Matthew 28

Condemning the Pharisees

This week we are picking the story up right where we left off really. Last week Jesus was questioned by the Pharisees and it says that He silenced them with His response so that the Pharisees no longer asked Him questions wasting His time. Immediately after that Jesus begins in chapter 23 to address the crowd and the disciples to make sure everyone knows His feelings towards the Pharisees. Look now at verse two.

Matthew 23:2–3 “saying: “The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. Therefore whatever they tell you to observe, that observe and do, but do not do according to their works; for they say, and do not do.”

First He says to listen to what they say but do not do what they do. The Pharisees were good moral teachers. They knew scripture and God’s commands well and taught people how to live by God well. Their actions though were much worse than their words. They were hypocrites did not really live by the words that they said. They always made exceptions to the rules in their cases to allow for whatever it was that they desired. We often recognize this and judge them harshly for it, but we as believers today we can often be no different at all. Jesus then gives specific examples of how the Pharisees were hypocritical so let’s look at those and see how we can relate.

Matthew 23:4 “For they bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.”

The first thing that Jesus mentions is that the Pharisees put a lot of pressure and weight onto the Jewish congregations without taking any of the burden on themselves. They were stating all of these laws and rules that everyone had to follow and often times these were rules that they were making themselves rather than scriptural rules. They would strictly and harshly enforce these rules on the people around them and ensure that they were followed, but they themselves were not neccesarily following all of their own rules. They would allow each other to be more relaxed on the observation of the rules while being harsh with others. We can be the same way pretty often. We study the commandments of God and know them in our heart but are not living them for ourselves. We are looking at the world around us though and telling everyone else to abide by the very rules that we refuse to live by ourselves. Sometimes it may not be that we are actually telling anyone to live by these rules but maybe we are judging the people we see every day. We are thinking of all the ways that they are failing to follow after God without examining our own lives and taking on the burden for ourselves. We need to take responsibility for our own actions and focus on how we can be more obedient towards Him rather than judging the people that we see around us. If we are living our lives by pushing the burden of obedience on everyone else then we are not properly representing Christ and will turn people away from the church. That is the exact reason why most people will tell you they do not come to church that it is full of hypocrites. Now to a certain extent we cannot concern ourselves too much with the excuses people make for not coming to church because there will always be a different excuse for them to use until God draws them in. At the same time we should also make sure that we are living rightly so that we aren’t making it easy for them to give an excuse to not come. Let’s look on to the next way He calls them out.

Matthew 23:5–7 “But all their works they do to be seen by men. They make their phylacteries broad and enlarge the borders of their garments. They love the best places at feasts, the best seats in the synagogues, greetings in the marketplaces, and to be called by men, ‘Rabbi, Rabbi.’”

Now this is all about how they are seen by the people around them. Everything they did was for the purpose of seeming great and holy. The first thing mentioned is about the broad phylacteries and their garments. First, what is a phylactery? You can kind of think of it as their personal Bibles. It was a small leather box with Hebrew texts written on think animal skins that they wore around their neck at morning prayer. So, they would broaden their phylacteries making them bigger and nicer to seem like they were so holy they needed such a large Bible. We can be like that today. Christians have a tendency to nearly worship the physical Bible itself and try to get the biggest and best Bible they can to show off to all of the people at church. Now look, there is nothing wrong with having a nice Bible. I currently am preaching from a Bible is a goatskin Bible that is meant for preaching. It is a pretty nice Bible. However, I am a pastor and I have to use this Bible every week so I need one that is durable and functions well for preaching. It is not wrong to have a nice Bible, it is wrong to have one and only use it on Sunday morning to show off how nice your Bible is. The same is true about the garments really. They liked to have the nicest of robes with all of the adornments so that they stood out and looked fancy. Well again I like to dress nice. I like to wear suits on Sunday and wear button ups and slacks pretty often, but I will tell you that most of my clothing either comes from Walmart or a thrift store. This is more a stewardship issue for how we use our money. Are we wasting money just to keep up with the latest trends in fashion or are we looking as best that we can within a reasonable budget? Lastly, they love getting recognition everywhere they went. They wanted to be called special names and have the best seats and make sure that their greetings were loud and obnoxious in the public spaces. Again we can be just the same. We love to get recognition for whatever we do. We feel like we are owed some kind of special recognition for who we are or what we have done. We are prideful and arrogant thinking that everyone should know who I am and what I have done and should be grateful for me. We need to remember back to the sermon on the mount and be meek and humble servants of Christ trying to serve God without drawing attention to ourselves. Being selfless in our actions. Look now down to verse 23 for one last thing that we can relate on.

