Chapter 35 - The Condemnation of False Spiritual Leaders—part 1 Expressing the Condemnation (23:13-33)

35 The Condemnation of False Spiritual Leaders—part 1 Expressing the Condemnation (23:13-33)

But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from men; for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in. [Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you devour widows’ houses, even while for a pretense you make long prayers; therefore you shall receive greater condemnation.]

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel about 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, he 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 upon it, he is obligated.’ You blind men, which is more important, the offering or the altar that sanctifies the offering? Therefore he who swears, swears both by the altar and by everything on it. And he who swears by the temple, swears both by the temple and by Him who dwells within it. And he who 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 cummin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others. You blind guides, who 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. Even 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.’ Consequently 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 shall you escape the sentence of hell? (23:13-33)

Throughout its pages, Scripture highly honors genuine spiritual leaders who rightly and faithfully represent God and seek no self-glory. God lifts up His true servants and presents them as examples for others to follow and respect. The Christians of Galatia must have greatly pleased God’s heart when they received the apostle Paul “as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus Himself” (Gal. 4:14). Paul called upon the Philippian church to receive Epaphroditus “in the Lord with all joy, and hold men like him in high regard; because he came close to death for the work of Christ” (Phil. 2:29-30). He implored the Thessalonians: “Appreciate those who diligently labor among you, and have charge over you in the Lord and give you instruction, and . . . esteem them very highly in love because of their work” (1 Thess. 5:12-13). He advised Timothy, “Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching” (1 Tim. 5:17). The writer of Hebrews exhorts believers: “Obey your leaders, and submit to them; for they keep watch over your souls, as those who will give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with grief, for this would be unprofitable for you” (Heb. 13:17).

On the other hand, no one in Scripture is more condemned than the religious charlatan who teaches and practices falsehood. God’s most furious wrath is reserved for those men who parade themselves as His servants but who are servants only of evil and falsehood, liars and deceivers whose own spiritual father is Satan himself (John 8:44).

The seventeenth-century Puritan preacher Richard Baxter wrote, “Many a tailor can go in rags while making costly clothes for others. Many a cook may scarcely lick his fingers when he has prepared the most sumptuous dishes for others to eat” (The Reformed Pastor [Portland. Ore.: Multnomah, 1982], p. 28). His point was that many religious leaders supposedly offer spiritual provision for those in their care but are themselves spiritually shabby and starving. Such were most of the Jewish religious leaders in New Testament times.

Many Christians today are greatly concerned about the rising influences of communism, humanism, secularism, and social injustice. Yet those evils, great as they are, do not together pose the threat to Christianity that false shepherds and pastors do. Throughout the history of redemption, the greatest threat to God’s truth and God’s work has been false prophets and teachers, because they propose to speak in His name. That is why the Lord’s most scathing denunciations were reserved for the false teachers of Israel, who claimed to speak and act for God but were liars.

Yet for some reason, evangelical Christianity is often hesitant to confront false teachers with the seriousness and severity that Jesus and the apostles did, and that the godly prophets before them had done. Today, more than at any time in modern history and perhaps more than at any time in the history of the church, pagan religions and cults are seriously encroaching on societies that for centuries have been nominally Christian. Even within the church, many ideas, teachings, and philosophies that are little more than thinly veiled paganism have become popular and influential. As in ancient Israel, the further God’s people move away from the foundation of His Word, the more false religion flourishes in the world and even in their own midst. At no time have Christians had greater need to be discerning. They need to recognize and respect true godly shepherds who feed them God’s Word and build them up in the faith, and they also must recognize and denounce those who twist and undermine God’s Word, who corrupt the church and who lead lost people still further away from God’s truth and from salvation.

The godly prophets of the Old Testament were constantly opposed and often persecuted by ungodly prophets, who invariably drew many of the people after them. Isaiah declared, “the people will be like the priest” (Isa. 24:2). Jeremiah wrote, “The prophets prophecy falsely, and the priests rule on their own authority; and My people love it so!” (Jer. 5:31) and “Many shepherds have ruined My vineyard, they have trampled down My field; they have made My pleasant field a desolate wilderness” (12:10).

In Matthew 23:13-33 Jesus relentlessly condemned the false spiritual leaders of Israel, in particular the scribes and Pharisees, who then held the dominant power and influence in Judaism. Jesus warned about them in His first sermon, the Sermon on the Mount (see, e.g., 5:20; 7:15), and His last sermon (Matt. 23) consists almost entirely of warnings about them and to them. In this final public message, the Lord wanted to draw the people away from those false leaders and turn them to the true teaching and the godly examples of His apostles, who would become His uniquely commissioned and endowed representatives on earth during the early years of the church. He also gave the apostles themselves a final example of the confrontational stance they would soon find it necessary to take in their proclamation and defense of the gospel.

