Jesus: ² The Pharisees and the scribes occupy the seat of Moses. ³ So you should do the things they tell you to do—but don’t do the things they do. ⁴ They heap heavy burdens upon their neighbors’ backs, and they prove unwilling to do anything to help shoulder the load. ⁵ They are interested, above all, in presentation: they wrap their heads and arms in the accoutrements of prayer, they cloak themselves with flowing tasseled prayer garments, ⁶ they covet the seats of honor at fine banquets and in the synagogue, ⁷ and they love it when people recognize them in the marketplace, call them “Teacher,” and beam at them.

⁸ But you: do not let anyone call you “Rabbi,” that is, “Teacher.” For you are all brothers, and you have only one teacher, the Anointed One. ⁹ Indeed, do not call anyone on earth “Father,” for you have only one father, and He is in heaven. ¹⁰ Neither let anyone call you “leader,” for you have one leader—the Anointed One. ¹¹ If you are recognized at all, let it be for your service. Delight in the one who calls you servant. ¹² For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

¹³ Woe to you, you teachers of the law and Pharisees. There is such a gulf between what you say and what you do. You will stand before a crowd and lock the door of the kingdom of heaven right in front of everyone; you won’t enter the Kingdom yourselves, and you prevent others from doing so.

[¹⁴ Woe to you, you teachers of the law and Pharisees. What you say is not what you do. You steal the homes from under the widows while you pretend to pray for them. You will suffer great condemnation for this.]^[a]

¹⁵ Woe to you Pharisees, woe to you who teach the law, hypocrites! You traverse hills and mountains and seas to make one convert, and then when he does convert, you make him much more a son of hell than you are.

¹⁶ Woe to you who are blind but deign to lead others. You say, “Swearing by the temple means nothing, but he who swears by the gold in the temple is bound by his oath.” ¹⁷ Are you fools? You must be blind! For which is greater: the gold or the temple that makes the gold sacred? ¹⁸ You also say, “Swearing by the altar means nothing, but he who swears by the sacrifice on the altar is bound by his oath.” ¹⁹ You must be blind! Which is greater: the sacrifice or the altar that makes it sacred? ²⁰ So anyone who swears by the altar swears by it and by the sacrifices and gifts laid upon it. ²¹ And anyone who swears by the temple swears by it and by the God who sanctifies it. ²² And when you swear by heaven, you are swearing by God’s throne and by Him who sits upon it.

²³ So woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees. You hypocrites! You tithe from your luxuries and your spices, giving away a tenth of your mint, your dill, and your cumin. But you have ignored the essentials of the law: justice, mercy, faithfulness. It is practice of the latter that makes sense of the former. ²⁴ You hypocritical, blind leaders. You spoon a fly from your soup and swallow a camel.

²⁵ Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You remove fine layers of film and dust from the outside of a cup or bowl, but you leave the inside full of greed and covetousness and self-indulgence. ²⁶ You blind Pharisee—can’t you see that if you clean the inside of the cup, the outside will be clean too?

²⁷ Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like a grave that has been whitewashed. You look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside you are full of moldering bones and decaying rot. ²⁸ You appear, at first blush, to be righteous, selfless, and pure; but on the inside you are polluted, sunk in hypocrisy and confusion and lawlessness.

²⁹ Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build monuments to your dead, you mouth pieties over the bodies of prophets, you decorate the graves of your righteous ancestors. ³⁰ And you say, “If we had lived when our forefathers lived, we would have known better—we would not have joined them when they rose up against the prophets.” ³¹ Even when you are preening, you make plain that you descended from those who murdered our prophets. ³² So why don’t you finish what your forefathers started? ³³ You are children of vipers, you belly-dragging snakes. You won’t escape the judgment of hell.

³⁴ That is why I am sending you prophets and wise men, teachers of breadth and depth and substance. You will kill some of them and crucify others. You will flog others in your synagogues. You will pursue them from town to town. ³⁵ And on your heads, stained through your hands and drenching your clothes, my friends, will be all the righteous blood ever shed on this earth, from the blood of innocent Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berechiah whom you murdered in the house of the Lord between the sanctuary and the altar. ³⁶ I tell you: this generation will bear the blood of all that has gone before.

