Synoptics - Matthew 22-23

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and so to remind ourselves of where we are back in Matthew chapter 22 verse 41 now while the
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Pharisees were gathered together Jesus asked them a question what do you think about the Messiah whose son is he and they said to him the son of David and he said to them then how does
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David in the spirit call him Lord saying the Lord said to my Lord sit at my right hand until I put your enemies beneath your feet if David call then calls him
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Lord how is he his son no one was able to answer him a word nor did anyone dare from that day on to ask him another question now we pretty much addressed this last time but I had mentioned that there was one particular element of this that I wanted to to cover before we moved into Matthew chapter 23 and that was an argument that I have mentioned maybe to you briefly in the past but it's working through it
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I think again helps to provide an example of how we need to do exegesis how we need to handle the text of Scripture the text that is cited the
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Lord said to my Lord sit at my right hand until I put your enemies beneath your feet we are familiar with that text from Psalm 110 verse 1 and if you look back at Psalm 110 you'll notice what we mentioned on the last
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Lord's Day it says and the Lord in all caps Yahweh says to my
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Lord and that's in small letters well the L is capitalized that's
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ORD in normal font sit at my right hand so I make your enemies a footstool for your feet and I explained last week this is
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Yahweh says to my Adonai and I did have one question afterwards that some people were a little confused because in the
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New American Standard in the New Testament it's just the Lord said to my Lord in all caps that's just because that's how the
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New American Standard does all Old Testament citations so when you see LORD in caps but a different font size like that versus this that's
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Yahweh the name of God in the Old Testament and this is Lord but that's only relevant in the
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Old Testament that's that's that's not going to be relevant in the New Testament different Bible translations we use different ways of indicating
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Old Testament citations and the New American Standard happens to use all caps and so everything ends up in caps which is one of the reasons it's harder to use
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New American Standard electronically now because if you want to cut and paste it looks like you're screaming at everybody because it's all caps and that's become screaming in electronic form but in the
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Old Testament you'll notice it says the Lord Yahweh says to my Lord my Adonai sit at my right hand so I'll make your enemies a footstool for your feet now
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I don't recall that anyone in this group was at the debate that or maybe you've maybe you've seen it though I don't know that too many people in this group would be watching
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TBN very often but last year
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Michael Brown and I debated Sir Anthony buzzard and another fellow whose name honestly escapes me on the subject of the
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Trinity versus Unitarianism and Sir Anthony buzzards primary well he brings up in all of his presentations one of his main arguments against the deity of Christ is based on this text so let me present his argument and then
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I'll see how you handle it unless of course you've already watched that debate and then you'll know how to handle it but that would be to your advantage sort of like last night we had a we had a quiz about young David down here on the front row and I just felt it was a little bit unfair that certain people
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I mean some of the I got 9 out of 20 I thought I was pretty good I mean especially some of the questions are like where do you first get lost you know
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I chose I chose a place to look like they might have been hunting I thought that was a fair fairly safe safe thing but I know they were not you don't go hunting in the
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Phoenix Zoo do you that's sort of illegal isn't it I mean that's not fair they're in a cage you know what do we want today bear let's see look up bear there it is over this way come on boys go get that go get us something there yeah all right anyway you'd only get to go to the
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Phoenix Zoo if you did that once and after that I don't think they'd let you in anymore but anyway so I'll see how you guys handle this particular this particular presentation the argument goes like this he says now this is one of the most important Christological texts it's quoted very often in the
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New Testament and he's right and in it Yahweh says to and the normal word for Lord in the
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Hebrew Old Testament when it's referring to God is Adonai Adonai but this isn't
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Adonai this is Adonai it's it's pointed just a little bit different and he says
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Adonai is always used of human Lords of human
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Lords and so the Hebrew text itself tells us that Yahweh is speaking to a human
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Lord Adonai not Adonai and he will point to certain footnotes certain footnotes in the like New American Standard that actually says
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Adonai is to see it's not Adonai it's Adonai there's it's you know it's a sort of a Trinitarian conspiracy and and what you've got here is a clear differentiation in the original language and if this is this this
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Lord Lord said to my Lord if that second Lord is Jesus then clearly this is a human individual because every single time
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Adonai is used in the Old Testament it's about a human individual so did you you've heard me talk about this before so that's probably not really a different answer than one
