07/16/2025
https://timeintheword.org/2025/07/14/to-be-seen-by-others/
Matthew 23:1 Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to His disciples, 2 saying: “The scribes and the Pharisees have seated themselves in the chair of Moses; 3 therefore all that they tell you, do and keep, but do not do according to their deeds; for they say things and do not do them. 4 And they tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger. 5 But they do all their deeds to be noticed by men; for they broaden their phylacteries and lengthen the tassels of their garments. 6 And they love the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, 7 and respectful greetings in the marketplaces, and being called Rabbi by men. 8 But do not be called Rabbi; for One is your Teacher, and you are all brothers. 9 And do not call anyone on earth your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heaven. 10 Do not be called instructors; for One is your Instructor, that is, Christ. 11 But the greatest among you shall be your servant. 12 And whoever exalts himself shall be humbled; and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted.
The religious leaders in Israel have become false teachers by this point and Jesus rebukes them. They have continually, throughout the history of Israel, rejected God’s messengers. They rejected the prophets, they stoned them, they killed them, they sawed them in two (Heb. 11:36-38). And now they have reached a point of no return as Jesus demonstrated in the parable about the vineyard owner who sent his servants and then sent his son, and they killed his son to try to take over the vineyard (Matt. 21:46). We see that now the religious leaders are not only rejecting the prophets, now they are rejecting the Son of God Himself.
In Matthew 22:41-46 Jesus asserted with His last question, the question to end all questions, that He is not just the Son of David, but that He is the Son of God. He was making the point that they have rejected Him. How in the world could those tasked with leading Israel in the worship of God reject God’s own Son? But they did. Then Jesus preached to them a message of condemnation. He exposed their false teaching, their false living, their sinful hypocrisy, and He preached to them that it is time for judgment to fall on their generation.
Here he begins talking not to the Pharisees, but to His disciples and to the multitudes there in the Temple court. Of course, the Pharisees and the scribes are still there, they are listening. After we get through the first twelve verses, when He turns and directly addresses the Pharisees, He gives them seven woes, seven statements of condemnation for their teaching and for the way that they live. He condemns them as false teachers, as ravenous wolves, and as hypocrites.
He starts, though, by warning the crowd that is gathered there. To understand who He’s talking about, when He says, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice.” The Pharisees and the scribes, who are they? We’ve talked about them a little, but who are they?
The Pharisees, at this point in time, there were about 6,000 of them in Israel. These were those who were tasked as religious leaders among the common people to go out and to demonstrate, to teach, and to lead by example what it meant to live a life of righteousness.
The scribes, specifically as a group within the Pharisees, the lawyers, the attorneys, these were those who had been tasked through the ages with writing down and copying the scriptures, taking the scrolls and just taking the word for word and writing so that they could have scrolls within the synagogues, so they could have scrolls for the teaching of the people, the word of God. No one knew the word of God better than the scribes, because their daily life was a life of copying it, word for word, from scroll to scroll. And it was something that couldn’t be done without attention. So they should have known the word better than any others. And that’s what we find out while Jesus condemns them.
This is not a complete, blanket condemnation, because there were a few among the Pharisees who trusted Christ. Nicodemus, for example, who came to Him. Joseph of Arimathea, who came to Him and provided a tomb after Jesus was crucified. These men were part of the Pharisees. So there were some who heard and who knew, and who sought Christ out, and we understand that nobody seeks on their own, it was because of the work that the Spirit was doing to draw Nicodemus to Jesus, and to draw others to Him.
As He does condemn the system (the religious leaders that should have been leading people in the worship of God but rejected the truth), He starts by warning the people. He tells them, “Do as they say, not as they do.” And even that comes with some qualification. Jesus here is not saying whatever they teach, do, because the rest of the chapter is Him denouncing their false teaching. There were things that they were teaching that were erroneous. So when Jesus says here, “Do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice”, we have to understand that this always comes with a Biblical qualification. They must test what is being taught against the Word itself. If what is being taught is the Word of God, do it.
Can false teachers teach the Word of God? Absolutely. By the way, that’s the danger. Some of these false teachers sound really good at first, but then you start to hear things that are coming in, that are being said, that are being added, and you realize they’ve gone off the rails, and they are teaching serious error or heresy. Well, as you hear the Word of God, wherever you hear the Word of God, we should be motivated to obey the Word of God. If we hear it, we should do it.
Jesus warns the multitudes and the disciples not to do what the religious leaders do. (If you ever have to tell somebody, “Do as I say, not as I do”, welcome to the Club of Heretics). Do as they say, not as they do. Why? Because they are hypocrites. They say one thing, but they do another. Jesus is revealing that these men who should know better could be proven to be false teachers, not by what they were teaching, but by their character, by the way they lived, by their outward display of “righteousness,” by their pride, and by the fact that they could teach people the Word of God and then not do it themselves.
Jesus condemns them who by their error are leading people to hell. They are making their followers twice the disciple of hell as they are, because they are not leading by example. They are twisting the Word, not living the Word. That is why the qualifications for elders, for pastors in the church, are not a qualification list of doctrines that they have to believe. It’s a list of character qualities in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. We know that right doctrine rightly believed produces right living. Now the point is that people will say, and actually it’s going to be proved in the text, they say that pastors are super Christians, that they’re a better Christian than anybody else in the church.
