Verses 1-39
Chapter 23
If a man is characteristically and temperamentally an irritable,
ill-tempered and irascible creature, notoriously given to uncontrolled
outbursts of passionate anger, his anger is neither effective nor
impressive. Nobody pays any attention to the anger of a bad-tempered
man. But when a person who is characteristically meek and lowly, gentle
and loving, suddenly erupts into blazing wrath, even the most
thoughtless person is shocked into taking thought. That is why the anger
of Jesus is so awe-inspiring a sight. It is seldom in literature that
we find so unsparing and sustained an indictment as we find in this
chapter when the wrath of Jesus is directed against the Scribes and
Pharisees. Before we begin to study the chapter in detail, it will be
well to see briefly what the Scribes and Pharisees stood for.
The Jews had a deep and lasting sense of the continuity of their
religion; and we can see best what the Pharisees and Scribes stood for
by seeing where they came into the scheme of Jewish religion. The Jews
had a saying, "Moses received the Law and delivered it to Joshua; and
Joshua to the elders; and the elders to the prophets; and the prophets
to the men of the Great Synagogue." AH Jewish religion is based first on
the Ten Commandments and then on the Pentateuch, the Law.
The history of the Jews was designed to make them a people of
the Law. As every nation has, they had their dream of greatness. But the
experiences of history had made that dream take a special direction.
They had been conquered by the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians,
and Jerusalem had been left desolate. It was clear that they could not
be preeminent in political power. But although political power was an
obvious impossibility, they none the less possessed the Law, and to them
the Law was the very word of God, the greatest and most precious
possession in the world.
There came a day in their history when that preeminence of the
Law was, as it were, publicly admitted; there came what one can only
call a deliberate act of decision, whereby the people of Israel became
in the most unique sense the people of the Law. Under Ezra and Nehemiah
the people were allowed to come back to Jerusalem, and to rebuild their
shattered city, and to take up their national life again. When that
happened, there came a day when Ezra, the Scribe, took the book of the
Law, and read it to them, and there happened something that was nothing
less than a national dedication of a people to the keeping of the Law (Nehemiah 8:1-8).
From that day the study of the Law became the greatest of all
professions; and that study of the Law was committed to the men of the
Great Synagogue, the Scribes.
We have already seen how the great principles of the Law were
broken up into thousands upon thousands of little rules and regulations
(see section on Matthew 5:17-20).
We have seen, for instance, how the Law said that a man must not work
on the Sabbath day, and how the Scribes laboured to define work, how
they laid it down how many paces a man might walk on the Sabbath, how
heavy a burden he might carry, the things he might and might not do. By
the time this scribal interpretation of the Law was finished, it took
more than fifty volumes to hold the mass of regulations which resulted.
The return of the people to Jerusalem and the first dedication
of the Law took place about 450 B.C. But it is not till long after that
that the Pharisees emerge. About 175 B.C. Antiochus Epiphanes of Syria
made a deliberate attempt to stamp out the Jewish religion and to
introduce Greek religion and Greek customs and practices. It was then
that the Pharisees arose as a separate sect. The name means The
Separated Ones; and they were the men who dedicated their whole life to
the careful and meticulous observance of every rule and regulation which
the Scribes had worked out. In face of the threat directed against it,
they determined to spend their whole lives in one long observance of
Judaism in its most elaborate and ceremonial and legal form. They were
men who accepted the ever-increasing number of religious rules and
regulations extracted from the Law.
There were never very many of them; at most there were not more
than six thousand of them; for the plain fact was that, if a man was
going to accept and carry out every little regulation of the Law, he
would have time for nothing else; he had to withdraw himself, to
separate himself, from ordinary life in order to keep the Law.
The Pharisees then were two things. First, they were dedicated
legalists; religion to them was the observance of every detail of the
Law. But second--and this is never to be forgotten--they were men in
desperate earnest about their religion, for no one would have accepted
the impossibly demanding task of living a life like that unless he had
been in the most deadly earnest. They could, therefore, develop at one
and the same time all the faults of legalism and all the virtues of
complete self-dedication. A Pharisee might either be a desiccated or
arrogant legalist, or a man of burning devotion to God.
