Matthew 23: 13 – 33
Whew, something smells
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. 23 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin 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.’ 31 “Therefore you are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. 32 Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers’ guilt. 33 Serpents, brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell?
As you can see from today’s topic we have a stinky lesson in store for you. You will see the connection as we review this portion of scripture.
In composing this study my mind drifted off to a funny television program with the Jerry Seinfeld series entitled The Smelly Car.
After dinner, Jerry gets his car ack from the valet. He and Elaine get in the car and are overwhelmed at the intense odor in it. They both realize that they had noticed that the valet had really bad B.O. (Body odor).
Jerry is appalled at the smell in his car and thinks that it is the restaurant’s valet who parked his car as the reason for the stink. He goes through a car wash and takes other measures but no matter what he does, he can’t get rid of the smell.
Worst of all, the smell has attached itself to him and to Elaine who rode in the car with him. Now others are starting to make comments on their personal hygiene.
Jerry even tries to sell it but after the car dealer took a whiff, he refused to buy it. As a last-ditch effort Jerry brings his car near a gang of hoodlums. After getting out of his car he tosses the keys inside his car, as they look on. The program ends when one of the car thieves gets in Jerry’s car and you see he facial response to the smell.
We will see that our Lord Is going to let the religious leaders be aware that they smell. They think by the way they act that they smell wonderful to the people but, they stink.
We will witness an amazing comparison our Lord uses in letting these religious phonies know of their condition in a variety of points. In one verse He compares their tithing of herbs to honorable attributes. We will see that His reference to these herbs are important because they have properties that deal with digestive problems which as you know give off offensive odors.
It will be quite clear that the words which Jesus has spoken to His disciples and the crowds could hardly have failed to rile the Scribes and Pharisees as they stood bristling among the crowds in the Temple. They were members of a very excitable and fervent people living at a very excitable and fervent time and attending a very excitable and fervent feast, and we can be sure therefore that they would begin to defend themselves with some vehemence and speak out vociferously against Jesus. And while they may well have been feeling somewhat guilty, they certainly did not see themselves as Jesus (and now the crowds) saw them.
This time He held nothing back. This was not just another session of challenge by Israel’s leaders. The Scribes and Pharisees had admitted defeat in that regard. This was to be the final denouement. He had given them every opportunity, but they had given no ground at all, simply falling back on silence when their false ideas were shown up, and He knew therefore that it was important that, with His death and resurrection fast approaching, it was made clear to all the people, and to them, that the Scribes and Pharisees had failed in their responsibilities and were now being replaced by God. He now publicly reveals the full truth about them. But now the vineyard (i.e. His Kingdom) was about to be let out to other tenants (His disciples), and it was important that all should know why, and should be convinced that it was necessary. We should note that had there not been solid truth in His words they would have been ineffective and would have been waved aside and treated with contempt. It was because of the truth that all saw that they contained, that the Scribes and Pharisees were so angry and determined that now He must die as soon as it could be arranged.
The first two woes attack the Scribes and Pharisees for preventing people from coming to a closeness of Adoni Yahweh. By their teaching and their influence, they ‘lock them out’ from it, and instead put great efforts into rather making them like themselves, ‘sons of Gehenna’.
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.
In chapter 12.28 The Lord Jesus had castigated them for not seeing that the Kingdom of God had ‘come upon’ them. Here He follows that up by charging them with also preventing others from entering under that because of their own blindness and obstinacy. They not only do not enter in, but they carefully lock the door to prevent others entering in, by means of their persuasive words and clever manipulation of Scripture. As the next verse makes clear it particularly angered Him that they put off seekers after truth from finding that truth, (and thus prevented the Shepherd finding His sheep). No wonder He was ‘angry’.
The word ‘hypocrites’, already used by Him of people like this who could not see beyond their noses and rejected every sign given to them and of those who did everything for their own glory will now be applied to them continually. They made a great show of godliness, and yet stood in the way of those who would become truly godly.
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.
The idea of the prevention of others from entering a closeness to God The Father Is taken a step further by considering their efforts to win even Gentiles to God’s Law, and then to so concentrate their minds on their own one-sided interpretation of it that they made them worse than themselves, and more fitted for Gehenna even than they were. They had a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge, and had become prisoners of their own emphases, and they had failed to shake themselves out of it when it was drawn to their attention. There is a warning in this for us all not to become so tied down in detail that we overlook the greater truths.
