Matthew 23:13-39
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In this section of Matthew, remember Jesus is in the last days leading up to when he will be crucified.
This is Passion Week, and Jesus is preparing his disciples and His followers for what is about to take place.
But right now, he is dealing with the Scribes and the Pharisees.
Last week in the first 12 verses, Jesus spoke of how these religious leaders had exalted themselves.They had taken the seat of Moses.
These were the people who displayed their righteousness, so everyone would see just how good they were.
But Jesus says, this is not how the kingdom of God works.
Every other kingdom exalts those who exalt themselves.
The kingdom of God exalts those who humble themselves.
It’s completely opposite.
We ended last week by talking about how in humility we are to be servants of the Lord and each other.
And so this week, Jesus is continuing to speak against the religious rulers, but this week, he takes it a step further. This week he going to pronounce woes upon the scribes and the Pharisees.
A woe is understood to be a statement of judgment.
It carries with a charge(a declaration of wrongdoing) and a sentence(the judgment for that wrongdoing).
Typically, in scripture, when we find a woe pronounced, it is being delivered by one of the prophets.
Jesus, hereas the incarnate word of God, takes the role of a prophet and he is going to call out the religious leaders of his day.
In doing this, he’s not just judging them, he is also warning the crowds and his disciples about following these blind guides.
They are leading people astray and so the loving thing to do is to call them out.
For the love of his disciples and his followers among the crowd.
Listen to what he says beginning in verse 13–
“But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.
I believe this first woe is one that encapsulates all of them.
It’s like a summary woe.
Everything that they do leads to this particular thing.
Jesus tells him that they are hypocrites and he will say that throughout.
Most of us are familiar with what a hypocrite is.
It’s someone who plays the fake.
They say one thing, but they do another.
Their life is inconsistent.
They claim a measure of holiness, but they live a completely different life than they claim.
Here, their hypocrisy is not just self damning. It’s doing harm to other.
Jesus says, they shut the door to the kingdom in people’s faces.
And you say— How do they do this?
Well, there’s one way to heaven. The one way to heaven is through Jesus Christ.
Jesus said in John 14:6-
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
And so the way into the kingdom of heaven, the door to eternal life, is Jesus Christ.
These religious rulers, reject Jesus, and so they do not enter in through the door.
Furthermore, They also seek to close the door to prevent other people from entering in through Christ as well.
They do this through their rejection of him and their teaching.
We talked about this last week, but the Pharisees and the scribes essentially taught a works based salvation.
They believe that they by strict adherence to the law and by their own additions to the law, that they could enter the kingdom of heaven based upon their own righteousness.
Jesus teaches the opposite and Matthew 5:3
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
They would also lead others down that same path.
But we understand that to trust in our own righteousness will not end well.
Our righteousness is as filthy rags.
We are sinners and as sinners, we need grace and mercy and forgiveness of our sin.
We need Jesus Christ.
These people don’t think they need Jesus, and they don’t think others do either.
And so they lead others away from him.
Jesus says there’s judgment coming upon them for that.
Woe to you.
Then you have verse 14 where Jesus pronounces another woe-
[“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense you make long prayers; therefore you will receive greater condemnation.]
And so here, Jesus calls out the scribes in the Pharisees for the way in which they treat the widows among them.
A widow in this day and time would not have had substantial means to take care of herself.
This was a patriarchal society.
Typically, a wife would depend upon her husband.
And so a widow unless her husband made provision for her, she would be poor.
These Pharisees and scribes were not lightening the load for these widows.
They were devouring their houses.
Requiring that they pay their religious dues rather than seeing that they were in need and having some common sense.
And so they are heartless, but they are also concerned about their appearance.
Jesus goes on to say in this particular verse that they in pretense pray these long prayers.
Jesus has already dealt with this back in Matthew chapter 6.
He tells us how to pray and how not to pray and one of the things he tells us not to do is to pray in order that people would see just how great of a prayer you are.