To say this is not to pass a particularly Christian verdict on
the Pharisees, for the Jews themselves passed that very verdict. The
Talmud distinguishes seven different kinds of Pharisee.
(i) There was the Shoulder Pharisee. He was meticulous in his
observance of the Law; but he wore his good deeds upon his shoulder. He
was out for a reputation for purity and goodness. True, he obeyed the
Law, but he did so in order to be seen of men.
(ii) There was the Wait-a-little Pharisee. He was the Pharisee
who could always produce an entirely valid excuse for putting off a good
deed. He professed the creed of the strictest Pharisees but he could
always find an excuse for allowing practice to lag behind. He spoke, but
he did not do.
(iii) There was the Bruised or Bleeding Pharisee. The Talmud
speaks of the plague of self-afflicting Pharisees. These Pharisees
received their name for this reason. Women had a very low status in
Palestine. No really strict orthodox teacher would be seen talking to a
woman in public, even if that woman was his own wife or sister. These
Pharisees went even further; they would not even allow themselves to
look at a woman on the street. In order to avoid doing so they would
shut their eyes, and so bump into walls and buildings and obstructions.
They thus bruised and wounded themselves, and their wounds and bruises
gained them a special reputation for exceeding piety.
(iv) There was the Pharisee who was variously described as the
Pestle and Mortar Pharisee, or the Hump-backed Pharisee, or the Tumbling
Pharisee. Such men walked in such ostentatious humility that they were
bent like a pestle in a mortar or like a hunch-back. They were so humble
that they would not even lift their feet from the ground and so tripped
over every obstruction they met. Their humility was a self-advertising
ostentation.
(v) There was the Ever-reckoning or Compounding Pharisee. This
kind of Pharisee was for ever reckoning up his good deeds; he was for
ever striking a balance sheet between himself and God, and he believed
that every good deed he did put God a little further in his debt. To him
religion was always to be reckoned in terms of a profit and loss
account.
(vi) There was the Timid or Fearing Pharisee. He was always in
dread of divine punishment. He was, therefore, always cleansing the
outside of the cup and the platter, so that he might seem to be good. He
saw religion in terms of judgment and life in terms of a
terror-stricken evasion of this judgment.
(vii) Finally, there was the God-fearing Pharisee; he was the
Pharisee who really and truly loved God and who found his delight in
obedience to the Law of God, however difficult that it might be.
That was the Jew's own classification of the Pharisees; and it
is to be noted that there were six bad types to one good one. There
would be not a few listening to Jesus' denunciation of the Pharisees who
agreed with every word of it.
Making Religion A Burden (Matthew 23:1-4)
23:1-4 Then
Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, "The Scribes and
Pharisees sit on Moses's seat. Therefore do and observe everything they
tell you; but do not act as they act; for they speak, but they do not
do. They bind burdens that are heavy and hard to bear, and place them on
men's shoulders; but they themselves refuse to lift a finger to remove
them."
Here we see the lineaments of the Pharisees already beginning
to appear. Here we see the Jewish conviction of the continuity of the
faith. God gave the Law to Moses; Moses handed it to Joshua; Joshua
transmitted it to the elders; the elders passed it down to the prophets;
and the prophets gave it to the Scribes and Pharisees.
It must not for a moment be thought that Jesus is commending the
Scribes and Pharisees with all their rules and regulations. What he is
saying is this, "In so far as these Scribes and Pharisees have taught
you the great principles of the Law which Moses received from God, you
must obey them." When we were studying Matthew 5:17-20
we saw what these principles were. The whole of the Ten Commandments
are based on two great principles. They are based on reverence,
reverence for God, for God's name, for God's day, for the parents God
has given to us. They are based on respect, respect for a man's life,
for his possessions, for his personality, for his good name, for
oneself. These principles are eternal; and, in so far as the Scribes and
Pharisees teach reverence for God and respect for men, their teaching
is eternally binding and eternally valid.
But their whole outlook on religion had one fundamental effect.
It made it a thing of thousands upon thousands of rules and regulations;
and therefore it made it an intolerable burden. Here is the test of any
presentation of religion. Does it make it wings to lift a man up, or a
deadweight to drag him down? Does it make it a joy or a depression? Is a
man helped by his religion or is he haunted by it? Does it carry him,
or has he to carry it? Whenever religion becomes a depressing affair of
burdens and prohibitions, it ceases to be true religion.
