Woes

Hello:

Our text is as follows:

Matthew 23:13 ”Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. 15 ”Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are. 16 ”Woe to you, blind guides! You say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.’ 17 You blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred? 18 You also say, ‘If anyone swears by the altar, it means nothing; but if anyone swears by the gift on it, he is bound by his oath.’ 19 You blind men! Which is greater: the gift, or the altar that makes the gift sacred? 20 Therefore, he who swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it. 21 And he who swears by the temple swears by it and by the one who dwells in it. 22 And he who swears by heaven swears by God’s throne and by the one who sits on it. (NIV)

Yesterday, we talked about how this chapter opens up with a series of rebukes that are directed to the Pharisees.  Jesus called them hypocrites and then began to specifically identify some of their hypocritical actions.   The ones we dealt with on yesterday had to do with their pride and arrogance and their need to be seen and feel important.  Today we will deal with their conversion efforts and their position concerning oaths and swearing.  You’ll notice that our text opens up with Woe to you.  As a matter of fact there are eight woes issue to the Pharisees.   He calls them hypocrites (speaking to their character) and blind men (speaking to their leadership).    Today we will deal with two of the eight woes. 

Woe #1-    You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces.    This particular woe had to do with their false teachings.  Because the Pharisees taught the traditions of men over the word of God they did not accurately teach the way of salvation therefore causing their followers to miss out on the kingdom of God and raising up converts who continued to teach their erroneous doctrines or as Jesus puts it makes them “twice the son of hell than they are.”.   

Woe #2- Swearing and oaths.    Those of you who have been following this teaching know that when we covered the “Sermon on the Mount” in chapter 5 we did a detail study on swearing and oaths and its historical context in the life of the Jews.  I will not review today but should you be new to the site all the old lessons are in archives and you can go back and review that history on oaths and swearing.  It is really quite interesting.   In our text today, Jesus is simply repeating something that he had corrected earlier in his sermon on the mount.   This is the second woe. 

Well, everyone, I really do want you to have a great weekend.   Don’t forget to check out the “pink blooms.”  They’re still around.

I have not said it in a while but I really do want to thank all of you that log in daily to study the book of Matthew with me.  I also want to appreciate all of you that support me with your donations and who order my products from the website.  You have been such a blessing to me and I really do appreciate it.

Have a great weekend. 

Stay encouraged!!!!!!!!

Don’t forget to pray and read God’s word daily.

This entry was posted on 27. March 2009 at 14:13 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.