In Matthew 23:27-39, we finished the 7 pronouncements of woe by Jesus upon the scribes and Pharisees.
The 6th woe was pronounced against them for being like whitewashed tombs: attractive on the outside, but inwardly filled with dead people’s bones and all uncleanness: full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. In the final and 7th woe, Jesus indicted these men for building/decorating the tombs of the prophets and righteous while being filled with the same evil intentions of their forefathers who murdered God’s messengers to Israel.
These men claimed they wouldn’t have killed the prophets, but Jesus declared that they witnessed against themselves: in their persecution/murder of Jesus’ emissaries and of Jesus Himself, these men were heaping divine judgment upon themselves. They stood in guilt of the shed blood of Abel to Zechariah (cover to cover of the OT Scriptures). This generation that was so privileged with the entire Hebrew OT and with direct access to Jesus’ public ministry were ultimately serpents, sons of the serpent in their hatred for Jesus as Messiah.
Jesus then pronounced a great lament over Jerusalem: led by these scribes and Pharisees, the people of Jerusalem and Israel as a whole were unwilling to receive and acknowledge Jesus as their King – how willing He was in patient kindness, desiring their repentance and for them to fly to the comfort of His arms of salvation/protection, but they were monstrously obstinate! Accordingly, God would depart their house, especially with respect to the temple: no longer His house, He left to them “their” house desolate, prepared for wrath and destruction.
Once Jesus left the temple (as He would emphatically do in 24:1), their abandonment by God would be fully symbolized, and many of these rebellious, ungodly leaders would not see Jesus again until He consummates the kingdom, dispensing both joy to the righteous and holy wrath against such who had flagrantly rebelled against God in their hatred.
Listen to last week’s teaching on Matthew 23:27-39 below.
https://www.sermonaudio.com/solo/harvestfellowship/sermons/3923213296869/
