Jesus Unloads His Seven Woes on the Pharisees and Us – Woe #4

Jesus Unloads His Seven Woes on the Pharisees and Us – Woe #4.

“Woe unto you hypocritical Torah-teachers and Pharisees, you frauds and imposters!” (Matthew 23).

In Matthew 23, Jesus demonstrated the spiritual audacity of taking on the religious leaders of His day. To many of the listeners of His diatribe, His words must have been outrageous. But Jesus had the guts and the nerve to confront the religious establishment, even as He included name-calling and divine judgment onto the heads of all those leaders of the Temple. This indeed took some holy chutzpah. Jesus had what it took to display his tenacious pursuit of biblical righteousness.

“Woe unto you“: What sorrow awaits you; alas for you; distress is headed your way; you’re asking for trouble; grief is coming for you; how unfortunate you are; your destiny will involve nothing but suffering; you’re hopeless.

“Hypocrite“: Pretender; fraud; phony; imposter; play-actor; fake.

Scribe: ‘Men of Letters,’ since the Greek word for scribe is “gramma,” the source for our word “grammar;” religious scholar; teacher of religious law; lawyer; interpreter of Torah; member of Temple leadership; associated with the Pharisees because most of the scribes belonged to the Pharisee party.

Pharisees: A popular religious party operating in 1st century Israel. They were respected for their scholarly knowledge of Scripture and for their interpretation of the written word and oral law. They were highly influential in the local synagogues. They were laymen, not priests, and came from all classes of people. They believed in the bodily resurrection of the dead and eternal life, which was earned by good works according to Mosaic Law. They emphasized extreme detail regarding observance to the Jewish law, which made them separatists from anything non-Jewish. They were committed to righteousness and obeying all of God’s laws, but often found themselves following the letter of the law at the expense of the spirit of the law, blind to the law’s true intent.

Number Seven: This number signifies wholeness, perfection, completeness. It is St. Matthew’s favorite number, for example there are seven petitions in the Lord’s Prayer, forgiveness not 7 but 77 times, there is a natural division of his gospel into seven sections, and now there are seven woes from Jesus.

Christ in Angry Prophet Mode. With the seven woes in Matthew 23, Jesus was living into His OT prophetic style of communication. And He enjoyed the perfect backdrop for the Woes… the Temple. Isaiah was the best known prophet in the Hebrew Bible who employed a “woe unto you” confrontation. In Isaiah’s case, he was calling the people of Judah to task for their exploiting of others, their drunkenness, their pride and arrogance, their confusing of moral standards, and their perverting of justice. Jesus used this “woeful” prophetic formula to critique not the people of Israel but the Temple leadership for their mean-spirited hypocrisy and their superficial, self-righteous ambition. There are actually eight woes technically in this Matthew passage, but one of them wasn’t in the original manuscripts, and so scholars say it was added to the gospel after first being written. So this eighth woe (“you devour widows’ houses“) is not considered an official woe of Jesus. He proclaimed seven woes, the perfect number, the complete number. This passage is Jesus’ most famous attack on the scribes and Pharisees, and has been called “the Grand Critique.” He didn’t mince words, He didn’t hold back in His stinging accusations of the Temple leadership. He basically excoriated them, and straightforwardly told them, I’ve had it with you! I’ve lost my patience with you! You are headed for disaster if you keep leading my people astray!

Fourth Woe: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites and imposters! Here you go again, playing Temple trivia instead of focusing on the major issues of religion, things like justice, mercy, and faith! You want to make sure everyone pays a tithe on little garden herbs, but then miss the giant matters of the Faith. Go ahead, pay your tithes, big deal, but don’t let them distract you from what’s of more spiritual importance! Once again, you are being blind guides for the people, more concerned about minor laws than major religious issues. Do you honestly think you can gain spiritual muscle by lifting these light weights and ignoring the heavy weights in Biblical truth? (Matthew 23:23-24).

The Pharisee in Me… The Fourth Woe:

… Am I forgetting what is really important in my Christian faith?

… Have I started missing the forest for the trees, being more concerned with minor matters than things like showing mercy, doing justice, and walking humbly with God?

… Am I using good judgment with regard to putting first things first and not playing ‘trivial pursuits’?

… Am I able to discern what God thinks is must important and top priority in following Jesus?

… Since God is not a blind guide but instead has unerring vision, what is His worldview, and is His Biblical perspective in fact our world view?