WASHING
Ritualism will replace relationship
23:25 All of the seven woes begin with the attention-getter “woe to you.” The address to the “scribes and Pharisees” and characterization as “hypocrites” occurs at the beginning of all of the woes, with the exception of the third woe (23:16). In this fifth woe, Jesus critiques the leaders’ excessive attention to the external, something highlighted earlier in this passage (23:5). The humorous analogy from the previous verse continues with a new metaphor of cup and dish. Attention to issues of purification and purity was meticulous in Jewish religious practice, something reflected here. But Jesus in earlier teaching has indicated that uncleanness comes from within a person, not from what is outside (15:10–20). The metaphor of cup and dish are used as a reference to the person, as Jesus here states that inside the cup resides “greed and self-indulgence.”
23:26 Jesus calls them “blind,” concluding this subset of three woes with the theme of blindness (23:16, 24). Continuing with the metaphor of cup and dish as representative of the person, Jesus states that primary attention must be given to what is inside. This will then result in the cleanliness of the outside (15:10–20).
Preaching Themes: Beauty, Character, Healing, Hypocrisy, Purity
Tiger Woods may just be the most famous person with bad knees, but many Americans struggle with this ailment. It is enough of a problem that, according to Sue Kelly of USA Today, 660,000 websites are related to sore knees and how to care for them. They feature exercises and stretches designed to help prevent knee surgery. That’s a lot of websites! But not as many as devote themselves to the problem of ugly knees: over 4 million. As it turns out, more Americans are concerned with knobby or fat knees than are interested in preventing serious joint pain.
God has called us to be as clean and pure on the inside as we appear on the outside. Do we spend too much time dressing up the body while neglecting the spirit?
—Jim L. Wilson and Rodger Russell
Clean the inside of the cup
What they put in their cups was contaminated by the source from which it had come, and it was useless to polish the outside of the vessel, and so meet the demands of the traditional Law” (Robinson). That the containers are full points to good measure; Jesus is not complaining of an occasional lapse but of the habitual activity of these religious leaders.
Rabbinic literature teaches the same principle: “Rabbi Gamaliel had issued a proclamation, ‘No disciple whose inside is not as his outside may enter the House of Study.’ On that day many stools were added … Rabbi Gamaliel became alarmed and said, ‘Perhaps, God forbid, I withheld Torah from Israel!’ He was shown in his dream white casks full of ashes” (b. Ber. 28a); “Any scholar whose inside is not as his outside is no scholar” (b. Yoma 72b). In actual practice, Pharisees did clean the inside of the cup (cf. Lev. 11:32; 15:12).