Don't be a door Kingdom closer!
Dispute of Jesus and the Pharisees over tribute money (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) “But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees , hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.” ( Matthew 23:13 ) Our Lord Jesus pronounced eight “woes” in Matthew 23 on the religious leaders of His day. This one condemns them for refusing the liberty that Christ was bringing with the new covenant. The first “formal” message that Jesus preached was taken from the great prophecy in Isaiah 61: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised” ( Luke 4:18 ). Later, the apostle Paul noted that “before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed” (