Matthew 23. I'm going to read from verse 13 to the end of the chapter. Here Jesus is speaking. This is the end of His great discourse in the temple after the debate, the back-and-forth, the gotcha questions that came from the Pharisees and Sadducees. So Matthew 23, reading from verse 13 to verse 39. Let's give your attention to the Word of God. But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. For you neither enter yourselves, nor allow those who would enter to go in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. Woe to you, blind guides, who say, if anyone swears by the temple, it is nothing. But if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath. You blind fools, for which is greater, the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred? And you say, if anyone swears by the altar, it is nothing. But if anyone swears by the gift that is on the altar, he is bound by his oath. You blind men, for which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? So whoever swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it. And whoever swears by the temple, swears by it and by him who dwells in it. He always swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by him who sits upon it. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you tithe mint and dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done without neglecting the others. You blind guides straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness. So you outwardly also appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, saying, if we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets. Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, so that on you may come all the righteous bloods shed on earth, from the blood of innocent Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. Truly I say to you, all these things will come on this generation. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who were sent to it. How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not. See, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Now that was not fun, so why read it? Well it's a matter of respect for Jesus who said it. It says we have one instructor, the Christ. He's the teacher, so we'll listen to the lesson. We'll also read it out of respect for the Holy Spirit who directed Matthew to write it down. The Spirit has a purpose. And so though it's aimed at one generation, we trust there's value for all generations. And we're not to be spoiled children who always want the pumpkin pie and never the cranberry sauce. All of God's Word has value for us. But someone might have a bigger objection to Jesus' words here than it's not fun. Someone might say, I don't think it's right. Jesus said, if you call your brother a fool, you're guilty of hell fire. He calls the Pharisees a lot worse than a fool here. So is Jesus consistent? Is he keeping his own word here? A more pointed objection than not fun. Well, Jesus came to be the mediator between God and us. That's his job. And in that job, we can discern three sub-jobs. He came to be prophet, priest, and king. Now, we're Western Christians. Protestant or Catholic, we never forget that Jesus is our priest. We never forget the cross and that Jesus offered himself on it. We know he's our priest. And we try, in our tradition, to not forget that he's the king, see? Christ's crown, king, all right? We try to not forget that Jesus is our king. But the prophet part, sometimes that one gets a little bit of short shrift. We forget to hold it in the forefront that he is also our prophet, the greatest of the prophets. And when we say prophet, of course, we're to think not of some crazy guy at Broad and Market. We're to think of the Old Testament prophets. Jesus is a prophet like those prophets. And those prophets had a fair amount to say. about Israel's sins and what was going to come. There's a lot of fierce words back there. Because their job was to express God's indignation and anger and wrath against sin. They would bring a covenant lawsuit, is what they say. They say, here's the covenant, it's what you should be doing and here's what you're actually doing. So they press the charges and then pronounce the sentence. So that's what Jesus is doing here. It's not for us to speak this way. And if it is, it would be very rare. It would be not to express our own peak, but warn of God's wrath. But it's also not for us to condemn Jesus as he does his job of being the prophet, bringing charges against the false shepherds. We should also remember the redemptive purpose, the saving reason that Jesus said this stuff. Far too much of that crowd in front of him looked to the Pharisees to find out what God wanted of them. And that was a fatal mistake. And so Jesus is harsh to get everyone to wake up and say, not them! Stop going to them! Calvin says, in this circumstance, it would have been cruel to be mild. He was harsh to be kind. So we have these seven woes that he pronounced on the scribes and the Pharisees And you might say, now wait a minute, politically, it was the other group, the Sadducees had a little more political power. It's the Sadducees ultimately more responsible for killing them. So why does it go after the Pharisees so hard? And the answer is it's the Pharisees who actually were teaching the people. The Pharisees had more everyday influence on everybody's day-to-day religion. And subsequently, rabbinic Judaism goes more in a Pharisaic track than a Sadducee track. So he's pronouncing the people that the people look to for guides. He's denouncing the guides, they're blind guides. He says, woe to