The unbelieving scribes and Pharisees whom Jesus addressed in the Temple stood alone in their sin and were condemned alone in their guilt for misappropriating and perverting God’s law and for leading Israel into heresy, just as the false prophets among their forefathers had done (vv. 30-32). But they also stood as models of all false spiritual leaders who would come after them. Therefore what Jesus said about them and to them is of much more than historical significance. It is essential instruction for dealing with the false leaders who abound in our own day.

In the first twelve verses of chapter 23, Jesus had declared that the scribes and Pharisees, typical of all false spiritual leaders, were without authority, without integrity, without sympathy, without spirituality, without humility, and therefore without God’s approval or blessing. Now speaking to them directly, He asserts they are under God’s harshest condemnation.

In verses 13-33 Jesus pronounces seven curses, or woes, on those wicked leaders. If verse 14 were included there would be eight woes, but that verse is not found in the best early manuscripts of Matthew (as indicated by its being set off by brackets in the NASB text). It was probably added later by a well-meaning copyist who picked it up from Mark 12:40 or Luke 20:47. Although the statement is genuine, it will not be discussed here, because originally it was not likely a part of this passage.

The scene in the Temple that day had become volatile in the extreme, in some ways more volatile than when Jesus had cast out the merchants and moneychangers the day before. At that time Jesus’ anger was vented against what the religious leaders were doing outwardly, and that attack had outraged them (21:16, 23). Now, however, He attacked what they were inwardly, and that infuriated them even more.

In our day of tolerance and eclecticism, the kind of confrontation Jesus had with the scribes and Pharisees seems foreign and uncharitable. A person who speaks too harshly against a false religion or unbiblical teaching or movement is considered unkind, ungracious, and judgmental. Jesus’ indictments in Matthew 23, as well as in other parts of the gospels, are so inconsistent with the idea of Christian love held by some liberal theologians and Bible scholars, for example, that they conclude He could not have spoken them. What Jesus really said, they maintain, was modified and intensified either by the gospel writers or the sources from whom they received their information.

But the nature of Jesus’ condemnation of those corrupt religious leaders is perfectly consistent with the rest of Scripture, both the Old Testament and the New Not only that, but Jesus’ words in this passage fly from His lips, as someone has said, like claps of thunder and spears of lightning. Out of His mouth on this occasion came the most fearful and dreadful statements that Jesus uttered on earth. They do not give the least impression of being the afterthought of an overzealous writer or copyist.

Matthew 23 is one of the most serious passages in Scripture. Jesus here makes the word hypocrite a synonym for scribe and for Pharisee. He calls them sons of hell, blind guides, fools, robbers, self-indulgent, whitewashed tombs, full of hypocrisy and lawlessness, serpents, vipers, and persecutors and murderers of God’s people. He uttered every syllable with absolute self-control but with devastating intensity.

Yet Jesus was never cold or indifferent, even toward His enemies, and on this occasion His judgment is mingled with sorrow and deep pathos. It is not the Son’s will any more than the Father’s that a single person perish, because it is the gracious divine desire that everyone would come to repentance and salvation (2 Pet. 3:9). At the end of His denunciation, Jesus extended by implication another last invitation for belief, suggesting that He would still gladly gather any unbelievers under His wings as a mother hen gathers her chicks, if only they would be willing (Matt. 23:37).

As Jesus had approached Jerusalem during His triumphal entry, “He saw the city and wept over it, saying, ‘If you had known in this day, even you the things which make for peace! But now they have been hidden from your eyes’” (Luke 19:41-42). He knew of the coming judgment on Israel and its leaders, and He was deeply grieved. There was therefore much pain involved in the curses He would soon pronounce. On the one hand is the fiery righteousness of God that yearns for rectification, and on the other is His sympathetic love, as His heart aches over the doom of His people.

In His castigation of the false Jewish leaders, Jesus repeatedly used two words, woe and hypocrites, that are keys to understanding Matthew 23:13-33. Woe is from ouai, which is not so much a word in the ordinary sense as an onomatopoeic interjection, suggesting a guttural outcry of anger, pain, or both. It is used in the Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) to express grief, despair, sorrow, dissatisfaction, pain, and fear of losing one’s life. In the New Testament it is used to speak of sorrow and of judgment, carrying the mingled ideas of punishment and pity, cursing and compassion.

But Jesus used woe against the scribes and Pharisees not as an exclamation but as a declaration, a divine pronouncement of judgment from God. He did not use the term in the sense of the profane phrase “Damn you!” He was not wishing for the damnation of those false leaders but certifying it. As already noted, it was not His desire that they be condemned but rather that they repent and come to salvation. But He knew that if they did not repent and believe they were doomed to hell under God’s righteous and just wrath. When God utters woe against evil men He sets divine judgment in motion.

