“Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘Whoever takes an oath by the temple, it means nothing. But whoever takes an oath by the gold of the temple is bound by his oath.’ Blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that sanctified the gold?” (Matthew 23:16-17 CSB – Read the chapter)

I have been working through the Gospel of Matthew with my church on Wednesday nights for nearly three years now. We’ve taken a break here or there along the way, but mostly it has just been Matthew for a while now. And I’ve got to say: it has been good. I know that I’ve never taken such a deep dive into a single book from the Scriptures, and I’m sure none of them have either. Taking time to meditate so long and so deeply on a single, Spirit-inspired author’s work has yielded much in terms of applicational rewards for us. We are currently in chapter 23 where Jesus blows up the scribes and Pharisees for their religious hypocrisy and bad spiritual leadership. It is one of those chapters that’s easy to ignore because at first glance Jesus is just berating His enemies for religious practices and traditions that are long gone. But a bit closer of a look uncovers volumes of uncomfortably relevant critiques for modern church members to consider. Let’s take a look at one of them together today.

There are seven different woe statements in this chapter. Woe language like this is something we often associate with prophets, especially of the Old Testament variety. They would proclaim: “Woe to you!” and then launch into a judgment-filled diatribe against the people. We imagine them angrily espousing the anger of God. But the word “woe” is not an angry one. It was originally an expression of lament. It was a common expression at funerals. Proclamations of judgment like this that start with “woe” are not expressing the anger of God, but His heartbreak over time and the judgment it naturally invites. They are expressing His reluctance to bring judgment even as He is committed to it in His justice on all those who don’t take the way out He provides us to avoid it.

This third woe in the chapter hits the scribes and Pharisees for essentially making loopholes for themselves and other religious insiders so that they didn’t have to keep their word. This allowed them to promise all sorts of great and lavish things to God that were going to make them look spiritual and faithful without actually having to bear the burden of keeping their promises. They would make these great oaths and be celebrated by the people for their great commitment to God. But when the time came to pay the piper for their promises, as long as they didn’t swear by one of the things that was actually binding, they had a ready excuse for their lack of fulfillment.

This would have been like when kids today will promise something with their fingers crossed. That used to be a pretty common thing in my household. One sibling would promise the other something in order to convince him to do something he wanted, but when the time came to deliver on the promise, he would just protest that his fingers were crossed (or his toes or legs or arms or eyes or something), and thus he wasn’t bound to keep his word. I remember doing the same thing with my sister when I was little. Yet do you know what you call someone who promises to do one thing, but then doesn’t for some stupid, contrived reason like this? A liar. The scribes and Pharisees were liars. Worse, they were religious liars. They simply justified their lies with religious language as if that somehow made it okay.

Jesus responds by asking them which is greater: the gold or the temple that sanctified the gold. The point is that neither was greater. They were the same as far as God was concerned. God doesn’t place more weight on some things than others in such a way that would allow an oath on one to be more binding than an oath on another.

He doesn’t value religious objects and practices the way we do. We assign value based on a whole range of different factors and then we divide ourselves off into various tribes depending on which things we value in which way. Take something like communion, for instance. Whether you take communion by drinking out of the same cup, or dipping bread (no, a wafer!) into a common cup, or passing out mini-shot glasses, or use wine versus grape juice, or leavened versus unleavened bread, or what have you doesn’t matter to God. I’ve served communion using jelly donuts before (something I have recently learned is apparently part of my reputation in the community…who knew?). The fact is: there is nothing in the New Testament that mandates which elements we use and how we serve them. We can attach all the significance to these things we want, but we are merely expressing our preferences and traditions, not the will of command of God. We forget this and divide ourselves over it or other similar things at our peril and to the detriment of our mission and message.

The reason we do this is that we are inherently tribal in our thinking. We mentally divide ourselves off into various tribes. We have our home tribes where everything is just like we want it to be. The people in that tribe are the ones we agree with on just about everything, and we would sacrifice a great deal to advance their interests and desires because we understand that theirs align closely with ours. This is usually a pretty small subset of people. Outside of this tribe, there are an endless number of other tribes. Some of these are tribes with whom we share enough points of commonality that they are allies. Some are very close allies indeed. Others are not as close. We have more strained relationships with some because the number of points of commonality with them are fewer. Then there are the enemy tribes. Enemy tribes are labeled as such because we don’t have any points of commonality with them, or because their interests crossed with ours at some point in a way that made it such that if one of us saw our interests satisfied, the other necessarily was not going to get the same.

Well, we naturally attach a great deal of significance to the things our tribe has decided to value. Of course, why our tribe values those particular things in the ways that we do is the result of a complex mixture of tradition and mythology and sheer arbitrariness. You are better off not questioning why such things are the way they are. But whatever the precise reason, we value them intensely.

And then comes the Gospel. The Gospel tells us that God values not just us and our tibes and the things that are important to our tribe, but that He values other tribes and the things that are important to them too. It tells us that there are some things our tribes values that we shouldn’t value. We are going to have to let those go if we are going to be part of God’s tribe. There are things in other tribes that we don’t like, but God is okay with them and values them because they do. This doesn’t mean we have to start liking those things, but it does mean we have to stop hating the other tribe members for liking them. It means we have to still have respect for people from these other tribes who do value them in spite of the fact that they value them.

It could perhaps go without saying that this isn’t easy to do. When we have a lifetime of tribalism built into our mental and relational operating systems, breaking from that isn’t easy to do. It can only happen by the transformational power of the Gospel. If somebody hasn’t fully embraced and experienced that power, then they are not very likely to have been able to really get past it on their own. In fact, if I may be so bold, if someone is still operating with this kind of a tribal mindset in the context of the church, that’s a pretty good indicator that they may not have really given themselves wholly over to the power of God in Christ. It is only when we fully embrace Jesus as Lord and experience the new birth of His Spirit that comes with that embrace that we can overcome the power of our petty tribalism to be a part of God’s meta tribe.

Coming back around to where we started, the folks who lean into this tribalism and who refuse to disabuse themselves of it are committing the same error as the scribes and Pharisees. They are putting things ahead of God’s kingdom. They are creating loopholes for themselves to avoid living fully in God’s kingdom, justifying this refusal on seemingly spiritual grounds. In doing this, though, they are maintaining their own little tribal fiefdoms that are just adjacent to His kingdom while not actually crossing the border. They are close enough to convince most people that they are living with into the borders of God’s kingdom, but make no mistake: the are independent of His kingdom in the final analysis.

I’ll leave you with this: We’ve got to watch out for this tendency in our own lives. We’ve got to watch out for it in the lives of the people we love and who are a part of our local church family. These are the kings of people who will one day arrive at the gates of God’s kingdom, cry out, “Lord! Lord” and be met with the tragic declaration: “I never knew you.” Jesus will one day look at these poor souls and say, “You never actually moved into my kingdom. You got close, but you just wouldn’t give up your tribalism and cross the border. I did everything I could to try and alert you to this fact so you could come the last little bit across, but you just wouldn’t do it. I’m so sorry, but the borders have closed, and you’re not on the inside.” Unless and until we submit ourselves fully to the authority of Christ, placing our entire faith in Him, renouncing our tribalism in favor of His greater tribe, this is the fate that awaits us one day. Tragic doesn’t even begin to capture this terrible outcome.

Stop holding onto whatever your worldly tribe happens to be. Let it go so that you can fully join the kingdom of God. It won’t be easy, but you will be so very glad that you did. I hope you will.