We have come to the part in Jesus’ rebuke of the Jewish authorities of his day, where he pronounces seven woes upon them. We have considered the reasons, why Jesus was so severe in his treatment of them earlier, and we’ve also mentioned the sins, which Jesus accused the authorities of committing. Now, we come to Jesus’ judgment of them, but to understand why he’s doing these things, we need to go back to the beginning in Eden. After all, Jesus does say, later in this discourse, that upon these Jewish authorities would come judgment for all the righteous blood, which was shed from the time, when Abel was slain by his brother to the time of Zacharias,[1] who was slain in the Temple of God at Jerusalem.
Consider for a moment what Adam did in the context of what Jesus was accusing the Jewish authorities. Jesus accused the scribes and Pharisees of shutting “up the Kingdom of Heaven…” but what does this mean? Jesus, himself, magnifies their guilt to include blood that was shed in the very beginning of recorded scripture (Genesis 4:8). However, what does their sin of shutting up the Kingdom of Heaven have to do with what occurred back then? Remember that Adam can be seen as shutting up the Kingdom. Adam had unprecedented access to the Presence of God, unknown, afterward, and unrealized until the coming of Christ. Adam, as the authority representing all mankind, was cast out of God’s Presence (Genesis 3:22-24). Therefore, not only did Adam reject the intimacy of God’s Presence, but he shut up that experience in his rebellion, so that all who came after him wouldn’t be able to enjoy the Presence of God in the manner in which he was able to prior to his rebellion.
Presently in the text, Jesus had been offering the experience of God’s Presence once more to mankind, in what he referred to as the Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven. and the people were willing to listen to him, some even believing he was the long-promised Messiah. Zacharias, John’s father, gives us a general picture of what Jews in that day expected in the coming of the Messiah. He said, God’s “servant David, as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets… that we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us…” (Luke 1:67-71), which was true in the Spirit. The problem was, however, the Jewish authorities had their own idea of what the Messiah should look like, when he would arrive. They had concluded that he would be an unconquerable military leader who, not only couldn’t be slain, but he would never die (John 12:34) and this idea was widely accepted in Judaism, believed even among Jesus’ own disciples (cp. Matthew 16:21-22). Nevertheless, Jesus preached a Kingdom that couldn’t be seen, physically (Luke 17:20), vis-à-vis it couldn’t be found on a map, because it was a Kingdom, whose throne was a man’s heart. If God ruled a man’s heart, it would mean intimate fellowship between him and the believer. This kind of thing would be the reinstatement of mankind’s access to the Presence of God, just as it was with Adam in the beginning (Genesis 2). This kind of Kingdom didn’t fit into the worldview of the Jewish authorities. Therefore, they rejected it and Jesus, who was the Messiah and King of that Kingdom. So, whenever folks began to believe Jesus and desired to enter such a kingdom (Matthew 12:23), the Jewish authorities planted doubts and fear in their hearts (Matthew 12:24), and the people were easily persuaded by their leaders (cp. John 7:46-52; 9:22, 24, 34; 12:34; Matthew 16:21-22; Acts 4:17-18; 5:28, 40). Thus, not only didn’t the Jewish authorities believe the Gospel, but those who showed an interest in Jesus, the authorities rebuked and sought to prevent them from believing (Matthew 23:13).
[1] The identity of this Zacharias is disputed, but there are several good reasons, why he is the one referred to in 2Chronicles 24:20-22, Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada the priest, who was stoned by the people at the direction of Joash, the king of Judah (see The Pulpit Commentary at Matthew 23:35). The murder of Abel was the first murder recorded in the Bible, and considering that 2Chronicles is the final Book of the Old Covenant text, as arranged by the Jews, the stoning of Zechariah/Zacharias would have been the final murder recorded in scripture. So, it is not so much that Jesus’ judgment was pronounced only for the period of history between Abel to Zechariah/Zacharias but for the first and last murder of Jewish history, which in this case would include all the violence that occurred up to Jesus final judgment upon the nation in AD 70.
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