Their next condemnation lies in the fact that they lay greater emphasis on their own gifts and offerings than they do on the God-provided and thus ‘holy’ means of approach to Himself. They emphasize their own works rather than God’s provision. Instead of ‘seeing God’ their eyes are filled with their own religious activity.
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?
Our Holy Master Jesus Is so moved by the idea of how they are turning both Jews and Gentiles from the truth that He changes His description from ‘hypocrites’ to ‘blind guides’, and He gives an example of the way in which they take men’s minds off the essentials and fix them on what is marginal. By what they advise men to swear on they treat the gold in the Temple as more important than the Temple itself. Their eyes are not fixed on the great King himself, to Whom the Temple points, but on the great treasury which contains their gold. In other words, their thoughts and hearts are not on God but on Mammon, even if it is ‘sanctified’ Mammon. Their eyes were more fixed in ‘observing the Law’ that on the God Whose Law they were called on to observe. But if they had only thought about it honestly, they would have recognized that the Temple as the symbol of God’s presence, and as such being the very reason for the gold being offered, was far, far more important than the gold within it. The One to Whom the offerings are made is more important than the offerings. They have made the creature more important than the Creator. (They have failed to recognize that God Is Spirit and that those who worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in truth - John 4.24). Thus, they are ‘fools and blind’.
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.’
Our Great King Jesus gives a further example of their folly. They declare that to swear by the altar signified nothing, while to swear by the gifts on the altar was essentially binding and made the person a debtor to fulfil their oath. This again revealed the same attitude of concentration on the means of worship (with which they felt closely connected), rather than on the central truth that they could only come to God through the shedding of blood as symbolized by the God-provided altar. Once again ‘fulfilment of the Law’ was having priority to God’s provided means of atonement.
19 Fools and blind! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift?
Then He passes His verdict and confirms why He considers that they are spiritually blind. Our Holy God Jesus’ point is that they lay too much stress on inessentials, and not sufficient on the reality of the living God. (This was in fact their whole problem all the way through). In His eyes the gifts only become important because of their connection with the Temple and the altar, which point beyond themselves to God. It is through them that the gifts ‘are made holy’, and thus it is they that are of the greatest importance. Our Lord Jesus recognizes that until His own sacrifice of Himself has been completed the altar and the Temple are essential, while on the other hand the gifts and offerings made there are simply man’s participation in it. Thus, the problem with the Scribes and Pharisees is that their worship is not based on the spiritual realities, with God filling the vision, but on the physical and the emotional aspects of coming and making their offerings, and therefore they do not encourage men, as it were, to break through to God. They are rather holding men at a distance from God and as a result they do not thereby come under the Kingly Rule of God. They are rather taken up with what they do themselves, their means of worship, and their participation in it.
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.
So now He tries to turn their thoughts Heavenward. Note the advance in thought. First the altar where propitiation can be made, and men can approach God, then the Temple from which worship and prayer and incense is offered and where God Is symbolically present, then Heaven where God Is present in majesty, and then especially ‘the throne of God’ where, as it were, God Himself Is seated in glory. That was where their worship should have led them, rather than simply to admiring and concentrating on their own gifts.
23 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin 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.
Here we come to the section that I originally started off with. When I first looked closely at the passage I began to question why our Precious Holy Spirit would list these three particular herbs and then I also thought is there a corollary relationship to the three wonderful attributes.
When someone gives off noises from their body, such as flatulence (gas), burping, and body odors is due to stomach digestive issues.
Now if you look up the properties of mint, anise, and cumin you will find out they are used in breath products and in digestive conditions. So, what am I leading to with this information. A couple of things our Great and Holy Caring Shepherd is recommending to these religious guys;
1. They do not realize it but even though they are all dressed up in regal outfits they give off unpleasant odors.
2. Our Adoni Yeshua recommends that the herbs these men go to great extremes to tithe should be utilized to help their own smell.
3. As co-shepherds these religious men should help relieve (i.e. metaphor of using herbs) God’s people from their pain. They should be giving the people the correct medicinal herbs of justice, mercy and faith.
Let me highlight these wonderful attributes of a Godly society. Justice is close to love and grace. Various needy groups are the recipients of justice. These groups include widows, orphans, resident aliens (sojourners or strangers), wage earners, the poor, prisoners, slaves, and the sick. Each of these groups has specific needs which keep its members from being able to participate in aspects of the life of their community. Even life itself might be threatened. Justice involves meeting those needs. Justice is depriving others of their basic needs or failing to correct matters when those rights are not met.
