Synoptics - Matthew 23

For me to be doing that, all I've got to do is fire up my iPad. There's really no parallel that I need to be looking at, so it doesn't make any sense. It's just Matthew, chapter 23, I mean. Yeah, Matthew, chapter 23.

Just waiting for the last influx of people to come in. However, Codex Ricotonius is with us, so it's showing its age. There's no parallel, so Matthew 23. I mean, you realize that version of the NIV isn't even published anymore.

Well, yeah, there's sections, but Matthew 23. Okay, we press on toward the precipice, and I'm not talking about the economy right now. I'm talking about Matthew 24, for me anyways. It would be sort of fun to cover all of Matthew 24 in one shot, just one day, and we're on.

That would set a new record, and I would feel significantly more comfortable with that person. Well, no, it wouldn't be TMI. It would just be a bee. Maybe for one day we could pretend we're a Southern Baptist Sunday School.

Because I remember back when our Southern Baptist quarterly went through the book of Romans in like nine weeks. So you did 9, 10, 11 in one day. And that's sort of how I feel about Matthew 24. But anyways, we've got Matthew 23 first.

Jesus' Condemnation of the Scribes and Pharisees

And we started last week. Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and his disciples, saying, The scribes and the Pharisees have seated themselves in the chair of Moses. Therefore, all that 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. Do not call anyone on earth your father, for one is your father, he who is in heaven. Do not be called leaders, for one is your leader, that is Christ.

But the greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled, and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted. Certainly the first twelve verses have numerous parallels elsewhere in the Gospels, but these serve as the introduction to the eight woes against the scribes and Pharisees that begin in verse 13.

But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people. For you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in. Now, I have a note at verse 14, and I neglected to look up the information.

As far as I can switch over eventually here and look at the information, but there is a textual variant in verse 14. It's not found in some of the earliest manuscripts. I'll have to look to see specifically which ones those are.

This particular program doesn't have that. Interestingly enough, the Greek text below does not have verse 14 either, so it must be a number of the early unseals to not have that. I'll look at that, but we'll read it anyways.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you devour widows' houses, and for pretense you make long prayers, therefore you receive greater condemnation. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around on sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.

Woe to you, blind guides, who say, Whoever swears by the temple, that is nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the temple is obligated. You fools and blind men, which is more important, the gold or the temple that sanctified the gold?

And whoever swears by the altar, that is nothing, but whoever swears by the offering on it, he is obligated. You blind men, which is more important, the offering or the altar that sanctifies the offering?

Therefore, whoever swears by the altar, swears both by the altar and by everything on it. And whoever swears by the temple, swears both by the temple and by him who dwells within it. And whoever swears by heaven, swears both 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 provisions of the law, justice and mercy and faithfulness. But these are things you should have done without neglecting the others.

You blind guides, you strain out a gnat and swallow a camel. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside they are full of robbery and self-indulgence.

You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and of the dish, so that the outside of it may become clean also. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.

So you too outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. 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.

So you testify against yourselves that you are sons of those who murder 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?

Therefore, behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes. Some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge 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, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.

Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. Then we have the single most commonly miscited text in the New Testament that I've ever encountered. And I mean that sincerely. I have lost track now of how many times I've heard the next verse misquoted by memory by many, many preachers.

Many, many preachers. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her, how often I wanted to gather your children together the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were unwilling.

Behold, your house is 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. Now, let me just mention, we'll talk about it much more when we get there, but what you hear is Matthew 23, 37 quoted, how often I wanted to gather you together, but you were unwilling.

It is one of the favorite texts of the Norman Geisler's Dave Hunt's Calvary Chapels of the World. And I can say it in just sort of a general way. And it is the text that goes, you see, God wants to be able to save, but he can't unless we're willing.

That's not what it says. And it would be really odd to have some sort of a discussion of the free will of man right at the end of that chapter. You may have noticed, it is a chapter of judgment, an oracle of judgment upon the scribes and Pharisees.

Who are they? They are the leaders of the Jewish people. Jerusalem, Jerusalem. Who kills the prophets? What did Jesus just said to them? You testify against yourselves that you are the children of those, the sons of those who killed the prophets.

The parallel passage is verse 13, which sort of stated the exact same thing. Specifically, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people, for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.

Here they have stood in the way of God's purposes, and they will be judged therefore. So, people just... I'm almost surprised, honestly, when I hear an Arminian quote Matthew 23 -37 correctly because I've heard it misquoted so many times.

In fact, that's what brought about, led to, is one of the incidents that led to the writing of two books, What Love Is This? by Dave Hunt and debating Calvinism between myself and Dave Hunt. Because back in, I think it was May of 2000, if I recall correctly, Mr. Hunt put out a newsletter where he misquoted Matthew 23 -37.

