Exhortation to His Disciples and The Crowds Not To Be Like the Scribes and Pharisees, But to Be Doers and Not Hearers Only, and Rather to Be Humble and Lowly, Treating Each Other As Being As Good If Not Better Than Themselves (23:1-12).
The chapter begins with an exhortation to His disciples, and to the crowds gathered round Him in the Temple courtyard. He wants them to be clear that in indicting the Scribes and Pharisees as He is about to do He is not condemning the Law for which they claimed to stand. Rather He wants His disciples and the crowds to respect and fulfil that Law more faithfully than the Scribes and Pharisees have (compare Matthew 5:17-20). And He especially warns His disciples against succumbing to the dangers revealed in what the Scribes on the whole had become, men who were inward looking and filled with a sense of superiority, of arrogance and of their own importance. Thus He wants to warn the disciples on their part against the danger of feeling superior to, and lording it over, others. When they shortly sit in Jerusalem on their ‘thrones of David' ministering to the new Israel (Matthew 19:28), they are to do it as equal to equal, brother to brother, and servant to servant, and not as a ‘great one' might do to inferiors, or as a father might do to sons, or as a master might do to servants. He had seen what it had done to the Scribes whom as a little boy He had admired so much, and He recognised how necessary it was to warn His disciples against it
Analysis.
a Then spoke Jesus to the crowds and to his disciples, saying, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses seat” (Matthew 23:1-2).
b “All things therefore whatever they bid you, these do and observe, but do not you after their works, for they say, and do not” (Matthew 23:3).
c “Yes, they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders, but they themselves will not move them with their finger” (Matthew 23:4).
d “But all their works they do to be seen of men (Matthew 23:5 a).
e “For they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments, and love the chief place at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, and the salutations in the marketplaces, and to be called of men, Rabbi” (Matthew 23:5-7).
e “But as for you, do not you be called Rabbi, for one is your teacher, and all you are brothers” (Matthew 23:8).
d “And call no man your father on the earth, for one is your Father, even he who is in heaven” (Matthew 23:9).
c “Neither be you called masters, for one is your master, even the Christ” (Matthew 23:10).
b “But he who is greatest among you shall be your servant” (Matthew 23:11).
a “And whoever shall exalt himself shall be humbled, and whoever shall humble himself shall be exalted” (Matthew 23:12).
Note that in ‘a' the Scribes and Pharisees proudly sit on Moses' seat, but in the parallel the disciples are rather to humble themselves. In ‘b' His disciples and the crowds are to do what the Scribes teach, but not what they do, and in the parallel they themselves are to be as servants when they teach and do. In ‘c' the Scribes and Pharisees lay heavy burdens on people (as masters do to their slaves) and do not seek to alleviate them, while in the parallel His disciples are not to see themselves as masters, but to recognise that only Christ is their Master. In ‘d' The Scribes and Pharisees desire to be seen of men, and in the parallel the disciples are to look to their Father in Heaven so as to be seen of Him. Centrally in ‘e' and its parallel His disciples are not to glorify themselves or to desire to be called ‘Rabbi', seeing themselves as great Teachers. They are rather to remember to walk in all humility.