Matthew 23:23–24 ““Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone. Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!”

So Jesus is telling them that the Pharisees are fully willing to give up their valuables to the church. They are paying their tithes well, but they are ignoring the more important things. They are ignoring opportunities to seek out justice, have mercy on others, and have faith in God. These are the things that truly matter. They however skipped right over these huge obvious things they ought to be doing to instead focus on the minor obligations that they could easily do. That is what Jesus means when He says that they strain out a gnat but swallow a camel. They focus in on these minor details rather than looking at the bigger picture of what God truly wants in the world because of their selfish and arrogant attitudes. Think about this analogy of a gnat and a camel though. Obviously Jesus used a ridiculously large animal here, but I think what He is trying to say is how much difficulty they are bringing onto themselves. By straining out the gnat and swallowing the camel they have inadvertently put themselves into an even more difficult situation causing more pain onto themselves than if they had just taken out the camel. We can be like this too. We focus on the small easy things to accomplish in our lives. We think, well you know I don’t really enjoy this or that anyway so I can give it up to God pretty easily. Maybe it is that money isn’t really of that much value to you so you are willing to give it up for God pretty easy. Maybe it is some habit that you have that isn’t really an addiction so you can easily give it up for Him, but what about the hard stuff? What about when you are strapped for cash, is your focus still on glorifying God with what you have? What about your time? Are you willing to sacrifice time you could spend doing something for yourself to instead serve God? What about the addiction in your life? Are you willing to cast it off and fight everyday to resist temptation? We have to choose the hard battles because if we don’t then we are choosing to swallow the camel instead of getting it out and it will only cause more pain and misery in our life than the temporary pain of giving up something for God.

Lastly, Jesus closes with why it is that the Pharisees have become like this.

Matthew 23:25–26 ““Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also.”

Matthew 23:27–28 ““Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”

Again, in line with the sermon on the mount Jesus tells them that the issue here is an issue of the heart. It is on the inside that counts here. He uses two analogies to demonstrate this, the first being a cup that is clean on the outside but dirty on the inside. How useful to you is a cup that is clean on the outside an dirty on the inside? Not at all. The thing you want to drink is going on the inside so the most important part is what is inside of the cup. Before you can be useful to God you need to clean the inside. God does not want superficial believers. He doesn’t want people who on the outside appear to be righteous. He wants people who are actually working to clean that inside too so that we can be used for His service. The other analogy is one that really spoke to me and it is of a whitewashed tomb. On the outside it is pretty and clean. Think of the graveyards down in New Orleans. They are very beautiful tombs and monuments down there, but you wanna know what the most beautiful one and the ugliest one have in common? They both have a rotting discusting corpse inside of them. No matter how beautiful that outside is the inside is still the same. What about us? Many of us may have polished that outside to be so pretty, making all the right decisions and putting on a good show for everyone but at the end of the day there is still a dead man inside of you. My hope today is that in all of us a fire is lit. Either we have already begun a relationship with Christ and have just gotten lazy in our adherence to His standard of living righteously in this world and in this case then we are in need of cleaning out our cup and getting ready to be used by Him to glorify the name of Jesus and to serve the people around us. Or we are the dead man in a pretty tomb and there has never been a time in our lives that Jesus has ressurected us and made a new creation out of us. If this is the case then I encourage you to please don’t hesitate. Through Christ you can be made alive again by the grace and mercy of God and with that comes life abundant. Joy and peace and assurance like no other can offer you. If you are here tonight and have not been brought back to life by Him then please don’t leave here tonight without talking to someone about it.