Matthew: Where can we go wrong? (23:1-39)

This sermon was preached to Grace Church Guildford on 26 May 2024. The audio recording of the sermon can be found below along with the transcript.

Where did it all go wrong? How did it end up like this? Have ever found yourself asking those kinds of questions? For example, you start a new job. From the advert, it seems to be exactly what you have been looking for: a more rewarding role, with less hours and better pay. And yet, within a few months, you find yourself sitting at your new desk, wondering why you ever took the job. How a role that seemed so right, could turn out to be such a mess. Or teenagers, many of you are sitting exams right now. And so, you are preparing as well as you can for whatever could come up in them. It feels like you have completed every past paper in existence. You not only made a fancy revision timetable, but this time you have actually followed your fancy revision timetable. And yet, imagine, when the big day comes, and you sit down in that exam hall, you open your paper and suddenly realise that you don’t recognise any of the questions. And you sit there, with the clock ticking by, trying to work out: How this has happened? How did I manage to miss this stuff? The reality is that life doesn’t always work out how we expect.

That’s true of our lives. And if you stop and think about it, you will realise that that is also true in the life of Jesus. That is what the Gospel of Matthew was written to tells us all about: the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. And as you read through the book, you can’t help but notice how positive and promising it seems to be. Jesus is preaching stunning sermons. Performing amazing miracles. Thousands of people are flocking to him. And by the time he arrives in Jerusalem, in Matthew 21, they try to make him king. It seems like their Messiah, their Saviour, is here. And yet, fast forward just a few chapters, and you find that same Jesus hanging on a cross. And you can’t help but wonder: how did it end up like that? Where did it all go wrong for Jesus? His ministry had such promise, and yet from a human perspective, it all seems to end in total failure. How did that happen? What went wrong?

Well, Matthew 23 answers that question. Over the last few weeks, we have heard Jesus was teaching in the temple, when his opponents started to close in. They try to trick him with loaded questions. And yet, he is able to answer every query they can come up with, defeats them in debate, and demonstrates he is the Lord. That was last week, and here we follow on from that. For having vanquished his enemies, Jesus now delivers his victory speech. A speech in which he summarises the spiritual state of Israel, and explains why they fail to accept him as the Messiah. In Matthew 23, Jesus himself tells us how it all went wrong, why his ministry ended up in such a mess. And the importance of this chapter must not be missed. For not only are these Jesus’ last words in the temple, which he leaves at the start of Matthew 24, but these are his last words to Israel. As we are told there in 23:39, he will not speak to them like this again. And so this chapter is the final act of Jesus’ public ministry. For in Matthew 24 and 25, he will speak privately to his disciples. And then from chapter 26, he is betrayed, tried, and killed on a cross. And in this last act of Jesus’ public ministry, he explains how that happens, why God’s people crucify their Lord.

Did you notice that as we read the chapter earlier, Jesus speaks of three different groups? First in 23:1, he addresses his followers. Then from 23:13, he confronts the religious leaders. And finally, from 23:37, he calls to the nation as a whole. And what Jesus says to each of these three groups, tells us how they went wrong. How his disciples selfishly squabbled over status, the Pharisees led like foolish hypocrites, and the nation was hostile to him. Those three things explain why Jesus ended up on that cross. However, Matthew 23 not only explains how those three groups went wrong at the time of Jesus, but it also shows us how we can also get it wrong today. How we, as the church of Jesus, as the leaders of God’s people, and as the wider world, can end up in total and terrible failure. How can we go wrong today? Well here, Jesus identifies three dangers, reveals three risks, that we must take care to avoid: (1) A Selfish Church (23:1-12); (2) A Foolish Leadership (23:13-36); (3) A Hostile World (23:37-39).

