Seven Serious Woes

Introduction

Throughout the ages, the church of Jesus Christ has survived many things. During the Roman persecution the church grew and established itself so that even the Roman emperor was eventually converted. During the rule of the Chinese Communist Party, the church in China thrived underground in hidden homes and even forests. During the reformation, the faithful men and women who were burned at the stake only fueled the flame of reform and truth across western Europe. Persecution is not, and have never been, much of a problem for the church. It will endure it, as it always has. But one thing the church cannot survive is when those loyal to our spiritual enemy, to sin, to evil, and to death, infiltrate the church and corrupt it from within. There is nothing that weakens a church and its witness more than a hypocrite. What damage it brings on both the church and the world at large. It is hard to pretend in times of persecution because your life is constantly at stake, but in times of ease and comfort this sin abound like a silent cancer, growing until it chokes the life out of a church before anyone even knows what is going on. Like many cancers, it can be stopped if sniffed out early, but this requires a firm diligence, on ourselves most of all.

While last week, we saw what hypocrisy looks like and how it can be avoided, here we see the great damage is does to both the hypocrite and to those around them.

Why Give “Woes”?

Now what is the point of this text? Seven woes on the Pharisees. Is Jesus just going on a rant against his enemies, or is there a deeper purpose to this series of accusations?

First, it is important that we inspect the context. These woes do not exist by themselves, but as part of a lengthy dialogue between the Jewish religious leaders and Jesus that began in chapter 22. This interaction can be divided into two sections.

Chapter 22 beginning in verse 15 has the four controversies between the religious leaders and Jesus. The controversy about taxes to Caesar, the controversy about the resurrection, the controversy about the greatest commandment, and the controversy of the Christ as David’s Son.

Now, after an introduction in the first 12 versus, Jesus continues his rhetorical offensive against the leaders in a way that is full of nuance, sarcasm, and irony. Because it is so stylized, the tone of this passage is very difficult to pick up from a translation of the original text because things like irony and sarcastic jabs are often lost in translation.

This often brings a lot of misunderstanding of this text. For example, Jesus does not want us to practice everything the scribes teach, even though he seems to say this in verse 2. This is ironic. An example might be how in Japanese, if a meal tastes bad a native speakers will not state their dislike of the food directly, but instead might say, “this food is delicious, isn’t it?” Now, if you are just learning Japanese, you might be confused. Do they actually think this food is good? But a native speakers would pick up on the ironic tone and context. The same is at play here, and much of what Jesus says here is done in the style that was common for such discourses of the first century.

Each woe is crafted to take something positive which the scribes and Pharisees believe about themselves and turn it into something negative and insulting. This creates a contrast between the hypocrites emphasis on this world and Jesus’ emphasis on the world to come.

Interestingly, both in the controversies in chapter 22 and the seven woes in chapter 23, Jesus never questions the Pharisees’ doctrine. In fact, on occasion he confirms it, such as their belief in the resurrection or their belief about the two greatest commandments. Does this mean that Jesus followed all of their teachings and traditions? We know that he did not, as he has already corrected some of their views, such as what is unclean or how the Sabbath should be observed. However, in this text Jesus is not focusing on the errors in their teaching, but rather the errors of their lifestyles, as we saw in verse 3. In other words, Jesus’ rebuke here is given here as if everything the Pharisees taught was correct. That is part of the irony of verses 2-3. Its as if Jesus is saying, “well since the scribes and Pharisees claim to teach the commandments of God’s law given to Moses perfectly, I guess we should listen to everything they say.” Then, getting more serious, he continues, “but even if that were true, you should be careful not to imitate their behaviour.”

This is important because Jesus is pointing out something that can be just as dangerous, if not at times more dangerous, than false teaching. That is, hypocritical living.

Now remember, the word hypocrite in ancient Greek was a word that originally referred to actors in a play and came to mean a pretender in a negative sense. Every time Jesus says hypocrites in our text, you could replace with pretenders! Fakes! Those of a deceptive lifestyle. In other parts of the NT, hypocritical living is often associated with false teaching. Listen to how Paul connects false teaching with a sinful and hypocritical lifestyle in 1 Tim 6:3-5

1 Timothy 6:3–5 ESV

If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of (worldly) gain.

