I Too Am Killing the Prophets

Introduction · 4 min

Introduction

Hook

Ask almost anyone whether they would have stood in the crowd that shouted “Crucify him,” and you will get the same answer: not me. We read of prophets stoned, slaves sold and neighbors handed over, and we are sure we would have stood on the right side. The scribes and Pharisees were sure too. They built and decorated the tombs of the prophets and said, “If we had been in the days of our fathers, we should not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets” (v. 30). Within days they handed the Prophet of all prophets over to be crucified.

Need

The surest way to repeat a sin is to believe we are above it. We repeat our own mistakes because “this time will be different.” We repeat our parents’ mistakes because we never stopped to look at them. We repeat history’s mistakes because we honor the past without learning from it. The honest confession is not “we would not have,” but “I too.” Jesus’ last woe on the scribes and Pharisees holds up a mirror to all three.

Read

Read Matthew 23:29–36 aloud. Ask the congregation to listen for what the scribes and Pharisees said about themselves in verse 30, and what Jesus said about them in verse 31.

The scribes and Pharisees were sure they were better than their fathers, and that certainty blinded them; the way out of a loop of sin begins when we stop saying “not me” and admit where we keep falling.

• “Not me”: they said, “we should not have been partakers” (v. 30). Peter said, “If all shall be offended in thee, I will never be offended,” and before the rooster crowed he had denied Him three times (Matthew 26:33–35, 75). “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall” (1 Corinthians 10:12).
• The loop: “As a dog that returneth to his vomit, So is a fool that repeateth his folly” (Proverbs 26:11). The drunkard wakes up bruised and says, “When shall I awake? I will seek it yet again” (Proverbs 23:29–35). Paul knew the cycle — “what I hate, that I do” — and he knew the way out: “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 7:15–25).
• Do I leave myself open? “If thy right eye causeth thee to stumble, pluck it out… if thy right hand causeth thee to stumble, cut it off” (Matthew 5:29–30). “Make not provision for the flesh” (Romans 13:14). Poor impulse control and addiction are seldom beaten in the moment of temptation; they are beaten earlier, by what we cut off. “Flee youthful lusts” (2 Timothy 2:22).
• Swept but empty: the house “swept, and garnished” and left empty took back seven spirits worse than the first (Matthew 12:43–45). Cleaning up is not enough; the room has to be filled with Christ.
• Remember and turn: the man in the mirror “goeth away, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was” (James 1:23–25). “I thought on my ways, And turned my feet unto thy testimonies” (Psalm 119:59). “Whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall obtain mercy” (Proverbs 28:13).

On screen, one click each

1. Not me Peter said “never,” and denied Him three times that night. Matthew 26:33–35
2. The loop The fool returns to his folly: “I will seek it yet again.” Proverbs 26:11; 23:35
3. Cut it off Close the door that keeps letting the same sin back in. Matthew 5:29–30; Romans 13:14
4. Remember Don’t look into the Word and walk away unchanged. James 1:23–25

Illustration

Three times Delilah bound Samson and cried, “The Philistines are upon thee, Samson,” and three times the men were waiting in the inner chamber (Judges 16:6–14). He knew exactly what she meant to do. He went back the fourth time anyway and laid his head on her knees. “He awoke out of his sleep, and said, I will go out as at other times, and shake myself free. But he knew not that Jehovah was departed from him” (16:20). “As at other times” — the words of every loop. The man who tore a lion apart with his hands could not walk away from her lap.

Potential Activity to Recommend

Name the one sin you keep coming back to — the one you have promised “never again” more than once. Then ask, “Where do I leave myself open?” and cut off one door to it this week: delete it, pour it out, stay away from the place, or tell a faithful brother or sister who will ask you about it and pray with you (Galatians 6:1–2; James 5:16).

Transition

Some loops are of our own making. Others we were born into. Jesus says the scribes and Pharisees were not only like their fathers; they were their fathers’ sons.

Jesus called them sons of the prophet-killers, and they were about to prove it; children tend to walk in their parents’ ways, good and bad, but no one is bound to repeat a parent’s sin — and no one is excused from God because of a parent’s hypocrisy.

