Welcome to Form Now. I'm Tim Gray, president of the Augustine Institute, and joining me is Dr. Michael Barber, a professor of scripture here at the Augustine Institute, and we're going to continue our ongoing Bible study on the Gospel of Matthew. Last time we left off towards the very end of Matthew Chapter 23. So grab your Bibles and open up to Matthew Chapter 23 with us, and we're going to cover, hopefully Michael Michael maybe even Matthew chapter 24 today.

Let's do our best. That would be fantastic I think. At the end of Matthew 23 we come to

the conclusion, the conclusion of those seven woes that Jesus had pronounced. And he explains

that the scribes and Pharisees complain, they say, if we had lived in the days of our fathers,

we would not have taken part with them in the shedding of the blood of the prophets. And Jesus says

that they testify against themselves, because what's going to happen is, of course, they're going

to shed his blood, right? And so in acting this way, these scribes and Pharisees are participating

in the sin of the righteous people who came before them that persecuted the prophets.

It's so ironic because they're comparing themselves as better than their ancestors.

And so in a rabbinic way, they love to study Jeremiah and Isaiah and the prophets. But by studying the prophets, they say, well, you know, that wouldn't happen now. We're much better than that. That's right. And yet they're going to be, as you point out, guilty. In fact, even guiltier than, because it's not just going to be Jeremiah that

they kill, it's going to be the Messiah. That's the great irony. Yeah, it's, it's, and what Jesus says

is that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth from the blood of righteous

able to the blood of Zechariah, Barakia, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar.

And that's a story that we find in the historical books of the Old Testament.

Jesus is, of course, drawing together the story of Abel and the story from the historical books

that describe Zechariah, this man who's killed in Second Chronicles 36.

And what Jesus is saying is that there is a climactic moment that is approaching,

and that is everything that's taken place in human history has been leading up towards his death.

And the scribes, the Pharisees, the leadership there in Jerusalem is going to bear the guilt of this terrible crime,

and blood will in a sense be on them.

And that's language of judgment that you find.

It is.

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