White-washed sepulchres

“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.” - Matthew 23v27-28

The only group that Jesus really ever attacked harshly was the Pharisees. These men had taken godly principles and created a self-serving, proud, arrogant, superficial, hypocritical, tradition based religious practice which fed their egos and never forced them to deal with attitudes of the heart.

Jesus used and amazing illustration to picture this truth. He said they had simply white-washed tombs which still were full of dead man’s bones and rotting filth. The outside looked amazing, clean, bright, and sparkling. They took care to make sure that everything looked right, but they never dealt with their own personal private lives. This sin was the one that incurred Jesus wrath.

The tragedy is that the sin did not stop there. One song writer puts it this way, sometimes it seems that “the church isn’t anything more than the second coming of the Pharisees, scrubbing each other till their tombs are white, with epitaphs of piety,” (Andrew Peterson – “Come Lord Jesus”) while never dealing with issues that really count – the issues of the heart.

Jesus said at the end of this section something along the lines of “If you take care of the inside, the outside will sort itself out.”

Lord, help me to never be guilty of this horrible attitude which gives other the view that I am all nice and clean on the outside, while my inside is full of dead man’s bones. May my outside reflect an inner holiness and true Biblical piety.