OUR FATHER COMMANDS US TO CARE FOR THE WELFARE OF WIDOWS AND ORPHANS

Matthew chapter 23 verse 14 captures the next article of indictment for which the religious leaders of Israel would be condemned for;

14 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense make long prayers. Therefore you will receive greater condemnation.

As a way of fiancially enhancing their positions, the scribes and Pharisees presented themselves to widows as prayerful spiritual advisors and part of the role they assumed, they ensured that any assets such as houses or lands were bequeathed to them when the widows died and the pharisees would accumulate what the widows left behind.

The Lord Jesus declared that the practice of pretending to be a pious intermediary between the widow and God in order to gain their earthly belongings was going to earn the religious leaders greater condemnation because it was hypocrisy with a predatory angle added to it.

Have mercy on us O God.

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OUR FATHER WHO SENDS SHEPHERDS TO GUIDE OTHERS TO THE TRUTH

In Matthew chapter 23 verse 13, the Lord Jesus began pronouncing condemnations upon the scribes and Pharisees for their hypocritical conduct and culture where they presented themselves one way before the people but lived self-indulgently in private.

13 “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in. 

The first condemnation against them was for locking people out of heaven by ensuring that the means of accessing heaven by faith was obscured from them.

The religious leaders had no interest or understanding of heaven and thus did not care to go there themselves and made no effort to show the lay people how to get there.

Have mercy on us O God.

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OUR FATHER WHO IS TO BE HONORED

The Lord Jesus, having confronted the religious leaders and showed them to be incomplete in their knowledge of the things of the spirit and of the scriptures, issued a scathing indictment of their practices as recorded in Matthew chapter 23 verses 1 - 12,

1 Then Jesus spoke to the multitudes and to His disciples, 2 saying: “The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. 3 Therefore whatever they tell you to observe, that observe and do, but do not do according to their works; for they say, and do not do. 4 For they bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. 5 But all their works they do to be seen by men. They make their phylacteries broad and enlarge the borders of their garments. 6 They love the best places at feasts, the best seats in the synagogues, 7 greetings in the marketplaces, and to be called by men, ‘Rabbi, Rabbi.’ 8 But you, do not be called ‘Rabbi’; for One is your Teacher, the Christ, and you are all brethren. 9 Do not call anyone on earth your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heaven. 10 And do not be called teachers; for One is your Teacher, the Christ. 11 But he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. 12 And whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.

The Lord Jesus advised His listeners to heed the words of the Pharisees and scribes because they sat in the seat of Moses and therefore had the authority of Moses confered on them by the office they held but Jesus warned them not follow after their conduct because they talked the talk but did not walk the walk.

These are the things that the Lord told his people not to emulate from the religious leaders;

• They placed heavy burdens on others that they exempted themselves from
• They did all their works to be seen by others to attract admiration
• They wore clothes and accessories to appear pious to other people
• They sought prominent positions and placements at feasts and gatherings
• They sought to be honorably greeted by men in social environments 
• They sought to be called by the title ˋRabbiˋorˋteacherˋ by others

The Lord said that only the Messiah and God had the right to be honored in such ways. All men should treat each other as brothers and should seek to be servants of each other.

Amen.

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OUR FATHER WHO CONFOUNDS THE WISE Part 2

The Lord Jesus, in rapid succession, had crossed swords with the religious and political powers in the temple over topics such as the payment of taxes to Rome, the reality of the ressurection from the dead and the hierarchy of the commands in the law of Moses and He demonstrated to all the people that the Pharisees and the Sadducees, who were posturing as the carriers of Israelˋs religious knowledge, did not have a complete understanding of the scriptures or of spiritual reality.

This doctrinal tour de force finalized in Matthew chapter 22 verses 41 - 44 where Jesus posed a question to the Pharisees on the subject of the Messiah whose arrival was being awaited for by all Israel.

41 While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, 42 saying, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose Son is He?”

They said to Him, “The Son of David.”

The Lord Jesus, being the Messiah Himself, asked the Pharisees (who were the custodians of the doctrines and traditions of the people of Israel), whose Son the Messiah would be according to the scriptures.

The Pharisees easily answered this question because it was well understood that the Messiah would be from the lineage of king David and so they said, ˋThe Son of Davidˋ.

Jesus had set His own trap for them to demonstrate to them and to the people that the religious leaders had only a partial understanding of the doctrines established in the scriptures.

When they commited themselves to the answer that the Messiah was the Son of David, Jesus then pointed out a paradox in the scripture that they had no answer for.

