Mat 23;27-36 27 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs whichindeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. 28 Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. 29 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, 30 and say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.’ 31 “Therefore you are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. 32 Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers’ guilt. 33 Serpents, brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell? 34 Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes: some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, 35 that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. 36 Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.
The Israelites were waiting for their Messiah for thousands of years. All their religious activities, rituals, sacrifices, temple, priests, history, and prophecies all gave them a Messianic hope. The Messiah was the hope of every Jew’s heart. The Messiah would arrive and establish His Kingdom, deliver them from their enemies, and blessedness for every Jew would come with that Kingdom.
The promised Messiah came to them, in David’s line, ministered among them for three years, and His works and words proved without a doubt that He is the promised One. He fulfilled their prophecies before their eyes; they were seeing Him right in front of their own eyes. Repeatedly, from their inmost being, they felt, “This is the coming one.” But sadly, most of the nation rejected Him, and not only rejected, but murdered Him. Why? The primary reason for their rejection is because of their false spiritual leaders who had captured the hearts and minds of the people, and they used their influence to turn people against Jesus Christ. So, in chapter 23, we see horrible woes being pronounced on them.
The saddest, most tragic story in history is this: the nation called out by God’s love and grace, given promises and covenants and hope and light, yet when all of that is to come to fruition in the arrival of the Messiah, they have gone so far in the other direction that rather than believe, they execute their own Messiah. And so this chapter pronounces judgment. This is the climax of the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ to Israel.
It is also the last sermon Jesus ever preached publicly. It is not a loving, encouraging sermon message. It is just the opposite. He is standing face-to-face, very bold, very confrontive, a very electric, burning scene, a dramatic act in front of the whole crowd. Without any hesitation, not thinking of consequences, He pours eight woes on these leaders. Only He alone can speak with this boldness. It is a statement of damnation and cursing against these false spiritual leaders who have led the people astray, and the great blood guiltiness of the souls of that nation will fall on their head.
We are looking at a very solemn chapter, a very sad chapter filled with woes, and today, as we reach the final woes, it is going to be very shocking. I was very hesitant to preach; if I had a choice, I would have skipped it, but the job of the preacher is to teach not only comforting, easy things, but even shocking truths of God’s Word, the whole counsel of God. So very reluctantly I stand here. But let me give a disclaimer/warning: if you have a weak heart, don’t run away, but pray God may give you strength to hear His truth.
We have seen six woes:
- Woe 1: For hindering people from truly getting saved.
- Woe 2: For making themselves rich by robbing the poorest with a show of devotion.
- Woe 3: For making their false converts double children of hell.
- Woe 4: For developing a system filled with lies in the name of God. No consequences! Lying in God’s name? “Ah, that is nothing.” They train people to lie, train people to babble in the name of tongues. “Yes, yes, the Holy Spirit is talking,” while it is just gibberish. They train people to give false testimonies in the name of God. “Oh, no, we should lie in God’s name.” They tell them, “That is nothing; it will bring glory to God.”
- Woe 5: For being strict with small external duties and neglecting important spiritual duties.
- Woe 6: For maintaining clean externals but full of extortion inside.
Now we will look at the other two.
Woe 7: For Deceiving People by Outwardly Appearing Righteous
Verse 27: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”
“You are deceivers; you are deceiving people by outwardly appearing righteous.” He says, “You are like whitewashed tombs.” Numbers 19:16 says, “Whoever touches a dead body, or a bone of a man, or a grave, shall be unclean seven days.” It is a ceremonially defiled thing. We also have some of it in Indian culture: you go to a funeral, we wash our legs and hands and even bathe. It was a ritual so we don’t get defiled. People say we should avoid bacteria spreading from a dead body, and it is good. So Jews would do everything to avoid touching a body or a grave.
We know they used to put the bodies in caves, but there were several caves in their place, so how would people know whether it is a tomb cave or a normal cave? So the Jews used to whitewash the caves with bright white limestone color, because as they were walking in the roads, hillsides, traveling, they feared that people might inadvertently touch a tomb and thus be defiled. And then, not just washing legs and hands and going into the house like us, no, there was a seven-day ceremonial cleansing process necessary, and especially they are defiled at Passover time, the whole festival is gone. Like when someone dies during festivals, how people don’t celebrate in our culture, like that, if you touch a tomb, the whole festival is gone. Especially during Passover time, the city was overflowing with population everywhere, the land covered with people, so people would not know which is a tomb or a normal cave. So to indicate a tomb, they would whitewash with limestone all the tombs in Jerusalem.