Mercy is when we are spared from judgment, harm, danger, or trouble. As our Holy El Shaddai, Almighty God, distributes mercy to us then we should also give mercy to others.
Faith contains two aspects; Intellectual assent and trust. Intellectual assent is believing something to be true. Trust is actually relying on the fact that the something is true.
Understanding these two aspects of faith is crucial. Many people believe certain facts about Jesus Christ. Many people will intellectually agree with the facts the Bible declares about our Lord Jesus. But knowing those facts to be true is not what the Bible means by faith.
Believing that Jesus Is God incarnate who died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins and was resurrected is not enough. We must personal and fully rely on the death of Christ as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
24 Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!
He summarizes their position by a huge contrast. The gnat was one of the smallest of creatures, the camel was the largest in Palestine. They are so one-sided in vision spiritually that when they see that a gnat (qamla) has fallen into their drink they carefully strain it out in order not to partake of an ‘unclean’ creeping thing, but when a camel fall into the drink (equally ‘unclean’) they swallow it down without even noticing it. The point is that they are such blind guides that they concentrate on dealing with the small things with great care, and practically ignore the big things altogether, without bothering to consider them. They spend hours splitting their dill and cumin into tenths and nine tenths, and ensuring that they have missed none, and even include mint which was not necessarily required to be a tithe, and yet they pass over justice, mercy and faithfulness as though they did not matter. They are too busy with the intricate details to spend much time on large matters.
Having demonstrated that justice, mercy and compassion, and faithfulness was to enjoy the major focus of their thinking Jesus now demonstrates by illustration where they are falling short. They are concentrating on externals rather than what comes from the inner heart. Fulfilling ritual correctly has become more important than dealing justly with people, meeting with God, revealing compassion and being faithful to His will.
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.
Note that this parallels those who lay great weight on their own gifts and offerings, which have a derived holiness, rather than on what is intrinsically holy. That prevented them from genuinely approaching the living God. Here their fault lies in cleansing externals while not being concerned about what lies beneath, and thus failing to please God. In both cases it is to miss what is essential for the sake of the inessential. They laid great stress on the ritual cleansing of pottery, and of their own outer bodies, but they ignored what lay within themselves and were thus full of ‘extortion’ (obtaining things by false means) and ‘excess’ (lack of self-control, self-indulgence). It is not, of course, that the Scribes and Pharisees were particularly evil men. They simply indulged in the same corrupt practices as many others. The difference lies in the fact that they set themselves up as the standard by which others should be judged, and as the custodians of the people’s morals, and should thus have been a glowing example to others. But they were not. Their light should have been shining before men, but instead it was dimmed and distorted. When we call ourselves Christians we too must beware that our lives are consistent with what we believe, or we too will come under the same condemnation.
The picture of the Pharisee carefully cleaning the outside of a vessel while at the same time it was full of filthiness, without bothering about the inside, is probably intended to be amusing as well as telling. Jesus constantly uses caricature to get over His point. But in the application the vessel represents themselves, keeping their outsides clean with constant washings, and yet not worrying about the inner heart. It was certainly typical of much of what they did, and much of what many of us do.
Alternately the idea might be that while they kept the outside of their vessels clean, they filled them with food and drink obtained by doubtful means (e.g. devouring widow’s houses and encouraging gifts from the destitute who could not afford them).
26 Blind Pharisee first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also.
But what they should have done was first ensure that the inside was clean. Then there might be some point in cleansing the outside. For the outside cannot be truly clean until the inside is. The result of making the inside clean will, in the case of a human being, result in the outside becoming clean as well.
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.
It was the custom in Palestine as the Feast of Passover approached, to generally clear up the highways and specially to mark the graves. This would be done by whitewashing them, so that pilgrims who did not know the district would not accidentally meet them and be rendered ‘unclean’ for seven days (Numbers 19.16), thus missing out on the Feast. For a time, they looked sparkling white, they were ‘beautiful’. But it did not obscure the fact that inside the tombs were rotting flesh and dead men’s bones. The same was true of the Scribes and Pharisees. They put on a show on the outside but they were dead and putrefying inside.
