Matthew 23:23-36

23It will be very bad for you, teachers of God's Law and Pharisees. You are hypocrites! When you grow spices to cook with food, you give a tenth part of these small things to God. You are right to obey this rule. But you do not obey the more important parts of God's Law. You do not help people in a good way. You are not kind to them. You do not always do what God says is right. You should have done these important things as well as the other small things.

24You are like blind people, but you show other people which way to go. You carefully take a small fly out of your water so that you do not drink it. But then you drink the large animal that is swimming in it!

25It will be very bad for you, teachers of God's Law and Pharisees. You are hypocrites! You always clean the outside of your cups and plates very carefully. You only clean the outside part that people can see. But on the inside, everything is still dirty. Inside you, your minds are full of bad thoughts. You want to have more things for yourself. You hurt other people to get what you want.

26Pharisees, you do not see what is true! You must first clean the inside of the cup. Then the outside that people can see will also be clean.

27It will be very bad for you, teachers of God's law and Pharisees. You are hypocrites! You are like a grave that has nice white paint on the outside and it looks beautiful. But on the inside it is full of bones and disgusting things.

28You are the same as that. Other people look at you. They think that you are good and you obey God. But on the inside you are hypocrites. Your minds are full of many bad thoughts.

29It will be very bad for you, teachers of God's Law and Pharisees. You are hypocrites! You build up the places where people have buried God's prophets. You make the places where they have buried good people to be beautiful.

30You say, “Our ancestors killed God's prophets long ago. If we had lived at that time, we would not have helped our ancestors to do that.”

31So you are speaking against yourselves. You show that you are the sons of those people who killed God's prophets.

32Now you must finish the work that your ancestors began to do!

33You are like a family of dangerous snakes! You will not be able to run away. God will surely punish you, and he will send you to hell.

34So listen to this. God says, “I will send prophets to you. I will also send to you people who know many things. And I will send people to teach you what is true. But you will kill some of these people. You will kill some of them on a cross. In the places where you meet to pray, you will hit some of them with whips. They will run from one town to another town, but you will follow them.”

35Because of all this, God will punish you for all the good people that you and your ancestors have killed. Long ago, Abel was the first of those good people. You also killed Zechariah, the son of Berekiah. He died in the yard of the temple near the altar.

36Yes, I tell you this: God will punish the people who are alive today for all those murders.