Mattthew 23:5

Matthew 23:5

Matthew Chapter 23 is entirely devoted to the teachings of Jesus about and against the Pharisees. The Pharisees will always be history’s worst example of religious hypocrites. How miserably religion can fail at the true worship of God. It’s been true in every age, and it’s true today. Why are there always so many religious hypocrites, and why is every culture and every society prone to be infested by them? Jesus gave us some important answers as to why the Pharisees became religious hypocrites.

Jesus said in verse 5 that "all their works they do to be seen of men." At the end of Matthew 22, Jesus declared that the greatest of all commandments is to love God with all the heart. What goes on inside of ours hearts is what is of prime importance to God. Our motives are very important, and God sees them. The motives of the Pharisees were entirely selfish. They did not genuinely want to know and worship God. They wanted to gain for themselves through the avenue of religious organizations. This is why so many religious organizations ultimately fail and degenerate. Once a human religious organization becomes large with a lot of property and buildings and income, then the human reasons increase for people like the Pharisees to be attracted as members and leaders.

One of the things that happen to human organizations is the creation of a hierarchy. In a hierarchy you have more powerful people at the top, and less powerful ones at the bottom. People who are motivated to obtain place, and power, and position; will constantly plan and desire to get control, for the sake of their own ego and their own selfishness. As Jesus said in verse 6, they "love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues."

Another failure of the Pharisees and another evidence of their selfish ambition was the inappropriate use of titles and labels as an identification of a higher status than others. And so Jesus criticized them in verse 7 because they loved to be called by men, "Rabbi, Rabbi." Jesus made it clear that the true worshippers of God were not to be divided by rank and position, and were not to use titles for each other that would create any kind of ranking or status.

Jesus gave two reasons for this. First, all of us have one Master, who is Christ Himself. We follow no human, only Jesus. He is our teacher and our guide and our counselor. Jesus forgives us our sins; no human can do this. We pray to Jesus, and not to men. If you give too high of a status to a human, you may end up following them instead of God; and you will definitely contribute to the establishment of a religion of Pharisee-like people.

Jesus said that the second reason that we should give no man the status of Rabbi, or anything like it, is because all believers are equal in status in the sight of God. We are brothers and sisters in Christ. No one is more important than another. Therefore, according to Jesus, we should avoid giving out special titles to a select few. If someone has the gift to teach, they are not any more important than someone else who has a different gift. Even a teacher has to be taught by Christ, and if you really learn spiritual ideas from a human teacher, you are not learning from the human, but you are learning from Christ who gave the gift to the human and who teaches through him or her. Therefore, Christ gets the glory. We are all students of His teachings, and we are all brothers and sisters in Christ, if we have come to Him for the forgiveness of sins.

In Mat. 23:13 Jesus said, "But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for you neither go in yourselves, neither suffer you them that are entering to go in." Jesus pronounced many woes against the Pharisees in this chapter. Perhaps the first woe is the most serious. Jesus said earlier in Matthew, "What shall it profit a man should he gain the whole world and lose his own soul." If the most important thing for a human is to end up in heaven, then you can’t be much worse or do much worse than to keep people from getting to heaven, and that is the final result of the work of false teachers. It is sad enough that they themselves will not end up in the kingdom of heaven, but it’s also a horrible consequence of their teachings that they act as a roadblock to keep others from heaven.

Jesus pronounced the second woe on the scribes and Pharisees in Mat. 22:13. He said, "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense make long prayer: therefore you shall receive the greater damnation." This time it’s the motivation of the Pharisees that is condemned. First of all, they are after money. When they see people, their eyes light up with dollar signs; and the ones that they are most likely to take advantage of are the naive and the defenseless like widows sometimes are. For the Pharisees religion became the source of their income, and like other unspiritual people, money became their highest priority.

Secondly, they are after the praise of men. They are not motivated to please God the way that a true worshipper should be. Instead, they use religious activities as a means of obtaining status and the praise of men. There is one thing worse than not praying, and that is to pray in order to be seen of men. That’s exactly why Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, "when you pray, enter into your closet, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret."

In Mat. 23:15 Jesus said, "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, you make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves." A proselyte is someone who has been converted to a religious organization. You can be converted to a religious organization without being converted to God. As a matter of fact, being converted to a religious organization is often a hindrance to coming to know the one true God, because serving God is a relationship and not a religion. The Pharisees were criticized by Jesus because of the effort that they put forth and the effectiveness that they had at entangling people in religion from a legalistic and traditional standpoint. Their converts were more likely to go to hell than even the Pharisees themselves.

In the 4th woe pronounced against the Pharisees, Jesus criticized them for their spiritual blindness. We will all be judged according to our opportunities and what we did with them. The Pharisees lived in a day when they had the opportunity to know Jesus the Messiah. Because they rejected Him, they insured their own spiritual blindness and foolishness. The same fate awaits many today, who have in a similar fashion, thrown away their opportunities to know and serve the Messiah.

Jesus said in Mat. 23:16-22, "Woe unto you, you 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! You fools and blind: for which is greater, the gold or the temple that sanctifies the gold? And whosoever shall swear by the altar, it is nothing; but whosoever swears by the gift that is upon it, he is guilty. You fools and blind: for which is greater, the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift? Whoso therefore shall swear by the altar, swears by it, and by all things thereon. And whoso shall swear by the temple, swears by it, and by him that dwells therein. And he that shall swear by heaven, swears by the throne of God, and by him that sits on it."

