Matthew 23
BSASBIn the temple courts, just before His arrest, Jesus warns the crowds and His disciples about religious show without a changed heart. He then speaks seven woes over the scribes and Pharisees. The chapter ends with His grief over Jerusalem, which He longed to shelter but which refused Him.
Matthew 23:1-2
Jesus speaks to the crowds and His disciples, not only to the leaders. The scribes and Pharisees teach the law of Moses, so their position carries real authority. Jesus does not deny that office. He is about to expose how they use it.
BSA: seat (“position of authority”): The seat stands for the teaching office handed down from Moses, an authority that is real even when those who hold it fail.
Greek: καθέδρας (kathedras, G2515) — “seat, chair.” This is the word behind our English ‘cathedral’ and ‘chair’ of a professor. It pictures a place from which someone formally teaches.
See also: Nehemiah 8:4-8.
Matthew 23:3
Where they faithfully read and teach God’s law, the people should heed it. But their own lives are no pattern to copy. Jesus shows that truth stays true even when the teacher fails, and that teaching which is not lived is hollow.
BSA: practice (“live out”): The failing is not in knowing the law but in living it out, so that words and life do not match.
See also: James 1:22.
Matthew 23:4
They pile up rules and demands until ordinary people stagger under them, yet they will not help carry the load. Religion without love becomes a weight on others. Jesus offers the opposite, a yoke that is easy and a burden that is light.
BSA: burdensome (“oppressive tasks”): The demands crush people instead of helping them walk with God.
See also: Matthew 11:28-30.
Matthew 23:5
Their aim is to be seen. Phylacteries were small boxes holding Scripture, worn on the forehead and arm, and tassels were worn on garments, both following God’s commands. They made them larger to look more devout. Good things done for show lose their worth.
BSA: phylacteries (“small boxes containing scripture texts”): A sign meant to remind the wearer of God’s word had become a badge to impress others.
Greek: φυλακτήρια (phylaktēria, G5440) — “safeguards, protective charms.” The word comes from ‘guard.’ The boxes were meant to guard God’s word in the mind, but they were being displayed for show.
See also: Deuteronomy 6:8; Numbers 15:38-39.
Matthew 23:6-7
Jesus names the hunger for honor: the best seats at dinners and in the synagogue, respectful greetings in the marketplace, and the title ‘Rabbi.’ These are small things, but they show where the heart looks for its reward, in human praise rather than God’s.
BSA: love (“have a strong affection for”): Their desire for status is not a slip but a deep affection that shapes their choices.
See also: Luke 14:7-11.
Matthew 23:8
Among His followers no one should rise above the rest as a master. There is one true Teacher, and everyone else is a brother or sister. Teaching has a place, but nobody holds rank over fellow believers.
BSA: brothers (“equal”): Jesus’ followers stand level with one another before their one Teacher.
Matthew 23:9
Jesus is not forbidding us to call our human dads ‘father.’ He is warning against giving any person the place that belongs to God alone, as the final authority and source of life. We have one Father in heaven.
BSA: Father (“the ultimate authority”): Every human guide stands under God, whose authority over His children is final.
See also: Matthew 6:9.
Matthew 23:10
A second title is set aside. ‘Instructor’ means a leader who guides others along the way. Our final guide is Christ Himself, the promised Messiah. Every human teacher serves Him and does not replace Him.
Greek: καθηγηταί (kathēgētai, G2519) — “guides, leaders, masters.” The word pictures one who goes ahead and leads the way. Jesus says only He may hold that place over His people.
Matthew 23:11-12
Jesus turns greatness upside down. In His kingdom the great one is the one who serves. Pride sets a person up for a fall, and humility is met with God’s lifting. He often repeated this saying.
BSA: servant (“one who attends to others”): True greatness is measured by how much we give to others, not by our rank. humbles (“lowers”): Humility is a willing lowering of oneself that God answers with honor in His time.
See also: Luke 14:11; Philippians 2:5-9.
Matthew 23:13
Now come seven ‘woes,’ cries of grief and warning. The first charges that these leaders block the door of God’s kingdom, by their own unbelief and by turning others away. Some manuscripts add a verse 14, which the BSB leaves out.
BSA: hypocrites (“pretending to be something you are not”): They played a part that hid what they really were. Woe (“a cry of sorrow”): It is more a sorrowful lament than a cold curse, with grief behind it.
Greek: ὑποκριταί (hypokritai, G5273) — “actors, play-actors.” The word was used of stage actors who spoke from behind a mask. Jesus calls them people who play a religious part in front of an audience.
See also: Luke 11:52.
Matthew 23:15
They work hard to win converts, crossing land and sea. But they bring people into their own empty, show-based religion, and the result is worse than before. Zeal is not enough if it is aimed at the wrong thing.
BSA: hell (“Gehenna”): Gehenna was named for a valley outside Jerusalem and became a picture of final judgment.
Greek: γεέννης (geennēs, G1067) — “Gehenna, the place of judgment.” The word comes from the Valley of Hinnom near Jerusalem. Jesus uses it as the name for God’s final judgment.
Matthew 23:16-17
They had invented a ranking of oaths. To swear by the temple meant nothing, but to swear by its gold bound you. Jesus calls this blind. The temple is what makes the gold holy, so it is the greater.
BSA: blind (“lacking insight”): They claimed to guide others but could not see what is really important.
Matthew 23:18-20
The same error is made with the altar and the offering on it. The altar is what makes the gift holy. Jesus’ conclusion is that an oath by the altar reaches everything connected to it. You cannot treat holy things lightly and then hide behind a loophole.
