these burdens on people, but they would not do those. They didn't have to do those. They were above that. He says, but all their works were fine. They do to be seen by men. They make their phylacteries broad and large the borders of their garments. They wore their phylacteries on the bottom of their clothes to show that they obeyed the law. Everybody could tell because they didn't have little phylacteries. They had big ones. You knew. Oh, there's a person who believes in the law because they were told to wear phylacteries in the Old Testament, so they wouldn't forget the law. Well, you can't forget the law if you're a Pharisee because your clothes have huge phylacteries on the bottom. When you get dressed every day, you know. Now, verse 6 is really important. They love the best places at feasts, the best seats in the synagogues. Greetings in the marketplaces have been called by men, rabbi, rabbi. They were obsessed with being recognized for their spiritual. Look at how many people in the Bible. Look at Joseph and Mary. Look at Mary, the mother of Jesus. Righteous. She kept all the Ten Commandments. She kept all the laws of God. She was righteous in her obedience to God. But she didn't do it for status. She did it because it was right and just and good.

See the difference? In some ways, Mary's activities, day-to-day activities, wouldn't be any different than any different of the Pharisees, except she wasn't parading it. She wasn't parading it. It's who she was.

And so they love the constant recognition that they're better than everybody else. It wasn't in effect that you're a teacher.

You know, I have people by life. I have some ministers that have been teachers in my lives, and I respect them. And I show them extra respect because they have taught me so much. But they never demanded that. It is who they are. They've earned it. So I give it to them. And my teachers. The Pharisees didn't. Their recognition was on their superiority. Their superiority. Because they knew they were good, and they were better. So Rabbi Rabbi. Master, master. Rabbi, Rabbi Syndrome.

First thing, now, he starts to give us what, how we should deal with this. But you do not be called Rabbi, for what is your teacher, the Christ? He says, you know, we're going to be around yelling something, oh, your teacher, teacher, rabbi, master, master. He says, ah, let Christ be your master. Let Christ be your master. It's interesting. Elders in the church are called a lot of things, but they're never called master, by the way. It's not a position given to the elders in the church. Do not call anyone on this earth your father, for what is your father? He was in heaven. It was interesting. I was watching something the other day where the Pope was meeting with some sort of an ecumenical group of ministers. And I forget why he's watching it. It was on the news or something. And it was interesting, because at one point he said to them, really, we need to all work together here on earth because we have one earthly father. I'm not sure all the Hindus appreciated it. You know, I'm not sure that meant anything to them, but he pronounced himself as the earthly father. Direct opposition to what Jesus says here. He for he was the greatest among you.

Actually, I read those out of order, didn't I? I read verse 10 and then verse 9. Okay, you know where I am. Verse 11. But he who is greater among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled. He who hums himself will be exalted.

Leader's servanthood is an attitude. Being a servant is an attitude. You could be the husband in your family and have the authority that God gives the husband in a family and still be a servant. See, being a servant is not synonymous or against authority. Being a servant is an attitude.

You know, if you struggle with an obsession to be seen as someone special, here's what you need to do. Take all that energy and be doing now in the next Passover, expended. Serving widows and elderly, mow the grass for a guy, maybe your neighbor, who's in a wheelchair. That's what you need to do. If you're obsessed with your desire to be shown, your superior, your spiritual superiority, between now and next Passover, spend all that energy just serving people. Serve the people of the church. Serve your neighbors. I had a pastor one time who still I look at as one of my greatest mentors, and that was his assistant. I was being trained by him. And a lot of times he'd say, well, come on over at 10 o'clock in the morning, and I'd get there, and he'd be going in and take a shower. And the reason why is he'd get up at 7 and go up and down. You'd see him driving his riding lawn mower up the street and down the street mowing all the lawns of every widow in the neighborhood. And that's how he started his mornings. Now, nobody in the church knew he did that, but that's what he did. I always thought that was one of the most amazing lessons I ever learned. He didn't need to teach me a lesson. He didn't, you know, he didn't tell me he did that when I... what do you do? Oh, I did all that. I just go up and all the widows, yards of the neighborhood. Jesus, I got a nice lawn mower, and I like doing it.

So that's what he would do at this over time, a couple days a week.

That's the way we deal with this, rabbi-rabbi syndrome.