We understand the qualifications, and these are qualifications that Christ has to maintain – we can’t maintain on our own. These qualifications are there given to show what the example of hearing and doing the Word of God should look like, which means the character that you see in an elder should be the character of every believer. As they are maturing and growing and being sanctified, there is not a distinction between the clergy and the laity, between those who are super Christians tasked with being professional preachers and teachers and those who just sit in the pew and come and hear and listen.
We are all brothers and sisters in Christ. We are equal at the foot of the cross. What matters here is the character of those who are teaching the Word of God. They should not say one thing and do another. We must realize that false teachers are being judged along with the people who follow them. While some people will go and listen to a false teacher because they are genuinely deceived, most of the people who go and listen to false teachers are there because they want to hear what the false teacher is teaching. And they are heaping condemnation on themselves for having itching ears for unsound doctrine.
Verse 4 says, “They tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger.” They put heavy requirements and rules on people, but then don’t give them any hope or any help. They tell them that they have to be absolutely righteous, but then don’t tell them how to be righteous because they themselves don’t know. They have “the appearance of godliness, but denying its power” (2 Tim. 3:5). There is no power in and of themselves to live like they ought to live.
Matthew Henry said about these Pharisees, “When in the pulpit they preach so well that it’s a pity they should ever come out, but when out of the pulpit they live so ill that it’s a pity that they should ever come in.” They sound good, but they don’t do good.
He says in verse 2, “The scribes and Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat.” Now, this is not a statement of affirmation. To sit in the seat as a teacher was to have authority. Usually, within the synagogue, there was a stone seat up front. It was called the seat of Moses, and that’s where you would sit when you were expounding the law of Moses, expounding the Word of God. And so by sitting in that seat, you are claiming that authority to teach. For Jesus to make this statement is a statement of irony. These men who tell you what to do but don’t do it, they sit on Moses’ seat. They think they have the authority to tell you what the Word of God says, but by their very lives they prove that they are not qualified to be sitting there. They are not qualified to be teaching.
We know teachers by the fruit of their teaching, what is produced in their lives and in the lives of their hearers. When we look at the lives of teachers, we need to look at the fruit that’s being produced, and if the fruit produced is bitterness and anger and harshness and a critical spirit, they might be spending time in the Word, but they are not bearing fruit in the Spirit.
There is a root of sin there, there’s a root of bitterness there, and it is twisting ministry. And it is not just fruit that an individual is bearing, it’s fruit that the listening congregation is bearing. What is the fruit that we as a church are bearing? Is it the fruit of the Spirit? That is the test of the preaching ministry of the church. If the Word is being rightly preached and heard and obeyed, then the pastor and the congregation will be bearing the fruit of the Spirit together.
These men claimed to be teachers. They claimed to belong in the seat of Moses. Jesus says that they are not qualified to be sitting there. They are teaching traditions and not the Word of God. James 3:1-2 warns, “Do not, many of you, become teachers, my brothers, knowing that we will receive a stricter judgment. For we all stumble in many ways. If anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to bridle the entire body as well.” That should scare teachers and preachers. There should not be nearly as many people who want to be teachers, knowing the judgment and the standard that they will be held to if they do it.
These men thought that they were called, but they called themselves. This was their tradition. This was what they wanted. This was all about selfish pursuits. They are condemned back in Matthew 15 for making tradition equal to the word of God. Matthew 15:3, Jesus answered, “And He answered and said to them, “Why do you yourselves transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?” You’ve made the commandment of God of no effect by your tradition, He said. In fact, as Mark records it, he says, “Laying aside the commandment of God, you hold tradition of men.” You’ve put tradition in the place of the commandments of God. You’ve made the Word of God of no effect through your tradition, which you have handed down.
Here are the false teachers. Some of what they teach is true. Most of what they teach is not. But when you look at their lives, and that’s what we will see over the next several paragraphs as we go through Matthew chapter 23, we will see the fruit of false doctrine, and of pride, and of arrogance, and of hypocrisy. Jesus says don’t follow their example. Test what they say. Be like the Bereans. “These were more fair -minded than those in Thessalonica in that they received the word with all readiness and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether those things were so.”
This, by the way, is why we are so grateful for the Reformation and for the fact that you can have a Bible in hand right now, because you can instantly check what is being taught against the Word of God. Imagine a church where not only are you not allowed to have a Bible, but if you question what the priest says, you’re put out of the church, and that means you’re going to hell. We have to be able to question any teacher. Listen, if the Bereans can question the Apostle Paul, you better question your pastor. Hold him to the Word of God. We’ve got to see that the Word is being taught, the Word is being heard, the Word is being understood, applied, and obeyed.
Jesus says, don’t follow their example. Now think about what Paul was able to say. Paul said, “Follow me,” but how did he qualify that? 1 Corinthians 11:1, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” Christ is the standard. Well, who were the Pharisees against? Christ! They didn’t want to believe or hear anything that came out of His mouth. They certainly didn’t like the fact that He had just claimed to be the Son of David, meaning the Messiah. That offended their whole system, their whole scheme. They couldn’t stand and do and teach like they used to. They were being exposed.
