Introduction
This is the word of the Lord,
Matthew 23:23–24 ESV
23 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.
24 You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!
Let us pray!
In Matthew 5, Jesus gave us the 7 beatitudes – the blessings that are the inheritance of the Christian, and here in Matthew 23, Jesus gives us the 7 woes – the curses that are the inheritance of the hypocrite (the Christian pretender).
A Matter of Life and Death
The sin of the Pharisees and Scribes were not some hypocritical behaviour, but the hypocrisy of the heart. The facade of spirituality that they had were not a few blind spots, they were entirely blind. They were an unregenerate group of people that did not love or glorify God. But in the name of faith and religion, they were corrupted at the core.
Therefore, the contrast between the beatitudes and the woes is the separation between the saved and the unsaved.
And so, the first and foremost question that you are faced with in this sermon series is the question of your own salvation. That is what is at stake in this study.
How much of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees are a reality in your own life? How fundamentally compromised are you in your own faith?
Now, we know that the Christian can exhibit hypocritical behaviour in many areas of their life but that is not a corruption of their identity in Christ. It is the sin of the flesh that remains for all regenerate men.
Let us for the sake of argument call that a lower order hypocrisy. We have to start with the higher order hypocrisy, repent if we are found guilty of it, and turn to Jesus Christ for salvation.
But if we are found to be genuinely saved, then we must hate and reject the lower order hypocrisy because it is a sign and symbol of the old life that the Christian has abandoned.
But do not be unnecessarily hasty to arrive at conclusions as to the nature and extent of your hypocrisies. In each of these woes, examine your own lives truthfully. Examine yourself with readily repentant hearts.
You need to understand this clearly. Jesus curses the Christian pretender. Whatever else we may think of ourselves, Jesus knows the hearts of all men. He is the one person before whom your hypocrisies cannot hide.
We know from Matthew 7, that people are not saved simply because they call on the name of the Lord.
We know from Ephesians 2, that people are not saved by any measure of their good works.
We know from Galatians 2, that righteousness cannot be attained through the law.
Ephesians 2:8–9 ESV
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,
9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
Genuine salvation is a miraculous work of God upon the heart of the converted.
And the fact that such a work has indeed taken place in the life of the convert is evidenced by their godly conduct.
Philippians 2:12–13 ESV
12 Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,
13 for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
James 2:26 ESV
26 For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.
So, if I may summarise, true salvation is the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of God’s elect whom he predestined for salvation. Those who are genuinely saved in this manner will bear the fruit of that salvation in their lives.
Any human attempt at imitating or humanly manufacturing this God-entanced work of redemption will always end in hypocrisy.
Blessings and Curses
Now, there is a certain structure to the Beatitudes in Matthew 5, where every blessing is granted for a particular trait of righteousness and in each one there is a description of what that blessing is.
So, for example, Matthew 5:3-4
Matthew 5:3–4 ESV
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed – poor in spirit – kingdom of heaven is theirs.
Blessed – mourn – will be comforted.
But, in Matthew 23, the curses likewise fall for a particular trait of hypocrisy (or unrighteousness) but then it does not detail what the curse specifically is. Instead, it details the hypocrisy further.
Matthew 23:13 ESV
13 “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.
Matthew 23:23 ESV
23 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.
Woe – hypocrite – shut the kingdom
Woe – hypocrite – neglect weightier matters
I think the reason that Matthew does not detail the explicit nature of these curses is because they are the antithesis of the Beatitudes.
Therefore, if ‘the kingdom belongs to the blessed’, then the curse is that ‘the kingdom does not belong to them’.
If ‘the promise of comfort’ is the blessing, then the curse is ‘the assurance of discomfort and the lack of relief’.
The meek shall inherit the earth but the hypocrite has no inheritance in this world.
Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are satisfied, but the pretender (the hypocrite) will thirst forever.
Mercy is the portion of the blessed, and merciless judgment is the portion of the cursed.
The pure in heart shall see God, but the eyes of the hypocrite will always be blinded to the glory of God.
The blessed are called the sons of God, but the cursed are called the sons of disobedience of their father the Devil.
Matthew 5:11–12 ESV
11 “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.
12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
But the cursed are regarded with great honour by the world, and they have no reward in heaven.
Matthew 7:23 ESV
23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
Understanding the curses this way adds flesh to the danger of the woes of Christ.
