Context for Matthew 23:23-39
Jesus preaches woe against those who should know the truth of the Word, yet have ignored that truth in favor of the desires of their own sinfulness. In this preaching, Jesus reaches back to the Words of the very prophets the leaders claim to follow, indicting those leaders with their own actions.
Jesus stood in the courts of the Temple, declaring woe against the leaders of the Jews. In His speech and in His meaning, Jesus embodied the Word given to the generations of prophets that foretold His coming.
Those same prophets also testified against those leaders unbelief, both in their own times and in the time when the Word they testified to stood among them. The leaders had seen the Christ, yet they failed to connect the Word of their ancestors to the man standing in those Temple courts.
We are quick to condemn the actions of those leaders, but before we do, we should take a long, hard look at ourselves. What do we believe? Is our claimed faith the faith of the Word or the faith of our own invention?
This is the very question that Jesus was ultimately asking the leaders of the Jews and is asking us. Jesus’ message was clear both then and now: there is only one way to Heaven, and that is through faith in the promised Messiah.
Therefore, the woe that Jesus preached against the leaders of the Jews while He was on earth is the same woe promised to anyone who does not believe in the One, True Faith, promised and fulfilled to the Jews through Christ’s life, death, and resurrection and brought to us through the faithful testimony of those who believed in Him first.
This is a difficult teaching, but it is the teaching that will get us to Heaven. Faith is not easy, but it is sure, and it is to the faith of the Word that we must cling.
