Introduction To Subang Jaya Church's Sunday Sermon Series, 1st Quarter 2026
JESUS' SERMON ON WOES UPON RELIGIOUS HYPOCRITES (Matthew 23:1-39)
by Yeow Chin Kiong
In Matthew's gospel account, the public preaching of Jesus Christ to His disciples and the multitudes who often gathered around Him are book-ended by 2 sermons: Jesus' sermon on the mount (Matthew 5:1 to 7:28) and His sermon on woes upon the religious hypocrites of His day (Matthew 23:1-39). In between these two rather lengthy records of sermon content, Matthew records many of the Lord's spiritual and moral lessons delivered to limited numbers of followers in different situations in the form of shorter parables and pointed statements. In the gospels according to Luke and John, we have other lengthy discourses by Jesus but only to His disciples, such as His final message just prior to His arrest (recorded in John 14:1 to 17:26).
In Matthew 23 the "woes" declared by our Lord were directed at the Jewish scribes and those who belonged to the Jewish sect of the Pharisees whom He repeatedly called, "hypocrites" (among other harsh names!).
However, these scoldings apply indirectly to all of His followers of any age who were doubleminded about the conduct and behavior expected of them. The scribes and Pharisees were,- in Jesus' time,- the custodians and teachers of God's revelation, especially of the Divinely-inspired Law of Moses, but their personal and corporate conduct did not reflect the moral and religious doctrine entrusted to them to preserve God's revelation in written form (if they are scribes of scripture) or to spread that revelation by teaching it (if they were Pharisees). Aptly, the woes would apply also to anyone who believed and taught one thing but lived a life contrary to his beliefs and teachings, i.e. were hypocrites consciously or unconsciously.
Indeed, if Jesus's sermon on the mount is obviously a positive declaration of how His followers are expected to live their lives to bring glory to their Creator (Matthew 5: 13-16) and encouraged right and good conduct.by God's standards, His sermon on woes to the other crowd was a necessary compliment to such positive, guiding words. The declaration of woes was an open rebuke of those whose conduct did not promote God's will among men but brought disrepute upon those who claimed to live by it. In the Christian age, to know what is good (as by being aware of revealed truth) and not DO THAT GOOD is sin (James 4:17).
Matthew 23 was recorded as a prelude to our Lord's equally-biting prophetic teaching on the fall of Jerusalem (Matthew 24:1-35) and the passing away of the dispensation of the Law of Moses. Clearly, there was nothing wrong with the Divinely-inspired Law of Moses which the Jewish scribes and Pharisees taught as they were supposed to. However, sinners,- and that includes all of us today,- could not, and cannot, obey the requirements of that law perfectly, needing God's forgiveness for violating it at times (Romans 7:7-25). That forgiveness from the eternally-dire consequences of sin is what our Saviour brought to all humankind (and not only Jewish scribes and Pharisees) by His sacrifice on the cross. Our own times and occasions of religious hypocrisy are similarly censured and rebuked today indirectly by Matthew 23. In this sense, Matthew 23 contains just the right rebuke and reprove to those living under God's new covenant, warning them to be careful to obey the new commandments of Jesus' sermon on the mount and His other teachings.