A WOEFUL DINNER
Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on December 2, 2020 under AM Bible Study |
AM Bible Study Group: December 2, 2020 from Luke 11:37-54
Theme: Our Lord speaks six ‘woes’ upon the grievous sin of hypocrisy.
(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).
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We have been studying together from that portion of Luke’s Gospel—starting with Chapter 10, and going all the way to Chapter 19—that deals with the final phase of our Lord’s earthly ministry. It’s the portion that is often called ‘the Judean ministry’. It involves the stories of what happened as He made His way toward Jerusalem—where He would present Himself as the long-awaited King of His people; be betrayed and arrested and crucified for our sins; and then raised from the dead for our justification.
We’ve already seen that there were many encounters along the way that involved strong opposition to our Lord. So far, they involved public events—such as when He was teaching, or when He performed a miracle. But now, we come to Luke 11:37-54; and a story of opposition that occurred during a dinner.
Usually, we all try to avoid controversy—especially during dinner. But this dinner presented our Lord with a dreadful situation of hypocrisy. And in it, we see Him speaking six ‘woes’. The Greek word that is used is ouai; and it’s a transliteration of the Hebrew expression ‘Oye!’ It means. “How terrible it is” or “How horrible it will be” for someone because of something. Whenever our Lord says such a thing, we should take it seriously! How truly horrible and woeful it will be for those who are characterized by the sin of hypocrisy.
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Now; the best way for us to approach this passage is to simply jump right in and look at it verse by verse. Our Lord had been responding to the opposition He had received because of a miracle He had performed. And so, in verse 37, we’re told,
And as He spoke, a certain Pharisee asked Him to dine with him. So He went in and sat down to eat (Luke 11:37).
Our Lord was always gracious. When He was invited to someone’s home—even someone who did not believe in Him—He went willingly. He didn’t mind going, even though He knew that His actions and words would be scrutinized. But before the dinner even began, the trouble arose. We’re told,
When the Pharisee saw it, he marveled that He had not first washed before dinner (v. 38).
This wasn’t a matter of sanitation or cleanliness. Rather, this was a matter of man-made, pseudo-spiritual ritualism. It was a ‘tradition of the elders’. We’re told about it in Mark 7;
For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands in a special way, holding the tradition of the elders. When they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other things which they have received and hold, like the washing of cups, pitchers, copper vessels, and couches (Mark 7:3-4).
It was a man-made ceremony. And when the Pharisee who had invited our Lord saw that He didn’t observe this ritual, we’re told that they marveled. “How can this Man be from God?”, they must have thought. “He doesn’t even wash His hands in the ceremonial way!—like we do!”
Now; let’s be careful here. Someone might be tempted to dismiss this as just a matter of the way ‘religious’ people behave and judge others. But such hypocritical judgmentalism doesn’t have to be ‘religious’ in nature. There are many man-made ‘rules for conduct’ or ‘patterns of acceptable belief’ that people—religious or non-religious—try to lay upon others. The whole matter of ‘judging others’ is far from being exclusively the behavior of religious people. Any time anyone makes up rules and regulations and ceremonies and rituals and standards for themselves—things which God never commanded—and elevate themselves as ‘righteous’ and ‘wise’ because they do those things, and judge and condemn others as ‘inferior’ or ‘sinful’ because they don’t—they are guilty of what this Pharisee was doing at his dinner table.
Our Lord responded! Our Lord was always gentle toward those who had fallen into many kinds of sins—especially when they knew they were sinners and wanted to be free from their guilt and shame. That’s what He went to the cross to accomplish for us. But He treated the sin of hypocrisy differently. It’s a sin by which we hide the truth about ourselves, and pretend to be something in the sight of others that we’re not. And our Lord reserved His harshest words for such hypocrisy. He began by responding to the specific matter of ‘washing’, and—in the process—gave a very vivid description of what hypocrisy really looks like.
Then the Lord said to him, “Now you Pharisees make the outside of the cup and dish clean, but your inward part is full of greed and wickedness” (v. 39).