Hypocrites is from hupokrits, whose original meaning was that of answering or replying. It later came to refer to actors, who answered one another back and forth in dialogue, and from there it came to mean deceitful pretense, the putting on of a false front. It was used to describe what might be called theatrical goodness—pretended goodness that is simply for show.

In His series of seven curses, or woes, against the scribes and Pharisees, Jesus condemned by extension all false spiritual teachers. He condemns them for their exclusion of people from God’s kingdom, for their subversion of the people, for their perversion of truth, for their inversion of God’s priorities, for their extortion and self-indulgence, for their contamination, and for their pretension.

FALSE LEADERS ARE CURSED FOR THEIR EXCLUSION

But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from men; for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in. (23:13)

First Jesus cursed the scribes and Pharisees for their exclusion of men from the kingdom of heaven. The chief evil of every false religion is that it shuts people out of God’s kingdom.

Regardless of the appealing, benign, and promising front that a false system of religion or philosophy may have, its ultimate accomplishment is to shut off the kingdom of heaven from men. It may feed their bodies, stimulate their minds, and calm their emotions, but it will inevitably damn their souls. It may raise their moral standards, increase their worldly success, overcome practical problems, and improve their outward relationships with other people, but it will not remove their sin or improve their relationship to God. It may promise heaven, but it can only deliver hell.

“You do not enter the kingdom yourselves,” Jesus said, “nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.” In their hypocrisy, the unbelieving scribes and Pharisees pretended to know God but did not, pretended to be His spokesmen but were not, pretended to be in His kingdom but were not. In their boundless pride they even believed they themselves were the doorkeepers of the kingdom.

In his letter to the Roman church, Paul said:

If you bear the name “Jew,” and rely upon the Law, and boast in God, and know His will, and approve the things that are essential, being instructed out of the Law, and are confident that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, a corrector of the foolish, a teacher of the immature, having in the Law the embodiment of knowledge and of the truth, you, therefore, who teach another, do you not teach yourself? . . . You who boast in the Law, through your breaking the Law, do you dishonor God? For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you. (Rom. 2:17-21, 23-24)

The scribes and Pharisees, and all other Jews who followed their hypocritical traditions, lived under the delusion that, because they were His called People and the receivers and human custodians of God’s law (Rom. 3:2; 9:4-5), they were somehow automatically destined to live under God’s approval. In their spiritual darkness they confused merely knowing the law with keeping it, and merely knowing about the light with living in it.

But Jesus declared that they had no part in God’s kingdom, which is the sphere of His reign and power and, in this context, especially refers to the sphere of salvation in which His redeemed people live.

The picture Jesus gives here suggests the idea of the scribes and Pharisees standing just outside the gates of the kingdom and slamming them shut in the faces of those who were about to go in. People who came to those religious leaders for direction and help in finding God were actually being shut off from Him even while they were on the verge of salvation.

In the immediate historical context, Jesus was saying that He had come to Israel to proclaim the kingdom of God and to provide entrance for all who would believe in Him. But as soon as a Jew showed interest in the gospel, the scribes and Pharisees would step between that person and Christ, as it were. Tragically, they succeeded in turning many seekers away. They had done the same thing to those who were drawn to God through the preaching of John the Baptist, and they would soon do the same thing to those who were drawn to God through the preaching of the apostles.

As soon as men and women from Jerusalem and from “all Judea, and all the district around the Jordan” went out to hear John the Baptist and “were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, as they confessed their sins,” the unbelieving and unrepentant Pharisees and Sadducees showed up, attempting to corrupt John’s work and confuse the people by pretentiously submitting to baptism but without genuine confession of their sins. Discerning their hypocrisy, John called them a “brood of vipers” who were under the judgment of God’s fiery wrath (Matt. 3:5-8; cf. w. 10, 12), using virtually the same words Jesus was now about to use against them in the Temple (23:33).

It is painful to consider—and was immeasurably more painful for Jesus to consider—the countless thousands who had been shut off from His kingdom by Israel’s false religious leaders. In his parallel passage Luke reports Jesus as saying, “Woe to you lawyers! For you have taken away the key of knowledge; you did not enter in yourselves, and those who were entering in you hindered” (Luke 11:52).

The false leaders took away the key of knowledge by misinterpreting the Word of God, by denying the Messiah, by denying the need for repentance, and by denying salvation by grace. Their work-righteous system had no place for the gospel of grace, which is the only way into the kingdom. By drawing people away from Jesus Christ, those leaders thwarted their salvation and confirmed their damnation.

That is why the greatest battle in the world is not against communism or humanism or secularism or social injustice. The greatest battle by far is the battle for men’s souls, a battle which could be lost even if somehow all those other battles were won. The great challenge of the church in our day is to clearly and boldly articulate God’s truth and just as clearly and boldly to expose Satan’s falsehoods. The great need of the world today is to turn from its falsehoods and to hear and heed God’s truth and be saved.