Again, this is Jesus, calling them out for a lack of compassion for those in need. And also a preoccupation with their appearance, spiritually speaking.
This verse speaks a further word of judgment. It says they will receive a greater condemnation.
They are religious but they are not right.
And then we come to verse 15.
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.
Here Jesus critiques their evangelism and discipleship.
The Pharisees and the scribes during this time would seek after converts, sometimes they were even gentile converts, but Jesus says they would make those converts into worse hypocrites than they were.
They would radicalize their followers.
They would hold them to a higher standard than they held themselves.
In the end, this has destructive results.
Jesus said you make them into twice the son of hell that you are.
Son of hell meaning that that is your destination if you continue on this path.
And so these religious leaders are anything but good leaders.
They’re leading people to adopt this religion that shuts the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s face, and it leads them down the path of destruction.
The very thing that they are teaching will get them in to heaven will actually lead them to hell.
Jesus says to these Pharisees and the scribes— Woe to you. Judgment is coming against you for this.
Again, they are religious but not right with God.
But he goes on
“Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.’ You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred? And you say, ‘If anyone swears by the altar, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gift that is on the altar, he is bound by his oath.’ You blind men! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? So whoever swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it. And whoever swears by the temple swears by it and by him who dwells in it. And whoever swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him who sits upon it.
Jesus here begins by calling them blind guides.
They are leaders, but they’re blind leaders.
Here he deals with the fact that they had a way of trying to get around telling the truth whenever they swore oaths.
They would swear on different things, and depending on what thing they swore on depended upon how serious they may have been in the moment.
And so he gives an example some of them would swear by the temple, and that was an oath that wasn’t as meaningful as it would’ve been if they swore by the gold in the temple.
They did the same thing with the altar and the offering on the altar.
And essentially, what’s going on here is they are trying to find a loophole in their oath taking.
As if swearing by one thing and not another means, it’s OK for for them to lie.
Y’all remember as a kid, the whole idea of crossing your fingers whenever you told something you didn’t mean?
What that was.. was that you didn’t have to really mean what you were saying when you had your fingers crossed.
In other words, it meant you were lying.
Jesus here is calling the scribes and the Pharisees out for this type of evading the truth.
And it wasn’t just them..
They led other people to do this as well.
They were teaching people that so long as they were careful about the things they swore by, you could get out of telling the truth with their oaths.
But that’s not how it works with God.
Jesus says, let your yes, be yes and your no be no.
There is no loophole when it comes to telling the truth.
These people are liars. Jesus is pronouncing judgment on them for this.
They keep their own form of the law, but they are lying.
Again, religious, but not right.
But wait, there’s more
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!
Jesus here calls them out for their attention to detail with small things, but neglecting the things that truly matter.
Here Jesus is dealing with their heart with regard to tithing.
And by the way, the Pharisees and scribes were known for their generosity and their giving.
They wanted everyone to know what they gave.
Jesus says here they even tithe on their spices and herbs.
But Jesus says they neglected the weightier matters of the law.
They brought their tithes on their spices, but really important virtues were missing.
They were unjust, faithless, and merciless, but by all means they brought their cumin tithe.
Jesus uses the illustration of straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel.
A gnat—the smallest of unclean animals (Lev. 11:23). The camel was the largest of all the unclean animals (Lev. 11:4).
This is a play on words in Aramaic because the word for gnat and camel are very similar.
Jesus is actually calling them out for a specific practice that they had.
John MacArthur says this
Some Pharisees would strain their beverages through a fine cloth to make sure they did not inadvertently swallow a gnat
And so Jesus is using a picture and even an exaggeration here to illustrate the point and the problem that these Pharisees and scribes had.
These Pharisees had become experts at magnifying the small things.
They made mountains out of molehill.
The bigger things they had neglected.
Now, They weren’t literally swallowing camels whole.
Jesus is saying the small things bother them, but the big things that really should bother them don’t.
