Emmanuel Lutheran Church

Sermon for Holy Tuesday

Matthew 23:29-39

The eighth and final curse is before us this evening, from the harshest sermon ever preached. On this very day, Tuesday of Holy Week, Jesus spoke His final words to His enemies—the scribes and Pharisees—before they would come against Him two days later in the Garden of Gethsemane. The Son of God preached against the children of the devil, and cursed them to hell, and yet even then held out to them a saving hope.

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you build the tombs of the prophets and garnish the monuments of the righteous, and say, ‘If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.’ You see how they pretended to be better than their fathers, the Jews in Old Testament times, who killed so many of the prophets God sent to them. “Yes, our fathers did wrong. We would never do such a thing! Look! We’ve erected monuments to the prophets, and we decorate their tombs!” They had convinced themselves they were on God’s side, on the prophets’ side. But no one who opposes Jesus, as they opposed Him, can ever be on God’s side, or on the side of the prophets.

“Therefore you are witnesses to yourselves that you are the children of those who killed the prophets. These Jews, by their rejection of Jesus, and by their plot to put Him to death, made themselves the children and heirs of those who had murdered the prophets. And knowing their plot to kill Him, Jesus challenges them, “Go ahead! Do it!” Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. The wickedness of the Old Testament Jews was great. But the climax of their depravity, the fullest measure of it, would be in putting to death the very Son of God.

You serpents, you generation of vipers, how can you escape the damnation of hell? How could these snakes escape the damnation of hell? Therefore, behold, I send to you prophets, and wise men, and scribes. Notice, first of all, that Jesus is now speaking directly as God. “I send, I will send you prophets.” Just as God had done in the Old Testament, so He will continue to do until the end of time, send prophets, wise men, ministers, preachers, to warn people of the coming wrath against all sinners, to urge them to repent before it’s too late, to take advantage of God’s invitation to salvation through Christ while it is called “Today.” That’s the only way to escape the damnation of hell.

But He knows ahead of time how most, especially the Jewish people, will respond to His prophets. And some of them you shall kill and crucify, and some of them you shall scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you slew between the temple and the altar. “Truly I say to you, all these things shall come on this generation. Of course, that’s exactly what took place over the coming years. The Jews of the first century were the most vicious persecutors of the apostles and the Christian preachers whom God sent to them, and, yes, all the righteous blood shed on the earth came upon them, was charged to them, and was punished in them in the destruction of Jerusalem, and in all the hardships that have afflicted the unbelieving Jewish people ever since. That bloodguilt would be removed from them if they would only repent and turn to Christ Jesus for forgiveness—a promise He still holds out to them. But to this day, most have not, and so they make themselves the children and heirs of those who persecuted the prophets.

Jesus mentions specifically the blood of righteous Abel, the son of Adam and Eve, who was persecuted and murdered by his unbelieving brother, Cain, because Abel was righteous in God’s sight, and Cain was not. That was the first murder of a believer by an unbeliever. He then mentions Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, most likely the one who is mentioned in 2 Chronicles 24, who was killed by the Jews, by order of the king, in the middle of the temple. Abel’s murder was recorded in Genesis, the first book of the Bible. And in the Hebrew ordering, 2 Chronicles is actually the last book of the Old Testament. So, from the first book of the Old Testament until the last, the Jews of Jesus’ day would bring on themselves the guilt of the whole history of the world, by killing Jesus and His beloved Christians.

Not that the Jews are the only ones who have persecuted Christians. No, the Romans took part, and the Muslims—to this very day—and many others have joined in as well, including the NBA, who just fired a player for being a Christian, including many who call themselves Christians, but are liars. All who persecute the genuine believers in the Lord Jesus, or who quietly go along with the persecution of Christians, make themselves the children and heirs of those who persecuted the prophets. And all will eventually pay, not by our hands, but by God’s own vengeance.

Jesus then turns from the scribes and Pharisees and addresses the whole city: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you. How often I would have gathered your children together, even as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and you would not! Behold, your house is left to you desolate, For I say to you, you shall not see Me from now on until you shall say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” 

Again, Jesus speaks directly to Jerusalem as the God of Jerusalem. “I wanted to save you, yearned to save you, but you did not want My salvation. And so your house will be left to you desolate,” He says. The Old Testament people of Israel would be wiped out, and plagued, and pursued over the coming millennia, fulfilling the curse Moses spoke against that people way back in the book of Deuteronomy. The Jews would not “see Me,” that is, they would not see their God again, they would be rejected by God, until and unless they repent, until and unless they join the believers who sang to Jesus just two days before, on Palm Sunday, Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. There was hope for those who murdered Jesus, but only in repentance and faith.

How the Pharisees must have hated Jesus after that harsh, harsh sermon, even more than they already did before! It’s no wonder they scrapped their plans to wait till after the Passover to kill Him. But how the humble and meek among the faithful remnant in Israel must have breathed a sigh of relief and said a prayer of thanks to God. “Finally! Finally someone has said out loud what we’ve known about our wretched ministers for so long!” To hear, finally, that God is not pleased with their behavior, that He does not accept them, that this is not who God is or who His ministers are meant to be! If they had begun to wonder about that, seeing how the Pharisees were allowed to rule and to prosper and thrive for so long in Israel, with no one to call them out for their abusive behavior, it must have been a great relief to hear Jesus, the One sent by God, speak these words of harsh rebuke against the abusive ministers.

And there, you see, even in Christ’s anger, even in pronouncing woes upon people, Jesus was looking out for His precious flock, defending them against the wolves, teaching them that, although God had allowed these wicked ministers to prosper for a time, He was not ambivalent toward the crooked way they were carrying out their ministry, He was not blind to His people’s suffering under their paltry care, nor was He going to let the wicked ministers get away with it forever. No, He was angry with them. And judgment was about to come upon them.

Now, it would be easy for us to point to similar behavior among the ministers in the Christian Church at large, examples of the hypocrisy, false teaching, and abuse on the part of the clergy that have left the Church in ruins. It would be easy for us to point to examples we’ve all seen of such hypocrisy and abuse, alive and well also in the Lutheran synods. And there is a point to pointing it out once in a while, because sometimes the faithful remnant who have been abused need to hear again that God was not behind their abuse, that God did send those ministers to behave that way. He didn’t approve of it. He doesn’t approve of it. He’s angry about it. And He won’t tolerate it much longer.

But we didn’t come to God’s house today to point out all the evil in the world or in the Church “out there.” We came to listen in on Jesus’ tirade against the hypocritical ministers and persecutors of the Church and apply it honestly to ourselves, to learn where we need to repent, to be pointed back to Christ for forgiveness, and to be fortified against every form of hypocrisy in ourselves.

Take this opportunity to put away all pride and hypocrisy from your hearts and to turn to the merciful Lord Jesus who has not yet come to you with a harsh sermon, bristling with anger, who has not yet prophesied the destruction of our congregation, but who comes to you today in love, who offered Himself on the cross and offers Himself to you still as Savior and Mediator, as One who disciplines those whom He loves, as the One who still has a good purpose for you in the place where He has placed you.

Trust in Him to wash you clean of any and all hypocrisy that stains your soul. And rejoice in His anger at the ministers of His Church who fail to repent, because His anger toward them is seething now more than when He first spoke the words of our text, and He will come to the defense both of His pastors and of His sheep, to put to shame all those who have brought trouble on His beloved Church, and to redeem us from their hands once and for all. Amen.

Sermon for Holy Monday

Matthew 23:23-28

Now that we’re in Holy Week, turn your thoughts back to the Tuesday of the first Holy Week, as Jesus continues His tirade against the hypocritical scribes and Pharisees. He has three more curses to pronounce upon them in this evening’s verses, and three more lessons for us to learn from them.

The fifth curse: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law: judgment, mercy, and faith. These you ought to have done, and not leave the others undone. God’s Law required the Israelites to set aside a tithe or a “tenth” of their produce and give it to the priests, as part of their wages. But the Pharisees were so meticulous with their tithing that they didn’t just focus on the regular fruits and vegetables. They focused even on the lesser produce, like herbs and spices and tiny little seeds. Every minor detail of the Law they were careful to observe. And that would have been praiseworthy, except that, in “majoring on the minors,” as some call it, they neglected the majors. In other words, they spent so much time counting out each tiny seed from their fields and gardens that they neglected the much-more-important and weightier things like justice in their courts, and mercy toward their neighbor, and faith in God. To truly keep God’s Law, you have to keep all of it. And you also have to recognize and imitate God’s priorities. Throughout the Old Testament, God makes it clear that justice and mercy toward one’s neighbor, and faith in God—which we call the moral Law—are the big things, while the details of the ceremonial laws were lesser things, and would eventually pass away entirely. In fact, even the tithing laws sprang out of justice and mercy. Tithing wasn’t a goal in itself. The goal was making sure that God’s priests and Levites, along with the poor, were properly taken care of. But the Pharisees made it all about their meticulous obedience to every detail of the Law.

