Sermon Tone Analysis

Jesus Shows Us How to Live a Holy Life

The Gospel of Matthew

Matthew 23:1-12

Sermon by Rick Crandall

(Prepared January 26, 2023)

BACKGROUND:

*Please open your Bibles to Matthew 23.

As you know, Jesus was in Jerusalem to die on the cross for our sins.

The city and surrounding villages were crowded with over 2 million Jewish pilgrims there for the annual Passover Feast.

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*Early that week, Jesus went into the Temple to drive out the moneychangers and dove merchants, because they had turned the Court of the Gentiles into a den of thieves by cheating the pilgrims.

Then in Matthew 21:14-16, "The blind and the lame came to (Jesus) in the temple, and He healed them.

But when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that He did, and the children crying out in the temple and saying, 'Hosanna to the Son of David!' they were indignant and said to Him, 'Do You hear what these are saying?'

And Jesus said to them, 'Yes.

Have you never read, "Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have perfected praise"?'''

*The next day, Jesus went back to the Temple.

Luke 20:1 tells us that Jesus was there teaching the people and preaching the gospel to them.

That's when the elites of the city started a series of verbal confrontations with the Lord.

*God's Word goes into a lot of detail about these evil scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, and Herodians who had united in their malicious hatred of Jesus Christ.

Normally, the scribes and Pharisees were bitter rivals of the Sadducees and Herodians.

That's because the Scribes and Pharisees radically enforced their man-made additions to God's Law.

Sadducees rejected those laws, and the divide was so bitter that in Acts 23:10, Paul was almost pulled apart during a clash between these two groups.

But the Sadducees were far worse in a different way, because they rejected the basic truth of God's Word.

*The scribes and Pharisees were also bitter enemies of the Herodians, because they were supporters of the non-Jewish family appointed by Rome to rule Palestine.

But almost all of these men agreed in their venomous rejection of Jesus Christ.

They were obsessed with His destruction, and had been plotting the Lord's death for months.

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*In Matthew 22, these evil men continued taking turns confronting Jesus, desperately trying to get Him to take a stand against God's Law, or their Roman conquerors.

Of course, they miserably failed, because you can't trick God.

And Matthew 22:46 ends the chapter by saying that "no one was able to answer Him a word, nor from that day on did anyone dare question Him anymore."

*Now in Matthew 23:1, Jesus began to speak to His disciples and the multitudes of people in the Temple that day.

John Phillips explained that "Jesus was still in the temple court with His disciples gathered around Him, the multitudes spread out before Him, and the national leaders of Israel in the background.

The leaders were still stinging at being so effectively silenced by the Lord.

Already infuriated, they were willing to pay any price to get rid of Him.

Now His scathing denunciation of their hypocrisy would sign His death warrant."

Phillips said that, because in this chapter you will see Jesus on fire with righteous wrath against the wicked leaders who had twisted God's Law for their own selfish purposes.

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*The Lord was just getting started in today's Scripture, but in these verses Jesus also shows us how to live a holy life.

Please think about this as we read Matthew 23:1-12.

MESSAGE:

*The first time I ever got sent to the principal's office was in the third grade.

My best friend was Zach Smith.

We lived close to the school, so Zach, my first grade brother and I used to ride our bikes to school.

There were 3 old teachers in our neighborhood (at least 25 or 30 years old), and they walked to school together every day.

*One day, I don't know why, maybe we had seen an old World War II army movie with the planes dive bombing, but one day we decided to dive bomb those teachers.

So we zoomed down the hill as fast and close as we could, and we let out a rebel yell as we sped by!

*That was the dumbest thing I had ever done in my life, -- up to that point.

We were all in the principal's office about 15 minutes later.

And I don't know why in the world I did that.

But I was sure it was Zach's fault.

*Zach helped me get in a lot of trouble.

Sometimes I would tell my daddy, "Zach did it first."

Dad would reply, "If Zach Smith stuck his head in a fire, would you?"

I was definitely following the wrong example.

*In these verses Jesus began to talk about some much worse examples: The corrupt religious leaders of His day.

But here Jesus also shows us how to live a holy life.