We do not need to over-emphasize ‘beautiful’. Jesus is not setting an aesthetic standard but indicating the difference between an unkempt and uncared for grave, and their smartness once they had been cleaned up and painted and looked respectable. In many cases the whitewashing would draw attention to their beauty, for tombstones and monuments was often to be ‘beautiful’ as the resting place of their occupants. It is, however, quite possible that people did tend to try to beautify them as well, especially at such times.
Jesus applies the picture to the Scribes and Pharisees. They too ‘whitewashed’ themselves by their ritual activities, but were inwardly unclean, ‘full of hypocrisy and lawlessness’. They were in total contrast with the pure in heart who saw God. The charge of ‘lawlessness’ is especially poignant, for they prided themselves on observing the Law. But that was their problem. They selected which parts they would keep, and those tended to concentrate on the religious ritual which was observable by God and men. Instead of being pure in heart they were whitewashed on the outside. There may also be a reference in this ‘whiteness’ to the fact that some wore white robes to make an impression of purity.
Along with their generation the Scribes and Pharisees made a great fuss about the godly of the past by erecting and decorating their tombs and monuments. It made them feel that they were not like their fathers who had disposed of the prophets and the godly. But at the same time they rejected John the Baptist and were intent on getting rid of Jesus. They did not realize that they were thereby guilty of rejecting Someone even greater than the prophets, for they were not spiritually attuned. Thus, Jesus points out that they were essentially just like their fathers.
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.’
The thought of whitewashed tombs leads on to the way they treat the tombs of the prophets, and the monuments to ‘the righteous’. They honor both prophets and righteous men of the past. They build their tombs and decorate their monuments (Herod the Great had built a new marble monument over David’s tomb. It was an age of such gestures. And the Scribes and Pharisees, as well as the people, heartily approved of it because of their admiration for David, even if they did not like Herod and did not do it themselves. And the wealthier among them would almost certainly have contributed to similar gestures). ‘Righteous men’ are those well-known from their history for their faithfulness to God. Once men are dead they very often become seen as respectable and acceptable, and that is what has happened in this case. Once they are safely out of the way and could no longer make accusations or demands they were honored. The nuisance of yesterday, on dying, has become the hero of today.
The Scribes and Pharisees and the people smugly said, (and probably believed it), ‘If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.’ They were actually convinced that their attitude to prophets and righteous men was the right one, and that had they been alive in their day they would have listened to them and followed them. They totally overlooked their own attitude towards John the Baptist and their plots against Jesus, and their willingness to beat people who disagreed with them. After all, that was different. Jesus could not really be righteous, for He did not agree with them, and all should recognize they only beat people who were in the wrong, (that is who were opposed to or neglected their teaching). And the same attitude would apply to His followers, for while He criticized their righteousness, they criticized His and theirs. And they would continue to do so. They no doubt said that He took things too far and applied them too literally. What was needed was balance, (that is, to take up their position). They considered that it was probably better for all if He was out of the way. For in their eyes He was not really ‘a prophet’. He was a false prophet. So, in their eyes rejecting Him was not quite the same thing as rejecting the prophets.
31 “Therefore you are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. 32 Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers’ guilt.
Our Lord Jesus then points out to them that by all this they are simply drawing attention to the fact that they are the sons of those who slew the prophets. They are of the same blood and, although they may not think it, are demonstrating the same attitude, for they are at this very time plotting His death.
‘Fill you up then the measure of your fathers.’ This was a sarcastic way of telling them to carry on their plots against Him. It was all that could be expected for they were like their fathers and could therefore only be expected to behave like them. ‘The measure’ probably indicates that they will finally fill up what their fathers have commenced, referring to the limit put by God on the amount of sin He will tolerate, which once it is reached causes Him to act.
33 Serpents, brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell?
Our Holy Good Shepherd Jesus then depicts all their attempts to appear righteous as simply indicating that like snakes and vipers who are concerned to escape from danger. Their concern is to escape the judgment of Gehenna. The picture is based on chapter 3.7, and the snakes escaping from the cornfields as the reapers get to work. The psalmists likened men to vipers because of the venom of their mouths (Psalm 58.4) and because of their deafness in the face of entreaty (Psalm 58.4), while in the blessing of Jacob the serpent and the adder are pictured as lying in the way waiting to bite their victims and bring them crashing down from their mounts (Genesis 49.17). Thus, our Lord Jesus Is likening them to their fathers, they are venomous and deaf, and deceitfully waylay the unwary, and therefore have little hope of avoiding Gehenna.