Notice Paul’s judgement on their personal and moral lives in connection with their rejection of the truth. This is something we must pay close attention too. Those of the Reformed tradition are often very sensitive to false teaching, but can lack in sensitivity to hypocrisy. This creates an environment where sinful hypocrites continue and thrive while the truly penitent, weak believer is shunned and comes under their condemnation.

But what exactly is the effect that hypocrisy has on the people of God? Jesus describes it in seven woes. The word woe is used ironically, as their was a word used to communicate mourning and grief, often in the context of funerals. In English we might say, “boo hoo” to mock someone in their grief, and Jesus is doing something similar, although it is a grief to come not one that they are currently experiencing.

Why does Jesus use such mocking language? It might seem rude, even unloving, to go as far as he does. Now, before you start mercilessly mocking those you deem to be hypocrites, we need to recognize that there is an ironic context here. The scribes and Pharisees were masters of debate and rhetoric, and being able to outwit you opponent in public discussions was a highly valued skill in the Jewish and Roman world of the time. In these public debates, it was not uncommon for ironic mockery to be used to make a point. We sense this in the words of the disciples of the Pharisees back in chapter 22:16 when they call Jesus a teacher who teaching everything truthfully and doesn’t care about what others think.

My point is this, Jesus is not spouting off in some unhinged rant against the Pharisees. Christ always maintained a godly self-control over his words. Instead, Jesus is doing what Elijah did to the prophets of the pagan god Baal in 1 Kings 18:26-27

1 Kings 18:26–27 ESV

And they took the bull that was given them, and they prepared it and called upon the name of Baal from morning until noon, saying, “O Baal, answer us!” But there was no voice, and no one answered. And they limped around the altar that they had made. And at noon Elijah mocked them, saying, “Cry aloud, for he is a god. Either he is musing, or he is relieving himself, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.”

This isn’t mean-spirited, although it is humiliating. It is using humour to show the ridiculous position his opponents are in. Now we may find this very offensive today, that is because most of the time such mocking is reserved for unhinged Twitter comments or highly emotional arguments. Again, as we will see, Jesus words are carefully chosen and fit into a style of rhetoric common throughout history. Irony is a good tool to show the folly of a certain way of thinking or acting. Just as Ezekiel mocking the prophets of Baal exposes how ridiculous their behaviour and worship of a false deity is, Jesus is exposing what a ridiculous world these religious teachers live in. A world in which, even if they were everything they claimed to be, they show themselves to be completely the opposite of what they claim to be. They are walking contradictions, and Jesus exposes this through a wonderfully articulated piece of harsh, and at times comedic, irony.

Seven Woes

Now, let us take a quick look at each of these woes so we can see both the skill which Jesus uses to expose the religious leaders and the warnings we see about the damage hypocrisy causes in the world and in the church.

1 - Keys that only lock

In each of these woes, Jesus takes something that the Pharisees and scribes believe about themselves, mockingly agrees that is true, then turns it on its head to show just how ridiculous and harmful their conduct really is.

The first woe assumes that these teachers are the guardians of the Kingdom of God. They have the keys of the Kingdom, he might say with irony. But there is a problem. As holders of the keys of the Kingdom, they can only lock it, but not open it. While they may style themselves as preservers of the Kingdom of God, all they do is shut the door so that no one, including themselves, can go in.

2 - Make Disciple’s for Hell

The second looks to the attempts made by the Pharisees as missionaries. Surely, they go through great lengths, traveling across sea and land to make a single proselyte convert.

A proselyte is not only a convert to Judaism, they were gentiles that were circumcised and submitted, not only to the OT law, but also to the traditions of the Pharisees. They were not merely converts to Judaism, but converts to the Pharisees.

So, while Jesus agrees that the Pharisees are indeed very devoted missionaries to the Gentiles, the result of their “mission work” is to make the person twice the child of hell as themselves. That is, the kind of religion which the Pharisees were converting others too has demonic origins, and the irony is that the Pharisees are so good at their mission work that they can make their converts even more Pharisaical, and hypocritical, than themselves.

