Judgement on Religious People. 

“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. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence making long prayers. Therefore, you will receive greater condemnation. “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.  “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.’ Fools and blind! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that sanctifies the gold? 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.’ Fools and blind! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift? Therefore, he who swears by the altar, swears by it and by all things on it. He who swears by the temple, swears by it and by Him who dwells in it. And he who swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by Him who sits on it. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin 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.  (Matthew 23: 13-23)

Say the word judgment to you and what picture would come to mind.  I think for many of us we might think of wicked sinners standing before God, and God judging sinners. Now there’s an element of truth to that but if you look at the ministry of Christ you pick up a slightly different mood music around the idea of judgement. For example, he said to a woman caught in the very act of adultery, neither do I condemn you go and sin no more. He said to a thief that was being crucified for his crimes and about to die, today you will be with me in paradise. Maybe you are saying to yourself, but surely Jesus condemned some things, and if that is so, what did he condemn.

The answer is one group above and beyond everything else. One group he condemned more than everybody else put together was ere religious leaders. Rather than all the people we normally would think of as wicked sinners, the number one object of Jesus judgment, if you will, was religious people and especially the religious leaders. What I’d like for us to do is look at his judgment on them or rather I should say his judgement of them. Now you might say to me, why should I be interested in that, I am not a religious leader, so how does that affect me, and the answer is that it in fact that indirectly, it does, let me explain.

As I began these studies in the Gospel of Matthew, I began by talking about how a a disciple of Jesus Christ a learner is, a student. So, this is a great opportunity for us to sit at the feet of Jesus so to speak and learn what he has to teach us. As I’ve gone through the Gospel of Matthew I have been impressed again and again with all the things that the Lord has to teach us. I would say that the passage we’re going to look at today summarizes the sum of all that Jesus has to teach us as well as any passage in the New Testament, with the possible exception of the Sermon on the Mount. This passage has a great deal to do with us and a great deal to say to us. 

If you look at it carefully at how this passage is structured is immediately obvious there are in this long passage 8 woes. When I was growing up, I heard this passage referred to many times as “The Seven Woes”. However, one of those woes is clearly a sub point of another. So, I would say I still like to call it the 7 woes. There are seven times that he calls them hypocrites. So yes, I'm going to look at all seven but I’m going to suggest also that these seven woes can be divided into two parts, and deal with them in that way. The first three woes deal with their public ministry, and the second half of the passage the last four woes deal with their personal lives. First, I'd like for us to begin with their public ministry of the Pharisee’s by considering the opening verses in which Jesus says, “woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites”. 

Let’s pause right there and note that this sounds like a denunciation, but note there is no anger here, there is no vindictiveness, here the word used is just “woe” actually means something like sorrow. So, while he is pronouncing judgment on them, he is not doing it with anger he is doing it with a broken heart. He is the one who wept over the city. 

He also calls them hypocrites, now as you know the original word hypocrites simply means to play a part it was originally used of an actor who played a part on a stage and only later came to be used in a negative sense of playing a part of someone that you are really not.

In the first woe he calls them spiritual hypocrites, but this has to do with their shutting up the Kingdom of heaven against men and women. They are not only blocking themselves by their action, but they are also blocking other people. He is saying you are destroying people, you are wrecking their hope of an eternal destiny with God, you are not going there yourself, and you are not leading other people to that place either. As you may know the scribes and the Pharisees believe that in order to get into the Kingdom you had to first be a descendant of Abraham, and then you had to have external righteousness, but Jesus here is saying that you’re not going to get in because, I am the way. I am the door. I am the giver of eternal life, and because you have rejected me. Therefore, you are destroying other people’s opportunity.  Meaning you are so misdirecting them. One commentator I read said, “They locked the narrow gate that leads to life, they didn’t just shut it they locked it. A false type of religion is a pretence and is always the worst enemy of the truth and is far more dangerous than even sinfulness or indifference, because at least both of these barriers can repented of, or overcome. Jesus here pronounces judgment on religious leaders because they destroy peoples eternal futures by blocking their way to the gates of heaven  .

The second woe is in verse 14. “Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites for you devour widows’ homes and for your pretences of long prayers. His second woe is upon their ministry, is that they make long prayers,  but those are not prayers of intercession to God but prayers to try and impress people. Whilst at the same time they are taking advantage of widows and orphans. The 1st century widow found herself in a was a particularly helpless situation, there was no social safety net so to speak, so if a woman became a widow, she was totally dependent humanly speaking upon her family. She could not go to work like women would do today, so Jesus is saying look you are destroying widows.

There are different interpretation of what this might meant. Many wonder if he's talking about misuse of money, they would go through long elaborate prayers and pretend that they are pious and take a collection as if they were doing it for the widows in their community and then not pass it on to them. In truth the details of what he is talking about are not clear, but what we can say without question is they were taking advantage and abusing the most vulnerable who existed within their community. And because of that he says “woe to you, you’re going to receive a greater condemnation” because of what you’re doing to these widows.

