Reading Assignment: Matthew 23:13-28
Main Idea: Judgment upon false teachers
Key Phrase: “Woe to you”
Overview of the six woes against the false teachers who were:
1. Obstacles to heaven
2. Recruiters for hell
3. Promoters of dishonesty
4. Neglectors of God's law
5. Fakes
6. Imposters
Prayer:
1. Thank Jesus for dealing with evildoers.
2. Thank Jesus for always speaking the truth.
3. Commit to living by His truth.
Transcript
Let's pray and we'll begin.
God, this morning we turn our attention to You. And we remember that You are God, You are the Lawgiver and Judge. This is Your world and even as we learned, not too long ago, we must always come to You on Your terms, because there is no bartering with You. There is no negotiating with You. You are God, and we are Your creatures. And it is our duty and privilege to approach You with humility, with submission, with a readiness to worship You, humbly serve You, and obey You because You are God. Thank You for drawing us to Yourself, by Your grace, through Jesus' sacrifice for sinners. We pray that as we looked to Your word that You would teach us this morning. Thank You for Jesus who speaks Your pure truth to us. In His name we pray. Amen.
The next reading assignment is Matthew 23:13-28. And the main idea is judgment for false teachers. There is no key verse from this passage, because there's a series of judgments upon false teachers that are declared in this passage. It’s difficult to pick out just one of them. But what we do have instead is a key phrase, a repeated phrase, where Jesus says, “Woe to you.” He's addressing the scribes and the Pharisees, and He declares judgments upon these false spiritual leaders. There are altogether seven of these declarations in the text. Now, if you count carefully, you will actually find eight of them in the NASB text, but there are actually seven of them because verse 14 is in square brackets, and, as the NASB footnote explains, early manuscripts do not contain this verse. Now, the Bible translators put that note there so we know that while traditionally this verse was included, the best manuscripts do not contain this verse, though it is echoed elsewhere in the gospels. This shows us that this was actually not a part of the original work which Matthew wrote. Now, this brings up the question of the reliability of the Bible. And the answer is indeed that the Bible is totally reliable, but it’s a more nuanced answer than this. If you get a chance, please download and listen to my sermon from John 8:12, where we skipped an entire section out of the beginning portion of that chapter, because of this text issue. This is a very important topic in biblical studies and the topic is called textual criticism. It is indeed an important topic, because we want to know the Bible as God had originally given it. There is much more to be said on this topic, but we don’t have time for it today. Please download and listen to that sermon. It was preached on August 16, 2020, and get the full scoop on how we should understand these square bracketed verses in the NASB. But the main point is that there are seven declarations of judgment and not eight. Today, we're going to cover six of them, and then next time we’ll look at the seventh one, because the final woe is very long.
A little more explanation before we go on: the phrase “Woe to you” employs a word that we don't generally use in the English language today. The word “woe” is ou-ai in Greek. It's nearly the same sound as the English expression. This is a word that declares a state of devastation, or of being under a curse or judgment. It expresses grief, despair, sorrow, pain, and even the fear of destruction. It is a declaration of ruin. And so when Jesus employs this phrase, “Woe to you,” He is saying that there is a judgment of great severity that is coming upon those whom He is talking about. Now why would Jesus declare such severe judgments upon these people? The answer is this: the false teachers were deceivers, who led people astray, giving them the false impression that they were spiritually fine, maybe even spiritually excellent, while all along, they were actually going deeper and deeper into a false assurance that they are headed for the kingdom of God, when in reality they were actually headed for the judgment of God. And here's what Jesus shows us: the Son of God, the Lord of the universe, doesn't just stand idly by and does nothing about this great deception, injustice, and corruption in His world. He will bring judgment upon those who perpetrate this evil form of destruction. And false teaching really is an evil form of destruction. It's really the worst form of deception. You just think about what happened during World War II, how Adolf Hitler deceived many, many young German men to become killing machines during the Holocaust. You think about the deception among terrorists, how certain extreme Islamic groups tell their people that if they bomb people, kill them, or even explode themselves in a public place to this end, they will be richly rewarded in the afterlife. You see, what leads human beings to do horrendous things is deception. And of course, as the worst form of deception, Satan deceived Eve and led her and Adam to bring all of humanity to sin, judgment, and death. Deception is what led to the expulsion from paradise in the Garden of Eden and the blessing of God. Deception is the greatest form of unrighteousness and injustice in our world. And when people begin to pervert God's truth, the Lord Jesus Christ will not put up with that, and He will bring God's judgment upon the perpetrators. Therefore, Jesus repeatedly calls out the deception of these false spiritual leaders and declares judgments upon them. Today, we will cover six of these declarations.
The first declaration is because they were an obstacle to heaven. This is found in verse 13, where Jesus says, “woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people; for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.” Jesus says that there's a judgment for these false teachers because they're actually keeping people out of the kingdom of heaven. They were doing this by leading people astray, by teaching the people to exercise a man-made religion that has nothing to do with the living God. And the worst part was their bad example. They led a lifestyle that was entirely ignorant of the true and living God. So Jesus says if you are not even going to make it to heaven, and you're leading people, you're actually blocking people from entering heaven. It's small wonder that Christ will deal with them in such a severe way.
