With chapter 23 begins the Discourse Section of Book V: The King. It runs on to the end of ch. 25, having three parts:
ch. 23 the woes pronounced on the Pharisees and the scribes
ch. 24 the Lord's overview of the future
ch. 25 a group of parables associated with it
The arrangement of ch. 23 is simple.
i. A warning to the crowds and the disciples.
ii. The Woes.
iii. The Lord's lament over Jerusalem.
The scribes and the Pharisees
The Jews had a saying: "Moses received the Law and delivered it to Joshua; Joshua delivered it to elders; the elders delivered it to the prophets; and the prophets delivered it to the men of the Great Synagogue" ... and those who interpreted it were the scribes! All Jewish religion was based on the Ten Commandments and the Pentateuch. It was this Law that gave them distinction among the nations; its study therefore was regarded as the highest of all callings (that is still true among Orthodox Jews today) and those who so studied it were the scribes.
The task of the Scribes was to apply the Law to changing conditions of life. This led to a prolific multiplication of sub-laws, fifty volumes of them!
The Pharisees, to preserve the faith against corruption, set themselves to fulfil every regulation the scribes worked out. However devout they were, therefore (and many were devout indeed) they were entrenched in a legalist mentality.
The Talmud distinguishes seven kinds of Pharisee:
1. The Shoulder Pharisee: who wore his good deeds on his shoulder "to be seen of men."
2. The Wait-a-little Pharisee: who always had an excuse for putting off a good deed.
3. The Bleeding Pharisee: who must not be seen talking to a woman, so he walked the streets with his eyes shut to avoid even seeing one ... and bumped into walls and doors!
4. The Tumbling Pharisee: who was so ostentatious in his humility he would not lift his feet from the ground, and tripped over every obstacle.
5. The Ever-reckoning Pharisee: who reckoned up his good deeds.
6. The Timid Pharisee: who went in dread of divine punishment, and so attended to every little detail to avoid condemnation, like cleaning the outside of his cup and platter.
7. The God-fearing Pharisee: the genuine article, who truly loved God.
This is not an outsider's criticism; this is the Jews' own description of them in their official literature, the Talmud. (William Barclay, 'Daily Study Bible: Gospel of Matthew Vol 2.' [St Andrew Press] p. 313)
But we must beware of giving ourselves false comfort by condemning them for all this. Matthew writes for the Church, and what he says applies to Christian teachers too. What is said about the Pharisees who taught the Law becomes all the more absurd and reprehensible if it can be said of Christians who teach grace.
When a bad-tempered man is angry, you do not take much notice; when a meek man is, you do. Jesus is angry; we should sit up and take notice - though the lament indicates that grief was mingled with His anger.
v. 2 "Moses' Seat" was an actual seat in the synagogue from which teaching was given out of the Law; the pulpit.
v. 3 "Do what they tell you ..." If they
taught rightly, we know from 22:34-40 what their teaching would be:
reverence for God and respect for man.
God will not let us off because we found cause to criticise the
preacher. He will hold us answerable for our response to the Word
preached, not to the personality of its herald.
v. 4 "Heavy burdens."
'Binding and loosing' was the prohibition and permission of moral
actions, the making of regulations and exceptions; the Law 'bound'
you to this, but 'loosed' you from that. The scribes multiplied
'bindings and loosings' out of all proportion. Acts 15:10 reveals how
Jews really felt about them, "Why do you try to test God by putting
on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers
have been able to bear?" Recall too Acts 13:39, "Through him everyone
who believes is justified from everything you could not be
justified from by the law of Moses." All demand and no succour.
How appealing, by contrast, to hear Jesus say, "My yoke is easy, and
my burden is light." No religion that professes to be true may be a
religion of legion 'do's' and 'don'ts'; they make it an intolerable
burden, and the only kind of burden God means religion to be is the
kind of burden wings are to a bird.
False religion is showy and superior too - done for the sake of a reputation with men, not with God. "To be seen by men ..." Jesus has already warned people off that: "Beware of practising your piety before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father in Heaven." (6:1) If God's interests are not our concern, neither will ours be His.