The third woe is in the next few verses.

“Woe to you scribes and Pharisees,  hypocrites, for you travel land and sea to win one convert and when you won him you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.  “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.’  (Matthew 23: 15-16)

It’s at this point in the passage that the word “woe” appears twice but notice in verse 16 he doesn’t repeat woe to you scribes and Pharisees hypocrites and it’s that observation that has led people to the conclusion that verse 16 is a sub point of verse 15. This is the third woe that goes from verse 15 all the way down through verse 22 and that it could be said that this is a woe about deceiving people, and how they deceived them on two levels.

Firstly, they deceived them concerning conversion. They will appear to go to extreme lengths to convert somebody but when they do that, he says they’ve have just made them twice the son of hell as they were before. That’s very strong language. Let me explain in ancient Israel there were Jews who followed Judaism, and there were God fearers who liked the morality of the mosaic law and they accepted the fact that was one God, but they didn’t go so far as to be circumcised or to observe all the ceremonies of the mosaic law. Another category was made-up of proselytes, and they were gentiles who accepted the fact there was one God and who really adhered to the moral law of Moses but who also received circumcision and observed the ceremonial law. What Jesus is talking about here is making proselytes, so what the Pharisees did is they took that group of people who were God fearers and tried to make proselytes by adhering to the rituals of the religion. 

And Jesus says, but when you do that it makes there spiritual situation worse than it was when you first found the. You make them twice the son of hell. The word translated hell here is actually the Greek word Gehenna which was a reference to the garbage dump outside of Jerusalem. Beyond one of the walls of Jerusalem they dumped all the garbage and then at the bottom of that wall there was a fire that was never quenched, and Jesus uses that as an illustration of what is later called in the Book of Revelation the lake of fire. In other words, the Pharisees are winning converts but they're not winning people over to the Lord, their winning converts to Pharisaism and they make them twice the Pharisees the original Pharisees were.

So, Jesus is saying woe to you because you deceive people when you make proselytes of them but then he goes into a rather elaborate discussion of the fact that they are blind guides. What a vivid metaphor they are the blind leading the blind. They don’t know where they’re going themselves and they’re trying to lead other people and Jesus says they are both headed for destruction. He calls them stupid; he calls them fools. I think we need to pause here because I think this is very important. The Greek word that’s translated fools means dull and stupid. When we think of the English words like fool or stupid, we think of that as someone who doesn’t have a high IQ.  But what Jesus is saying here is you are wilfully blind, but it’s not a reflection on their mental ability. I think Jesus is talking about their moral state. As a matter of fact one commentator, I read said this refers to a moral issue of wilful blindness. They are not willing to think straight, they are not willing to see simple clear truth because it doesn’t fit their world view.

I think this is really fascinating, I encounter people all the time that just can’t think straight they just can’t see simple truth, but this is not a matter of your intelligence it’s a spiritual matter. I’m totally convinced that this is the case many situations, people love to pretend their rejection of the gospel is intellectual when it is really emotional. In order to appreciate this, you need to see the illustrations that Jesus is using is a saying of the Pharisees. This used to say that if you swore an oath upon the temple then you didn’t have to keep that up, but if you swore by the gold on the temple then you were obliged to keep it. Why did he come up with this idea that you could swear by the temple or the altar or heaven and yet you were not obligated to keep it, but if you swore by the gold of the temple or on a gift made to  God then it was binding, it’s ridiculous, and that’s exactly what he says.

He’s using this common practice as an illustration of the fact they can’t think straight, they’re slow to understand and they don’t get simple spiritual truths, as matter of fact, they are wilfully blind. Which is why he says in verse 19 that they are, “fools and blind”. You’re not even using common sense, so he says you deceive people with the way you think and that is a moral issue not an intellectual issue. That’s three woes so far all of which have to do with their public ministry.

If you look carefully at these verses that we’ve looked at so far you will see that what really bothered Jesus is that they were hurting people rather than helping them. In facts, the real bottom line of their public ministry meant that they were not helping people, they were hurting people. As I said at the beginning these woes are divided into two parts. He first talked about their ministry and then he talked about their personal lives. So, let's look at the last four woes that have to do with them person lives.

