November 26 Sermon: Woes

Join us as we explore Jesus' confrontations with the Pharisees in Luke 11:37-54, illuminating their hypocrisy and the transformative power of authentic faith. 

Consider these questions as you listen to this week's message:

1. Reflecting on Pastor Mark’s story of the weeping willow tree, how does the metaphor of outward appearance versus inner authenticity resonate with the broader themes of hypocrisy and genuine faith explored in the text?

2. Jesus confronted the Pharisees for prioritizing ritualistic rules over the true essence of faith and righteousness. How does this confrontation parallel contemporary societal norms or personal practices that may emphasize appearances over genuine values or beliefs?

3. The passage draws attention to the concept of repentance and transformation. How can individuals today discern between superficial adherence to norms or traditions versus a genuine internal transformation that aligns with their beliefs and convictions?

Transcript:

It was back in September of 2001 that my wife and I got on an airplane in Omaha and we flew to Cleveland. We were going there for the purpose of an interview at a church in Sundeski, ohio, to be the youth director at a church there. Now, after the interview, we got a full tour of the church building and the rest of the church property. As part of that tour, we checked out one of the two personages that the church had. Now we only needed one tour because these two homes were mirror images of each other. So if you saw one, you saw the other. But as we left the one on the east side, my wife told me that if we got the job, we were picking the one on the west. Now, like I said, they were identical. We had a good idea of it, but why was she so interested in picking the one on the west? It wasn't because it was further from the street. It was in on the parking lot more and we wouldn't have to worry about watching Ahna play in the front yard as much. It wasn't because that one was closer to the YMCA and we wouldn't have to take 30 less steps to walk to the YMCA. It wasn't for that reason. No, she looked in the backyard and in that backyard was a beautiful weeping willow tree. She loved that tree. She wanted to be in the house that had that tree, and we have many fond memories of Ahna playing in the backyard, and when we watch old videos we get a little bit nostalgic about that tree because of the eight years we lived there. It wasn't there. I think it was probably about three years into it, as before either Josh or Carly was born.

I got a call in the morning, sitting in my office, and my wife was upset because the church had hired some tree pruners to come and prune the different trees around the church property. There were a lot of them, and she was told that the weeping willow tree needed to come down. It was beautiful, to be sure, but it was rotten on the inside. Now she had asked them if there was anything that could be done, but they told her it wouldn't take much for that tree to fall over, and, being so close to Lake Erie, we often had storms with very strong winds, and so the tree could easily fall over onto the house.

While the tree was aesthetically pleasing, it was decaying on the inside, and today we continue our journey through the story that Luke tells, and what we see here is Jesus rebuking the Pharisees, and the primary idea that comes through in the text here is the idea of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. Everything is good on the outside, but the internal life of the Pharisees was entirely different, and so, as we consider this passage of Scripture, we're going to dwell on three ideas that come through for us in the text today. The first one is that we're going to consider what I just illustrated as I opened up this morning the difference between outward appearance and authentic faith. This point that Jesus draws out is one that resonates with us. We can not only identify hypocrisy, but we also have an inherent distaste for it as well. Hypocrisy is a character trait that nobody finds appealing. Secondly, we see that Jesus confronts this hypocrisy, and this is something that not only happens in this story that we're looking at today, but the words of Jesus and the message of the Gospel stands against hypocrisy in every time and in every heart. And finally, we'll find that we are called to transformation. It is one thing to identify hypocrisy, even within ourselves, but it's an entirely different endeavor to change and to conform our lives so that we have consistency in them with what we say we believe. Now, as we get into this discussion, let's look at how this whole interaction gets started, as there's information that will help us to not only navigate the passage, but also help us to understand other times of interaction that we see between Jesus and the Pharisees when we're in other parts of the gospels.

This battle between Jesus and the Pharisees is something we see regularly. So what we see here is very straightforward, easy for us to understand. Jesus was going to eat and the Pharisees were concerned that he didn't wash his hands. Now you might be thinking this sounds like my mother. She was always upset with me when I didn't wash my hands before having my bologna sandwich and macaroni and cheese. But that's not what's going on here. The concern here of the Pharisees isn't a concern of hygiene, and I would advise you children, just for the record, when your mother tells you to wash your hands, don't call her a Pharisee. That might not go over well.

