Sermons

Matthew 23:13-36 – 7 woes of the Pharisees

 

Intro: Sermon concludes series of Christ’s 7 woes.

Review

Prop: Provocations of Christ’s indignation

1. Woe to the pragmatists (vv. 13-15)

 

1. They lock the door to heaven.
2. They force conversions.
3. They condemn their converts.

 

2. Woe to the blind (vv. 16-22)

 

1. Blind by lying to yourself.
2. Blind by lying to God.

 

3. Woe to the hypocrites (vv. 23-28)

 

1. Inverted priorities (vv. 23-24)
2. Reverse cleanliness (vv. 25-26)
3. External facades (vv. 27-28)

 

4. Woe to the murderers (vv. 29-36)

[TRANS] Again, a “woe” judgment, the last one of seven.

• Each woe serves as X’s warning and judgment on Pharisees.
  • Warning of what not to be in your heart.
    • Warning could be heeded.
    • Warning, nevertheless, Pharisees would not be heeded.
      • Hearing woe will not hear X’s warning.
      • Proving under X’s condemnation.

 

• Each woe exposes increasing hardness of heart.

 

• Final woe is cumulatively the worst: murder.

 

^ESV  Revelation 21:8 But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.” (Rev 21:8 ESV)

^ESV  Revelation 22:15 Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood. (Rev 22:15 ESV)

 

[TRANS] Presuming you would never murder when 3 witnesses say you would.

By the mouth of two or three witnesses, let every fact be confirmed

(Dt. 19:15; 2 Cor. 13:1).

 

Prop: Christ calls three witnesses to testify against the scribes and Pharisees.

 

1. First witness: “Your past” (vv. 29-30)

[KEY] X targets “scribes and Pharisees” final time, calling them “hypocrites” (v. 29).

• Josephus records first century practice, Pharisees building “tombs” to saints.
  • Monuments to “prophets.”
  • Think, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, as a testimony of “the righteous” (v. 29).

 

• Ironically, X reveals who they really thought were “the righteous.”
  • Venerated how righteous these prophets from the past were.
  • To say they would have been better fans.
    • Religious focus on them.
      • Pharisees claiming superiority to forefathers who had killed God’s messengers.

 

• Verse 30 is a witness against them: “…saying, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets” (v. 30).

 

• Testimony of prophets martyred recorded in Hebrews 11.

^ESV  Hebrews 11:35-38 Women received back their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. ³⁶ Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment.

³⁷ They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated–

³⁸ of whom the world was not worthy– wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. (Heb 11:35-38 ESV)

[KEY] Verse 30 is clear confession of self-righteous presumption, claiming:

“Were we to have been there then, instead of our forefathers, we would have seen things clearly.

• “We never would have done what they did.”

 

• Same presumption: “If I had been in the garden instead of Adam and Eve, I would not fallen to the serpent’s temptation.”

 

• Rational denying of shared culpability for Adam’s headship – the Fall.

 

• Realizing, had you been there, you would have done exactly what Adam and Eve did, is what make sense of all of humankind being held responsible for Adam’s sin.

 

[KEY] Presuming your innocence (before God) based on not being as evil as a forerunner (or anyone else in your life) is naïve and judgmental and dangerous.

• Think of the older brother of the prodigal (Luke 15:11-32) who refused to celebrate the redemption of his repentant younger brother, believing he deserved what his younger brother received.

 

• Presumption leads to pride and pride leads to a great fall.

 

 

 

1. Second witness: “Your present” (vv. 31-33)

[KEY] X turns their confession against them as a witness against themselves.

• Presumption is in and of itself indicting because Pharisees are in the same line as those who murdered God’s prophets.
  • X is less concerned w/genetic connection and more the spiritual one.
  • To their own confession, they are related to their murderous forerunners.

 

• You are the “sons of those who murdered the prophets” (v. 31).
  • Jesus had called them sons of their Father the devil, not too much earlier.

^ESV  John 8:44 You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. (Joh 8:44 ESV)

 

[KEY] Their witness of self-indictment was “real time” bc/of their current plot to kill Jesus.

• Murder inside their hearts, agst/X right then and there.

 

• X reading their murderous minds.

 

^ESV  Matthew 21:46 And although they were seeking to arrest him, they feared the crowds, because they held him to be a prophet. (Mat 21:46 ESV)

 

^ESV  John 11:53 So from that day on they made plans to put him to death. (Joh 11:53 ESV)

 

[TRANS] Verse 32, X w/indignation, commands them: “Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers” (v. 32; see Is. 51:17; Jer. 25:15).

• This the command for the Pharisees to finish what their apostate, unbelieving forefathers had committed.

 

• “Finish the job!”   

 

• As he would command Judas Iscariot.

^ESV  John 13:27 Then after he had taken the morsel, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, “What you are going to do, do quickly.” (Joh 13:27 ESV)

 

[KEY] X pulls no punches, continuing to expose them saying, “You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentence to hell? (v. 33).

