Matthew 23:36-39 | Ichabod

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Thank you for preaching to my soul this morning.

When we sing together, we proclaim God's graciousness and his mercy and his word to one another.

Did you know that you were singing one of the Psalms?

We sang Psalm 148.

We're proclaiming God's word to one another as we sing.

Thank you for doing that.

And since you've preached to me, I get to preach to you, but I will give you a consolation prize.

I only have an introduction and a conclusion this morning.

Really?

It's true.

I only have an introduction and a conclusion.

Introduction begins this way.

I want you to do an assignment for me.

I want you to remember how your parents spoke to you.

Or maybe, if you are a parent presently, how you speak to your children.

Not so much the words used, not the word choice, but the tone behind those words.

For example, remember the tone that parents employ when a child is in trouble.

There is a specific tone that by itself communicates displeasure, frustration, anger.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

You don't quickly lose the memory of that tone, right?

Oftentimes it's coupled with the use of a middle name.

But there's another tone that conveys compassion.

Maybe when you fell off a bike and skinned your knee for the first time.

When you broke a bone, when you just had a terrible day at school.

You see, we can tell often how parents are seeking to communicate merely by the tone of their voice.

That's problematic for us because we don't have the Lord Jesus' tone recorded for us in the last verses of Matthew 23.

We don't have any memory.

We don't have anybody that communicated for us down through the ages how the Lord Jesus said three sentences at the end of Matthew 23.

Some say that we should read them comfortingly, like a parent coming alongside their hurt child and seeking to encourage them and strengthen them.

But others assert that Jesus spoke with a tone of frustration or discipline, maybe even anger.

Let's read these three sentences if you have your Bible.

In fact, let's read them twice.

Only three sentences.

I will try to read them with different intonations so that you can hear the difference and hopefully feel how we might receive Jesus' words differently, depending on how he said them.

So first, beginning in Matthew twenty-three, verse thirty-seven.

Oh Jerusalem.

Jerusalem.

The city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it.

How often I would have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.

And you would not.

See, your house is left to you desolate.

For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Now let's read it again.

Oh Jerusalem! Jerusalem! You who stone the prophets and kill those who are sent to it.

How often I would have gathered you together, all of your children as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not.

Look, your house is left to you desolate.

For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Do you feel the difference?

The way we receive these three sentences depends on how we hear them.

And how we hear them sometimes requires saying them out loud and realizing how we are saying them.

So does Jesus, on the one hand, express sorrow in his heart for a lost people?

Or is this the end of the rope that leads to judgment?

Seems like it could go either way.

We might jump to a comforting reading of the passage.

Yes, there's that little jab there about stoning prophets and killing those who are sent to them, but look at how much the Savior's heart hurts for his people.

I mean, he would have gathered them together, and there's this gentle picture of a hen with chicks.

There's warmth and tenderness, and he leaves them hope about his coming again in the future.

And we long for encouragement and hope as human beings.

But we make this text mean something we want it to mean if the Lord intended discipline and judgment instead of comfort and encouragement.

So if we're to understand what Jesus said here, we have to get to how he meant to say it.

Otherwise, we take it in a direction that he did not intend.

So, how do we determine the intent behind these sentences?

Well, our first step is to look at the context.

Where are these verses in light of a gospel account written by Matthew?

Well, just for a little bit, let's go back to chapter 21.

It's probably the intermediate context here.

Jesus fulfilled in Matthew 21 the prophecy of Israel's Messiah entering the royal city by riding on a donkey.

We call that Palm Sunday, right?

The travelers from Galilee moving to Jerusalem for the Passover celebrate his coming as God's promised one.

And so they quote for the first time this passage from the Psalms that says, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

They're celebrating the coming of Messiah, of Israel's king.

Then upon arrival in the royal city, Jesus went straight to the temple in verse 12 of chapter 21.

And he cleared it of idolatrous money-making habits.

In chapter 21, verse 15, we see that those actions made the religious leaders, it says, indignant.

They refused to acknowledge Jesus as the promised Messiah.

Can you imagine that?

Jesus coming in and saying, I'm cleaning house.

I'm cleaning house.

I'm making this what God intended it to be.

And the religious leaders looking at him and saying, How dare you?

How dare you fix up this house to be what God wanted?

It's kind of ludicrous when you think about it, but that's what happened.