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I've given that could be dangerous just just so you know but if you want to be brave and throw that out there because the question is verse 45 if David then calls him courteous how is he his son and the argument would be the argument is a lesser will never call a superior courteous
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I'm sorry a superior would never call a lesser courteous and so if the
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Messiah is lesser than David then David would never call the
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Messiah courteous okay but speaking of the deity of Christ anyone yes sir it's in the
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Hebrew he's right the Hebrew does make a differentiation in the vowel pointing and the vowel pointing of Adonai is always about a human person never about God so Jesus can't be
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God yes sir yes sir that's exactly right the you may recall
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I don't know how many months ago it was sometime last year I seemed recall showing you
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I've got somewhere here on my iPad I could probably track it down if I look knew where to look real quick but Hebrew at the time of the
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New Testament did not have any vowel points in it the vowel pointing was added by a
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Jewish group called them the Mazarites about somewhere at the earliest seven to eight hundred years after Christ and so the fact that this has been pointed as Adonai rather than Adonai is nothing more than a recognition that the
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Jews almost a thousand years after Christ rejected him as Messiah that's really all this is and yet because of not having that one little piece of information a lot of people are just absolutely stumped by that argument because well
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Hebrew that's that's the language of the Old Testament and that that just that just must mean something and and if it's pointed in that way and those
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Mazarites you know we know that they preserve the text well we've got to be very careful about that the the vowel pointing of the
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Hebrew text comes long after the Christian era and long after these folks were already aware of how often this text was used by Christians to present the deity of Christ and so it is an editorial choice and the point of Jewish scribes nearly a millennium after Christ seven to a thousand years depending on where you put it to point that that's my
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Lord in a lesser form yes sir were you oh I thought that was that was a hand okay just stretching out the fingers got you going all right all right okay yes sir well well there's no question that the
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Jews fully understood the significance of the Christian use of the hundred and tenth psalm and that they viewed it as messianic and that there does seem to be something here
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Yahweh is speaking to someone who is placed at his right hand and enemies are placed beneath his feet this had already been interpreted as a messianic psalm this is in reference to the
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Messiah but there was no unified single view amongst the Jews as to exactly what the
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Messiah was supposed to be there was there was disagreement and so when Jesus asked this question they are not able to answer him it says answer him a word possibly because they just they were so frightened as to be able to open their mouths at that point given what had happened earlier in the chapter with the
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Sadducees but it does reflect the fact that while they saw that there was something in this text they really didn't have a full understanding of how these messianic prophecies were going to be fulfilled and we can understand that because part of the messianic prophecies we think of many of them are about the victory of the
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Messiah and the establishment of Israel as the banner of the nations and all these things but then you also have
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Isaiah 53 and you have the suffering servants and you have sacrifice language and how do you fit all that together and until you have the fulfillment it was very difficult to put it all together into a coherent whole and that's why it's one of the reasons
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I chuckle so much at reading the Book of Mormon for example the
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Book of Mormon is just such a massive pile of anachronism it's incredible because the
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Book of Mormon has people in the Old Testament period long before the coming of Christ using all this language referring to it as Christ including the word
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Christ which is actually Greek and Messiah I mean if it was reflecting some Hebrew way of thinking it would use some
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Mashiach not Christos but anyway referring to him as the
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Christ and talking about the cross and all these things would have been just completely completely not understandable to people of that time but Joseph Smith sticks this in the mouths of people of course it never existed
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Nephites and Lamanites and stuff like that but throws all this back into the Old Testament even before the revelation of the mystery which is found in the incarnation of Christ's death burial resurrection outpouring of the
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Spirit it's all thrown into into the Old Testament at that point so it's it becomes a real a real anachronism in that way so there's there's where having just a small piece of information about how we got the
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Bible helps to expose what's really a very poor argument in regards to someone who denies the doctrine of the
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Trinity so with that we then turn to Matthew chapter 23 that's why you've got the synoptic parallel that's fine but you can just look at Matthew 23 because we're going to be primarily dealing with it for the for the foreseeable future and so we get to Matthew 24 which normally comes after Matthew 23
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I wish that wasn't the case but that's the way it is I have mentioned already to you that Matthew chapter 23 is a bit of an embarrassment to many people in New Testament studies today the reason being historical and that is