Warned off so plainly, this is a fault we good Christians avoid, of course! Or do we? I think we fall into the trap on the negative side: rather than do things for display, we avoid things. "Dare not be seen doing that," we say. But we are being humbugs, just the same.
v. 5 The phylacteries had their origin in Deut. 6:7, "Impress these commandments on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads;" and 11:18, "Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads." What was obviously meant metaphorically was taken literally. They wrote the words on bits of paper and put them in little leather boxes worn on the forehead and the arm. Orthodox Jews in Israel today do it still: you can see them any day at the Wailing Wall. They missed the point of Deut. 6:6, "These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts."
The fringes or tassels were inspired by Num. 15:37-41, "The Lord said to Moses, 'Throughout the generations to come you are to make tassels on the corners of your garments with a blue cord on each tassel; you will have them to look at and remember all the commands of the Lord, that you may obey them and not follow after the lusts of your own hearts and eyes.'" (Deut. 22:12) But what guarantee is the wearing of a longer tassel that you "remember all the commands of the Lord"?
The "places of honour" at feasts and banquets were to the right and left of the host; in the synagogue, they were those which faced the congregation (as Presbyterian Elders do). About this Jesus had said on another occasion, when he noticed how guests picked places of honour at table: 'When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honour, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited. If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, 'Give this man your seat.' Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place. But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes he will say to you, 'Friend, move up to a better place.' Then you will be honoured in the presence of your fellow guests. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.'" (Luke 14:7ƒƒ)
v. 12 "Whoever exalts himself," note. This does not conflict with Matt. 5:16; the good deeds Jesus there commends are of such a kind that they call attention to God, not to ourselves. In contrast, the spirit of true religion is one of service and humility. God did not give us birth to find personal fulfilment for ourselves; He gave us birth to minister personal fulfilment to others: that in fact is how we find our own. We grow each other.
v. 7 "Salutations." The rabbis said, "a man must salute his superior in the knowledge of the law." They wanted that recognition. 'Rabbi' originally meant 'great,' so, 'lord, master, teacher.'
v. 8 "But you ..." is emphatic. One teacher, one Master - Christ; one Father - God. Fathers beget life, teachers give direction, masters wield authority. We need them all, but we receive them from God and His Christ, not from the Church embodied in its officialdom.
i. Shutting the door vs. 13-14
The word 'Woe' conveys both anger
and sorrow - tears, not simply denunciation.
v. 13 The word 'hypocrite' originally meant 'one who answers;' so it came at first to refer to stage dialogue, as spoken by actors, and then later to shams.
A 'hypocrite' is one who professes one thing while really embracing another. A trier who fails is not a hypocrite; though he fail often, he is a trier.
The Kingdom of Heaven is a reign of grace. But a ritual religion of pride and exclusiveness has nothing to do with grace. An example of the way the scribes and Pharisees would allow those who would enter to go in is Luke 13:10-17: "Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue ruler said to the people, 'There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.' The Lord answered him, 'You hypocrites! Doesn't each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? Then shouldn't this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?'"
I personally know of sects which forbid Christmas to children, and reject family ties with those who do not embrace their faith.
ii. Perverting the people v. 15
A 'proselyte' is a convert from one faith to another. The condemnation is not irrelevant to us today: emasculated churches make emasculated Christians out of their converts. "The most converted become the most perverted." We do it when we make Baptists out of people, or Anglicans or Methodists, instead of Christians.
iii. Misleading the masses vs. 16-22
Blindness is a symbol of sin. How can sinners be guides? This section illustrates the problem.
Rabbis held that an oath was binding only if God's Name came into it because of the third commandment, and because God was thereby introduced into the transaction as an active partner. So, with a deliberate intent to deceive, you made your oath by anything other than God which your customer might think was sacred to you. Perhaps too they argued that gold and gifts were your personal gifts as temple and altar were not, so you were personally involved - in which case Jesus' logic is irrefutable: you are as involved by going to the Temple and the Altar as by anything you present there. Or perhaps Jesus was caricaturing their finely honed techniques of evasion, which is what we do when we use the letter of the Law to evade its spirit.
The point is that no part of life at all is hid from God, or is beyond His interest and His reach. We must live before the world with the same honesty and transparency in which we know we should live before Him. So Matt. 5:33-37, "Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.' But I tell you, Do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God's throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No'; anything more than this comes from the evil one."
