WE ARE STUDYING THE FOUR GOSPELS MATTHEW, MARK, LUKE AND JOHN TO KNOW THE LORD AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST.
TO KNOW HIM IS TO LOVE HIM.
Our Savior was rejected in Nazareth see;
Jesus Rejected at Nazareth.
The Wedding at Cana.
Then He;
Cleanses the Temple.
We see that He;
Knows What Is in Man.
He then tells us how to get saved;
You Must Be Born Again!
For God So Loved the World!
Jesus ends His Ministry in Judea and;
John the Baptist Exalts Christ.
Jesus finished His Ministry in Judea and went up to Galilee but did not take the long road the Jews normally take to avoid going through Samaria but went straight to a place called Sychar near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacob’s well was there.
Jesus and the Woman of Samaria.
Jesus returned via Samaria to Galilee and we see The Rewards Of Service John 4:28-38, The Growth Of Faith John 4:39-45 and lastly The Reward Of Trusting Jesus’ Word John4:46-54.
The Rewards Of Service
Back in Galilee after a year in Judea;
Jesus Ministers to Great Crowds.
Nazareth’s loss was Capernaum’s gain. The people in the latter city recognized that His teaching was authoritative. His words were convicting and impelling.
The Sermon on the Mount.
And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him:
The Beatitudes. Salt and Light.
Lust-Divorce-Oaths.
Retaliation and Love Your Enemies
Secret giving and secret praying
How to pray and how to fast
What to Seek and Whom to Serve
Do Not Be Anxious
Judging Others
Ask, and It will Be Given & The Golden Rule.
A Tree and Its Fruit
I Never Knew You
Build your House on the Rock.
The Authority of Jesus
Rewards Of Faith, The Great Physician
The Helper Of The Needy And The Friend Of Sinners
a Sermon Christ in Me by Dr. Sidlow J. Baxter.
Jairus daughter Restored to Life, a Woman Healed, Jesus Heals Two Blind men, Jesus Heals a Man Unable to speak.
Hope for the hopeless. Tender Ministry to Maid and Women. Curing the Incurable and Raising the Dead
The sending forth of the twelve in Chapter 9 opens the third year Jesus’ public ministry
The Harvest Is Plentiful, the Laborers Few
The Mission to Israel.
Not Peace, but a Sword
Messengers from John the Baptist
Woe to Unrepentant Cities
Come to Me, and I Will Give You Rest
Jesus Is Lord of the Sabbath
God’s Chosen Servant
The Sign of Jonah
Return of an Unclean Spirit
Jesus’ Mother and Brothers
The Parable of the Sower
The Purpose of the Parables
The Parable of the Sower Explained
The Parable of the Weeds
The Mustard Seed and the Leaven
The Parable of the Weeds Explained.
Jesus’ Parables of the Hidden Treasure-The Pearl of Great Value-Fishing Net.
New and Old Treasures.
Jesus Rejected at Nazareth
The Death of John the Baptist told to Jesus
Jesus Feeds the Five Thousand men plus women and children.
Jesus Walks on the Water.
Jesus Heals the Sick in Gennesaret
Traditions and Commandments
What Defiles a Person
The Faith of a Canaanite Woman
Healing and feeding the multitudes
The Pharisees and Sadducees Demand Signs
The Leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees
Peter Confesses Jesus as the Christ
Jesus Foretells His Death and Resurrection
Take Up Your Cross and Follow Jesus
The Transfiguration
Jesus Heals a Boy with a Demon
Jesus Again Foretells Death, Resurrection and pays The Temple Tax.
Who Is the Greatest?
Temptations to Sin
A Prayer for the world to a New Life.
The Parable of the Lost Sheep
If Your Brother Sins Against You
The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant
Teaching About Divorce
Let the Children Come to Me
The Rich Young Man
Riches in the kingdom
Laborers in the Vineyard
Jesus Foretells His Death a Third Time
A Mother’s Request
Jesus Heals Two Blind Men
The Triumphal Entry of the Lamb of GOD!
Jesus Cleanses the Temple
Jesus Curses the Fig Tree
The Authority of Jesus Challenged
The Parable of the Two Sons
The Parable of the Tenants
The Parable of the Wedding Feast
Paying Taxes to Caesar
Sadducees Ask About the Resurrection
The Great Commandment
Whose Son Is the Christ?
Seven Woes to the Scribes and Pharisees-Judgment And Lament.
Matthew 23:13-26
Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples,
Saying,
“But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.
Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor!
Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold?
And, Whosoever shall swear by the altar, it is nothing; but whosoever sweareth by the gift that is upon it, he is guilty.
Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifieth the gift?
therefore shall swear by the altar, sweareth by it, and by all things thereon.
And whoso shall swear by the temple, sweareth by it, and by him that dwelleth therein.
And he that shall swear by heaven, sweareth by the throne of God, and by him that sitteth thereon.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.
Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.”
