Synoptics - Matthew 23:9-23

And not even Big Dave can feng shui us back where we need to be here. And at the end, I read that, I've heard different numbers, 20 to 50 sounds about right. That'd be a massive increase, yeah. We're talking about the population of Jerusalem for some reason.

I guess because we're in Matthew 23, so Jerusalem does get addressed. Okay, we have been doing a study of the synoptic Gospels, and we are in Matthew chapter 23. And I was going to inquire of the great taker of the notes as to exactly where we left off last time, but I have been left high and dry.

So I was looking at the woes. I don't remember personally doing much discussion of the call not section, to be honest with you. That's, I'm pretty sure we went farther than that. Well, we sort of, that's why I'm not exactly sure, because we've hopped, skipped, and jumped a little bit topically, unfortunately.

That's what is leading to the confusion on my part. I was, I know that I had made a mental note at some point to discuss the fact that we have one of the places in the New Testament where we have an entire verse variant in the manuscripts at verse 14.

And since I have the textual critical material in front of me right now, let's at least take care of that, and then we'll pick up from there. I sort of skipped over this when we read through this a few weeks ago.

But if you have the King James and the New King James, you have a verse 14, which sort of determines how many woes you have pronounced. Some people would actually say that if you've got eight woes, that's how we're saved, finally.

We, if you're sitting around going, we don't know where we are, if we just wait a little longer, right, you know. We're really trying to walk in nonchalant. Oh, yeah, you really, nobody noticed that one, especially when Porter's back there going, oh, we're saved, as soon as he walks through the door.

So we'll give you a second to find the notes there so that we have the official word. We were having disputes amongst us. You were causing division in the church because of a lack of unity and harmony here.

But I'll finish my point here while you're looking. Some people would actually argue that if we have eight woes, that would be unusual for Matthew. Matthew would want seven woes. And if you don't have verse 14, you have seven woes.

There you go. But the point is that verse 14 is not found in the majority of the earliest manuscripts. It's found in what's called Family 13 and a few others. And it's primarily from the Latin that that comes from, verse 14.

So it is actually not a part of the broad spectrum of the earliest manuscripts. And this is interesting. There's also a variant with verse 12 in some manuscripts. So that's why you have the brackets around it in some of the other translations you would have.

There's probably a note, I would assume, in the New King James, giving you some information down at the bottom of the page, one of the others. Yeah. Well, the Greek text goes from verses 13 to 15. So that's what you have there.

What did you have for us there? Yes, we were getting pretty close there. Yeah, that's verse 11. Okay. All right. Okay. So I guess we had just started talking a little bit about the identification of people and the positions that they take in religious authority.

I do recall specifically addressing some of the issues of the father terminology and the difficulty that is raised by some people demanding to be called that. Leaders, so on and so forth. So picking up with verse 11 according to the keeper of the notes, but the greatest among you shall be your servant, whoever exalts himself shall be humbled and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted.

The conclusion clearly indicates that the terminology of verses 8 and following, rabbi, teacher, father, leader, are all meant to be titles of exaltation, creation of division and classes within the body.

The reason being, the conclusion is, the greatest among you shall be your servant, whoever exalts himself shall be humbled, whoever humbles himself shall be exalted. Again, a common theme in Jesus' teaching.

I remember we had a youth retreat at this church that I was part of many moons ago back in high school. It was called Spiritual Boot Camp. Honestly, this was one of the best ones I was ever on. There's no two ways about it.

We were given a list of verses. This is called how to get people to do scripture memorization, though they don't want to. It was up in Prescott. I remember that. We had the time it took from getting from Phoenix up to Prescott, and we were given these verses.

One of them was Jesus' statement concerning the fact that the first shall be last, last shall be first. The one who would be greatest amongst you must be servant of all. The way you got everybody to memorize it was that while you were up at the camp, if one of the counselors or ministers or whatever caught you, they could ask you to quote any of these verses.

If you weren't with a group where someone could do that, you all got stuck in jail. Then you couldn't get out of jail, like go to dinner or whatever else, until you paid the fine of being able to quote that verse.