I knew a man one time that was obsessed with this. I was a teenager. You couldn't talk to him at church because he'd get people aside, and he would just tell them all the secret knowledge he had. You can't get this anyplace else. God revealed this to me. And he would get them aside, and he would tell them all these things. And most of the times, there were things that people already knew. They'd say, I know that. No, you don't. After church, you would dread it when he'd come around and say, my wife and I want you to have over for lunch. Because he would hold Bible studies. And he knew people would walk in and say, oh no. They'd go over his house, and the first thing you'd say is, you didn't learn much at church today. I'm going to tell you all the things you didn't learn. And he would give him this long Bible study, so nobody would go over his house. Finally he got to the place, and he says, well, these people were cold and unfriendly, so he left the congregation. He went and joined a Sunday church where he convinced them, at least part of them, they should keep the Sabbath. He somehow split that church all up into a mess, got kicked out of that. Last I heard of him, someone said they had seen him. This was not long before he died. They said they met him. They saw him at a Dunkin Donuts. He looked like a bulb on the street. He hadn't shaved or taken a bath, obviously, a long time. He sat there drinking a cup of coffee. And he said, you know what? I have no friends. I have no church to go to. Even my wife left me. And in his mind it was because he was a special teacher, and he was being rejected by everybody.

And you know, the shame is, when it came to certain aspects of knowledge, that man was remarkable. He was obsessed.

This last point is, I call this, it's not my fault syndrome.

What happens with self-righteousness, and maybe you've never done this, I'm going to admit, this is one I'm really good at. Okay? There are certain things you're good at. I'm good at this one. I can rationalize anything to it's not my fault. And I have argued that before, and people just stare at me like, especially my wife.

It's obviously your fault, okay? No, it's not. You're the one who made the decision. You're the one who put everything in motion. You're like, what do you mean it's not your fault? It's not my fault. If you could just understand my background, you would know why I do what I do. Right? How many times have you heard that? If you just understood how my parents treat me, you would know why I beat my kids. Believe me, I've heard that one in Tennessee many times. If you just understood, well, we understand, but you can't then equate that this action is somehow okay. In 1931, there was a gangster in New York named Two Gun Crowley. Now, most people don't know Two Gun Crowley, okay? Two Gun Crowley was a famous, I mean, he was just a murderer, a thief. It is a gangster. And one day, he was with his girlfriend and they were necking in the car, and a policeman walked up and said, can I see your license? Because they were sitting on the side of the road. He pulled out a gun and just shot the policeman. I don't know how many times they got out, pulled out the policeman's gun, and shot him with his own gun. Got in the car, drove back into New York, got in his apartment, didn't even think anything about it. No remorse, no nothing. Well, before long, his apartment was surrounded by 150 policemen. They estimated 10,000 people were standing around watching, and they just blew this apartment building apart. Everybody's shooting at the apartment building, and he's shooting out the windows, you know, like something out of a movie. And what was he thinking in all this? You know, they know, because he got wounded, and before he got so weak that they captured him, he managed to sit down and wrote something on a piece of paper. It's all bloodstained. And here's what he wrote, to whom it may concern, under my coat is a weary heart, but a kind one, one that would do nobody any harm.

Now, this tells us something about human nature. It's not my fault. When he was walking to the electric chair, he said, this is what I get for trying to defend myself. Now, I love this quote.

I spent the best years of... think who you think this might be. I spent the best years of my life giving people the lighter pleasures, helping them to have a good time, and all I get is abuse, the existence of a hunted man. It's Al Capoe.

They're not sure how many men he killed. There's a list, you know, you've got to work your kid again. They have a really long list. Stole, cheated, ran brothels. They went that way and it was horrendous. Yet he saw himself as basically good and just.

He wasn't a bad man. It's what we see humanity do from the very beginning. God walks through the garden and asks Adam, where are you? And Adam says, well, I'm hiding out here, you know. I was naked and I was ashamed. Wait a minute. Who told you this? Who made you this way? It's not my fault! Wait a minute. Who told you this? Who made you this way? It's not my fault! It's the woman you gave me! He not only blames her, he blames God. It's the woman you gave me! It's not my fault! What did she say? It was a serpent! How was I noticed? No, the snakes were supposed to talk. It's his fault! Actually, she's a little more correct than Adam's. But you see the point. It's human nature. We must feel good about ourselves. We must feel right. That's what drives people to do causes that seem bizarre. You know, there's this, not too long ago, I guess, a couple years ago now, there was out in California a big truck of sea bass that wrecked and speared these flopping bass all over the highway. So now there's been a movement ever since then for the last couple years to build a big monument to the dying sea bass because they would have suffered so greatly. And they're God's creatures and, you know, and so there's people there that want to build a monument to the sea bass and to show how cruel it is to eat them to begin with. You understand? We think, well, those people are in a suit, but no. It makes them feel what? Right, just, and good. They're right! If you eat fish, you're wrong!

