The Life of Jesus

Fools! Didn’t the One who made the outside make the inside too?

Rather, give as alms what is inside, and then everything will be clean for you!

“But woe to you P’rushim! You pay your tithes of mint and rue and every garden herb, but you ignore justice and the love of God. You have an obligation to do these things — but without disregarding the others!

“Woe to you P’rushim, because you love the best seat in the synagogues and being greeted deferentially in the marketplaces!

“Woe to you, because you are like unmarked graves, which people walk over without knowing it.”

One of the experts in Torah answered him, “Rabbi, by saying these things you are insulting us also.”

Yeshua said, “Woe to you Torah experts too! You load people down with burdens they can hardly bear, and you won’t lift a finger to help them!

“Woe to you! You build tombs in memory of the prophets, but your fathers murdered them!

Thus you testify that you completely approve of what your fathers did — they did the killing, you do the building!

Therefore the Wisdom of God said, ‘I will send them prophets and emissaries; they will kill some and persecute others’;

so that on this generation will fall the responsibility for all the prophets’ blood that has been shed since the world was established,

from the blood of Hevel to the blood of Z’kharyah, who was killed between the altar and the Holy Place. Yes, I tell you, the responsibility for it will fall on this generation!

“Woe to you Torah experts! For you have taken away the key of knowledge! Not only did you yourselves not go in, you also have stopped those who were trying to enter!”

As Yeshua left that place, the Torah-teachers and the P’rushim began to oppose him bitterly and to provoke him to express his views on all sorts of subjects,

laying traps to catch him in something he might say.

Meanwhile, as a crowd in the tens of thousands gathered so closely as to trample each other down, Yeshua began to say to his talmidim first, “Guard yourselves from the hametz of the P’rushim, by which I mean their hypocrisy.

There is nothing covered up that will not be uncovered, or hidden that will not become known.

What you have spoken in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed on the housetops.

“My friends, I tell you: don’t fear those who kill the body but then have nothing more they can do.

I will show you whom to fear: fear him who after killing you has authority to throw you into Gei-Hinnom! Yes, I tell you, this is the one to fear!

Aren’t sparrows sold for next to nothing, five for two assarions? And not one of them has been forgotten by God.

Why, every hair on your head has been counted! Don’t be afraid, you are worth more than many sparrows.

“Moreover, I tell you, whoever acknowledges me in the presence of others, the Son of Man will also acknowledge in the presence of God’s angels.

But whoever disowns me before others will be disowned before God’s angels.

Also, everyone who says something against the Son of Man will have it forgiven him; but whoever has blasphemed the Ruach HaKodesh will not be forgiven.