You had people jumping out from behind trees and throwing verses at you and stuff like that. It was a blast because I became everyone's favorite person. I already had like half of them memorized anyway.

I had all of them done by the time I got to Prescott. I was just so popular. Everybody wanted to be around me. It was great. It was unlike most of the other times when I was sort of alone. Anyway, just so happened that this particular story, this particular text reminded me of that.

I hadn't thought about that for many, many, many years. Now I'm still getting over it. But anyway, time to move on, time to move on. Obviously, it's the theme that has been, we trace it all the way back to the Sermon on the Mount.

It is repeated in many of the parables that Jesus tells, this concept of servanthood. Clearly, part of Jesus' what's about to become the seven woes on the Pharisees is due to the attitude with which they pursued their religious activities, shall we say.

It was not one of servanthood. To be honest with you, this is one of the main reasons. Back in 1998, I was asked to present a paper at the National Evangelical Theological Society meeting in Orlando, Florida.

So I went. I had some positive experiences there that I could tell you about, which would take us outside of our context here. But primarily, I was really disturbed by what I saw there, what I experienced there.

Because here you had all the leading evangelical scholars in the United States pretty much all getting together. All the big names are there, and they're doing their thing. As I'm listening, and as I'm taking this in, I just got the real distinct feeling that the attitude on the part of many there was, we are the enlightened leaders of the benighted church.

And we have the insight. And if you'll just come to us. The idea of servanthood, the idea of Christian scholarship as in being in service to the church and stuff like that, just didn't get that at all.

And it really, really, really turned me off. And that's the attitude that Jesus is describing here. The greatest among you shall be your servants. Those who are known for serving, not necessarily the ones with the biggest names.

The people who exalt themselves, they'll be humbled. But the ones who humble themselves, they'll be exalted. In the kingdom, there is an overturning, a turning upside down of the very attitudes that, well, if you really want to see the exact opposite attitude of this, yeah, there are notable exceptions.

But just watch the NBA. Okay? I mean, you can just start naming names. You know, the guys that are just, you know, in your face, I'm the best, no one can guard me, blah, blah, blah, blah. You think of certain wide receivers in the NFL, you know.

Just the very opposite picture of what you have here. And unfortunately, you get Christian superstars too. And they act that way and they want to be treated that way. And it's just the exact opposite of what Jesus has to say here.

And so, the woes that are coming up here, they're strong woes. I mean, when you start off, but woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven. Woe to you. This is an announcement of impending judgment.

And given that chapter 24 is a matter of sentences away, chapter 24 is going to be telling us all about the destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the nation of Israel. And I would argue in many ways that dispersion continues.

There may be a nation of Israel today, but most people who have been over there will tell you, the vast majority of people who live in that land are not religious. In fact, atheism is a large, large portion of that population.

And the idea of a temple, religious worship, Pharisees, scribes, so on and so forth, that's just not the case any longer. And so, there has been this dispersion that has taken place. And many, many, many, many people lost their lives about 40 years after this event.

The destruction of Jerusalem was an incredible thing. That's coming right after this. And so, you have these woes, this announcement of judgment upon the leaders of the people of Israel. And Jesus uses strong, strong language here.

When you talk about people, call them hypocrites and vipers. I guess if you read some of the early church writings I was listening to, is it proper to say you read a book if you actually listened to the book?

I guess so. Because that's how I do almost all my reading today, is you get on Kindle or something like that, you convert to MP3 and listen to what we're writing. I read an entire book yesterday morning, interpreting the Koran by Abdullah Said, who was a Muslim, but a, quote-unquote, moderate or liberal Muslim.

And listened to the entire book. Of course, I rode 109 miles. It took six hours. So, you've got time to do that. But that's how I do a lot of my reading these days. And I was listening to some of the early church writings.

I was just chuckling at, I think it was either Gregory of Nazianzus or Gregory of Nyssa, one of the two. It was during the Christological controversies of the early church. And he was going after somebody.

I think it was Eunomius, if I recall correctly. It might have been Nestorius or Apollinarius or one of the other heretics at the time. But in describing his exegesis of a particular text of scripture, he goes, let's say it was Eunomius.

