Sermon Tone Analysis

Scripture Reading

Introduction

This week, we turn our attention to the words that Jesus brings to a “Teacher of the Law”, or an “Expert in the Law.”

You will recall from our study in Scripture last week that Jesus had been invited to visit with a Pharisee in his house.

Jesus had accepted the invitation, and went in and sat down for the meal, but hadn’t washed his hands according to the Jewish ceremonial requirements.

Those were no God-given requirements, but rather they formed part of the traditions that were handed down by the Jewish Elders.

This shocked the Pharisee, but when he expressed that shock to Jesus, Jesus responded to him by pronouncing a series of woes upon the Pharisees.

Jesus certainly didn’t mince his words.

Rather, he outright told the Pharisee that him and those like him were in serious danger, since they did much of what they did in pride of heart.

They cared little for people around them, espeically for those who were needy.

They placed burdens on these people.

It’s that precise context that introduces our current passage.

Jesus has just finished saying these words, pronouncing these woes upon the Pharisees, when a Scribe takes offense at what he’s saying, and decides it’s best to let Jesus know that he’s actually upsetting them by what he’s saying.

It’s almost as if the Scribe thinks that by confronting Jesus, he can help him to see that his words are out of place, and that he must think a little more carefully about what he’s saying.

Now, we need to understand that this person that confronted Jesus was an “Expert in the Law.”

That’s the NIV rendition of the word there.

Some translations have it as a “Lawyer.”

But the fact is, this man was well trained in reading and writing, and that would have been applied to the study of various subject matters.

The Experts in the law were not limited to Jews.

Unlike the Pharisees or the Sadducees, scribes were not confined to Israel.

The scribal tradition in Israel has its roots in the ancient Near Eastern civilization.

Scribes worked in a variety of realms, including religious, political, judicial, economic, and social.

Jewish scribes may have been employed in additional occupations, including:

• copying manuscripts;

• teaching and interpreting the Torah and other Jewish literature;

• working in the temple, royal court, or administration;

• being a political advisor or diplomat;

• working with ancient sciences;

• functioning as wise sages, elders, judges, or as members of the Sanhedrin;

• writing letters and documents for the kingdom, businesses, and private households.

In summary, these men were highly regarded, highly educated members of society.

They would have been well respected among their peers.

In this sense, the Scribe probably felt the sting of Christ’s words against the Pharisee, because the Scribes also liked the kind of things the Pharisees liked, and probably sought the same kind of praise of man that was typical of the Pharisees.

But coming back to our text, we find that the restrained rebuke of the Scribe toward Jesus didn’t achieve his expected goal.

Instead, Jesus used this as an opportunity to pronounce a series of woes upon the Scribes themselves.

And once again, Jesus pronounces three different woes upon this group of people as a whole.

The first woe relates to the fact that these men were…

1. Creators of Burdens (v.46)

In verse 46 we read…

Jesus here denounces the Scribes / experts in the law because they would load the people of Israel with burdens that were exceedingly heavy to carry.

These burdens that are spoken of here were quite simply the various man-made rules and regulations that they would put in place.

While they certainly claimed to have taken these requirements from God’s law, they were in fact never required by God.

These religious leaders had taken things too far.

They had thought out, considered and then applied practical expressions of God’s law as they saw good, but then made their own practical outworking of the law of God the standard by which everyone had to live.

Thus it was no longer the law of God, but the rules and regulations of men.

Some examples of this are found in Scripture.

Now, because this was done on the Sabbath, these experts in the law had said that this was reaping and threshing, and thus was to be considered work.

Jesus denounced this way of thinking.

It certainly wasn’t what they claimed it to be.

On another account (found in Luke 6:6-11) we find that Jesus healed the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath, and he was rebuked for doing work on the Sabbath day.

Their rule and regulation was that you were not allowed to heal someone on the Sabbath day, unless their life was in danger.

If you healed them, it was considered work, and you were breaking the Sabbath law.

These were the various kinds of things that the Scribes and other religious leaders put in place, and they placed heavy burdens on the people.

And Jesus says to them here that these burdens ought not to be placed ont he shoulders of His people.

But notice what Jesus says further in this case.

He tells the Scribe that they themselves will not lift one finger to help them.

The big concern, apart from the fact that the experts in the law were burdening the people with rules and regulations that God didn’t require, was that they had no heart for helping the people of God to keep the law that he did require them to do.

In the other words these were men that were aloof and removed from the people.

They set themselves up on a pedestal, placed burdens on the people, and they themselves, being experts in the law, would have easily found loopholes for themselves in order to not allow their own laws to be a burden to them.

They would fail to keep their own rules themselves (cf.

Mat 23:3).

Here were men, so-called experts in the law, but they lacked a love for God’s people, and burdened them rather than simply taught them the ways of God.

But notice the next woe pronounced upon them, as Christ declares them to be...

2. Killers of Prophets (vv.47-51)

In verses 47 we read…

Just a brief remark on this verse.

In that day, it was common for the people to build tombs for the proper burial of various people.

Or they would build tombs in memory of those people.

Alternatively, they would simply redocorate and make these tombs look beautiful.

Very often, they would do this as a way of claiming to honour the people gone before them.

This seems to have been the case with the Experts in the law.

They would have been building these tombs with the view to honour the prophets from their history.

They would also claim that they would never have done what their fathers did.

We see this in the parallel account in Matthew...

There was evidently some claim by these Experts in the law that they would never have killed the prophets that their fathers killed.

And in order to try and demonstrate that they were innocent, they would perform this superficial act of “kindness” to the prophets in order to distance themselves from what their fathers did.

What did Jesus think of their efforts to distance themselves from the acts of their fathers?

In Christ’s eyes, their acts were merely acts performed before men in order to impress them.

Nonetheless, their guilt remained...

Christ simply says to them that they are joining in with their forefathers.

By building the tombs for the prophets, they are condoning the works of their fathers.

Christ doesn’t allow them to use this superficial act of building a tomb to get them off the hook.

Note what Jesus goes on to say in verse 49…

There is a flow in into this verse from the previous verse.

Verse 49 begins with the phrase, “Because of this...” or “For this reason...” The woe that Jesus pronounces upon them flows out of the fact that they join hands with their forefathers who killed the prophets.

We will see some more detail on precisely why this is in a moment.

But we also see that Christ declares that this was “the wisdom of God.”

The first thing that we must note from that statement was that none of this was outside of God’s sovereign planning and will.

He knew what would happen.

He knew that when His prophets were sent, they would be put to death by the leaders of Israel.

In this verse, Jesus talks about the “prophets and apostles” that were sent.

These were the people that were sent with the very words of God in order to declare His words to His people.

When we read “apostles” here, we shouldn’t think necessarily only of the Apostles of Christ, namely the 12. Rather, he is speaking generally of those sent by God.

That’s the meaning of the word “apostle.”

It is thus including all those who would be sent by God.

In Matthew’s account, it’s recorded that Jesus spoke of “prophets and wise men and Scribes.”

So Christ is speaking here about having sent his various representatives in order to declare his words, and instead of these people being received, they would be put to death.

This was true through the history of Israel, and it would continue to be true in the days that yet lay ahead.

There are many records in Scripture of such murders of the prophets.

In terms of a more specific example from Scripture, one that could be given is in the time of Elijah the prophet, when Queen Jezebel was seeking to kill of the prophets of God.