When men’s eternal souls are at stake, the church cannot be passive and indifferent. Nor can it hide behind false humility that fears being judgmental or behind false love that fears offending. Christ was supremely humble, yet He never called evil anything but what it was. Christ was supremely loving, yet He never withheld a warning that might save His hearers from hell. And He had nothing but intense anger for those who by their false teachings led men away from God and directly toward hell.

Nowhere is the Pharisees’s hardness of heart more graphically portrayed than in the account of the blind man Jesus healed on the Sabbath. When the healed man was brought to the Pharisees and they heard he had been healed on the Sabbath, their sole concern was for Jesus’ breaking one of their Sabbath traditions (John 9:16). The fact that this man who had lived all his life in blindness and despair had now been given sight was of no consequence to them. Nor was the fact that Jesus had obviously performed the healing by divine power of any consequence to them. They were utterly devoid of compassion and blind to the truth. They were indifferent to the confirmation by the man’s parents that their son was indeed born blind (v. 20) and impervious to the man’s own astute arguments about the divine source of his healing (vv. 30-33). The factualness of his healing was not a consideration to them. They had made up their minds that Jesus was not the Christ (see v. 22), and no evidence to the contrary carried any weight with them. In this one incident the Pharisees conclusively demonstrated their rejection of Jesus as the Messiah, their rejection of His divine nature and power, and their contempt for His divine grace and for the souls of men.

When the church began to move with great force after Pentecost, proclaiming Christ’s power to save men’s souls and demonstrating His power to heal men’s bodies, the Jewish religious leaders again demonstrated their hardness of heart. “What shall we do with these men?” they said of Peter and John after the healing of the lame man outside the Temple. “For the fact that a noteworthy miracle has taken place through them is apparent to all who live in Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it. But in order that it may not spread any further among the people, let us warn them to speak no more to any man in this name” (Acts 4:16-17). In their minds, neither the power the apostles manifested nor the truth they proclaimed was of any relevance. They themselves had rejected the kingdom and, just as during Jesus’ ministry, they were determined to prevent others from entering.

Paul reminded the Thessalonian believers that they suffered persecution at the hands of their own unbelieving countrymen just as the believing Jews in Judea had suffered at the hands of theirs. Those Jewish leaders “both killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out. They are not pleasing to God, but hostile to all men, hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved; with the result that they always fill up the measure of their sins” (1 Thess. 2:14-16).

Some years ago, a young man called and informed me that he was planning to leave our church and join Mormonism, two workers from which were going to visit him again shortly. I immediately drove to his house and confronted him with the extreme peril of what he was about to do. I told him that if he was not now a true Christian, they would damn his soul by leading him away from Christ and that if he were a Christian they would make a shambles of his spiritual life. When the workers arrived I refused to discuss doctrine with them but rather in the spirit of Matthew 23 presented the true gospel of Christ and denounced the unbiblical and damning errors that their sect taught. However, the young man fell into the cult and was not able to escape for a number of years.

Every non-Christian religion is a works-righteous religion, and works righteousness is inherently at mortal enmity with the gospel of God’s grace. By their very nature such belief systems exclude people from God’s kingdom.

FALSE LEADERS ARE CURSED FOR THEIR SUBVERSION

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel about 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, (23:15)

Second, Jesus cursed the scribes and Pharisees for their subversion of the people. They not only excluded them from the true faith but subverted them with false faith.

In New Testament times a great effort was being made to convert Gentiles to Judaism. They worked aggressively, traveling about on sea and land to make one proselyte. The word proselyte had the basic meaning of a person who has arrived, and came to be commonly used of an outsider who was brought into a religion.

Had that Jewish effort been made in the right way and for the right reasons, it would have been commendable, because Israel had been called to be God’s channel for reaching the world for Himself. In His covenant with Abraham the Lord promised that through him and his descendants “all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:3). In the covenant at Sinai the Lord set Israel apart as a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Ex. 19:6), who, like her Messiah, was meant to be a light to the nations (Isa. 49:6).

But for most of her history, Israel aspired to do anything but bring Gentiles to God. Like Jonah, they loathed the idea of pagans repenting, being saved, and thereby gaining the same standing before God that they enjoyed. By his own admission, it was for the purpose of forestalling, and no doubt if possible preventing, the repentance and forgiveness of Nineveh that Jonah tried to flee to Tarshish (Jonah 4:2).

By the time Jesus began preaching, however, a different spirit had arisen among some of the Jews, and they were zealously trying to win converts. As the result of those efforts, many synagogues had regular Gentile worshipers who had turned from paganism. Partly because Jews had such an unsavory reputation for exclusiveness and bigotry, Gentile proselytes were not easy to make, and when one of them converted he was considered something of a prize.