He just left out your children. So, he made the ones that were to be gathered the ones who were unwilling. Rather than what the text is talking about, that is the leaders were staying in the way of God's purposes for other people.

And that's the way he quoted it. And I took him to task for it. That led to a radio program. That led to his book,.

And the other book,.

And all the stuff that has come since then. I've actually even heard R .C. Sproul misquote this, which surprises me. But it certainly seems, I think if you were to... You know, you've often heard it said that if the entire New Testament was destroyed, we could rebuild the whole thing from the quotes of the early church fathers.

Maybe.

I'm not sure how accurate it would be, but maybe. But I think if the entire New Testament was destroyed and all you had was the sermons of modern-day evangelicals, Matthew 23 -37 would have to be written down differently than it actually appears in the text because it is misquoted over and over again.

Anyway, I wanted to read the whole thing so you have a sense of the drumbeat of condemnation, exposure, of hypocrites, white as sepulchers. Just this flood that has been building up until this point. And finally, when they cannot answer his question about whose son from Psalm 110, how can the Messiah be the son of David when David calls him Lord?

And they're like, I don't know. And given their position as leaders, this just exposes such a level of hypocrisy on their part that you have chapter 23. And last week I mentioned how much this is disliked in modern New Testament studies because of its alleged anti-Semitism.

Can't say anything negative. Of course, the fact that Pharisees back then might not be exactly like the Pharisees today doesn't seem to enter into anybody's mind, but actually though I've met a few Jewish folks that were identical to these folks.

I mean, just nothing's changed at all. But the idea that that would lead to anti-Semitism and the Germans had John 844 on their road signs. And as we mentioned last week, you can abuse anything to your own ends.

But last week we started talking about this concept of the chair of Moses. And I want to spend a little time on this due to the fact that this is one of the texts that will be thrown your direction in the subject of Roman Catholicism.

The better of the Roman Catholic apologists, and there are many of them out there, I don't know if you all have noticed, but last year we got our very own EWTN, Immaculate Heart radio station here in Phoenix.

I'm sure that you all listen regularly. I actually do listen every once in a while, especially when people who I've either debated or I've debated them and they now wish that they hadn't debated me or they won't debate me, are talking on the radio.

So it's a little bit of research on my part. But anyway, I do listen. And you will frequently hear, especially around midday, a program called Coming Home. And it's about converts to reverts to Roman Catholicism.

It's fascinating to me. It's almost never about people who were just plain old pagans and were converted to quote-unquote Christianity. When you talk about conversion, the vast majority of these folks are talking about conversion to the church, not to Christ.

And they identify the two so closely together that you can't make heads or tails out of one or the other. And of course then you've got all the Marian stuff and the Pope and all that stuff gets thrown in for the fun of it.

And you will very frequently hear programs talking about how wrong those Protestants are to all they've got is the Bible. From their perspective, there's no such thing as the church. We can't learn anything from history.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What they want to do is they want to present the church standing in the midst of time with her divine traditions.

Guarding over the scriptures.

Versus ignorant Protestants under a tree with this Bible. There's nothing in between. I mean, in between is a massive chasm and there's nothing there. Which of course we know is not the case, but that's how it's presented.

And one of the arguments they'll make is,.

Well, here you go. The chair of Moses.

Show me that in the Old Testament. Show me the chair of Moses in Genesis through Malachi, whether you accept the apocryphal books or not. Show me the chair of Moses. Jesus bound people to the authority of the chair of Moses.

Therefore, Jesus bound people to an extra-biblical religious authority and therefore, Sola Scriptura is not true because you're saying that's the very thing you can't do and yet Jesus did it.

So, how do you respond to that?

Well, as I mentioned last week, the chair of Moses has been identified archaeologically as a structure in the synagogue upon which the person would sit in the reading of the scriptures. And so, it was a position of authority within the synagogue structure.

Now, we would point out the entire concept of the synagogue is unbiblical in the sense that it developed into the form that it had in the days of Jesus during the intertestamental period. It developed during the time when Israel didn't have a temple or the temple was being built or now you had people, you had situations where you had Jews living outside of Palestine because of various deportations and things like that and they needed a center of worship and so a mechanism had developed called the synagogue and various traditions had developed around the concept of the synagogue and the reading of the scriptures and the prayers and all those other things but you don't have Moses coming down from the mount with a type or a pattern of what the synagogue is supposed to look like.