Have you ever taken a coffee cup from off the shelf—thinking that it was clean—but then looked inside? You saw that someone must have put it away before washing it. It looked good on the outside; but on the inside, it was disgusting. Jesus said that that’s what this ‘hand-washing’ Pharisee was like—and indeed, what all hypocrisy is like. The Pharisee was concerned about outward cleanliness—but not inward purity. God sees the inside of the cup as well as the outside. He is concerned about what is within us. Jesus went on to say,
“Foolish ones! Did not He who made the outside make the inside also? But rather give alms of such things as you have; then indeed all things are clean to you” (vv. 40-41).
It’s as if our Lord said; “Give alms from the clean things that you have within, then all things—inside and out—will clean to you.” And that’s a vivid description of the cure for hypocrisy. Be real before God; and then let what you do on the outside be the product of what’s inside. Both ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ will be real.
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Now; it’s then that our Lord took the opportunity to speak beyond the situation of just that one Pharisee, and went on to speak of all ‘Pharisee-types’ who make a showy display of an outward purity that they don’t really possess inside. As the Son of God—who is able to peer into the heart and see the truth—He put their faults on display; and spoke a ‘woe’ to each fault.
First, He showed that such hypocrisy is woeful because …
1. IT FOCUSES ON MINOR THINGS WHILE IGNORING MAJOR NEEDS (v. 42).
In verse 42, He said;
“But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and all manner of herbs, and pass by justice and the love of God. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone” (v. 42).
These careful Pharisees would actually count out seeds and spices and ‘tithe’ on them—devoting a tenth to God. I don’t suppose very many of us would do that! But while focusing in on such little details in their supposed obedience to the commandments, they ignored the greater things that the commandments were actually intended to bring about. It’s great to tithe. But the weightier matters of justice and love of God should have been dealt with first. Do we try to make a show of doing the little things that people can see in our actions, while ignoring the greater omissions that only God can see in our hearts?
Jesus spoke another woe against hypocrisy; because …
2. IT SEEKS OUTWARD HONORS IN THE SIGHT OF MEN (v. 43).
In verse 43, our Lord said,
“Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces” (v. 43).
Now; I like good seats too; don’t you? I liked to be greeted. But this wasn’t just a matter of seating arrangements and friendly encounters. In Matthew 23:7, our Lord described this as a part of loving “greetings in the marketplaces, and to be called by men, ‘Rabbi, Rabbi’.” It’s about having the best seats and receiving honorable salutations because you want to be recognized and treated as someone important. Such hypocrisy allows us to sit in the best seats as if we were honorable and holy—while the true person occupying that seat is filled inside with sin in the sight of God.
Then, our Lord spoke a woe to such hypocrisy because …
3. IT CONCEALS THE TRUTH ABOUT INWARD CORRUPTION (v. 44).
In verse 44, our Lord said,
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like graves which are not seen, and the men who walk over them are not aware of them” (v. 44).
For a Jewish person to come into contact with a dead body was a ceremonially defiling thing. The law of Moses commanded that certain things needed to be done before a person who had such a contact could be allowed back into the religious life of the people. It would have been a ceremonially dangerous thing, then, for a burial site or a tomb to be ‘unmarked’. And Jesus was saying that the hypocritical person causes the defilement of others in a similar way. They appear to be holy and righteous because of their outward conduct—including their ceremonial washings. But people who encounter them don’t realize that they are coming into contact with someone who is filled with sin and corruption in the sight of God. They spread defilement upon others deceitfully by their outwardly righteous and hypocritical appearance.
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Now; in speaking these first three ‘woes’, our Lord was addressing the ways that hypocrisy covers up the truth about ourselves—that a hypocritical person ignores weightier matters of righteousness in favor of minor things, that they seek outward honors from men for which they are not worthy, and that they conceal the truth about inward corruption that they bear within.
But then, our Lord goes on to show how such hypocrisy harms others. In verse 45, we read;
Then one of the lawyers answered and said to Him, “Teacher, by saying these things You reproach us also” (v. 45).
