Matthew 23:5

“Everything they do is done for men to see.”

This chapter, the 23rd, is often called “the seven woes” because Jesus uncovers sins cloaked in “self-righteousness.”  The woes fill this chapter – probably spoken shortly before his death on the Cross.

His warnings are disarmingly stern. I can not recall that Jesus spoke so strongly against the Gentiles and sinners. What moved him was to see the people who should have loved God above all else, who should have been burning with compassion for those who did not yet know God, the poor and needy, that they did nothing but make excuses for not helping those who needed a helping hand.  It was not that pagans that Jesus railed against in this chapter but against the rulers of the Jews – the Pharisees and the Sadducees – the supposed “holy people.”

Jesus summed up their overriding sin “Everything they do is done for men to see.”  Obviously not for God to see.

We need to keep in mind that God opened the stores of heaven to bless the Jews again and again for hundreds of years.  By this time they should be free of hypocrisy and duplicity but, on the contrary, they knowingly took the commands of God and made them”do-able” in their own strength. The fruit of it all was to despise non-Jews and to make the Word of God as nothing among themselves.

As I think of the fig tree that had the promise of good fruit but produced none, I can begin to understand what God thought of his “chosen people” who were blessed so that they can bless the nations. They seemed to have no compassion at all for the nations.  They thought only of their own holiness and personal purity. As Jesus pronounced woe on that tree, so he pronounces woe on the Jews who had compassion neither for God nor for “the nations.”

We do well to ponder this words of Jesus very carefully.