And so as you came into Jerusalem, you’d see these beautiful, clean, white tombs everywhere, dazzling in the sun, looking very beautiful like a new house. But they weren’t what they appeared to be. They were so beautiful and so pure and so white, but they were tombs. And anybody who touched them would be contaminated. And Jesus says, “That’s what you are.”
Outside they appear beautiful, white, and clean, their hairstyle neat, and their pious face filled with compassion, a calm demeanor, and outwardly appearing so pious. They say, “Don’t worry, Jesus calls, Jesus redeems, blesses, blessing,” and they speak with open arms and smooth words, and people flocking around them. But people don’t realize everyone that touches you is defiled in the sight of God. People think if you lay your hands on them, they will be blessed and God will hear their prayers, they will be purified, but the moment they touch you or hear your teaching, people become defiled in their mind and soul and body. A false teacher offers himself as one who will purify the impure, but all he does is contaminate everyone he touches. So you pollute, so you contaminate everybody who touches you.
Verse 27: “For you are like whitewashed tombs… which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, so nice and clean outside.” Can you realize the provocation of this statement? All your religion and show and righteousness is nothing but decoration of a dead body or tomb, “but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.” How do you like to see what is inside the grave after three or four days? Nauseating! That is what is inside them.
Their top ambition was to appear righteous before men and they were admired for that. They set outward purity and decency above inward sanctification and purity of heart. They made it a religious duty to cleanse the “outside” of their cups and platters, but neglected their own inward man. Verse 28: “Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.” Lawlessness: disregard for the law of God. Their heart is full of covetousness, adultery, lies, deception, idolatry, murderous angry thoughts. Their heart is full of lawlessness and hypocrisy.
So comes this Woe 7 for deceiving people by outwardly appearing righteous.
Woe 8: For Terrible Guilt of Rejecting Full Revelation / For Honoring the Dead Prophets, but Plotting the Living Son of God
Verse 29: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, and say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.’”
This is put as the last woe, and the Lord speaks a lot about this because this is the blackest sin. While God hates false prophets, He honors nothing more than His true prophets. He commands all His people to honor true prophets; we see that again and again in the Bible. He considers what is done to them as if done to Himself. When they touch them, they touch Him (Psalm 105:15: “Do not touch my anointed ones; do my prophets no harm.”). So when our Lord Jesus comes to this head, He speaks more fully than upon any of the others, for that touches His ministers, “touches his Anointed,” and touches the “apple of his eye.”
The eighth woe is on these people because while they build tombs/memorials for prophets, not just build and forget, but regularly during their death day and birthday adorn the monuments of the righteous, like we celebrate Gandhi Jayanti and Ambedkar birthday to honor them. Like today, ironically, those groups who killed Gandhi go and honor his memorials now. We have built the world’s tallest statue as a memorial, but live completely against their principles. We in the Catholic Church do the same thing: honor all these apostles and saints of old. “Oh, we honor Saint,” and build churches and memorials for so many saints, many of whom they would have killed.
The extravagant respect which the church of Rome pays to the memory of saints departed, especially the martyrs—dedicating days and places to their names, enshrining their relics, praying to them, and offering to their images—while they make themselves drunk with the blood of the saints of their own day, is a manifest proof that they not only succeed, but exceed, the scribes and Pharisees in a counterfeit, hypocritical religion, which builds the prophets’ tombs, but hates the prophets’ doctrine. Let there be saints, but let them not be living here.
So these leaders build memorials and decorate them, and honor them. In the memorial day speech, you know what they say. They protested against the murder of them, verse 30, and say, “If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.”
“Why, we would never have killed the prophets as our fathers have done. They were ignorant of the Scriptures and sinful, but we have grown in the knowledge of God’s Word and are so pious, not idolaters like them. We keep no idols, advanced in religion. We’re so much better than they are. You see, we’re so much holier than they. We’re so far beyond them.” They speak very passionately about great martyrs, how the holy great prophets were killed by their ignorant forefathers. “My blood boils to think that the great holy prophet Isaiah was sawn in two, Jeremiah who wept for our nation was stoned with blood flowing, how others were scourged, tortured. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented. My blood boils to think what our fathers did to our prophets. Oh, we will never do such a thing. We would sooner have lost our right hands than have done any such thing.”
The irony is, Jesus had told them in the parable of the vineyard earlier in chapter 21 that the history of Israel is killing the servants of the vineyard owners (the prophets). Finally, when the owner sends his son, this generation will kill him. But they claim, “Oh, we’re better. We would never have done what our forefathers did to the prophets.”