1.     A SELFISH CHURCH (23:1-12)

“Do what I say, not what I do.” I wonder if there are any parents here, who have said something like that before. You’ve asked your child not to do something (e.g. don’t talk with your mouth full, don’t raise your voice inside) and they have quickly pointed out that they have seen you do those very things. And so, in frustration, you have told them, ‘Just do what I say, not what I do.’ I think we all realise that isn’t good parenting. We should set an example to our children. What we say from our lips, and what they see in our lives, should align with each other. Even if we all often fall short of that aim. And yet, did you notice that our passage begins by Jesus saying that very thing, for in 23:2, he tells his followers to do what the Pharisees say, but not to copy what they do. That they should respect their leaders when they teach the Law, for they sit in Moses’ seat, that is speak with his authority when they preach from the Bible. And yet, they do not practice what they preach, their lips and lives do not align. And so, Jesus’ followers must listen to the preaching of the Pharisees, but not copy the practices of the Pharisees.

And in that, the Pharisees teach us an important lesson. For here we clearly see it is possible to know the truth, even to preach the truth, and yet still fail to practice the truth in your life. Friend, it is possible to come to church, sit under sermons, read your bible, be brought up around God’s people. It is possible for you to be able to say all the right things with your lips, and yet still act very differently in your life. Friend, just because you are here on a Sunday morning, does not mean that your heart is right before God. Just because you were brought up knowing your Bible, does not mean that you know God. It takes more than knowledge to make a Christian. For Christianity demands all of you, it calls you to offer up your head, your hands and your heart. And that is what these Pharisees got wrong. There was truth in their heads, but it hadn’t taken hold of their hearts, it wasn’t impacting their hands.

Jesus goes on to describe their sinful practices, listing them until the end of 23:7. I think we see the main mistake they make there in 23:5, where Jesus summarises: [READ]. And he goes on to list out several examples of that. Phylacteries are the little boxes that pious Jews wore on their arm and forehead. Inside them they would put tiny pieces of parchment with verses written on them. You might imagine someone walking around with a little ring box on their arm or on their head. However, these Pharisees weren’t using little ring boxes, but instead were using giant tuber wear-like boxes, to show everyone that they took Scripture seriously. It’s the same with the tassels, which they put on the corners of their clothes to identify them as Jews. However, the tassels these Pharisees are using are ridiculously long. And they were doing all this so they would be noticed, seen to be spiritually superior. In 23:6, we are told that they also love to sit in the place of honour at feasts, and in the most important seats in the synagogue. That is, they always wanted to be speaking up at the front of church, or sitting right here on the stage. And in 23:7, Jesus says they loved it when they received that title of respect, were called ‘Rabbi’, in public places. In other words, the Pharisees are all about spiritual status. The point of their practices was to be praised by others.

And so, from 23:8, Jesus tells his disciples that they must not do the same. That the church, the community of his people, must live in a very different way. For he says in 23:8: [READ]. Given that the rest of the Bible often uses the terms teacher and father, to describe leaders in the church and parents in the home, I think it is clear that Jesus is not prohibiting the actual use of these titles. Rather, he prohibits us from using them in the way that the Pharisees did. The reason they are not to call someone teacher in 23:8, is that they are all brothers. That is they are all equals, and so when the title of teacher is used, it must never be allowed to elevate that individual, make them something more than simply another brother in the Lord. Jesus tells us that these positions, these roles, these titles, are never to become a way to selfishly increase your own prestige, elevate yourself about others, achieve your own interests. In the church, these positions are never to be about status, rather they are to be about service. They are to be the way that you serve the interest of others, not yourself, how you build up the church family, not how you build up your own fame. And we know that is what Jesus means, for that is how he ends. For in 23:11, we read: [READ].

The church of Jesus Christ is to be a community of people that are not obsessed with their own selfish interests, but rather are obsessed with the interests of others. Are investing their time, giving their money, using their gifts, pouring out their prayers, opening up and sharing their lives, all so that they can see other people grow and flourish. The reason why you should join a church is not simply for your own good, but for the good of others. The reason why you should get involved in the welcome team, or coffee rota, or kids work, or deacon duty, is not so that you can get something out of church, but so you can give something to church. Humbly serve the wider church family.

