When we approach Matthew 23, we do not find the genteel and encouraging Jesus of popular imagination, but a caustic, critical and condemning Jesus. Why? Who was he referring to in such polemical tones? This is not an anti-Semitic chapter, but one targeting hypocritical religious leadership. Jesus' confrontation with the Jewish religious leaders was not over their ethnicity, but their deceitful loopholes to evade the law on the one hand and burdensome additions to it on the other.
Jesus did not deal with this matter privately but rather addressed his denunciation of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees to the crowds and his disciples. Paul also encouraged Timothy to publicly rebuke sinful leaders. Jesus strongly urges his hearers to follow the teachings of Moses that these religious leaders expounded, but not to do as they did, play the hypocrite. Any of us deserves the same criticism if we are like them. They didn't practice what they taught. That's what Jesus said.
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