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23 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone. 24 Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel! 25 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence. 26 Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also. 27 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. 28 Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. 29 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, 30 and say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.’ ~ Matthew 23:23-30
Today, we return to our study of Matthew 23 where the Lord Jesus is in the middle of pronouncing seven "woes" on the religious leaders of Israel. While the Beatitudes aid us at making us more sensitive to the Lord, the "woes" describe the hardening of our hearts toward Him. Having considered the first three "woes," today we consider the last four. In these "woes", the Lord Jesus pronounced His final judgment on the religious leaders of Israel who had rejected Him and led the people in an eventual equal rejection.
In v.23-24 of today's passage we read, "23 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone. 24 Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!"
The religious leaders of Israel proved they were false once they wrapped themselves up in the inconsequential minutia of religion. One of the great marks of a real leader is that he never allows himself to get wrapped up in minutia. The religious leaders of Israel had no capacity to deal with the real issues which always comes back to the condition of the human heart. In this "woe" the Lord Jesus isolated justice, mercy, and faith which is also isolated in Micah 6:8 which reads, "He has shown you, oh, man, what is good and what the Lord requires of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God."
The problem was the religious leaders of first century Israel were unmerciful, brutal, unforgiving, unkind, and lacking in generosity. Instead of walking by faith, they walked by sight. They lived by their own efforts. And so, the Lord told them they were real good at measuring kitchen seeds used to flavor food but that they missed the whole point of what is really important, namely the essentials in meaningful community.
By the way, the word "tithe" is mentioned six times in the New Testament, three times in the gospels. Each time it is mentioned it is used to condemn the abuse of it by the religious leaders of Israel. Three times in the book of Hebrews it simply reaches back and describes its historical reality in the history of Israel. At no time is it ever mentioned in the New Testament as binding to the church. God's goal in our giving is that we give from the heart having been moved by His Spirit.
The word "strain" in v.24 means to filter. According to Leviticus 11:42, the smallest unclean animal was a gnat. According to Leviticus 11:4, the largest was a camel. When these so-called leaders drank wine, they "strained" at gnats because they were attracted to the wine which they would drink. In other words, the religious were good at straining out a gnat while at the same time figuratively swallowing a camel. This made them value the wrong things. This is what we do when we do not know what relating to God means, we make it about stupid stuff that does not matter. False leaders miss the priorities of God and they substitute them with insignificant non-essentials. Therefore, the religious leaders were condemned for not engaging God and their fellow man with their hearts. If they had engaged their hearts, everything would have been different.
In v.25-26 of today's passage we read, "25 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence. 26 Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also."
The "dish" mentioned here was a plate used to serve delicacies. The religious cleaned the outside but neglected the inside. This meant they were real good at looking good on the outside but their hearts were nasty. They were like us, corrupt within. The difference between them and the poor in spirit is that the poor in spirit admit to the corruption within. These blind so-called leaders of their own so-called righteousness were greedy thieves who plundered the souls of the innocent. This is what happens when we feed the flesh which in essence is the self that the enemy tries to get us to worship. He doesn't try to get us to worship him directly, he just wants us to worship him indirectly by worshipping ourselves.
In v.27-28 of today's passage we read, "27 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. 28 Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness."
These religious leaders were masters at deception. This makes sense since their father was the master deceiver. It was he who tricked Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden so long ago. These first century spiritual leaders of the Jews appeared clean outwardly but they were dead inside. As a result, they contaminated the people with the disease of self-deception. The term "whitewashed tombs" came from an annual and unusual custom in Israel. It was right after the spring rains which always came to cleanse the land. At that time of the year the Jews whitewashed their limestone tombs where their dead had been buried. They washed the tombs because they feared the people might inadvertently touch a tomb and thus become defiled. The problem was, their attention to potential danger never allowed them to recognize the real danger, the defiled human heart. In tandem with the Word of God, it is only the grace of God that can diagnose and fix the human heart.
In v.29-30 of today's passage we read, "29 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, 30 and say, 'If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.'"
Here with the seventh "woe" the Lord Jesus pinpointed the problem of the religious leaders of Israel. He placed the spotlight on their pretentiousness which is what caused them to think they were so much better than everyone else. There is nothing God hates worse than pride. The religious leaders of Israel were really good at honoring the heroes of the past with memorials and monuments. In addition, the Lord Jesus substantiated the fact that they would have killed the prophets as their fathers did. Their behavior proved to be an ugly pretense to their spiritual pride.
After sin entered the world, the truth could not but crush sinful unrepentant man. The woes that God pronounced on the religious leaders of Israel were a natural response to their inner wickedness which manifested itself through their poor treatment of others. The problem the religious leaders of Israel had was they had not been broken thus they could not see their utter wickedness. As much as they were apparently in the Word, they should have been broken, given the design of the Word on the heart of sinful man.
The answer to deflecting God's woes is His grace. It was His grace that enabled the Lord Jesus to defeat for us sin and death. The grace of God is not a compensation for our good behavior, rather, it is the benevolent response of God toward the undeserving. The grace of God is an undeserved embrace from the Perfect One for those who have repeatedly fallen short of perfection. God's greatest response to the brokenness of man was put on fullest display at the cross of Christ. In the Chinese language the word for righteousness is a combination of two characters, the figure of a lamb and that of a person. In the character, the lamb is seen on top of the submissive person. Whenever God looks down at the believer in Christ He sees the Lamb of God covering him.
