Jesus Versus The Den of Robbers, Pt. 5

Matthew 23:1-30

23:1 Then Jesus spoke to the multitudes and to His disciples, 2 saying: “The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. 3 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. 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. 5 But all their works they do to be seen by men. They make their phylacteries broad and enlarge the borders of their garments. 6 They love the best places at feasts, the best seats in the synagogues, 7 greetings in the marketplaces, and to be called by men, ‘Rabbi, Rabbi.’ 8 But you, do not be called ‘Rabbi’; for One is your Teacher, the Christ, and you are all brethren. 9 Do not call anyone on earth your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heaven. 10 And do not be called teachers; for One is your Teacher, the Christ. 11 But he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. 12 And whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.

13 “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in. 14 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense make long prayers. Therefore you will receive greater condemnation.

15 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel land and sea to win one proselyte, and when he is won, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.

16 “Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘Whoever swears by the temple, it is nothing; but whoever swears by the gold of the temple, he is obliged to perform it.’ 17 Fools and blind! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that sanctifies the gold? 18 And, ‘Whoever swears by the altar, it is nothing; but whoever swears by the gift that is on it, he is obliged to perform it.’ 19 Fools and blind! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift? 20 Therefore he who swears by the altar, swears by it and by all things on it. 21 He who swears by the temple, swears by it and by Him who dwells in it. 22 And he who swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by Him who sits on it.

23 “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. 24 Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!

25 “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. 26 Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also.

27 “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. 28 Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

29 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, 30 and say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.’

Introduction

The story of Jesus’ ministry to Israel is the history of Israel. Jesus ministry to Israel is Israel’s entire history summarized in three short years. It is a history that takes you from the Exodus to the Exile. Jesus crosses the Jordan, is tempted in the wilderness, and enters the land and begins teaching God’s people how God wants them to live. The people do not listen. They do not repent. They do not obey. So He begins to obscure what He is saying to make it harder on them and to intensify their hard-heartedness. Finally he shows up in the Temple and pronounces condemnation and judgment upon it, and by extension, upon them. Jesus goes from speaking to Israel like Moses, then like David and Solomon, then finally like Isaiah and Jeremiah. And in our passage today, Jesus is at His most Jeremiah-like. He is pronouncing woe and condemnation upon those who lead God’s people into wickedness and evil. 

Do What the Pharisees Say, Not What They Actually Do (v. 1-12)

After publicly humiliating the Pharisees in their attempt to prosecute Him in front of the crowds, they took their ball and went home. Now Jesus is in the temple with the multitudes listening to Him alone. Remember, there are possibly thousands of people crammed into the Temple who there for Passover week, all of Israel has watched this go down. And now Jesus begins to launch a furious invective against the scribes and Pharisees. It is not enough that He has publicly humiliated them in front of the entire country. He has to thoroughly condemn them as well.

The first thing He points out is their position of authority. They sit in Moses’ seat. They have authority. The things they tell you to do, you should actually do. Their doctrine they have figured out, they have their theology degrees, and you should do the things they tell you. The problem is that they are hypocrites. They tell you to do these good and righteous things, but they themselves do not do those good and righteous things. In fact, they do the exact opposite. They do evil things while telling everyone to do good things.

They love to put heavy burdens on people. They delight in making life difficult for people, burdening their consciences terribly, and then when the weight of the burden becomes impossible to bear, they refuse to do anything to help. 

The good things these men actually do, they make sure everyone sees it and knows about it. Their righteousness is entirely performative. There is nothing genuine about it. The Jews were required by the law to wear the law upon their forehead and hand (this was the Phylactery) and also to have tassels on their garments. These guys make sure that theirs are the biggest and most notable. They want everybody to see what a good person they are.

They love to have high status. They love being the guest of honor at feasts, having the place of honor in the synagogue. They love being invited to speak at conferences. They loved having everybody know just how important they are. They love people going out and noticing them out in public and showing them honor. The title “rabbi” was one of great honor, and they reveled in it. 

Jesus then goes into an explanation about these titles. He is the rabbi, not these other guys. And then He says don’t call anyone on earth your father. Some people are confused here to the point that they don’t even call their own dads “father.” But that isn’t what Jesus has in mind here. He is talking about exalting men like these, giving them these titles. And it isn’t as though titles of authority are expressly forbidden, Paul defends his apostleship later in the New Testament, and points out that God has blessed the church with particular offices to minister to the saints. What Jesus is talking about here is exalting these godless men and showing them undue honor.

And why is that a problem? Because they are supposed to be servants of God’s people, but use their position to be served by God’s people. They chew them up and spit them out. Jesus has repeatedly said greatness comes through service. If you want to be great, you will serve other people. If you want to get humbled and be brought low, if you want to be miserably humiliated, try exalting yourself. But if you live a life of humility, if you choose humble service of others, you will be exalted. The scribes and Pharisees embody the antithesis of life in Christ’s kingdom. They exalt themselves and demand to be served by others. That is why Jesus humiliates them. And that is why Jesus was going to soon bring judgment upon the Temple and upon Israel.

A Very Un-Christlike Jesus Curses the Pharisees (v. 13-30)

Jesus then launches into woes. These are basically curses. There are eight of them just as there are eight beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, and they each correspond, some almost explicitly. In the first beatitude, Jesus says “blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” In this Woe, Jesus basically says curses upon you, scribes and Pharisees, for you close off the kingdom of heaven to men. The kingdom of heaven is not yours. They are the opposite of those who are poor in spirit.