You know this happens a lot with religious people in general.
Satan loves that churches are known for getting upset about carpet.
He loves when church people are petty.
He loves to have people who can’t let go of preferences. He would love nothing more than to have us focus on meaningless things rather than the mission we have been called toward.
Jesus says that’s a problem with this religious type.
Religious but they’re not right with God.
Jesus continues.
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean.
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
Jesus here uses two examples to illustrate the same truth.
Outwardly, they appear to be clean.
But the part that matters truly, they have neglected.
Firstly, he illustrates using a cup.
He compares their lives to someone who instead of cleaning the inside of the cup, where you actually put the liquid that you’re going to consume, they would clean the outside of the cup.
And so the outside was clean, but the inside where the liquid went was dirty.
Jesus says that’s the wrong priority.
Sure, the outside of the dish needs to be clean, but the most important thing is that the inside must become clean.
Then he uses the illustration of a tomb.
A white washed tomb, he calls them.
It looks pretty on the outside, on the inside it’s full of uncleanness and dead men’s bones.
In other words, both of these illustrate the reality you can appear to be something on the outside and yet the important aspects of your life being neglected.
My dad’s best friend whenever I was growing up was a man named Hayes Brazier.
And I loved Mr. Hayes.
My dad would sometimes get busy and was unable to come and pick me up from school and so he would send Mr. Hayes to come and pick me up
And the reason why I loved Mr. Hayes is because whenever he would pick me up from school we would always stop by a gas station on the way home. He would get me a drink or an ice cream or something.
One thing I did not particularly enjoy about Mr. Hayes was his car.
Mr. Hayes drove a Dodge Dynasty.
If you’re unfamiliar with that particular vehicle, google it, and you can see why that may not be what a young boy would want his friends to see him riding in.
I remember getting into his vehicle and his passenger seat was covered with empty cigarette cartons.
The floorboard was covered with empty cigarette cartons and coffee cups.
There were literally hundreds of cigarette butts in that car.
It was the nastiest car ever.
I remember one day Mr. Hayes pick me up from school and we went through the car wash.
And I sat in that car wash while the outside of that car was cleaned up, I never knew I’d be preaching one day and use this.
I started laughing and I finally got the nerve to ask Mr. Hayes why he was cleaning the outside of his vehicle and he told me he had a funeral to go to and he wanted his car to look presentable.
But the inside where people would actually be was awful.
This is the picture we get of these Pharisees and scribes here.
The part that everybody sees looks nice.
They put on a show.
But inwardly they’re a mess. Jesus says they’re full of dead men’s bones. Spiritually speaking these people are rotten. But they look good to the people around them.
Friends hear me this morning. This is a dangerous place to be.
To be affirmed by everyone around us as “good.”
It is a dangerous thing and it is an exhausting thing to be a professional fake.
Where outwardly speaking everybody looks and says look how good that person looks.
Look how awesome their life is. But inwardly you’re a mess.
The rise of social media caters to this.
Where we would portray something we aren’t really on the inside.
Jesus says there’s judgment coming on those we put on the show
This is the definition of what it looks like to be a hypocrite.
It’s a person who wears a mask to hide who they really are.
Religious but not right.
He goes on.
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, saying, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?
Jesus here addresses their practice of glorifying the prophet that came before them.
He also addresses their claim that have they been alive at the time of the prophets, they would’ve not killed the prophets like their fathers did.
This is ironic because the reality is at that very moment they are plotting on how to kill Jesus.
The fact is, they have the same heart as those who came before them.
So Jesus says to them, fill up the guilt of your father’s.
In other words, just go ahead and be like the ones that came before you.
Then he calls them a brood of vipers. He calls them serpents.
Essentially, he’s calling them children of Satan.
Anyone who has read the Bible know who the great serpent of old is.
So to be called a brood of vipers.
He is saying that they are children of a viper.
Jesus is not holding any punches here.
He knows their heart.
