Matthew 23
23
Superficial Spirituality versus Genuine Humility
1Then Jesus addressed both the crowds and his disciples and said, 2“The religious scholars and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat # 23:2 Moses’ seat was a special seat in the ancient synagogues where the most respected elders of the people would sit to instruct them. See Deut. 17:10–11; John 9:28–29. as the authorized interpreters of the Law. 3So listen and follow what they teach, but don’t do what they do, for they tell you one thing and do another. 4They tie on your backs an oppressive burden of religious obligations and insist that you carry them, but will never lift a finger to help ease your load. 5Everything they do is done for show and to be noticed by others. They want to be seen as holy, so they wear oversized prayer boxes on their arms and foreheads with Scriptures inside, and wear extra-long tassels on their outer garments. # 23:5 See Num. 15:38; Deut. 22:12. 6They crave the seats of highest honor at banquets and in their meeting places. 7And how they love to be admired by men with their titles of respect, aspiring to be recognized in public and have others call them ‘Reverend.’ # 23:7 Or “rabbi,” an Aramaic word that means “master,” “chief,” “great one,” or “teacher.”
8“But you are to be different from that. You are not to be called ‘master,’ # 23:8 Or “rabbi.” for you have only one Master, and you are all brothers and sisters. 9And you are not to be addressed as ‘father,’ # 23:9 As translated from the Hebrew Matthew and the Aramaic. The Greek is “Call no one father.” for you have one Father, who is in heaven. 10Nor are you to be addressed as ‘teacher,’ # 23:10 Or “leader.” for you have one Teacher, the Anointed One. # 23:10 Jesus is emphasizing the priority of God over titles of men and over all teachers, fathers, and leaders. He is not teaching us to be disrespectful to teachers, fathers, and leaders, but that God must be in first place over all others. See Deut. 17:9–10. 11The greatest among you will be the one who always serves others. 12Remember this: If you have a lofty opinion of yourself and seek to be honored, you will be humbled. But if you have a modest opinion of yourself and choose to humble yourself, you will be honored.”
Jesus Pronounces Seven Woes
13“Great sorrow awaits # 23:13 Or “woe.” you religious scholars and you Pharisees—such frauds and pretenders! You do all you can to keep people from experiencing the reality of heaven’s kingdom realm. # 23:13 The Hebrew Matthew is “You have hidden the keys of knowledge and shut the kingdom of heaven from the children of men.” Not only do you refuse to enter in, you also forbid anyone else from entering in!
14“Great sorrow awaits you religious scholars and you Pharisees—frauds and pretenders! For you eat up the widow’s household with the ladle of your prayers. Because of this, you will receive a greater judgment. # 23:14 As translated from the Aramaic and the Hebrew Matthew. The most reliable Greek manuscripts do not include this verse, and it is omitted by modern translations.
15“Great sorrow awaits you religious scholars and you Pharisees—such frauds and pretenders! For you will travel over land and sea to find one disciple, only to make him twice the child of hell # 23:15 Or “son of Gehenna.” Gehenna is an Aramaic word for the garbage dump outside of Jerusalem, which became a metaphor for hell. as yourselves.
16“You blind guides! # 23:16 The Aramaic is “blind rescuers.” Great sorrow awaits you, for you teach that there’s nothing binding when you swear by God’s temple, but if you swear by the gold of the temple, you are bound by your oath. 17You are deceived and blind! # 23:17 Or “you blind fools.” Which is greater, the gold or the temple that makes the gold sacred? 18And you say that whoever takes an oath by swearing, ‘By the altar,’ it is nothing. But if you swear, ‘By the gift upon the altar,’ then you are obligated to keep your oath. 19What deception! For what is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? 20Whoever swears by the altar swears by the altar and everything offered on it. 21And whoever swears by the temple swears by it and the one who dwells in it. 22And whoever swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by God, who sits upon it.