Nor would the Pharisees allow the slightest relaxation. Their
whole self-confessed purpose was to "build a fence around the Law." Not
one regulation would they relax or remove. Whenever religion becomes a
burden, it ceases to be true religion.
The Religion Of Ostentation (Matthew 23:5-12)
23:5-12 They
perform all their actions to be seen by men. They broaden their
phylacteries; they wear outsize tassels. They love the highest places at
meals, and the front seats in the synagogues, and greetings in the
market-place, and to be called Rabbi by men. You must not be called
Rabbi; for you have only one teacher, and you are all brothers. Call no
one upon earth father; you have one Father--your Father in Heaven. Nor
must you be called leaders; you have one leader--Christ. He who is
greatest among you will be your servant. Anyone who will exalt himself
will be humbled; and whoever will humble himself will be exalted."
The religion of the Pharisees became almost inevitably a
religion of ostentation. If religion consists in obeying countless rules
and regulations, it becomes easy for a man to see to it that everyone
is aware how well he fulfils the regulations, and how perfect is his
piety. Jesus selects certain actions and customs in which the Pharisees
showed their ostentation.
They made broad their phylacteries. It is said of the commandments of God in Exodus 13:9
: "It shall be to you as a sign on your hand, and a memorial between
your eyes." The same saying is repeated, "It shall be as a mark on your
hand, or frontlets between your eyes" (Exodus 13:16; compare Deuteronomy 6:8; Deuteronomy 11:18).
In order to fulfil these commandments the Jew wore at prayer, and still
wears, what are called tephillin or phylacteries. They are worn on
every day except the Sabbath and special holy days. They are like little
leather boxes, strapped one on the wrist and one on the forehead. The
one on the wrist is a little leather box of one compartment, and inside
it there is a parchment roll with the following four passages of
scripture written on it--Exodus 13:1-10; Exodus 13:11-16; Deuteronomy 6:4-9; Deuteronomy 11:13-21.
The one worn on the forehead is the same except that in it there are
four little compartments, and in each compartment there is a little
scroll inscribed with one of these four passages. The Pharisees, in
order to draw attention to himself, not only wore phylacteries, but wore
specially big ones, so that he might demonstrate his exemplary
obedience to the Law and his exemplary piety.
They wear outsize tassels; the tassels are in Greek kraspeda (Greek #2899) and in Hebrew tsiytsith (Hebrew #6734). In Numbers 15:37-41 and in Deuteronomy 22:12
we read that God commanded his people to make fringes on the borders of
their garments, so that when they looked on them they might remember
the commandments of God. These fringes were like tassels worn on the
four comers of the outer garment. Later they were worn on the inner
garment, and today they are perpetuated in the tassels of the
prayer-shawl which the devout Jew wears at prayer. It was easy to make
these tassels of specially large size so that they became an
ostentatious display of piety, worn, not to remind a man of the
commandments, but to draw attention to himself.
Further, the Pharisees liked to be given the principal places at
meals, on the left and on the right of the host. They liked the front
seats in the synagogues. In Palestine the back seats were occupied by
the children and the most unimportant people; the further forward the
seat, the greater the honour. The most honoured seats of all were the
seats of the elders, which faced the congregation. If a man was seated
there, everyone would see that he was present and he could conduct
himself throughout the service with a pose of piety which the
congregation could not fail to notice. Still further., the Pharisee
liked to be addressed as Rabbi and to be treated with the greatest
respect. They claimed, in point of fact, greater respect than that which
was given to parents, for, they said, a man's parents give him
ordinary, physical life, but a man's teacher gives him eternal life.
They even liked to be called father as Elisha called Elijah (2 Kings 2:12) and as the fathers of the faith were known.
Jesus insists that the Christian should remember that he has one
teacher only--and that teacher is Christ; and only one Father in the
faith--and that Father is God.
The whole design of the Pharisees was to dress and act in such a
way as to draw attention to themselves; the whole design of the
Christian should be to obliterate himself, so that if men see his good
deeds, they may glorify not him, but his Father in Heaven. Any religion
which produces ostentation in action and pride in the heart is a false
religion.