What follows then is that Jesus leaves the temple, and in Matthew 21, verse 18, we see him coming back the next day, and he curses a fig tree.

Matthew 21:18

And that's symbolic for those leaders who rejected him, who were indignant at him.

He said, Listen, you should have been ready for the coming of your king.

This fruit tree should have had fruit ready for its creator, but it wasn't ready.

You weren't ready either, so I'm cursing you.

What follows then in chapter 21 and 22 is a series of challenges and teachings that leave the Jewish religious leaders on the outside looking in.

Beginning in chapter 21, we have this distance between Jesus and the religious leaders, and they're in conflict.

And Jesus then sort of paints a picture of his kingdom, and he says, This is my kingdom, and you're over here on the outside looking in.

They refused to believe in him, and so they're not a part of his kingdom because they reject him.

So then we get to chapter 23, where Jesus begins a righteous railing against the hypocritical scribes and Pharisees.

They're denounced.

They're denounced for not following the law properly and not receiving God's Son.

So if you look then down at chapter 23, verse 32, Jesus gets to an extremely strong condemnation of these people.

Again, Matthew 23, verse 32, fill up then the measure of your fathers.

Matthew 23:32

You serpents, you baby snakes, you baby vipers.

How are you to escape being sentenced to hell?

In verse 36, Jesus uses the phrase, this generation, describing those among the Jewish leaders who would reject Jesus and participate in the rejection and the murder of all those sent to God's people.

And so we can see that Jesus leads into these last three verses of chapter 23 with a strong interaction between the religious leaders of Israel and himself, leaders that reject him, leaders that are on their way straight to condemnation because they refuse to acknowledge God's word and they refuse to acknowledge God's Son.

The Lord's ire was toward those who ought to know better, but rejected him instead.

And in the rejection, as we saw all throughout chapter 23 last time, they also lead others astray.

As the leaders went, so went most of the people.

And so they bear the greater judgment.

Now look again at verses 37, 38, and 39.

As you get to the end of verse 37, and especially verses 38 and 39, we see several you's and a your listed there.

In Matthew's way of writing, those are plural pronouns.

Telling us that Jesus is still likely focusing on those scribes and Pharisees, those hypocrites, those people who will not escape being sentenced, he says, to hell.

And so the Jerusalem, Jerusalem, is a way to speak of that whole group of antagonistic leadership that's centered in the city of Jerusalem.

Verses 34 and 37 say much the same thing.

Says, I'm sent you people, you killed them and crucified them, you're going to flog them.

Verse 37 says, You're the people that do this.

You've done this all along.

Verse 37 is a generalized statement about Jerusalem as the source of all the antagonism against the prophets and even now God's own Son.

And remember, this is a declaration that comes before the cross and before the resurrection.

Jesus is speaking prophetically here.

He is Yahweh in the flesh judging the unbelief of the leaders of his people.

And we've seen God judge his people like this before.

Numbers 13 records the historical account of sending twelve spies into the promised land, one from each tribe.

You remember this story.

Caleb and Joshua were two of the twelve spies, and they went throughout the land of Canaan, the promised land, for forty days.

Then they came back to give a report to all of the people.

Ten spies gave a negative report.

When it came time for Caleb and Joshua to speak, they worked hard to convince the people of the power of God and the grace of God to provide that good land to them.

However, the people believed the ten unfaithful and unbelieving men and rebelled against Moses and God.

In fact, they said they desired to die in the wilderness rather than trust God.

Think about that.

We would rather die wandering in the wilderness than to trust God to be powerful and good and gracious.

So God gave them what they wanted.

The nation wandered in a desert wilderness for 40 years until that generation of unbelieving people died.

Now, as we move forward into Numbers chapter 14, we read in verse 33, God says, And your children shall be shepherds in the wilderness for 40 years and shall suffer for your faithlessness until the last of your dead bodies lies in the wilderness.

Numbers 14 · chapter mention

So again, remember what's happening.

Twelve leaders going out to identify and to recognize the land, to come back with a report that says, yes, we can trust our God to do what he said.

But ten of them don't believe that.

So ten leaders lead an entire nation astray, so that an entire generation of unbelieving people dies while the next generation suffers through it.

When the Old Testament was translated into the Greek language, the word here for wilderness or desert, your Bible might say, is the same word used by Jesus in Matthew 23, verse 38, where he said, Seek, your house is left to you a wilderness.