It seemeth to me that Eunomius has engorged himself upon windy food and belches forth his false teachings. And I'm just like, yeah, I wouldn't really go over to my publisher these days. I'm writing a book on Islam right now.

And I just can really see my editors going, really? You really want to go there? I don't think so. So things have changed a little bit. We're a little bit more genteel in how we do things today. But I don't think that the rest of this chapter would get by too many editors today either, to be perfectly honest with you.

Because the Lord is very straightforward. And of course, if you isolate this from everything that's come beforehand, it might seem extremely imbalanced. But this is the conclusion of all of the interaction that has been going on now for 23 chapters in the Gospel of Matthew between Jesus and these individuals.

So keep that in mind when we look at these woes. 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, we might step back and go, sounds like man's in control of salvation and all the rest of it. That's not what Jesus is addressing at all. What Jesus is addressing are men who claim to be the very guides of the godly.

The ones who give direction into how to worship God and what true worship is. And instead, by their hypocrisy, by their imbalance that is so imbalanced, it becomes itself an error. Does anyone have absolutely perfect balance in their theology?

No. But can you get to a point of imbalance where the error is greater than the positive element of one's theology? Well, it seems so. Because Jesus never says that these individuals are worshipping the Baals, but he does basically say they're engaging in idolatry, even though they confess the right God.

They don't know him. They say his name, but you don't know him, is the assertion that's being made. So, here you have people who are claiming the name of God, but they are shutting off the kingdom of heaven from people.

I've mentioned many, many times, it was well known that at this time in history, the standard viewpoint was that the people who could not keep all of these laws and did not engage in all of these activities, the Am Ha 'adits, the people of the land, did not feel that God's grace was for them.

They felt that it was limited to this super class. And so, in essence, the kingdom of heaven had been shut off from them. And these men had done everything they could. The very proclaimer of the kingdom of heaven, the very embodiment of the king of the kingdom of heaven was right there.

And how many times do we read of people being fearful because of the Jews? And they knew that the Jewish leaders opposed the message of Jesus. And so, they are, by their actions, by their unbelief, by their positive rejection of Jesus, they are shutting off the kingdom of heaven from people.

They are being used as a means. Now, we can argue on the basis of what John says and even what is contained in Matthew. This is a part of God's judgment. That's another issue. These individuals are standing in the way of light itself.

They are seeking to spread the darkness of their own tradition in opposition to the light of the kingdom of heaven. And so, a woe is proclaimed upon them. These hypocrites, they talk about the kingdom of heaven and they proclaim the kingdom of heaven.

But they shut people off from it. How so? Well, they don't enter in themselves. The invitation is standing right there in front of them. And what are they filled with? Remember, these are the same type of perverse people that word can come of Jesus' raising of Lazarus from the dead.

And what's their response? Is it to rejoice? Look what's going on. God has sent the Messiah and the prophecies are being fulfilled. No. What are we going to do if this guy keeps going like this? Everybody is going to believe it and the Romans are going to come and take away.

What kind of perversity has been demonstrated there? So, they do not enter in themselves. They squint their eyes and they cover their eyes with their hands. They refuse to see the light. You do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.

So, they are purposefully standing in the way of other people. They want to make themselves stumbling blocks. Now, we know... See, this is how the world today thinks. The world would look at this and they would go, Well, we know everybody has good motivations and stuff like that.

It's just a sincere difference of opinion. What these scribes and Pharisees were doing, honestly, they were just concerned about the possible disruptive influence of this one preacher. So, they were just trying to maintain the status quo of the society.

It's wrong to attribute evil motives because no one really has evil motives. Everyone is generally good and that's how the world thinks. And yet, the reality is that these individuals wanted to make themselves a barrier to those who would follow Jesus.

They wanted to do that. Why? Because they wanted their own disciples. It was a cutting off of their own authority, an exposure of their own hypocrisy. And, like I said, the world has no mechanism whereby to honestly interpret these words, but instead see them as just narrow dogmatism.