In verse 31 is a direct hit: “Therefore, you are witnesses”—right now on the spot—“you give testimony against yourselves that you are the sons of them that killed the prophets.”
Why? Why does He say that? Well, what were they right there, right then, thinking and plotting to do? What? To kill Him? Kill Him? I mean, they were so consumed with their own lying deceit that they didn’t even see the reality of the fact that they were killing One greater than the prophets, the Son of God. The final prophet of whose coming all the other prophets prophesied. “You give testimony against yourselves.” By their own confession, you say, it was the great wickedness of their forefathers to kill the prophets; so that they knew the fault of it, and yet were themselves guilty by planning to kill the final prophet now. Their own tongues shall be made to fall upon them.
They are going to kill Him, but they, in deception, say, “We would not have killed prophets like our forefathers.” They were at this time plotting to murder Christ, to whom all the prophets bore witness. They think, if they had lived in the days of the prophets, they would have heard them gladly and obeyed; and yet they rebelled against the light that Christ brought into the world.
We are sometimes thinking, if we had lived when Christ was upon earth, how constantly we would have followed Him; we would not have despised and rejected Him, as they then did; and yet Christ in His Spirit, in His Word, in His ministers, is still no better treated.
The next verse is very scary. As He concludes this woe, He gives them up to unredeemable damnation.
Verse 32: “Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers’ guilt.”
“Fill them up.” Terrible words. The worst judgment any parent can give to their children is to leave them to do whatever they want. The worst spiritual judgment God can give to anyone is described in Romans 1: God gives them up to the lust of their own hearts, to vile passions. If Ephraim be joined to idols, and hates to be changed, “let him alone.” Here Christ gives them over with these terrible words.
“Fill up” is a term used often in Scripture in connection with sin, judgment, and wrath. Very frequently in the Scripture, the image of a cup being filled to the brim is used in connection with God’s divine wrath. The book of Revelation talks about the cup of God’s wrath or the cup of His fury. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Hosea talk about it. It is even indicated in Matthew later on when Jesus, in the garden, says, “Let this cup pass from me,” and sees it as the cup of divine judgment, the cup of fury.
The picture is that God allows some sinners to go on sinning to the extreme, and that is indicated in a cup. He allows them to sin more and more. He removes His restraining grace and control, so they fill the cup of His wrath without control. Once they fill it, He can pour His most horrible, maximum wrath and judgment on them, and through that, glorify His attribute of justice and wrath. So the universe can see how infinitely great His wrath and justice are. That is a terrible truth.
It is like a dam getting filled and filled. After a point, it bursts out with wrath, and a flood is poured on the heads of people. We may wonder why God keeps quiet when false teachers do so many horrible things in His name, why He allows so much injustice to happen in Ukraine, why He allows Russia to go on with this war, killing so many. In His providence, He has allotted a cup. “Okay, fill it, fill it, so when you fill it to the brim, I can pour My utter wrath on you and glorify My justice and wrath.” So you fill up a cup of sin, so the cup of wrath and judgment can become full.
So here our Lord, amazingly in a command, says to them, “fill it up, finish it off, do the rest of the evil that has to be done.” It’s amazing to think that the Lord Jesus Christ, as pure and holy as He is as God, could command anyone to do maximum evil. But He does, in effect, say, “fill it up.” It is a similar thing to the fact that He said to Judas in John 13:27, “What you do, do quickly.” Go do it. It isn’t that Jesus desired that evil be done, it is only that since evil was to be done, Jesus said, “get it over with.” It is a command where He removes His restraining grace on them, and now they will plunge full swing to do evil and be instruments in Satan’s hand to do history’s most heinous crime of killing God.
“Go ahead. You’re scheming to kill the greatest Prophet of all. That’ll fill up the full measure of the murderous attitude of your people against God’s messengers. Do it. You say you are better than your fathers who killed prophets; you are the worst. You are going to kill God. You are going to top off the accumulated cup of sin of the nation Israel, of the people whom God revealed His truth to. You’re going to fill it up. Get it over with. Get it done that judgment may come.”
Now notice what He calls this cup. He calls it the “measure of your fathers’ guilt.” Fill it up, the same cup your fathers were filling. It’s as if the history of Israel has been a history of filling up a cup with sin, a cup of wrath which will bring inevitable judgment, and they’ve been doing that. Starting from their forefathers when they set up the calf, tested God in the wilderness, grumbled again and again—God was patient, patient, long-suffering. All successive generations of the Jewish nation have been sinning and sinning and sinning, and He even chastised them through captivity, but then He brought them back, and they just kept filling and filling and filling the cup. And now by killing their own Messiah, they will fill it, and finally judgment comes.