There were two kinds of proselytes in the synagogues. One was called “a proselyte of the gate,” a Gentile who only attended the services. He now worshiped the true God, but he had not committed himself to full ritualistic and legalistic Judaism. Such proselytes are referred to in the book of Acts as a person who was devout (10:2, 7; 13:50), as “God-fearing” (10:2, 22, 35; 17:4, 17), or as “a worshiper of God” (16:14; 18:7).

The other kind was referred to as “a proselyte of righteousness,” so called because he became as religiously Jewish as a Gentile could become. They participated in all the ceremonies, rituals, and feasts; they observed all the cleansing and other rites, both biblical and traditional; and if males, they were circumcised. Those converts were even given Jewish names in order to separate them as much as possible from their pagan past. Contrary to their popular appellation, however, they became anything but righteous. Like the scribes and Pharisees who instructed them, they became paragons of self-righteousness.

For obvious reasons there were many more proselytes of the gate than proselytes of righteousness. It was the latter kind in which the scribes and Pharisees delighted, and it was considered a great achievement to initiate a Gentile into all their legalistic practices.

As is often the case with new converts, including true converts to Christ, many of the proselytes of righteousness became extremely zealous for their new faith, some of them even more zealous than those who converted them. But because they were brought into a false religious system that had replaced biblical Judaism, such a proselyte became twice as much a son of hell as the scribes and Pharisees themselves. They sometimes surpassed their mentors in fanatical zeal, but because their zeal was not godly it simply led them more certainly to hell.

Of hell translates a Greek genitive that refers to belonging to or being characterized by. Son of hell referred to a person who was especially characterized by hellishness. Twice . . . a son hell would be person who was doubly hellish and doubly damned.

Hell is from geenna, derived from the name of a valley just outside Jerusalem called Hinnom where refuse was burned. It was considered an accursed place because it was the site where ancient worshipers of the pagan deity Moloch offered their children as live burnt sacrifices, a hideous practice taken up even by some Israelites (see 2 Chron. 28:3; Jer. 7:31). When King Josiah declared the place unclean (2 Kings 23:10), it became a garbage dump, and because flames and smoke arose from the valley continually, it also became a vivid picture of the eternal fires of hell.

How grateful every believer should be that at some time in His life he was confronted by a spiritual door-opener rather than a spiritual door-closer, someone who shows the way to the kingdom rather than shuts people out of it. And how grateful every believer should be who has the opportunity to hear and study the Word of God in truth. Even a dull presentation of the true gospel is immeasurably superior to the most exciting presentation of a false gospel that damns to hell.

As a citizen of God’s kingdom, every believer ought to be one who opens the door of the kingdom to others. All saints have the keys of the kingdom, which is the saving gospel of Jesus Christ (Matt. 16:19), and every false teacher takes away the key of knowledge that leads to the kingdom (Luke 11:52). When Christians are confronted by a representative of a false cult, sect, or religion, they should offer to explain the way of salvation in Christ to him, hoping to snatch him out of the fire, as it were (Jude 23). But they should not debate theology or the merits of various sacred writings or interpretations of the Bible, thereby “casting pearls before swine,” but firmly denounce the teachings of that group as ungodly and damning—just as their Lord did with the scribes and Pharisees.

FALSE LEADERS ARE CURSED FOR THEIR PERVERSION

Third, Jesus cursed the scribes and Pharisees for their perversion of truth. God is the God of truth and cannot lie (Titus 1:2; Heb. 6:18), and His people are therefore to be people of truth. On the other hand, there is no truth at all in Satan. “Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature,” Jesus says; “for he is a liar, and the father of lies” (John 8:44). His followers are also skilled in lying, and perversion of truth is the hallmark of every false religious system. From the beginning, those who have rejected God have rejected His truth. They have “exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Rom. 1:25).

In this particular indictment, Jesus did not call His opponents hypocrites but blind guides, emphasizing their unawareness that they were ignorant of the truth. As God’s chosen people who were entrusted with His revelation, the Jews had long considered themselves as guides to the blind, lights to those in darkness, correctors of the foolish, and teachers of the immature (Rom. 2:19-20; cf. 3:2). But as Jesus had declared earlier in His ministry, they were “blind guides of the blind. And if a blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into a pit” (Matt. 15:14). The scribes and Pharisees prided themselves in their superior religious knowledge and understanding, but they were blind leaders trying to lead blind Israel, and together they were doomed to judgment if they would not come to the light.

Among their many perversions of truth was the teaching that Whoever swears by the temple, that is nothing; but whoever swears by the gold of the temple, he is obligated. The very fact that they had developed such a double standard for swearing gives evidence that their concern was not for truth but for the evasion of it when it did not suit their selfish interests. The underlying purpose behind the first part of the standard was to provide sanctimonious justification for lying with impunity. A person could lie all he wanted, provided he swore by the temple and not by the gold of the temple. Since no society can survive without some provision for verifying and guaranteeing such things as promises and contracts, the second part of the standard was developed as a necessary expediency. If a person wanted to make absolutely certain that someone was telling the truth or would live up to an agreement, he would make him swear by the gold of the temple, which supposedly made his word binding. A person who broke his word after taking such an oath was subject to penalties under Jewish law.