We must be the same person in all relations. No 'business me' and 'leisure me' and 'Christian Me' - just one me! No committee of sundry selves with a chairman counting votes; just God and me, made whole by the regenerating power of the Spirit and the love of Jesus in my heart.
iv. No sense of proportion v. 23-24
The law about tithing is given in Deut. 14:22, "Be sure to set aside a tenth of all that your fields produce each year," and Lev 27:30, "A tithe of everything from the land, whether grain from the soil or fruit from the trees, belongs to the Lord; it is holy to the Lord ... The entire tithe of the herd and flock - every tenth animal that passes under the shepherd's rod - will be holy to the Lord."
This was provided especially for the benefit of the Levites, the temple attendants, whose entire livelihood was supplied out of the tithes of the people; they "had no inheritance" of their own in the form of possessions, land or wealth.
In the beginning, notice, tithes were primarily made in corn, wine and oil - crops. Mint and dill and cummin are garden herbs, not crops; they had no income value, so there was no real reason for them to be tithed. But the scribes extended the rule to every kind of herb. The practice was a sign of neurotic obsession. They were so obsessed with fine points of law - all in the interests of establishing their own virtue - that they had lost sight of the nobler purpose it was given to serve, a true worship of God and His interest in others. Obsessed with their own lily-white purity, they showed no concern for the welfare of others. Professing a pure devotion, they were in fact hard, arrogant and ruthless.
Men who tithe their income, dress well for church, behave impeccably there, never dreaming of making a disturbance in church by shouting 'Hallelujah', but cheat on the boss's time at work, ignore the needs of a single parent family next door and are ill-tempered at home are guilty of the same fault. Women who serve on church and welfare committees but neglect their children who are lonely for them at night are in no better case.
What matters? A meticulous observance of religious rituals, or a loving heart?
v. 24 Straining wine through cloth into a cup. The practise was inspired by Lev. 11:41ƒƒ, "You are not to eat any creature that moves about on the ground, whether it moves on its belly or walks on all fours or on many feet." That included insects.
Note the contrast Jesus draws: "You strain out a gnat, and swallow a camel!" Marvellous comic hyperbole! You have to see the whole animal going down the Pharisee's throat: the long hairy neck, a hump, two humps, the knobbly legs ... "and," says Jesus, "he never even noticed!"
The church is still bedevilled with nitpickers who make a meal of trivia and have no vision for the real business of the church: growth in fellowship, maturity and outreach.
v. Outside and inside v. 25-26
'Clean or Unclean' originally meant whatever disqualified you from worship in the Sanctuary. You became 'unclean' through contact with a dead body, or with spilled blood, or with an irreligious heathen. It was extended to include contact with sickness, the eating of non-kosher food and points of hygiene. Even so, obedience was the point of it all: a personal, conscientious devotion to God.
But the whole thing became ritualised, with emphasis, not on the quality of a thing or a practice, but on 'rites.' So Mark 7:1-8, "The Pharisees and some teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were 'unclean,' that is, unwashed. (The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. When they come from the market-place they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles.) So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, "Why don't your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with 'unclean' hands?"
He replied, "Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: 'These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.' (Isaiah 29:13) You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men."
The Lord's answer to all this obsessive ritualism is given in Mark 7:14ƒƒ:
"Jesus called the crowd to him and said, 'Listen to me, all of you, and understand this. Nothing outside a man can make him 'unclean' by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him 'unclean.'" After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this. "Are you so dull?" he asked. "Don't you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him 'unclean'? For it doesn't go into his heart but into his stomach, and then out of his body." (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods 'clean.') "It is what comes out of a man that makes him 'unclean.' For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man 'unclean.' First make the tree good, then its fruit will be good."
We do not become a good person by the manipulation of our outward behaviour. But we still think so.
Luke 11:38ƒƒ: "A Pharisee, noticing that Jesus did not first wash before the meal, was surprised. The Lord said to him, "Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? But give what is inside the dish (or what you have) to the poor, and everything will be clean for you."