Shutting The Door (Matthew 23:13)
23:13 "Alas for
you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you shut the door to the
Kingdom of Heaven in the face of men! You yourselves are not going into
it; nor do you allow those who are trying to get into it to enter it."
Matthew 23:13-26
form the most terrible and the most sustained denunciation in the New
Testament. Here we hear what A. T. Robertson called "the rolling thunder
of Christ's wrath." As Plummer has written, these woes are "like
thunder in their unanswerable severity, and like lightning in their
unsparing exposure.. . . They illuminate while they strike."
Here Jesus directs a series of seven woes against the Scribes
and Pharisees. The Revised Standard Version begins every one of them:
"Woe to you!" The Greek word for woe is ouai (Greek #3759);
it is hard to translate for it includes not only wrath, but also
sorrow. There is righteous anger here, but it is the anger of the heart
of love, broken by the stubborn blindness of men. There is not only an
air of savage denunciation; there is also an atmosphere of poignant
tragedy.
The word hypocrite occurs here again and again. Originally the Greek word hupokrites (Greek #5273)
meant one who answers; it then came to be specially connected with the
statement and answer, the dialogue, of the stage; and it is the regular
Greek word for an actor. It then came to mean an actor in the worse
sense of the term, a pretender, one who acts a part, one who wears a
mask to cover his true feelings, one who puts on an external show while
inwardly his thoughts and feelings are very different.
To Jesus the Scribes and Pharisees were men who were acting a
part. What he meant was this. Their whole idea of religion consisted in
outward observances, the wearing of elaborate phylacteries and tassels,
the meticulous observance of the rules and regulations of the Law. But
in their hearts there was bitterness and envy and pride and arrogance.
To Jesus these Scribes and Pharisees were men who, under a mask of
elaborate godliness, concealed hearts in which the most godless feelings
and emotions held sway. And that accusation holds good in greater or
lesser degree of any man who lives life on the assumption that religion
consists in external observances and external acts.
There is an unwritten saying of Jesus which says, "The key of
the Kingdom they hid." His condemnation of these Scribes and Pharisees
is that they are not only failing to enter the Kingdom themselves, they
shut the door on the faces of those who seek to enter. What did he mean
by this accusation?
We have already seen (Matthew 6:10)
that the best way to think of the Kingdom is to think of it as a
society on earth where God's will is as perfectly done as it is in
heaven. To be a citizen of the Kingdom, and to do God's will, are one
and the same thing. The Pharisees believed that to do God's will was to
observe their thousands of petty rules and regulations; and nothing
could be further from that Kingdom whose basic idea is love. When people
tried to find entry into the Kingdom the Pharisees presented them with
these rules and regulations, which was as good as shutting the door in
their faces.
The Pharisees preferred their ideas of religion to God's idea of
religion. They had forgotten the basic truth that, if a man would teach
others, he must himself first listen to God. The gravest danger which
any teacher or preacher encounters is that he should erect his own
prejudices into universal principles and substitute his own ideas for
the truth of God. When he does that he is not a guide, but a barrier, to
the Kingdom, for, misled himself, he misleads others.
Missionaries Of Evil (Matthew 23:15)
23:15 "Alas for
you, Scribes and Pharisees, for you range over the sea and the dry land
to make one proselyte, and, when that happens, you make him twice as
much a son of hell as yourselves!"
A strange feature of the ancient world was the repulsion and
attraction which Judaism exercised over men at one and the same time.
There was no more hated people than the Jews. Their separatism and their
isolation and their contempt of other nations gained them hostility. It
was, in fact, believed that a basic part of their religion was an oath
that they would never under any circumstances give help to a Gentile,
even to the extent of giving him directions if he asked the way. Their
observance of the Sabbath gained them a reputation for laziness; their
refusal of swine's flesh gained them mockery, even to the extent of the
rumour that they worshipped the pig as their god. Anti-semitism was a
real and universal force in the ancient world.
And yet there was an attraction. The idea of one God came as a
wonderful thing to a world which believed in a multitude of gods. Jewish
ethical purity and standards of morality had a fascination in a world
steeped in immorality, especially for women. The result was that many
were attracted to Judaism.