Secondly, skipping verse 14, that's the one without good support from ancient manuscripts, we move onto verse 15. Jesus here declares that the scribes and the Pharisees were recruiters for hell. In many ways, it's saying the same thing as the first one, but emphasizing the hell side of the equation. Jesus says, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around on sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.” Jesus tells the scribes and the Pharisees that they went out of their way to aggressively recruit people to adopt their religion. But of course, instead of leading these people to heaven, they were actually leading them to hell by their false religion. When Jesus says that they are making them twice as much as son of hell, He means that their recruits become a worse form of their religion than they were. They made fanatics out of these recruits. Think about one fanatic that they produced, which is the apostle Paul. They recruited that young boy when he was a child, and brainwashed him so that he eventually became a terrorist who persecuted and even put Christians to death. And so Jesus declares “Woe to you.”
Thirdly, they were promoters of dishonesty. Jesus talks about their false teaching on oaths and vows to God. Jesus says, “Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘Whoever swears by the temple, that is nothing; but whoever swears by the gold of the temple is obligated.’” The topical issue, the surface issue, was false swearing or taking false vows before God, which is a serious matter. If you tell God something, you must do it. Otherwise you're making a mockery of God. But they actually taught that it's okay to let your words be cheap and worthless, and still be right with God, as long as you don’t swear by the gold that is in the temple. Now, this is a perverted view of what is truly valuable. If a person swears just by the temple, the Pharisee said, “it's okay; you don't need to keep that vow or, or be dead honest about what you said.” They made up this strange standard, where you can cover up your dishonesty with lesser forms of swearing. But underlying all of this was their love for money and merchandise. These are the things they really cared about. So, if you swear by money and merchandise, then you had better keep your word. But if you swear by God or His consecrated place, the temple, or His altar, the consecrated place of offerings, or even heaven itself, they said, “It's okay; you don't have to be dead honest.” Of course, Jesus' teaching on honesty was always clear and contrary to these false ideas. We read this earlier in chapter five. He taught us in 5:37, “Let your statement be ‘Yes, yes,’ or ‘No, no.’ Anything beyond these is of the evil one,” that is Satan. And so once again, Jesus declares woes upon these false teachers because they were leading people astray. They told them, “you can be dishonest, especially with God.” They were making a mockery of God.
Moving on to the next woe. In verse 23, Jesus declares woes upon false teachers because they were neglectors of the law of God. He tells them, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others. You blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!” He tells them that they were fanatical about keeping the fringe aspects of the law, the lesser provisions of the law, but they had very little interest in keeping the aspects of the law that really mattered, things that God cared the most about, things like justice, mercy, and faithfulness. So Jesus shows that they were totally out of alignment with God's word, and that they were actually blind guides who travel with no spiritual compass.
Lastly, number five, Jesus declared that these false teachers were fakes. Verse 25, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside they are full of robbery and self-indulgence.” Again verse 26, “You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and of the dish, so that the outside of it may become clean also.”
Jesus also declares sixthly that they were imposters. They were “like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.” They only appeared outwardly to be righteous to men, but inwardly they were full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. They were imposters, posing as something they were not. They didn't love God. They didn't live by God's law. They just had a facade of religion. And Jesus can see straight through them and He tells them that they were no spiritual leaders at all.
In sum, Jesus declares woes upon these false teachers because the were obstacles to heaven, recruiters for hell, promoters of dishonesty, neglectors of God's law, and they were imposters. In one word, they were hypocrites. Under the guise of serving God, they were actually leading people away from God and away from heaven and into hell. What do we learn from all of this? What this shows us is that Jesus will deal with every false teacher. Jesus is the judge on the final day of judgment. He really cares about the truth that can lead souls to repentance and save them. He really cares whether people are taught the truth of God, or they are being led astray from the truth.
Well, in light of this, what are some things we can pray about? First, we can thank Jesus for His justice and judgment. Jesus will deal with every false teacher. We can also thank Jesus for His truth, because Jesus never lies to us and Jesus is no hypocrite. He always practiced what He preached like we saw last time. Also, we can pray to express our commitment to Jesus' truth, that we will uphold His truth, no matter how difficult it is to do so, because we really do trust in Him.
With that, let me pray for us to wrap it up for today.
Lord Jesus, thank You that You care. You will one day deal with every evildoer, especially those who pervert Your truth. Everyone who deceives people in Your name, You will deal with every single one of them, because You are the judge on the final day of judgment, and You will not overlook all the injustice and deception that pervades this world. Thank You also for always speaking the truth to us, and that You will never lie to us. We trust in You with all our hearts, and we commit to You to listen to You to uphold Your truth above our own opinions and ideas. Some things You say are difficult to swallow; but it is the truth, and so we humble ourselves before You, ready to accept anything and everything You have spoken. You have spoken these things for our good to lead us to heaven and away from sin and eternal destruction that awaits all those who refuse to repent. Thank You our Lord. Thank You for being such a powerful, strong God who judges evildoers. You indeed are our Savior. We trust in You. We give You thanks for Your holy word. In Your name we pray. Amen.
Lord bless you all and we are done for today.