The Traits of Hypocrisy
We’ve covered two of the seven woes so far and we’ve seen two traits of hypocrisy.
1. Evangelism – Obstruction of salvation & the indoctrination of hell
2. Teaching – Lying & the twisting of Scripture
3. Discernment – And today, we are going to see the compromise of priorities, the dangerous imbalance of false piety.
Exegesis
Matthew 23:23 ESV
23 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.
They hypocrisy of the Pharisees is here revealed in their generosity – Lev 27:30-32
Leviticus 27:30–32 ESV
30 “Every 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.
31 If a man wishes to redeem some of his tithe, he shall add a fifth to it.
32 And every tithe of herds and flocks, every tenth animal of all that pass under the herdsman’s staff, shall be holy to the Lord.
They took tithing seriously and mint, dill and cumin were the smallest of their garden crops, and they were so precise in their tithing that they gave a tenth of everything, even the smallest.
We know that sin is a parasite. It cannot exist independently but needs something good to corrupt. There is no sin without the good that it corrupts.
And so as sinners, our flesh is capable of taking anything good and turning it to evil.
False piety is a sin that latches on to the easiest external display of godliness and elevates its importance disproportionally in order to distract from weightier matters.
Maturity & Weightier Matters
By heightening the stature of the lesser matter, they neglected the weightier matters of the law.
The first thing that you have to understand here is that there are weightier matters.
I wrote on my blog once that there are many things that matter in my own ministry, but they don’t all matter at the same time.
Ephesians 4:11–15 ESV
11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers,
12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,
13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,
14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.
15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ,
Maturity is the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. An important part of maturing is to be able to distinguish between lesser and weightier matters.
Hebrews 5:14 ESV
14 But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.
The mature have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.
They can discern the weightier matters from the lesser matters.
Christian maturity is not a matter of how long you’ve been saved, or how many churches you’ve been a part of, or even how many experiences you’ve had in your Christian walk.
It is a matter of evidenced discernment.
Adulthood has become a privilege we acquire from the legal government when we turn a certain age. But this is not true. The human government has no authority to bestow on you adulthood. Rather, that age is the declaration of the human government that by this time the man and the woman ought to have risen to the stature of maturity that is required of an adult.
Adulthood is not a privilege bestowed on us, it is a standard we are supposed to rise to.
1 Corinthians 14:20 ESV
20 Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.
Parents, you have 21 years to equip your children, not a lifetime. You have 21 years to train them in the power of discernment and godliness. Your job is to help the rise to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, and then handover the keys to their life over to them when they turn 21.
Philippians 1:9–10 ESV
9 And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment,
10 so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ,
Abounding in knowledge and discernment is the stature of the mature.
Luke 10:41–42 ESV
41 But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things,
42 but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”
The sin of Martha was not in her serving, but in what her serving neglected – the weightier matter – to sit at the feet of Jesus.
And Christian maturity is first understanding and identifying the differences in lesser and weightier matters.
And here, Jesus gives us the weightier matters of tithing – justice, mercy and faithfulness.
Deuteronomy 14:28–29 ESV
28 “At the end of every three years you shall bring out all the tithe of your produce in the same year and lay it up within your towns.
29 And the Levite, because he has no portion or inheritance with you, and the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, who are within your towns, shall come and eat and be filled, that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands that you do.
The tithe was an expression of worship and of compassion for those who were dependent on others.
James 1:27 ESV
27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
Religion that is church membership and expository preaching that neglects the comforting aid to the afflicted is impure and defiled. A church that deals with the text all the day long and never with the hearts of the people is a corrupt church.
The false piety of the Pharisees latches on the tithe in such a way so as to neglect the very reason for the tithe – justice, mercy and faithfulness.
These you ought to have done without neglecting the weightier matters of the law.
The problem here was not in the righteousness of these righteous acts but how they were emphasised disproportionally so as to obscure other more weightier matters.
• For husbands, this is like that time when you bought that expensive gift for your wife as a way to cover up your inadequacy in your care and selfless sacrificial service to her wellbeing.
The gift in this case is more a down payment to shut up her nagging than a blessing.
• For wives, this is managing the home and all its various functions by putting on the expression of a household slave, as a way to excuse your lack of verbal encouragement and respect for your husband’s leadership.
Your call to such respect is not primarily experiential but biblical.
• In the workplace, we would rather do what pleases our managers than what glorifies God in righteous working.
• We would rather organise and critique the liturgy of our church than the liturgy of our hearts or our homes.
1 Timothy 3:4–5 ESV
4 He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive,
5 for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church?
One of the most important fruits of a spiritually mature man is his ability to discern the weightier matters of the law.
Now, Jesus had a good way of summarising this trait of hypocrisy.
Matthew 23:24 ESV
24 You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!
Gnats among other small insects were considered spiritually unclean.
Leviticus 11:23 ESV
23 But all other winged insects that have four feet are detestable to you.
Leviticus 11:41 ESV
41 “Every swarming thing that swarms on the ground is detestable; it shall not be eaten.
So, the Pharisees were so particular to strain out a gnat from their wine reserves to keep it without blemish.
But, the thing is, camels are also ceremonially unclean. If gnats are the smallest unclean insect, the camels were the largest unclean animal. Lev 11:4
Leviticus 11:4 ESV
4 Nevertheless, among those that chew the cud or part the hoof, you shall not eat these: The camel, because it chews the cud but does not part the hoof, is unclean to you.
So, the hypocrisy of the Pharisees was about how they take the smallest concern out of proportion as a way to neglect a camel that they heedlessly swallow as a whole.
Conclusion
Hypocrisy corrupted their evangelism, their teaching and now their discernment.
Hypocrites are not judicial because the matters of justice, mercy and faithfulness are not their concern.
In the place of justice, they would cut corners and compromise.
In the place of mercy, they would burden their people with harsh laws.
In the place of faithfulness, they would rather raise a facade of spirituality.
Sincerity in the Christian faith is not an option.
For those of you who find the traits of this hypocrisy seeped deep in your life, turn to Jesus and be rid of the curse that befalls you.
For you Christians, hate all hypocritical behaviour by recognising the root of this sin and the seriousness of it.
Galatians 3:13 ESV
13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”—
• Christ did not merely become cursed on that tree. He who is the very embodiment of righteousness became the very embodiment of the curse for you and me.
• In order that the blessings of Christ may fall on us, he took the curse that denied the kingdom of God to the sinner.
The curse of ‘the assurance of discomfort and the lack of relief’.
The curse of no inheritance in this world.
The never-ending source of living waters suffered the curse of the unquenchable thirst upon the tree.
The Father mercilessly turned his face in judgment that fell upon the Son.
He who forever was face-to-face with his Father in complete harmony cried out when suffering the curse of forsakenness.
The Son of God took the sins of the world and suffered in our stead
• Christ your blessing became the curse. The sin of hypocrisy makes a mockery of the cross and for such the cross is not a salvation but a judgment.
Turn now to Jesus, the only way, the truth and the life. Abandon insincerity and hypocrisy and love him with all your heart, body, mind and strength.
Romans 12:1–2 ESV
1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Introduction
This is the word of the Lord,
Matthew 21:23–27 ESV: 23 And when he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came up to him as he was teaching, and said, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” 24 Jesus answered them, “I also will ask you one question, and if you tell me the answer, then I also will tell you by what authority I do these things. 25 The baptism of John, from where did it come? From heaven or from man?” And they discussed it among themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ 26 But if we say, ‘From man,’ we are afraid of the crowd, for they all hold that John was a prophet.” 27 So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And he said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.
As we’ve traversed through the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 21 has marked a stark distinction in how Jesus approaches his ministry on the earth.
He is no longer quiet about his Messianic identity. He is going all out. He has entered Jerusalem, the heart of the nation of Israel. He is marching to the cross.
He knows he will die here. His words and actions in Jerusalem will catapult the opposition into a blinded rage in an attempt to destroy this Jewish carpenter.
That is what the mind in the flesh does when it encounters the immovable and unstoppable truth of the Spirit. When you can’t argue or reason your way out, you suppress, you throw tantrums, and then you lash out.
Romans 1:18 ESV: 18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
Today’s sermon is about the suppression of truth, which is the de facto position of the human flesh. And now, as Christians, before you assume that I’m talking about those who are out there in the world and of the world and now about us, let me say it as clearly as I can, I’m talking about suppression of truth in your lives.
Even though you and I are a regenerate people who have our sins crucified on Christ’s cross, who are freed from the curse of sin and death, we are still beings in the flesh and the effects of sin and temptation continue to wage war in our bodies.
Jesus said in his High Priestly prayer, in John 17:15-16
John 17:15–16 ESV: 15 I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.
He also told us that, Matthew 18:7
Matthew 18:7 ESV: 7 “Woe to the world for temptations to sin! For it is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the one by whom the temptation comes!
We are no longer under the bondage of sin but sin is still a very pressing reality in our lives. We are called to fight because we have been given the means to defeat our flesh. We are not helpless anymore for the Lord Himself is our help.
1 Corinthians 6:19 ESV: 19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own,
So, the force of temptation, the allure of sin and selfishness, pride, and all the weaknesses of the flesh are ever before us. The question is, “How intentional are we in this war?”.
Romans 6:1–2 ESV: 1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?
This is how unintentional Christians think about their salvation. Since we are no longer under the curse of sin, how bad can it be if we fall? And Paul’s basic response is that such thinking isn’t Christian thinking. The Christian response to all sin is, “How can I live in this when I have died to it? I’m dead to this!”
The Christian does not justify or make room for sin, he knows it to be wrong and deals with it accordingly, like one who is dead to that kind of life.
Unrelenting Sleuth On the Scent of Truth
The most crucial and transformative period of my life in coming to a strong and rooted faith in Christ, as I’m sure is the case for many of you, was when I resolved to pursue truth. At some point in my life, it suddenly mattered as it should for all of you, what the truth was.
And when I say truth, I mean it from top to bottom. Not just about the higher philosophical realities of existence and purpose, but also about the reality of day-to-day life and decisions. I realized that it matters that we know why we do what we do and whether we should do what we do.
Life hung in the balance for me at that point because I had to make sense of questions like,
- Why am I here?
- What must I do?
- How must I honor my Father and Mother?
- When and how do I disagree with my parents?
- When do I pursue marriage?
- What do I do with my money?
- Whom do I marry?
- Can I fall in love?
- How do I treat women?
- What are the boundaries of friendship?
- Why must I do engineering?
- Do my grades really matter?
- How high should I aim?
- Can I have ambitions?
- How do I make the right decisions about career and lifestyle choices?
- What movies can I watch?
- Do I need to be a part of the church?
- How must I steward my generosity?
- How must I steward my time?
- Do I join this college or do I accept this job offer?
Trust me, I can go on and on and on and on, and not stop. So many Christians are stuck on so many of these questions because they’ve never bothered to be intentional about their pursuit of truth (about reality, about what really matters) in the small things that suddenly they are caught off guard as though something strange were happening to them. Then, they run to their prayer closets to seek God’s magical answer to their problem while also praying that they wouldn’t catch a cold from all the dust in that unused closet.
John Piper in his poem, The Calvinist, has this phrase – unrelenting sleuth on the scent of truth. Are you unrelenting in the pursuit of truth? I was and that has always been the bottom-most foundational reality in my Christian life. Everything I pursue has to align with what I believe to be true, and what I believe to be true must be ratified by the Bible.
Romans 1 against the whole wide world
Allow me some time to take you through the nature of the flesh as it is revealed in Romans 1. Now, mind you that when a sleuth finds himself in this chapter, he may end up MIA – Missing in Action. Romans 1 is like a mirror maze. Whichever way you turn and run, you run headfirst into your exposed self and it hurts. If there was ever a chapter in the Bible that was written to send the worldliness inside of you reeling in horror and fear, it is this one.
So, have a prayer in your heart for me as I go into Romans 1 and try to navigate our way through some of this truth in under 10 mins.
Paul begins by mentioning his intention in Romans 1:15
Romans 1:15 ESV: 15 So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.
• The apostle Paul is a very logically minded guy and you have to follow his reasoning. What we find after this statement is a cascade of causes. The conjunction ‘for’ in the Bible is a word that points you to the cause. It is a word that precedes the explanation, the reason.
• He is eager to preach the gospel. Not the five ways to please your wife or the 10 ways to hold your tongue. The Bible does speak about all these things and they need to be preached, but Paul’s talking about the essence of preaching, the centrality of the message regardless of what your topic might be. Everything comes out of this most central and unavoidable message, of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Your eagerness to preach anything must be at its most fundamental level a desire to preach the Gospel.
Romans 1:16 ESV: 16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
• According to Paul, the eagerness of preaching the Gospel is an unashamed love for it. This means that the hesitation to preach the Gospel may be a strong indicator that you are ashamed of the Gospel.
• Paul can’t imagine how one could be ashamed about the power of God that saves everyone who believes, whether Jew or Greek.
Romans 1:17 ESV: 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
• The Gospel is the power that saves because it is the revelation of God’s righteousness that is revealed from faith to faith.
• So you have to work your way back from these three cascading ‘for’s and see how God’s righteousness which is his just approval, moral perfection, the purest right that has no wrong; how this perfection of light with all its power is presented or revealed in the message of the Gospel which is that Jesus died and rose again so that if you believe in him you shall not perish but this pure and perfect light shall cleanse you, but if you do not believe in Christ, you will perish without any hope of a salvation.
He hashes out this judgment in the next verse,
Romans 1:18 ESV: 18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
• See how the Gospel is the revelation of God’s righteousness, his salvation, and those who reject this salvation are called suppressers of the truth.
Jesus, when talking about our salvation said, in John 14:6
John 14:6 ESV: 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
This is the glory of the truth, that Jesus is the truth.
When Moses asked God for his name in Exodus 33, God responded with ‘I AM’. There is a reason that this is the highest name. When you and I use our names we are using words to represent who we are. They are identifying titles to who we are as a person. But who God is as a Being is Existence as we know it.
John 1:3 ESV: 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.
No creature can claim to exist apart from God. We exist because he exists.
In much the same way, when Jesus says that he is the truth, he means to say that there is no truth if there is no Christ. He is the Truth.
Paul tells that Christ is the One,
Colossians 2:3 ESV: 3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
There is no knowledge apart from knowing Christ. The one who forsakes Christ is forsaking knowledge.
Therefore, what sin does, what the flesh in unrighteousness does, is forsake Christ because you can’t argue with truth, you have to yield. But if you don’t want to yield, the only thing you can do is ‘suppress’.
And when you suppress, you forsake knowledge, wisdom, and above all, truth.
And God’s wrath is revealed against such people.
Romans 1:19–21 ESV: 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
• God has made plain to us the truth. Every act of creation, the cosmos is a constant megaphone declaring to you the truth about God. You cannot escape it. Therefore, sin is not ignorant, it is intentional. It is foolishness.
Hebrews 1:1–2 ESV: 1 Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.
God has always been speaking, and the coming of Jesus was the loudest and clearest speech. The Gospel is the loudest statement from Heaven.
So, in summarising this cascading causes in Romans 1, God has always been revealing the truth to the world, and the Gospel is the loudest and clearest message of truth. And through the Gospel is revealed the power of God for righteousness and salvation to those who are in the unrelenting pursuit of truth, but for those who suppress the truth the Gospel is the decisive stroke of judgment.
The Centrality of Truth
When the Gospel took such root in my life, I understood that I cannot answer any of the questions in my life meaningfully without the reality of this God in my life.
I understood that the only place that I can find the answers to all the questions pertaining to my life were in the pages of the Bible.
Cornelius Van Til, a Dutch-American philosopher and theologian was famously known to have said that The Bible is authoritative on everything of which it speaks. Moreover, it speaks of everything.
And this has been the foundation stone of much of my practical Christian life and even my apologetics.
Armed with this understanding, let us look at this short passage in Matthew 21
Exegesis
Matthew 21:23 ESV: 23 And when he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came up to him as he was teaching, and said, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?”
• Here we find Jesus back at the temple teaching the people. The Messiah had gone from cleansing the temple to healing the sick and now teaching them.
For all the parents in the room, here is a picture of how the rod of discipline should be used. Discipline is meant to drive out the evil, heal the wounded and to teach.
If you use the rod only to punish and not to heal or to teach, then you are in greater need of the rod than your children.
Be Christlike in your parenting. Let your anger heal and train, not destroy those whom God has placed under your care.
• If there was one thing that the people could not deny, it was the authority with which Jesus spoke and did what he did.
In an earlier passage we’d read,
Matthew 7:28–29 ESV: 28 And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, 29 for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.
So, when Jesus chases out the money changers and traders from the temple courts and then heals the truly needy and teaches them in the place where only yesterday was buzzing with trade, the crowds are watching an authoritative man.
In fact, such was the authority with which he conducted himself that none opposed him as he disrupted trade across acres of land overturning the table of the money changers, beating and driving out birds and goats and the people.
• This again is the nature of Christ, the truth. Since God is the I AM, the only uncaused cause, the very embodiment of existence as we know it; that when he shows up, the authority of his presence will be unlike anything else that exists. When God walks into the room so-to-speak, it’ll be unlike anyone else walking into the room. His very existence is existence.
And here, standing before these Jews was the very truth incarnate, the highest truth and instead of falling flat on their face, they wanted to know his credentials.
This is what the flesh does when it encounters truth. You cannot deny it, debate it, overpower it, so you suppress, you dismiss, and what better way to do that than you try and discredit it.
• By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?
This question is two-fold. It questions Jesus’ authority and the one who gave him that authority. They cannot question the reasoning behind his cleansing of the temple, they cannot deny the reality that people are healed, and they cannot argue with his teaching. So, they ask for his qualifications.
Matthew 13:55 ESV: 55 Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?
John 1:46 ESV: 46 Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.”
Matthew 21:24 ESV: 24 Jesus answered them, “I also will ask you one question, and if you tell me the answer, then I also will tell you by what authority I do these things.
• For those of you here who are more technically aligned, here is an example of what we call pre-suppositional apologetics. Jesus does not rush to satisfy their request to see the evidence of his qualification. Instead, he presupposes their worldview according to which it does not matter if someone is speaking the truth or doing good things, it matters that he is officially given such authority.
Matthew 21:25–26 ESV: 25 The baptism of John, from where did it come? From heaven or from man?” And they discussed it among themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ 26 But if we say, ‘From man,’ we are afraid of the crowd, for they all hold that John was a prophet.”
• According to their worldview, if they denied John’s authority, the crowds would turn against them because they believed he is a prophet. On the other hand, if they agreed that it was from heaven, then they are caught for not believing him. Jesus knew that the Chief priests and elders were behaving inconsistently. That they were swayed not by credentials but by the lust for power and the authority they possessed over the people. This forced them to behave inconsistently in how they dealt with John’s ministry. Though they themselves did not believe John, they did not oppose him in front of the crowd.
• Now, see how when push comes to shove, they weren’t bothered about the truth. They did not want to answer truthfully. ‘If we say this, then…’
So many of us in our flesh deal with life in this manner. These chiefs, elders of the people would not answer truthfully because it would either lose them their popularity or it would hurt their ego.
Is Truth your higher treasure? Or are you all about truth when it is most convenient for you?
• How would you deal with sin if it were pointed out to you by your children? Would you receive it or would you question the maturity of their age, their authority?
• The piety of these elders of Israel was an outer display with no inward reality. They prayed aloud so that they could be seen by others, they were generous so that people would speak highly of them.
Are you the same Christian on the inside as you have shown yourself to be on the outside?
When push comes to shove, are you as heavenly minded as you say you are? Do you desire the glory of his name, the glory of his church, and building of his kingdom above all things? Or do you desire your own welfare more?
• Doug Wilson talks about how Christians like to put sin and righteousness on the stuff rather than weigh it upon their hearts. Some like to see their righteousness in the fact that they don’t watch movies, listen to secular music or hang around with unbelievers. Yet none of these things prove any measure of your righteousness.
If you must know, your pastor watches movies, listens to secular music, and hangs around with his unbeliever friends. The measure of my righteousness is not found in me avoiding this world because I am in this world. It must be measured by how much the world has not mastered me, but how in Christ I have mastered the world.
Have you not read Paul who wrote in 1 Corinthians 10:23
1 Corinthians 10:23 ESV: 23 “All things are lawful,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful,” but not all things build up.
• How true is your faith? How genuine is your confession? How passionate are you to want truth to be the banner over your home?
It is easy to be a Christian on a Sunday morning and behind a pulpit. But how Christian are you at home?
Matthew 21:27 ESV: 27 So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And he said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.
• We do not know – In what they thought would be a wise response, they revealed their foolishness. These who came to question Jesus’ authority were people without knowledge. They were left empty and their response shows their lack of authority.
Christ who spoke and worked with such authority stood in stark contrast to these who could not answer his question.
So, Jesus establishes his superior authority by revealing the spiritual nakedness of the Jewish elite.
• And as John Piper pointed out, “Jesus does not deal with those who suppress the truth.”
Conclusion
Jesus who is the very embodiment of truth, does not deal with those who do not love the truth.
The spiritually mature person is one who has gone down further along the road of truth, those who are more aware of it and have aligned their lives to it.
• Anxiety – Trust
• Interests of others
• Dependence on God more than money
• Obey scripture more than culture
• Pray more
• Whose ambitions serve the Glory of God and the good of his Church