It’s a cumulative thing that He speaks of. The wickedness of each succeeding generation contributes, then, to the final result, and the Lord is saying the limit of Israel’s evil is almost reached. God’s tolerance has its limits. You have it back in Genesis where God says in chapter 6, “My Spirit will not always strive with men.” And what does He do? He destroys the whole world in a flood, leaving only eight souls. And what God was saying is, “It’s full.” The cup of man’s wickedness is filled up. That’s it. There’s no more room for anything else. And He comes in judgment. In Revelation, we see when the world fills the cup of His wrath, a time comes, the filling up of the cup of wrath is done. God takes no more sin in the cup. That’s it. Then He comes to judge them. The Winepress of the Fierceness and Wrath of Almighty God. And there is a limit to what God will allow. There is only so much wickedness before judgment comes. And that is true in this case in the nation Israel.
They pride themselves, “Oh, we would have never killed the prophets like our forefathers,” so holier than them. And He says to them, “Who are you kidding? You are so worst that you actually be filling the cup of your fathers’ sins.”
He continues to say their ruin is inescapable and irrecoverable, how graphically He says this.
Verse 33: “Serpents, brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell?”
“Serpents” (ophis) are subtle as serpents, cleaving to the earth, feeding on dust. They had a specious outside, but were within malignant, had poison under their tongues, the seed of the old serpent. In their unregenerate state, they had the poison of the old serpent against God and His prophet, spitting venom. “Brood of vipers,” a generation of vipers: a terrible scene—their forefathers were before them, and they were a generation of envenomed, enraged, spiteful adversaries to God and His Kingdom. “Brood of vipers”—imagine a sight full of thousands of snakes one upon another, full of poison; chilling.
A viper is a small poisonous snake in Palestine that lives down in the desert area of Israel and looks like a stick. They would look like a small twig or a broken branch or a small stick, and maybe in gathering sticks for a fire, you would collect one in your hands, and the next thing you knew, those teeth would plunge their way into your arm or your hand and they would not be able to be torn loose, such as happened to the apostle Paul in the book of Acts, and God spared him miraculously. This is a poison snake that is impossible to detect in some situations—deceitful and deadly. Same poisonous, deadly, deceitful snakes: wicked, subtle, poisonous, deadly, deceitful creatures. It was no compliment to be called an echidna, and when Jesus called them that, everyone knew what He was saying.
Verse 33: “How can you escape the damnation of Gehenna?” Gehenna is the word that is the symbol of hell, the constantly burning trash pile and dump. “How can you escape it?” And the answer is: they can’t. No way. This fits the imagery. In a field in those days, even today, after harvest they would burn the remaining stubble. When the farmer burns the stubble off, these snakes hiding inside, these echidna, would come up out of their holes, and they would wiggle as fast as they could, racing ahead of the fire to escape it, but they never were fast enough to escape the fire, but burned. So He says, “How will you escape the judgment fire, brood of vipers? Do you think you can outrun the fire of God?” Not a chance, not a chance.
This doom, coming from Christ, was more terrible than coming from all the prophets and ministers that ever were, for He is the sole Mediator through whom we can escape the condemnation of hell. If He says, “How can you escape,” and is saying they were damned, they are truly damned. Of all sinners, if we have this spirit of the scribes and Pharisees, we will never escape this damnation.
If this is scaring, we have still not started. This is the beginning. Look at what He says. Very scary: as part of the final woe, as part of this terrible judgment of removing His restraining grace and allowing them to fill the cup of their fathers, He grants them a gift in verse 34.
Verse 34: “Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes: some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city.”
“Therefore,” because of your hardness, hypocrisy, blindness, fools, as blind guides, brood of poisonous deceivers, you’ve rejected the truth of God, rejected the righteous spokesman of God, rejected even the Son of God. Because of that, “I”—that’s emphatic in the Greek, Christ is the One who is sending—“I am sending unto you prophets, wise men, and scribes.” Wait, aren’t these gifts Christ gives to the church? The connection is strange: “You are a generation of vipers, not likely to escape the damnation of hell.” One would think it should follow, “Therefore you shall never have a prophet sent to you anymore.” “I am sending unto you,” and you’d think He’d say judgment, wrath, vengeance. But no, “Therefore I will send unto you prophets, wise men and scribes.”
