Category: Matthew 23

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Matthew Matthew 23

When we reject those sent to us

Matthew

Nobody likes to be rebuked. To be told you’re wrong. But how do you respond when you are?

The Pharisees followed the long line of their ancestors throughout Israel’s history. Instead of listening and repenting when rebuked, they turned on those sent to them.

They turned on Jesus, murdering him, and they turned on his disciples, all the while claiming that they would never have murdered the prophets that their ancestors murdered long before.

And so Jesus said,

You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?

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.

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.

I tell you the truth, all this will come upon this generation. (Matthew 23:33-36)

Jesus then wept, saying,

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.

Look, your house is left to you desolate.

For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’ (Matthew 23:37-39)

And that’s what happened. Within a generation of the people that murdered Christ, Israel fell, their beloved temple demolished until this very day.

What happens when we reject those God sends to us to rebuke us? Ultimately, our lives will fall apart. And we will be judged.

God takes no pleasure in this. He weeps over it. But there can be no life, there can be peace until we acknowledge him as Lord over all in our lives.

Solomon wrote,

Faithful are the wounds of a friend. (Proverbs 27:6, NASB)

The truth can hurt. It can be painful to hear. But if we take it to heart, it can bring healing.

What do you do when you are rebuked?

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Matthew Matthew 23

Cleaning out the inside

Matthew

Jesus continues his scathing of the Pharisees and teachers of the law by saying,

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.

Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean.

In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. (Matthew 23:25-28)

Scathing indeed. The Pharisees and teachers of the law were held up as so righteous by the people. But Jesus exposes every filthy thing in their hearts, their greed, their self-indulgence, and their utter hypocrisy.

He called them whitewashed tombs which look so beautiful on the outside, but are filled with rotting bones on the inside.

How about you? What would Jesus say about you if he saw you? Would he call you a whitewashed tomb? A cup that is clean on the outside and filthy on the inside?

It is so easy to put up a front. In fact the word “hypocrite” originally came from the word for “actor.”

But God looks beyond your exterior to your heart. And when he does, what does he see?

For that matter, what do you see? Can you even see the areas in your heart that are ugly in the sight of God? Or are you so blind that while you can see everyone else’s sin, you can’t even see your own?

I suppose the real test is this: Do you feel compassion for those “sinners” around you because you know just how much mercy you yourself have received from God, and continue to receive day by day?

Or do you just feel utter contempt for them, thinking, “I would never do something like that!”

What is in your heart? What needs to be cleaned out from your cup?

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Matthew Matthew 23

Remembering what’s important

Matthew

It’s really sad the reputation that a lot of Christians have in the world, particularly in the States.

Some of it is the natural response of the world to people who love the Lord. Jesus did say that there would be people who hate us because of him.

But I wonder sometimes how often Christians get a bad reputation, not because they are following Jesus, but because they’ve forgotten what’s important.

Many of these Christians go to church every Sunday, perhaps go to a Bible study during the week as well, they read their Bibles and pray daily, and they are very loud in their championing of Christian values.

There was a group very similar to that in Jesus’ time: The Pharisees and teachers of the law. Yet Jesus said of them,

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cummin.

But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness.

You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.

You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel. (Matthew 23:23-24)

Jesus adds another thing they neglected in Luke 11:42, “the love of God.”

Jesus said in another passage that the world would know that we are his disciples by the love that we have for one another. (John 13:35).

I suppose the question I have, not just for you but for me, is this: “Is my life marked by the love and mercy of God?”

When people look at me, do they see these things flowing from me? Do they know that I truly do care for them? Do they see the compassion I have for them?

Or do they merely see a person who constantly condemns them and their lifestyle?

When people see me at work, do they see a person of integrity, a person who does what is right even when it hurts me?

Do they see a person who is faithful at what he does, or someone who slacks off whenever he can?

If people don’t see these things in our lives, the condemnation and criticism we receive from the world will be well deserved. And sadly, they may never come to Christ because of it.

And while God will hold them accountable for the decisions they made, we also will be held accountable for giving them the opportunity to blaspheme God and to hold him in contempt. (2 Samuel 12:14)

How about you? What’s coming out of your life? Love? Mercy? Justice? Faithfulness?

These are what is important to God.

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Matthew Matthew 23

Loopholes

loopholes

I’ve mentioned before the different problems of legalism.

Here we see another problem. People who are legalistic tend to try to find loopholes. They may keep the letter of the law (as they see it), but try to find ways to avoid keeping its spirit.

The Pharisees and teachers of the law were masters of this, and we see an example here that Jesus brings up.

The law said that you were to keep oaths that you made to God. But these men made all kinds of rules of what that actually meant.

If you said, “I swear by the temple,” you weren’t bound by your oath, but if you said, “I swear by the gold of the temple,” you were required to keep it.

If you said, “I swear by God’s altar,” you weren’t bound by your oath, but if you said, “I swear by this gift on the altar,” you were.

And Jesus points out the utter fallacy of this way of thinking.

It is the temple that makes the gold holy, not the reverse.

It is not the gift that makes the altar holy; rather, it’s the altar that makes the gift holy.

Lest the Pharisees try to squirm out from under that concept, he goes on to say that if you swear by the temple, you’re swearing by God who dwells there.

And if you swear by heaven, you swear by God’s throne and by God himself.

