Title: Six Woes
Text: Luke 11:37-54
Date: March 2, 2008
Location: Sulphur Spring Baptist Church
Verse 37 tells us that a Pharisee invited Jesus to share a meal with him and a few of his friends. Jesus agreed to the man’s generous offer, but almost immediately entering the man’s home Jesus began to say and do things that offended the man and his friends. We normally think about Jesus as being a very loving, caring and compassionate man, and He was. But He was also a man that had no patience when it came to religious ritual and hypocrisy. So He took this opportunity to tell the Pharisees exactly what He thought about them. Of course that didn’t go over very well with the Pharisees, and from that day on they started looking for a way to get rid of Jesus once and for all.
Most of you may have at least heard about the Pharisees before but I’m sure the majority of you really don’t know who they were or what they believed. So let me take just a few minutes and give you a little information about them.
The Pharisees were the Religious Fundamentalists of their day. They were very legalistic when it came to keeping the Law of Moses. The Pharisees were a Jewish sect that was formed during the Second century B.C. Most were very well educated in the Jewish law as well as the oral traditions that had been passed down from generation to generation.
The original goal of the Pharisees was to bring Spiritual Revival or renewal to the land of Israel. They recognized that the reason Israel was in the condition they were in was primarily because the Jewish people had chosen to disobey the Law.
Consequently their intention was to promote and teach the importance of obeying the Law of Moses. Which would in turn produce holiness and righteousness in the lives of the Jewish people and pave and the way for the kingdom of God to be established on earth.
In some respects we as Southern Baptists have a lot in common with the Pharisees They believed in the inspiration and authority of the Bible (which in their case, was the Old Testament). They believed in the Supernatural. They believed in Satan. They believed in Heaven, and Hell, and they even believed in the resurrection of the dead.
So far they sound like a good group of men, who had good intentions. The problem with the Pharisees was not in what they believed, or what they hoped to do, but in what they actually became and what they actually did.
Their goals were noble and more importantly they were right. The Spiritual condition of the nation of Israel was in fact due to the Sin and disobedience of the Jewish people. But unfortunately, somewhere along the way the Pharisee’s lost sight of the original goal of bringing a spiritual revival to the nation of Israel. Maybe it was power or money, or perhaps it was the prestige that went along with being a Pharisee but something sidetracked them. Instead of being the first to recognize Jesus as the Messiah, they were the first to reject Him. Rather than turning the nation to Him, they did everything within their power to turn the nation against Him.
So what went wrong? The Pharisees understood what the problem was, but they obviously didn’t know the solution.
They understood that sin and disobedience were the problem but they thought the best way to correct the problem was to focus all of their attention on keeping the Law of Moses.
They taught the importance of keeping the law, but neglected to teach the equally important spiritual truths that came from the prophets. They came to dwell too heavily on the “letter” of Law. They concentrated too much on the details of the Law and not enough on its purpose, which of course was to make them aware of their sins.
The final straw so to speak was when the Pharisees began to give greater spiritual importance to their own ‘interpretations of the Law’ rather than the Law itself. In those places where the traditions of the Pharisees contradicted the written Law, their traditions always prevailed.
The relationship between the Pharisees and the written Law of God is similar to that of the Supreme Court of the United States and our Constitution.
One day last week I was helping Lora prepare for a test in her social studies class and we were going over the different functions of the 3 different branches of government, including the Supreme Court. The Supreme Courts responsibility according to our Constitution is to interpret laws passed by Congress and make sure they agree with our Constitution.
Unfortunately, very few of the ‘opinions’ and “interpretations” that are given by the Supreme Court today are decided by examining the Constitution itself.
Most of their decisions are based on their own interpretations of the Constitution instead of the original document itself.
That was exactly what the Pharissees were doing.
This was not the first time Jesus had been invited to the home of a Pharisee, nor was it the first time that they had heard him teach. In fact on several occasions during his 3½ year ministry, the Pharisees had voiced their disapproval of Jesus or his teachings.
On one occasion they questioned why He ate or associated with sinners like Zacheaus.
On another occasion they wondered why Jesus would allow a woman of questionable character to touch him, much less wash his feet with her tears.
On another occasion they couldn’t understand why Jesus didn’t teach his disciples to fast like they did.
Then there was the time Jesus cast a demon out of a man, and they claimed that Satan had given him the power to do it.