He knows what they are going to do to him.
They are doing Satan’s work.
How Jesus says, how will they escape the sentence of hell?
These people are religious. They are not right.
Jesus continues his actions as a profit and prophesies about what these people will do in the future.
Jesus says here—
Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.
Jesus says I’m going to send you people and you’re going to kill them.
In other words, Jesus is saying—-you claim to not be like the people that came before you.
You’re actually just like them.
Because you are just like them, you incur their guilt as well.
From Abel to Zachariah, everyone of those people who died unjustly at the hands of wicked men, you are just like those wicked men who put them to death.
Jesus says that this will come upon this generation
Jesus is not wrong.
If you go and read about the disciples in the many different ways in which they died, it’s clear that the same people who would put Jesus to death would come after those who followed him.
The apostles would die too.
So These people are no different.
So Jesus pronounces woes
Church family they are religious, but they are not right.
The next part of this chapter is really important, because in the last few verses of this chapter Jesus expresses his heart towards the people of Jerusalem. To Israel itself.
Listen to what Jesus says as he weeps over Jerusalem
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’ ”
Jesus here expresses his heart and his desire for Jerusalem to turn and repent.
He says how often did I want to gather you together like children like a hen gathers her chicks under her wings
That picture is meant to be an endearing picture.
We are to see the heart of Jesus for his own people.
This was the desire.
God gave Israel the prophet. He gave Israel the word. He gave Israel his own son.
He expressed His desire that they would be his people.
BUT… They were not willing
John tells us in John 1 Jesus came unto his own and his own did not receive him.
Not only would they not receive them, they rejected him. They killed him.
So there’s judgment that follows.
Their house is being left desolate.
In other words, it is going to be an empty house.
And the reason why is because they were religious, but they were not right.
Church family this passage this morning is a warning.
This group of people that Jesus pronounces these woes upon, had it all together.
Everyone thought they were super spiritual.
They were the leaders within the church.
But in reality, their hearts are far from God.
Jesus list out the issues that he has with them.
He list the reasons for judgment upon them.
This kind of religion that looks good on the outside, but inwardly is a mess is not what Jesus is looking for.
Teenagers hear me, so you have your parents fooled. You come to church and you act really good in front of everybody but what’s your language like?
What’s your search history like?
What’s your text messages look like?
Adults, it may be that we have everyone fooled.
Where we have portrayed a certain image to those people around us that we want to impress with our religiosity, but we know who we are.
I really believe that the Pharisees and the scribes they knew Jesus was right here.
I believe they heard every word that he said.
I believe he struck a note with every single woe.
I believe he convicted them.
I also believe they hated him for it.
No one likes being called fake.
No one wants to admit that they’re fake.
But one day there will be no more faking.
When a judgment will fall and all the masks will come off.
The social media post that picture one thing will no longer matter.
What will matter is not who you are before men, but who you are before God.
One day we will be stripped of all the paint and appearance and we will stand before God and answer for who we really are.
I want you this morning to recognize that that is how he sees you now. We do not fool the Omniscient Lord.
One thing this passage makes clear for us is that Jesus sees through their faking
He’s not fooled
He knows who we are.
He knows what’s inside.
He calls them out for it.
And I believe that as we think about that this morning, and then we look to the end of this passage, and we hear the heart of Jesus toward sinners, my prayer is that those of us in here who are faking what hear not only Jesus’s judgment of the fakes, but also his heart for these people.
The Blessed truth of this passage is that Jesus is willing to gather you into his arms as his real child if you are only willing to come to Him.
Jesus can do for you what you cannot do for yourselves.
You can put on a good show
You could show up with your family looking in order.
You can post Bible verses by the bucket loads on Facebook.
You can serve in the church.
You can have perfect attendance.
You can do all that
You can make yourself religious.
Only Jesus can make you right.
So let me beg you this morning will you go to him?
Will you call upon him for salvation?
Only he can make you right… let’s pray