What was Jesus’ point?

Just do what’s right.

When God said, “Keep your oaths that you have made to me,” the point wasn’t that it’s okay to break your oath if it isn’t made in God’s name.

While keeping your oaths is certainly important, the real point was that your word is important. If you say you’re going to do something, do it.

The Pharisees and teachers of the law focused on “oaths to God” rather than “keeping your oath.”

In so doing, they “strained the gnat,” in making rules on what “oaths to God” meant, and “swallowed the camel” by consistently breaking their other oaths. (Matthew 23:24)

How about you? Do you have a heart that truly wants to please God and do what’s right? Or do you have a heart that only does so grudgingly, and is always looking for loopholes?

You cannot please God by claiming to find loopholes and slipping through them in your daily life.

Let’s get rid of that kind of attitude.

Rather, let’s do what we know in our hearts God has told us to do.

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Matthew Matthew 23

When those who teach are bad

Matthew

For some reason, one of the English teachers in the Japanese high school I teach at was showing Karate Kid 2 to his students yesterday.

I can’t say much for the film, but the one character I really like is Mr. Miyagi, the mentor to Daniel who was his karate student.

What does Karate Kid 2 have to do with this blog? Absolutely nothing. But the original Karate Kid does.

In the original (and much better film), Daniel asked Mr. Miyagi why the karate students who bullied him acted the way they did. Mr. Miyagi answered, “No such thing as bad student, only bad teacher.”

Now I don’t know that I completely agree with this statement, but there is some truth to it.

When a teacher is bad, then those who follow him or her will almost inevitably go down the same path.

That’s what you see in this passage. Jesus continues his scathing of the Pharisees and teachers of the law by saying,

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to…

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are. (Matthew 23:13-15)

These teachers of the law and Pharisees had a lot of problems. They were hypocritical, legalistic, and completely blind to what was truly important to God.

The result? All their students were the same way, and even worse. You see this in Saul of Tarsus before his conversion.

What can we learn from this?

First, as a teacher, what are you like? The apostle James wrote,

Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. (James 3:1)

While James is primarily talking about what we teach, he is also talking about our lives. As teachers, we cannot be like the Pharisees and teachers of the law who did not practice what they preached. (Matthew 23:3)

So if you’re a teacher, are you living what you say? Or are you hypocritical?

And as you teach and live your life, do you always keep in mind what is most important to God? Justice. Mercy. And faithfulness.

For what we need to remember is that God will not only hold you responsible for what you teach and how you live, but to the degree that you are faithful to the position he put you in, he’ll hold you responsible for the kinds of students you produce as well.

The other question you need to ask is who is your teacher?

How is he living his life? What kinds of things is he teaching? Because if you are not wise in choosing your teacher, you’ll be going down the same road as they are, and that can be disastrous.

Who are you listening to at church? Who are you listening to on podcasts? Whose books are you reading?

Teachers are responsible for what they teach, but you are responsible for what you let in.

So as I’ve said before, I’ll say again,

Test everything. Hold on to the good. (1 Thessalonians 5:21)

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Luke Luke 20 Mark Mark 12 Matthew Matthew 23

A wrong view of leadership

The gospels

What is leadership? What is leadership not?

In a scathing criticism of the Pharisees and teachers of the law, Jesus gives us insight into what true leadership is about.

He first warned the disciples and the crowds,

The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you.

But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. (Matthew 23:1-2).

Here, Jesus tells the people that though they were to respect the offices of authority, nevertheless they were not to do what the teachers of the law and Pharisees did because they didn’t practice what they preached.

Oh, they kept all the minor details of the laws, as well as the traditions of the elders, but when it came down to what was most important, justice, mercy, and faithfulness, they failed miserably. And it showed in how they treated the people, and how they related to God.

It also showed in how they viewed leadership. They saw it merely as telling the people what to do, not serving them. Jesus said of them,

They tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. (Matthew 23:4).

These men poured out law upon law, rule upon rule on the people.

But when people started to crumble under the burden of guilt for not being able to keep all these things, they didn’t encourage them; they didn’t pray for them; they didn’t think how to help them. Rather, they condemned them.

They also saw it as a point of pride to be in that position.

Their phylacteries (boxes that held writings of scripture in them) were wide and their tassels which also had scriptures written on them were long so that all the world would be impressed by their spirituality.

They then abused their position for financial gain. Jesus said, “They devour widows’ houses,” probably meaning that they used the respect they gained from their position to get money from the widows.

They also gloried in being called “teacher” or “father” by those around them because it showed their high position among the people. But Jesus said,

But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have only one Master and you are all brothers.

And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven.

Nor are you to be called ‘teacher,’ for you have one Teacher, the Christ. (Matthew 23:8-10).

And that’s what a leader is to remember. Titles are nice to have, but in reality, all of us are equal, and God is the only one who is truly above all.

Yet even God came down to earth as a servant. He healed the sick, he brought good news to the poor and downtrodden, and then he died on a cross to take the punishment for all of our sins. And that is the attitude that leaders are to take.

Jesus said,

The greatest among you will be your servant. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. (Matthew 23:11-12).

True leaders are servants. They don’t look for what they can gain in terms of respect, pride, or money. Rather, they are willing to sacrifice all for the sake of the people around them.

What kind of leader are you?