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I know especially for the young people who are in here World War two probably seems like ancient history to you it's not there are still people around who fought in that so that war in fact just a couple of weeks ago the very last man who had fought in World War one died and so there are still lots of World War two veterans around though they are passing away very quickly and so for you it's it's studying it's almost ancient history for me
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I remember my parents talking about what it was like to live through the war years and and I had a relative that came came back from the
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South Pacific and he had been on a 1 .1 anti -aircraft gun and how his hearing was forever damaged as a result
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I knew him and his hearing was forever damaged as a result of that and and battle in the
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South Pacific and things like that and so for me it's a whole lot more close and real than I think for the next generation that don't have that that connection but you know that probably the one thing that is fairly well -known in the present generation younger generation concerning World War two is the the what is called the
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Holocaust and initially that term was not just limited to the murder of Jews there were many many others that millions of others that were killed along with the
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Jews including gypsies believe it or not that lived in Hungary and places like that there were many hundreds of thousands of millions of other people were killed but the focus was primarily upon the the desire to exterminate the
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Jewish people and approximately six million Jews were exterminated by the
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Nazis and there's all sorts of connections between the
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Nazi Party and various religious groups in Germany the Nazis didn't just pop into existence one day the day before the war started they had they had come along it's interesting those who forget history are doomed to repeat it after the defeat of Germany and its allies the
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Austrian -Hungary allies in World War one there was horrific economic collapse in Germany there are pictures of people with wheelbarrows full of money going to buy a loaf of bread super hyperinflation to where a loaf of bread would be millions and millions of what we would call dollars or Deutschmarks or whatever and when you have that kind of economic and social upheaval and collapse people are willing to buy into anything that will bring normalcy and security into their lives and as it has been well said the
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Nazis made the trains run on time and they did and they brought normalcy and they brought order and people are willing to turn a blind eye to a lot of things if those same groups will bring order to to their lives and that's what took place that included the
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German churches that willingly cooperated with especially the
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Lutheran churches willingly cooperated with the Third Reich and obviously when the
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Nazis first came into power all those atrocities were in the future it was a slow thing they began you know slowly pushing through their agenda and things like that it very frequently happens in that way long and short of this the relevance of this to Matthew 23 is that after the defeat of Germany certain schools in Germany had had long been the leaders in New Testament studies especially schools such as that of Tübingen and primarily
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German rationalists I mean it you know way liberal and so on and so forth and much of the fundamentalist movement at the beginning of the last century was in reaction against the
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German schools but American seminaries have always shown themselves to have this odd desire to be accepted by that wing of what's called scholarship because the world looks at them as being true
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Bible scholars you know Bart Ehrman is a true Bible scholar because Bart Ehrman is willing to say that the
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Bible's a fraud if you actually believe the Bible is true then you're not a really a true Bible scholar you see and so there is this willingness to embrace all this kind of liberalism and the
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Germans were leaders in this and they reemerged as leaders even after World War II but now there was a cultural burden of guilt as the pictures from Auschwitz and Dachau and Buchenwald become published and what results from all of that is a a pendulum swing that exists to this day it it hasn't gone back to where well
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I was listening to a debate just late this past week and one of the the atheist proponent a man by the name of Hector Avalos was basically saying that the primary influence on Hitler was
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Christian antisemitism primarily mediated to Hitler via Luther and when he did touch upon the
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Bible he did so in such a way as to point to text like Matthew chapter 23 remember
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I already mentioned to you what happened with the passion film and the statement of the Jews let his his blood be upon us and upon our our children's children and so on and so forth and they certainly
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Paul was a anti -Jewish bigot despite the fact that he was a Pharisee but anyway the terrible things that he says and first and second
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Thessalonians about the Jews and the wrath of God abiding upon them if any of these texts have been cited in the past and according to Hector Avalos John 844 where Jesus said to certain
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Jews you are of your father the devil appeared on road signs in Nazi Germany and so the fact that Jesus talked to certain
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Jews 2 ,000 years ago who wanted to have him killed and who eventually were allowed to do that someone can abuse that 1900 years later and somehow that means there's something wrong with the
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New Testament this is the kind of thinking there can be you know you know how it is in a politically correct world like we live in today logic and rationality go out the door what something meant at the time it was written the context in which to reach ahead that's irrelevant as long as somebody's offended by it today well then that's a terrible horrible thing and that we shouldn't believe these things and we should if we're really good loving