• Father like son: Abraham twice said of Sarah, “She is my sister” (Genesis 12:13; 20:2), and his son Isaac said the same of Rebekah, for the same fear (Genesis 26:7). Samuel watched Eli fail to restrain his sons (1 Samuel 3:13), yet when Samuel was old “his sons walked not in his ways, but turned aside after lucre” (1 Samuel 8:1–3).
• The kings: Abijam “walked in all the sins of his father” (1 Kings 15:3). Nadab “walked in the way of his father”; Baasha killed him and walked in the very same way (1 Kings 15:26–34). Ahab did evil “above all that were before him” (1 Kings 16:30). Amon copied Manasseh’s idols but “humbled not himself before Jehovah, as Manasseh his father had humbled himself” (2 Chronicles 33:22–23).
• The good passes down too: Jehoshaphat “walked in all the way of Asa his father” (1 Kings 22:43). Timothy’s unfeigned faith “dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice” (2 Timothy 1:5). That is why God told parents to talk of His words at home, on the road, at bedtime and in the morning (Deuteronomy 6:6–7).
• The chain can break: God says the son “that seeth all his father’s sins… and feareth, and doeth not such like… shall surely live” (Ezekiel 18:14–17, 20). Hezekiah was the son of Ahaz, who made his son pass through the fire (2 Kings 16:3); Josiah was the son of Amon. Both did right in the eyes of Jehovah (2 Kings 18:3; 22:2).
• When a parent is a hypocrite: in this same sermon Jesus said of the scribes and Pharisees, “all things therefore whatsoever they bid you, these do and observe: but do not ye after their works; for they say, and do not” (Matthew 23:3). Hypocrisy is a reason to reject the hypocrisy, not the God they failed to obey: “shall their want of faith make of none effect the faithfulness of God? God forbid” (Romans 3:3–4).
• Some walk away from God altogether; others walk away from a church, not because they searched the Scriptures and found it wrong, but because a parent was a hypocrite in it. Either way the parent is still deciding for them. Test every teaching by the Scriptures (Acts 17:11; 1 John 4:1), not by the worst person who held it. Jonathan did not leave the God of Israel when Saul turned against David; he spoke plainly to his father (1 Samuel 19:4; 20:32) and kept his own faith.

On screen, one click each

1. Inherited Isaac told the same lie his father Abraham told, word for word. Genesis 20:2; 26:7
2. Copied Amon copied his father’s idols but not his father’s repentance. 2 Chronicles 33:22–23
3. Chain broken The son who sees his father’s sins and fears does not do the same. Ezekiel 18:14, 20
4. Keep truth A hypocrite’s failure does not make God’s word untrue. Matthew 23:3; Romans 3:3–4

Illustration

Ahaz cut in pieces the vessels of the house of God, “and shut up the doors of the house of Jehovah; and he made him altars in every corner of Jerusalem” (2 Chronicles 28:24). His son Hezekiah grew up in a city with the temple locked and an altar on every corner. He had every excuse to say his father’s religion was a sham and be done with it. Instead, “He in the first year of his reign, in the first month, opened the doors of the house of Jehovah, and repaired them” (29:3). His father shut the door; the son did not walk away from it. He opened it.

Potential Activity to Recommend

Parents: your children are learning more from what you do than from what you say — ask what they would become if they copied you exactly. Sons and daughters: name one thing your parents taught you that you must keep, and one thing they did that you must not repeat. And if you have kept God at arm’s length because of someone else’s hypocrisy, go back to Matthew 23:3 and to the Scriptures themselves, and let God answer for God.

Transition

What is true of a family is true of a nation. Jesus now widens the frame from one set of fathers to all of history — from Abel to Zachariah.

From the first murder in Scripture to the last, men killed God’s messengers, and Jesus foretold that this generation would do it again; history repeats for those who will not learn from it, but God wrote it down so that we can.