3 - Twisting God’s commands

The third woe names these teachers as blind guides. This plays off of the way Pharisees saw themselves as the guides of the world to God. They were the ones, they would say, who see and are able to show others, through their traditions, what pleases God. In response, Jesus does affirm that they are guides with the ironic twist that these guides are blind. This is followed by a dose of ironic exaggeration. Its unlikely that the Pharisees actually taught that swearing by the temple was nothing, but that is the point. The Pharisees did teach that there were different kinds of oaths, some were binding and some were not binding. This was to “guide” the common people who often used oaths lightly, so that certain oaths were enforced and others were not. We saw back in chapter 5 that when Jesus said to not swear at all, it was in this context. We saw then that it is not sinful to swear an oath, such as at your wedding or in a court of law, and that the Apostle Paul at times made oaths in his letters, but the point was that differentiating between oaths was just a way to lie and deceive. Instead, the believer must consider all their words as an oath and let their “yes be yes” and their “no be no”. After all, the whole point of an oath is to confirm that you are not lying, and that is why believers should avoid oaths in general, not because it is sinful to make an oath, but it is sinful to say anything which we do not mean. Basically, the only time we should take oaths is to help others believe us, such as in court, and never to differentiate some things we say as more true than others.

But these so-called guides, in making a tradition in which some oaths did not have to be kept, were encouraging people to lie and so were leading people into disobedience. Jesus exposes this by using an example that they would all find absurd to show just how insane their rules were. Its like if you were talking about a politician who wanted to raise taxes and you said, “they want to take the air we breathe.” Everything knows that this is ridiculous, but that is the point. The hyperbole emphasizes how ridiculous you think their tax policy is. So the Pharisees prove themselves to be blind guides in the way they teach people to lie by making oaths that do not have to be kept.

4 - Straining a gnat, swallowing a camel

The forth woe points at the extremely strict way the Pharisees go about following the OT laws on tithing. The Pharisees took great pride in their attention to detail, and Jesus once again agrees with them in a mocking way. Yes, they are very careful to keep the tithing laws, so careful that they go into their spice rack and make sure to measure out a tenth of everything in there. Good job guys, you are really good at following one commandment very strictly. However, what about the weightier matter of the law? What about the things God really care about, like pursuing justice for the oppressed, being merciful to those who wrong you, or approaching God with a heart of sincere faith? Do you really think God is so concerned with how much of your spices you give to the temple that he overlooks your faithlessness in the things which really get at the heart of the law?

Although careful to obey the smallest commandment, they neglect great ones. Jesus gives us the ridiculous image of straining out a tiny fly from your drink but swallowing the large camel that’s floating around in it. Its a humourous image that would make a good comic, and it visibly demonstrates how messed up their priorities are. In telling them not to ignore their attention to tithing, Jesus is also poking at those who saw their obedience to God as perfect and blameless. Like if he came to the one spot of a large, messy floor; one tiny spot they were so proud of cleaning perfectly, only to inform them that their efforts fell short and that the entire floor should look like that tiny spot. They are not nearly as perfect as they think.

5-6 - Clean only what is seen, leave the inside filthy

The fifth and sixth woes are very similar and worth looking at together. In both, he mockingly praises them for how holy and godly they make themselves look. Wow, you Pharisees truly are clean from all sin in the places where others can see. And look, such beautiful displays of holiness and obedience to God! Wow, good job! Too bad the inside of the cup you cleaned is still filthy, which is the part of the cup that matters most. Too bad the beauty of their holy living is like the beauty of a tomb, meant to hide and remove from our minds the reality of the rot and decay that exists inside.

This points, again, to the fact that hypocrites put all their attention on how others see them rather than a true pursuit of holiness. They do not care about being genuine worshipers of God. If they did, they would perhaps not look so clean or beautiful as they do now. They would have to deal with their sins and many of their good works would go unnoticed, but it would be pleasing in the eyes of God who sees all and is especially concerned with our hearts, which is the source of all uncleanness. The rottenness within is identified as pretending holiness which hides lawlessness. They do not truly desire to obey God’s law, only to look like they do.

7 - Persecutors of prophets

And speaking of tombs, the final woe is the one with the worst sting. Starting in verse 29, Jesus once again acknowledges a source of pride for these men; their celebration of the prophets of old. They speak of these holy men with great respect, they erect monuments for them, and they think to themselves, “if only we lived in those days, we would have listened. We would have done the right thing! We would not have been like our ancestors who persecuted and, at times, murdered God’s prophets!” Such sentiments are a common source of pride when people consider the evils of past generations. “If I lived in the 1700s, I would have opposed slavery! If I lived in Nazi Germany, I would never have been deceived by Adolf Hitler’s propaganda.” How self-deceptive we are. We think that because we live in a time when slavery and Hitler’s wicked propaganda are obviously evil to us that we would have been different than 99% of the people that lived back then. So these Pharisees imagine themselves so different from their wicked ancestors who killed God’s prophets.

