WWUTT 2088 You Who Killed the Prophets (Matthew 23:29-39)

Jesus called the scribes and the Pharisees sons of hell. He said they were a brood of vipers who will not escape the sentence of hell. How is it that we can escape such judgment by turning to the Lord Jesus Christ.

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Here once again is Pastor Gabe. Thank you Becky and greetings everyone. We are still in Matthew chapter 23, finishing up the chapter today with the final woe that Jesus issues to the scribes and the Pharisees.

The Final Woe Against the Scribes and Pharisees

I'm going to begin reading here in verse 29 and go through verse 39 out of the Legacy Standard Bible. Hear the word of the Lord. Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous.

And say, if we had been living in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partners with them in the shedding of the blood of the prophets. So you bear witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.

Fill up then the measure of the guilt of your fathers. You serpents! You brood of vipers! How will you escape the sentence of hell? On account of this, behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes.

Some of them you will kill and crucify. Some of them you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, so that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous 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 upon this generation. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who were sent to her, how often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you did not want it.

Behold, your house is being left to you desolate, for I say to you, from now on you will not see me until you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.". So we have been through six woes that Jesus has issued to the scribes and Pharisees, and today we come to that last one in verse 29, where Jesus compares them to those who had killed the prophets in the past.

He tells them he's going to send them prophets, and they are going to kill them, filling up the measure of their sins. And then we have, at last, Jesus lament over Jerusalem in verses 37 to 39, and he goes out of the temple.

He leaves them and takes his presence away from them, that God is no longer with them there. That's what that symbolizes. God was with them while Jesus was in the temple teaching, but now he goes out from them and says he will not return to them again.

He never comes back into the temple. Of course, he's arrested, he's taken to Pilate, he's taken outside the city and crucified, but he never comes back again into the temple. And then when he goes up on the Mount of Olives, the disciples come to him and ask him what will be the signs of the destruction of the temple and the sign of his coming.

And that's what we're going to get to next week, the Olivet Discourse in chapters 24 and 25. We'll be in that two or three weeks, probably. But first of all, let's come back to this last woe here, verse 29.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous and say, if we had been living in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partners with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.

Now, the fact that Jesus mentions here that there are tombs that they adorn and decorate and honor, then there would have been these monuments there in Jerusalem at that particular time that would have been erected in memory of some of these prophets.

Now, some of the tombs we know of that were there, David's being one of them, because in Acts two, when Peter is preaching at Pentecost, he he talks about David's tomb. We know where that is. You can point to it.

David is buried over there. But you can't find the tomb of Jesus because he has risen from the dead. Well, you could find his tomb. It was the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. Everybody knew where it was.

You could go to it. The stone was rolled away. There's no body inside. That was where Jesus was buried in the tomb of a rich man. It was known where Jesus body was laid. And you could go there and look inside and see his body is gone.

He was raised from the dead. He ascended into heaven. And so that's something that Peter talks about at Pentecost. We know where David's body is laying, but Jesus body is nowhere to be found because he is risen.

So we know there were many tombs, many monuments that the Pharisees would have decorated. None of those monuments exist today. None of the ones that they would have have been caretakers of or honored back in the time of Christ 2000 years ago.

None of those exist now. There are tombs that you can go to in in the Holy Land. I think James, the half brother of Jesus, is one of those tombs, if I remember right. But there's a few. You know, you probably don't know for sure if that's actually his body inside.

Same with any of the other tombs and the names that they claim, because after the Jewish Roman War, all of that would have been destroyed and we would have lost track of where any of those persons were buried.

So we don't know that any of those monuments that exist in the Holy Land today actually have the bodies that they claim are inside them. But at this particular time, anyway, with the Pharisees, there were those tombs and probably even bodiless monuments, right?

So they didn't actually have the body of that person, but they had erected a monument in memory of them. Jesus says that you decorate those monuments, you honor them, you try to say if we had been living in the days of our fathers, well, we would not have done as they did.

We would not have put those prophets to death. And so Jesus says in verse 31, so you bear witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up then the measure of the guilt of your fathers.

