<p>23:3&nbsp;<em>Therefore</em>- Because they were in the place of Moses, the Lord advised obedience to them rather than quitting the synagogue system. He told His disciples that the time would come when they would be cast out of the synagogues (Jn. 16:2). He clearly had no conception of guilt by association, acquired through religious association with those who taught and lived wrongly. For He goes on to roundly condemn the whole system of Judaism. Perhaps He hoped that the presence of His people amongst that system would be an influence for good upon at least some and a witness to the leadership. Or perhaps He knew that until the more public founding of the Christian church, those people had no realistic alternative but to continue attendance. For outside of the religious system they would spiritually flounder. Whatever, we never hear Him making a direct command to come out from the system until in Revelation we hear His call to come out of the latter day Babylon, which was likely an extension of His teaching in the Olivet prophecy to leave Jerusalem when she was besieged in the very last days. But this was therefore more of a call to self preservation rather than of religious separation because of differing principles. If He had intended separation for religious reasons, He surely would have called for it earlier. But He doesn't. The essential witness is made from our position embedded, at least externally, in this world.</p><p>Put together two scriptures in your mind: &ldquo;You must obey the Pharisees and do everything they tell you&rdquo;; and, &ldquo;Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees&rdquo; (Mt. 23:3; 16:6). Surely the Lord is teaching that we should respect elders but never cease personally analysing what they teach for ourselves. Once we stop doing this, we start resigning our own personality and will be unable to follow our Lord personally, i.e. with our own persons. And then we will be ripe for being caused to stumble, if those elders we are listening to then offend us. For &lsquo;we&rsquo;, with all that we are, will have been dominated by them.</p><p><em>All things whatever they tell you, do and observe</em>- But soon the Lord would be sending the disciples out with the commission to teach the world &ldquo;to observe s.w. all things that I have commanded you&rdquo; (28:20). And this command became programmatic for the early church, whose integrity was to be judged on the degree to which they had kept / observed s.w. the Lord&rsquo;s commands (1 Jn. 2:3-5; 3:22,24; 5:2,3; there are other allusions to the great commission in John&rsquo;s letters, e.g. 3 Jn. 7). So clearly enough&nbsp;<em>His</em>&nbsp;commands and the need for loyalty to&nbsp;<em>them</em>&nbsp;soon replaced His word here in Mt. 23:3 about observing / keeping the commands of the Scribes. He may be employing an element of sarcasm, as if to say &lsquo;It&rsquo;s OK, you don&rsquo;t have to put up with this much longer; in a day&rsquo;s time, I shall be dead, the Law of Moses will be completed, you will be free. But for just another 24 hours, endure their tyranny&rsquo;. Only afterwards would the disciples have appreciated what the Lord meant.</p><p><em>But do not you copy their works, for they say and do not</em>- The Lord is making a purposeful paradox. Their &lsquo;works&rsquo; were a not doing or working. Their sins of omission were counted by Him as a work. They, of course, prided themselves upon their works. But the Lord is saying that they actually did nothing- in His book. In this lies the tragedy of Christianity as mere religion. The works can be done, and yet in the Lord&rsquo;s eyes, the essential works are not done. The Lord continues His play on this idea by going on to say that the works they do are done to be seen of men (:5). They did the works but because they were done towards men and not to God, they were not really done. If we have our reward of men, then we have no reward of God. Our works s.w. must be made manifest / revealed by the light of Christ, specifically in the cross, as to whether they are worked &ldquo;in God&rdquo; or not (Jn. 3:21). The mere doing of the work is not the basis of acceptability.</p><p>The Pharisees did all the works, but in their hearts they never knew God, and finally went and did His Son to death. The Lord plays on the fact that ultimately, in God's eyes, they did no works at all: &quot;Do not ye after their works; for they say, and&nbsp;<em>do</em>&nbsp;not&quot; (Mt. 23:3). We are left to imagine the anger of those zealous men. They&nbsp;<em>did</em>&nbsp;do works, as the Lord observed. But to Him, ultimately they did nothing at all. They had no genuine motives.</p>