Finding Life in a World of Death

“I Am the Resurrection”

(Matthew 23:25-28, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, May 25, 2008)

Matthew 23:25-28 ²⁵ "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. ²⁶ You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean. ²⁷ "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness. ²⁸ So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

Introduction – Hypocrites

No one wants to be thought of as a hypocrite. We don’t like people who have lots of pretense in one direction when their lives seem to move entirely in another. The outward sweetness that some people show seems too much for us. Of course, it is possible to be too frank. We ought to be reasonably civil. In our household growing up we were taught that if you could not honestly say something nice about someone, then you should say nothing. This doesn’t always turn out to be the right thing to do, but then it is not necessarily completely virtuous to immediately say exactly what comes into your mind on every topic. Even when we have something critical to say to a friend, something true and important, we should prayerfully consider the right time and the place to make the comment.

In any case, we put a high value on being “real” with people, and we don’t have much appreciation for those who are syrupy sweet, who want to seem nice to everyone, especially when we suspect that inside they are full of criticism. This is one kind of hypocrite, but it is not the Pharisee kind of hypocrite. The Pharisees were not playing over-nice. They were playing the game of over-holy or over-righteous. That is even less appealing than over-nice. God is not at all impressed with this game, and He is never fooled by our act. The Pharisees were big at over-holy. No one can actually be too holy. The game is a pretend game. You play it by making a show of being outwardly holy. Being outwardly holy does not turn out to be a pathway to true increases in real holiness.

Outside the cup (25)

Jesus uses two illustrations to make His point here. The first has to do with the custom of the ceremonial cleansing of dishes, and the second with a practice for avoiding uncleanness through exposure to a grave. We read more about clean cups in Mark 7:4. In addition to special ceremonial hand-washing traditions, the Pharisees had many traditions, including special techniques for the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches.

We have no way of knowing for certain exactly what the accepted practice of ceremonial cleansing was in the day of Christ. It must have involved some kind of cleansing of what Jesus calls the “outside” of the cup. While it is possible that He is making a distinction between the external surface of the cup versus the internal surface that touches the food, it is more likely that He is contrasting the whole cup or plate versus the contents of the cup. Whatever the exact procedure was, it is beyond dispute that the Pharisees had a special procedure for the ceremonial cleansing of cups and plates, and that this was a matter of common knowledge among the disciples of the Pharisees, since it would have been a very frequent procedure, particularly when bringing in new pottery from the outside world. The point is that it was an external ceremonial regulation, and to not abide by this kind of rule would have been viewed as a violation of divinely-ordained traditions that had come from generations of rabbinic reflection. After many years of rabbis thinking about these matters, the Pharisees apparently had quite a lot to teach people about how you ought to clean cups and dishes before you used them.

Inside the cup (25)

Jesus goes on to say that the real problem is what is in the cup. The cup is full of greed and self-indulgence. The word translated “greed” here can mean “robbery,” and the word translated “self-indulgence” also means “a lack of self-control.” It does not make a difference what ceremony you used to make the cup clean if you use it to drink down an unhealthy mix of robbery and gluttony.

What could it mean that Jesus is talking about things like greed, robbery, self-indulgence, and gluttony being inside a cup? It could be that He is talking about how the Pharisees came to have their food and drink, and how their self-focused lives were driven by sinful desires. Which is the greatest danger, that God would be offended because you did not adequately cleanse the outside of a cup that may have once been touched by a gentile, or that God would be offended by the way that you covet what others have and then find immoral ways to get what is not yours?

Cleaning the cup (26)

Jesus is using this illustration of a well-known custom that people would have seen many times if they lived around the Pharisees. He is referring to this custom to make a point about the Pharisees themselves. He is not fundamentally criticizing their ceremonial practices so much as He is criticizing them. They were like the cup; cleaned so well according to their traditions, but the stuff on the inside was filthy and they did not seem to care. They just gulped down all that sin as if it were no problem at all, as long as the vessels were cleansed the right way.