Brothers and sisters, even if the church has a stage, it must never become a stage. Church should not be a platform on which we perform for each other. No, instead church should be the place where we come to serve each other. And churches that get that, congregations who embrace that, give themselves to the slow quiet work of caring for one another, the humble background task of checking in on each other, living daily life alongside each other, those will be the churches that flourish. Now friends, don’t get me wrong, what is preached from the pulpit is important. And yet, we see here with these Pharisees that even if it is truth being preached from the pulpit, it will do no good if it is not also being practiced in the pew. If members are not selflessly giving themselves to serve each other.

2.     A FOOLISH LEADERSHIP (23:13-36)

When you read through Scripture, it is easy to see the importance of good leadership. Across the Old Testament, the same pattern repeatedly occurs. When Israel has a godly king, it is a godly nation. When it has an evil king, it is an evil nation. And so it is unsurprising, that when you get into the New Testament, both Jesus and the apostles, say a lot about church leadership. Of course, the most famous passages are those in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, where Paul presents the qualifications for elders, what we should look for when we choose shepherds to lead us. There in Titus 1, he explains, “An overseer as God’s steward must [...]”. That is what Paul tells us we should look for when choosing church leaders. He gives us a positive picture of the character and competence of the men he wants us to pick. And yet, the Bible also gives us a negative picture, warns us away from certain kinds of men. We see that here in Matthew 23, Jesus identifies these religious leaders as the kind of leaders we must try to avoid.

Here we see the sharpest contrast between the promising start of Jesus’ ministry, and its deeply disappointing end. If you remember back two years, you will recall that the first act of Jesus’ public ministry was the Sermon on the Mount, which opened with those wonderful Beatitudes. [...] The ministry of Jesus began with him pronouncing blessing upon blessing. And yet, here he finishes his public ministry in Matthew 23 by declaring curse after curse.         

That is what that word woe means. It is a curse word, in that it is a word that communicate a curse. It means may bad things come upon you. May God’s just wrath and right judgement fall on you. And Jesus uses it here seven times in our passage. He pronounces seven curses on these religious leaders. There in 23:13, he says: [READ]. And that is not all that Jesus says, for throughout the section he repeatedly calls these religious leaders: hypocrites, blind men, he describes them as fools. It is harsh language, isn’t it? And yet, we must remember that this is not angry frustrated Jesus calling his enemies nasty names. No, this is Jesus the judge, handing down their sentence. He has demonstrated himself to be the divine Lord. And now he is condemning them for crimes against the Christ.

If you are anything like me, you read this portion of the passage, and you are tempted to join Jesus in his judgment. ‘Those foolish Pharisees, what a mess they were!’ And yet here we see that that is exactly what the Pharisees do. There in the seventh and last woe, in 23:29, Jesus tells us how the Pharisees look at the failings of their forbearers in the past, and insist that they would never have been so foolish. They assume that if they had heard the prophets, they would not have rejected them. And we must take care not to do something similar today, assume we would have treated Jesus differently to how the Pharisees did, that Jesus would not say these very same things about us.

The other six woes easily split up into three pairs [1-2, 3-4, 5-6], and some of them are easier to grasp than others. For example, there in 21:13-15, we have the first two woes, which clearly mirror each other. First, Jesus describes how these Pharisees are failing to bring people into heaven. And then, we get the reverse of that in the next woe, for we are told that they only end up leading their converts to become children of Hell, just like themselves. And that is why these leaders are hypocrites, for while they say they are bringing people to God, they are really blocking people from God. In the same way, it is easy to understand why Jesus calls them hypocrites in woe number five and six, for there in 23:25-28, he uses two illustrations which clearly shows their moral hypocrisy. He talks about how the outside of something (e.g. a cup or a tomb) does not match its inside. And it is easy to see how that applies to the Pharisees. As we have heard, they preach but do not practice. Their lives and their lips don’t line up. They claim to have achieved great holiness, but they are really hypocrites at heart. And that is a stark reminder to all Christian leaders, to cultivate the health of their own spiritual lives. To ensure, like a good parent, they align their lives with their lips as best they can. As the Scottish minister, Robert Murray McCheyne, famously concluded, “The greatest need of my people is my personal holiness... It is not so much great talents that God blesses, as great likeness to Jesus. A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God.” And of course, that’s not just true for ministers and leaders, but for anyone involved in any kind of spiritual service. For as Paul puts it in 2 Timothy 2, we must cleanse ourselves from all that is dishonourable, so we might be a holy vessel, useful to the master, ready for every good work. Brother or sister, if you want to serve our lord, you need to focus on becoming like our lord.