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Christians we should love people enough to say that Matthew was wrong in all the things that he said and of course it fits in with that viewpoint that that Matthew was just representing this this early period of the
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Christian church where they were in such conflict the Jews and so you know he's he's biased and blah blah blah blah once you start once you cut up the
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New Testament into into little bitty parts and start setting them in opposition with one another you can come up with anything the reality is as we saw last week we see this this conflict during Passion Week and we see the
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Pharisees coming at him and we have questions about politics and the Sadducees came at him and and and you've had this this growing crescendo of conflict and it's not because these people are
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Jews because Jesus is a Jew and it's not the Jewish people as a whole you have wonderful things said by Matthew and by Luke of Jewish people like Simeon and Anna and and you're gonna have all even after the crucifixion you know you've got
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Nicodemus and you've got Joseph of Arimathea and you've got positive things we said the idea that any of these people have some kind of racial idea in mind is so absurd that normally you just laugh at it but since it's repeated so often in our culture and since so much of our cultural conversation is done in 22 -second sound bites on CNN that never allows for a background never allows for context never allows for any kind of rational discussion whatsoever that we have to think about these things and recognize what's what's really going on and so you look at Matthew chapter 23 and it is the fitting conclusion for the the the development of conflict and the the woes that are pronounced in this text are woes that have been well -deserved and notice how before the woes start notice what
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Jesus says and Jesus spoke to the crowds and to his disciples saying the scribes and the
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Pharisees have seen themselves in the chair of Moses I remember we have a chapter division here but chapter divisions chapter in the
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Old Testament were introduced in the
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I think the 1300s chapter divisions in the New Testament in the 1400s and the chapter and verse divisions which we have today specifically the verse divisions in 1551 okay so it's so easy for us reading books in the
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Western culture to take that form and stick it here and so Matthew 23 new section as if Matthew wants us to see this as the new section no somebody within the past 600 years put it a chapter break it makes sense
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I mean you wouldn't want Matthew to be all one chapter it's easier to find
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Matthew 23 13 than it is to find verse 1174 okay so it does help us to navigate better but the problem is it imposes an outline into our minds that wasn't there when
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Matthew wrote this and so very frequently we'll start at the first verse of a chapter and what was going on at the end of last chapter either we don't even recognize it don't even look to see or in our minds well since the author broke it well the author didn't and especially with it then
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Jesus spoke the crowd this is the then comes right after and no one asked him any more questions he had just asked them a question about the nature of the
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Messiah and had shut their mouths they were unwilling to answer the question and so here are guys who are dressed the nines in religious garb they they have phylacteries they have boxes on their foreheads that have scripture quotes in them they do the prayers they they should they have the most light of anybody and what does that mean that means they have the least excuse of of anybody and so I would say that this chapter does contain the strongest language in the
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New Testament I mean I think there might be one verse in Paul that rivals
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Matthew 23 in it's in your face idness okay but this is some of the strongest language and it's embarrassing to many people today how could lowly
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Jesus meek and mild ever speak like this well
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I don't know about you but whenever I meet people who are always meek and mild there's nothing in this world they can get them to be anything but meek and mild
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I find that really weird in fact I don't find that respectful
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I don't find that something to be emulated there are things in this world that are worthy of being passionate about and about speaking strongly about and if you can't do that then
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I say there's something wrong with you and the world only wants the Jesus of the manger they do not want the
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Jesus of Matthew chapter 23 because he clearly believes there's right and wrong and in this instance what's very clear is the one the one attitude we never want to have
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I mean if there's any attitude that we want in our prayers go Lord don't let me be like that it's not the publicans and it's not the sinners it's the
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Pharisees it's the people who have to wear sunglasses they have so much light and that they call light darkness and darkness light that's the worst attitude that's the sin you want to avoid big time and yet it's a huge temptation there's no question about it so describes the
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Pharisees have seated themselves in the chair of Moses therefore all they tell you do and observe but do not do according to their deeds for they say things and do not do them they tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men's shoulders but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger but they do all their deeds to be noticed by men for they broaden their phylacteries and lengthen the tassels of their garments they love the place of honor at banquets and the chief seats in the synagogues and respectful greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by men but do not be called rabbi for one is your teacher and you are all brothers they'll call anyone on earth your father for one is your father he who is in heaven not be called leaders for one is your leader that is