Because what is it that they are going to do at the end of this particular week? They're going to put Jesus to death. And if they would put Jesus, the son of God to death. Oh, yeah, most definitely, they would have killed any of the prophets that would have been speaking the word of God, which, of course, the Pharisees don't speak.

They do when they read from the scrolls. But then the extra laws that they add and the stuff that they impose upon people. They would have put to death anybody that would have opposed them, just as they're going to do to Jesus.

And so Jesus says, fill up then the measure of the guilt of your fathers. Now, consider here, verse 33. He says, you serpents, you brood of vipers. How will you escape the sentence of hell? As I had said earlier in the week, we see some parallelisms here.

There are probably a chiastic structure that exists in Matthew, where some of the things we have seen said at the beginning of the letter, even the first half of the gospel are coming back in again toward the end.

This statement where Jesus says, you serpents and you brood of vipers. This is exactly what John the Baptist called them back in Matthew chapter three. When they came to John to be baptized, he said, you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath that is to come?

And here Jesus says, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell? So at the beginning of Jesus earthly ministry, as a forerunner to that ministry, John the Baptist was saying exactly that.

And here Jesus is saying that as well, calling them vipers and serpents. This is probably the deepest insult that Jesus could give them, comparing them to Satan, because that's what he means by calling them serpents and a brood of vipers.

Just like the serpent came into the garden and deceived Eve with conniving words. So it is the Pharisees do with the rest of the people. So Jesus comparing them to being like Satan, you serpents and you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell?

Now, the way that he says that is to issue to those scribes and Pharisees that are standing there, some of them are going to hell. And only Jesus can make that claim. We can't use the same words when we would be, let's say, rebuking a false teacher.

You can't say to that person, how will you escape the sentence of hell? Because you don't know that they may repent. They may turn from their false teaching and their wicked ways and come back to Christ and therefore be forgiven.

So we can't declare anathema in that way. We can't point to a person and say, your sentence is hell and how will you escape? But Jesus can say that because he knows. He knows the hearts and minds of these men, and some of them probably having committed the unforgivable sin, which Jesus would know if they had done that.

Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which he had talked about earlier in this gospel. We're going to hear it come up again, too, in Mark and in Luke. So having blasphemed the Holy Spirit, Jesus knowing that we can't know if somebody has gone that far, has blasphemed the Holy Spirit and is therefore guilty of the unforgivable sin.

But Jesus would know if they had been. And so talking to them as sons of hell, they are sons of hell who make their converts twice as much a son of hell as themselves. He had said that previously back in verse 15.

So here he says again to them that their sentence is hell. Now, that's really a harrowing thing to think about. You think about those men that are standing right there. Here is Jesus, the son of God, saying of them, you're about to burn for all eternity under the wrath of God.

Oh, man, that just chills me to think about that. A lot of us don't like talking about hell, right? I don't enjoy talking about hell. It is a scary thing to think of a person being eternally punished forever under the wrath of God.

Jesus will say this again at the final judgment coming up in Matthew 25, where he talks about the wicked will go away into eternal punishment. But the righteous into eternal life, that is a scary thing to think about is a terrifying thing to think about.

Burning in judgment for all eternity. And there is no hope for you. You can't repent. You can't turn back your opportunity to come to God and be forgiven. Your sins is now in this life. You won't get that opportunity in the next as much as there are false religions in the world that will say that you can.

Mormonism believes they can baptize the dead, baptize them out of hell. The Roman Catholics will claim that you can you can get a person out of purgatory, a family member or whatever. You know, pay your indulgences.

You'll decrease the amount of time that they're burning so that they can go to heaven. There are various there are various realms of thought, even among those who claim to be Christians, that will say that a person doesn't really go hell forever.

They can get out. They can go to heaven. Remember the story that Jesus told about the rich man and Lazarus in Luke's gospel. It's not a story as in something made up. It's something that Jesus knew. Of course, he would know because he is the one who came down from heaven to tell us about these things that go on on the other side.

Lazarus dies. He's carried by angels to Abraham's side. The rich man dies and he goes to a place of fiery torment. And as he's begging Abraham for relief, Abraham says that a chasm has been fixed between where you are and where we are.

