21.8.22a - Matthew 22:13-39 - Where Did They Go Wrong?

This may be one of the most important lessons we ever study together. Matthew, the tax collector has been building up to this moment for nearly twenty chapters. Remember Matthew has been writing his gospel primarily to the Jewish people. He wants them to see how different Jesus is from the Jewish leaders. Much of this gospel has been pointing out the failure of the religious leaders to recognize who Jesus is. This eventually leads to them murdering Jesus. Before they murder Jesus, he condemns them to their face. These words are some of the most accusatory and harsh words that we have recorded from Jesus. The first part we studied last week. He told the crowds to be careful about falling into hypocrisy and self-glorification.

I said last week that these men are not called false teachers. They speak the word of God and people should listen to the words they say. But Jesus makes it clear that they do not practice what the word says. They are false spiritual leaders. They are leading people down a path that is destined to destruction. We don’t want to be like them. Nor do we want to follow someone like them. Today, we will study to see more details about what they are doing wrong. There are five evils that Jesus focuses on. I would like to preach one sermon on each, but I feel like that would destroy the flow of this text.

Shutting The Door (13-15)

Matthew 23:13-15

Jesus accuses these leaders of shutting the door to the kingdom in people’s faces. Imagine that! Here is someone who is very interested in worshipping and serving God, but they put up road blocks. They make it unattainable. Jesus has come to call all men to repent and accept the gift of God’s grace, but the Pharisees refuse to accept God’s grace. They don’t stop there. They also see other people coming to accept grace, and they look at the person’s sins and say, “There is no hope for you.” Jesus is fake. God doesn’t love you like he loves me and he never will. There is nothing you can do. You would have to keep this huge list of rules for God to really love you. Good luck.

Then, he says that they are traveling far and wide to find a person who will be their proselyte. They want a convert to their rule keeping system so they can make that man as lost as they are. They want people who are devoted to their rules. We all know that new converts tend to be overly zealous. They find out the truth, they feel more righteous than ever, and they have to hold that righteousness above others. Jesus calls that man twice as much a child of hell as they are. Wow!

Have we ever shut the door in the face of those who would believe? Have we ever put road blocks up that prevent people from listening or understanding the truth? Our goal should be to remove the road blocks. If people want to come in, we want to clear the way for them. It’s not an easy commitment to make. Why would we want to make it more difficult? Since I’ve been here, we have been making small changes to try to make this church building feel comfortable for a visitor. We don’t want them to feel like we don’t care about them. We don’t want them to feel like they are entering a dead church building. Our goal is to help make them feel like they can be accepted here because Jesus was very accepting. If we are cold and callous, we might shut the door in the face of a sinner looking for grace. We want everything about this place to scream, “Sinners are welcome here!”

Blind Guides (16-22)

Matthew 23:16-22

This text tells us about the guidance of the Pharisees. It makes no sense. If someone borrows money and swears by the temple that he will pay it back, they say he doesn’t have to pay. But if he swears by the gold of the temple, he has to pay. They would do the same thing with the altar and the sacrifice. Their focus was on a tangible quantity. They don’t know how to measure the temple or the altar in value. So this means that someone could basically cross their fingers as they swear. They could trick people and steal their money. The religious teachers were promoting this! Jesus says that the temple is greater than gold and the altar is greater than the sacrifice. Who doesn’t know that? So if you swear by the altar, you are swearing by everything on it. If you swear by the temple, you are swearing by God. Failing to keep that oath results in death.

Have we ever twisted something that is clear to deceive people and keep what we want? Have we ever been less than honest about the truth because we don’t want to suffer the consequences and change? These guys are spiritual leaders and they refuse to lead with truth and justice. Jesus calls them blind guides, blind fools, and blind men. We must keep our eyes open to the truth and submit to it.

Neglecting Weightier Matters (23-24)

Matthew 23:23-24

In this third condemnation, we see Jesus pointing out the scribes and Pharisees diligence. They work really hard to be righteous when it comes to tithing for God. Tithes were commanded in the Old Testament law. In the New Testament, we are told to give as we have prospered cheerfully. These men were looking at the ten percent rule with great detail. They were taking it very seriously and making sure that they give ten percent of everything they gain. This level of diligence seems righteous to everyone observing from the outside. They are trying their best to follow the commands of God. But Jesus condemns them because they are neglecting to keep the laws God cares most about.

Did you know that God cares more about justice, mercy, and faithfulness than he does about the intricate details of the law? Don’t get me wrong. Jesus does tell them to tithe everything. He wants them to care about the commands and be careful to obey them. But sometimes people let themselves get distracted by those intricate details so that they don’t have to mess with the big picture.

Have you ever done that? Maybe you are working on a big project and there are things that you don’t want to do. Do you avoid doing them and spend all of your time focusing on something less important? Do we do that with God’s law? Do we see ourselves failing in one area and think that the solution is to ignore our failure and succeed in another area? I think this is why many churches start to divide. They don’t want to focus on their lack of love and mercy. They want to overlook their complete failure to evangelize. So they think about tiny little insignificant things and they start being divisive over them. This makes them feel more righteous when they really aren’t.