you, shove the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. That's what Jesus is all about. He's about preaching and bringing the kingdom of heaven, God's counterattack on Satan. And so he went around preaching and healing and welcoming and freeing If you wanted to know what God was doing, Jesus was the one to tell you. The scribes and Pharisees said, don't go to that guy. Stay away from Jesus. Not only did they not believe themselves, they tried to keep others from Jesus. They said, he cast out demons by the power of Beelzebub. How could you say that about Jesus? Here's Jesus freeing and helping one person after another. How would you say that? They're trying to shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. You know, that's a very profound way to hate God and hate your neighbor. To stay away from Jesus and try to keep other people away from Jesus. So that's the start of the woes. How can you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces? How much do you hate God and hate your neighbor? He says, woe to you, you go all out for a single convert and then you make him twice as much a son of hell. He says, the problem here is not that you lack zeal. You have a lot of zeal. You travel far and wide. They wanted converts. But what did they convert them to? They converted them to a heavy yoke of a man-made religion. And this is still going on. They used to have a neighbor across the street. He converted to a very orthodox form of Judaism, with all of its man-made, exaggerated traditions. It's sad. But here's what's really sad. The Pharisees, with their bad principles, were zealous for converts. Are we that zealous? They traveled over earth and sea. Do we travel across the lunchroom to talk to the person who is obviously down? And are we willing not just to point to ourselves, but to God in whom there is hope? A sad comment on us if the Pharisees with their bad principles had more zeal than us when we have the gospel. He says, woe to you, you teach people to swear falsely. And I think I see a connection between the first three woes and the first three commandments. First commandment, no other gods before God, but you must have another God if you shut the kingdom of heaven. Second commandment, don't make any graven image, but you must have some idol if you make your convert worse. And then most clearly, the third one, don't take the name of the Lord in vain. But their teaching on oaths seem to be designed to give people ways that they could swear and have it not count. Keep their sense of light. They're trying to swear with their fingers crossed. Now that's a child's sinful game. This is nothing to be made religious teaching out of. But he says, you teach people that if they swear by the altar, it's nothing, but if you swear by what's on the altar, now that's binding. Now what is that? Now, you might wonder, do we have any evidence outside of this that the Pharisees taught that kind of thing? Well, we don't have these two examples anywhere else, but in the Mishnah, we do get the following ruling, that if you vow by the Torah, it's not binding, but if you vow by the contents of the Torah, then that is binding. Now, what is that? That's exactly what Jesus is condemning, the same kind of hair splitting, and you don't even see what the point is, and it just seems to be, taking an oath, which is a way to guarantee trust, and turning it into the opposite. It's just a wrong thing to do. Why swear? Well, to convince someone. What should you convince them of? Of the truth. Why would you look for ways to make non-binding oaths? The whole point of an oath is to be binding. You know, when you come to God's law, the question should never be, how much can I get away with? That is not a question that comes out of a God-honoring heart. How much can I get away with shows that our real attitude is lawlessness. The converted heart doesn't say how much can I get away with. The converted heart says, what honors the lawgiver? What loves God and loves my neighbor? The converted heart says, this is how I want to love God, by keeping His law. So Jesus says here, your attempts to come up with breakable oaths, they are logic. How can the gold in the temple be greater than the temple? But more deeply, every oath ultimately calls on God to judge it and judge the oath breaker. Jesus says he will, so either don't vow or keep your vow. He says, woe to you, you tithe your herb garden, but you neglect the weightier matters of the law. By weightier, he doesn't necessarily mean harder. He means the more important parts. That was a rabbinic idiom. What's weighty and what is light? What is the more important part? What's the less important part? And here he sounds just like the Old Testament prophet. In Micah, we've read it. What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love mercy, and walk humbly with your God? And he paraphrases that. He says the same thing. weighty thing is justice and mercy and faithfulness. He says, this is what you ought to do without neglecting the others. You'll notice he says, you know, you're actually right to tithe the herb garden. A strict interpretation of the Torah will get you there. It's not just a man-made tradition. We read that, you know, okay, the tenth of all of your produce, okay. But he says, don't spend so much time counting your mint leaves that you neglect the widow. Leave off with the mint leaves and help the widow. Now, I found that a lot of American Christians, if you ever say, you know, I think God wants us to do this, and it's something they haven't thought of before, they instantly say, you're a