Matthew 23:1-12 - Hypocrisy

23:1-3

Having resisted the various attempts to trap Him, Jesus now launches an attack on the Pharisees and teachers of the Law. Offence and defence go together. There is a time to forensically highlight the glaring evil of the ways of society. Perhaps surprisingly, Jesus starts out by telling the people that they must obey the leaders. Respect for authority is an important characteristic, it is also a very difficult one. For what are we to do when authority is so clearly wrong? First, why does Jesus say they must obey the authorities? Because they sit in the seat of Moses, ie God had given the Law and the religious leaders were in the position where they were meant to implement the Law. Likewise, Paul in Romans 13 says we must respect the authorities because they are in a God appointed position. Now, this does not mean unquestioning blind compliance. Jesus will soon show that that is definitely not the case. In Acts Peter and John continued to preach the gospel. In history, the times when the church has gone along with tyrannical regimes (eg the church in Germany during the Nazi era, the Pope Francis and the Chinese regime), have not been glorious years. But we need to be so careful, for the root of human sinfulness is a rebellious spirit, our rebellion against God. We may start off with the best of intentions, but before long our sinful spirit will rise up to take advantage of the situation, and rebellion will be all that we have.

23:4

While Jesus told the people to obey their leaders, they were not to follow their example. For the leaders were not following the Law. Instead they laid heavy burdens on the people, and did nothing to help them carry those burdens. The religious leaders were acting directly against the Law. There is a lesson for us here in how we treat others. The religious leaders would claim that their myriad of rules were helping to ensure that the Law was observed, but they had totally lost sight of what the Law was about (love God, love your neighbour). This phenomenon occurs again and again in human affairs. We have a set of means put in place to achieve a certain end. However, the means soon become an end in themselves and everything and everyone ends up having to bow down to the means, and the original end becomes lost, or is at best paid lip-service.

23:5-7

All the actions of the religious leaders were designed to show how “good” they were. Phylacteries were boxes containing scriptures. They made a big show of wearing these, but they did not obey the word itself. It is like, before the days of online Bibles, someone carrying around a big Bible but hardly ever reading it. The leaders enjoyed having the place of honour, enjoyed being greeted by people with respect. This hypocrisy is also human nature, part of our fallen nature, so all of us need to be on our guard against it.

23:8

“You are not to be called rabbi..” Does this mean we must never have titles? I don’t think so, I think it is our attitude that matters. We are not to take delight in titles, we are not to consider ourselves better than others or superior to others. What is the foundation for this? It is that we have only one Master and we are all brothers. Christ is my master, and Christ is your master. So we both look first to Christ. And we are brothers, we are part of the same family. There may need to be a hierarchy for functional reasons, but never for relational reasons.

23:9-12

Jesus then extends the principle to other categories: father and teacher. We need to look first at the positive reasons. We all have our Father in Heaven. Any supposed human relationship looks rather paltry in the light of this (of course, I am not saying human relationships do not matter and that we should not delight in them). And each person’s greatest relational need is to appreciate more and more our relationship with God our Father.  Now in 1 Corinthians 4:15 Paul rebukes the Corinthians for not having many fathers, so again we must not take these words here in a legalistic sense. It is the heart that Christ is concerned with.  We need to know our Father in Heaven. And the same principles apply to teachers. Teachers are explicitly mentioned as a God given ministry in the New Testament, but Christ, the Messiah, is our primary teacher. Verses 11 and 12 get to the heart of the matter, the issue that Jesus is dealing with, and that is exalting ourselves. We are servants and are to see ourselves as servants. We are not to seek to exalt ourselves, but to build others up and to glorify Christ.

Matthew 22:33-46 - Questions

22:34-40

Having seen the Sadducees get no further, the Pharisees come back with another question, “which is the greatest commandment?”. Jesus gives them a reply that they cannot object to, for it comes from the Old Testament, love the Lord your God and your neighbour. Then He adds “all the Law and the Prophets hang on these two”. The Pharisees had got hung up with proving their own righteousness and condemning others, they had forgotten the heart of the matter.

