The King condemns the ways of the Jewish leaders
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📚✭Then Jesus spoke to the crowd and to his disciples, 2 📚saying, “The scribes and the Pharisees✭ sit in Moses' seat. 3 📚✭Therefore whatever they tell you to observe, observe it and do it, but do not do according to their works, for they say, but do not do. 4 📚✭For they tie up heavy burdens, hard to carry, and lay them on men's shoulders. but they are not willing to lift one of their fingers to move them.5 📚“But they do all their deeds to be seen by men. They make their phylacteries✭ broad, and enlarge the borders✭ of their cloaks, 6 📚✭and love the places of honour at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, 7 📚and greetings in the marketplaces, and to be called by men, ‘Rabbi, Rabbi.’
8 📚✭“But you must not be called Rabbi, for one is your Teacher, the Christ, and you are all brothers. 9 📚✭And do not call any man on the earth your ‘father’, for one is your Father, who is in heaven. 10 And do not be called teachers, for one is your Teacher, the Christ.
11 📚“But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant. 12 📚And whoever exalts himself will be abased, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.
13 📚“But woe✭ to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men. For you neither go in yourselves, nor allow those who are entering to go in.
14 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you devour widows' houses, and for a show✭ make long prayers. Therefore you will receive the greater condemnation.
15 📚✭“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel around sea and land to make one convert, and when he has become one, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.
16 📚“Woe to you, blind✭ guides, who say, ‘Whoever swears by the temple, it is nothing, but whoever swears✭ by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.’ 17 📚You fools and blind! For which is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifies the gold? 18 And, you say, ‘whoever swears by the altar, it is nothing, but whoever swears by the gift that is on it, he is bound by his oath.’ 19 📚You fools and blind! For which is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifies the gift? 20 Therefore whoever swears by the altar, swears by it and by all things on it. 21 📚And whoever swears by the temple, swears by it and by him who dwells in it. 22 📚And he who swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God, and by him who sits on it.
23 📚“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithes✭ of mint and anise and cummin, but you have neglected the weightier matters of the Law: justice, mercy, and faith. These you should have practiced, without neglecting the other. 24 📚✭Blind guides! You strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!
25 📚✭“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of robbery and self-indulgence. 26 📚Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, so that the outside of them also may be clean.
27 📚✭“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. 28 📚Just so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
29 📚✭“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you build the tombs of the prophets, and decorate the tombs of the righteous, 30 📚and say, ‘If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets. 31 📚Therefore you are witnesses against yourselves that you are the children of those who killed the prophets. 32 📚Fill up, then, the measure of the guilt of your fathers. 33 📚You snakes, you brood of vipers, how can you escape the damnation of hell?
34 📚✭“Therefore, now I am sending prophets, and wise men, and scribes to you, and some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will beat with whips in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, 35 📚✭so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berachiah, whom you killed between the temple and the altar. 36 📚Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.
The King weeps over Jerusalem
37 📚“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets, and stone those who are sent to you, how often✭ I would have gathered your children together, just as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not have it! 38 📚✭Now your house is left to you desolate. 39 📚✭✭For I tell you, You will not see me from now on until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’ ”