Condemnation of False Spiritual Leaders
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2014 · 23 November 2014
In the Word of God, the most honored, the most dignified is the true and faithful man of God. In other words, God lifts up faithful, true servants of His name. And throughout Scripture we read of the wonderful testimony of these individuals and God calls us to give them honor and respect. The apostle Paul said that people treated him as though he were an angel or even as Christ Himself, in Galatians 4:14.
But on the other hand, the most severely condemned are the false spiritual leaders. The harshest words of condemnation and wrath are reserved for those who parade themselves as true spiritual leaders, but in fact are liars and hypocrites. Scripture repeatedly warns about teachers who do not know God, who are strangers to the salvation they claim to proclaim. They are warning men of a hell that they themselves will populate.
Jesus rebukes them as perishing in the midst of plenty. Matthew 23 stands as a peak above all other peaks in Scripture in its condemning terms that we read through verse 36. And honestly, it's difficult to preach this passage because it’s condemning these false leaders over and over. But we must because it stands as a warning. And so we find ourselves instructed for today by learning why they were so condemned.
And may we transport that message to our current situation and apply this to the false spiritual leaders of our own time. Let us not name religions, denominations or movements, but let me give you the criteria out of the word of God so that you can make those judgments on your own. But you need to be discerning, honor those who are true spiritual leaders as Scripture leads you to condemn and avoid those who are false.
Now it is still Wednesday of His last week, two days from the crucifixion. The mounting hostility to Jesus Christ has reached a fever pitch. He intimidated them every way possible and they wanted to eliminate Him and then when the whole city seemed to be swept up in the fact that He might be the Messiah, their anger was even raised beyond what it had been before.
They no longer asked Jesus any questions. He had made them look like fools every time they did, so they silenced themselves. And so on this Wednesday He preached a final sermon. And it is against false spiritual leaders and it is a warning to the people to stay away from them in verse 1-12. And then it is a condemnation of them themselves from verse 13 on and ends with a lament over the consequence of the unbelief of Jerusalem, which was the product of false spiritual leadership.
Seven times Jesus uses the word woe. He pronounces this kind of curse on them and it is not wishful thinking. And He pronounces the final judgment on the religious leaders of Israel who have rejected Him and led the people in an equal rejection. And so we're left with seven curses. First of all, false spiritual leaders are cursed for keeping people out of the kingdom as we saw in verse 13, "For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men for you neither go in yourselves, neither permit them who are entering to go in."
Secondly, false spiritual leaders are cursed for perverting people. They not only shut them out of heaven, they usher them into hell. Verse 15 says, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel land and sea to win one proselyte, and when he is won, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.”
Thirdly, false spiritual leaders are cursed for they subvert the truth. They have developed reasoning that undermines truth. God is the God of truth, who cannot lie says Paul. And so any false system is a lying system. False religions are filled with lies, untruths, broken promises and that's exactly what the Pharisees and scribes had developed, a religion that evades the truth.
Jesus calls them blind guides, because they lived under the illusion that they were the guides of the blind. Romans 2:19-21 says, "You are confident that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, 20 an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, having the form of knowledge and truth in the law. 21 You, therefore, who teach another, do you not teach yourself?” In fact, earlier in Matthew 15:14, He said, "the blind are leaders of the blind and if the blind lead the blind, both are going to fall in a ditch."
Only God can change the lying nature and replace it with truth nature. And that is a redemptive work, a sanctifying work, a work of regeneration. But in order to appear pious, they had developed a system by which they could lie without being judged. And they would vow that to God, and make a promise to some person and then in order to affirm that they wanted a contract sealed in blood.
But in Matthew 5:33-37 our Lord says to them, “Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform your oaths to the Lord.’ 34 But I say to you, do not swear at all: 37 But let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’” In other words, a person of integrity does what he says. There is no need for anything else.
So Jesus said in verse 16, “Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘Whoever swears by the temple, it is nothing; but whoever swears by the gold of the temple, he is obliged to perform it.” So they say, swearing by the temple means nothing. But if you swear by the gold in the temple that's something. How ridiculous. They knew what the Old Testament said pay your vows, meaning: keep your promise. God hates lying.
This is illustrated in Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5 who said we are going to give all we receive from the sale of this property to God. It sounded so religious and so spiritual. But when they received that money and they looked at how much it was they thought we made a mistake. The church doesn't need all this. We can't give all this to them, let us keep part of it. And you know what God did? He killed them in front of the whole congregation.
The point here is, the leaders had developed a system whereby they could lie. And so in verse 19, “Fools and blind! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift?” Jesus doesn't even deal with the immorality of it here. He deals with the stupidity of it. Verse 17, “Fools and blind! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that sanctifies the gold?” In other words, the only reason the gold is sacred is because it's in the temple because that is where God dwells.
And then in verse 18, they had another little deal, "whosoever swears by the altar, it is nothing; but whoever swears by the gift that is on it, he is obliged to perform it.” Jesus says, you morons, which is greater the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift? The gift standing alone is nothing, only when it is on an altar offered to God that it becomes something.