I happened upon a discussion just recently of how many people detest the third string quarterback of Denver, a fellow by the name of Tim Tebow, because he's an outspoken Christian. And, I mean, they're angry by the fact that when Florida won the national championship a couple of years ago, on the, you know how they put the black stuff on the, you know, to keep their reflection.

I've never had reflection off of my cheekbones personally, so I don't even know what. How could that happen? I don't get it. But anyways, they put this black stuff. Well, he wrote on it John 316 on his paint.

And, of course, they do these zoom-ins. And, the next day, the most Googled, the number one hit on Google was John 316, because so many people had watched the game and were wondering, what's John 316?

Now, it says a little bit about our society that they're having to Google John 316, that they have no clue what in the world it is. That tells you a little something. And, good grief, what about that poor guy who, for my entire lifetime, has been going to every NFL game in the world down there in the end zone with his sign that says John 316?

Why didn't anybody Google that before? I mean, I feel sorry for the guy. He must have just ripped his sign up and gone home crying, because, I mean, if the guy down there with face paint can get it, and I've been gone to every game for 50 years now, I feel really sorry for that guy.

But, anyways, they're just seething. I mean, they interviewed people just seething with anger. You know, could you imagine if it had said Surah 4, 157? Would anybody have said a word about that? As long as it's to the Koran, it really would have been great if it was to some Buddhist scripture, the Bhagavad Gita or something like that.

He'd be interviewed on Oprah. Well, she's off the air. But, anyways, you know, whoever's taken Oprah's position and, you know, Steven Spielberg would probably make a movie about it and stuff like that.

But since it's from the Bible, oh, you can't allow that to happen. So, anyways, there is a division. And the first woe that is pronounced is this act of hypocrisy can shut off the kingdom of heaven from people.

There are stumbling blocks that we have to deal with. And hypocrisy becomes a stumbling block, especially when you're proclaiming, allegedly, the truth about God. Then, as I mentioned, verse 14 is a textual variant.

I'll just read it so you know what it is in case you don't even have it in your text. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you devour widows' houses, and for a pretence you make long prayers, therefore you receive greater condemnation.

Well, nothing there is not found elsewhere in scripture. And certainly the long prayers, the tassels, the garments, all the rest of these things, a constituent element of the hypocrisy that Jesus has mentioned before.

Verse 15, 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.

Wow. To become a proselyte, it did not involve walking down the aisle at the temple, okay? They did not sing 32 stanzas of Just As I Am, however you say that in Hebrew, and you sign a little card and you're in.

No, the process of being a proselyte, a convert to Judaism, including entering into the community itself, was a major, major commitment. And especially outside of the land of Israel, it could be extremely difficult to even be able to do it.

It could be so socially stigmatizing, because the Jews were not liked, especially because they were viewed as atheists. Not in the sense we use the term atheist, but they said there were no other gods, and so they were called atheists because they denied the existence of a plurality of gods, many gods, the polytheism of the day.

And they were despised. We know that shortly after the time of Christ, shortly after the spread of around 51 AD, the Jews and the Christians were expelled from Rome, because they were fighting with each other all the time, evidently.

And there were many places where it would be very, very difficult, aside from all the stuff you had to go through, including, for men, circumcision. That's why we see in the Book of Acts so many God-fearers.

They're called God-fearers in the synagogues. They were not a part of the community, per se, but they were attracted to the ethical and moral system, the existence of one true God, creator of all things.

And so they would attend to the reading of the scriptures, they would attend the synagogue services, if there was a synagogue in their city. And they were called God-fearers. They were not proselytes as yet, but they could either be in the process or had just gone so far and just weren't willing to go any farther for various and sundry reasons.

And so to get a proselyte, that took a lot of work. I mean, it wasn't, you know, say the prayer, punch the card, you're in, type of stuff. And so there would be pride on the part of these individuals when they would bring in one of those proselytes.

There is someone I have brought into the true Abrahamic faith, and we've brought him to the truth, and so on and so forth. But because of the hypocrisy, because of the self-centeredness, because of the lack of humility, because of the pride and the keeping of the commandments and so on and so forth, when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.