• The pattern: “Which of the prophets did not your fathers persecute?” (Acts 7:52). They “slew thy prophets that testified against them” (Nehemiah 9:26). Jehoiakim had the prophet Uriah fetched back from Egypt and killed him with the sword (Jeremiah 26:20–23). Zechariah son of Jehoiada was stoned in the court of the house of Jehovah, saying, “Jehovah look upon it, and require it” (2 Chronicles 24:20–22).
• Foretold and fulfilled: Jesus said they would kill and crucify, scourge in synagogues and persecute from city to city (v. 34). Stephen was stoned (Acts 7:58–60), James was killed with the sword (Acts 12:2), Paul five times received forty stripes save one (2 Corinthians 11:24), and the Jews of Thessalonica followed him to Berea (Acts 17:13). Stephen told the council, “as your fathers did, so do ye” (Acts 7:51) — and they proved it by stoning him.
• Remembering is not repenting: George Santayana wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (The Life of Reason, 1905). The scribes and Pharisees remembered the past perfectly well. They knew every prophet’s name and kept every tomb, and they repeated it anyway.
• Written for our learning: “these things happened unto them by way of example; and they were written for our admonition” (1 Corinthians 10:11; Romans 15:4). Judges turns the same wheel again and again: “another generation… that knew not Jehovah,” and after each judge died “they turned back, and dealt more corruptly than their fathers” (Judges 2:10, 19). So God told fathers to teach their children, “that they… might not be as their fathers” (Psalm 78:5–8), and Zechariah son of Berechiah preached, “Be ye not as your fathers” (Zechariah 1:4).
• It can be broken: Saul of Tarsus was “standing by, and consenting, and keeping the garments of them that slew” Stephen (Acts 22:20). He became Paul: “I obtained mercy… for an ensample of them that should thereafter believe” (1 Timothy 1:13–16). On Pentecost men who had crucified Jesus were pricked in their heart and asked, “Brethren, what shall we do?” (Acts 2:36–38).

On screen, one click each

1. Foretold Jesus said they would kill His messengers, and Acts shows they did. Acts 7:58–60; 12:2
2. Written Israel’s history was written down so we would not repeat it. 1 Corinthians 10:6, 11–12
3. Taught Tell the next generation, that they might not be as their fathers. Psalm 78:5–8
4. Turned Saul held the coats at Stephen’s death, and still found mercy. Acts 22:20; 1 Timothy 1:13–16

Illustration

Josephus tells that Herod the Great broke into David’s tomb by night looking for treasure, and when two of his guards were killed by a burst of flame, he was frightened and built a monument of white stone at the tomb’s mouth (Antiquities 16.7.1). The same Herod slew the children of Bethlehem to be rid of the newborn King (Matthew 2:16), and his son Herod Antipas beheaded John the Baptist in prison (Matthew 14:10). A family that built a monument to David killed the Son of David’s forerunner and hunted the Son of David Himself. Monuments are easy. Repentance is hard.

Potential Activity to Recommend

This week read Judges 2 and ask, “Where do I see us in this?” Then do what that generation’s fathers failed to do: tell a child or a younger Christian one thing God has done, so that the generation to come will know Him (Psalm 78:4–7).

Transition

Abel’s blood cried from the ground for justice (Genesis 4:10). But there is blood that speaks a better word than Abel’s.

Conclusion · 4 min

Conclusion

Recap

Stop saying “not me,” and break the loop of your own sins (vv. 29–30). Learn from your parents: keep what was good and refuse what was not (vv. 31–33). Learn from history, because God wrote it down for us (vv. 34–36).

Gospel

All the righteous blood from Abel to Zachariah came to its height at the cross, where the husbandmen cast out the Son and killed Him (Matthew 21:37–39). Yet the blood the crowd called down on themselves (Matthew 27:25) is the blood “poured out for many unto remission of sins” (Matthew 26:28). It “speaketh better than that of Abel” (Hebrews 12:24): Abel’s cried for justice; Christ’s offers mercy, even to those who shed it. On Pentecost Peter told the men of Jerusalem, “this Jesus whom ye crucified,” and about three thousand of them were baptized that day (Acts 2:36–41).

Invitation

The honest confession is not the Pharisees’ “we should not have been partakers,” but Daniel’s: “we have sinned… neither have we hearkened unto thy servants the prophets” (Daniel 9:5–6). If you have not obeyed the gospel, break the cycle today: believe in Him, repent, confess Him, and be baptized into Christ for the remission of your sins (Acts 2:38; Romans 10:9–10; Galatians 3:27). If you are a Christian caught in a loop you cannot seem to break, come and let the church pray with you (James 5:16).

Close

Read 1 Corinthians 10:11–12 together, and let it be the last word.