Societies have had various means of trying to make its people keep their word. In some, the most sacred and binding vow was sealed with the blood of the parties involved. In others, an agreement is written in a contract, which each party signs and which often specifies penalties for defaulting. Until recent years, many western courts of law required those giving testimony to swear to tell the truth by placing their right hand on a copy of the Bible and invoking God’s help.

The use of oaths had become so perverse in Israel that they were used even to renege on promises made to God. If a person, for example, vowed to give a certain amount to the Lord’s work, he would often swear to his vow by the temple. If he later decided he had pledged too much, or if he never intended to give the full amount, he had an out, because that vow was considered to be nothing.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus condemned all swearing of vows. “But I say to you, make no oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is the footstool of His feet, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. Nor shall you make an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. But let your statement be, ‘Yes, yes,’ or ‘No, no’; and anything beyond these is of evil” (Matt. 5:34-37). A godly person will always tell the truth, and for him a simple yes or no is sufficient, because his virtuous character is his bond.

Jesus was not teaching a new principle. The psalmist declared, “Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and pay your vows to the Most High” (Ps. 50:14). In other words, a vow made is a vow to be kept. David testified, “Thy vows are binding upon me, O God; I will render thank offerings to Thee” (Ps. 56:12), and again, “I will sing praise to Thy name forever, that I may pay my vows day by day” (Ps. 61:8; cf. 66:13; 76:11). It is significant that in each of those quotations the keeping of vows to God is directly related to praise and thankfulness to Him.

The great offense of Ananias and Sapphira was not in giving less to the Lord’s work than they were able to give but in lying about it. When Peter confronted them, he charged them with lying to the Holy Spirit and putting God to the test. The Lord takes lying very seriously, and for their deception those two believers lost their lives. It is not surprising that, as a result, “great fear came upon the whole church, and upon all who heard of these things” (Acts 5:1-11).

The idea that swearing by the gold in the Temple was binding but swearing by the Temple itself was not binding was moral chicanery and logical absurdity. “You fools and blind men” Jesus said; “which is more important, the gold, or the temple that sanctified the gold?” In other words, by what perverted logic had it been determined that making a vow on something lesser was more binding than one made on something greater? The only reason the gold could be thought of as sacred, and thereby make the vow supposedly more obligatory, was the temple that sanctified the gold.

The religious leaders applied the same twisted logic to swearing by the altar, which was considered to be nothing, that is, nonobligatory, and to swearing by the offering upon it, which was thought to make a person obligated to keep his vow. “You blind men,” Jesus said, “which is more important, the offering or the altar that sanctifies the offering?” The whole idea was both theologically and logically preposterous. Those standards were nothing more than wicked pretenses for using holy things to disguise their unholy propensity to lie.

As Jesus went on to point out, to swear by the altar was to swear by everything on it; to swear by the temple was to swear by Him who dwells within it, namely, God Himself; and to swear by heaven was to swear both by the throne of God and by Him who sits upon it. In other words, everything involved with the temple and everything involved with heaven involved God. In fact, since God is the creator of everything, to swear by anything at all involves God.

FALSE LEADERS ARE CURSED FOR THEIR INVERSION

Fourth, Jesus cursed the scribes and Pharisees for inverting divine priorities. They magnified the insignificant and minimized the essential.

Mint and dill and cummin were garden herbs used as kitchen spices, and were not generally considered farm produce, of which the Mosaic law required a tithe be paid to the treasury in Israel (Lev. 27:30). Because it helped support the government, which was a theocracy operated to a great extent by the priesthood, the tithe was a form of taxation. A second tenth was to be paid each year for support of the various worship ceremonies and national festivals (Deut. 12:11, 17). Another tithe was to be paid every three years for a type of welfare, to support the Levites, aliens, orphans, and widows (Deut. 14:28-29), which amounted to an additional 3.3 percent a year. Israelites were therefore required to pay just over 23 percent of their income a year in taxes to fund the theocracy.

The instructions for tithing produce (see also Deut. 14:22) related to marketable farm crops such as grains, olive oil, wine, fruits, and vegetables. But the legalistic scribes and Pharisees extended the provision to include the smallest potted plant grown in a kitchen window. As today, herbs then were grown mostly for their leaves and seeds, and when the scribes and Pharisees picked leaves from a mint plant or gathered seeds from the dill and cummin plants, they would carefully count out the leaves and seeds, separating out one for God from each ten counted. They gloried in the self-righteousness of subscribing to such minutiae.

But with all their carefulness in such insignificant and often noncompulsory matters, they neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. They were obsessed with counting leaves and seeds but indifferent to basic ethics.