That is, that's the term Gehenna. And of course, the Valley of Hinnom was the garbage dump outside of Jerusalem where you had continuous fires going on there. Not in the sense of open flame that you could always see, but, well, good example.

You may recall over the past weekend, if you're like me, you probably did take the time to stop at least once or twice and watch one of the historical documentaries on what happened on 9 -11. And it's amazing to think.

9 -11 was the very first day I taught at Grace Christian School. That last year it was open. It was the first day of classes. And I remember walking in that morning after the towers had already fallen and everything else and looking at those kids I'd never seen before in my life and saying, you don't know it, but your lives changed today.

And I know of at least one of those kids that has been in Afghanistan since then. So, yeah, it most definitely did. But you may recall in the discussion of that that when the towers came down, then there were fires underneath from all the jet fuel.

And, man, can you imagine the amount of paper there was in those two buildings? Massive. And they just smoldered down there for weeks before they were all out. And that's sort of like the kind of fires, if you've seen maybe a fire in a landfill or something like that, it can just, you know, stay down.

Forest fires. You know, a forest fire can get real low to the ground for a while, you know, if there's no wind or something like that. And there's these things called hot spots. And as soon as the wind comes up, here it comes back again.

Well, that's what Gehenna was like. And there was just this constant light smoke coming out from the fires underneath the garbage and things like that. And so to be a son of Hinnom, son of Gehenna, again, not smooth.

This isn't the Jesus with the little cuddly lamb picture. You know what I mean? He's looking at the very leaders of the nation and calling them sons of hell. And, of course, to be a son of hell is not to mean that you're daddy's hell.

What it means is that you act and you derive your nature from that which is opposed to God rather than that which is actually godly itself. Which, again, can you imagine? Just put yourself in that position of someone saying that's what you are.

If they claim to be a Christian and say, by your behavior, by your beliefs, you are a son of hell, most people don't respond to that very calmly. And yet that's what Jesus says to these individuals. So all their zeal, they would have pointed out, how can you say this about us?

We compass land and sea to bring people into the truth. But what do you bring them into? What good is your zeal if it's a zeal for that which is opposed to God's truth? 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 of the temple that's sanctified, the gold. And whoever swears by the altar, that is nothing.

Whoever swears by the offering on it, he is obligated. You blind men, which is more important? The offering of the altar that sanctifies the offering. So this is a, I was going to dig up some of the citations and I didn't, so I apologize.

But you may not actually think there's a need for apology. You can go through, remember I've mentioned it a number, in fact I've mentioned it so many times. Maybe I'll ask the question and wake you all up.

Because you all get used to just hearing my voice droning on, especially by 21 minutes after the hour. You're like, we only got nine more minutes to go. And this would be a good time to see if anyone's awake.

But we have various Jewish writings today that come from antiquity. I guess this is, I guess this is, oh well, yeah. Let's see if this one, this one works. What's the most famous Jewish writing, the great source of Jewish law and so on and so forth from the medieval period?

The Talmud. Nicely. And what is the Talmud? There's two steps to get here. And the first codification of writings that dates from about Christ would be what? That's the one in the middle. Two centuries.

The Mishnah. So the Mishnah gives us, is really as close as we can get to the traditions, laws at the time of Christ. We cannot assume it existed in Jerusalem at that time, but we can tell much of it did.

I mean, there's many of the, the Korban rule, for example, that Jesus makes specific reference to, we can find so and so. So this is around 200 AD. Then you have, over the next number of hundred years, you have what are called the Gemara, which are the commentaries on the Mishnah.

You put the Mishnah together with the Gemara and you have the Talmud. There's different versions of the Talmud, the Babylonian Talmud, et cetera, et cetera. But this is what we've got. So the Mishnah here is, we could go to that.

Actually, I have it here on my iPad now to think about it. But we can go to the Mishnah. And yes, my Sincino Talmud that I have in my library, only in English, is 22. So it's fairly, fairly extensive.

Yeah, fairly extensive. So the Mishnah in Hebrew, my Hebrew-English Mishnah is about five, about five volumes, I'd say. It's fairly large for it. So it's obviously, you know, the Gemara puffs it up a lot.

