On the Scribes and Pharisees
Having just silenced the Pharisees Jesus speaks out against them in earnest. Many of the things Jesus rails against them about are just as big a problem in the church today. I, like many Christians who read this with an open heart, can see issues where I fail to live up to His standards myself. This is a good chapter to read after you've read the sermon on the mount [Matthew 5-7]. It will help you to get over misplaced self-righteousness.
On Religious Show
Matthew 23:1-12 records Jesus' first direct assault on the religious elite of His day. He does give them credit for usually giving good counsel for what is right under the Law. After all, they had spent their lives studying it. But Jesus does then warn people to not do their works. He flat out said that they weren't following what they were saying.
They like to be seen in the right places, wearing the right clothes, and associating with the right people, and are very conscious of their religious position and want to be recognized by the title Rabbi or teacher. Dake notes that they were established as a Rabbi by the laying on of hands by the Sanhedrin, given a table book and a key that they wore around their necks. The key would be eventually buried with them.
Christ says that among Christians this practice was to be abolished. Nobody was to be elevated as Rabbi. All were to brothers and sisters in Christ and only Christ was to be the Master. There would only be one exalted father and that was God in heaven. He repeats that to be greatest in the kingdom of God was to be the humble servant of all. God would, in the fullness of time, exalt those who lived an abased life, and abase all in His church who had an attitude of self importance.
There is an order in all denominations. There are those who are called to minister, to teach, to preach, to govern. It is more efficient in many ways to have such an order. Things do move more smoothly with someone in charge. Even Christ put Peter above the disciples and them above the common people when starting His church. But when it came to workers, all of the 120 in the upper room [Acts 1:19] were equally filled. All went out and used the gift of tongues and interpretation to spread praises to God to those people gathered for the Passover. It is possible to be one and to have structure.
But Christ's warning is just as real today as it was then. As you move up into any Christian organization, your heart needs to, if anything, become more humble. Yes, your responsibilities have increased. But frequently the higher you go, the less you are able to actually win the lost directly. Stay humble, and you'll end up being more effective for God. Perhaps you won't have to eventually be abased.
A Series of Woes
Matthew 23:13-15 then state a series of quick woes against the scribes and Pharisees.
The first verse accuses them of hindering people from knowing the truth and in teaching false doctrine. They literally try to keep people from making it to heaven via salvation in Christ.
There perhaps aren't many modern day parallels to this. The internet has largely democratized access to scripture in most of the free world. But there are still governments which stand in direct opposition to the spread of Christianity. Many of these are Islamic controlled regimes, but others like China only permit churches to legally exist if they will preach a China approved message.
Thinking back in history, I look at the efforts by the Catholic church to keep the Bible from being translated into the common language. The Council of Toulouse in 1229 was an example. The Constitution of Oxford (1408) tried to inhibit the use of the Wycliffe translation. William Tyndale was executed in the 16th century for his New Testament translation.
The Reformation changed all that, and the printing press helped spread new translations like the Douay-Rheims and Authorized King James versions. But even then, books were precious and expensive.
What are you doing to bring Christianity to your fellow man? The Pharisees were operating from a position of power and trying to stop this democratization of religion where their influence would wane. If you are a church leader, does this description fit you or your organization today?
The next verse talks of unjustly hurting widows property by improper takings, and warns of making long prayers. Dake notes that prayers were sometimes 3 hours long and were offered multiple times during the day. I do think that the church needs to be praying more, but that would seem excessive to do routinely. Especially if it is just being done to look holy in the eyes of others.
The final verse of this section warns against looking high and low to create one follower, who was then bound to a religion that was to be surpassed by Christianity and would ultimately be destined to hell.
On Oaths
In Matthew 23:16-22 then continues condemning Pharisees for making oaths or swearing on things that had perceived worth to the them but were less important to God. To be sure, God wanted to rein in making oaths about anything and everything, just to sound like you meant it. He wanted our promises to be yea or nay, and then live up to what we promised without invoking an oath at all [Matthew 5:37].
