saying, The scribes and the Pharisees have set themselves down in Moses' seat
The Lord turns to the crowds and to His own disciples and speaks about the men who taught them. His first words are a surprise. Before He exposes their hypocrisy, He upholds the authority of the very men He is about to condemn.
The disciples were Jews. They still belonged to the nation, and its teachers still held real authority over them.
Matthew 23 shows how far the Lord still links the disciples with the nation, since they were Jews. He does judge the leaders, who misled the people and dishonoured God by their hypocrisy. He speaks to the crowd and to His disciples, saying, "The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat." They were the ones who explained the law. So they were to be obeyed in all that they said from that law. Their own conduct, though, was nothing but hypocrisy.
How did they end up in that seat? One writer traces the story behind it.
The scribes and Pharisees had set themselves down in Moses' seat. They put themselves there. Even so, it was not entirely a case of seizing a place that was not theirs. A real zeal for the law of God, against the slackness all around, had first put them in the place they now held. Then decay set in. They lost the old spirit but kept the place. Here the Lord recognizes them in that place, and He recognizes the decay just as fully.
Owning the seat was no compliment to the men in it. It honoured the law they passed on, and so the God who gave it.
So part of our Lord's mission to the Jews was to say that "the scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat: so practise and observe whatever they tell you." But He also gave a careful warning. His hearers were never to make the scribes and Pharisees personal standards of good and evil. "But not what they do. For they preach, but do not practise." In themselves they were warning lights, patterns of wrong, not of right. There they were in fact. The Lord upholds the duty to own them, and to own whatever they set out — not from their own traditions, but from the law. He does not dissolve that duty. This honoured God Himself, despite the hypocrites who only sought honour from men for themselves.
The command has a limit, and the limit is God Himself.
About that higher claim of obedience I mentioned: it is the safeguard wherever authority rests in hands that can be wrong. So Christ tells His disciples to obey the scribes sitting on Moses' seat. But when those scribes tell them not to preach Christ, they cannot obey, because God had told them to do otherwise. A parent's authority is sacred. But suppose I were a Jew, and my father told me not to become a Christian. I disobey him, because a higher obligation stands over his. This matters morally. No one may leave or refuse a lawful authority on the ground of his own will or self. The only ground is the direct authority of God.
The men in the seat failed one basic test.
The leaders occupied Moses' seat. As long as they enforced the law of Moses, they were to be obeyed. But they lacked the very first principle of a true lawgiver: he must be under the laws himself. These, on the contrary, exalt themselves at the cost of a burdened people.
The same failure tests anyone who teaches today.
Our teaching and our appeals have no more value than our lives give them. Of the scribes and Pharisees in His day, the Lord had to say that they preach but do not practise. How solemn this is! The teaching was good, but the teachers did not match the teaching.
One writer shows what has to happen before this verse can be applied to the church today.
The Lord had even authorized obedience to scribes and Pharisees sitting on Moses' seat. To make this text apply the way people apply it now, they first had to set up Moses' seat in the Christian Church.
- Seat. Moses' seat was the place of explaining the law. The scribes and Pharisees took it themselves, out of a real zeal that later decayed.
- Honour. The Lord upholds the seat, not the men. Obeying there honours the God who gave the law, not the hypocrites who sit in it.
- Limit. What they drew from the law bound the hearers. Their own traditions did not. No human authority holds when it commands against God's direct word.
- Failure. They enforced on others what they would not carry themselves. So they rose at the cost of a burdened people.
- Test. Teaching and life must match; our words carry only as much weight as our lives give them.
all things therefore, whatever they may tell you, do and keep. But do not after their works, for they say and do not,
Here the Lord grants the scribes and Pharisees one thing: the right to read out the law of Moses. In the same breath He takes away the right to be copied. Why obey men He is about to call hypocrites? And what does that mean for anyone who teaches a truth he does not live?
These men took that seat themselves. How they got there still matters.
The scribes and Pharisees had set themselves down in Moses' seat. It was their own act, yet it cannot be called a complete takeover. An earnest zeal for the law of God, against the slack ways of the day, first put them in the place they now hold. Then decline set in. They lost the old spirit but kept the place — and the Lord plainly recognises them in it here, while fully recognising the decay too.
The command has a clear limit. It binds the hearer to what these men draw out of the law, not to the life they live alongside it.
The Lord leaves the disciples in the relation with the Jewish leaders in which they were then found... All were subject to the authority of the scribes and the Pharisees. These men sat in Moses' seat. People ought to hear them about the instructions they drew from the law given through Moses. Still, one must carefully guard against following the way they lived: they were hypocrites who spoke and did not act.
Obedience here reaches past the speakers to the God who gave the law they read. It also sets a limit. The verse props up no office a man claims for himself.
But the Lord carefully warned them not to make the scribes and Pharisees personal standards of good and evil in any way: "but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice." They were in themselves warning lights, patterns of wrong, not of right... The Lord keeps that obligation in force instead of dissolving it. People still had to own them and whatever they set forth — not their own traditions, but what came from the law. This was to honour God Himself, despite the hypocrites who only sought honour from men for themselves. It gives no warrant to false apostles or their self-deceived successors now.
This arrangement belonged to one moment in time:
After the Lord's death the apostles laboured, and their work bore fruit in Israel. For that work the chief priests and scribes were wholly set aside. Before the cross it was different (Matt. 23:2-3).
The gap between their words and their works was not accidental. It ran in one direction: strictness outward, ease at home.
He began by granting them the place they claimed as the interpreters of the law of Moses. So the people were to keep and do the law as they heard it from their lips. Yet they were to carefully avoid taking them as examples. Their lives contradicted the law they proclaimed. They made rules for others without the smallest conscience about their own obedience... it is a very common fault among professional religious people, who love directing others while taking it easy themselves.
The verse leaves a standing test for anyone who teaches. Good words cannot carry a bad life.
An ounce of example is worth more than a ton of precept... When the Lord Jesus was on earth, the Jewish people had many teachers — scribes and Pharisees. Their teaching was good, but their own lives were bad... Mr. Spurgeon once spoke of a minister who was so good in the pulpit, but so questionable in the way he lived. When he was in the pulpit, the people said it was a pity he should ever come out of it. When he was not in the pulpit, they said it was a scandal that he should ever be allowed in! Let us above all things be real! God forbid that we should proclaim to others truths of which we do not know the power in our own souls.
Earlier in Matthew, the Lord had already tied greatness in the kingdom to this very union:
In Matthew 5:19 He links His promise to the agreement between actions and doctrine.
- Seat. The scribes took Moses' seat themselves, out of real zeal for the law. They kept it long after they lost the spirit of it. The Lord recognises the seat and names the decay.
- Say. Do what they read out of the law. Obedience there honours God, not them.
- Do. Their lives taught the opposite lesson. They were warning lights: patterns of wrong, never standards of good and evil.
- Burden. The strictness ran one way. They laid heavy rules on others and kept no conscience about their own obedience.
- Real. Teaching and living must agree. An ounce of example outweighs a ton of precept. No one should preach truths whose power he has never known himself.