Jesus Hates Hypocrisy
Even More Than You Do!
Part 6 – Learning from History
Matthew 23:29-39
February 15, 2009
Me: One of the most frustrating parts of parenting is when your child gets hurt doing something that had already hurt them sometime before.
You parents know what I’m talking about, right?
You’ve told them over and over not to play with chainsaws, but they didn’t listen and they got hurt. And what happens two weeks later? They’re doing it again.
We: And it’s not just with parenting is it?
How many of you here have done something that caused you pain or hardship, and then you thought you could do it again and not be hurt by it, but it ended up the same way?
Pretty embarrassing, right? Especially if it gives your wife or mother-in-law the excuse to say, “I told you so.”
The issue is that a lot of times we don’t learn from our mistakes, and it can cause pain or hardship.
God: On a broader scope, people and nations can refuse to learn from the mistakes of the past; so they can continue to make those mistakes.
And depending on what those mistakes were, it can lead to judgment from God Himself.
The passage we’re going to look at today describes that kind of blind living, but I believe it has some implications for you and me on a very personal level.
We’re going to work our way through this passage and look at some lessons from it. And then I want go into some ways to show the world around us that we are not slaves to the mistakes of the past.
Matthew 23:29-39 –
29 "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. 30 And you say, ’If we had lived in the days of our forefathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ 31 So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. 32 Fill up, then, the measure of the sin of your forefathers!
* The earlier generations killed the prophets. This generation would kill the one the prophets foretold.
* Jesus pointed out that they were no different from their ancestors at all for they were plotting to kill another messenger from God—the Messiah himself. (LACNT)
These guys were already planning on how to have Jesus killed, and it would fall into place in just about 3 days from this conversation.
They were so blinded. They were blinded to their own hypocrisy, and they were blinded to the Messiah standing right in front of them.
And you know what? If we’re not careful, we can become the same way.
Like the Pharisees we can become so engrossed in the religious wrappings of the faith that we lose sight of Christ Himself.
We see things only through our denominations eyes, or only through the eyes of our favorite TV or radio preacher, or through the eyes of our favorite Christian author.
Sometimes we miss out on truth because it doesn’t come in the “Wesleyan” package or in the package fed to you by Focus on the Family or the Moral Majority.
Now, I’m not against those groups, by the way, so don’t have a cow, okay?
I’m just saying that you can’t let them do all your thinking for you, no matter how good they are and no matter how much you might agree with them.
The trouble with the Pharisees and such was that very few of them could see outside of their little boxes, and that’s why they couldn’t see the truth of Jesus even though He was right in front of them. It was causing them to repeat the mistakes of their forefathers.
And because of this Jesus tells them to go ahead and fill up the measure of their sin.
The idea behind “the measure of the sin” is that God can only tolerate so much sin; and when the measure is “full,” He must respond in wrath. (EBC) He did in the case of the temple in AD 71, and the time is coming when He will pour out His wrath on the earth for all its sin.
Let’s continue in verse 33:
33 "You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell? 34 Therefore I am sending you prophets and wise men and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. 35 And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. 36 I tell you the truth, all this will come upon this generation.
* The job of persecution is not done.
Not only will they do away with the Messiah, they would persecute those who come in His name.
It has not let up since the time of the apostles until now, and I’m pretty convinced that it won’t let up until we’re with Jesus.
And Jesus promises that judgment will be brought because of it.
Up to this point in the chapter, Jesus had been addressing the religious leaders.
But here Jesus expands His words to include “this generation.” This is because the leaders represent the people; and the people, despite Jesus’ warnings, do not abandon their leaders for Jesus the Messiah. And this sets the stage for Jesus’ final words regarding Jerusalem, (EBC) which we find starting in verse 37.
37 "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. 38 Look, your house is left to you desolate. 39 For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ’Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’"
Jerusalem was intended to be the center of worship of the true God. But Jerusalem had become blind to God.
Jerusalem here stands for all the Jewish people, but this prophecy specifically looks to the city’s destruction.
* By their constant rejection of God’s messengers, they had sealed their fate. Jesus wanted to gather the nation and bring it to repentance, but the people wouldn’t let him.
Here we see the depth of Jesus’ feelings for lost people and for his beloved city that would soon be destroyed. Jesus took no pleasure in denouncing the religious establishment or in prophesying the coming destruction of the city and the people that rejected him. He had come to save, but they would not let him. (LACNT)
The bottom line of all this part of Scripture is found in that famous quote by George Santayana –
"Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it." (Life of Reason, Reason in Common Sense)
I was doing some searching to get that quote and found that there are a number of versions of it, but the one I just mentioned seems to be the correct one.