So the story reminds us here about the root issue that's going on in so many different interactions that Jesus has with the Pharisees. What they do is they take ritual commands from the law and then they amplify these commands beyond the intention of the command. You see, the law had strict rules about washing, but these were for ceremonial purity in the temple. And notice, they're sitting down to eat. They aren't heading into the temple's inner court to offer sacrifices to a holy God. That's not what they're doing here.

As I said, this is an excellent example of what was going on with the Pharisees and why there were so many confrontations between Jesus and the Pharisees. They took a clear command that had real significance to show the purity and holiness of God in the temple worship, and then they went and applied it in a way that was never intended. As you've heard me mention before, the Pharisees were legitimately well-intentioned people. They saw that the people of God were not living faithful to the commands of God, and so they were calling people to change and live lives of holiness. But as a part of this, what they did was they took these types of things, the ceremonial cleanliness. They took them to the extreme in hopes of helping people to be more faithful and more pure. Well, in this case, the tradition developed from the idea that all of Israel should be a kingdom of priests, and so everyone should be clean all the time, particularly before when they eat.

But this was a distortion of the command and an expansion that was not in any way justifiable by scripture, and so this info gives us a backdrop for the response of Jesus here. This is more than just a response to them being upset that he didn't wash his hands. This response of Jesus is to the whole system of being more concerned with made-up laws and regulations than actually living a holy life and loving others. And so we see Jesus exposing the problem with scathing words of judgment against their hypocrisy as he delivers these woes. And these words of Jesus get right to the point, don't they? He talks about the Pharisees cleaning up the outside of the cup, but inside they're full of greed and wickedness, and I don't need to spend considerable time here explaining this. We get what Jesus is saying.

The Pharisees are deliberate to do all the right stuff and to look good on the outside. The stuff that people can see is their concern, but their hearts aren't in the right place. We know what hypocrisy is. We detest hypocrisy. You and I will never be telling a friend about somebody we know that they don't and say you know, he's a really great guy and you know what my favorite character trait about this guy is he's the biggest hypocrite I've ever met. I just love that. It's probably our most detested character trait.

We have an inherent distaste for those who look one way but you can tell that that's not who they are on the inside. And before we move on from identifying the point Jesus is making here, we must bring this to today. As I just said, we inherently have a distaste for hypocrisy. And on top of it all, it is even easier to see the harmful nature of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees here because, as I pointed out, what they are doing is really absurd. What the Pharisees are doing here with their requirements are almost a caricature. They're that extreme. And so it's really easy for us to look at the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and stand over them in judgment. We forget about the hypocrisy in our own hearts because we see it so obviously in other people, and particularly in the Pharisees. Here it comes down to what we usually do yeah, I've got issues, but at least I'm not like that. That's something that we all do.

These words of the Pharisees, these words to the Pharisees here by Jesus, we have to remember these are not only an indictment of the Pharisees. The Holy Spirit also uses these words of Jesus here to convict us of our own hypocrisy, and we must be deliberate to evaluate where you and I have washed the outside of the cup but we've left it filthy on the inside. We have to be brutally honest with ourselves and be willing to turn to Christ in repentance and faith, with the goal of amending our lives. The truth is, the most significant problem with the Pharisees is not that they're really hypocrites. We're all hypocrites. Their greater fault is that they did not repent when they were called to repentance for their hypocrisy. Right their issue was clearly shown to them. It's obvious. What Jesus is saying is clear here. The biggest issue that they have is that they don't do anything about it.

And so the next section of the text that we'll see here is Jesus not only identifying the problem, but confronting it and then offering a solution. And Jesus says here, as we start to look at verses 40 through 43, that didn't God make the inside and the outside of you? Shouldn't everything match up? Shouldn't you be concerned about both? And he also makes an interesting statement about the giving of alms. Now, if we were to stop there with verse 41, we might not understand why Jesus is even bringing this up, but we get more of an education on the approach of the Pharisees here in the verses that follow.