Their attraction was on two levels. There were those who were
called the god-fearers. These accepted the conception of one God; they
accepted the Jewish moral law; but they took no part in the ceremonial
law and did not become circumcised. Such people existed in large
numbers, and were to be found listening and worshipping in every
synagogue, and indeed provided Paul with his most fruitful field for
evangelization. They are, for instance, the devout Greeks of
Thessalonica (Acts 17:4).
It was the aim of the Pharisees to turn these god-fearers into
proselytes; the word proselyte is an English transliteration of a Greek
word proselutos (Greek #4339),
which means one who has approached or drawn near. The proselyte was the
full convert who had accepted the ceremonial law and circumcision and
who had become in the fullest sense a Jew. As so often happens, "the
most converted were the most perverted." A convert often becomes the
most fanatical devotee of his new religion; and many of these proselytes
were more fanatically devoted to the Jewish Law than even the Jews
themselves.
Jesus accused these Pharisees of being missionaries of evil. It
was true that very few became proselytes, but those who did went the
whole way. The sin of the Pharisees was that they were not really
seeking to lead men to God, they were seeking to lead them to
Pharisaism. One of the gravest dangers which any missionary runs is that
he should try to convert people to a sect rather than to a religion,
and that he should be more concerned in bringing people to a Church than
to Jesus Christ.
Premanand has certain things to say about this sectarianism
which so often disfigures so-called Christianity: "I speak as a
Christian, God is my Father, the Church is my Mother. Christian is my
name; Catholic is my surname. Catholic, because we belong to nothing
less than the Church Universal. So do we need any other names? Why go on
to add Anglican, Episcopalian, Protestant, Presbyterian, Methodist,
Congregational, Baptist, and so on, and so on? These terms are divisive,
sectarian, narrow. They shrivel up one's soul."
It was not to God the Pharisees sought to lead men; it was to
their own sect of Pharisaism. That in fact was their sin. And is that
sin even yet gone from the world, when it would still be insisted in
certain quarters that a man must leave one Church and become a member of
another before he can be allowed a place at the Table of the Lord? The
greatest of all heresies is the sinful conviction that any Church has a
monopoly of God or of his truth, or that any Church is the only gateway
to God's Kingdom.
The Science Of Evasion (Matthew 23:16-22)
23:16-22 "Alas
for you, Scribes and Pharisees! Blind guides! You who say, 'If any one
swears by the Temple, it is nothing; but whoever swears by the gold of
the Temple is bound by his oath.' Foolish ones and blind! Which is the
greater? The gold? Or the Temple which hallows the gold? You say, 'If
anyone swears by the altar, it is nothing; but if anyone swears by the
gift that is on it, he is bound by his oath.' Blind ones! Which is
greater? The gift? Or the altar which hallows the gift? He who swears by
the altar, swears by it and all that is on it. He who swears by the
Temple, swears by it, and by him who inhabits it. And he who swears by
heaven, swears by the throne of God, and by him who sits upon it."
We have already seen that in matters of oaths the Jewish legalists were masters of evasion (Matthew 5:33-37).
The general principle of evasion was this. To the Jew an oath was
absolutely binding, so long as it was a binding oath. Broadly speaking, a
binding oath was an oath which definitely and without equivocation
employed the name of God; such an oath must be kept, no matter what the
cost. Any other oath might be legitimately broken. The idea was that, if
God's name was actually used, then God was introduced as a partner into
the transaction, and to break the oath was not only to break faith with
men but to insult God.
The science of evasion had been brought to a high degree. It is
most probable that in this passage Jesus is presenting a caricature of
Jewish legalistic methods. He is saying, "You have brought evasion to
such a fine art that it is possible to regard an oath by the Temple as
not binding, while an oath by the gold of the Temple is binding; and an
oath by the altar as not binding, while an oath by the gift on the altar
is binding." This is rather to be regarded as a reductio ad absurdum of
Jewish methods than as a literal description.
The idea behind the passage is just this. The whole idea of
treating oaths in this way, the whole conception of a kind of technique
of evasion, is born of a fundamental deceitfulness. The truly religious
man will never make a promise with the deliberate intention of evading
it; he will never, as he makes it, provide himself with a series of
escape routes, which he may use if he finds his promise hard to keep.