In the second woe, Jesus condemns the Pharisees for devouring widow’s houses. Their job is to feed widows, yet they feed upon widows. In the second beatitude, Jesus blesses those who mourn, like widows. The scribes and Pharisees are a curse upon those who mourn. And Jesus pronounces woe upon them.

In the third beatitude, Jesus blessed the meek, saying they shall inherit the earth. In the third woe, the Pharisees travel across the earth to gain converts, and all they and their converts inherit is hell.

If the fourth woe, the scribes and Pharisees think they have found a loophole in God’s law, they would swear vows but in ways that those vows could be broken. If you swore by God’s name or swore that something was a devoted offering to the temple, there was no way out. In the fourth beatitude, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be filled. In the fourth woe, the scribes and Pharisees are manipulative, deceptive, and greedy. They hunger and thirst for unjust gain and will be left empty. 

In the fifth woe, the scribes and Pharisees are incredibly scrupulous about things that don’t really matter that much. They obsessively tithed the herbs from their garden, yet were willfully oblivious to the massive evils they played a role in. They were very careful to obey the things that are unimportant but the greater issues of mercy and justice and faithfulness they could not care less about. They strain out gnats and swallow camels. The fifth beatitude matches this, as well, the merciful are blessed with mercy. There will be no mercy for the merciless Pharisees.

In the sixth woe, the Pharisees are scrupulous about cleaning the outside of a dish, presenting the exterior as clean while the interior is disgusting. The law required dishes be cleaned if something unclean touched them. The point of the law isn’t about dishes but people. The heart needs to be clean, the interior of a man must be made right. The insides of the Pharisees are impure. This connects with the sixth beatitude: blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. The Pharisees are impure in heart and shall not see God.

In the seventh woe, the Pharisees are whitewashed tombs. In the law, if you touched a grave or a dead body you were ceremonially unclean. During Passover, when there were lots of people in Jerusalem, the graves were marked with white so people could avoid them and be able to go to worship. Jesus is saying the Pharisees are like these tombs. Outwardly they are marked as though they are perfectly righteous and holy, yet inwardly they are full of death. They are anything but men who produce peace among men. They produce strife and violence, and they are not sons of God, like the seventh beatitude, but sons of Satan.

And finally in the eighth woe, Jesus condemns these men for building monuments to the prophets, thinking they’d have honored the prophets in the old days, but in reality they would be just like their fathers who persecuted and murdered them, because they are about to do the very same thing to Jesus. The eighth beatitude is “blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Jesus says the scribes and Pharisees are those who persecute the righteous, and they will be shut out from the kingdom of heaven.

Conclusion

What do these things mean for us? Do we have scribes and Pharisees today? Yes, we most certainly do. Even (especially?) within the church we have leaders who witness massive injustice and wickedness take place, they watch as those who rule over us destroy the social fabric of the country by engineering a society where sex and marriage are divorced from child-rearing, leading to the rise of promiscuity, the acceptance of sexual perversion, and even opening the door to monstrous things like the genital mutilation of children. Many purportedly conservative evangelical leaders turn a blind eye to such things, or make tacit mention of them while ignoring root causes. Many of our leaders will say nothing about our rulers who have forcibly de-industrialized the country, impoverishing millions, directly leading to the deaths by drug overdose of tens of thousands every, single year. Meanwhile those who rule over us get wealthier and wealthier, while it becomes harder and harder for regular people to make a living. Our evangelical leaders will not ever discuss such things. They will never talk about our rulers using a pandemic as a means to further wage war upon the middle class and destroy the livelihoods of millions who have worked their entire lives to build something that provides for their family. They turn a blind eye to our rulers forcing people to take an experimental gene therapy treatment in order to feed their families. They don’t care about such massive injustices.

Oh but there are things that they do care about. They will gladly go on about how America is a fundamentally racist country and that racism is the biggest problem there is right now. They will go on about how you should be ashamed of your ancestors if you are white. They will go on about how much the Bible talks about immigration and if you object to the idea that all seven billion people on planet earth deserve the right to American citizenship and to vote in American elections you are sinning. Like the Pharisees they will publicly signal how righteous they are to world, and on the world’s terms. 

And as much as we should condemn leaders who neglect the very serious, very real, massive injustices being done to regular people while promoting the causes of those who hate us, as much as we should condemn them for tithing their dill and cumin while saying nothing about evil being done to us, we should see the same attitude so often in ourselves.

It is very easy to condemn those outside, it is easy to see Pharisaism in their actions, but it is much harder to see it in ourselves. We will care about the problems of the world, problems we can do very little about, while neglecting righteousness in our own lives that we can do. We will neglect the duties God has set before us in our own lives while trying to signal to the world that we are righteous and holy people. We all want people to see the good stuff we do and none of the bad.

But the antidote to this is doing what Jesus said. We are to serve others in humility. And that means doing righteous deeds no one is ever going to see. Being glad to do good stuff for people in total obscurity. God sees what is done in secret, and if you really do believe in Him, you will do the stuff that pleases Him that only He sees. That is the stuff that he really rewards. If you have faith in Jesus Christ, if you truly trust in Him, you will obey Him and you will do the things He requires. And most of all, what He requires is a heart that longs to please God and not men. So trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, humble yourself, and you will be exalted. In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen!