Jesus and the Pharisees – Part 8 – “Twice as Unfit” – Matthew 23:13-15

Kim and I were members of a church in Irving that was a large church. It shared a parking lot with a shopping center. The anchor store in the center had closed, and the possibility was there for the church to buy a rather large building. The offer later extended to purchasing the entire shopping center.

As the church was grappling with what to do, they had a series of house meetings to discuss not only if we should purchase the property, but what we would do with it once it was purchased. There were a lot of ideas that were batted around in the meeting I attended.

One of the things that struck me, all these years ago, was one man, a leader in the church, who said that we should use this opportunity as a means of reaching out to more people. He wanted these people to join our church so that they could become good church members. As they developed into good church members, they would be taught to tithe and increase the church’s income.

As I listened to this man, I asked myself what he was trying to do. Was he wanting to reach people for Christ, or was he wanting to reach people for the church? There is a wide difference between the two. While a person who is won to Christ is assured a relationship with the Father and the Son through the Holy Spirit, the person who is simply won to the church may become a dynamic church member that may never know Christ. The church member would have a false sense of security in thinking that he or she was devoted to Christ, but would in the end find himself or herself far outside the kingdom.

I think of this when I read Jesus’ lamentation about the Pharisees and their reason for evangelism. It’s a question we need to ask ourselves regularly: Why do we do evangelism?

How we answer it can open our eyes to our own relationship with Christ.

Background

It is important to once again remind ourselves that the Pharisees were men and women who genuinely loved God and wanted to be pleasing to Him. They were devoted to worship and to obedience to the law. In this way, they hoped to earn God’s favor and be brought into God’s kingdom.

One of the things they did was they were eager to convert others to their faith. They would teach those outside the faith what the Law and the Prophets said about God, hoping that those outside the faith would see the true God and come to worship Him as they did.

In our world today, there are those who are devoted to sharing the gospel of Christ with the world. Many who do so are committed to bringing these converts into a right relationship with Christ, learning to walk with Him and grow in Him.

Unfortunately, there are some, like the man at the large church in Irving, who are devoted to calling church members. Such people are passionate about their beliefs and convinced they are doing good in the world.

It is to people like this, and to the Pharisees, that Jesus spoke against in today’s passage.

Central Truth: Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for their misplaced evangelism.

The Pharisees’ “evangelism”:

1. Shut the doors to salvation (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.”

Slamming a door in someone’s face can have different reasons behind it. There was a time when a person could express their displeasure by slamming the telephone down. Those days are long gone. Today, the best we can do is slam the door in someone’s face.

Slamming a door can also be a way of taunting or teasing others. It gives them the illusion that they can gain entrance into an enticing place, only to have the opportunity taken from them at the last moment.

Slamming a door can also be an effective means of keeping someone from getting what we ourselves are unable to gain. Think of a vault door. On one side of the door are riches and valuables. They don’t belong to us, and we don’t want others to get them, so we slam the door as people are trying to enter in.

Probably, Jesus had this idea in mind when He said the Pharisees slam the door to heaven in the faces of those who would be saved. Perhaps the rules and regulations are so strict and so difficult to attain that it discourages others from trying. If we set the bar too high, few will be willing to try much less overcome the bar. That’s the case with the Pharisees.

Then again, the Pharisees led people to believe that attaining heaven was as simple as following the rules. If you do “A, B and C,” then you win and earn God’s favor. The problem here was that it wasn’t simply “A, B and C.” There were so many other letters and numbers to add to the “to do” list that no one could ultimately achieve the goal of winning God’s approval.

Remember that the Pharisees way of achieving God’s favor is heavily dependent upon works. These works had to be good enough and often enough that God would look past the sin and see only the good works.

