If I should ask you for adjectives describing Jesus, I’m almost certain I’d get such words as kind, loving, forgiving, patient, gentle. All of these answers are correct. But if you read the New Testament carefully, you’ll come up with some other words ― words like impatient, angry, and perhaps even disgusted. Now the question is, what or who brought out these negative feelings in Jesus?
Our scripture of the day gives an answer. Jesus is teaching in Jerusalem. This means that religious leaders are everywhere: the people the New Testament so often refers to as "the scribes and Pharisees." These scribes and Pharisees were trying feverishly to discredit Jesus by asking questions they felt might put him on the spot. But Jesus had just turned the tables by asking these same men a question they couldn’t answer. It was a humiliating moment for these men of dignity and position.
Now it’s almost as if Jesus is sorry for what he has done. What he had done was right and proper, mind you, but it could have bad fallout, because it might diminish the authority of the religious leaders. So Jesus said, "The scribes and Pharisees have authority; they sit on Moses’ seat. For that reason, you ought to listen to them, and follow their teachings."
With these words, Jesus endorsed the office and authority of the scribes and Pharisees. But he didn’t stop there. He now proceeded to condemn the way these men actually lived, because the way they lived was in vivid contrast to their teaching. And in what he said, Jesus demonstrated that he was, indeed, angry, impatient and disgusted. "Don’t do as they do," Jesus said, "because they don’t practice what they preach