legalist. How dare you say anything that God wants me to do something? Well, you might be a legalist, that's certainly possible. But you're not a legalist simply because you say, I think we need to keep God's law. Notice he says, these you ought to have done without neglecting the others. So if you think keeping God's law is going to make you right with God, that's legalism and that's a bad thing. If you substitute man's tradition for God's law, that's legalism and that's a bad thing. If you put burdens on people that God hasn't put there, that's legalism and that's a bad thing. If you major in the minors, and neglect the important parts. That's legalism and that's a bad thing. Trying to do what God has told you to do is not legalism. It's what you're supposed to do. As you do it, however, make sure you put the weight on the weighty parts. So I urge you, don't use the word legalism too fast to ward off your brother when he tries to encourage you to do something God has said. You ought to humbly consider what they have to say. Did God say it? Is this a true interpretation of God's law? If it is, then do it. Not sure if we can discuss it. But always take care, justice, mercy, faithfulness. These are the important things, and the important things should get the bulk of your attention. Jesus uses a beautifully grotesque image here. He says, you strain out a gnat, I have tithed my mint, and you swallow a camel. Yes, you have this old lady who swallowed a camel picture in your mind. And it's just like the camel going through the eye of the needle. He's taking the smallest unclean animal, the gnat, and the biggest unclean animal, the camel. He's comparing the two and saying, now which one do you less want to swallow? And of course, they actually sound alike in Aramaic. And so he leads in from that to the next woe. You are concerned with ritual cleanness. You're not concerned with the state of your heart. You clean the outside of the cup while the inside is full of greed and self-indulgence. Obviously he's calling the person the cup. He says you worry about looking good, you don't care about the inside. Now it seems to me that applies to us in at least two ways. How long did you spend on your appearance today? How long did you spend preparing your heart? Is there a mismatch? It's worthy of thought. And second one I think is more important. How much energy do you spend worrying about what someone thinks about what you did? How much energy do you spend worrying about what God thinks about it? What I mean is that's a way of getting at the question, are you more concerned to look good or to be good? And it's not that we shouldn't care at all what other people think. If we love our neighbors and are concerned for their feelings, it's part of a package of loving your neighbor. But whose approval do you live for? Are you more into looking good or more into being good? Because it's woe to us if we clean the outside and not the inside. He says, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees. You're like whitewashed tombs. You look good, but inwardly you are unclean. And this might have been the most offensive thing to them, of what he said. Because the most unclean thing to touch for them was a dead body. And so they would paint tombs, not so much to make the tomb look pretty, but as a way of putting neon on it, saying, don't step on this, you don't want to walk over this, that'll make you unclean. Jesus says, on the inside, you're so far from God, whoever comes close to you, gets a whiff of your spirit, is made unclean by that. Richly clean, no doubt. But what kind of heart do you have? Then he comes to the seventh climactic woe. He goes from being like a tomb to being responsible for what's in tombs. He says, you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous. You might say, well, what's wrong with that? You say, if we'd lived when our fathers did, we wouldn't have taken part with killing the prophets. You might say, well, surely that is what you're supposed to say. And so you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who killed the prophets. And you might say, okay, Jesus, what is your point? He's like, you can't help your ancestry. But what they were saying was, we love prophets. We would never kill a prophet. But when God actually sent them a prophet, John the Baptist, they ignored him, and Herod killed him. And then God sent them Jesus, the greatest of prophets, and they didn't listen to him either. And they're about to call for him to be killed. And so Jesus here is saying, you know, your words mean nothing. You say you love prophets, but actually for you, the only good prophet is a dead prophet. So that's the basis of saying your sons are your fathers, not just biologically, but morally. You proved it with John, you're proving it with Jesus. And then he says something remarkable. Therefore I send you prophets, wise men and scribes. Now who sends prophets? God sends prophets. So once again, Jesus takes on what God does and says that He does what God does. Another way, just embedded in here, that Jesus shows us who He is, that He is the God-Man, He is God come in the flesh. I send you prophets, He says. But it's a curious thing. Why send prophets, wise men and scribes, to people that you just said are snakes? Why send prophets when you're going to kill them? Well, some of the priests did believe come to faith in Jesus as the Messiah. You get that in Acts chapter 6. And some of the Pharisees did come to faith. We see that in Acts 15 when they're the group that has trouble getting their heads around Gentiles and circumcision. So he's