And so, the whole idea, well, show me the chair of Moses is sort of like, well, show me anything about the synagogue. I mean, you can sort of start seeing just a hint of it in some of the Ezra and Nehemiah, how the people had to try to deal with being in Babylon and being away from Jerusalem and having no central place of worship and all the rest of that but you just, all the synagogue was something that developed over time.

Now, of course, it might be relevant whether we translate it seeded themselves,.

In other words,.

They don't really belong there, I suppose that might be relevant but the point of the argument is verse 3, therefore all that they tell you.

Do and observe.

But do not do according to their deeds for they say and do not do. Things and them or in italics, it's literally they say but they're not doing.

And so,.

Why would Jesus say, therefore all that they tell you do and observe but do not according to their deeds for they say and do not do. Well, it's pretty obvious where Jesus is going with this. They tie up heavy burdens, lay them on men's shoulders, they themselves are unwilling to move them as much as a finger, they do all their deeds to be noticed by men, this is a, the beginning of a denunciation of their religious hypocrisy but it still doesn't answer why Jesus would say, why does Jesus say, just ignore these guys.

They're a bunch of hypocrites,.

Ignore them.

I mean that's, that's the attitude a lot of people would say and if these guys are this bad and they are so hypocritical then why not just simply say, have absolutely nothing to do with them.

Well,.

That's the direction some people would take.

But.

What would that involve?

That would involve.

The.

Denunciation and separation from basically all of Judaism. And where was it that the apostles go to in the book of Acts, first and foremost in every city they enter into. They go into the synagogue.

And.

We are not told that they, they feel like they're doing anything wrong there. We're not told that they, well it's just not right for you to do that, it's not right for you to sit there and listen to the reading of the law.

And when they're given an opportunity to read the scriptures and give testimony to the Messiah,.

They do. Now,.

They know pretty quickly.

They're eventually not going to get to be there any longer.

But.

That choice, they want to be made by the synagogue leadership, not by themselves. There was nothing wrong with the synagogue. There was nothing wrong. Nowhere in the New Testament do you find the apostles saying it's wrong of you to gather and to read Moses and it's wrong to have these God-fearers, these people who aren't proselytes but they're attracted to monotheism.

They recognize the coherence of a monotheistic world view and the morals that flow from that and they don't want to sacrifice animals to these pagan deities and gods and all the rest of this stuff. And you never find anything,.

Well that's all wrong.

Not at all.

It becomes their primary mission field, in fact. And so what Jesus is doing here is if they are sitting in the seat of Moses,.

What are they supposed to be doing?

They're supposed to be reading the scriptures. They're supposed to be expounding God's law and God's truth. And Jesus doesn't come along as a revolutionary and say, ah, just throw it all over. It's a little bit like what happened during the Reformation.

When Rome's authority began to collapse, primarily from the inside, but began to collapse, what was one of the toughest challenges for the reformers was maintaining some sort of order in the absence of what had been the authority for so many centuries and resisting the temptation to anarchy and radicalism.

And that is a temptation of mankind. I don't know if any of you saw the news yesterday, but there were riots in London, burning of a double-decker bus and buildings and so on and so forth. And then there was another thing somewhere in Michigan, I believe.

There were rampaging youths after a state fair and stuff. And that kind of anarchy is unfortunately a part of fallen man's nature. Rebellion wants a little bit of authority and the authority is lifted a little.

Let's just throw it all off. And what did some of those groups do? They not only threw off Rome, they ended up throwing off everything. Throwing out the doctrine of the Trinity or substitutionary atonement.

Let's just get rid of it all.

Let's just start all over again. We're wiser than anyone's ever lived before us. And so some people would look at the hypocrisy of the scribes at the fair and say,.

Ah, just throw it all out.

Jesus doesn't do that. If they are seated upon the chair of Moses, they're reading from the scriptures, you don't overthrow the authority of the scriptures and you don't disrespect the people.

That are reading the scriptures either.

But you exercise proper discernment. And that's where a lot of people miss it on the other end. And that is what they tell you, do and observe, but don't be an airhead. That's the very paraphrastic loose translation.

But do not do according to their deeds, for they say and do not do. And the illustrations he's going to use are, look, the things they're saying are good things, but they've lost their balance. They will stand in the city square and they want everyone to greet them and call them rabbi.

And they will blow trumpets when they put their wad of cash into the temple treasury, so that everyone can see just how wonderfully righteous and generous they are. Well, is there something wrong with giving to the temple treasury?

No.

Is there something wrong in doing religious deeds?

No, as long as you have.

The right motivations for doing it. And what's this whole chapter about?

You don't even know what the motivations.

Are to be anymore. You have become so focused upon the action, the outward. You're so worried about.