We need not with conscious superiority condemn the Pharisaic
science of evasion. The time is not yet ended when a man seeks to evade
some duty on a technicality or calls in the strict letter of the law to
avoid doing what the spirit of the law clearly means he ought to do.
For Jesus the binding principle was twofold. God hears every
word we speak and God sees every intention of our hearts. In view of
that the fine art of evasion is one to which a Christian should be
foreign. The technique of evasion may suit the sharp practice of the
world; but never the open honesty of the Christian mind.
The Lost Sense Of Proportion (Matthew 23:23-24)
23:23-24 "Alas for
you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you tithe mint, and dill,
and cummin, and let go the weightier matters of the Law--justice and
mercy and fidelity. These you ought to have done without neglecting the
others. Blind guides who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!"
The tithe was an essential part of Jewish religious
regulations. "You shall tithe all the yield of your seed, which comes
forth from the field year by year" (Deuteronomy 14:22).
"All the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land, or of the
fruit of the trees is the Lord's; it is holy to the Lord" (Leviticus 27:30).
This tithe was specially for the support of the Levites, whose task it
was to do the material work of the Temple. The things which had to be
tithed were further defined by the Law--"Everything which is eatable,
and is preserved, and has its nourishment from the soil, is liable to be
tithed." It is laid down: "Of dill one must tithe the seeds, the leaves
and the stalks." So, then, it was laid down that every man must lay
aside one-tenth of his produce for God.
The point of Jesus' saying is this. It was universally accepted
that tithes of the main crops must be given. But mint and dill and
cummin are herbs of the kitchen garden and would not be grown in any
quantity; a man would have only a little patch of them. All three were
used in cooking, and dill and cummin had medicinal uses. To tithe them
was to tithe an infinitesimally small crop, maybe not much more than the
produce of one plant. Only those who were superlatively meticulous
would tithe the single plants of the kitchen garden.
That is precisely what the Pharisees were like. They were so
absolutely meticulous about tithes that they would tithe even one clump
of mint; and yet these same men could be guilty of injustice; could be
hard and arrogant and cruel, forgetting the claims of mercy; could take
oaths and pledges and promises with the deliberate intention of evading
them, forgetting fidelity. In other words, many of them kept the trifles
of the Law and forgot the things which really matter.
That spirit is not dead; it never will be until Christ rules in
the hearts of men. There is many a man who wears the right clothes to
church, carefully hands in his offering to the Church, adopts the right
attitude at prayer, is never absent from the celebration of the
sacrament, and who is not doing an honest day's work and is irritable
and bad-tempered and mean with his money. There are women who are full
of good works and who serve on all kinds of committees, and whose
children are lonely for them at night. There is nothing easier than to
observe all the outward actions of religion and yet be completely
irreligious.
There is nothing more necessary than a sense of proportion to
save us from confusing religious observances with real devotion.
Jesus uses a vivid illustration. In Matthew 23:24
a curious thing has happened in the King James Version. It should not
be to strain at a gnat, but to strain out a gnat as in the Revised
Standard Version. Originally that mistake was simply a misprint but it
has been perpetuated for centuries. In point of fact the older
versions--Tyndale, Coverdale, and the Geneva Bible--all correctly have
to strain out a gnat The picture is this: A gnat was an insect and
therefore unclean; and so was a camel. In order to avoid the risk of
drinking anything unclean, wine was strained through muslin gauze so
that any possible impurity might be strained out of it. This is a
humorous picture which must have raised a laugh, of a man carefully
straining his wine through gauze to avoid swallowing a microscopic
insect and yet cheerfully swallowing a camel. It is the picture of a man
who has completely lost his sense of proportion.
The Real Cleanness (Matthew 23:25-26)
23:25-26 "Alas
for you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you cleanse the outside
of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of rapacity and lust.
Blind Pharisee! cleanse the inside of the cup and the plate first, that
the outside of it also may be clean."