Jesus illustrates it with this memorable picture: You blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel. Flying insects were technically unclean for the Israelites and weren’t to be eaten. So the Pharisees were very careful to strain out even the tiniest gnat that might have fallen into a cup. Meanwhile, they “swallowed a camel.” Not literally. But again, while the Pharisees were busy focusing on the tiny things, boasting about how obedient they were, they neglected the huge things, and taught others to do the same. Instead, they should have taught the people about God’s grace and goodness toward sinners. They should have taught the people to love God, to trust in Him, to love their neighbor and have mercy on him, to repent of their sins and to look to the Messiah to provide atonement. And then they should have practiced what they preached!

The sixth curse: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you make the outside of the cup and of the platter clean, but inside they are full of extortion and excess. You blind Pharisee! First clean what is inside the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also. Again, the Pharisees were meticulous with their ceremonial washings of pitchers and cups and platters and hands. And they taught people, that, if they truly wanted to be pleasing to God, they had to do the same things. But it was all about externals for them. They failed to point people to the inward sins that flowed from their corrupt and sinful hearts, the greed, and the selfishness, and the love of excess drinking and eating and partying. Jesus made this same point earlier in Matthew’s Gospel: For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man. God wasn’t concerned with clean cups! He was concerned with clean hearts, and those only come from God who cleanses the filthy hearts of penitent sinners and creates a new heart in a man. Sinners are cleansed from the inside out, not from the outside in.

And finally for tonight, the seventh curse: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs that indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and of all uncleanness. Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. Whitewashed tombs. What a perfect analogy! People back then, like people now, made tombs and crypts and gravesites look beautiful. But everyone knows what’s on the inside of those tombs and coffins: dead things, rotting things. That’s what Jesus accuses the Pharisees of being, looking righteous and beautiful on the outside, while inside they were full of corruption, uncleanness, hypocrisy, and wickedness. It’s the definition of hypocrisy—making yourself appear to be one thing, while, actually, on the inside, being just the opposite.

Oh, take these curses to heart! The ministers of Israel had all but destroyed Israel through their hypocrisy and wickedness, and Jesus was fed up with them. He pronounced these curses upon them, but even then, it was only the sword of His mouth that attacked them, no lightning from heaven, no fire and sulfur raining down, no fistfights or brawls or anything of the sort. Neither Jesus nor His followers respond to wickedness in that way. Instead, the Son of God preaches harshly against them, to expose them for all to see, and to reveal God’s righteous anger against hypocrisy and those who practice it.

Now, there is such a thing as hypocrisy among Christians. There are many who pretend to be Christians, when, in reality, they don’t live according to the Christian faith or believe the teachings of the Christian faith. And if that’s true among laymen, it’s even more true among clergy, with scandal after scandal revealing far too much hypocrisy among those who pretend to serve Christ but actually serve only themselves. If you find any hypocrisy within yourself, admit it immediately and turn to God for forgiveness.

But remember this: To be a Christian does not, by definition, make a person a hypocrite, as some wrongly accuse. A hypocrite tries to fool people into believing he is something different than what he truly is, something better, something holier. That’s not what Christianity is about, though. Christians try to be sinless, struggle to be sinless, and holy, and righteous, but we don’t pretend to be sinless. On the contrary, what do we confess openly and publicly every Sunday? O almighty God, merciful Father, I confess to You that I am by nature sinful and unclean, and that I have sinned against You in my thoughts, words, and deeds. For this I deserve nothing but Your wrath and punishment. There’s no pretending there, only blunt honesty. No, when we approach God, unlike the Pharisees, we approach Him not because of our goodness but in spite of our wickedness, trusting in His promise to be merciful to sinners who approach Him through faith in His beloved Son, who called out His enemies for the hypocrites that they were, and then submitted Himself to those very hypocrites, at the end of that week, to be condemned and crucified, for love of His sheep, for love of us all. Amen.