A ‘lawyer’ back then was not what we typically think of today when we think of a lawyer—that is, an attorney at law. Rather, in Jesus’ day, a lawyer was a biblical scholar—an expert in the interpretation and application of the law of Moses. This particular lawyer was present at this dinner; and he apparently didn’t know when it might have been a good idea to keep quiet. He took personal offense at what our Lord said about hypocrisy; and the Lord responded by offering three more ‘woes’
He speaks a further woe against hypocrisy because …
4. IT LAYS HEAVY BURDENS ON OTHERS (v. 46).
This may have been a particular manifestation of hypocrisy that was typical of the experts in the law, because they sought to apply the law to the lives of others. We read in verse 46;
And He said, “Woe to you also, lawyers! For you load men with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers” (v. 46).
The experts in the law, in Jesus’ day, sought to build what they called ‘a fence around the law’. They created rules and regulations for life that kept anyone from coming near the edge of ever violating the law of God in practice. According to Jewish history, they created 613 additions to God’s law—specifying conduct in every area of life. It made normal life very difficult. Those who gave these extra rules didn’t provide any gracious means of keeping them or of relieving people of the ways that they weighted life down. They weren’t even necessarily concerned about keeping them themselves. They only wanted to make sure everyone else kept them. That’s what hypocrisy does. It doesn’t allow people to be free to live before God. Instead, it makes life miserable for others.
Jesus went on to speak another woe against such hypocrisy; saying that …
5. IT PERSECUTES AND SLAYS THE RIGHTEOUS (vv. 47-51).
Jesus—speaking to the lawyers—said in verses 47-48;
“Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets, and your fathers killed them. In fact, you bear witness that you approve the deeds of your fathers; for they indeed killed them, and you build their tombs” (vv. 47-48).
These lawyers built beautiful tombs to the prophets of the Old Testament era. They said, “If we had lived back in those days, we would never have participated with our fathers in the slaying of God’s prophets.” Yet, they thus admit that they are the sons of the slayers of prophets. They were, in fact, partners with their fathers—because their fathers killed them, and they built the tombs. Thus, they are part of the heritage of those who persecute and slay the righteous.
Because hypocrisy is a lie, it hates those who live in truth. In verses 49-51, Jesus said,
“Therefore the wisdom of God also said, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, and some of them they will kill and persecute,’ that the blood of all the prophets which was shed from the foundation of the world may be required of this generation, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah who perished between the altar and the temple. Yes, I say to you, it shall be required of this generation” (vv. 49-51).
God sent them prophets, and they killed them. In fact, they were about to kill the one who is Prophet, Priest and King—the greatest Prophet of them all—the one who was promised in Deuteronomy 13 as a ‘Prophet like Moses’. And for this reason, the guilt of all those in the past who killed prophets would fall upon them—all the way from Abel who killed his brother, to the Jewish people who killed Zechariah. (The person named Zechariah may be a reference to the prophet whose Old Testament book bears his name, or it may be the man Zechariah who was killed by King Joash in 2 Chronicles 24.) This is what hypocrisy leads to. It puts forth a pretend righteousness in the sight of men; and it jealously hates and kills those who truly are righteous before God.
And finally, Jesus speaks a woe against such hypocrisy; because …
6. IT PREVENTS OTHERS FROM ENTERING INTO TRUE KNOWLEDGE (v. 52).
Jesus said, in verse 52,
“Woe to you lawyers! For you have taken away the key of knowledge. You did not enter in yourselves, and those who were entering in you hindered.”
These lawyers were the scholars. They held the key to knowledge. But they hid the key. They kept the door locked to others. And they wouldn’t even go in themselves. How hypocritical their use of ‘knowledge’ was!
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Now; these strong words didn’t lead anyone to repentance. Instead, it brought their hypocrisy further out in the open—and they were made furious. Luke tells us in verses 53-54;
And as He said these things to them, the scribes and the Pharisees began to assail Him vehemently, and to cross-examine Him about many things, lying in wait for Him, and seeking to catch Him in something He might say, that they might accuse Him (vv. 53-54).
What good did their hand-washing do for them? It did nothing to cleanse their hearts.
Dear brothers and sisters; let’s carefully heed these six ‘woes’ spoken by our Lord against hypocrisy. Let’s ask the Holy Spirit to show us the truth. Let’s hear our Lord’s admonition and make sure that the inside of the cup is clean—and then all things will be clean on the outside.
EA