Looking at the outside of the cup.

And making sure there's nothing on it, you don't even notice the grime and grit and disgusting mold inside. You've become so focused on the external that you no longer see that the internal is what should result in the external.

You should have done all these things,.

But you've neglected.

The weightier matters of the law.

You've lost your balance.

And so, when Jesus says,.

Therefore all they do, they tell you, do and observe. He's not violating what He said in Matthew 19 when He overthrew the Corban rule, because Moses never said anything about that. If they're sitting in the chair of Moses, they're reading the Scriptures, anything that's going to come from that,.

Do and observe.

But recognize the hypocrisy of these individuals,.

And He's not saying,.

Oh, and all their unbiblical traditions, hey, as long as they're up there, you go ahead and do that, too. You go ahead and overthrow the Scriptures and give your wealth to the temple so you can't help your parents and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

He says, no, you don't do that. All they tell you, do and observe, but do not do according to their deeds they say and do not do.

So, when someone tries to say,.

Ah, here, there, we found it. Interestingly enough, the attempts on the part of Roman Catholic apologists to find some way of substantiating their grossly unbiblical view of the Bible, tradition, so on and so forth, often leads to interesting conundrums.

And that is, well, some of you have mentioned this before, maybe you've forgotten it, but years and years ago, I did a radio program with Jerry Matitix on a radio station in Boston. And I asked him an off-the-top-of-my-head question.

I'd never thought of it before. Because we were talking about this subject, and I said, Jerry, I said, how did a man who lived 50 years before Christ know that Isaiah and 2 Chronicles were Scripture? See, his argument was, without Rome's authority, we can't know.

We've got to have Rome's authority, or the Bible is unknowable, we can't know what the canon is, we can't know what it teaches, you've got to have Rome's authority for all this stuff. Now, Rome never defined the canon of Scripture, and at best, Rome has probably defined the meaning of seven verses of Scripture, and there are people who say, that's too big a number, that's a real small percentage, so none of that actually makes any functional sense.

But, we were arguing the issue of the canon, and he was saying, you've got to have an infallible authority. Okay, Jerry? 50 years before Christ. How did the believing Jewish man know that Isaiah and 2 Chronicles are Scripture?

I don't think it's arguable that they knew, because Jesus holds them accountable. In this very book. Have you not read what was spoken to you? Remember, Matthew chapter 19? We were just there a number of weeks ago.

Now, he couldn't come up with an answer. He had never been challenged on that level before. So, since then, I've repeated that question, and I've heard entire radio programs where people were trying to deal with this issue, and the answers have been really interesting.

One guy said, well, the only way he could really know was by the Urim and the Thummim, which had to do with the high priest vestments, but one answer that I got was, well, by reference to the Jewish Magisterium.

The Jewish Magisterium. Really?

That's the same Jewish Magisterium that never accepted as canonical the books that Rome says we have to accept as canonical, called the Apocrypha, right? So, when were they infallible, and when did they cease being infallible?

That doesn't work very well either.

It really isn't the answer to the question.

As long as you think that there needs to be some external counsel, infallible pope, something, the Jews didn't have that. And so, obviously, someone could know what Scripture was without this kind of external infallible authority that Rome attempts to come up with.

And so, that's why we need to think about these things, and when you look at this, you go, well, if you want to go with chair of Moses means something that Jesus bound people to, when did you unbind yourself from this?

Because there wouldn't have been anyone sitting in the seat of Moses reading the books you call canon Scripture, such as 2 Maccabees. And so, wouldn't that contradict your practice? But, at that point, you just say, well, the pope says, and you move on from there.

That's how it works.

So, we go back to the actual text itself, and this begins, once he says, Do not do according to their deeds, for they say and do not do. There is, you know, what is one of the fundamental issues of the book of James.

Don't be somebody who says and doesn't do. And there needs to be a consistency between the two. 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.

Well, what would that be? Well, obviously the scrupulousness of their law-keeping had become an issue of no longer looking at the purposes of the law and obeying from the heart. It had become an external issue.

We saw this. This is the result of all these encounters. What's one of the very first encounters? Jesus heals on a Sabbath. How in the world could anyone be angry about that? How in the world could the Jews, waiting for the Messiah, see God's power exercised and see a person freed from some kind of horrible suffering and be upset about it?

All because of the day. So, how often did Jesus have to correct their understanding even of the purpose of the Sabbath? They had turned it into this external thing. They didn't see what came first, what the origin...