See, the Pharisees were so deliberate in keeping rules that they literally gave 10% a tithe of everything the scripture said to tithe, and so Jesus mentions that to obey this, they divided out 10% of their spice rack. They literally did everything. And notice, jesus brings up these spices because they're small, they're insignificant, and they were so obsessed with giving exactly 10% that they weighed these tiny things. And you and I understand the absurdity of this. That isn't the point. The point was to return to God the first and the best of what he had given to his people in love and mercy. And yes, there was an explicit command to give a tithe. But if someone came joyfully and accidentally, because they didn't have a scale, only gave 9.9% of their income, were they breaking the purpose of the command? No, they weren't.

Someone can get out their calculator and their scale and figure out exactly how to give 10% of everything they have. And if they believe that somehow this merits righteousness before God for them, they don't get it. 10% isn't your gateway into heaven. Going from 9.9 to 10% is not what gets you in, and then 15% isn't getting you a closer seat to the throne of glory, and 25 or 30% isn't getting you an extra big mansion on an extra gold street. But once again we see how the Pharisees were splitting hairs with the law of God and then ignoring the needs of others and having hearts that neglect others.

And the words of Jesus here cut right to the point and show us that they are just doing this for show. And he shows us this by saying that they love the best seat in the synagogues. Now, I'm not sure exactly what the best seat in a synagogue was, but based upon my extensive experience in American Protestantism, I'm assuming that the best seat in a synagogue or in a church is in the back. There's just an educated guess there. But joking aside, wherever the seats they desired were located, we thoroughly understand the point Jesus is making. They wanna be noticed, they want to give the appearance of holiness, yet they aren't concerned about actual righteousness. Basically, they wanted to be important. But all of this is just a show. It's just like the weeping willow tree in our backyard it looked great, but it was rotten on the inside.

And in verse 44, jesus uses compelling imagery to drive this home for us. He delivers another statement of woe to the Pharisees, and this time we read that they're like unmarked graves and people walk over them without knowing it. Now, the first thing you might wonder as you read this is what's the big deal? Why is Jesus using this as an illustration? Why is this a woe? Well, in the book of Numbers, people who touched a dead body or touched a grave were declared ritually unclean, and so they went about whitewashing graves so that people could identify them, so they would not accidentally come near a grave, touch it and be ritually unclean. And so the point that Jesus is making here really has two sharp edges. This is a scathing woe on the Pharisees here, because he's telling them you're not only dead, but you also defile others with the way you worry about what's on the outside instead of being concerned with the condition of their hearts. This really had to have cut the Pharisees deep, because the goal of the Pharisees was to be ritually pure and to restore law keeping by God's people. But Jesus says here they're failing. Actually, he really is saying, isn't he, that you're not only failing, you're making it worse.

But Jesus isn't only insulting Pharisees here. We see this in the response of a lawyer who heard Jesus speak words of woe here. Now, the lawyers are those who were experts in the law. They studied the law. Now, at this time, most of these lawyers, these experts in the law of God, were Pharisees, but not all of them were, and the lawyer that Luke records for us here takes exception to what Jesus has to say, and so the woes come for the experts of the law as well. The statement of this guy. I wonder, when he asked this, if he knew that he was going to be unleashing even more scathing words of woe from Jesus. But this is what they get, and the first one leveled at the lawyers is that they put the rigor of the law onto the people and they tell them to keep it, but they don't bother with it themselves. It doesn't apply to them.

As I alluded to previously, the burden Jesus is mentioning here are not the laws of God itself, but these little extra laws they came up with as a fence around the law to make allegedly keeping the law easier. But Jesus rightly calls this a burden. Now, what I always do when I talk about this is I use the imagery of a large, heavy log. These extra laws are designed to help them feel like they can keep the law. But aren't I better off when I look at a large, heavy log and see it there and say, there's no way I can carry that. You can't put that on me. I need help, I need the assistance of another or I need someone else to carry it for me. I'm better off there.

What they were doing here was people could see the burden of the law and remember the three uses of the law, that they stop our mouth, they show us how to live, but they also help us to see that we need Jesus, that we need God to intervene and help us. But what they were doing is they were trying to make the law achievable. So they were taking that log of the law and slicing off a piece of paper and putting it on their shoulders and say, see, you can carry this one, and here's another one, and here's another one, and here's another one. But eventually that log ends up on their shoulders and the burden comes on them. I was able to do these, but now I can't do this. The burden does not become something where they go looking for the rescue of another. Instead, the burden all ends up on their shoulders. They act like they're taking it away, but really they're just slowly adding the exact same burden to the people.

