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13 But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in. 14 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense make long prayers. Therefore you will receive greater condemnation. 15 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel land and sea to win one proselyte, and when he is won, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves. 16 Woe to you, blind guides, who say, "Whoever swears by the temple, it is nothing; but whoever swears by the gold of the temple, he is obliged to perform it." 17 Fools and blind! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that sanctifies the gold? 18 And, "Whoever swears by the altar, it is nothing; but whoever swears by the gift that is on it, he is obliged to perform it." 19 Fools and blind! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift? 20 Therefore he who swears by the altar, swears by it and by all things on it. 21 He who swears by the temple, swears by it and by Him who dwells in it. 22 And he who swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by Him who sits on it. ~ Matthew 23:13-22
Today, we return to our study of Matthew 23 where the Lord Jesus is in the middle of identifying the religious leaders of Israel for who they were. With several mountains of evidence from the Old Testament and from the 3 1/2 year of the earthly ministry of the Lord Jesus the religious leaders of Israel rejected God. Sadly, they were ushered to the door of heaven but they slammed it closed and their eternity was sealed. In this chapter the Lord Jesus pronounces seven "woes" on the religious leaders of Israel. While the Beatitudes describe the process whereby we are made increasingly sensitive to the Lord, the woes in this chapter describe the hardening of our hearts toward Him. The Bible is full of "woes." Throughout the Bible God’s "woes" introduce His anger toward the people who choose idolatry.
The Lord Jesus, God incarnate, spoke harsh words here in today's passage regarding the religious leaders of Israel. Sometimes harsh is called for in order to hopefully snap people out of their spiritual lethargy. Through His harsh words, the Lord Jesus slammed the Jewish religious leaders because they were doomed for eternal hell. He went from addressing those who had yet to repent as hypocrites, to blind guides, and then to fools. There is always a progression either toward the Lord or as in this case away from the Lord. As we give ourselves to the truth, the more we will be guided by and to the truth.
Of the seven "woes" in this chapter, the first in v.13 condemns the work of the religious leaders of Israel. They were supposed to guide the people to worship the God of the Bible. But they actually pointed them in the direction of the evil one. Through the second "woe" the Lord Jesus highlighted the religious leaders false religious pretense that led them to take advantage of the common folk. Through the third "woe" the Lord Jesus highlighted the fact that their influence on the common folk was doubly damning.
This chapter exists because the religious leaders of first-century Israel had moved so far from God’s intention that the Lord Jesus considered them cursed. Many today are turned away from the Lord because what they see out of those who say they know Him. Christianity today is a far cry from what it is really supposed to be about. Even those who have entered into a personal relationship with God through the Lord Jesus can go off the rails by majoring on the minors and minoring on the majors.
The Lord Jesus came to this earth in order to grant to us a personal relationship with God through His sacrifice on the cross. Those who do not get this make it into something God never intended it to be, that is religion. Through every believer in the Lord Jesus the world desperately needs to see this authentic relationship whereby we are honest about who we really are and in that context how the grace of God spurs us on in our pursuit of Him. What we so desperately need is to experience an authentic faith that organically overflows into a life of devotion to God.
This is precisely what the Lord Jesus came to this earth to bring. He came to give us a new heart and a new spirit that would transform us from the inside out and show the world what Christianity is truly about. The offense of the gospel is that we all need to be remade. The promise and the hope of the gospel is that God will bring to pass this very thing. On the cross, the Lord Jesus was undone, transformed into a broken and mangled reflection of human life, so that we who are broken and mangled could enter into a personal relationship with the God of grace.
Most people are afraid to be fully given to God's grace. At the very heart of our survival and triumph as believers is that we are totally being defined by God's grace. In our attempt to grow in the faith, our goal must be the Lord Jesus. Our goal must be the sincere search of a desperate heart that recognizes the cross of the Lord Jesus must define him. We must approach God through prayer and His word with the idea that we will be defined by Him. God’s grace extends beyond our salvation, beyond an escape from death, and heaven is not the only thing we have been freely given by our gracious God. When we limit His grace to the free gift of eternal life, we miss what it is all about. We miss a personal relationship wherein we have been totally accepted by God.
It was Mike Yaconelli who once said, "The critical issue today is dullness. We have lost our astonishment. The Good News is no longer good news, it is okay news. Christianity is no longer life changing, it is life enhancing. Jesus doesn’t change people into wild-eyed radicals anymore, He changes them into “nice people”… What happened to the kind of Christians who were filled with passion and gratitude, and who every day were unable to get over the grace of God."
The freedom that is ours through the cross must define us as having been accepted in the Beloved of God. Religion leads those not drenched in God's grace to unsuccessfully try to bribe God for His blessings. The religious person doesn't understand that only the Lord Jesus could earn for us God's blessing and in Him we have every blessing imaginable. With this understanding we are free to live life from the starting block of His total and unconditional love. When we come to this understanding of Christianity, we will be authentically Christ-like and godly. It is this disposition that enables us to love God and others authentically.