Swearing in this context refers to the taking of an oath. An oath is basically a promise. If you swear that you will do something, you are promising that you will do it. Earlier Jesus had taught that swearing and the taking of oaths should not be done by His followers, because His followers should always tell the truth and therefore an oath should never be necessary. That’s why Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, "swear not at all", and He said to always let "yes" mean "yes" and "no" mean "no". The Pharisees had developed an extensive system that had to do with the taking of oaths: what was a proper oath and what was an improper oath. Jesus condemned them for it, and said that this was just another proof of their blindness and foolishness.

On the same theme Jesus said in Mat. 23:23-24, "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you pay a tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law: judgment, mercy, and faith. These ought you to have done, and not to leave the other undone. You blind guides which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel." Because the Pharisees did not understand the scriptures, they left off the most important things when they taught. They taught about giving money and tithing, which Jesus shows here to be less important than other matters.

The Pharisees used the scriptures, they taught from the scriptures; but because they had the wrong motivation, they guided people in the wrong direction, and Jesus called them blind guides. Just because someone uses the Bible as the basis of their teaching doesn’t mean that they are teaching what God wants them to teach, or that they are emphasizing the things that ought to be emphasized.

What the Pharisees failed to teach were the Biblical principles of judgment, mercy, and faith. They were false teachers, and they proved the point by failing to teach about judgment. There is a judgment to come. God is the judge of every living being, and everyone will one day stand before the judgment seat of Christ to be judges for all that they have done and all that they have said. Anyone who is involved in religion, and claims to be a teacher of the things of God, and does not warn people of the judgment to come; that person is making the same mistake as the Pharisees. Jesus mentioned hell many times in His teachings, and He said, "Except you repent, you shall all likewise perish."

Jesus said that the Pharisees also missed the point about mercy. There is judgment to come, but thank God there is mercy available through Jesus Christ. Because false teachers do not emphasize the judgment to come, they do not understand the importance of mercy, or the true meaning of mercy. Mercy is when God does not give you what you deserve. God delights in mercy. He is a loving and forgiving God. Unlike humans, God is quick to forgive. God has a great storehouse of mercy available to all who would partake of it through Jesus Christ. Anyone that is a true believer is only a believer because of the mercy of God.

The third thing that the Pharisees failed to teach, Jesus said was faith. Faith is the means by which we obtain mercy and avoid judgment. Instead of faith, the Pharisees had a religious organization. Instead of faith, they had ceremony and tradition. The Pharisees had a religion without a relationship with God. Why is faith important? Because without faith it is impossible to please God. Faith is a requirement for salvation. It says about Abraham that he believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Faith is also what gives us victory over the world, over its injustices, sufferings, and failures. Most of the important things in true religion center around faith. When Jesus criticized His own disciples, He said to them, "O, ye of little faith", and He said to Thomas, "Blessed are those who will believe without seeing." Faith is the means of salvation, faith is the victory over the world, and faith will sustain us in the most difficult of trials. No wonder the Pharisees were lacking if they did not understand nor teach about faith.

In Mat. 23:25-28 Jesus pronounced two more woes upon the Pharisees. The criticisms from Jesus again were about the Pharisees efforts to change their outward appearance, without changing their inner motivation or inner self. Jesus said, "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you make clean the outside of the cup and platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. You blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you are like unto whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so you also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity."

The Pharisees failed because they worked at cleaning up their outward appearance, but they made no effort to clean up their heart or their inner motivation. In describing their inner wickedness, Jesus said that they were full of extortion and excess. Extortion is ripping people off. The definition of extortion is: to obtain from another by intimidation or coercion. Is it possible that some would obtain money from others in the name of religion using the methods of intimidation or coercion? An honest believer hates to see the hunger for money made a part of religion, and Jesus hated to see it also.

According to Jesus, another problem with the inner motivation of the Pharisees was that they were given to excess. Almost every sin is the result of going to an excess about something. Most things in life are good, in and of themselves. It is when they are taken out of the bounds that God has set for them that they become sinful. We usually sin when we go to an excess on something that otherwise would be o.k. Therefore, someone like a Pharisee, whose heart is full of excess, will be a very sinful and wicked person. Be careful about pursuing the appetites and desires of this human life. It’s too easy to cross the line. A believer should always desire to be disciplined and to do things with moderation in order to avoid the sin of excess.

The last woe that Jesus pronounced against the Pharisees was not any more flattering than the others. Basically He said that they were murderers. He said, starting in Mat. 23:29, "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because you build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchers of the righteous, And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets... You serpents, you generation of vipers, how can you escape the damnation of hell? Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them you shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall you scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: That upon you may come all the righteous blood upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom you killed between the temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation."

The lives of some of the best people ever to live on the earth are recorded in the Bible. They were people of faith and therefore were involved in true religion. On the other hand, some of the worst people ever to live on the earth have also been involved in religion, but not true religion. There may be nothing worse than a religious hypocrite, someone who uses religion in order to gain status and to be seen of men, and uses religion in order to profit financially. Jesus pronounced His strongest words of criticism and condemnation for such hypocrites. Jesus said they were fools and blind, and were children of hell. He said they would receive greater damnation, and that they were full of extortion and excess, and hypocrisy and iniquity. He called them serpents and said they were murderers; and He asked them how could they escape the damnation of hell?

But in spite of saying these things, Jesus still had compassion for them; and had they repented He would have forgiven them. His compassion is shown in verses 37 and 38 where he said, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often I would have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and you would not. Behold, your house is left unto you desolate."

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