Matthew 23:38

A group of leaders have rejected Jesus.

They have acted in unbelief and rebellion against their God, saying, We don't trust you.

And just like in the wilderness, Jesus says, Okay, that's what you want.

See, Israel's unbelief, led by unbelieving leaders' refusal to trust Yahweh in the flesh, resulted in the loss of all in which they trusted by wandering in a desert place devoid of God's mercy.

This comes when God's hand of blessing is removed from a people.

There comes a point in our unbelief when God gives us what we want rather than giving us what he knows to be best.

The scribes and Pharisees' place of leadership and authority would become a desert.

Their nation of people would become, would become as Israel ravaged by death in the desert.

And their city and their beloved temple would become a desert.

God would eventually bring judgment where faith is expected, yet remains non-existent.

So God would turn their positions of authority, the wealth and comfort in which they trusted, and their glorious prized temple into a wilderness of death and destruction.

He'd done it before when the leaders of his people refused to trust him.

And he would do it again.

Now, in some respects, all of verses 37, 38, and 39 have been fulfilled.

The Lord's apostles were stoned and killed.

The Roman general Titus destroyed Jerusalem and demolished the temple in 70 AD.

The city was overrun again in the Barchakbah revolt some 65 years later.

Jerusalem and Judaism were left desolate.

I hope you can see that by looking carefully, it becomes clear that these three sentences are not comforting.

They are full of judgment.

A thousand years before, fifteen hundred years before, Yahweh said, I would love to take you under my wings and lead you into the promised land.

But you would not.

Here Yahweh in the flesh says, I would have loved to have taken you under my wings, but you would not.

So we can see that these are words full of judgment.

Placing them in their context enables us to hear a little more of the tone.

And it makes a difference in how we understand what Jesus said.

The Lord Jesus condemned the leadership of his people and he consigned them to judgment just as he did the leaders of his people in the book of Numbers.

And sadly, the rest of the people suffer from the unbelief and rebellion of their leaders.

That's my introduction.

Now the conclusion.

If you can use your imagination again, and visualize a camera zooming in from a wide view that takes in the crowds and the disciples in verse 1 and the scribes and the Pharisees.

If you can imagine that zooming, zooming in to Jesus focusing on the scribes and the Pharisees, maybe the Sadducees are there too because this condemnation occurs in the temple.

And having zoomed in on Jesus and the religious leaders, the camera now pans to Matthew, pen in hand, writing this record a decade or two later for us to read in the 21st century.

What did Matthew want us to see?

Well, he wants us to see the judgment as a result of unbelief and rejection of Jesus.

His first readers were living through that judgment that came by the Roman war machine.

But there's something bigger, something grander that Matthew wants us to see.

Matthew wants us to focus not primarily on the scribes and the Pharisees or the Sadducees, not even on the judgment.

He wants us to see Jesus.

He wants us to see Jesus.

If the promised judgment that is here is what consumes us, then we've missed what is most essential.

Let me show you what I mean.

We've noted before how how God records the beginnings of earth history.

Created the world and everything in it, and he created a garden where he placed the first human beings.

That garden was like a garden temple.

Because it was a place where God walked and talked with people.

They worshipped him in that garden.

They conversed with him in that garden.

They heard his word proclaimed to them from his own mouth in that garden.

We might say it was the ideal temple.

But then those human beings entertained God's archenemy, the Satan, the deceiver, Satan, and they entertained him in God's temple.

Rather than exercise dominion over the creation, as God had said, and then to evict God's enemy from his earthly garden temple, Adam and Eve said, Hey, come on in, let's have a meal together.

In God's garden temple.

And what was God's response?

Get out.

Get out and never come back again.

He set up a caribbean at the entrance to Eden with flaming swords barring entrance.

No longer could they enter his presence.

That began to change with a man named Moses.

While he was still a shepherd in the desert, God promised Moses in Exodus chapter 3 that he would be with him.

Exodus 3 · chapter mention

Interesting choice of words.

Man was no longer with God, but now God was promising Moses that he would be with him.

Then, when the people of Israel were at Mount Sinai, God said to Moses in Exodus 19, I am coming to you, to you, in a thick cloud, so that the people might hear when I speak with you and may also believe you forever.

A few verses later, it says, Moses brought the people to meet God at the mountain.

And Yahweh came down to the top of the mountain to meet with Moses.