God cares more about justice, mercy, and faithfulness than he does about the intricate details. So don’t let blind guides divide you over something that is insignificant to God. Focus on the failure until God helps you become what you are supposed to be. If you are not just, focus on your lying, stealing, harming nature. If you are unmerciful, focus on your judgmental, restricting, unforgiving nature. If you are unfaithful, focus on your idolizing nature. Don’t look away from them no matter how discouraging it becomes. These are what God care about! Do not let yourself get distracted.

Cleaning The Outside (25-28)

Matthew 23:25-28

In this section, Jesus uses two images to illustrate his point. In the first, he speaks about cleaning the outside of a cup or plate while leaving the inside dirty. This goes along with the other ideas that he has condemned them for, but now he categorizes the sins differently. The scribes and Pharisees have been doing works of righteousness from an outside perspective. They are motivated to make external changes so that they appear more righteous and gain greater influence. However, they are not so focused on their hearts. Their hearts have remained corrupted and dirty. It seems like changing the external works has resulted in an increase the sins inside of them. Jesus says they are full of greed and self-indulgence.

The second image is of a tomb. This is even more graphic illustration. Imagine a tomb that is painted and decorated to look beautiful on the outside. It is a magnificent place where everyone would want to be buried near. But Jesus says they are full of dead people’s bones on the inside and all uncleanness. They make themselves look like nice people who are wonderful and easy to get along with, but inside they are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. If their outside properly represented what was inside, it would look hideous.

It is interesting that as I look out into the audience, I see a lot of clean cut men and women. All of you look upright and proper. I’m sure there are some, maybe even many, who have a great heart that matches the outer appearance. But I wonder if there is anyone here who is deceiving everyone else. The outside looks great, but the inside is full of greed, hypocrisy, self-indulgence, and lawlessness. You don’t really want to do God’s will, you just want to look like you do so you can enjoy the benefits of relating to other apparently righteous people.

But what about me? Do I like to appear righteous? Do I worry about people thinking that I’m not righteous? Are those anxieties about the perception of others more important than actually having a good heart? Jesus tells us to start from the inside. If the inside is disgusting, we need to clean it out. The one who wants to appear righteous when they are not is a self-indulgent person. They get pleasure out of people thinking much of themselves. Maybe many of us are fighting with that tendency in ourselves. We have to stop focusing on the outer appearance, and start focusing on having a heart that loves God and loves people.

Killing The Righteous (29-36)

Matthew 23:29-36

This is the final condemnation text we will look at, but I want you to see how Jesus describes a righteous act that they are doing. He says that they are making monuments to the righteous people of old. They lift up the prophets who spoke the truth and were killed for it. They honor and memorialize these men, saying, “If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have killed them.”

Then, Jesus says something odd. He says, “Thus you witness against yourselves that you are the sons of those who murdered the prophets.” Why did Jesus say that? In order to understand this, we need to understand the culture. Jesus is using a play on words. They call themselves the sons of those who kill the prophets. They do not disown them. These men are focused on physical heritage, and that makes them inseparably tied to the evil generations that are before them. They should be mourning their father’s sins, and learning from their mistakes. Instead, they act like they are more righteous than previous generations while doing the same things.

Notice that Jesus says, “Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers.” He is essentially telling them to go ahead and commit the sins of their fathers. They claim they wouldn’t do what their fathers have done, but they are planning to kill Jesus. So the rest of this section gives them a notable condemnation because they will do the very thing they condemn.

How often do we condemn those in the Old Testament or those in Jesus’ day for disbelief? How often do we say, “If I had been there, I would never have done what they did?” That mindset and self exaltation doesn’t help us. Pride always comes before the fall. The Christian who thinks that they are doing everything right needs to take a closer look at themselves from the inside out. They might think that they are in a place to condemn someone else for being a false teacher, but they had better make sure to avoid acting like one of these false religious leaders.

Jesus Wants To Help (37-39)

To wrap up our study, I wants us to look at the final words of Jesus in this chapter. Notice his feelings toward these false religious leaders. In verse 34, he says, “I send you prophets and wise men and scribes.” He wants to help them and send them words of wisdom to get them on the right path. Now look at these final words.

Matthew 23:37-39

Here Jesus seems to be grieving over the continual rebellion of the Jewish people. They refuse to listen and believe. So Jesus says, “Your house is left to you desolate.” God has left the building. All of these words are the last words Jesus will speak in the temple before being crucified. Jesus will not step foot in the temple again until 70 AD when he comes in judgment through the Roman army. His final words foretell those days.

Conclusion

All of this sounds really scary coming from Jesus. Many might think of Jesus as gentle and sweet and he is. But if you want to get on the wrong side of Jesus, close the door to eternal salvation so other people can’t go in. The scribes and Pharisees appeared righteous, and they believed that they were righteous. But this text describes how deeply they have been corrupted by the world around them. These men are shutting the kingdom in people’s faces as they refuse to believe in Jesus and deceive people to keep them from believing.

This text sets us up for the next section of the book where Jesus will foretell their judgment and the destruction of Jerusalem. Sadly, these men never washed the inside of the cup. They pursued their own way, killed Jesus, and killed those Jesus sent to help them. We cannot overlook this text and miss the root of their problem lest we make the same mistake. Submit to Jesus with honest hearts, focus on what God cares about most, and stop getting lost in the small things.