And you can't cross over here and we can't go over there. So there's no getting out. Once that sentence has been issued, once somebody has been cast into hell, that that is such a terrifying thing. I can tell you that it has prevented me from from walking into sin.

And I don't think that if I were to sin, that I would lose my salvation. But still, I understand what I deserve because of my sin. I deserve that. I deserve to be cast out of God's presence forever and perish under his judgment forever.

That's what I deserve. But he is merciful to me, having given his son to die on the cross for my sins, because I believe in Jesus. My sins have been forgiven and that is not going to be my destiny to be sent into hell.

I am looking forward to the day where I will go to heaven and dwell with God forever in his eternal perfect kingdom. But like I said, knowing that that's what I deserve because of my sin, then there have been plenty of times where I've been tempted by something and I think to myself, hell is what I deserve if I do that.

And so just the fear of that prevents me from giving into that temptation. Now, ultimately, I want to please God because he gave his son for me. Jesus gave so much for me that I would be forgiven and that I might be with him.

So ultimately, my motivating desire is to honor God, to serve him, to worship him, even in the way that I live. For as said in Romans 12, 1, we are to present our bodies as living sacrifices unto the Lord, holy and acceptable to him.

And this is our spiritual act of worship. So that's what I want to do. I want to worship God with my body. But nonetheless, there have been times where the fear of hell has been the thing that has prevented me from giving into that temptation.

Here, Jesus says to these men that that's where they're going. That's what they deserve. Fill up then the measure of the guilt of your fathers, you serpents, you brood of vipers. How will you escape the sentence of hell?

How do we escape the sentence of hell? By believing in Jesus. And then we become fellow heirs with him of his eternal kingdom. Going on, Jesus says in verse 34, now he says to them, on account of this, behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes.

Some of them you will kill and crucify. Some of them you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from city to city so that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Barakaya, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar.

I'll come back to that here in a moment. But first of all, with regards to these that Jesus says that he is going to send to them, he's going to he's going to send prophets and wise men and scribes. We have in Ephesians chapter four, verses 11 to 16, where it says that God gave the prophets and the apostles, the evangelists, the shepherds and the teachers to prepare the saints for the work of ministry.

You could consider that list as being the same of what Jesus says here, the prophets, the wise men and the scribes. That's the same as the evangelists, the prophets and apostles, the shepherds and the teachers.

Some of them will be put to death. We read about in Acts some of them who were martyrs. Stephen, who was a deacon, he was the first martyr. James was also somebody who was martyred. James, the brother of John.

So we read about some of those martyrs even in the New Testament. But the apostles, when they were murdered, many of the apostles, when they were killed, that actually happened after Canon was completed.

So we don't have the account of Peter being crucified upside down. That's not talked about in scripture. We understand that that's what happened to Peter because that's church tradition, but it doesn't actually say that in the scriptures.

And then there's you know, you can read in church history about others who had died. Timothy, I remember reading his story just recently about how he was stoned to death. He was trying to stop some Ephesians from going to the temple of Diana to worship, the temple of Artemis.

And because he tried to stop them telling them to repent, they stoned him to death. That's how it's believed that Timothy had died. Now that certainly wasn't the scribes and the Pharisees, but they would be right along with them.

Any of those who have murdered or killed God's servants, these scribes and Pharisees are part of. They are among those who had killed righteous Abel from the blood of righteous Abel. So Jesus is putting them in league with Cain.

It's amazing to think that of the first four people that existed on earth, the third killed the fourth. Cain killed his brother Abel and killed him because God had favor with Abel, but he did not regard the sacrifices that Cain had lifted up to him.

And so Cain hated his brother Abel. He hated his righteousness and he struck him and killed him. First John 3 11 says, for this is the message which you have heard from the beginning that we should love one another, not as Cain who was of the evil one and slew his brother.

And for what reason did he slay him? Because his deeds were evil and his brothers were righteous. So Cain hated righteousness and killed Abel for that. And notice there that John says that Cain was of the evil one.

And so Jesus is saying that here of the scribes and Pharisees, of course, because he described them as being like serpents and a brood of vipers. So they are just like Cain who had killed his brother Abel from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Barakai, who would have been the last martyr in the Old Testament, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar.

