The Pharisees were Jesus’s perennial enemies. They still are. While the sins Jesus denounces in our passage this morning may seem in some ways rather arcane, the same sinful attitudes and behaviors exist today. Like the Pharisees of days gone by, we so often offer up what looks good and moral, but behind the thin veneer of paint are shards of broken glass, ready to cut. 13. "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. 15. "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are. 16. "Woe to you, blind guides! You say, `If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.' 17. You blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred? 18. You also say, `If anyone swears by the altar, it means nothing; but if anyone swears by the gift on it, he is bound by his oath.' 19. You blind men! Which is greater: the gift, or the altar that makes the gift sacred? 20. Therefore, he who swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it. 21. And he who swears by the temple swears by it and by the one who dwells in it. 22. And he who swears by heaven swears by God's throne and by the one who sits on it. 23. "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices--mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law--justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. 24. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel. 25. "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. 27. "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. 28. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. 29. "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. 30. And you say, `If we had lived in the days of our forefathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.' 31.
So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the
prophets. 33. "You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell? 34. 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. 35. And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. 36. I tell you the truth, all this will come upon this generation. As Jesus began His public ministry in Matthew 5 with eight blessings in the beatitudes, so now He prepares to end His public ministry with seven woes. A woe is a strong condemnation, a pronouncement of judgment. He issues this denunciation against the leaders because their teaching infected so many. He warns them about their false responses to what God has given them in His Word. There are three main areas where they’ve erred. These warnings are for us as much today as they were then. The three problem areas are places where hypocrisy runs rampant. To be a hypocrite in the ancient world initially refered to the actor who, in Greek theater, wore a mask to convey emotion. The term evolved over time to include anyone who had a false front about their lives. Today one person has defined a hypocrite as: one who complains about the sex and violence on the tape in his V.C.R. ARE WE FALSE IN OUR PREACHING? (Verses 13-22) False preaching deflects others from faith (verse 13). 1st Woe: There is a tremendous danger when people speak from God’s Word, but in so doing keep others from believing it. But that is what these teachers of the Law did. We saw last week their guilt of not practicing what they preached. But here we see they are also guilty of practicing what they preach, but are preaching and practicing the wrong thing. Their religious zeal is misplaced. What is more, their misplaced sincerity keeps others from believing. Their zeal to protect their own interpretation of the Bible causes them to neglect the central message of the Scripture. In their zeal to uphold the Law, they would not see God’s Messiah as He stood in front of them. Not only will they not enter in, as was evidenced in the previous chapter when they could not answer the simple question as to the person of the Messiah, they will not let others in, either. The door is slammed on others when they teach falsely what God’s word clearly explains, when they interpret God’s Law apart from the Gospel. Since they lack the Messianic key to unlock the meaning, they cannot communicate its meaning to others. The only thing they have to offer are their own human traditions rather than God’s truth; they obscure the central message in Scripture with trivia and minutiae. The image of shutting the kingdom in the face of others pictures not only closing a door, but bolting it tight. As teachers sitting on Moses’s seat, they possessed the keys to unlock God’s Word, but they used them only to be sure no one else would believe, would ever get in. False preaching degrades converts (verse 15). 2nd Woe: Their zeal in shutting others out only makes their converts far worse off. Since they don’t offer them any hope of salvation, what they do give them makes them much worse. First century Judaism, before the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, was known as the high water mark for Jewish missionary zeal. They would travel the world over in search for the nominal Jew or the pagan who would become obedient to the Law. But for all their zeal, what they produce is far from beneficial. Jesus doesn’t critique their zeal, their extensive missionary efforts, but their results. The Pharisees so locked the converts into a theological grid that they too rejected Jesus as the Messiah. As they deflected them from believing what was true, they degraded the converts and condemned them to Hell. As these converts are won to a perverted faith, they imitate the vices of their false teachers. As they do not have a knowledge of Scripture which would restrain their sin and are unregenerated themselves, they go whole hog. False preaching devalues sin (verses 16-22). 