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We’re looking over the shoulder of Jesus while he was teaching in the Temple and things are getting spicy. The day before he nearly started a riot in Jerusalem and now he just ran off the religious leaders who tried to trap him in his words so they could arrest him. Things are very tense.

Jesus now turns to the people and gives them some advice. He’s going to curse religion seven times. If you’re still convinced that Jesus is somehow on the side of religion, or that his mission was to inaugurate a new world religion, this story is the conclusive evidence to the contrary. This is also not just a condemnation of Judaism, but an archetypal disposition toward all institutional religion (èxousias), and if what we know of Christianity existed during this time, it would fall under the same rebuke.

However, this is nuanced. Jesus is NOT condemning the entirety of religion, but the fundamentalism of holding people to the letter of the law, and forsaking the heart of the law.

“The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice.” (Matthew 23:2-3)

Jesus’ advice is to “Do as they say, not as they do” which summons up our own experience with parents who drink and smoke and cheat on taxes telling their kids not to drink, smoke, or cheat on quizzes. As we’ll see, Jesus is addressing the hypocrisy of knowing what is right but not doing it. Jesus is exposing the same cause for our culture’s exodus from institutional religion, namely that while those propped up by religion lay claim to the moral high ground, their authority is actually not in religion, nor the men and women behind it, no matter how elaborate their title, but in the voice of God.(seat of Moses)

“And when Moses went into the tent of meeting to speak with the Lord, he heard the voice speaking to him from above the mercy seat that was on the ark of the testimony, from between the two cherubim; and it spoke to him” (Exodus 7:89)

In short, Jesus is saying, “Religion should know better, but it cannot be trusted. Trust instead, the voice that speaks to you from the Mercy seat.” God speaks in his revealed word. It’s not enough to have the talking heads of the religious industrial complex telling us what the Bible says, we must sit in “the seat” before God ourselves, and hear his voice through His Word. Far too many believers are biblically illiterate but claim the Bible is authoritative. This is illogical and foolish and produces bad things.

The rest of the first section (up to v.12) Jesus is pointing out how religion is focused on optics. It puts on a big show, the leaders like to be exalted, the machinery runs on flattery to the few, and oppression for the rest. In (v.8) Jesus’ instruction is “But you are not to be called rabbi…” This is not just about titles (Father, Rabbi…) this is a directive on organizational management, as indicated by the aorist subjunctive tense. This means Jesus is referring to an ongoing future and applying it to all titles, not just those mentioned. So why do we have Popes? Fathers? Rabbis? Imams? etc… The existence of these is the evidence Jesus’ teaching is disregarded.

Since we’re holding this within it’s historical and textual context of the passion story, this teaching, followed by Jesus rebuke of religion, takes on a scale that is generally missed by bible teachers, and certainly ignored by institutional religion. Christ following was and remains a grass-roots movement, it should never have become an alternative institutional religion, if it were true to Jesus’ teaching. I’ll prove the Easter story is about Jesus is divorcing religion, beginning in the next section where Jesus curses religion seven times-signifying a divine order, and a perfect or complete condemnation.

The term (oùai-woe, disaster, terrible, condemnation) is a term of extreme distress either in personal sorrow or in divine condemnation; both applications comport here. Jesus’ condemnation of the religious leaders is not about Judaism, but about religious fundamentalism, which is another way of falling in love with the container and forsaking the contents. Not only does this exist in all institutional world religions, but it also exists potentially in all human organizations where inclusion and exclusion criteria exist. The way we can discern if our religious organization falls under this condemnation is its ability to speak to the “heart” level and not prioritize the performance level.

“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.” (v.13-14)

Religion is failing in its mission not despite itself, but because of itself. It has coopted the voice of God and replaced it with compliance mandates, and inclusion criteria. As a result of the leaders not (eisérxomai-entering, move into, begin experiencing) the kingdom of heaven (divine union), nor knowing how to access it here and now, they inevitably mislead their constituents, causing them to miss heaven as well. They literally (kleío-close, refuse compassion, “close the bowels”-sphincter) obscuring Heaven for everyone.

I see this today with the unbiblical gospel of “accepting Jesus in your heart or you go to Hell”. Perhaps if the Bible only had three verses in it, but since it doesn’t, this over-simplification not only doesn’t make sense, but doesn’t comport with “the seat of Moses” or revelation of God in His Word. Those who have blindly adopted this are the victims who are not entering because of this error.

“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.” (v. 15)

Evangelicalism and all religions who seek to convert others need to heed this. If a fundamentalist, who isn’t accessing God’s kingdom, who isn’t humbled, but has pride in their position, title, power, and container; then goes to great extremes to make a convert of him/her self, the result is worse than doing nothing. They are making “children of hell” (Gehenna-city dump, place of total waste and desolation). Jesus says this because he knows that institutional power belongs to Satan. Pride is Satans’. A modern application would require many churches to immediately stop their work. This is nuanced. Not all evangelism is true evangelism. If one is serving from the bottom, no hierarchy (v. 8) and revealing heaven has come to earth to all comers, then fine, but if one is working for the big “star on” machine, and drafting people into bondage to the machinery, while punting heaven to one day after death, then such evangelism is unto Satan, not God.

We’ll continue Jesus’ condemnation of religion next week, but for now, we must take seriously this rebuke. This rebuke is far more dire applicable to the modern church machine than most of us realize. As we’ll see, the issue isn’t actually the religion, but the heart of the religious person and how the religion is ordered. The easy test is to look at the container in relation to the contents, and to look at whether the religion serves people, or if the people serve it.

I invite you to prayerfully reflect on this vital teaching of Jesus. Consider its context in the Easter story, and consider its implications for the message of the Gospel as well as the function of evangelism in the mission of the Church.