Can Law-Keeping Be a Gate Into the Kingdom of Heaven?

“The Door to Heaven”

(Matthew 23:13-15, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, May 4, 2008)

Matthew 23:13-15 ¹³ "But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. ¹⁵ Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

Introduction – The Missionary and the Message

There is an inescapable connection between a missionary and His message. By “missionary” I am not referring only to those who go to a foreign land. Anyone who brings a message, a new philosophy, or a new way of life to those who do not yet share that perspective is a missionary, even if he lives and dies in the same town without ever leaving its borders. For the message of such a missionary to have any credibility with others there must be some obvious agreement between the words that a man speaks and the life that he lives.

I was struck last year during a visit to an economically-challenged country to see run-down shack-like buildings by the side of the road with old rusty signs advertising those places as “miracle centers.” It seemed to lack credibility. A health and wealth preacher who does not have enough to feed his family does not serve as a very convincing advertisement for the miracles he claims to bring. That example may seem slightly humorous. It is not as funny to think about the fact that a preacher of righteousness and joy through Christ could reasonably be said to lack credibility if he is habitually miserable and eminent in sinfulness. What is the message that our lives speak to others who know us? We are missionaries of a kind to anyone who wants to inquire. Do our lives speak the same message as our words? We believe the Bible, and we are willing to tell others about it. What is the message of the Bible, and what is the message of our lives? Is there anyone who has a message that fits refreshingly well with his life?

Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! (13, 15)

The teachers of the Law (scribes) and the larger group with which they tended to be associated (the Pharisees) had a message that they eagerly taught to others. Their message was one of law-keeping, but their lives were lives of law-breaking. For this reason they were called hypocrites, and a “woe” was pronounced upon them, which is an ancient way of saying that such a person or group should expect some very serious trouble from Almighty God. The concept of a hypocrite is something that comes to us from the world of Greek drama. A hypocrite was someone who was acting or playing a part. A great actor does not always have to play the same type of part. He has learned to put on the mask for the role that he is playing, and to change his voice and mannerisms to match each role in an excellent way. By the way, it is this studied pretense that makes drama a very inappropriate medium of communication for someone who brings people a message from God. We don’t need actors to bring us a gospel message. We need people who are so earnest about what they are saying that they are willing to die for it. The trouble is that some preachers and teachers who claim to represent God are actually actors, even though they may not be aware that they are playing a part. This was the problem with the scribes and Pharisees. They did not consciously put on skits when they sat in Moses’ seat, but their preaching and teaching was an act.

You do not enter the kingdom of heaven yourselves (13)

The Pharisees fancied themselves as gatekeepers for God, but they refused to go into the kingdom of heaven through the only gate that God provided, the Lord Jesus Christ. Even though many Pharisees would eventually embrace the truth of Jesus the Messiah, they almost all rejected Him during His earthly ministry. They had a different gate to heaven that they were using. That gate was the gate of law-keeping.

After the fall of Adam, there was no way for his descendants to enter the kingdom of heaven through law-keeping. We come into this world with a massive demerit in the failure of Adam to abide by the law that God had revealed in the garden. Adam’s sin was representative for all of his posterity. For that reason, even the most law-abiding follower of God, if he is entirely descended from Adam, has zero possibility of entering the kingdom of heaven through law-keeping. There was an additional problem with the particular way that the Pharisees were pursuing law-keeping. They had taken it upon themselves over the centuries to change the law, and to prefer their own traditions of law interpretation to the actual Law of God from the books of Moses. This was a very natural temptation for the school of thought that suggested that there was a way to resurrection blessings through law-keeping. Our problem with law-keeping is certainly not limited to Adam’s sin. Our consciences accuse us of law-breaking all day long, if they are still working at all. Therefore there is a great temptation to reduce the demands of the law in such a way that the law is seen as largely ceremonial and outward. This is what the Pharisees did. That is how they could play the part of the law-keeper so well. They gave their all to teaching that way of life. Nonetheless, it was not such an easy thing to really be a law-keeper. If you think that the way to heaven is through the gate of law-keeping, there is much pressure to hide all of your law-breaking. The goal is to convince others, convince yourselves, and even to convince God of your great obedience. You may be able to fool others, and you probably can fool yourself, but it turns out to be much harder to fool God.

