Matthew 23:34-36: His Blood: Our Guilt and Our Salvation

“…I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify…” Jesus in Matthew 23:34

 “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” (Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956)

Jesus continues in His revealing of the hearts of the scribes and Pharisees.   Jesus receives no points for political correctness. Rather, He peers deeply into human hearts and proclaims the truth about man.  Jesus can do this; He is the Judge who will preside over the final judgment (Revelation 20:11-15).   We as humans must take a backseat when it comes to judging the hearts of others.  Discern, yes; judge, no.

Jesus says, “Therefore I send you  prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town” (v. 34).    This is fulfilled with John the Baptist (Matthew 14:10) and in the Book of Acts:  Peter and the Apostles (5:40), Stephen (7:60), the church (9:2), James (12:2), Paul (14:19, 2 Corinthians 11:23-27), etc.  And it will be fulfilled when they deliver up the King of Glory to be crucified. 

Also, notice the Christology of Jesus’ words “I send you” (v. 34).  If our Lord was a mere man, He could not have uttered those words.   Yet our Lord reveals He is beyond human, beyond space and time, with those simple words:  I send you.

Even though the scribes and Pharisees thought they were so righteous that they would never shed blood (23:30), they were guilty of the blood of a whole generation of prophets, including the Prophet, Priest and King.   Therefore on them will come all the righteous blood shed on earth (v. 35).   From A to Z, from Abel to Zechariah (v. 35), from the first murder (Genesis 4:8-11) to the last murder recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures (2 Chronicles 24:20-22), they are guilty.  

The phrase son of Barachiah (v. 35) is a difficulty since the Zechariah who was recorded as murdered in the court of the house of the Lord (2 Chronicles 24:21) is listed as the son of Jehoiada, not Barachiah.   A different Zechariah is recorded as the son of Barachiah (Zechariah 1:1).   Bible scholars have many possible solutions to this difficulty.   One of them is that Zechariah was a popular name in Biblical times.  Unger lists twenty-nine different Old Testament characters that had the name” Zechariah” (The New Unger’s Bible Dictionary, pp. 1380-1381).  Also, one of the oldest and most reliable manuscripts of Matthew (i.e., Sinaiticus) omits son of Barachiah, giving possible evidence of a later scribal error. 

And just days later when the people of Jerusalem cried, “His blood be upon us and on our children” (Matthew 27:25), they prophesied against themselves.  For a generation later the Roman siege of Jerusalem killed over 1 million people, according to the Jewish historian Josephus.   Those things did come upon this generation (v. 36), just as Jesus said.

Rembrandt’s (1606-1669) masterpiece, The Raising of the Cross, hangs in the museum Alte Pinakothek in Münich.   This painting depicts the crucifixion of Christ.  Interestingly out of place, Rembrandt painted into this picture a man in a blue painter’s hat raising the cross.   Francis Schaeffer in How Should We Then Live?  (p. 98) explains:  “That man is Rembrandt himself – a self-portrait.  He thus stated for all the world to see that his sins had sent Christ to the cross.” 

This passage from Matthew 23 has been the basis for much heretical hostility toward the Jewish people over the centuries.   But all of us are guilty of the blood of Jesus.   If we blame others for the crucifixion of Jesus without implicating ourselves, then we prove we are in darkness and outside of His salvation.   Like Rembrandt, may we all humble ourselves before the cross, realizing that His blood is on us.   As we acknowledge our culpability, His blood on us no longer condemns us; rather it justifies us before God (Romans 5:9).   What an awesome God we serve!

Rembrandt's "Raising of the Cross"

Matthew 23:27-33: Are We Whitewashed Tombs or Walking the Walk?

“you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?”  Jesus to the Pharisees in Matthew 23:33

"One of my biggest concerns was how people use…their religion as a banner…They go, 'I'm a good Christian…and this is the way you should live your life.' And I'm like, do not give me a lecture on how to live my life when you go to church every week, but I know you're still sleeping around on your wife.”  (Sandra Bullock explaining why she initially rejected the role of Leigh Anne Tuohy, a born-again Christian, for the movie, The Blind Side;  www.crosswalk.com, Nov. 16, 2009)

“Do not look on his appearance or the height of his stature…For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7)

It is days before the crucifixion of Christ and Jesus is proclaiming the sixth woe to the scribes and Pharisees, (v. 29).  These hypocrites have polluted the Law of Moses and are trying to destroy Jesus. It is also days before the Jewish feast of Passover (see Matthew 26:2).   It had become a regular practice to have the tombs whitewashed and thus outwardly appear beautiful.  But still within they were full of dead people’s bones.  The hope is no one would accidentally touch the tombs and become guilty of uncleanness (v. 27) and thus be unable to participate in the Passover (see Numbers 19:16). 

And Jesus, being the Master Teacher, takes this scene, which was very familiar to His Jewish audience, and uses it to illustrate a spiritual reality.  He says that like the whitewashed tombs, the scribes and Pharisees outwardly appear righteous to others but within are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness (v. 28).   Imagine hearing that if you were a Pharisee!

