Introduction: I want to begin today by taking you back in time 2000 years ago to the common scene at the table of any Jewish Scribe or Pharisee. You will notice that here on the table are a few seemingly simple items, a jug of water and a small wash basin, but to the Pharisees, these items made all the difference between those considered righteous and those who were rejected by God. Allow me to demonstrate the typical hand-washing procedure required to make a person ‘ceremonially clean’.
Now that you understand what this looked like, and the significance it held in the religion of the Pharisees, perhaps you can understand the shock that came to the Pharisee who had invited Jesus to dine in his home, when Jesus went straight to the table without even glancing at the water basin. The table was set, the tension was high, and Jesus was getting ready to scrub some dishes. Let’s listen in as the scene unfolds:
‘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. Foolish ones! Did not He who make the outside make the inside also? But rather give alms of such things as you have; then indeed all things are clean to you.”
Jesus then mentions three woe’s against the Pharisees. We need to understand that the term woe carries not only a judgmental element, but also a degree of pity. Some have translated this term as ‘Alas, for you Pharisees.’ Jesus has tried many tactics to open their eyes, this will be the last; opposing them head on.
I. The Models of Righteousness - Pharisees
The 21st Century believer has a certain picture in mind whenever he or she hears about the Pharisees. But in order to understand this situation, we need to see the Pharisees through the eyes of the Jews of Jesus day. How did the Pharisees view themselves? How did their contemporaries see them? What did Jesus think of them?
In their own eyes they believed that they were the righteous van-guard of Israel; leading the way to righteousness by their exemplary conduct. To the Pharisee there was nothing more important than ritual purity, and they prided themselves on following the letter of the law. There was nothing more anathema to a Pharisee than being defiled by something unclean, whether it was food, foreigner or fool.
The contemporaries of the Pharisee’s would have shared a similar view of these men. Even Jesus makes comment about the righteousness of the Pharisees in a somewhat positive way in scripture. Interestingly, being a Pharisee was not a job. No one gained an income from being a Pharisee, you couldn’t be a professional Pharisee; rather it was like a religious club. A club with special standards and rituals. Like as hyper-religious Lion’s Club or Rotary but rather than work to solve social needs in the community, the Pharisee’s mandate was to solve moral needs, to make the community of Israel more holy.
To this end, they believed themselves to be the exemplar of holiness. Anyone who desired to have a standing with God would surely join the ranks of the Pharisees and learn the intricate code of holiness. Even the common Jew on the street knew enough to pattern his or her life in such a way.
Jesus did not share this view.
Jesus did not join the Pharisees.
Jesus did not agree with the Pharisees measure of purity.
Declaring his first woe against the Pharisees gathered around the table, he said, “You tithe mint and rue and all manners of herbs and pass by justice and the love of God.”
Mint and rue were among the smallest of the garden herbs in Palestine. In fact the law omitted the need to give 10% of these tiny things. But that wasn’t good enough for the Pharisees. This same group that was so meticulous in washing their hands and asking the blessing were mathematically precise in giving a tithe of everything they possessed.
They were convinced that their rigid obedience to the law, even to the extent of going over and above would earn them good standing with God. But Jesus points out the Achilles Heel in their reasoning. They have focused so much on minutia of the law that they have lost sight of the big picture. While they tithed even to the smallest amount they walked past people who didn’t have anything to tithe. While they sat at their tables to bless every acceptable food, their neighbours sat and ate locust rolled in flour and fried – not asking a blessing, for no blessing was required over locust, that were considered a curse.
While the Pharisees are still digesting Jesus statement he brings a second woe: ‘Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the best seats in the synagogue and greetings in the marketplace.’
Unlike most modern day churches, the synagogue was set up differently. At the very front of the synagogue where the scrolls were kept and the readers table there was a special bench, a bench that faced the congregation. This bench was generally reserved for honored guests and for those considered most righteous. Did Jesus strike a nerve when he pointed out what each of these Pharisee’s already knew in their hearts? Was Jesus speaking from recent experience? Perhaps they had all been in the synagogue this week and Jesus had observed as they shuffled over to allow another Pharisee to join the honored bench.
Yet isn’t the Old Testament clear that God seeks the humble to lift up?
Before anyone could challenge these first two statements, Jesus adds a third: ‘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.”
Does that seem like an unusual saying to you? Just what is Jesus saying about the Pharisees? And do you notice that for the first time he has applied this passage to a second group in the form of the Scribes?
To understand these words we must consider again the Jewish laws of purity. According to Old Testament law, anyone who came into contact with a grave would be rendered unclean for 7 days. In order to avoid this the Jews would literally whitewash tombs so no one would inadvertently make contact with them.
Therefore Jesus final woe is the most scathing as it indicates that just as a man is made ceremonially unclean by making contact with an unmarked grave, so those who seek to imitate the Pharisees are becoming morally unclean.