It says “therefore.” This is the consequence: “I’m sending unto you prophets, wise men, and scribes.” Well, why does He say that? What is He talking about? Why? Because this is what will make you fill up the cup of iniquity. Prophets, wise men, and scribes are all Jewish terms for God’s messengers. Prophets would be preachers. Wise men would be teachers. Scribes would be writers. Why?
“I am sending you these people, not so that you might have another chance to believe and be saved, but that you might have continued opportunities to hear God’s truth, harden your heart against it, and continue to reject so that you will pile upon yourself a greater weight of guilt, which deserves a severer judgment.” This will help you fill up the cup of iniquity. It’s a fearful thought, but that’s what He’s saying.
Verse 34 continued: “…some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.”
Do you see the point? It’s a heavy passage. And He’s saying, “I want you who are so guilty to be more guilty yet and to bear the full weight of your sin.”
“I’m going to send you these people, the best prophets, wise men, and scribes, the best ones, and I know what you’re going to do.” You’re not going to believe them as a nation as a whole, you leaders. Some will believe, as in Acts, but as a whole, you leaders, and as a whole, this nation will not receive them but rather will kill them and persecute them. And therefore, you will pile more guilt upon your head and be worthy of greater judgment. “You will bring on yourselves the filling up of the cup of wrath and the blood of all the righteous.” And then God will judge you with severity. And this way, the religious leaders would fill up the accumulated guilt from the history of the death of the righteous.
Now notice in verse 34 He says some of them you will kill and crucify. Kill probably refers to the Jewish method of stoning, and some crucify using the Roman method. They did that. They crucified Jesus using the Romans as the executioners; Peter was crucified upside down. They stoned Stephen; they killed James, and many others. We don’t know how we could count them all. History doesn’t reveal all of them to us. And then the ones they didn’t kill, they brought very near to death. Scourging: they scourged Peter and John.
Scourge them where? In the synagogue, in their place of worship, in the pretense of religion, as they did it as a service to the church and God: “Let the Lord be glorified.” Paul was repeatedly beaten with rods and whips by the Jews. And the ones they didn’t scourge, they pursued from city to city to city. We see that with the apostle Paul—the pursuing, the chasing them everywhere. As the apostles went from city to city to preach the Gospel, the Jews dodged them, and haunted them, and stirred up persecution against them (Acts 14:19; 17:13). They pursued Christians to punish them, to persecute them at Antioch, at Pisidia, at Iconium, at Lystra, at Thessalonica, at Berea, at Corinth, at Jerusalem, at Caesarea. It was a way of life for the early church, always running from the persecution of these false spiritual leaders of Israel who sought to stamp out the Gospel of Christ.
So He says, “Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers’ guilt. Serpents, brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell?” To fill that up, “I will gift you.” “I’m going to send more preachers and more teachers and more writers, and you’re going to fill it up by killing them and persecuting them.” And then you’re going to fill that cup up so much that “upon you”—
That in verse 35 says: “that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth.” The whole thing is going to come apart. The dam is going to take only so much and it’s going to break on you. The cup of wrath will be filled.
The word “that on you” (hopōs) means purpose: “for the purpose that upon you may come the righteous blood.” God’s purpose is to let this generation fill up the final act of atrocity against the righteous by massacring the Savior Himself and His followers, and then God’s judgment will pour itself out.
And you’re going to be suffering the just punishment of all that blood from righteous martyrs, starting from Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Barachiah, whom you slew between the temple and the altar. From A to Z, from the beginning of the Old Testament, Genesis chapter 4, the first murder of a righteous man (Cain killed Abel). And He sweeps them all the way through their history, all the way through to the conclusion of the Old Testament era and the last Old Testament martyr, Zechariah, son of Barachiah, and they murdered him between the temple and the altar. In the temple and in the name of God they did it.
Now, how will the guilt of what their fathers did also be piled on them? And listen carefully to me. The longer they have rejected the truth and refused to repent, and the more information they have that they have rejected, and the more lessons given them from which they have not learned and repented, the greater the guilt. Do you understand that? Judgment will be based on the amount of light you have; the more truth you know, when you don’t allow truth to change you, the greater the judgment. So that the people in Jesus’ time have greater guilt than anyone that ever lived before them. You say, “Well, their forefathers had the law of God.” Yes, but they had the law of God, the teaching of all the Old Testament prophets, and in addition, the forerunner John the Baptist and their Messiah Himself, the final prophet Himself, coming and giving them full revelation of truth and teaching Jesus in word and works, and sometime even His apostles.