Woe number 1 and 2, and number 5 and 6, are easy enough to get our heads around. And yet, the pair of woes in the middle of our passage are more difficult. That’s because woe number 3 and 4 do not deal with the character of these leaders, but rather with their competence. Here Jesus does in fact critique the preaching of the Pharisees, highlight how they mishandle God’s Word. And Jesus tells us that these teachers go wrong in two different ways, in two ways that we too can also go wrong as we handle God’s Word today. First, in the third woe, from 23:16, he warns us against liberalism, against the tendency to talk of technicalities, to look for loopholes, in God’s Word. You see, these Pharisees understood that they were not to swear oaths by the temple, or its altar, or by the throne of God. And yet they developed an elaborate system to get around that restriction, for they reasoned there was no explicit command to not swear by the gold of the temple, gift on the alter, or by heaven, where God’s throne is placed. Oh yes, God said not to make oaths, but they worked hard to get around that restriction. And you know, there are some leaders who try to do the same with God’s word today. While the Bible contains clear views on issues, such as sexuality or gender, these leaders try to argue that it doesn’t really mean what it says. That we can get around it, avoid such statements today, by looking for a loophole. That is the danger of liberalism. Foolishly breaking the boundaries set out in Scripture. And Jesus warns us not to trust such leaders, not to follow such fools.

And yet, the fourth woe in 23:23, in the centre of our text, warns us of the opposite danger. Not that of liberalism, but of legalism. For not only must we take care that we do not go beyond the boundaries of Scripture, but we must also strive to reflect the balance of Scripture. There in 23:23, Jesus points out the Pharisees take tithing seriously, so seriously in fact that they not only give away a tenth of their crops, as the Law required, but they even set aside a tenth of their spices: mint, dill and cumin. Every time these Pharisees got home from Tesco, they opened their new jar of chili flakes, got their measuring scales out, and carefully removed 10% of the jar, so they could give it to God. And yet, Jesus points out that they fail to display the same kind of dedication to some other commands, commands that are more central, even more important than the command to tithe, give away a tenth of their goods. Oh yes, if God turns up to inspect their spice rack, he will find it in perfect order, but Jesus says in 23:23: [READ].

It is easy to miss it here, but I think it is important for us to notice, that Jesus draws a distinction in the law between major things and minor things, between more important and less important commands. And that is not just true for the law, but it is true for the rest of Scripture as well. You know, sometimes we can be tempted to see the Bible a bit like the landscape of the Netherlands. Completely flat. Every part of it on the same level as all the rest. And there is something right and good about that, for all of it is God’s Word. We see that here, for Jesus does not tell them to give up the tithing of spices, but simply tells them they should have practiced the major parts of the law, while still not neglecting the minor bits. Jesus says that we must obey every jot and tittle of God’s Word. And yet, just because we must obey it all, does not mean that we must assign the same importance to it all. For if the Bible was a country, it would not be like the Netherlands, all set on the same level, but rather Jesus says here it would be more like the landscape of Switzerland. It would have heights and depths. Mountains that reach up to the heavens, those great and glorious truths like the nature of God, the work of Jesus, salvation by grace, and then there are valleys that remain lower down, relate to more mundane matters (teachings on spiritual gifts, views...).

And Jesus says here, how foolish we must be, to focus on the minor truths so much, that we miss the major truths. For if you take a trip to Switzerland, you don’t spend all your time walking around the valleys, you could do that in Wales! No, if you go to Switzerland, you want to climb mountains, ascend into the heights. And it should be the same when we go to Scripture. We should want to spend most of our time on the most important things. We would be foolish to major on minor truths, and so miss the major ones. To become so obsessed with the periphery of Christianity, that we never gaze at the glorious centre! That is what the Pharisees did. They spent all their time arranging their spices, and forgot there were more important matters that they needed to give their attention to!

