He's like you're whitewashed tombs. In other words the outside of you looks pretty, but the inside of you, actually your very presence is making people unclean, unclean. It leads us to a question. You want to be kingdom people, you want the kingdom to be established. Let me ask you a question. Do you have any secrets? Is there any time where on a Sunday morning you come in here and your being is simply a whitewashed tomb? Everything looks good here, but the inside of you is dying and you don't want anybody to know? This is a story about what destruction looks like. It's a story about when you do that it doesn't just affect you; it affects everybody around you because it creates atmospheres and environments that no one can explain. When you're hurt is not dealt with, when your pain is not dealt with, what that does is it creates an environment of a whitewashed tomb. Everything on the outside looks clean and put together and all of that, but on the inside it's bad.
Listen, I pastored at a church of, I don't know, several thousand and my office was upstairs. I used to sit up there, I would watch people come into church. I'd see it. I'd see the husband and wife addressing each other with obscenity-laced tirades, then walking into the front door of the church; hi pastor. Why? Because they're struggling with something they don't want anybody else to know about. There's a character issue that is not dealt with and what happens is everything out here looks nice, but on the inside they're simply a whitewashed tomb and their very presence is affecting the atmosphere of the whole place. Listen, every now and then churches, families, everybody, everybody has to scratch the surface of the whitewashed tomb to see how much dead stuff is actually in there that needs to be dealt with - and that's kingdom. That's kingdom people.
Now the last thing I want to talk about tonight, and this is sort of my main point for the night is this - and everything I've talked about deals with this principle. There's a Hebrew principle of studying the Bible called [unclear 00.15.50] - I'll write it in English, light and heavy. Light and heavy. Every scripture has a light side and a heavy side. Light and heavy was a principle of rabbinical interpretation. It was said to help people live the best life. It was also meant to decide what do you do when the Bible contradicts itself. What do you do when the Bible contradicts itself, which we're going to talk about that here in a second okay? Like for instance Jesus said if your eye offends you pluck it out. Well if you're one of these people who takes everything in the Bible literally good luck! [Laughter] Shane, I take the whole Bible literally. It all is literal and it [unclear 00.16.35] I take it literally, I'm a literalist. Very good. Jesus said if you look at something sinful pluck your eye out. Go for it!
You never see any of His disciples - like He travelled with 12 men for three and a half years. Do you not think there was one lust issue amongst 12 men? [Laughter] And you never see His disciples showing up at the camp fire with a pencil with their eye on it; Jesus, I'm so sorry. [Laughter] In rabbi school these were light and heavy statements. Jesus is saying - what He's saying is that if you handle the sin issue when it's light it'll keep it from becoming heavy, but if you wait until it's heavy it's harder to deal with - light and heavy. Light and heavy. Jesus used these phrases all the time. You have heard it said don't murder but I say to you don't hate - light, heavy. Why? There was a group of people who got proud of themselves for never killing anybody. Jesus says you haven't murdered anybody? Well woopty-do! How many people actually murder people? I'm not concerned with the murderers; I'm concerned with how much hate is in your heart, how much stuff looks nice but on the inside you actually hate people. So to Jesus the heavy sin was hate; the light sin was murder.