The idea of uncleanness is continually arising in the Jewish
Law. It must be remembered that this uncleanness was not physical
uncleanness. An unclean vessel was not in our sense of the term a dirty
vessel. For a person to be ceremonially unclean meant that he could not
enter the Temple or the synagogue; he was debarred from the worship of
God. A man was unclean if, for instance, he touched a dead body, or came
into contact with a Gentile. A woman was unclean if she had a
haemorrhage, even if that haemorrhage was perfectly normal and healthy.
If a person who was himself unclean touched any vessel, that vessel
became unclean; and, thereafter, any other person who touched or handled
the vessel became in turn unclean. It was, therefore, of paramount
importance to have vessels cleansed; and the law for cleansing them is
fantastically complicated. We can quote only certain basic examples of
it.
An earthen vessel which is hollow becomes unclean only on the
inside and not on the outside; and it can be cleansed only by being
broken. The following cannot become unclean at all--a flat plate without
a rim, an open coal-shovel, a grid-iron with holes in it for parching
grains of wheat. On the other hand, a plate with a rim, or an earthen
spice-box, or a writing-case can become unclean. Of vessels made of
leather, bone, wood and glass, flat ones do not become unclean; deep
ones do. If they are broken, they become clean. Any metal vessel which
is at once smooth and hollow can become unclean; but a door, a bolt, a
lock, a hinge, a knocker cannot become unclean. If a thing is made of
wood and metal, then the wood can become unclean, but the metal cannot.
These regulations seem to us fantastic, and yet these are the
regulations the Pharisees meticulously kept.
The food or drink inside a vessel might have been obtained by
cheating or extortion or theft; it might be luxurious and gluttonous;
that did not matter, so long as the vessel itself was ceremonially
clean. Here is another example of fussing about trifles and letting the
weightier matters go.
Grotesque as the whole thing may seem, it can happen yet. A
church can be torn in two about the colour of a carpet, or a
pulpit-fall, or about the shape or metal of the cups to be used in the
Sacrament. The last thing that men and women seem to learn in matters of
religion is a relative sense of values; and the tragedy is that it is
so often magnification of matters of no importance which wreck the
peace.
Disguised Decay (Matthew 23:27-28)
23:27-28 "Alas
for you, Scribes and Pharisees! for you are like white-washed tombs,
which look beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of the bones of
dead men, and of all corruption. So you, too, outwardly look righteous
to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness."
Here again is a picture which any Jew would understand. One of
the commonest places for tombs was by the wayside. We have already seen
that anyone who touched a dead body became unclean (Numbers 19:16).
Therefore, anyone who came into contact with a tomb automatically
became unclean. At one time in particular the roads of Palestine were
crowded with pilgrims--at the time of the Passover Feast. For a man to
become unclean on his way to the Passover Feast would be a disaster, for
that meant he would be debarred from sharing in it. It was then Jewish
practice in the month of Adar to whitewash all wayside tombs, so that no
pilgrims might accidentally come into contact with one of them and be
rendered unclean.
So, as a man journeyed the roads of Palestine on a spring day,
these tombs would glint white, and almost lovely, in the sunshine; but
within they were full of bones and bodies whose touch would defile.
That, said Jesus, was a precise picture of what the Pharisees were.
Their outward actions were the actions of intensely religious men; their
inward hearts were foul and putrid with sin.
It can still happen. As Shakespeare had it, a man may smile and
smile and be a villain. A man may walk with bowed head and reverent
steps and folded hands in the posture of humility, and all the time be
looking down with cold contempt on those whom he regards as sinners. His
very humility may be the pose of pride; and, as he walks so humbly, he
may be thinking with relish of the picture of piety which he presents to
those who are watching him. There is nothing harder than for a good man
not to know that he is good; and once he knows he is good, his goodness
is gone, however he may appear to men from the outside.
The Taint Of Murder (Matthew 23:29-36)
23:29-36 Alas
for you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you erect the tombs of
the prophets, and adorn the memorials of the righteous, and say, 'If we
had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partners
with them in the murder of the prophets.' Thus you witness against
yourselves that you are the sons of those who slew the prophets. Fill up
the measure of your fathers. Serpents, brood of vipers, how are you to
escape being condemned to hell fire? For this reason, look you, I send
you the prophets and the wise men and the scribes. Some of them you will
kill and crucify; and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues,
and pursue them with persecution from city to city, that on you there
may fall the responsibility for all the righteous blood shed upon the
earth from the blood of Abel, the righteous, to the blood of Zacharias,
the son of Barachios, whom you murdered between the Temple and the
altar. This is the truth I tell you--the responsibility for all these
crimes shall fall on this generation."