He made clear that if you swore on the altar, you were swearing on it and everything that sat on it. If you swore by the temple, you were swearing on it and all its contents. If you swore by heaven, you were swearing by heaven and everything in it, including God's throne.
He called the Pharisees blind guides for carrying on so. There may be times to make an oath. But they should be few and far between. And if you make an oath, you should keep it, and I pray that any oaths that we have forgotten over our lives will be brought clearly to our remembrance so that we may do them.
On Paying Tithes
Matthew 23:23-24 speak of the practice of paying tithes. He said that the Pharisees paid tithes of the least little amount using anise and cummin as examples which were fine seasonings. This was to their credit, to be clear. Tithing is both and Old and New Testament requirement.
Then Jesus takes them to task for ignoring the more important elements of the Law. He declares that they certainly should have tithed, and kept on tithing, but shouldn't have let the more important matters slide.
It is easy to write a tithe check and give an offering. I've done it all my life, since even before I started earning a living - giving donations to Sunday school that my mom provided. But trying to live a Christ like life in everything I do, say, write, or think has always been a struggle. I'd like to say I was successful on balance, but I'm sure if I added up all the hours of TV I have watched or hours I have spent reading books neither of which were religious in nature, I'd be way in debt. Perhaps if you analyzed your life fairly, you'd see the same. Or maybe it's just me.
Anyway, the challenge is there for us to all do better. We don't want to be swallowing camels.
On Inner Truth
The last section of woes on the Pharisees and scribes is found in Matthew 23:25-36. In these verses, Jesus warns of trying to look good to the world on the outside, but not being clean on the inside.
He calls them out on their hypocrisy in how they live and in their actions and words where they declare that if thy had been alive in the past they wouldn't have made the mistakes that their ancestors made.
Christ then prophesies that those people would end up killing, crucifying, and scourging the people that Christ would send, proving that in fact, they were no better than their ancestors. They would start with Christ only a couple of days in the future. The blood of all the righteous from Abel to Zacharias (Zechariah 1:1) would be on their heads. He asks how they could possibly escape the damnation of hell, and would be done in that generation.
While there has been martyrdom throughout Christianity, and it is ongoing (estimates of 70 million over the last 2,000 or so years with around 5,000 per year in recent years Open Doors), the greatest damage was to the early church when the total number of Christians was smaller. And of course, Christ would start that in just a couple of days at the indirect hand of some of the people He was criticizing. Never be afraid to take your stand for truth, but realize that just like Jesus there may be opposition. Better still to be standing for God than a serpent or viper as Jesus described the Pharisees.
On Jerusalem
At the end of the chapter, Matthew 23:37-39, Jesus turns His attention to Jerusalem itself. He comments on how often He wanted to gather and bless the city, protecting it as a hen gathered chicks under her wings, but they would not change or accept God.
Think back of all of the Old Testament intervals where Israel and Judah were ruled by kings who both did evil and actively moved the people towards evil (or at the very least did nothing to inhibit it). How many times throughout the nation's history was Jesus ready to act from heaven to change the course of their future if they would only repent and do right in the sight of God? From what Jesus says here, many.
Now, Jesus declares that their house would be left desolate. Indeed, it would only be a few decades until Rome destroyed the temple completely. The Jewish people, those who still tried to live under the Law, haven't been able to truly do that since the temple was destroyed.
To end this chapter, consider how many times Jesus has wanted to pull you under His protection like the mother hen He mentioned. I'll bet that it is a far larger number than you can even imagine. But God gave us all a free will. We have to chose His protection and move under His figurative wing ourselves, just like a baby chick must do.
People think that God is distant. That He is somehow impersonal or doesn't care about us, if they think of Him at all. But He is still the same loving God that Jesus exemplified when He was on earth. Don't doubt that. God has never moved away. But we, as Christians and the world, have moved away from Him. He still wants you to be gathered back under His protection. The first step is accepting Christ as Savior. If you haven't already taken that step, do it now.