They also criticized Jesus for healing a man on the Sabbath, and allowing his disciples to pick grain on the Sabbath.
Finally they criticized him for allowing his disciples to eat without ceremonially washing their hands. Which of course is the same thing that our text mentions.
Now I want to make sure you understand what’s going on here. This Pharisee isn’t upset that Jesus forgot to wash the dirt off of his hands before setting down to eat. He’s upset because Jesus didn’t see the need to follow the ‘tradition of the Pharisees’ and wash his hands in a certain way for a certain amount of time by using a certain amount of water.
This type of “ceremonial washing” was not required by the Jewish Law, but was one of the traditions that the Pharisees had added to the Law. The Gospel of Mark explains this practice in more detail. In Mark 7:1-4 it says:
The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the Law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and saw some of his disciples eating food with “unclean”—that is, ceremonially unwashed—hands. (The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles.) .
In his commentary on The Gospel of Luke, William Barclay gives us a little insight into this religious practice:
"The law [in this case out of the Talmud, not the Law of Moses] laid it down that before a man ate he must wash his hands in a certain way and that he must also wash them between courses....large stone vessels of water were specially kept for the purpose because ordinary water might be unclean; the amount of water used must be...enough to fill one and a half egg-shells. First the water must be poured over the hands beginning at the tips of fingers and running right up to the wrist. Then the palm of each hand must be cleansed by rubbing the fist of one into the other. Finally, water must again be poured over the hand, this time beginning at the wrist and running down to the fingertips. To the Pharisee, to omit the slightest detail of this was to sin."
Now with that in mind why didn’t Jesus wash his hands before he sat down? Was it just an oversight on his part? Did he just forget, like our children sometimes do? I don’t think so. I believe Jesus had no intention of washing, because He knew what kind of reaction He would get from the Pharisees and He wanted to take this opportunity to let them know exactly what He thought about them.
In the next few verses Jesus takes the opportunity to share a few things with the Pharisees.
(1) First of all, He told them that they weren’t nearly as clean as they thought they were. Even though on the outside they looked like good upstanding citizens they really weren’t. Instead of being righteous and holy they were full of greed and wickedness.
The overall impact of Jesus’ words was clear. Jesus differed from His host and the other Pharisees by believing that what was on the inside was much more important than what was on the outside. In other words a man’s attitudes and motives are much more important than what he pretends to be. The Pharisees believed that a man is made holy by working from the outside, in. Jesus believed that holiness (and defilement) came from the inside, out.
Unfortunately, many people today are making the same mistake that the Pharisees made. They put their Sunday clothes on, and come to church every week. They want everyone to believe they are faithful Christians. When in reality all they’re doing is playing church.
That’s what Jesse James did. James killed a man during a bank robbery but a few weeks later was baptized into the Kearney Baptist Church. Not long after that, James killed another man. Yet that didn’t keep him from becoming the choir director at his church.
Keith Miller puts it this way; “It has never ceased to amaze me that we Christians have developed a kind of selective vision which allows us to be deeply and sincerely involved in worship and church activities and yet be almost totally pagan in the day in, day out guts of our business lives and never even realize it.”
(2) Next Jesus tells the Pharisees that they have lost sight of the design of the law.
You see they tithed, but they neglected the more important matters of the law. Jesus did not criticize them for tithing, but he did say that they intentionally overlooked the part of the law that required them to have compassion on the poor and to love God with all of their heart, soul, and mind. In other words the Pharisees interpreted the law to justify their own beliefs. The part of the law that they were unwilling to abide by, they simply overlooked.
Once again, this is still a problem in our day and time. People pick and choose what they want to believe about the Bible and either ignore or try to explain away the rest.
(3) Next Jesus rebukes the Pharisees’ for their preoccupation with position, prestige, and the praise of men.
The front seats in the local synagogue were the best seats for two reasons: (1) You could see and hear everything that was going on in the service, and you could be the first to greet visiting rabbis. Not to mention the fact that everyone else could see that they were sitting in the most prominent seats. You see the Pharisees did not go to the synagogue to worship or to hear the word of God proclaimed. Instead they went to the synagogue to get their egos stroked, which was also the main reason they went into the marketplace.