Frederick Brotherton Meyer, a contemporary and friend of D. L. Moody and A. C. Dixon, was a Baptist pastor and evangelist in England involved in ministry and inner city mission work on both sides of the Atlantic presents it to us this way regarding Matthew 23:13-28
WOES FOR THE FALSE-HEARTED
These repeated woes may be translated, Alas for you! Our Lord with unfailing accuracy indicates the inevitable doom which such conduct as that of the Pharisees and scribes must incur. He forewarned them that they could expect nothing in the dread future but the judgment of Gehenna-the metaphor being taken from the valley of Hinnom, south of Jerusalem, where fires were kept burning to consume rubbish and refuse. Hypocrisy is hiding under a cloak of religion the sins which the ordinary moralist and worldling would condemn. It is very injurious, because it hinders men from entering the Kingdom, Mat_23:13. It is punctilious in its exactions, because while it strains out gnats, it swallows camels, Mat_23:23-24. It expends itself on outward ritual-the Pharisees would not enter Pilate’s hall on the day before the Passover, but they murdered the holy Savior. Above all things, let us be true, professing to be no more than we are!
William MacDonald (1917-2007) who, for more than forty years, written directly about the key issues of Christianity. Leaving a promising business career as an employed investment analyst with First National Bank of Boston “at the foot of the Cross”, he had travelled worldwide, proclaiming the unsearchable riches of Christ for the Believer’s Bible Commentary on Matthew 23:13-26
Woes against the Scribes and Pharisees
Woes against the Scribes and Pharisees The Lord Jesus next pronounces eight woes on the proud religious hypocrites of His day. These are not “curses,” but rather expressions of sorrow at their fate, not unlike the expression, “Alas for you!”
23:13 The first woe is directed against their obduracy and obstructionism. They refused to enter the kingdom themselves, and aggressively hindered others from entering. Strangely, religious leaders are often the most active opponents of the gospel of grace. They can be sweetly tolerant of everything but the good news of salvation. Natural man doesn’t want to be the object of God’s grace and doesn’t want God to show grace to others.
23:14 The second woe lambastes their appropriating of widow’s houses and covering it up by making long prayers. Some modern cults use a similar technique by getting elderly widows, sometimes undiscerning believers, to sign over their property to the “church.” Such pretenders to piety will receive greater condemnation.
23:15 The third charge against them is misdirected zeal. They went to unimaginable lengths to make one convert, but after he was won they made him twice as wicked as themselves. A modern analogy is the zeal of false cults. One group is willing to knock on 700 doors to reach one person for their cause; but the final result is evil. As someone has said, “The most converted often become the most perverted.”
23:16-22 Fourthly, the Lord denounced them for their casuistry, or deliberate dishonest reasoning. They had built up a false system of reasoning to evade the payment of vows. For instance, they taught that if you swore by the temple, you were not obligated to pay, but if you swore by the gold of the temple, then you must perform the vow. They said that swearing by the gift on the altar was binding, whereas swearing by the empty altar was not. Thus they valued gold above God (the temple was the house of God), and the gift on the altar (wealth of some form) above the altar itself. They were more interested in the material than the spiritual. They were more interested in getting (the gift) than in giving (the altar was the place of giving).
Addressing them as blind guides, Jesus exposed their sophistry. The gold of the temple took on special value only because it was associated with God’s abode. It was the altar that gave value to the gift upon it. People who think that gold has intrinsic value are blind; it becomes valuable only as it is used for God’s glory. Gifts given for carnal motives are valueless; those given to the Lord or in the Lord’s Name have eternal value.
The fact is that whatever these Pharisees swore by, God was involved and they were obligated to fulfill the vow. Man cannot escape his obligations by specious reasonings. Vows are binding and promises must be kept. It is useless to appeal to technicalities to evade obligations.
23:23, 24 The fifth woe is against ritualism without reality. The scribes and Pharisees were meticulous in giving the Lord a tenth of the most insignificant herbs they raised. Jesus did not condemn them for this care about small details of obedience, but He excoriated them for being utterly unscrupulous when it came to showing justice, mercy, and faithfulness to others. Using a figure of speech unsurpassed for expressiveness, Jesus described them as straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel. The gnat, a tiny insect that often fell into a cup of sweet wine, was strained out by sucking the wine through the teeth. How ludicrous to take such care with the insignificant, then bolt down the largest unclean animal in Palestine! The Pharisees were infinitely concerned with minutiae, but grossly blind to enormous sins like hypocrisy, dishonesty, cruelty, and greed. They had lost their sense of proportion.
23:25, 26 The sixth woe concerns externalism. The Pharisees, careful to maintain an outward show of religiousness and morality, had hearts filled with extortion and self-indulgence. They should first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that is, make sure their hearts were cleansed through repentance and faith. Then, and only then, would their outward behavior be acceptable. There is a difference between our person and our personality. We tend to emphasize the personality—what we want others to think we are. God emphasizes the person—what we really are. He desires truth in the inward being (Psa_51:6).
Please pray the Holy Spirit-The Paraclete will use these sermons and studies to bring many to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.
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