Matthew Woes | Inside of the Cup

Pastor Seth opens by explaining that the church is concluding its teaching series on Matthew 23, a chapter from the final period of Jesus’ life and his last public discourse. Jesus pronounces a series of “woes” against the Pharisees and teachers of the law, sharply criticizing their religious hypocrisy. Seth says the passage is not merely ammunition for criticizing hypocritical people outside the church; it is meant to make Christians examine the hypocrisy that can live within them. Beneath the criticism, he believes Jesus is offering “abundant life.” The sermon focuses on Matthew 23:25–28. Jesus compares the religious leaders to people who clean the outside of a cup and dish while leaving the inside full of greed and self-indulgence. He also compares them to whitewashed tombs: beautiful outside, but internally full of dead bones and uncleanness. Seth emphasizes that Jesus is not condemning external cleanliness itself; he is exposing a life devoted to appearances while ignoring the heart. The goal is not simply to look righteous before others, but to become clean from the inside out.

To make Jesus’ image concrete, Seth asks the congregation to imagine waking up to a sink full of dirty dishes. He describes leaving his wife a kitchen like that after cooking a Sunday meal, then asks what it would be like to take one of the dirty bowls, clean only its outside, and pour cereal into it. The congregation’s reaction—“yuck, gross, and disgusting”—illustrates Jesus’ point: the inside is where the food goes, so it matters most. Some dirt on the outside may be tolerable, but an unclean interior makes the dish unusable. Seth then connects this to Jesus’ statement in Matthew 5 that a person’s righteousness must surpass that of the Pharisees to enter the kingdom of heaven. The Pharisees appeared extraordinarily devoted: they studied God’s law with precision, prayed consistently, attended religious gatherings, and carefully managed how they appeared to others. Yet Jesus still called them hypocrites. Seth uses Larry Crabb’s formulation that doing right requires more than performing activities because the whole law is summarized by loving God and loving others. External behavior cannot manufacture that love; it requires profound internal change.

Seth argues that people cannot produce love, change their desires, or perform spiritual surgery on themselves. They can bathe, groom, dress, exercise, and manage many outward aspects of life, but they cannot reach inside themselves and transform the motives of the heart. He deliberately leads the congregation toward the frustration of asking how the inside of the cup can actually be cleaned. If the answer is only “do better” or “try harder,” people may intensify their outward religious efforts without becoming inwardly different. That strategy eventually produces exhaustion. A person may try harder and harder to control behavior, then discover that the effort has not changed the heart. The remaining options can seem to be grumbling that Jesus or the church demands too much, or simply giving up. Seth calls this a false binary. The alternative is not something people can accomplish through greater willpower, but surrendering control to Jesus. Genuine transformation, he says, feels less like forcing external behavior and more like bearing fruit: the changed inner life begins to express itself outwardly without the same burnout produced by religious performance.

Seth introduces an iceberg as a picture of the human life. Above the waterline are circumstances, behaviors, and feelings. Circumstances include one’s job, city, health, friendships, church, hobbies, and finances. Behaviors include habits, disciplines, choices, and actions, while feelings include anxiety, anger, fear, sadness, and joy. He says social media advice usually promises to improve one of these three areas: imitate someone’s better vacation or home, change routines and habits, or learn techniques to manage emotions. People may switch jobs, cities, diets, churches, Bible plans, exercise routines, or therapeutic practices, but these changes do not necessarily reach the heart. Below the waterline are deeper needs and desires, especially the need for love, purpose, belonging, meaning, wisdom, and significance. Those needs are legitimate because God made people with them, but they also make people vulnerable to deep disappointment when others reject, abandon, betray, or fail them. Seth says pain can include abuse, abandonment, rejection, and trauma, and its depth often reflects the reality of the violated need. Yet he insists pain is not what ultimately separates people from God. Beneath the pain is sin: the self-protective response that tries to control life, avoid vulnerability, reject others first, please everyone, use humor, or build an identity that keeps God and other people at a distance.

Seth describes sin as a “best friend” that rises up whenever a legitimate need is disappointed and offers a self-made solution. If someone is embarrassed, sin may promise that they will never be weak or uninformed again. If someone is rejected, sin may tell them to reject others first. If they feel exposed, they may become angry, controlling, entertaining, people-pleasing, or emotionally distant. These strategies can look like protection, but Seth says they are attempts to keep authority over one’s own life and prevent anyone—including God—from having influence. He connects this pattern to Genesis 3. Eve sees that the forbidden fruit is desirable for gaining wisdom, even though wisdom is a real human need that God himself is willing to provide. Seth points to James’ promise that God gives wisdom generously without finding fault, but Eve chooses a way to obtain it on her own terms. Sin therefore does not merely consist of bad behavior; it is mistrust of God and a decision to use something else to satisfy a need God intended to meet. At the bottom of the iceberg is the question of who sits on the throne: God, or the self. Seth says that once people recognize this, merely adjusting circumstances, behavior, or feelings appears inadequate.

Seth turns to Psalm 139’s prayer, “Search me, God, and know my heart,” explaining that biblical testing is like a structural stress test that reveals where a life bends or breaks. He encourages people to pray for God to know their anxious thoughts, expose offensive ways, and lead them in the everlasting way. This deeper examination can happen privately with God or in a trusted spiritual community. In Acts 2, when people hear that the Jesus they crucified has been made both Lord and Messiah, they are “cut to the heart” and ask, “What shall we do?” Seth says the appropriate response is not to create a more intense religious schedule, but to admit that self-repair is impossible. He defines repentance as changing one’s mind about who is God and allowing Jesus to sit on the throne. Instead of obeying merely to manage appearances or avoid discomfort, a surrendered person begins to want God and obey him from the deepest part of life. Jesus’ forgiveness, the cleansing of his blood, and the work of the Holy Spirit move inward and then produce outward change. Circumstances may remain difficult, but Seth says peace can accompany trouble and joy can coexist with sadness. He closes by inviting everyone—whether it is their first or millionth time—to confess pride, jealousy, greed, lust, and other attempts to meet deeper needs, trust Jesus, and ask him to keep changing them from the inside out.