Jesus uncovers their hypocrisy in verse 31. He says, again with irony. Remember that in these times, as in most of history, people didn’t choose their profession, they usually did what their father did and were taught by him. So Jesus uses this father-son dynamic to mock them, “oh, so you admit that you are children of those who killed the prophets? Well then, why don’t you learn their trade? Go ahead and finish what you started. After all, if your fathers were serpents, than you are a brood of vipers (a reference to the image of the devil as a serpent). In fact, I’ll send you some prophets. Then we’ll see if you are really so different from your fathers.” Jesus goes even further, saying that they will persecute these new prophets and will even chase them from town to town. In verse 35, Jesus says that their wicked persecution will not only be held against them, but they will be viewed by God as co-conspirators with every wicked murderer of the righteous in history. They will bring on a guilt of a spiritual family of death which is completely devoted to destroying the righteous.

These words would really hit home when this prophecy came true. Right before he was murdered by the Jewish authorities, the deacon Stephan would say these words to them:

Acts 7:51–52 ESV

“You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered,

Jesus finishes by making it clear that this would happen to the current generation, meaning that these very individuals who so eloquently praised the prophets of the past would be responsible for the murder of their own prophets, and worse: of the Christ whom they claimed to be waiting for.

Conclusion: Hypocrisy relies on worldliness, holiness relies on heavenliness

Everything in the last two chapters which has divided Jesus’ teachings from the teachings of the hypocrites who are challenging him comes down to where they place their emphasis, either on this life or the life to come. What Matthew shows us is that the hypocrite has a radically different worldview from a practitioner of true holiness. This is because the hypocrite only has this world to be rewarded in, whilst the holy person waits patiently for a reward from God in the final day.

Like a poison apple beside a healthy one, visibly they may look the same but one is deadly for the church and the other nourishes her. As it is vital that the church is protected from false teaching, so it is absolutely crucial that we protect the church from hypocrisy. If we do not, we will have churches that look good. Churches that have beautiful services, sound sermons, warm greetings, an emphasis on holy living, conversations about the Bible, a thriving outreach ministry, and everything else that looks healthy on the outside. But inside we will be dead. We will lock both ourselves and others out of the Kingdom. We will make converts, not for Christ, but for the devil. We will guide people into unbiblical practices with excuses that sound really good and logical but are false. We will ignore that love, justice, mercy, and faithful worship God demands and instead focus on how long our skirts are, how pressed our ties are, how alcohol-free our drinks are, how restful our Sabbaths are, how big our donations are, and ignore the things that God really cares about: loving the Lord our God with all that we are and loving our neighbour as ourselves. Finally, we will persecute those who expose our hypocrisy. We will attack them viciously with every name we can think of. We will call them heretics, worldly, legalistic, foolish, ignorant, not real Christians, and even call them hypocrites.

In short, we will be a pretend church full of pretend Christians all going to hell and knowing absolutely nothing of the power of God.

See how much space Matthew reserved in his Gospel for this teaching. Jesus surely said many other things that last week before he went to the cross, but Matthew thought it necessary to spend so much space in his account of our Lord giving us this warning against hypocrisy. I know we’ve been talking about it a lot, and there’s little I can say that hasn’t already been said, so I’ll end with this. Test yourself, oh Christian. There are some who question themselves constantly and are always afraid that they might be hypocrites. I’m not talking to you. Jesus wasn’t talking to the prostitutes and tax collectors when he said these things, so if you are aware of your sin and it breaks your heart every day this message is not for you. But if you are a comfortable Christian, if you are quite satisfied with what others think about you and have little concern for your empty prayer life, your lack of desire for the word, your judgmental attitude towards others, your secret sins which you make constant excuses about and hide so well from everyone else. You should beware. Search yourself, for you are in a most dangerous place and threaten not only yourselves but other souls as well.

Brothers and sisters, God doesn’t want you all dressed up in your pretend religion. He doesn’t want all your flaws and sins hidden so that you look so godly and holy to others while you hide what is ugly about you. He wants you to come as you are, bearing your ugliness, your guilt, your sin, your corruption to him. He will cleanse you from the inside, and you will truly be clean. Come to Christ in such a way, for all those who come in humble faith he never ever turns away.