1. FIRST: JESUS WANTS US TO REJECT THE MINDSET OF THE SCRIBES AND PHARISEES.

[1] HE WANTS US TO REJECT THEIR HYPOCRISY.

*The Lord makes this truth clear to us in vs. 1-3:

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Then Jesus spoke to the multitudes and to His disciples,

2. saying: "The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat.

3. Therefore whatever they tell you to observe, that observe and do, but do not do according to their works; for they say, and do not do.

*Gotquestions.org

tells us that "Moses' Seat" goes back to Exodus 18:13, where "Moses sat to judge the people; and the people stood before Moses from morning until evening."

In Jesus' day, the teachers of the law and the Pharisees had become the interpreters and enforcers of the law, so their place of authority was called "Moses' Seat," much like our judges are said to be "making rulings from the bench."

*The Roman Empire had given them authority to rule in these local, religious matters, but unlike Moses, many of these men abused their authority.

They were teaching many things against God's Word.

And back in Matthew 15:3, Jesus had already asked them, "Why do you also transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition?"

We can be sure that when Jesus told the people to obey all of their rulers' commands, He meant the commands consistent with God's Word.

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*Jesus was about to severely condemn the scribes and Pharisees for all of their evil ways.

And here in vs. 3, He began to stress their hypocrisy.

Jesus told the people, "Do not do according to their works; for they say, and do not do."

*They were hypocrites.

Ed Markquart explained that the English word, "hypocrite," comes from the Greek word, which means "actor."

And many of the Pharisees in Jesus' day were good actors.

If anyone was ever a religious fake, it was those Christ-rejecting Pharisees.

They pretended to be genuinely religious, but it was all a sham, and deception.

Like any good actor, they were all "make believe."

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*How hypocritical were they?

In vs. 4 Jesus put it this way, "They bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers."

No wonder Jesus wants us to reject their hypocrisy.

[2] HE ALSO WANTS US TO REJECT THEIR HARD-HEARTED ATTITUDE.

*We see the scribes and Pharisees' hard hearts in vs. 4. Again, Jesus said, "They bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men's shoulders. .

."

These cruel leaders didn't care a bit about the heavy burdens they were laying on other people.

And it's important for us to understand how evil these scribes and Pharisees were.

*In Jesus' day there were only a few thousand Pharisees, but they held power far greater than their numbers.

For over a hundred years they had basically been in charge of telling all of the other Jews what was right and wrong.

By Matthew 12, the Pharisees were stalking Jesus, looking for any opportunity to accuse Him of breaking their man-made rules.

In that chapter Jesus went into a synagogue and healed a man with a withered hand.

But it was on the Sabbath day, and that was against their man-made law.

*Luke 6:11 tells us that the Pharisees were filled with rage, and Mark 3:6 says they "went out and immediately plotted with the Herodians against Him, how they might destroy Him."

The Pharisees hated Jesus so much, they were working with their enemies to plot His death.

You see, Jesus rejected all of the petty rules the Pharisees had added to God's Law.

There were thousands of these regulations, like their ungodly law against healing on the Sabbath Day.

*About 1,400 years earlier, just before the Children of Israel entered the Promised Land, Moses spoke to them, and in Deuteronomy 10:12-13 Moses asked them: "What does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways and to love Him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the LORD and His statutes which I command you today for your good?"

*God gave His Law to the Children of Israel FOR THEIR GOOD.

But the Pharisees had corrupted God's Law by turning it into a terrible burden on His people.

William Barclay gave this example: In Jeremiah 17:21, "Thus says the Lord: 'Take heed to yourselves, and bear no burden on the Sabbath day.'"

But a "burden" had to be defined, so the scribes and Pharisees defined it as "food equal in weight to a dried fig, enough wine for mixing in a goblet, milk enough for one swallow, honey enough to put upon a wound, water enough to moisten an eye-salve," and so on.

*Then they had to settle questions like this: "Could a chair or even a child be lifted on the Sabbath Day?" Or would it be carrying a burden to do so?

On and on the regulations went.

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*Thank God for the simple good news of the cross of Jesus Christ!

It is based on the mercy, grace, and love of Almighty God.