³⁷ O Jerusalem, Jerusalem. You kill the prophets whom God gives you; you stone those God sends you. I have longed to gather your children the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you refuse to be gathered. ³⁸ Surely you can see that God has already removed His blessing from the house of Israel. ³⁹ I tell you this: you will not see Me again until you say, with the psalmist, “Anyone who comes in the name of the Eternal One will be blessed.”^[b]

Elders: ² Tell us by what authority You march into the temple and disrupt our worship. Who gave You this authority?

Jesus: ³ Let Me ask you a question first. Tell Me this: ⁴ was the ritual cleansing of baptism John did from God, or was it merely a human thing?

Chief Priests, Religious Scholars, and Elders (conferring together): ⁵ If we say it was from God, then He’ll ask us why we didn’t believe John. ⁶ If we say it was merely human, all the people will stone us because they are convinced that John was a true prophet.

Jesus: ⁸ Well then, if you won’t answer My question, I won’t tell you by what authority I have acted.

Jesus: A man planted a vineyard. He rented it to tenants and went for a long trip to another country. ¹⁰ At the harvest time, he sent a servant to the tenants so he could be paid his share of the vineyard’s fruit, but the tenants beat the servant and sent him away empty-handed. ¹¹ The man sent another servant, and they beat him and treated him disgracefully and sent him away empty-handed too. ¹² He sent a third servant who was injured and thrown out. ¹³ Then the vineyard owner said, “Now what am I going to do? I’ll send my much-loved son. They should treat him with respect.”

¹⁴ But when the tenants recognized the owner’s son, they said, “Here’s our chance to actually own this vineyard! Let’s kill the owner’s heir so we can claim this place as our own!” ¹⁵ So they threw him out of the vineyard and murdered him. What do you think the owner will do to these scoundrels?

¹⁶ I’ll tell you what he’ll do; he’ll come and wipe those tenants out, and he’ll give the vineyard to others.

Crowd: No! God forbid that this should happen!

Jesus: ¹⁷ Why then do the Hebrew Scriptures contain these words:

¹⁸ Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to fragments, and if that stone falls on anyone, he will be ground to dust.

Chief Priests, Religious Scholars, and Elders: ²¹ Teacher, we respect You because You speak and teach only what is right, You show no partiality to anyone, and You truly teach the way of God. ²² So—is it lawful for us to pay taxes to Caesar’s occupying regime, or should we refuse?

Jesus: [Why are you trying to trick Me?]^{[b] 24} Show Me a coin. Whose image and name are on this coin?

Chief Priests, Religious Scholars, and Elders: Caesar’s.

Jesus: ²⁵ Well then, you should give to Caesar whatever is Caesar’s, and you should give to God whatever is God’s.

Sadducees: ²⁸ Teacher, Moses wrote in the Hebrew Scriptures that a man must marry his brother’s wife and the new couple should bear children for his brother if his brother dies without heirs.^{[c] 29} Well, once there were seven brothers, and the first took a wife and then died without fathering children. ³⁰ The second [took her as his wife and then he died childless,]^{[d] 31} and then the third, and so on through the seven. They all died leaving no children. ³² Finally the woman died too. ³³ Here’s our question: in the resurrection, whose wife will she be, since all seven had her for a while? Will she be the wife of seven men at once?

Jesus: ³⁴ The children of this era marry and are given in marriage, ³⁵ but those who are considered worthy to attain the resurrection of the dead in the coming era do not marry and are not given in marriage. ³⁶ They are beyond mortality; they are on the level of heavenly messengers; they are children of God and children of the resurrection. ³⁷ Since you brought up the issue of resurrection, even Moses made clear in the passage about the burning bush that the dead are, in fact, raised. After all, he calls the Lord the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.^{[e] 38} By Moses’ time, they were all dead, but God isn’t God of the dead, but of the living. So all live to God.

Religious Scholars: ³⁹ Teacher, that was a good answer.

