Matthew 23:13-22

¹³ “But tragedy is coming to you, scribes and Pharisees, actors! Because you shut the kingdom from the sky in people’s faces. Because you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.

¹⁵ Tragedy is coming to you, scribes and Pharisees, actors! Because you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a son of Gehenna as yourselves.

¹⁶ “Tragedy is coming to you, blind guides, who say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.’

¹⁷ You blind fools! Because which is greater, the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred?

¹⁸ And you say, ‘If anyone swears by the altar, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gift that is on the altar, he is bound by his oath.’

¹⁹ You blind men! Because which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred?

²⁰ So whoever swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it.

²¹ And whoever swears by the temple swears by it and by him who dwells in it.

²² And whoever swears by the sky swears by the throne of God and by him who sits upon it.

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wrong way

This passage includes three of Jesus’ seven pronouncements of future tragedy – his famous seven woes upon the Pharisees. They were religious heroes in the eyes of the people. But Jesus saw inside them; he saw their hypocrisy. He also saw the result of all their pious effort. Their proselytes thought they were gaining ground in the goal of reaching God. Instead, they were getting closer and closer to destruction in Gehenna.

The people the Pharisees influenced were being kept away from a relationship with God. They were gaining religious disciplines, and losing eternal life.

LORD, keep us from turning people on to religious work, but off to Christ.