Joel Green states that, “In striving to maintain purity… the Pharisees have actually made themselves impure. What is more, rather than separating themselves from the impurity of others, Pharisees are now actually endangering the relative purity of those around them.”
Indeed, we observe now, that not everything that is presented on the surface is indicative of what is happening in the heart. The Pharisees have scrubbed the outside of the plates until they shine, but inside the plates are filled with rancid hypocrisy.
II. The Teachers of Righteousness – Scribes
Suddenly we hear another voice at the table. Not only are the Pharisees present, but it appears the scribes have been invited as well. Some of your Bibles will have here the word lawyer. And while we might derive some sort of comic glee from hearing Jesus castigate the lawyers, these particular men are different from the sort that we tell jokes about today.
While being a Pharisee was not a paying job, being a Scribe often was. These were the men who devoted their entire lives to studying the scriptures. Some of them surely would have belonged to the group of Pharisees, although there is record in some histories that many Scribes thought of the Pharisees as uneducated.
Had the scribes at the table been enjoying listening to Jesus cut the Pharisees down to size as he meted out his woes? If they had they were stung by the last one. Jesus had implicated them as well. Surely he must have been mistaken? Surely the Scribes were not to be thought of as filled with decay?
So one of the scribes voiced a mild protest, “Teacher, by saying these things You reproach us also.” In a few moments he will wish he had bit his tongue. For Jesus now turns to address the Scribes.
How did people understand the Scribes in Jesus day? What was their role? If the Pharisee’s were the religious leaders who were meant to model the sort of life God desired, then we would be right to understand that the Scribes were the teachers of Israel, the ones tasked with the responsibility of proclaiming God’s word to the Jews in a way they could understand and apply.
But it seems the scribes did not understand their task in the same way. In fact the scribes typically denied the literal meaning of a text and instead searched for some riddle to be solved.
Jesus speaks to the Scribes 3 woes. The first is, ‘Woe to you also, scribes! For you load men with burdens hard to bear, and you yourself do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers.’
Have you ever felt burdened down by the demands of scripture? You’ll find the Christian version of Scribes; people ready to give you a hundred and one ‘do nots’. If you’ve ever met one, or worse, if you’ve ever tried to follow one, you’ll know how burdensome and empty faith seems to become. Jesus was angry that the scribes who were supposed to teach the people how to live rightly had rather made it nearly impossible for the people to live at all.
Let’s look at the second Woe to the Scribes: “Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets, and your fathers killed them.” Jesus goes on to say that by building the tombs they are approving of what has been done before their time.
Is that a fair statement? In fact it is. The Scribes will prove themselves to be murderers of the prophets in just a short period of time when they will be responsible in part for the crucifixion of the greatest messenger God ever sent, his only Son.
Barclay puts it this way, “The attitude of the Scribes to the prophets was paradoxical. They professed a lip service and a deep admiration for the prophets. But the only prophets they admired were dead prophets.”
As Scribes it was their responsibility to communicate the messages that scripture recorded from these scribes, but instead they trivialized the real message and instead eked out impossible riddles; burying the real message of justice and reform in a mess of laws and extra rules. Instead of proclaiming the message, they were commemorating the murder, making saints of the prophets without giving heed to what they taught.
The final woe to the scribes is, “Woe to you scribes! For you have taken away the key of knowledge. You did not enter in yourselves and those who were entering in you hindered.”
This is by far the greatest sin of the scribes. For in their hands lay the very key for opening up the doors of the kingdom for all Jews to enter – but they concealed it, they rejected literal interpretation and they refused to allow commoners to interpret the scripture. They stole the key of knowledge, effectively locking out those who were meant to be invited in, and they failed to enter in themselves.
“That earlier pronouncement of woe had condemned the entire Pharisaic project for achieving an end dramatically opposed to that for which it had been intended. Similarly, Jesus insists, the portfolio of the expert in the law is to pull back the veil on the meaning and relevance of the law of Good, but their efforts have had the opposite effect – both for themselves and for those for whom they were to serve as teachers.” (J. Green)
What do we understand from what Jesus is saying at this supper? True authentic righteousness has as much to do with WHO I AM as with WHAT I DO!
III. Authentic Righteousness – Walking and Talking
What if Jesus came, not to 1st Century Palestine, but to 21st Century Canada. What sort of discussions would take place over our dinner tables? How comfortable would we be with this man making the grandiose claim to reveal God to us?
The first thing that seems certain is that most Christians share more in common with the Pharisee’s than they do with the tax collectors; but that isn’t meant to be a scathing comment. In fact, the Pharisee’s were being offered the opportunity to be part of what God is doing.
That’s part of the amazing thing about Jesus. He came as God in the flesh, but we never find him unilaterally condemning anyone. The judgment is always sprinkled with hope of redemption; the dark clouds of doom are lined with the silver of salvation. Listen to Jesus list of woes, and discover throughout them that he gives not only the judgment, but in many places the remedy for the judgment. But the Pharisees were so blinded by their arrogance that they reject the offer and eventually reject the Messiah.