When God sent His Son to be the only gate to heaven, He was not at all fooled by the Pharisees’ hypocrisy. He knew that they were law-breakers, because he knew why he was going to the cross. If law-keeping could be a gate into the kingdom of heaven, then Jesus’ death on the cross would have been completely unnecessary. In fact Jesus coming to earth as the Son of God would have been completely unnecessary. We did not need Jesus to come and do miracles in order to teach us the Pharisaic way. There were many others who were teaching that system, and many people were listening to them. Jesus came to us as the second Adam, conceived by the Holy Spirit, and without the guilt of Adam’s sin. To that spotless perfection He added no sin of His own over the course of His perfect life. Then He died the death of a sinner as our Substitute before God. Jesus came to be the One Gate to heaven through His life and death. You enter God’s Kingdom through Jesus alone. The Pharisees refused to go through that gate.

You do not allow others to enter the kingdom to heaven (13)

Not only did they refuse to enter the kingdom of heaven through the Jesus gate. As much as they were able, they were trying to stand in front of that gate in such a way that others could not enter either. In John 9 we learn that leaders of the Jews had decided that anyone who would confess Jesus as the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. The Pharisees were the most influential group of leaders in the synagogues. These were places where daily and weekly worship of God happened, but when God the Son came, the Pharisees wanted to remove anyone from the synagogue worship who rightly saw Jesus as the Messiah. They blocked the way into the kingdom.

You travel across sea and land (15)

It was not that the Pharisees were against evangelism. They went everywhere with their particular understanding of the law-keeping gateway to the life of resurrection blessing. They believed in making converts through their version of good news. They just had a profound disagreement with Jesus concerning what the good news really was.

What was the good news that the Pharisees brought wherever they went? “You too can be Jewish. You need to take upon yourself the yoke of the Law as it has been interpreted through our traditions, and then you will be good like we are.” “We have kept the law from our youth. Be like us and keep the law the way that we do. Do this and you will live.” The first problem is that they were not truly doers of the Law. They were very selective in their focus upon the outward and ceremonial, and they added to the law. They accused Jesus of being a law-breaker because he healed on the Sabbath. Jesus accused them of being law-breakers because they robbed widows, committed adultery, and flattered themselves as obedient because they knew the Pharisaic way. You be the judge. Who was the real law-keeper? Was it Jesus who opened the eyes of a blind man on the Sabbath, or was it the religious leaders who plotted to kill Jesus because He made the blind see on the wrong day of the week and raised Lazarus from the dead?

Children of hell and the Door to Heaven (15)

The account of the resurrection of Lazarus from the dead is amazing. Of course the miracle was amazing, but I am talking about the way that people reacted to the miracle. When Jesus called Lazarus out of the tomb, some people believed. After all, he had been dead for four days. But others went straight to the religious leaders. It was then that a key official said that it was expedient that one man should die so that the nation could live. They claimed to have concern about what the Romans would do if someone was doing things like raising the dead, but had they come to grips with the simple fact that Jesus had given life to a man who had been dead in a grave for four days? Where is the amazement? There is none. There is only self-righteous anger leading to murder.

It is very important what religious door you walk through. The Pharisee came with a missionary message and so did Jesus. Look at the message and look at the life. The Pharisee and Jesus cannot both be right. The first is a hypocrite. He makes a big show of his law-keeping and he turns his converts into self-righteous people who are heaping more judgment upon their souls with their arrogance and sin. He is a religious actor. Then there is Jesus. Who can rightly accuse Him of sin? Look at what He came to do, and tell me if it isn’t the very highest definition of love. Look at the man who had the power to give sight to the blind, and then look at the people that only hated the blind man who had been healed. Look at the man who called forth His friend Lazarus from the grave, and then look back at the men who wanted to kill both Jesus and Lazarus as a result of what had happened. Look at the group that only wanted to do whatever was necessary to get rid of the man who has resurrection power in His voice. Who is the Law-Keeper? Who is the Gate to heaven? Who is the Messiah? Behold the man! Behold the God-Man! Jesus.

Questions for meditation and discussion:

1. What is a hypocrite? Why is this word associated with the scribes and the Pharisees?

2. How did the scribes and Pharisees obstruct the entrance of people into the kingdom of heaven?

3. What motivated Pharisees in their missionary zeal?

4. What was it about Pharisaic teaching and behavior that made them and their converts fit for hell?