And hear Paul, the converted Pharisee: "If your brother is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not, by your eating, destroy your brother for whom Christ died. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit; anyone who serves Christ in this way is both pleasing to God and approved by men. Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual upbuilding. Don't destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All food is clean, but it is wrong to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble. It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother to fall. So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the man who does not condemn himself in what he allows. But the man who has doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin. We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please his neighbour for his good, to build him up. For even Christ did not please himself ..." (Rom. 14:15ƒƒ)
Yet churches are torn apart over such trivial issues as whether there should be one cup or individual cups used at the Lord's Table, or one loaf or individual pieces of bread, or over the colour of a sanctuary carpet.
vi. Disguised decay v. 27-28
Whoever came into contact with a dead body became ceremonially unclean thereby, so tombs on the pilgrim ways were white-washed as a warning: so Luke 11:44, "Woe to you, because you are like unmarked graves, over which men walk without knowing it." The corruption of death within was disguised under a pretty exterior, for the tombs were not only whitewashed, but decorated. "You ... decorate the graves of the righteous." (v. 29)
The application is obvious: What goes on in our mind, what attitudes are in our heart underneath our pious patter and our nicely mannered Christian exterior? As Shakespeare put it in Hamlet, "Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, show me the steep and thorny way to heaven, while himself the primrose path of dalliance treads."
This leads on to the next 'Woe.'
vii. Pots calling kettles black v. 29-36
The point of this paragraph is v. 31, "Thus you witness against yourselves, that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets." (Sons of ... = character-likeness.) It is easy to profess innocence in relation to prophets who are conveniently dead, while we are scheming to silence prophets presently living who disturb our complacency. "We would not have dreamed of doing such things ..."
That is the very pride and prejudice against which the prophets inveighed. It is the attitude: "Don't you make a monkey out of me, son, with your accusations; I'm pure ..." It is the attitude which flatly refuses to be called in question ... an attitude which may very well be welling up as you read this! How we do fall into this trap. Those who criticise Home Groups for being cliques become themselves a condemning clique! The spirit of proud condemnation always betrays us.
The 'Zecharias' to whom Jesus referred is found in II Chron. 24:20-22, "The Spirit of God came upon Zechariah son of Jehoiada the priest who stood before the people and said, 'This is what God says: 'Why do you disobey the Lord's commands? You will not prosper. Because you have forsaken the Lord, he has forsaken you.'" But they plotted against him, and by order of the king they stoned him to death in the courtyard of the Lord's temple."
Unwilling to be called in question, you see.
Note vs. 34-35, "Therefore I am sending you prophets and wise men and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the innocent blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar."
By the phrase "from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah" Jesus meant, "from first to last, you've been like this," for the Hebrew Bible began with Genesis and ended with II Chronicles (the prophets all fitted in earlier). Jesus was referring to the first and last murder in their Bibles.
Underline the 'therefore': the hostility of the Pharisees is the very reason for the Christian mission ... even to them! When Jesus warned the disciples of the cost they would have to meet to obey, it was like God's commission to Jeremiah, "They will not listen, but you have to go." The idea that so long as we duly meet the conditions of prayer and holiness our evangelism is bound to be successful is a nonsense. Jesus plainly said there would be occasions when it will fail. But the certainty of failure does not release us from the obligation to do it. That after all is what justice, mercy and faith require. Justice, mercy and faith (v. 23) are the only test of obedience to God; not smoking, drinking and dancing, or not singing choruses, not raising your hands, and not speaking in tongues.
Micah 6:8, "He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."
The seven woes vs. 13-33 (eight if you include v. 14) are a contrast to the eight beatitudes. Here is the ugly reverse of the 'beautiful attitudes.'
The first four are about their doctrine, the last four about their character.
1. Poor in spirit (have nothing)
- mean-spirited: 'they shut the door' (deny others)
2. Mourn (have no-one)
- imposed view ('make conquests,' 'collect scalps')
3. Meek (nobodies)
- oaths: 'knowalls,' 'clever dicks' (somebodies)
4. Hunger & thirst for righteousness
- obsessed with trivia
5. Merciful
- merciless: 'greed, extortion'
6. Pure in heart (sincerity)
- white-washed tombs (hypocrisy)
7. Peacemakers
- murdered the prophets
8. Persecuted (do without)
- devour widow's houses (get, get, get)
What we really believe determines what we really are.
This material is copyright; it may not be quoted, published or reproduced without the author's permission, nor preached without acknowledgment!