The Condemnation of the Religious Leaders, Part 5

Jim ButlerMatthew 23:29–33

Matthew 23:29–33 records the eighth and final woe Jesus pronounces against the scribes and Pharisees, and this sermon works through the passage under three headings: their professed allegiance to the prophets, their protested dissociation from their fathers' murders, and Christ's prophetic assertion of their guilt. The hypocrisy at the centre of the woe is that these men honoured dead prophets with tombs and monuments while plotting the murder of the greatest prophet, the Lord Jesus Christ himself. The sermon draws sustained parallels from Ezra 9, Daniel 9, 2 Kings 17, and 2 Chronicles 36 to show that Israel's rejection of the prophets had always preceded covenantal judgment, and that Matthew 23 sets the ground for the destruction of Jerusalem prophesied in Matthew 24. Hearers are pressed by Christ's own question — 'How can you escape the condemnation of hell?' — and directed to faith in Christ alone as the only answer.