Jesus borrowed the word weightier from the rabbinical tradition, which had divided the law into light and heavy categories. In their inverted priorities the scribes and Pharisees had reduced such matters as justice and mercy and faithfulness to the light category, and elevated the tithing of garden herbs to the weightier category. In His reference to the truly weightier matters, Jesus paraphrased the words of Micah. Some 700 years earlier that prophet had declared, “[The Lord] has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Mic. 6:8).

The scribes and Pharisees were inequitable, unfair, unjust, unmerciful, brutal, unforgiving, unkind, greedy, and abusive of others. They were everything that is contrary to the weightier provisions of the law. Worst of all, they walked by sight rather than faith, trusting in their own works rather than God’s grace.

Jesus did not denounce the tithing of herbs, which would have been perfectly acceptable if done in sincerity and faith. And because tithing was at that time still a valid requirement under the Old Covenant, He certainly did not reprove tithing in general. “These are the things you should have done” He said, “without neglecting the others.” In light of the fact that such garden plants had not generally been considered covered under the Mosaic laws of tithing until rabbinical times, it seems likely that by these . . . things Jesus was referring to tithing in general. In other words, while being faithful to tithe according to scriptural instruction, they should not have neglected the Lord’s much weightier demands.

The tithe, however, was strictly a requirement of the Old Covenant. It is mentioned only six times in the New Testament, three times each in the gospels and in the book of Hebrews. In the gospels it is always used, as here, in regard to its abuse by the scribes and Pharisees (see also Luke 11:42; 18:12). In the book of Hebrews the Mosaic tithe is mentioned only in regard to its use in ancient Israel (Heb. 7:8-9; vv. 5-6). At no time in the New Testament is tithing mentioned as binding on the church or even recommended as the standard for Christian giving. This is easy to understand if one recognizes that tithes were a form of taxation to support the national life of Israel (see the author’s 1 Corinthians [Chicago: Moody, 1984], pp. 454-55). The closest New Testament parallel is the requirement to pay taxes indicated in Romans 13:6-7.

Almost without exception, false religions strongly magnify the insignificant and minimize or entirely ignore the truly spiritual. The worldly is idolized; the spiritual is disregarded.

It is also possible for true believers to become caught up in minutiae. Some Bible students, for instance, claim to have ascertained the meaning of virtually every obscure sign and symbol in Scripture yet give scant attention in their lives to the Bible’s clear and unambiguous moral truths.

Jesus graphically illustrated the scribes’ and Pharisees’ inversion of priorities by saying that they would strain out a gnat and swallow a camel. The gnat and the camel represented the smallest and the largest, respectively, of the ceremonially unclean animals (see Lev. 11:4, 42). Fastidious Pharisees would drink their wine through clenched teeth in order to filter out any small insects that might have gotten into the wine. In their typical reversal of values, those Jewish religious leaders were more concerned about being contaminated by a tiny gnat than by a huge camel. They were painstaking about formal, ceremonial trivialities but were unconcerned about their hypocrisy, dishonesty, cruelty, greed, self-worship, and a host of other serious sins. They substituted outward acts of religion for the essential virtues of the heart.

FALSE LEADERS ARE CURSED FOR THEIR EXTORTION AND SELF-INDULGENCE

Fifth, Jesus cursed the scribes and Pharisees for their extortion of others and indulgence of themselves.

To illustrate again their hypocrisy, Jesus used the figure of cleaning the outside of a cup and . . . dish, but not the inside. The Greek phrase behind dish was often used of a platter on which exquisite delicacies were served. The idea is of a person who offers a guest a seemingly lovely meal served with the best wine. But it turns out that, although the utensils are beautiful and ceremonially purified, the food served on them was putrid.

Outwardly, the religious leaders gave the appearance of pious devotion to the Lord, but inwardly they were full of the moral and spiritual filth of robbery and self-indulgence. They were ceremonially immaculate and attractive but spiritually squalid and repulsive.

Harpag (robbery) carries the ideas of plundering, pillaging, and extortion, and akrasia (self-indulgence) has the basic meaning of lack of self-control and was often used to denote unrestrained self-gratification. The unscrupulous religious leaders robbed the people they were supposed to serve in order to satisfy their own greed. They plundered both the souls and the wallets of the people and used the ill-gotten gains to serve themselves.

Making the accusation more personal and direct, Jesus said, “You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and of the dish, so that the outside of it may become clean also.” No utensil is clean that holds ill-gotten food or drink.

Throughout history, false religious leaders have become rich and fat by fleecing those they pretend to serve. Outwardly they appear righteous, caring, and exemplary, but inwardly they are rapacious wolves.

FALSE LEADERS ARE CURSED FOR THEIR CONTAMINATION

Sixth, Jesus cursed the scribes and Pharisees for spiritually contaminating everyone they touched.