sending prophets, they're gonna die. He's sending apostles, they're gonna be killed. But it's for the sake of the minority that will hear them. It shows us the mercy of God and what his servants sometimes have to undergo. He sends his servants to a group knowing the group is going to kill them but it's for the sake of the minority that will hear and for the sake of leaving the majority with that excuse. That generation heard about Jesus before Jesus from John and the prophets. Heard about Jesus from Jesus. Then they heard about Jesus after Jesus with the prophets and the other Christian believers. Sorry, the apostles and the other Christian believers like prophets. And it was necessary to leave them without excuse, given the punishment that was coming. He says, on you will come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of Abel, as in Cain and Abel, to the blood of Zechariah, who comes much later. Now, why would one generation suffer for another generation's sins? I mean, they're not innocent, but why are they told that they're going to suffer for the past Righteous blood. Well, two reasons for that. First of all, that is simply how it often is. God will wait for a society to repent. He gives them time to repent. Some people die while God waits. And you might say, look, wait, he died and he had a good life even though he's a great sinner. Well, don't worry. There'll be another judgment after death. But you think about that, the flood. Noah takes a hundred years to build the ark. A lot of those sinners died peacefully, perhaps, during the hundred years. Israel didn't inherit the promised land until the Amorite sin was filled up. In other words, a lot of sinners died while the conquest waited. So in God's providence, as He works in the world, judgment comes on a society when God says it will. And the sinners who die first, they don't escape. pointing to us once to die, then comes the real judgment. So when judgment does come, whether it's the flood or the conquest or what Jesus is talking about, the past and the present come down on some present generation. But secondly, who is this generation rejecting? A prophet, but not just another prophet. They're rejecting the Messiah. They're rejecting the one the prophets had said to wait for. They're rejecting the one who'd shown greater signs than the others more healings, more resurrections, more signs. Not just the Messiah, but the Divine Messiah, the Son of God. That's why that generation got the heavier punishment. And Jesus mercifully warned them. He tells the parable of the tenants where the servants come, but then the Son comes. He told the parable of the wedding feast. When the king invites you to his son's wedding, you don't say no. So those are the reasons that the punishment came on Jerusalem one generation later, and was very severe. Now you wanna know what happened? Well you're gonna have to come back next week, because he gets into that in the next chapter, so I can't tell you all now. What we wanna know now is, as we come to the end of seven heavy woes, what we wanna know is, how did Jesus say it? With what kind of heart did Jesus say it? Was He glad to say it? Is He a vindictive, enraging, kind of Savior. That's why it's going to be in verse 37. Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings. As much as there was to condemn about scribes and Pharisees, that didn't give Jesus joy to condemn it. As a man, we can be sure he loved his country, loved his people, loved his capital city. And as God, what brings joy to heaven? There's joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, which is an amazing thing. If you're a sinner, you can bring joy to heaven. You can repent, and the angels will rejoice. Another reason to repent. Jesus here He does not pronounce the woes with glee or indifference or vindictiveness. He said it because it was true. He said it because people needed to hear it. But He wished as man it were otherwise. Which is why we can have hope. This is why we can repent. Because Jesus is merciful and wishes all men everywhere to repent. And so Jesus uses a powerful mothering image. As a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. And again, that's an image used of God in the Old Testament. Deuteronomy 32, like an eagle that flutters over its young spreading out its wings so the Lord alone guides Israel. Or Psalm 36, the children of men take refuge in the shadow of your wings. It's in Ruth. Boaz says to Ruth, May the Lord reward you, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge. So here Jesus takes this mothering image used of God in the Old Testament and applies it to himself. Again, what is true of God is true of Jesus. He reminds us that God is full of love and compassion, but will not spare the guilty. because the people were following the bad rulers the judgments gonna come not just on the leaders but on the whole city there's a warning in that you can't just say well I was following orders and do evil they were following orders don't listen to Jesus when the orders are evil there's a time to quit there's a time to disobey he says woe to scribes and Pharisees but now he's saying all Jerusalem's gonna get it And the house that Jesus had claimed as his own, as God's, he now leaves the house to them. Had been the house of my father, but now it's your house. Why it's your house? Because God's leaving it. It's desolate. Just as Ezekiel, the prophet, saw a vision of God's glory leaving the temple, so Jesus pronounces the house desolate, and then what does he do? Chapter 24, he left. And he never came back. But he didn't do it with