Jesus is charging the Jews that the taint of murder is in their
history and that that taint has not even yet worked itself out. The
Scribes and Pharisees tend the tombs of the martyrs and beautify their
memorials, and claim that, if they had lived in the old days, they would
not have slain the prophets and the men of God. But that is precisely
what they would have done, and precisely what they are going to do.
Jesus' charge is that the history of Israel is the history of
the murder of the men of God. He says that the righteous men from Abel
to Zacharias were murdered. Why are these two chosen? The murder of Abel
by Cain everyone knows; but the murder of Zacharias is not nearly so
well known. The story is told in a grim little cameo in 2 Chronicles 24:20-22.
It happened in the days of Joash. Zacharias rebuked the nation for
their sin, and Joash stirred up the people to stone him to death in the
very Temple court; and Zacharias died saying, "May the Lord see and
avenge!" (Zacharias is called the son of Barachios, whereas, in fact, he
was the son of Jehoiada, no doubt a slip of the gospel writer in
retelling the story.)
Why should Zacharias be chosen? In the Hebrew Bible Genesis is
the first book, as it is in ours; but, unlike our order of the books, 2
Chronicles is the last in the Hebrew Bible. We could say that the murder
of Abel is the first in the Bible story, and the murder of Zacharias
the last. From beginning to end, the history of Israel is the rejection,
and often the slaughter, of the men of God.
Jesus is quite clear that the murder taint is still there. He
knows that now he must die, and that in the days to come his messengers
will be persecuted and ill-treated and rejected and slain.
Here indeed is tragedy; the nation which God chose and loved had
turned their hands against him; and the day of reckoning was to come.
It makes us think. When history judges us, will its verdict be
that we were the hinderers or the helpers of God? That is a question
which every individual, and every nation, must answer.
The Rejection Of Love's Appeal (Matthew 23:37-39)
23:37-39
"Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killer of the prophets, stoner of those sent to
you, how often have I wished to gather your children together, as a bird
gathers her nestlings under her wings--and you refused. Look you, your
house is left to you desolate, for I tell you from now you will not see
me until you will say, 'Blessed in the name of the Lord is he that
comes.'"
Here is all the poignant tragedy of rejected love. Here Jesus
speaks, not so much as the stern judge of all the earth, as the lover of
the souls of men.
There is one curious light this passage throws on the life of
Jesus which we may note in the passing. According to the Synoptic
Gospels Jesus was never in Jerusalem after his public ministry began,
until he came to this last Passover Feast. We can see here how much the
gospel story leaves out, for Jesus could not have said what he says here
unless he had paid repeated visits to Jerusalem and issued to the
people repeated appeals. A passage like this shows us that in the
gospels we have the merest sketch and outline of the life of Jesus.
This passage shows us four great truths.
(i) It shows us the patience of God. Jerusalem had killed the
prophets and stoned the messengers of God; yet God did not cast her off;
and in the end he sent his Son. There is a limitless patience in the
love of God which bears with men's sinning and will not cast them off.
(ii) It shows us the appeal of Jesus. Jesus speaks as the lover.
He will not force an entry; the only weapon he can use is the appeal of
love. He stands with outstretched hands of appeal, an appeal which men
have the awful responsibility of being able to accept or to refuse.
(iii) It shows us the deliberation of the sin of man. Men looked
on Christ in all the splendour of his appeal--and refused him. There is
no handle on the outside of the door of the human heart; it must be
opened from the inside; and sin is the open-eyed deliberate refusal of
the appeal of God in Jesus Christ.
(iv) It shows us the consequences of rejecting Christ. Only
forty years were to pass and in A.D. 70 Jerusalem would be a heap of
ruins. That disaster was the direct consequence of the rejection of
Jesus Christ. Had the Jews accepted the Christian way of love and
abandoned the way of power politics, Rome would never have descended on
them with its avenging might. It is the fact of history--even in
time--that the nation which rejects God is doomed to disaster.
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)