They wanted to be recognized as Pharisees because it made them feel good about themselves. They liked feeling superior to everyone else. They were driven by their desire to have men’s approval, rather than God’s. Consequently they could not interpret the Scriptures or teach them accurately. Their attitudes and their preconceived ideas kept them from being able to rightly divide the Word of God.
(4) The last thing Jesus said that was directed to the Pharisees was the most painful and most explicit. Jesus accused the Pharisees of being a source of defilement, rather than a source of purification.
In the Law which the Pharisees revered (Numbers 19:16) the Israelites were taught that a person was rendered ceremonially unclean by coming into contact with a grave, even if the grave was unmarked.
If that happened then they would not be allowed to attend any religious services for seven days. The Pharisees thought of themselves as righteous and holy people. They also believed they were making a positive contribution to the Nation of Israel in leading it in the direction of Holiness.
Jesus told them that in reality they were leading the nation of Israel farther and farther away from God. Not only this, but He goes as far as to say that God would not overlook their sins, but that they as well as the teachers of the Law would be held responsible not only for their own sins but for the sins of the people that they led astray. This was by far the most stunning blow of all to the self-righteous Pharisees.
According to our text, an expert in the law came to the Pharisees defense and said, “Teacher, when you say these things, you insult us also.”
The Scribes or “experts in the law,” as our text referred to them interpreted the Law of Moses and taught it to the common man. I guess you could say they were the Theologians or Seminary professors of their day.
Jesus took advantage of this opportunity to show the Pharisees and the Scribes that they might be held in high esteem by the Jewish people but in the sight of God they were in real trouble.
Because according to 1 Samuel 16:7 God isn’t as concerned with the outward appearance of a man as much as He is concerned about the condition of that man’s heart.
(5) The first woe directed against the “Experts in the Law” was that their teaching produced a burden, not a blessing:
Jesus replied, “And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them” (Luke 11:46).
When David spoke of the Law of God in Psalm 119, it was a blessing, a delight. When the Experts of the Law got done with it, it had become a burden. They had turned the Law inside-out. What God had graciously given to His people, the Experts and so-called religious leaders had turned it into something so complicated that the people couldn’t even understand it, much less obey it.
(5) The second woe that Jesus spoke against the Experts of the Law was directly related to the first. Jesus condemned them for rejecting the message and messengers of God, just as their forefathers before them had done.
We have already noted that the experts of the law and the Pharisees majored on the minors. They focused on the details of the law, while missing the design and purpose of the law, which was to make the people aware of their sins.
That’s bad enough, but they also focused on the Law exclusively, completely ignoring the prophets. The prophets were the ones who called Israel to repent of their sins and foretold the coming of the Messiah.
(6) The third woe is the final blow: Jesus accused the Scribes and Pharisees of hindering people from knowing and responding to the Truth.
In the Gospel of Matthew Jesus was even more direct when he said “that they were blind guides, who were leading people astray.”
Instead of teaching the people how they could renew their relationship with God they were pushing people away from God. This is why Jesus was so upset with them.
Unfortunately the response of the Pharisees and Experts in the Law was not repentance, but rejection and resentment. This was the “last straw.” They would no longer try to work with Jesus, or try to get him to come over to their line of thinking. In the weeks and months that followed they did their best to discredit Jesus in the eyes of the Jewish people, while looking for an opportunity to get rid of him once and for all. This was the beginning of the end. The cross was just over the horizon.
Conclusion: Now what exactly can we learn from this passage of Scripture. I think the main thing we need to remember is that God despises Hypocrites just as much today as He did back then. He hates for people to pretend to be something that they aren’t.
We like to think we’re okay. That this passage of Scripture doesn’t apply to us. But in reality it does.
*We sing “This is the Day” but instead of being glad in it, we’re mad about it.
* We sing “O Worship the King” but we’re more concerned about whose winning the UK ballgame than we are about worshiping the Lord.
*We sing “Sweet hour of Prayer” but are content with 3 minutes a day.
*We sing, “Serve the Lord with Gladness” and then gripe and complain about everything we have been asked to do.
*We sing, “People need the Lord.” And never walk across the street to invite our neighbors to church.
*We condemn our brothers and sisters in Christ for their sins but never even stop to consider the possibility that we may have some things in our life that we need to change.
As we come to this time of decision Perhaps we like David need to pray:
“Search me, O God, and know my heart; Test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.” (Psalm 139:23-24)