All of it was just the external stuff. Here's exactly how far you can walk, and here's exactly how heavy a thing you can carry, and it's just all this stuff. And they've tied these massive burdens, so much so that the Yam Ha 'aretz, the people of the land, sure, they may have looked at the Pharisees as being tremendously holy people, but they also basically felt like, well, if that's what it takes, I'm never going to...

I can't ever expect God's grace because I can't do all that.

It's not possible.

Just impossible. And so they had tied these heavy burdens, but they themselves would not move them with so much as a finger. Anyone who becomes a legalist becomes very much self-focused upon my accomplishments.

Almost to the point where if somebody else is likewise doing their accomplishments, it's almost a competition. It's a Keeping Up with the Joneses type thing. If I have my phylactery box and it's just the best in Jerusalem, and then three weeks later, Ben Therack ends up coming out with the new edition of the phylactery box, which makes mine look like it's dated.

Well, now I've got to get a bigger.

And nicer phylactery box.

I can't rejoice that he has.

A pretty phylactery box now either.

It just becomes this silly type of a situation. And so the idea of helping others or coming alongside, that kind of legalism just doesn't even suggest itself. And it becomes threatening.

When somebody else...

It's almost like a competition for the grace of God. And there, of course, can be no such thing. But they do all their deeds to be noticed by men, for they broaden their phylacteries and lengthen the tassels of their garments.

Once again, the external. The Jews developed particular clothing that had spiritual significance. And it's perfectly understandable how these things started. I mean, have you ever seen a... I think it's a mezuzah.

I have a few of them. I bought them at a Jewish bookstore. And it's normally just a small little thing. It can be made of various things. And it'll have some Hebrew writing on the front. And inside you have a small piece of parchment on which have been written normally the 10 words or the Shema or something like that.

And put it on the doorpost of your house.

Well, isn't that exactly what.

The Levitical law said? Deuteronomy, you know, when you're walking in a way and you'll put these on the post of your house. And in other words, the point is that these divine precepts are supposed... You're supposed to be immersed in them in all of your life.

It's not like, well, when I go to temple,.

Then I'm religious.

But then when I'm not at temple, I just live like the pagans next door.

It's supposed to be.

As you walk in the way and as you walk and talk with your children and as you walk and talk with others in the community, there is this discussion of the things of the Lord and the things of God. And how it's supposed to be.

And so, traditions would start. Someone would come up with a great idea. You know, I'm going to put tassels.

On my garments.

That remind me of the names of Yahweh. You know, Yahweh is my Redeemer. And Yahweh is my place of hiding. And all these wonderful names and stuff like that. And I'm going to put these tassels.

On my garments.

And every time I look at them, they're going to remind me of God's goodness to Israel and what I'm called to be as a faithful Israelite to reflect God's glory to the nations.

Great idea. Great idea.

It's wonderful.

Only one problem is, you know, what if someone puts tassels.

On their garments.

Because, well, now that's what you do. Grandpa did it. Dad did it. And so now I'm going to do it. And since I really want to advance in Judaism and I sort of like how people treated Grandpa and my Dad, I like how they got great greetings in the marketplace and the crowd sort of parts to them.

That's what I want too. So I'm going to have tassels.

On my garments,.

But theirs are only an inch long. I think three inches would be good. And you see the movement away from the original intention to something completely different so that eventually you have something that has become nothing more than pure religious hypocrisy.

It's real easy to look back at what it once meant. And it's not impossible for someone to begin a reformation movement and bring it back to those original things, but the fact of the matter is religion makes for a wonderful way of self-aggrandizement when abused.

And Jesus is talking about.

The issues of the heart.

They do all their deeds to be noticed by men.

Not by God.

They do what they do for an outward show to men. They broaden their phylacteries and lengthen the tassels of their garments because this is religious. And it says I'm a righteous man. Well, no, it doesn't say you're a righteous man.

It says you're a religious man. The two should be synonymous, but they're not always. They love the place of honor at banquets and the chief seats in the synagogues. And you see this even to this day.

You see this kind of religious activity.

Amongst the Jews and amongst everybody.

Let's face it. I mean, it's real easy to be pointing the fingers here. But is there not sort of the same type of culture.

Even amongst evangelicals?

I mean, we see this. I mean, there are certain folks that you just mention the name and, boy, people are going to line up around the block just to get a book signed or something like that. And it can be a stumbling block.

It can be a real problem, especially if the person starts sort of getting hooked on that.

Well, this is sort of cool.

I sort of like this. And there are certain big, big, big names in any group. And those names automatically start carrying all sorts of authority. And people start bowing down and things like that. And thankfully, there is at least naturally amongst evangelicals who know why they're evangelicals some kind of a resistance to the personality cult that's natural amongst us.