One of the websites I visited described the headaches in trying to find the correct version, and he ends with this:
There are three things I’ve learned from this:
1) Those who don’t learn from history are condemned to write web pages about it.
2) Those who cannot come up with quotes of their own are condemned to repeat them.
3) Those who do not remember the past are doomed to misquote it.
(Jaywalker.ca)
Anyway, my point here is that the Pharisees and leaders didn’t understand that they were repeating the history of their forefathers, and they would be judged for it.
You: So what do you think is the main lesson we should learn from this passage?
Learn from the mistakes of history.
No matter how much I looked at this passage and studied it, I could not get past the idea that this is what Jesus wants us to get today.
The church of Jesus Christ can learn a lot from the history of the Jews as well as from our own history.
Just as the Jews had a bloody history in terms of how they dealt with the prophets, Christianity has a bloody history as well.
The name of Jesus has been used to justify killings, torture, war, slavery, and all sorts of evil things throughout the last 2000+ years.
One of the biggest objections I get when discussing Jesus with people is that the bloody history of Christianity makes it a false religion. Besides the issue of hypocrisy, this is the biggest objection I run across.
So how do we handle the arguments about how history “proves” that Christianity is false?
I’ve got three ways to go about that:
1. Point out that all major religions have bloody histories.
Christianity is not the exception to the rule by any means.
Anybody hear about the “war on terror?” Who is waging this war, for the most part? Radical Muslims who are using their religion as a justification for terror.
Many would say that Islam is not a religion of war, but of peace, and they could show you plenty of passages from the Quran to back that up.
I’m not saying it’s one or the other. I’m simply saying that here’s an example of a religion being used to justify wanton death and destruction.
Hinduism, Buddhism, and others have the same kind of legacy.
And each of them have followers who decry the use of their religion this way.
But the truth or falseness of those religions isn’t affected by their histories. The truth or falseness is determined by objective measures of what truth actually is.
But there’s more, and that leads me to the second way to meet this objection:
2. Point out that the while it’s true that people have misused the name of Jesus, this does not mean that Jesus Himself is false.
His actions and words are true or not true independent of the misguided actions of those who claim to be His followers.
In other words, Jesus lived, died, and rose again. The Crusades don’t affect those facts.
Jesus claimed to be the only way to heaven. That claim is true whether or not Christians owned slaves during the Civil War.
Jesus healed peoples’ diseases and brought people from the dead. This is true whether or not people were tortured and killed for being heretics during the Middle Ages.
Does all that make sense? People’s actions do not make Jesus true or not true. He is true or not true, regardless of how people act in His name.
Here’s what I believe is the best and most important application of this passage, however:
3. Live a life that is contrary to the history they like to point out.
Live in such a way that they will realize that the ugly stuff is the exception, not the rule.
Show them that you are appalled at how people have used the name of Jesus for their own greedy and murderous intentions, and that Jesus would not condone that.
Show them that you’re not bound by the mistakes of the Church.
Show them that you don’t let others do your thinking for you, and that you’re more concerned with what the Scriptures teach than what comes over the airwaves or in the mail.
That your eyes and ears are wide open to Christ, not blinded by tradition or the media.
In this passage, Jesus saying, “Look, you boneheads! You haven’t learned anything from your own history that you claim to be ashamed of. You’re continuing in that grand tradition of killing God’s spokesmen.
“If you were really ashamed, you’d stop it and recognize Me as the Messiah so My Father can bring real healing to Israel.”
In our case, Jesus is saying, “Don’t be a bonehead. Don’t fall into the traps that have led others to misuse My Name so often these last 2000 years.”
Live a life that totally contradicts all the ugly stuff they’d like to throw in your face, so they can see that you and Christianity are not defined by history, but by the truth of Scripture.
We: There’s no question that Christianity has a bloody and sinful history among its people.
And there’s no question that even today, people use the name of Jesus to perpetrate horrible things on people and to justify their own greed.
And there’s no question that there are plenty of people in our area who aren’t above calling themselves Christians but who follow their own agendas and ambitions instead of Christ’s.
So I’d like to challenge you to live a life that shows what Jesus is really all about – restoring relationships to God by dying for them.
Live the kind of life that reflects the lengths God will go to see that they have eternal life.
That’s not something people expect a lot nowadays, and it blows them away when they see it.
So when they look at you, will they see someone who embodies the mistakes of the past, or will they see someone who’s more concerned with reflecting Jesus and His love.
That’s up to you, but I think you know what Jesus would prefer.
Let’s pray.