If the Messiah was the Son of David, why then did David, in Psalm 110 verse 1, call the Messiah his LORD when a son is never greater than his father?

43 He said to them, “How then does David in the Spirit call Him ‘Lord,’ saying:

44 ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand, Till I make Your enemies Your footstool” ’?

45 If David then calls Him ‘Lord,’ how is He his Son?” 46 And no one was able to answer Him a word, nor from that day on did anyone dare question Him anymore.

This question was unanswerable by the Pharisees because they did not have insight into the nature of the Messiah as the Son of God and how the Messiah would emerge from the lineage of David through Joseph and Mary as Davidˋs son by the Holy Spirit and so the Messiah would be both Davidˋs Lord and Davidˋs son.

This spiritual and corporeal truth, though apparent to us now that the Messiah emerged and brought salvation to the whole world, was completely opaque to the Pharisees and thus the question completely confounded them and they refrained from asking Him further questions on doctrinal matters.

Amen.

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OUR FATHER WHO SO LOVED THE WORLD THAT HE GAVE HIS ONLY SON

Matthew chapter 22 verses 34 - 40 contains the authoritative summation of the entire book of the law and the prophets by the Lord Jesus. 

Having heard that Jesus had publically discredited the false doctrine of the Saddusees, the Pharisees approached Jesus again to test Him by asking which of the commandments of God was the greatest or the most important or the most crucial. 

34 But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?”

37 Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

The Lord answered that the Shema (the first commanment) out of Deutronomy chapter 6 verse 4 - 5 as the great commandment which reads as follows;

4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

To this, Jesus added that the second most important commandment was the command in Leviticus 19 verse 19 which reads;

18 “‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.

Jesus then explained that all the writings of Moses and the prophets were founded on these two commandments.  

The ministry of our Lord Jesus was the culmination of these two commandments where the reconciliation between God and man would be accomplished by Jesus' sacrificial life and death.

Amen.

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OUR FATHER WHO CONFOUNDS THE WISE

The pharisees and the reps from Herodˋs court had come with the question of taxation and after they had left, a contigency of a sect of temple leaders called the Saddusees approached Jesus with a disingenous question. The Saddusees did not believe in the ressurection and yet their question was about who a   woman would be married to  (having been married to multiple brothers as each died and the next married her ) when she ressurected. Matthew chapter 22 verses 23 - 33 records this encounter with Jesus;

23 The same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Him and asked Him, 24 saying: “Teacher, Moses said that if a man dies, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife and raise up offspring for his brother. 25 Now there were with us seven brothers. The first died after he had married, and having no offspring, left his wife to his brother. 26 Likewise the second also, and the third, even to the seventh. 27 Last of all the woman died also. 28 Therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife of the seven will she be? For they all had her.”

29 Jesus answered and said to them, “You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God. 30 For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels of God in heaven. 31 But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” 33 And when the multitudes heard this, they were astonished at His teaching.

The questioners presumed that people remained married to each other after the ressurection and so the connumdrum they placed before Jesus was how people who were legally married to multiple people in this life would be assiged to a partner in the ressurected life.

To the questioners, this connundrum was an airtight argument against the ressurection because the legallity of multiple marriages in the earth would cause an intractable mess in heaven after the ressurection when the multiple marriages would have to run concurrently which was not lawful. The question turned on how a fair decision could be made to assign a woman to a particular a man when she was legally linked to other men.

Jesus responded to this question in two parts. First He nullified the connundrum by informing the questioners that their primary point of fact was wrong. Whereas they thought that marriages continued in the afterlife, Jesus corrected their misconception by telling them that at the ressurection, marriages would not continue. He authoritatively told them that human beings, once in ressurected, would be like the ˋangels of Godˋ who neither married nor were given in marriage. 

This information provided a revealing glimpse into the afterlife where men and women, now immortal beings, were no longer legally linked by marital on earth. In marriage, men and women are joined together in one flesh but with the destruction of the flesh upon the resurection, there is nothing that continues to be joined and each individual is a free standing entity in God.

The second part of Jesusˋ response nullified the doctrine of the Saddusees that held that there was no ressurection by using scriptures such as Exodus chapter 3 verse 15, that reads as follows;

God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’

“This is my name forever, the name you shall call me from generation to generation.

In these texts, God refers to Himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and because this declaration is made to Moses long after Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had died on earth, they were clearly in a ressurected state because God is the God of the living and referred Himself as the God of living people.

The clarification that Jesus brought to the doctrinal murkiness of the Saddusees astonished all who heard Him.

Amen.

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