Jesus: How is it that people say the Anointed One is David’s descendant? ⁴² Don’t you remember how David himself wrote in the psalms,

Jesus: ⁴⁶ Beware of the religious scholars. They like to parade around in long robes. They love being greeted in the marketplaces. They love taking the best seats in the synagogues. They adore being seated around the head table at banquets. ⁴⁷ But in their greed they rob widows of their houses and cover up their greed with long pretentious prayers. Their condemnation will be all the worse because of their hypocrisy.

Jesus: ³ I’m telling you the truth, this poor widow has made a bigger contribution than all of those rich fellows. ⁴ They’re just giving from their surplus, but she is giving from her poverty—she’s giving all she has to give.

Jesus: ⁶ Go ahead, look around, and be impressed; but days are coming when one stone will not be left standing on another. Everything here will be demolished.

Crowd: ⁷ When will this happen, Teacher? What signs will tell us this is about to occur?

Jesus: ⁸ Be careful. It’s easy to be deceived. Many people will come claiming to have My authority. They’ll shout, “I’m the One!” or “The time is now!” Don’t take a step in their direction. ⁹ You’ll hear about wars and conflicts, but don’t be frightened at all because these things must surely come, although they don’t signify the immediate coming of the end. ¹⁰ You can count on this: nation will attack nation, and kingdom will make war on kingdom. ¹¹ There will be disturbances around the world—from great earthquakes to famines to epidemics. Terrifying things will happen, and there will be shocking signs from heaven. ¹² But before any of this happens, they will capture you and persecute you. They’ll send you to synagogues for trial and to prisons for punishment; you’ll stand before kings and government officials for the sake of My name. ¹³ This will be your opportunity—your opportunity to tell your story. ¹⁴ Make up your mind in advance not to plan your strategy for answering their questions, ¹⁵ for when the time comes, I will give you the words to say—wise words—which none of your adversaries will be able to answer or argue against. ¹⁶ Your own parents, brothers, relatives, and friends will turn on you and turn you in. Some of you will be killed, ¹⁷ and all of you will be hated by everyone for the sake of My name.

¹⁸ But whatever happens, not a single hair of your heads will be harmed. ¹⁹ By enduring all of these things, you will find not loss but gain—not death but authentic life.

²⁰ Here’s how you will know that the destruction of Jerusalem and her temple is imminent: Jerusalem will be surrounded by armies. ²¹ When that happens, there’s only one thing to do: if you’re in Judea, flee to the mountains; and if you’re inside the city, escape; and if you’re outside the city, stay there—don’t enter— ²² because the time has come for the promised judgment to fall. ²³ How sad it will be for all the pregnant women, for all the nursing mothers in those days! All the land of Israel and all her people will feel the distress, the anger, falling on them like rain. ²⁴ The sword will cut some down, the outsider nations will take others captive, and this holy city, this Jerusalem, will be trampled upon by the outsiders until their times are fulfilled.

²⁵ There will be earth-shattering events—the heavens themselves will seem to be shaken with signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars. And across the earth the outsider nations will feel powerless and terrified in the face of a roaring flood of fear and foreboding, crashing like tidal waves upon them. ²⁶ “What’s happening to the world?” people will wonder. The cosmic order will be destabilized. ²⁷ And then, at that point, they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and blazing glory. ²⁸ So when the troubles begin, don’t be afraid. Look up—raise your head high, because the truth is that your liberation is fast approaching.

²⁹ (continuing with a parable) Look over there at that fig tree—and all the trees surrounding it. ³⁰ When the leaves break out of their buds, nobody has to tell you that summer is approaching; it’s obvious to you. ³¹ It’s the same in the larger scheme of things. When you see all these things happening, you can be confident that the kingdom of God is approaching. ³² I’m telling you the truth: this generation will not pass from the scene before everything I’m telling you has occurred. ³³ Heaven and earth will cease to exist before My words ever fail.

³⁴ So be careful. Guard your hearts. They can be made heavy with moral laxity, with drunkenness, with the hassles of daily life. Then the day I’ve been telling you about might catch you unaware and trap you. ³⁵ Because it’s coming—nobody on earth will escape it. ³⁶ So you have to stay alert, praying that you’ll be able to escape the coming trials so you can stand tall in the presence of the Son of Man.