3rd Woe: Though the religious call themselves the leaders of the blind, they are blind leaders. They are blind because in their complicated interpretation they see so much more in the Bible than the obvious. Whenever we erect structures of morality which transcend Scripture, whenever we think we know better than God’s Law as to what is right and wrong, we become blind leaders and in promoting Law we devalue sin. False preaching will erect an elaborate scheme for determining what is sinful and what is not, what is permissible and what is taboo. This schematic will appear to be pleasing to God, but when it is examined the foolishness of the structure is apparent. These blind guides no doubt imagined they were doing something very noble: clarifying what kind of oath demands we keep the oath and what kind can be broken with immunity. According to rabbinic literature, the swearing of oaths was commonplace among the Jews. A whole tractate of the Mishnah is given over to the subject (Shebueot), This tractate goes into a bewildering variety of forms of oaths, their validity and their invalidity. By subtle distinctions the Pharisees succeeded in making perjury legitimate. The obvious problem Jesus points out here is that all we say should reflect integrity. In seeking to be exact and clear in their legal standings, they succeed in excusing their own sin. Their perfectionism is so great that in order to deal with the dissonance of their own sinfulness, and since they do not understand a God who in grace provides for the forgiveness of sins through the punishment of another, they must make a way to excuse their own sinfulness. How do we see this false preaching today? Whenever we try to clarify what a Christian is by creating lists of do’s and don’ts, but in so doing we erect unbiblical entrance requirements that few would want to profess faith. We shut the door when we confuse morality with faith. When we demand they adhere to a certain political party or confuse being a patriotic American with being a disciple of Jesus Christ. We shut the doors to others when we demand perfect adherence to our way. Whenever we teach our peculiarities of morality, no matter how popular, instead of God’s Word, when we communicate the Law but neglect the gospel, we will certainly make better disciples of hell than even we are, when we teach as though we have a corner on truth, whenever we go back on our word due to some technicality, when we think that which is legal is therefore ethical and is allowed by God, whenever we think that some sins are more tolerable to God than others - in business, marriage, promise to the kids? ARE WE FALSE IN OUR PRACTICE? (Verses 23-28) False practice decides what is important (verses 23-24) 4th Woe: The Law specified that 1/10 of what one grew in grain, wine and oil was given but was not as clear as to garden plants. The teachers of the Law led the way in trying to honor God by getting down to the nitty gritty, the smallest of the herbs which grew next to their houses, that was paid as part of their tithe. But as far as the rest of their life, not much more was done. They neglected issues which were more important, which carried more weight, which were far more difficult to do. Jesus is not saying they should have ignored the tithe. Malachi 2 says that to not tithe is to rob God. Far too many people are a few steps behind the Pharisees in this matter. All the things of God’s Law are important, but those are most weighty, which are most expressive of inward holiness. Judgment and mercy toward men, and faith toward God, are the weightier matters of the Law, the good things which the Lord our God requires (Micah 6:8); to do justly, and love mercy, and humble ourselves by faith to walk with God. Their confusion is likened to straining out gnats but swallowing camels. Both creatures were considered unclean and if one found a gnat floating in your chili, one would be careful to remove it post haste. These Pharisees cared so much about God’s Law they would be so repulsed at the gnat floating in their gravy, they’d do anything to remove it. But when it came to a camel - without a blink of an eye - they’d open their mouth and let the whole thing slide right down. We strain out gnats when we are very careful to give 10% but our response in worship is shallow, our attitude toward others is unloving, our concern for those suffering is superficial. We strain at gnats when we are so exacting in our theology, but there is not an ounce of love for those around us, for those who don’t know Christ. It’s easier to swallow a camel than you think. False practice delights in the external more than the internal (verses 25-26). 5th Woe: If it is up to us to decide what matters and what does not, we’ll always emphasize the external over the internal; we’ll deal with what shows first. If company is coming over you begin in the living room and push the toys and junk further back. Your bedroom is perhaps the last place where you’ll dump whatever you have left. You don’t begin by dusting the basement floor joists. We are not unlike the Pharisees of old; we love external religion instead of having to wrestle with the hard inner person. We think that a good external paint job is enough. While these seem passionately religious, they are in fact, passionately possessed with appearance and gratification. Jesus sees through this obsession with appearance and pleasure, and He sees into the spirit that produced the obsession in the first place. Jesus switches from the illustration to the real problem. You clean the outside ... but the inside is full of greed and self-indulgence. The problem with false practice which cares only for appearances is that when we live our lives based on appearance, looking good, what rules our lives then is avarice and a lack of self-control. The beautiful life is a shame if what produced it was consumption, covetousness and intemperance. A nice house, well mannered kids, reasonable car, but is that how God measures? Is that what counts when you stand before God? No matter how well your lawn is manicured, if your life is controlled by your desires then you are a hypocrite in practice. If you have a coffee cup at the office, take a look inside. Was it originally porcelain white, now turned coffee black? Does this make you consider how your heart looks? False practice deceives by appearance (verses 27-28). 