23“Great sorrow awaits you religious scholars and Pharisees—frauds and pretenders! For you are obsessed with peripheral issues, like insisting on paying meticulous tithes on the smallest herbs that grow in your gardens. # 23:23 Or “You tithe on mint, dill, and cumin [caraway seed].” See Lev. 27:30; Num. 18:12; Deut. 14:22–23. The law of Moses only obligated tithing on grain, wine, and oil. The religious scholars added to the law their interpretation, which added vegetables and herbs to their list of what should be tithed. These matters are fine, yet you ignore the most important duties of all: to walk in the love of God, to display mercy to others, and to live with integrity. # 23:23 Or “faithfulness.” The Hebrew Matthew is “justice, loving-kindness, and truth.” The Aramaic is “justice, grace, and faith.” See Mic. 6:8; Zech. 7:9. Readjust your values and place first things first. 24What blind guides! Nitpickers! You will spoon out a gnat from your drink, yet at the same time you’ve gulped down a camel without realizing it! # 23:24 This is best seen as an Aramaic pun, because the Aramaic word for gnat is qamla, and the word for camel is gamla. The gnat becomes a metaphor of what is least and insignificant, for swallowing a gnat will not hurt you. But the camel becomes a picture of self-righteousness. To swallow a camel would indeed kill you.
25“Great sorrow awaits you religious scholars and Pharisees—frauds and imposters! You are like one who will only wipe clean the outside of a cup or bowl, leaving the inside filthy. You are foolish to ignore the greed and self-indulgence that live like germs within you. 26You are blind to your evil. Shouldn’t the one who cleans the outside also be concerned with cleaning the inside? You need to have more than clean dishes; you need clean hearts!
27“Great sorrow awaits you religious scholars and Pharisees—frauds and imposters! You are nothing more than tombs painted over with white paint—tombs that look shining and beautiful on the outside but filled with rotting corpses on the inside. 28Outwardly you masquerade as righteous people, but inside your hearts you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
29“Great sorrow awaits you religious scholars and Pharisees—frauds and imposters! You build memorials for the prophets your ancestors killed and decorate the monuments of the godly people your ancestors murdered. 30Then you boast, ‘If we had lived back then, we would not have joined them in killing the prophets.’ 31But your words and deeds testify that you are just like them and prove that you are indeed the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. 32Go ahead and finish what your ancestors started! 33You are nothing but snakes in the grass, the offspring of poisonous vipers! How will you escape the judgment of hell if you refuse to turn in repentance?
34“For this reason I will send you more prophets and wise men and teachers of truth. Some you will crucify, and some you will beat mercilessly with whips in your meeting houses, abusing and persecuting them from city to city. 35As your penalty, you will be held responsible for the righteous blood spilled and the murders of every godly person throughout your history—from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Jehoiada, # 23:35 As translated from the Hebrew Matthew. See 2 Chron. 24:20–21. This strengthens the argument that the original manuscript of Matthew was written in Hebrew. The Greek erroneously lists Zechariah’s father as Barachiah. There was indeed a Zechariah son of Barachiah, but he didn’t live until after the crucifixion of Christ and was killed in a massacre in AD 69 by zealots inside the temple. See Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lost and Hostile Gospels (Williams & Norgate, 1874), 138. It is also recorded by the Jewish historian Josephus that Zechariah was the son of Jehoiada. B. J. 4.6.4. Furthermore, Jerome, in his commentary on Matthew, says, “In the [Hebrew] Gospel [of Matthew] which the Nazarenes use, for ‘son of Barachiah’ we find written, ‘son of Jehoiada.’ ” Quoted from http://www.textexcavation.com. whom you killed as he stood in the temple between the brazen altar and the Holy Place. 36I tell you the truth: the judgment for all these things will fall upon this generation!”
Jesus Prophesies Judgment Coming to Jerusalem
37“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem—you are the city that murders your prophets! You are the city that stones the very messengers who were sent # 23:37 Or “apostles” (sent ones). to deliver you! So many times I have longed to gather a wayward people, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings—but you were too stubborn to let me. 38And now it is too late, since your city will be left in ruins. # 23:38 See Jer. 12:7; 22:5. 39For you will not see me again until you are able to say, ‘We welcome the one who comes to us in the name of the Lord.’ ” # 23:39 See Ps. 118:26.
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Matthew 23: TPT
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Learn More About The Passion TranslationMatthew 23
23
Religious Fashion Shows
1-3Now Jesus turned to address his disciples, along with the crowd that had gathered with them. “The religion scholars and Pharisees are competent teachers in God’s Law. You won’t go wrong in following their teachings on Moses. But be careful about following them. They talk a good line, but they don’t live it. They don’t take it into their hearts and live it out in their behavior. It’s all spit-and-polish veneer.