Brothers and sisters, Grace Church, we must be careful not to make that mistake, become so obsessed with minor things, that we start to miss major things. You know, as a conservative, Bible believing, church, we are often good at maintaining the boundaries of Scripture, unapologetically saying what God says, even if it comes at great cost. We are often alive to the danger of liberalism. And yet, we must take great care not to fall into the other ditch of legalism. For it is possible to protect the boundaries of Scripture, but fail to reflect the overall balance of Scripture.

The most important tool we have as a church, to help us avoid legalism, is our statement of faith. You know, what we believe as a church is not decided by Jamie or myself, nor is it determined by the eldership, nor is it dictated by what is preached from this pulpit. No, what Grace Church believes is set out in the statement of faith we affirm, that list of truths that we commit to together as a congregation. And that statement is what will protect the balance we see in Scripture. For it sets out the major truths we find in God’s Word, and need to agree on to be a church together, and yet there are a whole host of more minor matters that are not included in it. For example, it declares that God ‘is the Creator of all things.’ [...] However, it doesn’t say how he created all things, or how long he took to create all things. It states the major truth, but not all of the minor details. And that means that different members can have different views on those details. It is the same when it comes to the role of men and women in the church, the work of the Holy Spirit, the second coming of the Lord. On every topic in our statement of faith, we have the major truth, but not all the minor matters. It makes sure we all agree on the major things, but have freedom in the more minor details. And that is important, for that is how ensure that we all focus on pursuing justice, mercy and faithfulness together, without falling out about how to best arrange our personal spice affairs. It is how we ensure that the hobby horses of our leaders don’t end up defining, dividing or distracting the church. It is how we protect ourselves from making mountains out of theological molehills. Foolishly focusing on little things, while missing the main mission that God has for us in this world. It is to the world we turn as we close. For the third way [...].

3.     A HOSTILE WORLD (23:37-39)

In many ways, Matthew 23 can come across as a harsh chapter. It is a sermon that contains great anger, and yet in the final few verses, we also see that it contains great love. Oh yes, Jesus’ heart is angry, but it is also in anguish. For in 23:37, after speaking of the terrible judgment coming on that generation of Jews, Jesus cries out: [READ].

In a chapter that reminds us that our judge is more righteous than we could ever know, we also see that he is more forgiving that we can ever imagine. For despite the hostility, God’s messengers the prophets, have experienced from the nation, and the city of Jerusalem in particular, Jesus declares that he has longed to care for them, longed to bring them under his protection, save them from the wrath to come. To emphasise this, he uses that wonderful imagery of a hen, gathering its chicks beneath its wings, where they will be safe and secure, kept from all harm. And he says that is what he wanted to do to this hostile city, and yet in the end they were not willing. And so, we see in 23:38, instead of deliverance, they face desolation, as their house, the very temple that he is standing in, is demolished by Rome a few decades later, and the Jews of Jerusalem are scattered to the four corners of the world.

Our passage ends with a cry of anguish, and yet it is not the last time Jesus will cry out like that. This may be the final act of Jesus’ public ministry, but it is not his final appearance. For in a few chapters, he will be marched through the streets of that same city, and lifted up to die on a cross. The nation of Israel will not only kill God’s messengers, but they will also kill God’s Messiah. And yet, even as Jesus marches towards his death, Luke tells us that he will once again cry out in anguish, praying for his people, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Right to the end, Jesus remains ready to forgive the hostility they have shown against him. And indeed, on the cross he made that forgiveness possible. Oh yes, here in Matthew 23, Jesus will pronounce divine curses on the people, but in Matthew 27, as he hands on the cross, he will bear that curse for his people, suffer all of the just wrath and right judgment of God against sin, for all who will believe in him, who will come and shelter under his wings, repent of their hostility towards God and

His hand us stretched out still. Friend how often have you rejected Jesus, again and again, for years, countless times you have walked away from church services, turned him away, even made fun of him and mocked him. Yet his hand is stretched out still. In his last words to his people, it is his love, his willingness to forgive, that he leaves them with. […]