And not only that, they should have learned of God’s judgment on past apostates and past murderers of the righteous. They should have learned from them not to do that. So they had accumulated revelation and they had accumulated lessons from history, all of which they rejected. Therefore, their accumulative guilt is surpassing that of any generation prior to them.
And so it all breaks on their heads. How can one generation be held responsible for all the righteous blood? Because of its constant rejection of full light, constant rejection of all the lessons of history.
One generation which duplicates the sins of past generations and rejects the lessons of past history and rejects the revelation of God that it has, brings upon itself a more profound judgment. So judgment is cumulative. And He says this to them, Verse 36: “Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.”
All what things? All this guilt. All this guilt for righteous blood is going to break on your heads. It’s all going to break on you. This generation. The destruction shall be so dreadful, as if God had once for all arraigned them for all the righteous blood shed in the world. “It shall come upon this generation,” which intimates that it shall come quickly; some here shall live to see it. Note: The sorer and nearer the punishment of sin is, the louder is the call to repentance and reformation.
This nation at this time and this place in history, you fill the cup up when you kill the Savior and His apostles. You’ve filled it up, that’s it. It’s going to break on you. And it did, by the way. It did. The Lord was crucified as we shall see a few days later. And it wasn’t but a few years after that, in A.D. 70, that the judgment of God came, and that judgment physically that came in A.D. 70 against the nation Israel was only a symbol of the eternal damnation that came against those Christ rejecters.
Oh, there were some who believed in the midst, but as a whole, the nation rejected. And that judgment that fell on them in A.D. 70, He is going to talk about that in the next chapter, how their nation and temple will be destroyed, not one stone upon another.
Today we hear about what Ukraine is going through, but much, much worse the judgment came in A.D. 70, and it was a holocaust to end all holocausts. It is called by Luke, in chapter 21:22, “the days of vengeance.” If Christ was crucified in A.D. 33, in A.D. 66, the revolution broke out against Rome. They took as much as they could take of Roman oppression. It was about May of 66. And Rome struck back, and they started a bloody battle in Galilee and started slaughtering the Jews in the north in Galilee. And finally Titus came down to the city of Jerusalem with an army in excess of 80,000 men.
Josephus, the great Jewish historian, was there and has written the full record of it, so we know what happened. And Josephus fills in all kinds of information for us. The 80,000 men came in, they got all around the city. The Jews didn’t allow them to enter their capital, refused to surrender, and the siege broke out and the war broke out. It’s beyond description. Absolutely beyond description to tell what happened. The Romans who were outside the city had the Jews captive in the city. Any Jew outside was immediately killed. In fact, they put crosses up all around the city so Jews could look out of the city and see crucified Jews everywhere. When they caught a Jew, they crucified him outside the city.
They built a mound outside the city so that the Jews could not escape, and that’s a very common Roman technique. They would catapult 300-kg boulders over the walls and crush the buildings and the people inside. They built battering rams. They built weapons out of the wood, and what the Jews did was set all that on fire. And so every time the Jews burned that up, they took more trees and built more weapons. And so for months, they were stripping the forest as they built machines and the Jews burned them up because they were made of wood. And inside the city, there were all kinds of problems going on. In fact, there was even an internal revolution among the Jews and they were killing each other. The Romans sealed off the city eventually, and starvation and famine began to work its terrible work.
An unbearable stench began to rise from within the city because of the death. And they threw at least 100,000 bodies—according to Josephus, they threw 100,000 bodies out over the wall just to get rid of the decay and the stink, and so the outer part of Jerusalem was just covered with dead bodies decaying. It’s an unbelievable thing. Finally, the temple was destroyed by fire, and in August of A.D. 70, the Roman soldiers went into the temple location and lifted their own banners in the very holy place and sacrificed to their false Gods.
Caesar then ordered that the whole city of Jerusalem be razed to the ground, and it was completely leveled. All that was left was a small part of the Western Wall. There were, according to Josephus, 1,100,000 dead Jews, 100,000 were taken into prison as prisoners. Out of one city gate, they hauled over 115,000 corpses of Jews—out of one city gate. They obliterated them.
God said, “The cup is full,” that’s it. God’s Spirit does not always strive with man. And so the word of judgment was imminent condemnation and it came, and it came fast. That’s how God feels about sin. That’s how God feels about the rejection of His truth and His Son. That’s not the end of the story.
Lessons from the Final Woes
We have seen the final two woes. Indeed they are terrible woes.
First Lesson: Hypocrisy (Woe 7)
Woe 7: For deceiving people by outwardly appearing righteous.
Hypocrisy. Let us look at our own heart. Are we hypocrites in heart?
