The woe of the hypocrite.
The word "woe" is repeated again and again in this chapter, and yet the reader of it fails to realize what the woe denounced precisely was. The suggestive word is left by Christ. It is enough to tell these men that they are surely heaping up woe for themselves in the latter day. Some hint of the coming woe may be given in the closing verses of the chapter, which indicate a time of sorest humiliation, of hopeless ruin. Jewish literature gives quite as bad a picture of them as Jesus did. "Fear not true Pharisees, but greatly fear painted Pharisees," said a Jewish ruler to his wife, when he was dying. "The supreme tribunal," said another, "will duly punish hypocrites who wrap their talliths around them to appear—what they are not—true Pharisees."
I. WHAT THINGS WERE HEAPING UP WOE FOR THESE HYPOCRITES. Our Lord marks several things in which their hypocrisy was especially manifest.
1. Their professing to be spiritual teachers, yet keeping the people from receiving spiritual truth (Matthew 23:13).
2. They joined devout prayers for desolate widows with a grasping covetousness that seized the widows' property and ruined them.
3. They made proselytes, so to say, to righteousness, but compelled them to be as bitter, base, and uncharitable as themselves.
4. They made foolish distinctions, which they took care did not hinder themselves.
5. They appeared to be most delicately scrupulous, but in their conduct they allowed the grossest and most abominable licence.
6. They were supremely anxious about the look of things; they were wickedly indifferent about the real condition of things.
7. They wanted men to admire them in public, but they dare not let any one see their private lives. It is easy enough to see that, for such men, a revealing day must come, and, when it came, it would prove humiliation and woe indeed. It is woe for such men to be found out. It was a beginning of woe for Jesus thus to show them up before the people, and make them objects of scorn and detestation.
II. WHAT PERSONS SUFFERED WOE BECAUSE OF THE HYPOCRITE. For the religious hypocrite is a woe-maker. And this point may be opened out with some treshness. Every religiously insincere man:
1. Makes woe for himself. He has no enemy like himself.
2. He makes woe for the religious community to which he belongs. He prays against their prayers; he brings disgrace on them when he is found out.
3. He makes woe for society, which learns, by his failure, the misery of mutual mistrust.
4. He even brings dishonour on the name and cause of God.—R.T.