4-7“Instead of giving you God’s Law as food and drink by which you can banquet on God, they package it in bundles of rules, loading you down like pack animals. They seem to take pleasure in watching you stagger under these loads, and wouldn’t think of lifting a finger to help. Their lives are perpetual fashion shows, embroidered prayer shawls one day and flowery prayers the next. They love to sit at the head table at church dinners, basking in the most prominent positions, preening in the radiance of public flattery, receiving honorary degrees, and getting called ‘Doctor’ and ‘Reverend.’
8-10“Don’t let people do that to you, put you on a pedestal like that. You all have a single Teacher, and you are all classmates. Don’t set people up as experts over your life, letting them tell you what to do. Save that authority for God; let him tell you what to do. No one else should carry the title of ‘Father’; you have only one Father, and he’s in heaven. And don’t let people maneuver you into taking charge of them. There is only one Life-Leader for you and them—Christ.
11-12“Do you want to stand out? Then step down. Be a servant. If you puff yourself up, you’ll get the wind knocked out of you. But if you’re content to simply be yourself, your life will count for plenty.
Frauds!
13“I’ve had it with you! You’re hopeless, you religion scholars, you Pharisees! Frauds! Your lives are roadblocks to God’s kingdom. You refuse to enter, and won’t let anyone else in either.
15“You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You go halfway around the world to make a convert, but once you get him you make him into a replica of yourselves, double-damned.
16-22“You’re hopeless! What arrogant stupidity! You say, ‘If someone makes a promise with his fingers crossed, that’s nothing; but if he swears with his hand on the Bible, that’s serious.’ What ignorance! Does the leather on the Bible carry more weight than the skin on your hands? And what about this piece of trivia: ‘If you shake hands on a promise, that’s nothing; but if you raise your hand that God is your witness, that’s serious’? What ridiculous hairsplitting! What difference does it make whether you shake hands or raise hands? A promise is a promise. What difference does it make if you make your promise inside or outside a house of worship? A promise is a promise. God is present, watching and holding you to account regardless.
23-24“You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You keep meticulous account books, tithing on every nickel and dime you get, but on the meat of God’s Law, things like fairness and compassion and commitment—the absolute basics!—you carelessly take it or leave it. Careful bookkeeping is commendable, but the basics are required. Do you have any idea how silly you look, writing a life story that’s wrong from start to finish, nitpicking over commas and semicolons?
25-26“You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You buff the surface of your cups and bowls so they sparkle in the sun, while the insides are maggoty with your greed and gluttony. Stupid Pharisee! Scour the insides, and then the gleaming surface will mean something.
27-28“You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You’re like manicured grave plots, grass clipped and the flowers bright, but six feet down it’s all rotting bones and worm-eaten flesh. People look at you and think you’re saints, but beneath the skin you’re total frauds.
29-32“You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You build granite tombs for your prophets and marble monuments for your saints. And you say that if you had lived in the days of your ancestors, no blood would have been on your hands. You protest too much! You’re cut from the same cloth as those murderers, and daily add to the death count.
33-34“Snakes! Cold-blooded sneaks! Do you think you can worm your way out of this? Never have to pay the piper? It’s on account of people like you that I send prophets and wise guides and scholars generation after generation—and generation after generation you treat them like dirt, greeting them with lynch mobs, hounding them with abuse.
35-36“You can’t squirm out of this: Every drop of righteous blood ever spilled on this earth, beginning with the blood of that good man Abel right down to the blood of Zechariah, Barachiah’s son, whom you murdered at his prayers, is on your head. All this, I’m telling you, is coming down on you, on your generation.
37-39“Jerusalem! Jerusalem! Murderer of prophets! Killer of the ones who brought you God’s news! How often I’ve ached to embrace your children, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you wouldn’t let me. And now you’re so desolate, nothing but a ghost town. What is there left to say? Only this: I’m out of here soon. The next time you see me you’ll say, ‘Oh, God has blessed him! He’s come, bringing God’s rule!’”
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THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved. Used by permission of NavPress. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers.