Matthew 23:1-12
You and I tend to take baths or showers fairly frequently. Maybe daily – some take showers more than once a day. Maybe every other day. It’s pretty frequently. We like to be clean on the outside, get rid of the smell of sweat and dirt.
How much thought do we put into being clean on the inside? How much thought do we put into making sure our heart is healthy? And our liver? Our kidneys?
An even more important question is: How much thought do we put into making sure our spirit is clean? That our spiritual heart is pure and holy?
Matthew 23 is the last public sermon Jesus will give and He unleashes His wrath, mixed with disappointment, against the religious leaders, specifically the Pharisees.
WOE #1 – 23:13-14:
The hypocrisy of the Pharisees is elaborated in this paragraph. The Pharisees claimed to be “teachers of the law” (see John 3:10) but they “shut off” the kingdom of heaven from others, refusing to enter (through faith in the gospel and repentance as well as baptism, see Luke 7:29-30) and not allowing others to enter through their discouragement, threats, and false teaching (see 9:33-34; 11:19; 12:23-24; 21:15; John 9:22).
WOE #2 – 23:15:
These proselytes had the characteristics of hell twice as worse as their teachers!
WOE #3 – 23:16-22:
If a man swears an oath, he is obligated to fulfill that oath if it is at all possible. God is truth as we discussed last week and lying has no place in God’s nature nor in the nature of God’s followers.
WOE #4 – 23:23-24:
They were willing to be careful about the “little things” such as the tithe and in doing so, they would strain out the gnat, an unclean animal, from their water or wine. But in the process, they neglected broader, more important principles, such as fairness, mercy, and faithfulness and, in doing so, they swallowed a larger unclean animal, the camel.
WOE #5 – 23:25-26:
Jesus challenges the Pharisees to be consistent, to be people of integrity: clean the inside of the cups and platters so that it can be clean inside and out. Spiritually speaking, the Pharisees’ hearts should be aligned with God’s word and then their behaviors should be aligned with their hearts. That is a person of character.
WOE #6 – 23:27-28:
They were like tombs having been whitewashed; they appeared externally as if they were holy and righteous and good. But, as with the cup and platter before, on the inside, they were actually full of hypocrisy and lawlessness, performing acts or behaviors which did not have God’s authority behind them.
WOE #7 – 23:29-33:
Jesus is directly applying the parable of the farmers (21:35-39) and the parable of the wedding celebration (22:3-5). Subsequently, the application of each parable (21:41, 44; 22:7) will be made to Jerusalem and her temple (23:38). Consequently, they were bringing to a completion (“filling up the measure˝) of their fathers. The full wrath of God, which had been delayed for centuries for the sake of bringing Jesus into the world, was now going to be poured out in full upon the Jewish nation for all their past sins and evils against God and His prophets, most notably against His Son, Jesus Christ.
The judgment of God the Father, in fulfillment of the two parables, will fall on that generation of Jews. The “blood of all the prophets” (punishment for their murders) who had been shed on the ground will be laid on the heads of that generation.
One’s outward behavior must reflect his inward moral compass, which must be aligned with the word of God. Many people can go to church / worship, can pray, or perform other acts of “religious service,” but if their actions are not authorized by Jesus Christ, they are condemned as “lawless” ones.
The sins Jesus rebukes in the Pharisees are not unique to the Pharisees. We could easily be guilty of the same sins. We need to make sure that our outward behavior matches the inward convictions, which match the expectations of God’s word.
Paul Holland