Do you remember the story about the man without a country? It was written in the early 1800’s, when the memories of the American Revolution were still fresh. The story is about a man on trial for a crime he committed under the laws of the United States. Having been found guilty, the man is about to be sentenced. Before pronouncing sentence, the judge asks the convicted man if he has anything to say. The man sneers that he wasn’t guilty and that the laws were ridiculous. He concludes his rant by saying he wished he had never heard of the United States. The statement so shocked the judge that he pronounced sentence: the man would get his wish. He was sentenced to spend the rest of his life on an American navy ship far from the United States and was forbidden to be told anything of what was happening in the nation. He spends the rest of his life regretting the rash words spoken in a moment of passion.

Sin is making a rash decision that we know better than God, than we don’t need Him. It is open rebellion against God, and there really is not enough works that would justify Him overlooking our rejection of Him. That’s why God’s grace is so significant. God reaches out to us because of His great love, creating a way for us to come back into relationship with Him. This reconciliation comes only through Jesus Christ. It is freely giving to all who believe. In sending Christ to die for us, God is telling us that you and I can never hope to be good enough to earn His favor.

That’s why the Pharisees slammed the door in the face of would-be converts. When you tell people that they have to be good enough to be saved, they will fail every time.

2. Gives a false sense of security (15)

“Who 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.”

One of the great stories of faith in relatively modern times was the missions movement. William Carey was a man in England who believed that God wanted the gospel shared around the world. It was an idea that was foreign to almost all of the churches. The thinking was that if God wanted people to know Him, He would find a way to bring them to His churches.

William Carey disagreed. He believed that God could use missionaries to take the gospel to the lost of the world. Toward that end, Carey began to raise funds so he could go to India. He believed God had laid India on his heart and that is where he would go.

Because of William Carey’s vision, it was the birth of the modern mission movement.

And yet, missions were not unique to 18th century England. The Pharisees were eager to proselytize people to Judaism. As Jesus mentioned, they would travel over land and see to win a single convert. As a result, the new convert was more devoted to his or her new religion, becoming far more zealous than those who grew up in the faith.

When I was in junior college, there was a student that began to attend the Bible studies at the BSU. One night as we were preparing to visit in the various dorms on campus, this student began to speak with our BSU director. The director led the student to Christ. The transformation was incredible. Brian’s life was incredibly turned around by coming to Christ. He became immersed in discipleship, digging into Scripture memorization and evangelism. He prayed often and fervently. The last I heard, Brian had a prayer ministry going on. I don’t know what exactly that means, but Brian was a man who was truly on fire for God.

That’s often how it is when a person comes to Christ as an adult. The change is obvious and sometimes dramatic. So it was with the converts to Judaism through the Pharisees. The new convert was deeply committed to living out the Pharisee lifestyle, doubling down on their efforts to earn God’s favor. As a result, Jesus tells us these converts were twice as fit for hell as those who had done the converting.

3. The omitted verse (14)

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You devour widows’ houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. Therefore you will be punished more severely.

If you have a KJV of the Bible, you are probably wondering why the NIV does not include v. 14 in the text, placing it in the footnotes. The reason is that most ancient manuscripts do not include verse. To be sure, there are some manuscripts that include it, but the more reliable manuscripts do not.

It is included in Mark 12:40 and is placed right after Matthew 23:6. The emphasis of the verse indicates the hypocrisy of the Pharisees in that they ignore the essence of the law while they publicly profess to be committed to the law. Like the man who wants to be seated at the places of honor and given the best seat in the synagogue, this person is someone who does not practice what he preaches.

The fact that most modern translations do not include the verse here does not mean it isn’t a valid verse; after all, it is included in Mark. It simply doesn’t really fit in these lamentations toward the Pharisees that Jesus is proclaiming at this point in time.

Still, the lesson is there. A person who claims to be of great faith while seeking gain at the expense of causing people to suffer is the height of hypocrisy and, according to Jesus, worthy of more severe punishment.

Conclusion

In the Great Commission, Jesus tells us that as we are going about our daily living, we are to make disciples. We are to baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and we are to teach them to obey everything He teaches us.

The question we need to ask ourselves is: When we share the gospel, are we hoping to win people to Christ, or to our religion and our church? There is a difference.