Matthew 23:13–36
The Bible4Jesus.com Podcast
About this episode
We live in an age that has domesticated Jesus. And nowhere is this more apparent than in Matthew 23. After patiently answering the trick questions of the religious establishment, the Sadducees, the Herodians, and the Pharisees, Jesus now turns the tables. This chapter is a blistering, unrelenting, sevenfold declaration of woe upon the spiritual leaders of Israel. This is not a petulant outburst; it is a formal, covenantal lawsuit. It is the divine indictment before the sentence is passed. They are the inverse of the Beatitudes in chapter 5. A woe is not a vindictive curse; it is a cry of profound sorrow and a declaration of impending judgment. It is the cry of a physician telling a man who refuses treatment that his disease will be terminal. Jesus is not just angry; His heart is breaking over the spiritual ruin these men are causing.