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.
INTRODUCTION
There is no reason to doubt that this Gospel was written by Matthew. It presents the narrative of our Lord’s life from the standpoint of the pious Jew; and the evident design of the writer is to show how completely and continually our Lord fulfilled the Old Testament Scriptures. No other Gospel contains so many quotations from the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms. In it the predominant aspect of our Lord’s character and work is the Messianic. He was great David’s Greater Son. The keyword of the book is “Behold your King.” As King, His line is traced through the kingly race. As King, He proclaims the kingdom of heaven. As King, He promulgates the laws, describes the subjects, and announces the rewards of the Kingdom. When describing His own action at the last, when He sits on His throne and all nations are gathered before Him, He speaks of Himself as King, Mat_25:40. It was on His avowal of kingship that He was condemned to die. From every viewpoint this Gospel is one of the most precious documents in the world.
By F.B.Meyer
{e-Sword Note: The following material was presented at the end of Matthew in the printed edition}
Find the outline of our Bible study on The Gospel of Matthew at the link below.
Outline Of The Gospel According To Matthew
The King of the House of David
III. FACING REJECTION, Matthew 16:13-25:46
3. Questions, Discourses and Parables of Judgment, Matthew 17:10 to Matthew 25:46
NB !Note:
The Judean ministry of Jesus, which lasted almost one year, is not discussed by Matthew. This one year period is covered in John 1;1 to the end of John 4: and fits between Mat_4:11 and Mat_4:12. Matthew takes us from the temptation directly to the Galilean ministry.
Today we will look at the following question in the outline starting with
Matthew 23:13-26
80. What indictments did Jesus bring against the Pharisees?
80. What indictments did Jesus bring against the Pharisees?
Woes to the Scribes and Pharisees
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?
Whoso 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.
Comments by F.B.Meyer
Matthew 23:13-26
The answer for 80. What indictments did Jesus bring against the Pharisees?As presented by F.B.Meyer.
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!
Believer’s Bible commentary
Book by William MacDonald
N. Woes against the Scribes and Pharisees (23:13-36)
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).
23:27, 28 The seventh woe also strikes out against externalism. The difference is that the sixth woe castigates the concealment of avarice, whereas the seventh condemns the concealment of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
Tombs were whitewashed so that Jewish people would not inadvertently touch them and thus be ceremonially defiled. Jesus likened the scribes and Pharisees to whitewashed tombs, which looked clean on the outside but were full of corruption inside. Men thought that contact with these religious leaders would be sanctifying, but actually it was a defiling experience because they were full of hypocrisy and iniquity.
23:29, 30 The final woe was against what we might label outward homage, inward homicide. The scribes and Pharisees pretended to honor the OT prophets by building and/or repairing their tombs and putting wreaths on their monuments. In memorial speeches, they said they would not have joined their ancestors in killing the prophets.
23:31 Jesus said to them, “Therefore you are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.” But how did they witness this? It almost seems from the preceding verse that they dissociated themselves from their fathers who killed the prophets. First, they admitted that their fathers, of whom they were physical sons, shed the blood of the prophets. But Jesus used the word sons in the sense of meaning people with the same characteristics. He knew that even as they were decorating the prophets’ graves, they were plotting His death. Second, in showing such respect for the dead prophets, they were saying, “The only prophets we like are dead ones.” In this sense also they were sons of their fathers.
23:32 Then our Lord added, “Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers’ guilt.” The fathers had filled the cup of murder part way by killing the prophets. The scribes and Pharisees would soon fill it to the brim by killing the Lord Jesus and His followers, thus bringing to a terrible climax what their fathers had begun.
23:33 At this point the Christ of God utters those thunderous words, “Serpents, brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell?” Can Incarnate Love speak such scathing words? Yes, because true love must also be righteous and holy. The popular conception of Jesus as an innocuous reformer, capable of no emotion but love, is unbiblical. Love can be firm, and must always be just.
It is solemn to remember that these words of condemnation were hurled at religious leaders, not at drunkards and reprobates. In an ecumenical age when some evangelical Christians are joining forces with avowed enemies of the cross of Christ, it is good to ponder the example of Jesus, and to remember the words of Jehu to Jehoshaphat, “Should you help the wicked and love those who hate the Lord?” (2Ch_19:2).
23:34, 35 Jesus not only foresaw His own death; He plainly told the scribes and Pharisees that they would murder some of the messengers whom He would send—prophets, wise men, and scribes. Some who escaped martyrdom would be scourged in the synagogues and persecuted from city to city. Thus the religious leaders of Israel would heap to themselves the accumulated guilt of the history of martyrdom. Upon them would come all the righteous blood shed on the earth from … Abel … to … Zechariah, whose murder is recorded in 2Ch_24:20-21, the last book in the Hebrew arrangement of the Bible. (This is not Zechariah, author of the OT book.)
23:36 The guilt of all the past would come on the generation or race to which Christ was speaking, as if all previous shedding of innocent blood somehow combined and climaxed in the death of the sinless Savior. A torrent of punishment would be poured out on the nation that hated its Messiah without a cause and nailed Him to a criminal’s cross.
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