In verse 23 he says, “woe to you scribes and Pharisees hypocrites for you pay tithes of mint and anise and cumin but have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy”. He talks about the fact that they pay ties on the small things. Now the Mosaic law required tithing of things like corn and the oil that you would grow from olives and wine that you would grow from grapes. What the Pharisees did is they took the smallest herbs like mint and cumin and tithed them. Jesus says, that’s fine you shouldn’t neglect tithing but you have neglected the weightier matters of things like law, justice and mercy. You made a minor issue so important that you forgot the major stuff. You magnify the minor stuff over the major issues of the law and justice. He then goes on in the next verse to use one of his most vivid statements in the whole New Testament. He says, “you strain out a nat and swallow a camel”. Now what does that mean, let me explain what I believe this means. In order to make sure that they didn’t consume any impurities and become ill they would strain their water through something like gauze thereby straining out any impurities and leave the water drinkable. What Jesus says here, is you are ensuring that you don’t swallow an insect but you are in fact swallowing an elephant. The point is vividly portrayed, in that they pick apart the little things and yet they missed the major things. So, they forget justice, mercy and faith. And they focus on religious rules and regulations.

I am amazed at how often people don’t think straight in this way even today. I became convinced years ago that as the Bible says the way we change is by being transformed by the renewing of our minds, because if you can’t think straight, you’re not going very far spiritually. You got to think you’re going to love the Lord your God with all of your heart and mind, but what people seem to just want is to feel good. Sometime even when people go to church some just want to have their ears tickled so they can feel good. But God wants you to think and that can be hard work.

The next woe, Jesus goes on to offer his opinion on is in the following verses.

“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. Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also.  (Matthew 23: 25-26)

The Pharisees went through some ceremonial washings where they washed utensils, and he says you wash the outside, but you don’t wash the inside. So, again Jesus is talking about you putting all of the emphasis on the externals and not the internals which is one of the major lessons in the teaching ministry of Christ. As one pastor I heard put it like this, they’re businessmen who are regular in church attendance and yet in their business they are unethical and tyrannical.  Perhaps the supreme biblical illustration of this was the action of the chief priest who when Judas returned the 30 pieces of silver from them for the betrayal of the Lord Jesus he said it is not lawful to put them into the treasury because it is the price of blood murder. It was not right to put money into the treasury and defile the temple but you could had it out previously to pay the price ot the betrayal and murder of Christ.

It is always a danger to any church that they begin to place the emphasis on participation in programs rather than the internal transformation of the person. We can always come up with all kinds of things to do, or not do, but we neglect the weightier matters of discipling people or even expressing love and mercy in our communities. Jesus is saying we are all in danger of putting all of the emphasis on the external action and forget the internal attitude and that all of our external actions are fruitless and frivolous unless they produce in us more love and mercy and justice and faith. That’s the issue is always at the heart and core of what Jesus taught here. There  is another 6th woe in the next verse.

Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs which appear beautiful outwardly but inside are full of dead man’s bones.

What a vivid illustration. In order to understand this, you need to know that there were tombstones in ancient Israel and according to the Pharisees if you brushed up against one of them you were spiritually defiled and you had to go through rituals to be cleansed. When there was a feast day, they would take white paint and they would paint these tombs in order to alert you that you shouldn’t bump into them. So, Jesus says those tombs look great freshly painted but inside are filled with dead man’s bones. You may look good on the outside but inside there is death and uncleanness. Instead of focusing on being good inside they are just trying to look good on the outside. Jesus again, went straight to the heart of the matter and said don’t focus on just looking good but the focus on internal cleanliness and righteousness. Therefore, by your actions you are witnesses against yourselves. You are indeed the sons of those who murdered the prophets. What he’s talking about here is the fact that although they built monuments to the prophets of the Old Testament those same prophets had been killed by people like them. That’s exactly what you’re doing now, so your sons of your fathers because at this very moment they were planning his execution, so too were they were saying that they were living righteously. He calls them snakes, poisonous snakes, who choose unrighteousness over righteousness and you’re covering it up by what you say concerning the ancient forefathers.

Let me see if I can sum it all up, Jesus basically is pronouncing woe on the scribes and the Pharisees. Primarily because of their hypocrisy that’s the one central thought in all of these verses, the hypocrisy of the lives and their public ministry. Hypocrisy both in their private lives, and in their public ministry. They destroyed people they ruin widows, and they deceive people both in their private lives and their public ministry. They magnify minor issues over major issues, they put the emphasis on the external instead of the internal and they focused on looking good instead of being good. They chose unrighteousness instead of righteousness and now they were even planning to kill the Messiah, the holy one of God, and Jesus new it. Let me close by saying one more thing here. I think this passage summarizes what Jesus taught as much as anything I know with the possible exception of the Sermon on the Mount. What Jesus is saying is, don’t emphasize the miner over the major, don’t focus on looking good over being good, don’t choose unrighteousness over righteousness, don’t say one thing and do another, don’t put conduct over character, don’t put action over attitude, and whatever you do don’t hurt people. That’s why we should beware of the Pharisees’.Instead, choose to put the emphasis on developing godly character the conduct will take care of itself. If we put the emphasis on having the right attitudes the actions will take care of themselves. Don’t be like a Pharisee and get it the wrong way around.