What was the great sin of the Pharisee’s that Jesus focused on? The sin was that of Hypocrisy. This is a charge which is regularly leveled against the church. So what does it mean to be a hypocrite? Hypocrisy is trying to make someone think or believe something that isn’t, in reality, true.
If Jesus were at my dinner table, would he say to me,
‘Woe to you Baptists. Who pay your tithe with mathematical religiosity. But have neglected the love of God and neighbours.’
‘Woe to you Baptists. You love the recognition and respect of people more than you care about the needs of the down-trodden.’
‘Woe to you Baptists. You are filled with secret corruption. You follow empty forms of religion, you yourself know they are empty, but rather than seeking to be filled, you play the role so no one else will know.”
The Pharisees issue was that they had the casings of religion, but the true transforming power was not there. It was simply a game of play-acting.
The religion of true followers was much different. More vibrant and less polished. The Pharisees (and many Christians) prefer to have others think of them as having arrived spiritually, with all their ducks in a row. But Jesus was seeking those who were willing to “Fumble Towards Righteousness”, not afraid to show that they did not yet understand everything about God and that they were still seeking more and were willing to come on their knees to find it.
The great danger of living like the Pharisees is that we may drive away those who would come to hear the reality of the gospel, and we may lead astray those who seek to model us. Jesus demonstrated true righteousness, it didn’t have a lot to do with his location or the people he was with. In fact Jesus ruined his reputation for the sake of the lost. But Jesus demonstrated a great concern with loving God and loving others. Love, not only in theory, but love in practice – whether through meeting needs, inviting the outcasts to come in, or touching the untouchables.
What, then, was the great sin of the Scribes? It was the sin of concealing truth. One of my favourite sermon text-books states that one of the greatest sins of preachers and teachers is making the Bible boring. Yet if Jesus came to 21st Century Canada and sat down at my table, would he find me to be a ‘Christian Scribe’?
Would Jesus say:
“Woe to you Baptists. You have placed huge burdens on peoples backs by your legalistic interpretation of scripture, yet you do nothing to help them with their load?”
“Woe to you Baptists. You speak highly of murdered prophets, but your behaviour and teaching reveals that you have no intention of applying their message to your situation.”
“Woe to you Baptists. You have the key to knowledge, but you have hidden the key from others and have failed to use it for yourself.”
The great sin of the Scribes was simply complicating the message until it meant nothing. We do this too.
I once read a scholar who said that until a person understands the identity of Melchizadek they can not consider themselves to be a mature Christian. Other scholars have taken simple and straightforward passages of scripture and made them almost unrecognizable in a sort of hermeneutical origami. The message is clear – if you don’t have a degree in Theology you aren’t equipped to read your Bible.
The other danger is that we may become so tied up in minutia that we miss the big picture of what God is doing and what he is calling us to.
Sometimes this is an excuse on the part of Christians to avoid doing what they know they should. They ask questions like, “What does Jesus mean when he says, ‘Come, follow me”? Or, “God doesn’t say anything about dating in the Bible, so I guess there really aren’t specific standards.”
On the other hand, you will find Christians with a do and don’t list longer than your arm. What sort of things do Christians not do? Well let’s see: They don’t smoke, drink or wear blue jeans to church. They would never go to a movie theatre. They would not enter the home of a non-Christian. They are always in the church when the church building is open. They learn to speak Christianese so as to signal to every person who isn’t a Christian that they really don’t understand anything. They would never be found on a golf course on Sunday, nor would they ever go golfing with a non-Christian – because you never know what sort of jokes they might tell. They read not only their Bible, but the daily bread for every day of the year.
The great danger with Christian Scribes is that they may drive away those who come seeking to enter the kingdom of God; or that some will be so engrossed with keeping the rules, they’ll never come to understand their need for salvation.
Conclusion: So in conclusion, let us be clear, and simple.
Salvation is of the Lord. There is only one way to be made right with God, and it comes from outside ourselves. We cannot somehow make ourselves good enough, we must humbly come and seek salvation through simple faith in the work Jesus did in paying for our sins on the cross.
Behaviour is very important to God, but there is no way to clean ourselves up before we come to Him. We must come to Him and then he will begin the work of ‘Cleaning us up.’
The burden of righteousness that God lays on us is not cumbersome, but freeing, for it opens the door to restoring us to the places God created us for.
Rather than seeking complex formula’s for holiness and righteousness, take this to heart: ‘Do what you know is right.’ The key to discipleship is a short four letter word… are you ready for it… OBEY. As you study God’s word you will find instruction for life, when you find that instruction apply it to your life.
The key of the kingdom is faith entered into through obedience. Nothing hard to grasp about that.
Remember, the one who made the outside, made the inside also. So while it is good to clean up the outside, it is more important to clean the inside as well.