Moses spoke with God, and God answered in Exodus 19.

Substantial change from the garden temple.

No more can you come and meet and speak with God, but now Moses, one man, can meet and speak with God.

Later, after following God's directives to build a tent for worship that included a section that was set apart as especially holy, God came to dwell in that most hallowed of holy places.

His residence, he said, was going to be above that seat of mercy.

There was a golden box, and on top of that box was a lid that had two cherubim.

Same angels as at Eden.

Two cherubim, and God said he would dwell between the cherubim.

God was with his people once again.

And over the next 400 years or so, the people became used to God's presence, always being with them.

He was always there in the tent, in that holy of holies place.

And so accustomed had they become, much like us becoming accustomed to going to church.

They came to view the ark with those golden angels and the presence of God like a magic box.

They no longer considered it with holiness and respect as the place of God's presence, but more like a lucky charm.

And so they took it out of the tent and they took it with them to war against the Philistines, thinking that the box's presence would give them victory.

Unfortunately, they focused so much on the golden box that they forgot the God of the box.

So God let them be defeated by their enemies, who captured the box and took it home as a prize of war.

Eli, the Jewish high priest at that time, was an old man.

And when he heard the news, he fell backward in his chair and broke his neck and died.

Eli's two sons were killed in the battle when the ark of God was taken.

And when she heard the news, Eli's daughter-in-law prematurely gave birth to a son whom she named Ehavod.

It says in 1 Samuel chapter 4, she named the child Ehodod, saying, The glory's gone.

1 Samuel 4 · chapter mention

Because the ark of God had been captured.

Now, because Yahweh was more powerful than the demon gods of the Philistines, the ark was returned to Israel.

And several decades later it was brought to David's city.

There, in Jerusalem, a temple was constructed as God's earthly house.

And like the tent in Israel's desert wanderings, there was an especially holy section in the temple where that golden box resided, where God Himself chose to be present with his people.

But we human beings are all alike.

We tend to eventually revert to being like our ancestors.

And so, like their ancestors who forgot the God of the box, the people of Israel forgot the God of the temple.

And the temple, like the golden box, became just a symbol.

It was a nice building.

But the God who made it his house was mostly an afterthought.

So God destroyed that temple.

He raised up a Babylonian king whose military forces raised the city of Jerusalem and tore down that house of God.

My friends, God will not tolerate idolatry that honors something or someone other than himself.

The prophet Ezekiel reported the spiritual reality of those disastrous events.

Ezekiel records, beginning in Ezekiel chapter 9, how God's executioner went through the city of Jerusalem to put to death those who had rejected him and did not believe in him, beginning with the leaders of Jerusalem.

Ezekiel 9 · chapter mention

Then in Ezekiel 10 and 11, God showed Ezekiel a depressing vision.

A depressing vision of the glory of God leaving the Holy of Holies, leaving the mercy seat, and coming out of the Holy of Holies, and coming out of the temple, and eventually coming out of the city of Jerusalem, leaving the city.

Yahweh left his house and judgment came.

It was Ichavod, no longer in name only, but in reality.

The glory was gone.

The temple would be rebuilt a few decades later, but without its former glory.

But the presence of God did not return to his house and his people.

It was like after Eden again.

They were kept from the presence of God because God wasn't there.

And that rebuilt temple was a disappointment.

The older people who had seen and remembered Solomon's glorious temple wept at the simple building erected in its place.

Then a few hundred years later, a ruler came along named Herod, a man who wanted nothing more than to make a name for himself.

And so he spent decades of taxes and labor on building that shabby temple into a glorious temple.

Nothing like it had ever been seen before, they said.

Oh, sure, Rome had its splendid marble temples for its demon gods, but human beings had never seen something beautiful until they laid eyes on Herod's temple.

Herod's temple.

Oh, it was the Jewish temple.

It was the home of the Jewish God, but if you'll remember, it was an empty temple.

For God had never come to take up residence in it.

The glory of Yahweh never came into that house.

At least that was what the records showed, and that's what the people thought.

You see, the Gospel of John records that Yahweh did come to his people again.

Like a light shining in the darkness.

But the world didn't know that light.

Because that light was a person.

God came.

John records that he came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.

That person, the word of God, became flesh and tented.

The same word used for that Old Testament tabernacle in the desert.

Tented among us.

And we've seen what?

His glory.

What kind of glory?

Glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Here at last was Yahweh, the God of the garden temple, who dwelt in the tent in the desert and chose Solomon's temple as his house.

Here at last is Yahweh wrapped in human flesh, full of grace and truth, the glory of God here before the elders of his people, walking with his people in that beautiful temple, the word of God in the temple to the people.

Would they only see the beauty of Herod's temple?

Or would they see the glory as of the only begotten Son of the Father?

Luke, in his account, tells of the Lord's sorrow, not his judgment, but his sorrow before the event in our text in Matthew.

In Luke chapter 19, we read that when Jesus was coming into Jerusalem, he drew near to the city and he wept over it.

Luke 19 · chapter mention

He wept, saying, I would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace.

But now they're they're hidden from your eyes.

You have eyes to see, but you do not see.

For the days will come upon you, he said, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you, and they will surround you, and they will hem you in from every side, and they will tear you down to the ground, you and your children with you.

And they will not leave one stone upon another in you.

Why?

You didn't know that I came.

That sorrow in Luke would become Matthew's judgment a few days later.

Throughout Scripture, we find that when God's people reject him, it is followed by judgment that indicates God leaving his people.

So what does Matthew say?

It says in Matthew 23, verse 39, for I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Matthew 23:39

And what happens in this unfortunate chapter division?

The first verse of chapter 24 says, Jesus left the temple.

He left his house once more.

That would be a terrible end to a really dreadful story.

If it were not for the character of God.

See, the scriptures tell us that God's loving kindness endures forever.

Jeremiah would write as he's watching the destruction of Jerusalem, the Lord's mercies are new every morning.

Great is your faithfulness.

So we should expect to see mercy and grace amid judgment.

If the character of God is true.

And yes, we do see that.

You see, the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus, the killing of his sent ones, and the desolation of the house of the Jewish leaders paved the way for the fulfillment of Jesus' words to the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well.

She said, Oh, you guys say that we have to come to Jerusalem to that temple to worship.

But our people, they say we need to worship on this mountain because there was a temple there.

And Jesus said to her, Oh, the day's coming when you won't need to go to a temple in Jerusalem or go up to this temple.

A day will come when you will worship in spirit and in truth.

You see, as a part of God's purpose and plan, with this rejection and the Lord's eventual crucifixion, God's presence is no longer needed in a particular location.

Because God's presence is now in and among his people through his spirit.

The Corinthians were told that God's people are his temple.

And his spirit, if you know Christ through saving faith, God's spirit is in you and is among us.

He lives in us.

The sad reality of this rejection and judgment led to the next stage of God's plan to unite all people, Jewish people and non-Jewish believers, into his family through faith in Jesus.

And it is through faith in Jesus that we escape the judgment that comes from unbelief and rejection of him.

And through faith in Jesus, we now eagerly wait his return.

But even more than that.

Do you know why it is that God's people eagerly wait for his return?

You ever thought about that question?

Why is it that we we have that sense of Jesus coming again?

Well, we have that sense because he said he would come again.

But why is there this sense in us that anticipates that with hopefulness and joy?

It's because Revelation 21 promises a time when we will be back in a garden temple.

It says in Revelation 21, verse 3 that God Himself will be with them as their God.

Revelation 21:3

And Paul told the Ephesian church that the spirit that now lives in you is his down payment of his guarantee that that will happen.

And so we look now through the times of sin and disobedience and rebellion and rejection and judgment, and we look through all of that darkness and those cloudy days with faith and hope because of the great comforter that the Lord has sent us, his own spirit to guarantee our presence with him.

And so we look through these times with strength to endure until the end when God will dwell with us as the King Himself, Yahweh our God, present with us again.

Amen.

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, please come soon.

Sometimes we wonder how long we can wait.

The world around us is deteriorating and seems to be going from one stage of rebellion to another, but you've left us here for this time to be your witnesses.

Yes, it may be painful.

They may even stone some of us and kill some of us.

As our brothers and sisters in Christ throughout the world experience, it may come to our doorstep.

Lord, let us look clearly through the clouds of disobedience and rebellion, just as Stephen did to see you high and lifted up.

The King of all, who will one day come and gather us together as your own people.

And we will celebrate and we will rule together with you.

May you come soon, Lord Jesus.

Until then, strengthen your people.

Lift us up and cause our voices and our hearts and our souls to celebrate and to praise you through it all.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

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