22:41-46

Jesus then takes things further, explaining about the Messiah. The common teaching was that He was the Son of David. This was true, but did not go far enough, and Jrdud quotes from Psalm 110. The messiah is greater than just being the Son of David. For all of us, Jesus is greater than we imagine.Now no one else was prepared to ask Jesus any questions, knowing that all that would be shown up was the limits of their own understanding.

Matthew 22:23-33 - The Sadducees have a go

22:23-33

The Sadducees had seen the Pharisees fail to trap Jesus, and reckoned that they could do better. So they asked him a question about marriage. The Sadducees were sort of aristocratic and political, with limited interest in theology. They considered only the first five books of the Old Testament to be valid, and did not believe in angels nor the resurrection. They were somewhat like the liberal anglicans of today. So instead of believing the Scriptures they saw them as a tool and thought that in one of Moses’ instructions they had a logical contradiction with which they could trap Jesus. So they posed the question of what happened after the resurrection to a woman who had worked her way through seven brothers, her husbands having an alarming propensity to die. Their aim was to prove the illogicality of the resurrection.

22:29-33

Jesus goes right to the heart of the matter. The Sadducees knew neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. These two things lay at the root of the Sadducees' problems. Much the same could be said about most liberal “Christians”. They were assuming that at the resurrection things will just be a continuation of the present age. Many Christians today make the same mistake. Things will be radically different, we will be radically different. Paul majors on this in 1 Corinthians 15. So marriage as we know it will not exist in the age to come. Jesus then goes deeper by reminding the Sadducees that God describes Himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and He is the God of the living. The true nonsense would be to say that there is no resurrection. God creates life not death. The people were amazed at Jesus’ teaching.

Matthew 22:15-22 - Paying the poll tax?

22:15-22

The Pharisees now tried to trap Jesus with His words, an enterprise doomed to failure. They started with flattery saying they knew He was a man of integrity. The poll-tax was a contentious issue. People hated the Romans, but to offend the Romans was a dangerous path to follow. So they asked Jesus if it was right to pay the poll-tax or not, thinking that yes or no were the only possible answers, and that either would get Jesus in trouble. But Jesus knew what they were up to and he turned the matter around., with His now famous statement “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s”. The Pharisees were not giving to God what was His.

Matthew 22:1-14 - Are you going to the wedding feast?

22:1-14

The Pharisees had this picture of only a few elite getting into the Kingdom of God, and they were part of the elite. Jesus tells them a parable that says things are rather different. Who prepared a banquet for His Son”, note the emphasis on the son, i.e. on Jesus. Rejecting Jesus is a fundamental error. Many were invited to the banquet. The Pharisees were invited, but they refused to come. They were even given another chance. \the \pharisees continued to go about their own business, and some even seized the king's messengers. The king reacted with anger, this is looking forward to AD70. The king then sent his messengers to invite anyone who would listen.

We then see that the invitation is both open and restrictive, repentance is necessary. We need to recognise our need for forgiveness, Coming with an attitude or pride or self- righteousness is wearing the wrong clothes.

Matthew 21:33-46 - Whose vineyard do you think it is?

21:33-46

Jesus continues His teaching with the parable of the tenants, this one is aimed squarely at the religious leaders. The religious leaders thought they owned the system, for getting that it actually belonged to God. So when the landowner sent messengers the tenants thought they could solve the problem by dealing with the messenger, they even thought that killing the owner’s son would solve the matter.. The religious leaders forgot that they were to run the place on God’s behalf, achieving God’s purposes. Remember that Jesus said He only did what He saw His Father do (John 5:19).  Jesus warns them that judgement would come upon them. The religious leaders reacted in their usual stupid way by seeking to arrest Jesus, but they were also afraid of the crowds.

Matthew 21:28-32 - Slow obedience?

21:28-32

There are some who say something like “slow obedience is no obedience, is disobedience”, this parable seems to give the lie to that statement. There are two sons, the first claims to not obey the father, but then does what the father asked, the second says he will obey the Father, but then does not do so. Jesus’ own explanation makes it clear that the point is that the religious types, the supposedly obedient are actually disobedient, for their actions do not measure up with their words, while the “sinners” (tax collectors and prostitutes, people despised by the religious leaders) are actually the obedient ones. The religious leaders refused to repent.