After the spring rains had ceased, Palestinian Jews in New Testament times had the custom of whitewashing houses, walls, and particularly tombs. They began this task on the fifteenth of Adar, which roughly corresponds to March, in order to make their communities more attractive for Passover pilgrims. They had an additional purpose for whitewashing grave sites, however, especially those in and near Jerusalem. Because a person became ceremonially unclean for seven days if he touched a dead body or even a grave (Num. 19:16), all tombs were carefully whitewashed to identify them to unwary travelers. They would be prevented from inadvertently touching the tombs and becoming defiled and thereby disqualified to participate in many of the Passover activities, including the offering of sacrifices. In some cases the entire tomb was painted, and in others drawings of bones were painted on it to mark it as a sepulcher. Because of all the whitewash, Jerusalem and its environs glistened in the sunlight during the Passover season.

Like the whitewashed tombs, the scribes and Pharisees on the outside appeared beautiful, but inside they were also like the tombs, full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. They were spiritually dead and had no genuine regard for God’s law, despite their outward praise of it and claim to be its true interpreters and teachers. In an infinitely worse way than the tombs ceremonially defiled those who touched them, the scribes and Pharisees spiritually defiled those whom they touched.

FALSE LEADERS ARE CURSED FOR THEIR PRETENSION

Seventh and last, Jesus cursed the scribes and Pharisees for their pretension in presuming to be superior to others, including their forefathers.

For many hundreds of years these leaders had been in the vanguard of ventures to build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous saints and heroes of Israel. They would have been on the speaker’s platform in ceremonies honoring the great men of the past and would have voiced the loudest adulations.

Realizing that many of those saints had been persecuted and martyred by their own forefathers, the scribes and Pharisees made vehement disclaimers for themselves, asserting self-righteously: “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.”

But Jesus repudiated their pretension and exposed their true character, declaring that “consequently you bear witness against yourselves, that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.” At that very moment they were plotting to kill Jesus, their Messiah and the Prophet of prophets, proving they were even more wicked than their ungodly ancestors. They were so consumed by hatred of the truth and righteousness of God that they were totally blinded to the fact that they were about to crucify the very Son of God.

“Fill up then the measure of the guilt of your fathers,” Jesus said. “Your scheming to put to death the greatest prophet of all,” He declared in effect, “will be the final measure of the murderous conspiracies of your fathers against God’s messengers.” They were about to culminate all the guilt of those in the past who killed God’s messengers. This was the supreme act of sin against God’s prophets, as they murdered the Prophet-Messiah.

In a final curse Jesus exclaimed, “You serpents, you brood of vipers, how shall you escape the sentence of hell?” The question was rhetorical, meaning that they could not possibly escape the sentence of hell if they carried out the evil intent that now poisoned their hearts.

Ophis (serpents) was a general word for snakes, but echidna (vipers) referred to small poisonous snakes that lived primarily in the desert regions of Palestine and other parts of the eastern Mediterranean. Because they looked like a dried twig when they were still, a person collecting wood for a fire would often pick one up inadvertently and be bitten, as happened to Paul on the island of Malta. That particular viper was deadly, and when Paul suffered no harm from the bite, the superstitious islanders thought he was a god (Acts 28:3, 6). Vipers therefore had the understandable reputation for being both deadly and deceitful.

At the beginning of his ministry John the Baptist had called the unbelieving and unrepentant Pharisees and Sadducees who came to him for baptism a “brood of vipers” (Matt. 3:7), using exactly the same phrase used now by Jesus at the end of His ministry to describe those same false leaders. Neither the messages of John the Baptist nor of Jesus had any positive effect on those men, but served only to harden them in their unbelief and in their opposition to the gospel and to God’s righteous messengers.

In pagan Greek culture, the echidna had long been associated with evil. In their mythology the name was given to a monster deity that was half snake and half woman and that gave birth to other monsters, including the murderous sphinx of Thebes.

By the time of Christ, echidna was universally associated with extreme wickedness and danger. Therefore when Jesus called the scribes and Pharisees a brood of vipers, He was declaring them to be both evil and deadly.

As explained earlier in this chapter, the term geenna (hell) was derived from the name of a valley near Jerusalem where trash and garbage continually burned. Jesus’ relating vipers to the sentence of hell suggests the common practice of a farmer’s burning the dried stubble in his field to prepare the land for the next planting. As the flames approached their dens, vipers would try to scurry away but were usually unsuccessful and consumed by the fire. Jesus said, in effect, “You wicked, deceitful men, do you really think you can outrun God’s fire of judgment?”

As Jesus had just reminded them, those false leaders were guilty of keeping people out of the kingdom, guilty of subverting the people, guilty of perverting God’s truth, guilty of inverting God’s priorities, guilty of extorting God’s people, guilty of spiritually contaminating everyone they touched, guilty of pretending to be righteous while being malevolent, and worst of all guilty of preparing to execute God’s own Son.