joy, he did it with sorrow. He says, Jerusalem, Jerusalem. He says it twice to give the sense of the emotional involvement. And he says, you won't see me again until you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. That's what the crowd of mostly Galileans had said when he came in, Psalm 118. That's what they said at the triumphal entry. The back country folk from his region, they said, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. But the crowd as a whole, although they liked seeing him beat up on the scribes, they weren't willing to believe in him. So he gives a condition. You won't see me till you're willing to acknowledge that God sent me. Will it happen? It's not clear from here. The grammar is a condition. It won't happen unless this happens. Whether it will happen is not clear. So we finished Jesus's great discourse in the temple. And I wanna step back and think for a second, what is in this beyond what we've covered? What is the message for us? Well, first of all, nothing with Jesus was ever an accident. That's one thing to take out of it. Nothing with Jesus was ever an accident. As it says in Acts 2.23, Jesus was delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. and you crucified him by the hands of lawless men." Striking verse, the men who did it were lawless, they were wrong, but it wasn't outside God's plan, it was by his definite plan and for knowledge. Nothing with Jesus was ever an accident. God was always in control. We see that here where Jesus again pronounces in advance of what happened to him, what happened to his apostles, what happened to the city afterwards. He's a prophet, both in the sense of pronouncing God's judgment, and in the sense of telling what's going to happen. Secondly, when you read the Bible, what is the core of what God requires of you? Well, he calls you to enter the kingdom of heaven, and we do it by repentance and faith. Let no one shut the door for you to believing in Jesus. And when we ask, well, what does repentance look like? It looks like confession of sins and then turning from them to a new life. What is the new life? We've had different summaries. Love God, love your neighbor. Good summary. We have another summary here in verse 23. Justice and mercy and faithfulness. Justice and mercy with your neighbor. Faithfulness towards God. Walk humbly with your God. Those are the weighty things. So I want to challenge you. Would those who know you say that you're just? And would those who know you say that you're merciful? Have you managed both? If you're brave enough, you might ask somebody. And as our nation gives thanks this week, check your faithfulness. Have you been faithful to those things God has called you to be faithful to? Because thank God you have something to be faithful to. Some don't. No family, no church, no job, no faith. If there's nothing that you're called to be faithful to, except God whom you don't know, That's not a life of freedom, it's a life of loneliness and desolate and not knowing the point. It's a life without meaning. So thank God for all the things that you're called to be faithful to, beginning with him, and check yourself. How are you on your faithfulness to the things God has called you to be faithful to? Thirdly, remember zeal. The Pharisees wanted to convert people. Jesus said, you went over land and sea for one. It's not right we should be less zealous. Let's pray and ask God to forgive us if we are lacking in zeal. And finally, understand that rejecting Jesus is the worst of all possible decisions. You know, if you live life for any length of time, you will make some bad decisions. You will fail to follow through on something. You will not make a good decision. You will ask for forgiveness. As you go through life and you make your bad decisions, take care not to make the worst one. The worst decision is to reject Jesus Christ. Because when you make a bad decision, what you need is forgiveness. And with Jesus, there is forgiveness. Don't turn your back on the one place where you shut that door and there is no forgiveness. So live boldly. The way Martin Luther said it was, sin boldly, but believe in the Lord Jesus more boldly still. Now don't sin boldly exactly. What he means is don't be paralyzed. Go ahead, live life. Live before God with thankfulness. Make your decisions. Live life. Know you're gonna make bad decisions. But take care. Never shut the door on Jesus Christ. That would be the worst decision. As another preacher has said, he's the only savior who will not disappoint you. And if you disappoint him, he's died for you. You won't find another one like him. So don't refuse Him. Enter the Kingdom of Heaven, press in, understanding that in Jesus, God has come in the flesh. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank You for our Lord Jesus. We thank You that He is the mediator that You've sent, so that we can have a way to You. We thank You for Him, and we thank You for His sacrifice, we thank You for His reign, and we thank You for His teaching. And Father, as we've considered the woes that he pronounced, help us, Lord, to cling to Jesus Christ for forgiveness. Lord, forgive us for the times when we have discouraged people from following you. Lord, we know that is a great sin, and we pray that you would forgive us for it and open our eyes that we might not continue to do it. And Lord, help us to try to hear all of your words and to know that the great and weighty things are love and justice and mercy and faithfulness. So help us to live in these things, even as in Jesus you have first loved us. We pray this in His name. Amen.