What do the following three verses have in common? (Just hover over the verse to read it)

Matthew 4:19

Matthew 23:15

Matthew 28:19

The answer: all three introduce the idea of deliberately making “something” out of “someone.”

“I will make you fishers of men”

“You make him twice as much a child of hell”

“Go and make disciples of all men”

In all three verses Jesus is speaking.

In Matthew 4 he is compelling the brothers James and John to follow him. Jesus is the one who will make them “fishers of men.”

In Matthew 28 Jesus is commissioning the disciples to go and make other follows of Jesus from all nations; to go in his power and through his authority.

But in Matthew 23 Jesus is condemning the scribes and pharisees.

What scares me about these verses is that they imply that great power belongs to those who seek to be “makers.” Jesus has the power to transform ordinary men into great servants. Jesus gave the disciples great power to turn people from all nations into great disciples. The scribes and pharisees had great power, but it was the power of twisted scriptures, twisted rules, and twisted religion. And the result Jesus said was to make followers (proselyte – “an outsider who was brought into a religion”) who were “twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.” They were brought into a false religious system that was a distortion of true biblical Judaism. In other words, unsaved men (Matthew 23:13) were leading others to their doom by converting them to a false faith. They were the blind leading the blind to their death (Matthew 15:14).

Is it possible to know how to be the kind of “maker” that Jesus praises? Matthew 23 gives us the qualities of false spiritual leaders. From these we will pull out the principles of true spiritual mentoring and discipleship.

And we’ll do that in the next post.