Learn from this passage our Lord’s knowledge of and attitude towards religious hypocrisy. Where multitudes were duped, our Lord was not. “You outwardly appear, but inwardly you are.” There is a discrepancy of what you are and what you appear.
“Are you for real?” Outwardly you appear, when I look at you now, you appear hungry for the Word, interested in listening to His preaching, His truth. You appear. But my question is, what are you? Are you what you appear? Jesus said to the church in Sardis, “You have a name to be alive, but inside you are dead.”
Jesus is in the midst of His church with eyes of flame of fire. He knows what I am, what you are. He knows us through and through. All together, are we real? We know all too well, don’t we, what different people we are inside than we are outside; what a world we live in in our hearts; what an inner self, our true self, we hide from others. Full of nauseating things: hypocrisy and lawlessness, lust, covetousness, murderous anger.
That double man who lives—it is a spiritual disease, and God hates it. That can be cured only by Jesus. When we come broken-hearted to Him, realizing what hypocrites we are, “Lord, search me and know me, there is so much hypocrisy in me.” With a true sense of our guilt of hypocrisy, in a posture of faith and trust in Him, “Lord, heal me from this disease.” How much He warns, “You shall not use leaven in the Old Testament; all your offerings to Me should be without leaven.”
He teaches that the leaven that can spread unknowingly is the leaven of the Pharisees, and repeatedly warns, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees,” which is hypocrisy. How much we should watch our hearts and prepare our hearts so our worship and prayer is not mixed with this leaven. We appear outside, but inside something else. Oh, may we take this warning, see how much Christ hates it.
Are we pursuing heart holiness? I didn’t say perfect, but reality, not advanced. Are you for real?
Oh, may we be very concerned with heart purity. Guard our heart with all diligence. My heart should be concerned for heart purity, when horrible things go on there. Full of nauseating things, like a graveyard: hypocrisy and lawlessness, lust, covetousness, murderous anger. When we have something going on in our heart, you are pained and ashamed as if the whole church with the pastor saw you doing that, and you feel ashamed and plead with Him. You know He looks at them as block letters.
Are we pursuing heart holiness? I didn’t say perfect, but reality, not advanced. Are you for real? If you are not, you may fool elders, brothers, and sisters, but listen to the words of Jesus, “You shall receive greater condemnation.” If you fooled us all, what good have you done on that Day? Before all men and all angels, He removes your mask and shows who you are, says, “Depart from Me, you cursed, woe to you.”
What is the point of fooling all of us? Jesus Christ knows what you are. If you are not real, go to Him, until He makes you real. He sees every detail of the soul. What does He see in you now? Any of us are capable of masquerading as Christians quite successfully before others, but none can do so before Jesus Christ.
Second Lesson: Cumulative Guilt and God’s Judgment (Woe 8)
Woe 8: For the terrible guilt of rejecting full revelation.
This lesson teaches that there is a measure of sin to be filled up, before utter ruin comes upon persons and families, churches, and nations. God allows every man to a measure. God will bear long, but the time will come when He can no longer forbear. We read, “for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete,” (Genesis 15:16) that was to be filled before God destroys them. Today if you are sitting here, and not obeying His truth, and thinking God is not doing anything to you, Romans 2 says you are doing a wrong calculation. This is the riches of His forbearance and longsuffering. “Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance? But in accordance with your hardness and your impenitent heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.”
Secondly, children fill up the measure of their fathers’ sins when they are gone, if they persist in the same or the like. That national guilt which brings national ruin is made up of the sin of many in several ages, and in the successions of societies there is a score going on; for God justly visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children that tread in the steps of it. If you continue to sin against God, He will bring the guilt of all your forefathers who rejected the Gospel upon you—both physical father and spiritual forefathers of hypocrites upon you—filling the cup of your fathers.
Thirdly, persecuting Christ, and His people and ministers, is a sin that fills the measure of a nation’s guilt sooner than any other. This was it that brought wrath without remedy upon the fathers (2 Chronicles 36:16), and wrath to the utmost upon the children too (1 Thessalonians 2:16). This was that fourth transgression, of which, when added to the other three, the Lord would not turn away the punishment (Amos 1:3; 1:6; 1:9; 1:11; 1:13).
Fourthly, it is just with God to give those up to their own heart’s lusts, who obstinately persist in the gratification of them. Who reject truth. Those who will run headlong to ruin, let the reins be laid on their neck, and it is the saddest condition a man can be in on this side hell.