6th Woe: Continuing on the theme of external appearances, Jesus moves to the common practice of whitewashing tombs. During month of Adar, just before Passover, it was customary to whitewash the lime graves or grave sites, in order to warn pilgrims to steer clear of the area and avoid ritual uncleanness from contact with corpses, which would prevent participation in the Passover. Just a few days before Jesus had entered Jerusalem, and the tombs which littered the Kidron Valley now glistened in the bright Mediterranean sun. The grave sites were rather stunning. But such preparation could not hide from those around what they were; they were still graves. In this same way, the most religious people of the day looked so wonderful, but the irony was that for all their formalism, for all their love of conformity, they were full of uncleanness. The irony here is that in verse 28 Jesus says that for all their preoccupation with the Law (nomos) they are full of anomia, here translated as wickedness, but literally, “lawlessness.” This strikes at the heart of the legalist. For all their shouting about the Law, when they neglect the proper place of grace as the corrective to our sin problem, when they misuse the law to make us what we are not, they are in fact, lawless. For all their nit-picking and overly scrupulous desire to obey, they reject the one who has obeyed for us, the one who empowers us to obey as we look in faith toward Him. Don’t settle for moral reformation when God offers regeneration. Don’t think that an external coat of paint will suffice, when you and I need complete cleansing. There is a huge difference between a band-aid and a heart transplant. The Queen Mary was the largest ship to cross the oceans when it was launched in 1936. Through four decades and a world war she served until she was retired, anchored as a floating hotel and museum in Long Beach, California. During the conversion, her three massive smoke stacks were taken off to be scraped and painted. But on the dock they crumbled. Nothing was left of the 3/4-inch steel plate from which the stacks had been formed. All that remained were more than thirty coats of paint that had been applied over the years. The steel had rusted away. ARE WE FALSE IN OUR SECURITY? (Verses 29-36) False security demeans our responsibility. 7th Woe: The final pronouncement of judgment centers on the core problem: they will preach lies, thus condemn others; they will practice lies to cover up their own sin - because when push comes to shove they are unwilling to admit their own sin, their own need for forgiveness, their own culpability in the sins which exist all around them. Those whitewashed tombs were not just simple grave stones, but some were elaborate memorials to the prophets from centuries long gone. They pretended to have such regard for the holy men of the past that, being unable to honor them in person, they would set up monuments to their memory, and adorn their resting places with tokens of respect. It is easier to honor the memories of prophets long gone, when we no longer have to listen to their tirades. It is easy to venerate prophets’ memories while rejecting the prophets’ messages. A false security creeps in - we mistakenly believe we atone for our sins as we invoke their names. We easily think that if our heritage is right, we are right, that if we stand in a certain chain of great persons, we are great ourselves. Jesus disenchants us. Traditionalism is no substitute for truth. But as they patted themselves on the back, caring for their tombs, denying any personal involvement in the sin of their forefathers who had the prophets killed, they set themselves up. They’ve condemned themselves for they are not just the biological descendants of those who murdered the prophets, they are their spiritual descendants as well. They show their paternity by resembling their fathers. While piously claiming to be different, they are already plotting ways to put an end to Jesus. Their connection goes from Abel, the first righteous man to be recorded in Scripture as having been killed by a wicked man, to Zechariah, whom most scholars believe is refering to the Zechariah found in 2 Chronicles 24:20-21, the last in the Hebrew canonical order. So, from A-Z, all those who were murdered will testify against them. But while Jesus makes it clear that there exists a fearful judgment of God coming, a judgment which He further describes in chapters 24-25, while Jerusalem will be destroyed and there awaits an eternal guilt and punishment, there stood before them the one man who would answer the blood of Abel to Zechariah, who would atone for the sin of hypocrites like you and me. You and I must acknowledge our guilt. We are hypocrites. At the drop of the hat I’d rather anyone of you be my disciple than follow Christ, for then you’ll do what I say and life will be so much easier. False preaching is such a temptation. False practice is also so comfortable. Like a comfortable pair of slippers, we know how good it feels to look good before others, to hear the compliments. But what is worse, what is most dangerous is when we have that false security, when we think that as we honor the departed saints of Presbyterianism: Calvin, Knox, Augustine, Hodge, Sproul (not dead yet) we think that we are immune from God’s judgment. But you and I, because of our sins, nailed God’s one and only Son, the only truly Holy One to a tree. Are you willing to hear the criticism that you are a hypocrite, that you deserve nothing, but God in His grace placed that woe you deserve on His Son, so that you may be blessed, made His own child, instead? People will do the funniest things to keep up appearances and pretend that everything is normal! Often they will expend more energy on trying to hide a problem than on trying to solve it. One of the Japanese soldiers who defended Osaka, Japan, has testified that the anti-aircraft guns in his area fired a lot of blanks in the last few months of World War II. There was insufficient ammunition for the guns, but the military did not want to be criticized for not trying hard enough to defend the people. Hence, they shot a lot of blanks. Even when they did fire live rounds, the ammunition this unit possessed would not reach the high-flying B-29 bombers. Neither the blanks nor the real shells in this one unit were endangering any enemy planes, but the Japanese soldiers were risking their lives to stay out in the open and keep up the appearance of effective defense. What a heavy price for maintaining an appearance! |