It was just a silly way to evade having to keep your word. And you see false spiritual leaders need that because they lie all the time. So Jesus says, in verses 20-22, "Therefore he who swears by the altar, swears by it and by all things on it. 21 He who swears by the temple, swears by it and by Him who dwells in it. 22 And he who swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by Him who sits on it.” So if you swear by anything that represents God, then you are going to touch the God who fills it all.
Fourthly, false spiritual leaders are cursed for reversing divine priorities. Look at verse 23, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone.” Well, you know what mint, anise and cumin are? All three of these are kitchen items used for flavoring food.
In the Old Testament law, God instructed His people to give one-tenth of all their crops and all their products to the treasury in Israel. So every year when you got your crop, ten percent of it went to the priests because the government was a theocracy run by priests. There also was a second tenth was for ceremonies and national festivals and so forth and there also was a third tenth paid every third year for welfare and for strangers.
And the Old Testament text said in Leviticus 27:30 and Deuteronomy 14:22, that this included "all the increase of your seed." Now what that meant was, you plant your seed and whatever you get of the increase, you tithe that. But these literalists had taken that to the extreme. God meant for you to tithe the grain and the wine and oil products. They were real good at counting seeds, but they "have neglected the weightier elements of the law," which are, "justice, mercy, and faith."
False religious leaders get wrapped up in inconsequential minutia and have no capacity to deal with the weightier matters. Jesus used the tradition of the rabbis who believe there were light elements to the law and weighty elements. And here He says the weighty elements are justice, mercy, and faith. The Jews had been taught in Micah 6:8, "He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?”
And they had no faith. They walked by sight and they walked by works. They walked by law and they walked by their own efforts. But they did not have the real spiritual stuff. At the end of verse of 23 Jesus says, "These you ought to have done without leaving the others undone." He means you should take care of the tithe as well. Tithe does have its proper place still in Judaism in the gospel time.
It is amazing how false religious systems have so much minutia and so little reality. They really operate as people who have no internal spiritual commitment at all. Verse 24 describes them in a very graphic way, "Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!” In the Old Testament in Leviticus 11:42, the smallest unclean animal was a gnat, an insect. The largest unclean creature that was forbidden to a Jew was a camel in Leviticus 11:4.
So Jesus says to them, do you know what you're doing? You are all confused, your whole priority system is inverted. You're just fooling around with stuff that doesn't matter. You are afraid to eat the tenth mint leaf and then you are allowing into your life hypocrisy, dishonesty, cruelty, greed and self-worship. You substitute insignificant forms and outward acts of religion for essential realities of the heart.
Fifthly, so the false spiritual leaders are condemned for excluding people, perverting people, undermining the truth, inverting the rules, and also for extorting the people. Verse 25, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence.” You have a ministry that looks pious, but the whole thing is based on taking advantage of other people. You use people, you extort people.
All the plate and the cup have been cleaned ceremonial, the only problem is that the food on the plate and the wine in the cup were stolen. It all looks so religious and yet everything in it and on it was gained by extortion. How many false religious leaders are there all over the world who are offering people how to get rich and the riches they have gained is all the stuff they have stolen from those very people.
So Jesus says in verse 26, "You blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish that the outside of them may be clean also.” This is so prevalent today, as false spiritual leaders become rich, they become fat, they become wealthy with their false piety and yet they have the heart of a thief.
Sixthly, false spiritual leaders are cursed for their deception. Verse 27 says, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.” Jesus says you are guilty of deception. You contaminate people, you aren't what you claim.
On the 15th of Avadar, which is the month of March in Israel in the time of our Lord, there was an unusual custom. It was right after the spring rains that came and washed away the white-wash that the Jews used to white-wash the tombs. And the reason they did that was in preparation of Passover, along the roads where people would be travelling, for fear that they might inadvertently touch a tomb and thus be defiled. And because of doing these ceremonial cleansing processes, they could avoid other activities.
And so as you came into Jerusalem, you would see these beautiful clean white tombs everywhere. But they weren't what they appeared to be. Verse 28, “Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.” They looked so pure and so white, but they were tombs. And anybody who touched them would be contaminated and Jesus says, and that's what you are. You're whited tombs.
Then the seventh one, false spiritual leaders are cursed for pretension. Verse 29-30, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, 30 and say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.” They said, we're so much holier than they. This is the ugly pretense of spiritual pride. Jesus had told them earlier in Matthew 21 how they had killed all of the prophets from God in the parable of the vineyard and the landowner and the servants and the son.
And Jesus says in verse 31, “Therefore you are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.” Why? Because right there they were plotting to kill Him. They were so consumed with their own deceit that they didn't even see the reality that they were killing one greater than the prophets, the son of God. Verse 32, "Fill up then the measure of your father’s guilt." What does He mean? Go ahead. You're scheming to kill the greatest prophet of all, the Son of God.
Jesus knew that this was the reason that He came, to die to save those who believe. Even the devil was fooled, only God can turn something so heinous as being crucified into the greatest act of love for humankind. As it says in Genesis 50:20, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” Let us pray.