Listen friends, that’s God talking in the person of Jesus Christ. God is a God of judgment and vengeance, and we must not forget that. This teaches us sometimes, the purpose of sending the preachers is not for grace, it’s for judgment. And may I suggest this to you: when you hear the message of Jesus Christ and you hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ, it is a message unto salvation or it is a message unto judgment. And the more you hear it, the more it comes to you as a message of grace; and the more you reject it, the more it piles upon you the guilt of judgment. For the more you have, the more you’re responsible for. To whom much is given, much is required.
Better off only to have heard once than to have heard a multiplicity of times and continue to reject, you just pile on greater guilt. And ultimately, that’s what the Lord is saying here.
Not just here. Look at 2 Corinthians chapter 2, verse 14. In 2 Corinthians 2:14, he says, “Thanks be unto God.” And this is a most unusual passage: “Thanks be unto God who always causes us to triumph in Christ and makes manifest the smell of His knowledge by us in every place.” Now I want you to listen to this. Paul says, “I’m thankful that no matter what I do, no matter where I preach, no matter what the response is, we triumph.” Every time a preacher preaches the Gospel, he’s victorious. Every time the Word goes forth, it accomplishes the purpose to which it was sent.
And listen to me, the purpose is not always salvation. The purpose sometimes is compounded guilt. Do you understand that? The purpose sometimes is to bring the grace of salvation to the heart, and God is glorified through His grace. The purpose other times is to compound guilt, to bring judgment, and God is equally glorified through His judgment because God is as much a God of judgment as He is a God of grace. I don’t know that we have understood that properly.
And so verse 15 says, “For”—here’s why we can thank God that we always triumph—“For we are unto God a sweet aroma of Christ in them that are saved, and in them that perish.”
Why? You say, “You mean it’s a sweet aroma in God’s presence when people perish? It’s a sweet smell to God when people perish?” It’s hard for us to understand that. But God is as much revealed in His glory in the devastation of judgment as He is in the expression of grace and salvation.
God is not lopsided. He’s not all love and grace and kindness and mercy. He’s a God of holiness and a God of justice and a God of judgment and a God of wrath and a God of vengeance against evil. And if men choose that, He will be glorified in their condemnation as much as He is glorified in the conversion of those who believe. God will be glorified either way. And so it is a sweet aroma to them that are saved and them that perish. To the ones who are saved, it is an aroma, says verse 16, “of life unto life.” To the ones who perish, it is an aroma “of death unto death.” What a statement!
So, Paul says we don’t corrupt the Word of God in verse 17. We don’t alter the message. We give it as straight as it can be given, and we know that we triumph every time we give it because God is glorified. When some believe, He’s glorified in His great grace. When some reject, He’s glorified in His holy judgment against their rejection and their sin. Do you see the point? And God has to be glorified as much in this end as He is in that end, else He is not revealing Himself fully as God.
You see, even in Isaiah’s time, God sends him for this purpose.
Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.” And He said, “Go, and tell this people: ‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand; Keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’ “Make the heart of this people dull, And their ears heavy, And shut their eyes; Lest they see with their eyes, And hear with their ears, And understand with their heart, And return and be healed.”
In Revelation 22:11, at the conclusion of all that God could possibly say, at the last chapter in the Bible, the message is all given. This is the last word: “He that is unjust, let him be unjust still. He that is filthy, let him be filthy still. He that is righteous, let him be righteous still. He that is holy, let him be holy still.” In other words, as it is at the end, so it’ll be forever. And if you are unjust and filthy, then let it be so forever. God will be glorified even in that act of judgment against your ungodliness. If you are righteous and godly, let it be that forever. God will be glorified through that as well.
We all know from Romans 9 that we are to ask Him: if God wants to display His wrath and His power against sin on vessels of wrath fitted for destruction, then so what? Doesn’t He have a right to do that? He’s God. And on the other hand, He will show the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy as well. God has to be seen in His wholeness, and God is as much glorified in His wrath against ungodliness as He is in His grace towards those who believe.
Oh, terrible as judgment, He says, “I will send more prophets, wise men, and more books will be given to you, so you may reject all that light and increase your condemnation.” Is Christ doing something like that to you? You keep hearing more and more, yet your heart is not changed. Why does He continue to give us more truth? So that truth can increase our guilt and our punishment? Oh, how terrible a thought!
Oh, may we take this warning to heart and ensure we hear His Word every time with diligence, prayer, preparedness of heart, in faith, accept, and ensure the Word changes us. And never be people hearing, hearing, hearing and accumulating guilt, and filling the cup.
May this cause us to shudder in repentance.
Grace Reformed Baptist Church, Bangalore 