And this activity is not the only thing that Jesus delivers these woes about. It goes back to the history of the lawyers in not listening to the prophets, and the idea we see here is that these types of people were the ones who persecuted prophets in the past. When people rose up to proclaim the word of God, it was these teachers of the law who killed the prophets. It was those type of people. And the point that we see in this is that this is nothing new.

Back to Abel and Genesis or Zechariah in Second Chronicles and all those who proclaimed the truth, they had opposition from teachers like those Jesus is facing here in Luke, and he tells them that the blood of all of these prophets is on their hands. Because, even though they likely look back on the stories and they don't think they're the bad guys, they are the bad guys. They stand against the truth because they put human ideas, they put human traditions above God's word and they don't turn from their sin in repentance and faith. And this is our final point as we look at the final woe that Jesus delivers to the lawyers here. They had what they needed, but in adding to the law of God, they took it away from the people. The word of God showed them what they needed to do, but they didn't use the key that they've been given. They didn't amend their lives. Instead, they heaped on greater burden. Jesus tells them that they knew they needed to go through that door, and not only didn't they go in themselves, but they kept people away by making these additional laws, keeping people away from the truth. It's keeping them from turning from their sin in repentance and faith. And this is really, really, really powerful imagery. Here the Pharisees and the experts in the law not only refuse to go through the door themselves, but they're blocking it for others who so desperately need it. And because they're standing there as experts, as those who give this instruction, people trust them and they're keeping them away from the truth.

And this entire passage is humbling for us. There's no denying the point that Jesus is making. Is there? No amount of outward posturing deals with the rot on the inside? And as sinful creatures, our outward appearance isn't the problem, is it? We're born dead in trespasses and sins, and that's not an external problem. It's an internal problem. To go back to the tree in our yard, once again the problem was the rot in the tree and in Adam, we are all born with rot within the tree. Trimmers that day in my yard could have easily decided that they were too lazy to cut down our weeping willow tree, and I'm confident they could have pruned it. It needed it and made it look even more beautiful than it already was. But that wouldn't have taken care of the issue. When a storm from the northeast whipped over Lake Erie, the whole thing could have come crashing down on the house, regardless of how beautiful the tree had been pruned, regardless of how good it looked.

So this passage is a humbling call to true repentance for you and me. Will we hear the words of Jesus and acknowledge that we're hypocrites like the Pharisees and the experts in the law and in repentance and faith, turn to Jesus and trust that the conviction brought to us through the word and the work of the Holy Spirit is for our benefit? Will we amend our lives or will we be like the Pharisees and the teachers of the law? And it's really saddening to read how this passage closes up for us today, because these guys didn't hear this call to repentance and amend their lives. Instead, they looked for ways to destroy Jesus. Their self-righteousness was so great that the Lord of glory, speaking to truth to them, fell on deaf ears. Repentance was the last thing on their mind. Instead, their hearts became even harder, and we have a great motivation for turning in repentance and faith that the Pharisees didn't have, because we know the gospel.

We know that we do not merit righteousness through keeping of the law. In fact, we deeply know that we are so completely incapable of earning our way to God that we need Jesus. So why would we return to outward keeping of rules when we have the gift of salvation earned for us by the life, death, resurrection and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ? This great gift we have motivates us to live a holy life, not because we think we're meriting something before God, but because we have already been saved. It motivates us to live a genuine life of repentance and faith, trusting in God's work for us. And so, as we close up today, may the blessing of the word and spirit be upon us, that we might leave from here not like the Pharisees and like the experts in the law, but instead may we be grateful that God has given us the conviction of areas of rot inside us, and may we trust that, through the same word and spirit that brings this conviction, he can transform us, that our lives might not be filled with hypocrisy and fake righteousness, but instead may we display the transforming work of Christ to the world.

Amen, let us pray. Almighty and everlasting God. We praise you for the gift of your word. We thank you that in it we hear these calls to repentance and we pray, lord, that we would have genuine repentance each and every day. May we not worry about washing the outside of the cup, but instead clean the inside, that we might reflect the righteousness that you have given us in Jesus. Help us to be faithful witnesses to the world that you might receive all the glory. In the name of Jesus that we pray, amen.