This kind of blindness is a scary concept. It seems obvious that they needed to be cleansed from the inside, from the depths of their hearts, but like any of us who make a big point of external rules, those things push away from our minds deeper considerations that should be our first priority when we get serious about our sin. Our biggest problem is not the external things. It’s our greed, our robbery, our self-centeredness, and our gluttony. It’s about why we get our food and how we get our food, and not about our dishes or our cups. This is an especially serious problem if we use our excellence in externals to try to convince ourselves and our fellow Pharisees that we do not have any problem on the inside. If we have no problem on the inside, then Jesus died in vain. But we do have a problem on the inside, and Christ is well aware of it. We need a solution. How can I be clean inside and out? Through the holiness of Christ and His death on the cross; this is the only solution for us.

Whitewashed tombs and the resurrection (27-28)

The last two verses are similar. We start again with a well-known Pharisaic practice, and Jesus uses that, again, not so much to criticize the ceremonial practice as to illustrate the deeper problem. There was apparently a custom of clearly identifying tombs by whitewashing them so that the pilgrims who came into Jerusalem would not inadvertently become ceremonially unclean. If they were unclean then they could not celebrate the Passover.

At the very moment that Jesus was using this illustration the city was swelling with people from all over who had come to celebrate the Passover. The graves were whitewashed like a warning sign to people, but Jesus was saying that they were also a powerful illustration of the Pharisees. Like those whitewashed graves the Pharisees had two problems. First, they were ugly on the inside. They were unclean in ways that were bigger than anyone could see. They had untamed hearts. It is not right to steal things from widows. It is not right to proudly demand the positions of honor everywhere. It is not right to be filled with adulterous impulses and actions. It is not right to scheme together in order to murder the Son of God. The Pharisees were examples of lawlessness. This ugly inside was compounded by their second problem. They had a showy, fake, and self-righteous outside. They were like those tombs in a way. They sounded a trumpet about their ceremonial obedience and their charity. They wanted everyone around them to know that they were spotless according to the Law. They were in fact lawless hypocrites.

These were the facts about the Pharisees. The facts about Christ were entirely different. First, He was utterly beautiful on the inside. His soul was unstained by Adam’s sin, and unstained by any evil thought, word, or action of His own. Everything connected with his holiness was perfectly beautiful. Second, regarding the way He presented Himself to others, he was entirely humble, true, and merciful on the outside. He was beautiful and real. This is the greatest kind of beauty. It is a natural soul beauty that is not produced by some fake exterior. This is our Savior, and this is the One who then went to the cross and died for our Pharisaic sins. We have had much sin on the inside and much pretense on the outside, and Jesus died for us.

I want to leave you with some thoughts concerning His resurrection. The actual description of Jesus coming from death to life is something that we have no record of. We have eyewitness accounts of Him dying, and of his being dead and buried in a tomb. We have eyewitness accounts of Him being alive again on the first day of the week. What we don’t have is any witness of the moment of his going from being a dead body in a tomb wrapped in grave clothes to then being alive in a resurrection body. It is as if that experience is covered over with a shroud of some mystery and decency. Like His other miracles, we know that it had to have happened, but we don’t know exactly how it happened.

It is something to consider. A lifeless body being given all the signs of life, not just of any kind of life, but a new life, an immortal resurrection body life… What a joy to contemplate! We do have descriptions of this happening to us. Ezekiel has a vision of a valley of very old dry bones. The bones become reconnected. The muscles and tissues are restored and the spirit is returned to the bodies. All of this happens by the Word spoken. Whitewashed tombs may be an appropriate symbol of the death that comes from Pharisaic religion. An empty tomb and a new healthy, living, wonderful, eternal, resurrection body is the right symbol of what Jesus brings. Which one do you want? I want the living one. I will give up the showiness of fake holiness now, God help me, if I can have the blessing of a living spirit, some true holiness of life, and the sure promise of participation in the blessing of a resurrection kingdom. Jesus is risen! His doctrine is the teaching and preaching that brings life. Everything else brings death.

Questions for meditation and discussion:

1. Explain the Pharisaic custom and Jesus’ use of the clean/dirty cup imagery in verses 25-26?

2. Compare this with the Pharisaic custom and Jesus’ use of the whitewashed tombs imagery in verse 27?

3. Verse 28 refers to appearing righteous to others. What sort of people would Pharisees want to impress and why?

4. What is lawlessness? Is lawlessness still a relevant concept after Christ has perfectly fulfilled the Law?