Balancing Blessings Series

People watching

There are some people who have a hobby of “people watching.” It’s not necessarily creepy or stalking, just observing.

My dad is one of those people. Whether going to a mall or an amusement park, before the advent of cell phones, he would just sit and watch people while the rest of us went into stores or rode rides. When we returned to him, we’d all head to the next spot and he would sit and wait, watching what was happening around.

There is a lot you can learn about people, just by observing.

Posture and gait - reveal a bit about physical abilities

How people interact with others can leave some hints about their relationships and even a bit of what they think about the people they are with (delight, enjoyment, contentment, contempt).

What people wear - style, neatness, comfort - I always found it interesting to go to Kings Dominion and see “couples” dressed in identical outfits.

We can learn a lot from observation, and Jesus gives us a little example of that in the passage we’re considering this week.

Turn in your bibles to Luke 20:45. P. 838

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve observed…

Jesus in the Temple

drove out sellers

confronted by varying groups of religious leaders.

Yet they became silenced because they couldn’t get at Jesus through His teaching. As much as they hated him, they couldn’t refute him.

So, Jesus, still surrounded by his listeners, seems to be observing people - He’s people watching and draws out some conclusions and applications for His listeners and for us.

Luke 20:45–21:4 ESV

And in the hearing of all the people he said to his disciples, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and love greetings in the marketplaces and the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts, who devour widows’ houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”

Jesus looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the offering box, and he saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. And he said, “Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.”

Jesus, in His observations, points out some contrasts. As we think through these for us today, it seems like there are three pairs of contrasts that we should consider:

Responsibility over Recognition

Sacrifice over Surplus

Humility over Honorifics

Let’s begin by considering the contrast of…

Responsibility over Recognition

Jesus observes the scribes. Now, they have been one portion of the groups of people that have been confronting Jesus.

But who are these scribes?

Scribes were priests who were also experts in the law, in Scripture. They were highly educated. Like lawyers in our day, they were periodically engaged to help people understand how the law should be applied and would also be called upon to adjudicate some matters of estates. They were essentially called upon to (NBD):

Preserve the law - they did this a by carefully copying the texts in order to preserve them.

gather students to teach the Torah

entrusted with administrating the law

But, I think there is another element to all of this that we need to consider, that is that the culture of Jesus’ day and that of the OT was predominantly an oral culture. In other words, most people could not read, so in order to learn the Word of God, people had to hear it. This was very much a communal act as people gathered together regularly hear the Word of God and hear it explained. We see this some in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah as Ezra, who was also a scribe, was called upon to read and teach the word of God. Scribes had an important job, especially since most people did not have access to God’s word. They had a great responsibility. In some ways, that responsibility came with some recognition.

Unfortunately, in Jesus’ observations, He noticed that they seemed to love the blessings that came from the recognition they received. He said that they “like” to wear long robes. We might think of these robes as being similar in formality as those we would see at a graduation or those that a judge or justice might wear in a courtroom. In our day, the black robes, various colors, stoles, head coverings, and bands on the arms are accompanied by different levels of recognition.

In this desire to garner recognition, that included sitting in the seats of honor and being praised for their long, ornate prayers - which may have become a show of their education or command of language.