• X pictures them as John the Baptist had, years before, as snakes, an unpredictable, yet cunning brood.
  • Like Original Serpent, Satan (Gen. 3:1), they are lying and lethal.
  • They aim to strike and kill.

[KEY] And Jesus finishes with the rhetorical question, “…how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?” (v. 33).

• Question carries both sentiment of compassion mixed w/sense of condemnation.
  • Is hell for them a foregone conclusion?
  • No, but they are moving in that direction.

 

1. Third witness: “Your future” (v. 34-36)

[TRANS] X calls 3rd witness who are those they will soon engage.

• On the surface, this is counterintuitive.
  • Ones, sent by the Lord to build his church.
  • Some of who will have a clear death sentence.
    • See Eph. 4:11-13 “prophets” “teachers” etc.
    • All gifted in the church.

 

[Question] “Who carries out this death sentence?”

“…some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town” (v. 34).

• Future actions cry out against you – actions only X could predict and foresee.

 

• He knew who he was talking to.

[Illus] Paul in 2 Corinthians 11:24-25, said he was flogged.

^ESV  2 Corinthians 11:24-25 Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. ²⁵ Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; (2Co 11:25 ESV) (2Co 11:24 ESV)

Early church was persecuted in the synagogue and town to town.

Paul, pre-X persecuting church, town to town: Acts 8:1-4; 9:1-2.

 

Paul, himself later driven from town to town: Acts 13:45-50; Iconium 14:1-2; Lystra 14:19-20; Thessalonica 17:5-10; Berea 17:13-14; Corinth 18:12-18; Jerusalem 21:27; 23:12, Caesarea 24:1-9.

 

[TRANS] Next verse perhaps most harrowing.

• X (like it or not) answers why Christians are persecuted.

 

• Validate God’s judgment against unbelief.
  • Believers sent to evangelize.
  • In so doing, persecuted.
    • So, all the full guilt of sin will be levied against unrepentant sinners.
    • Picture of condemnation.

[Appl] You may ask yourself why you’re being taunted for being a Christian. Why are you being marginalized or held back as a believer. Do you realize that the Lord is exposing an unbeliever’s sin and you might not even understand your role in this.

Your life and witness will exacerbate or aggravate others so they will come to the end of themselves, leaving only one of two options. Either people respond to Christ or reject him altogether.

 

• Repercussions of what X says, are astounding. “…so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth…” (v. 35).

[Illus] Had an old college professor who’d always say, “All means all and that’s all, all means.”

• Idea that the combined weight of every murder ever committed being held against them seems rough.
  • Jesus illustrates this weight beginning with “…righteous Abel and ending with Zechariah.”
    • We know Abel and we know he’s the first to be murdered.
    • No disputing him but which Zechariah are we talking about?

 

• There are 20 references to Zechariahs in Bible.
  • Could be John the Baptist’s father?
  • Or, what about the minor prophet who wrote the most about Christ, second to Isaiah.

[KEY] There is the lesser known, Zechariah from 2 Chronicles.

^ESV  2 Chronicles 24:20-22 Then the Spirit of God clothed Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the priest, and he stood above the people, and said to them, “Thus says God, ‘Why do you break the commandments of the LORD, so that you cannot prosper? Because you have forsaken the LORD, he has forsaken you.’”

²¹ But they conspired against him, and by command of the king they stoned him with stones in the court of the house of the LORD.

²² Thus Joash the king did not remember the kindness that Jehoiada, Zechariah’s father, had shown him, but killed his son. And when he was dying, he said, “May the LORD see and avenge!” (2Ch 24:22 ESV)

• The priest told the people that faithfulness to the LORD is the only condition for blessing and he was killed for this.
  • This under the full authority of King Joash behind this conspiracy.
    • 2 Chronicles has been cast as the last book of the Hebrew bible.

 

• Though accounts happened 800 years before OT writing was completed.

 

• In either case, this cast Abel to 2 Chron’s Zechariah as a symbol of saying, A to Z.

 

[KEY] Still, though no record of Zechariah the minor prophet being martyred, Christ explicitly designates Zechariah as “the son of Barachiah” (v. 35; see Zech. 1:1).

^ESV  Zechariah 1:1 In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the LORD came to the prophet Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, (Zec 1:1 ESV)

• Every OT believer, every saint from Abel to Zechariah, “between the sanctuary and the altar” (v. 35).

 

• All this blood shed is on your head.

 

 

Verse 36 just broadens all of this to all unbelieving Israel.

The pre-curser to Christ’s lament or them.

 

[How does this apply?]

• I think it could be easy to say, well this does not apply to me because I’ve never killed anyone, nor do I plan to.

 

• But I want to ask you a question in terms of what you do know to be true about your own heart. Do you practice hate?

 

• In Jesus’ economy, hate is the driving force for murder and hate (like lust with adultery) if left unrepented of, is what keeps people from God and sends people to hell.

 

 

Let’s end with a practical study in 1 John 3.

^ESV  1 John 3:10-16 By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.

¹¹ For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.

¹² We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous.

¹³ Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you.

¹⁴ We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death.

¹⁵ Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.

¹⁶ By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. (1Jo 3:10-16 ESV)