Commentaries tend to do that. People writing commentaries tend to be very wordy. But anyways, what we have here is an example. We could go to the Mishnah and I could find example after example after example of this kind of fine hair splitting.

Where, well, if you swear by something, what we have here is, if you swear by something, you know, what would really bind your oath and what wouldn't bind your oath? And what we have here is basically an identification of these people as blind guides, fools and blind men.

Whoever swears by the temple, that is nothing. But whoever swears by the gold, the temple is obligated. They had made such weird divisions and distinctions that they claim to be guides. They claim to have insight.

They claim to have wisdom. But all of their wisdom is empty. It's foolishness in Jesus's perspective. Fools and blind men. And I've encountered this many, many times. There are people who have become so imbalanced.

The way I put it is they only have one string in their banjo. They have one string in their banjo. And they've got one thing. And they've lost sight of everything else. And they just know everything there is to know about that one thing.

And everybody else needs to know everything they know about that one thing. And if you're not as excited about that one thing as they are, then there's something wrong with you too. And they show up here all the time, believe it or not.

And I remember the first time talking with Pastor Fry many, many years ago about folks like that. And he just looked at me in his own inimitable Pastor Fry way and said, Well, I hope the door doesn't hit him on the way out.

That's about the only way you can approach us, folks. They come in and they've got their thing. And they want to instruct us all on their thing. And if we don't think their thing is the thing, We had a couple of guys show up about, I don't know, about eight, nine months ago.

George, you remember this one. And their big thing was we all need to be warned about Rick Warren. Everybody in this room needed to be warned about Rick Warren. And they were willing to come in and teach us all about all the errors of Rick Warren.

And if we didn't want them to come in and teach us about all the errors about Rick Warren, Then there was something wrong with us. And I was like, OK, all right. Do anything else in life. Go fishing, go hunting, anything.

Hopefully not the hunting part, you know. Yikes. Just a little bit scary there. And there are people like that out there. And here, you know, they will be able to get down to such incredible minutia on such incredibly unimportant things.

And yet, in the process, talk about being guides and wise. And many times people look at them and go, oh, those are brilliant men. And Jesus' point is, you're fools and blind men. You've become so imbalanced that you have become blind.

What is more important, the offering or the altar that sanctifies the offering? Whoever swears by the altar, that is nothing. Whoever swears by the offering, he is obligated. They had made such silly distinctions based upon their traditions, etc., etc., that Jesus can identify them simply as blind.

They can't see for anything anymore. They think they see. And they will, you know, I cannot help, and I imagine Mr. Callahan might confirm some of this, but sometimes there are philosophers who become so enamored with their complex systems of philosophy that they just wander off into the desert and become no good to anybody.

They just, they become blind. They think they have the greatest insights in the world and we all just need to grab hold of their insights because if we have their insights, then everything will be fine.

And they've actually just completely lost their way. And that is what Jesus is saying here as well. So you have the discussions of the oaths. They had made such great distinctions about the go through verse 22.

So we'll pick up, oh great keeper of the notes, with verse 23. We will finish Matthew 23. And believe it or not, we'll go right into Matthew 24. We really will. But the bulletin says I'm in Louisiana.

I'm actually in Georgia, Louisiana, Georgia. All I know is they talk funny wherever I'm going. And that's just the way that's going to be. I'll be in Louisiana at the end of October is when I'll be there.

But between now and then, I'm going to be talking to all sorts of people who talk funny. I'm going to Georgia, Louisiana, and Australia. And so which one is the weirdest variation of the English language?

I'm not really sure. But good on you, mate. Okay, we know where that one is. We'll be heading down to Australia in the middle of October. So lots of traveling. So I'm not sure when we're going to get to Matthew 24.

But we will get there eventually. All right, let's close the Word of Prayer. Our gracious Father, we thank you once again for this time to open your Word and consider these ancient words that are still living and vital to us today.

Help us to avoid the attitude of the scribes and Pharisees. For we know you have expressed very deeply your detestation of that kind of religious hypocrisy. May our worship be without hypocrisy this day.

We pray in Christ's name. Amen.