See also: Matthew 5:33-37.
Matthew 23:21-22
Every such oath finally touches God. The temple is where He dwells, and heaven is His throne. There are no loopholes, because God stands behind everything sacred. Whatever we swear, we speak in His presence.
BSA: dwells (“makes His home”): The temple matters because God has made it His home, not because of its gold or stone.
See also: Isaiah 66:1.
Matthew 23:23
They carefully tithed even small garden herbs. Jesus does not condemn that, since He says they should not neglect it. But they missed what God cares about most, which is justice, mercy and faithfulness. Details matter, but they must not push out the heart of the law.
BSA: weightier (“more important”): God’s commands differ in weight, and the heavy ones are about how we treat people.
See also: Micah 6:8; Hosea 6:6.
Matthew 23:24
This is a sharp, even funny picture. A careful person strains a drink to avoid swallowing a gnat, an unclean insect, yet swallows a whole camel, also unclean. They were precise about little things and careless about great ones.
Greek: διυλίζοντες (diylizontes, G1368) — “filtering through, straining out.” The word means to pass a drink through a cloth to catch what should not be swallowed. It shows how much care they spent on the tiny things.
Matthew 23:25-26
They scrubbed the outside of the cup and dish, while the inside was filled with what was taken by greed and indulgence. Jesus calls them to start with the inside. A clean heart makes the outer life clean too.
BSA: greed (“excessive desire”): Behind a respectable surface lay a grasping appetite for more. inside (“from the heart”): Jesus is speaking about the heart as well as the inside of the cup.
See also: Mark 7:20-23.
Matthew 23:27-28
Tombs were whitewashed so that people would not touch them by accident and become unclean. They looked clean, yet they held death. In the same way, the leaders looked righteous while their hearts were full of pretense and lawlessness.
BSA: whitewashed (“covered up”): A coat of white paint covered the death within without changing it.
Greek: κεκονιαμένοις (kekoniamenois, G2867) — “plastered with lime, whitened.” The word describes a coating of lime applied to a surface. Jesus says their goodness was only a coating.
Matthew 23:29-30
They honored dead prophets with fine tombs and said they would never have harmed them. Yet respect for the dead is easy. The real question is how people treat the living messengers of God who speak to them now.
See also: Luke 11:47-48.
Matthew 23:31-32
By talking about ‘our fathers’ who killed the prophets, they admit their family line. Jesus says they carry the same spirit. He tells them to go ahead and finish what their fathers began, which is bitter irony that exposes where their hostility toward Him is leading.
BSA: measure (“a standard or limit”): Sin has a limit of fullness, and Jesus says they are about to fill it up.
Matthew 23:33
Jesus’ strongest words in the chapter. Snakes and vipers hide and strike. He calls them what their poison shows them to be, and then asks a real question: how will they escape judgment? The question still invites repentance.
BSA: brood (“generation of poisonous snakes”): They are the offspring of a long line of the same deadly kind.
Greek: γεννήματα ἐχιδνῶν (gennēmata echidnōn, G1081) — “offspring of vipers.” John the Baptist used the same phrase. It says that their nature is passed down like a family trait.
See also: Matthew 3:7.
Matthew 23:34
God keeps sending messengers, and now Jesus Himself sends prophets, wise men and teachers. Some will be killed, some beaten, some hunted from town to town. This foretells what happened to His apostles and followers in the book of Acts.
BSA: sending (“dispatching on a mission”): These messengers go out with Christ’s own commission and authority.
See also: Acts 7:51-52.
Matthew 23:35
The guilt of all the righteous blood shed will fall on them. Abel’s death opens the story in Genesis, and Zechariah’s death is told in 2 Chronicles. Jesus covers the whole sweep of Scripture. The leaders who reject Him add to a long history of rejecting God’s messengers.
See also: Genesis 4:8; 2 Chronicles 24:20-21.
Matthew 23:36
Jesus speaks with full certainty that the consequences will arrive within that generation. Many Christians see this fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. His warning is solemn, but it is spoken with sorrow.
BSA: generation (“group of people living at the same time”): The judgment is meant for the people alive and listening to Him.
Matthew 23:37
After all the woes, the heart of Jesus is seen. He weeps over Jerusalem like a mother hen who wants to shelter her chicks. He had longed, again and again, to protect them. Their refusal was a choice, not His lack of love.
BSA: gather (“a place of protection, safety”): The wings of a hen are a picture of refuge from danger, which Jesus offered to His people. unwilling (“refused”): The tragedy is that His offer was turned down, not that it was withheld.
Greek: ἐπισυναγαγεῖν (episynagagein, G1996) — “to gather together.” The word has a pulling-in sense, like a hen drawing her chicks close. It shows the tenderness of His call.
See also: Psalm 91:4; Luke 13:34.
Matthew 23:38
Because they would not be gathered, the temple, here called ‘your house,’ is left to them empty. God’s presence is withdrawing. Without Him, the grandest house is only a shell.
BSA: desolate (“deserted”): The temple will be emptied of what made it holy, the presence of God.
Greek: ἔρημος (erēmos, G2048) — “deserted, empty, wilderness.” The word is used of a lonely, abandoned place, and so of a home left without its owner.
Matthew 23:39
Jesus quotes Psalm 118. He will not be seen again in this way until people welcome Him with these words. It ends the chapter with hope. A day will come when He is received as the One who comes in the Lord’s name.
BSA: name (“authority”): To come in the Lord’s name is to come with His authority and as His representative.
See also: Psalm 118:26; Matthew 21:9.