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Christ but the greatest among you shall be your servant whoever exalts himself shall be humbled and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted and then you have the eight woes but woe to you scribes and Pharisees hypocrites so there's the background is he makes sure we know who we're talking about the scribes and the
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Pharisees now for us scribes is somebody who sits around writing stuff and yes they probably were involved in the reproduction of the scriptures the copying of the scriptures but they were also involved in the interpretation of scriptures they were sort of lawyers scribes in fact there are times and that you may have noticed in the parallel where one gospel will call somebody a lawyer and somebody will call the scribe because they there's relate there was a overlap in these areas these are people whose job it is to make known the scriptures these go remember back in Ezra Nehemiah remember when all the people gathered and it was commanded to bring it forth the book of law and they read the book the law the people left and they they repented and it was wonderful and it was great and there were people set aside specifically to instruct the people about the law that's the beginning of the scribes and Pharisees it started well most things that go horribly wrong actually start with good intentions okay church history is a long series of falling into apathy and apostasy and then there's a renovation movement and then there's a slow decline the renovation movements and renovation movement itself now becomes the instrument to bring about more decline and apostasy and then there's a new renovation movement it just happens over and over again and what you have here is the result hundreds of years later something that was good we need to have people who concentrate on the ministry of the scriptures and making it known and teaching everybody and that's a wonderful thing right up until those very same people don't actually believe what it is that they're teaching and it becomes a mechanism whereby they enrich themselves at the cost of others and wow that continues to happen even in our day amazing how that is so you have the scribes and the
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Pharisees and they have seated themselves in the chair of Moses now there may be something there of saying well they put themselves there not
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God but what is the cathedra of Moses that's what the literal
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Greek term is cathedras that's where the term Cathedral comes from when you see the there's there's there's a
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Cathedral downtown and that's where the Bishop of the
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Diocese of Phoenix in the Roman Catholic Church that's that's where he would be centered is where the cathedra or seat is and hence you have the seat of Peter for example in Rome this is the cathedras the seat of Moses and so what does
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Jesus mean when it literally says upon the seat of Moses the scribes and Pharisees have sat what is what does that mean well there was a archaeologically speaking and we're got about five minutes here
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I think I can squeeze all this in archaeologically speaking there was something called the seat of Moses in most synagogues as we have dug up synagogues and examined their construction and so on so forth and you can learn a lot from that kind of work and it's unfortunate that that kind of work doesn't go on anymore in primarily
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Muslim lands which I find interesting but as we found these these synagogues there would be a stone seat in the front and it was referred to as the seat of Moses and it would be from this position that the scriptures would be read remember when
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Paul is on his missionary journeys with his companions and they go into the synagogue and they're they're given the scriptures the scrolls and they're asked to read and they turn to a messianic text and then use that to proclaim of Jesus so this seat is where the the scriptures would be read out from and instruction would be given and it's called the seat of Moses because well who's the preeminent name as far as the foundational documents that would be read there
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I mean the the people of God would say the Shema each each morning and they would begin their their worship with this confession of faith
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Shema Israel Yahweh Elohim Yahweh where's that's where's that come from comes from Moses it comes from Deuteronomy and so what
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Jesus is saying is these scribes and Pharisees they sit on Moses's seat and to sit there brings certain responsibilities because if you're going to sit on Moses's seat you better teach what
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Moses taught because you are in essence claiming his authority
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I mean you wouldn't sit on it if you actually disagreed with what
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Moses was saying or if you thought that you had something better than what Moses had and so they sit upon Moses's seat and if it is translated correctly as they have seated themselves there might be some sense that they've done so illegitimately and it might come out in what's said in verse 3 therefore all that they tell you do and observe but just don't do according to their deeds for they say things and do not do them now what's the fundamental accusation there well what's what's the what's the phrase in verse 13 when the woes start woe to you scribes and Pharisees and what are you hypocrites hypocrites the primary assertion of verse 3 is they're hypocrites they tell you certain things they don't do certain things now he's also going to say that there are certain things that they do that we shouldn't do such as the core bound rule and things like that so one of the questions is was
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Jesus and we'll pick this up next time but in verse 3 was Jesus actually in a blanket way saying that they had some type of infallible authority and you should just be bound to that but to recognize that these particular men are hypocrites is that all he was saying or is there something more here that's a great keeper of the notes where we will pick up with Matthew 23 3 next time around okay all right let's close the word of prayer our gracious heavenly father we thank you for this opportunity to begin opening this this text we thank you that we can consider such things as what was going on the background of your word and these these things shed light upon your word most importantly we want to hear what our
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Lord said and we want to avoid the attitude the spirit of the Scribes and Pharisees and so help us to examine ourselves help us to follow after our