Woe
“‘Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.’”
Today’s Text: Matthew 22:23-33 (Living Life Daily Devotional)
People sometimes mention that the Old Testament is hard to read because there is so much of God’s wrath on display. It needs to be pointed out that God’s wrath is on display whenever sin governs God’s people.
We see God’s wrath on display here in Matthew 23, one of the most difficult passages in all of Scripture, IMHO. It would be extremely rare to hear a sermon going over the “woe”s that are heaped on “the teachers of the law and Pharisees” in this chapter.
But although people will have a tendency to skim through Matthew 23 as quickly as possible simply because of the negative language, many may not hear Jesus’s warnings directed at Christians today—that is, at us, the reader.
Somehow, the wrath of God on the Israelites in the Old Testament may be more relatable to us, because it is quite easy to see ourselves in the Israelites through the accounts of their disobedience. And so we might feel as if we are somehow objects of God’s wrath together with them. And we don’t like to be reminded about our disobedience or the possibility of God’s wrath on us because of it.
But what do Pharisee and teachers of the law have to do with us?
That posture exposes a mistake that I find a lot of people make. We have a tendency to disregard biblical teaching, because it doesn’t immediately and directly seem to have anything to do with us. However, we should not necessarily be focusing on who Jesus is instructing so much as the spiritual principles of the instruction.
The warnings in this chapter are also for us, not just the Pharisees and teachers of the law. And the warning is that we must not allow ourselves and our communities to have those attributes and qualities and behaviors that Jesus condemns.
Because, let’s face it—let’s be honest—we are all vulnerable to hypocrisy. And the first hypocrisy that Jesus points out is how the Jewish ruling class made it practically impossible for people to become a part of the community of God—even when they themselves did not follow their own rules to the letter. They were being exclusionary when they should have been inclusionary.
Why? Because they either didn’t understand or (even worse) didn’t care that God wants to give everyone an opportunity to be saved and be a part of His family and His kingdom.
Woe to any of us if we have that same attitude.
Father, You are gracious and loving and merciful. And You want what is best for us, which is to be in Your household, in Your kingdom, as Your people. Yet we so easily and so often stray from the goodness You offer to us. Forgive us for being prone to wander. And Forgive us for not wanting to share the generous blessings of Your kingdom with the world. Change my heart. Change our hearts to declare Your praises to a dying world. In Jesus’s name. Amen.