We read about that in Second Chronicles chapter 24. Jesus says in verse 36, truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. Those who are standing there, this will happen to them.

God will send those to them who will be preaching the gospel. And what are they going to do? They're going to fill up the measure of the sins of their fathers by putting them to death. This will happen upon this generation.

And even those to whom Jesus was speaking, many of them would go to hell forever. And so after this, Jesus leaves the temple. This is the conclusion of the teaching that Jesus had been doing in the temple in that week before he is about to be arrested and crucified.

All of this happening on a Tuesday, according to Matthew's account. So then you have Jesus lament over Jerusalem in verses 37 to 39. Jesus says, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who were sent to her.

How often I wanted to gather your children together the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. And you did not want it. Just as it, as Jesus had said about them earlier, well, did Isaiah speak of you hypocrites for you acknowledge God with your lips, but your heart is far away from him.

And that's the way it is with this wicked city and its teachers that mislead them. It's from this very city. These people are going to come out against Jesus in just a few days and shout, crucify him.

Jesus says in verse 38, behold, your house is being left to you. Desolate is being left to you. Desolate because God is leaving the house. Jesus is walking out of the temple. He's leaving it just like Ezekiel saw when God mounted up in a chariot, left the temple, went up on the hillside to watch as Jerusalem was about to be destroyed.

God's presence was taken away from his people. And so Jesus is doing that same thing here. He is leaving the temple, the presence of God that was with them while Jesus was in the temple teaching. And now the presence of God is gone.

So Jesus says in verse 39, for I say to you, from now on, you will not see me until you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. In other words, you won't see me. You won't know me. You won't understand me unless you are able to sing the praises of Christ as the son of David, just as the people did when Jesus had entered into Jerusalem a couple of days before.

Only those who praise him, who know that he is the one who has been sent by God, only they see and know that Jesus is the Christ. You know, many of us probably make the same error that the Pharisees did in the sense that we think to ourselves, hey, if I had been alive at this particular time, I wouldn't have put Jesus to death.

I would have been shouting, crucify him. I would have been shouting, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Yet Jesus and his apostles are no better treated in the church today. The vast majority of churches I would say in America today wouldn't welcome Jesus or the apostles there.

They would probably just as quickly, right along with the Pharisees, have put Jesus to death. They have a version of Jesus that is very appealing to the world. I noticed just yesterday, as a matter of fact, that Jonathan Rumi was on The View, which is such a godless television show, this gaggle of women up there and the horrible things, the horrible liberal ideologies that they spout.

They had Jonathan Rumi, who plays Jesus on The Chosen, on their show, and they're just fawning all over the guy. Of course they are, because the Jesus in that show is not the Christ of the Bible. They love the worldly Jesus.

They don't love the true Christ. And so we must be careful that we don't try to soften Jesus into an image that we like a little bit better, and maybe isn't as offensive to people. Because if we do that, we would be just as guilty as the scribes and the Pharisees.

We would be right along with them wanting to crucify the true Christ and have our own Jesus that will give me whatever it is that I want, which is a false god. It's an idol. We have made a god in our image instead of worshiping the true God.

And if that's where you end up, then God is going to give you up in the lust of your heart to do what ought not to be done, and you will fall into judgment. Turn from your sin to the Lord Jesus Christ and be forgiven and be saved.

Let us know Christ for who he really is according to what the scripture says about him. And may our desire be not for a God that will let me do whatever it is that I want, but let us worship the true God, heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for what we've read with regards to these things, the woes that Jesus had issued to the scribes and the Pharisees. And I pray those things make us tremble, that we would turn from our sin to Christ, be clothed in his righteousness, and walk in your ways and in your statutes.

For as said in 1 John 2, those who keep the commands of Christ truly belong to him. And if we say that we belong to him, we ought to walk in the same manner in which he walked. So guide us in your truth today.

May we walk in holiness and desire to be like Jesus, the Christ of the Bible. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study. Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book.

On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers. Tomorrow, we'll pick up on an Old Testament study, When We Understand the Text.