If you have leather, you're wrong. You have to stand the depth of feeling they have about this. It's like I try to explain to my wife sometimes. She'll say, why do people support abortion? The killing of babies! Now, if they kill you, you have to understand that incredible angst and anger you feel because what you see what they're doing is what? Bad, evil. They have that exact same feeling about you because they say your stance against abortion is bad and evil. You want to take away a basic human right. What are you, a Nazi? And their mind, that's how they feel about you. Because every human being wants to feel righteous. And if we don't have God's standards of righteousness, we'll just make a standard up. And when we make the standard up, we'll say that's what makes me feel good and just, and that's what makes me feel right. And that is self-righteousness. Everything you see in our society is self-righteousness. Now, because God has given us so much, we can forget how dangerous the sin of self-righteousness is.

That before God, we have to recognize who we really are, our bankruptcy, if you will, before God. I am morally, if God does not resurrect me, I have no eternal life. If God does not save me, if God does not give me his spirit, if God does not call me, if God does not work with me, no, I must respond. We all have responsibility. But isn't that part of, you know, part of not being self-righteousness and taking responsibility for your own sins? It's not my fault. No, it is my fault. And I must take responsibility for my sins. And I must go ask God to apply that brutal, terrible torture and execution of Jesus Christ for me. And every year, we're reminded of that. Just go to 1 John. We'll conclude with this. 1 John 1.

1 John 1, verse 9. If we confess our sins, one of the greatest ways we deal with self-righteousness, we have to get on our knees and we have to say, it is my fault. It is my fault. I have corrupted human nature and it won't change until I take responsibility for who I am. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just, that's two of the elements of righteousness. Faithfulness and just. People, justice means we have to die. God's justice is, I can give you mercy. You say, oh, could He get away with the law? No, He didn't. Well, how? What do you do with the penalty of the law? The law requires the penalty. If He didn't do away with the law, what did He do? Because His righteousness demands that something have justice involved. He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from what? All unrighteousness. Our own sense of goodness, our own sense of right, our own sense of justice. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar. His word is not in us. Chapter 2. My little children, these things, John says, I write to you, so that you may not sin. Now, He doesn't say, He can't be a license to sin. We have to understand, though, the process by which we are cleansed. How we come out of sin and then something else must be put into us. If anyone sins, we have an advocate. You have someone who speaks up for you. You have someone who is your defense attorney, which is one of the definitions of advocate. We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but for the whole world. We're right back to the past. We're right back where we begin.

As we prepare for the Feast of Unleavened Bread, you and I will throw out physical evidence. But more importantly, we should be considering the spiritual leavening in our lives. This doesn't mean that God wants you to dig up all your past sins and somehow bring them before Him again. He's forgiven you of your sins. When you were baptized, at every Passover, what are we reminding? That daily, as we get on our knees, we are forgiven. That's the kind of relationship we have with God. But He never wants you to forget how you got there. It's the moment we forget how we got there, and we begin to revel in our own superiority, our own righteousness, our own goodness.

Well, we forget how we got there. Why do you think He makes us once a year? Actually twice a year, because on the day of the Tobit, we do it too. Why is it twice a year God stops this? Wait a minute! Remember how you got here. It's to keep us away from the sin of self-righteousness. It's to keep us focused on Him and on Jesus Christ. If you suffer from the, I don't have Bond syndrome, or the I'm okay, you're okay syndrome, or the Rabbi-Rabbi syndrome, or it's not my fault syndrome, then you probably don't know you do. That's the great danger on self-righteousness. We have to go ask God, do I suffer from self-righteousness? We have to go ask Him. Is that one of the problems I have? If I do, then we have to ask, would You in Your mercy and Your gentleness show me? That's hard. That's hard. And in the midst of that, we're still focused on how we got there. How we were even given the permission to ask that question is because at the Passover we were reminded that without the sacrifice of Jesus Christ as a substitute for what we deserve before God's righteousness, we are doomed. It's that simple. And only through His sacrifice and God's work that is carried out because He is resurrected, and the Holy Spirit is poured out, it's in His work that He does in us that we can be cleansed from our sins and then we become the recipients of His righteousness.