Jesus continues with the seventh woe of chapter 23:  “For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, saying, ‘if we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in the shedding the blood of the prophets’” (v. 29-30).  However, contrary to the opinion of the Pharisees, the gospels record several occasions when the scribes and Pharisees sought to destroy and kill Jesus (Matthew 12:14, Mark 11:18, Luke 4:29, John 8:59).  And very soon they will be successful in crucifying Him.    Therefore Jesus says, with a taste of the prophetic, “Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets” (v. 31). 

Thus the hypocrites among the scribes and Pharisees will fill up then the measure of the wrath of God poured out on their fathers (v. 32) because of their disbelief, idolatry and bloodshed (see 2 Chronicles 36:15-19; Ezekiel 9:3-11).   This prophetic command to fill up then the measure of your fathers was fully realized in Jerusalem in AD 70 when the Romans destroyed the city and killed over 1 million of its occupants (Josephus, The Wars of the Jews, VI.9.3). 

Jesus then calls the hypocrites of the scribes and Pharisees serpents (Genesis 3:1) and a brood of vipers (Matthew 3:7).  A common way for farmers of that day to rid themselves of these poisonous snakes was to start a grass fire.  The vipers, trying to escape, would be consumed by the fire. Jesus, using that imagery, asks rhetorically, “How are you to escape being sentenced to hell?” (v. 33).  And, according to the New Testament Jesus, hell is a very real place. 

The danger in a passage like this is that we may put ourselves above the scribes and Pharisees; we want to think we would believe in Jesus from the first miracle if we lived then.  Not necessarily true.  We are of the same nature as they.   The sins of the Pharisees and scribes are our sins; their woes, our woes.  How often do we put on our “Sunday best” to go to church yet have unconfessed sin in our heart?   The warning of being a whitewashed tomb still applies to us today. Only through God’s grace through the atoning work of Jesus on the cross do we escape being sentenced to hell (v.33).  

The movie The Blind Side is based on a true story of a Christian family adopting a homeless boy who goes on to play football in the NFL.  After rejecting the role, Sandra Bullock hesitatingly decided to meet the real life Leigh Anne Tuohy in person, the main role in the movie. Sandra saw that Leigh Anne’s faith was genuine.  Sandra changed her mind, took the role and said, “I finally met people who walked the walk.”  Are we whitewashed tombs or are we walking the walk?

Matthew 23:23-26: Neglecting Justice, Mercy and Faithfulness

“You clean the outside of the cup…but inside (you) are full of greed ...” Jesus to the Pharisees, Matthew 23:25

“He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?”  (Micah 6:8, ESV)

“Nobody is ‘cool’ before the cross. …The gospel crucifies our swagger and kills our pride. The gospel is not about us becoming more ‘hip’ but more loving as we walk in humble service to our King.

(Michael Pohlman, “Blessed are the Uncool”, http://michaelpohlman.wordpress.com, Oct 27, 2011)

Jesus continues to expose the Pharisees and the scribes after they repeatedly tried to discredit Him (Matthew chapters 21 and 22).  In 23:23 Jesus continues His series of “woes”:  Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law.  The scribes and Pharisees were obedient to Deuteronomy 14:22, “You shall surely tithe all the produce… which comes out of the field every year.” 

The scribes and the Pharisees had taken this command the extra mile and had tithed not only their crops but even the spices that could have been grown in small containers in the kitchen window.    In so doing, they neglected the weightier, or the more important, provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. 

In the previous chapter Jesus was asked, “Which is the great commandment in the Law?”  Jesus answered quoting Deuteronomy 6:5, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind,’” (22:37).   Jesus continued, “The second (greatest commandment) is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ (22:39).  Tithing spices, a priority of the Pharisees, was much further down on the list of great commandments.

Whether they were robbing widows of their estates (23:14) or tying up heavy burdens on men’s shoulder yet refusing to help them with so much as a finger (23:4), the scribes and Pharisees failed to show justice, mercy and faithfulness (v. 23).  Tithing spices are among the things they should have done (v. 23).  But because their hearts are full of self-indulgence, they failed to love God and love their neighbor.  These hypocrites used the Law exclusively to love themselves.

Jesus continues: “You blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!” (v. 24).    In the desert of Jerusalem all sorts of nasties find their way into one’s drink.   And not swallowing a gnat is technically obedience to the Law (Leviticus 11:41-42).    A gnat is the smallest of unclean animals; the largest is the camel (Leviticus 11:4).   By concentrating on the gnats of the Law, but ignoring the camels of justice, mercy and faithfulness, they missed the point of God’s Law.   

Jesus reminds us of the point of the Law with this illustration:  you clean the outside of the cup but inside you are full of robbery and self-indulgence (v.25).     The gospel is not about putting on our Sunday best, brushing ourselves off and making ourselves more presentable to God.   Jesus taught that He did not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it (see Matthew 5:17).   

The Law is our tutor pointing us “to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith” (Galatians 3:24) “apart from the works of the Law” (Romans 3:28).  The point of the Law is to reveal our own inability to live up to God’s impossibly holy and high standard.  The Law reveals our need for a Savior.   The Law cannot make us self-righteous. 

May we clean the inside of the cup and of the dish (v. 26).  How?  Through “His mercy by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior” (Titus 3:5).   The inner reality of being cleansed through hope in Christ for the forgiveness of our sins comes first so that the outside of our cup may become clean also (v. 26).   Let’s kill our religious swagger and pride and let’s find life in His death on the cross.