Thank you, Jared, for leading us in that wonderful song of prayer that we might be cleaned from the inside out, Lord. That's so relevant to what we'll be sharing today. So let me add my welcome to those of Jim MacRuskis, to those who are viewing us this morning. We're glad you're here, and I trust the Lord will bless this message to you and to your heart and to your life. Our passage today is from Luke chapter 11, verses 37 through 45. It's a challenging passage because it deals with a number of woes or laments that Jesus spoke against the Pharisees and the lawyers. But understood rightly, this passage has a message for each one of us. We're not Pharisees and lawyers, but we can still hear this message that Jesus presents to them. So let's read the passage. Luke 11, 37 to 54. When Jesus had finished speaking, a Pharisee invited him to eat with him. So he went in and reclined at the table. But the Pharisee, noticing that Jesus did not first wash before the meal, was surprised. Then the Lord said to him, now then, you Pharisees, clean the inside of the cup and dish Take it back, clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You foolish people. Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? But give what is inside the dish to the poor and everything will be clean for you. Woe to you, Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue, and all kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and love of God. You should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone. Woe to you, Pharisees, because you love the most important seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces. Woe to you, because you're like unmarked graves, which men walk over without knowing it. One of the experts in the law answered him, teacher, when you say these things, you insult us also. 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. Woe to you because you build tombs for the prophets and it was your forefathers who killed them. So you testify that you approve of what your forefathers did. They killed the prophets and you build their tombs. Because of this, God in his wisdom said, I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and others they will persecute. Therefore, this generation will be held responsible for the blood of all the prophets that has been shed since the beginning of the world, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, this generation will be held responsible for all. Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering." When Jesus left there, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law began to oppose him fiercely and to besiege him with questions, waiting to catch him in something he might say. Let's ask God to help us understand this passage from his word. Father, we come to you as your children and those seeking you, and we seek, Lord, your grace now as we share together this passage from your scriptures, your holy scriptures. We thank you, Lord, that the Lord Jesus was so bold as to share the truth with these men, these scribes and these Pharisees and these lawyers. And we pray, Lord, you would help us to have open ears and open hearts to hear what he said and to understand it and to obey it. And we thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. So by way of introduction, we meet two groups in this passage. We've met them before, but let me just say a few words about each of them. The first group is the Pharisees. This is a group who go back at least to the second century BC. They were strict observers of the Torah or the Old Testament law as written in the first five books of the Old Testament. They believed correctly that the Jews were exiled to Babylon because they failed to follow the law, and so they interpreted it rigorously and taught the Jews to obey it. It's been estimated there are only about 6,000 Pharisees in Judea in Jesus' time, but their influence exceeded their numbers. And there was a lot of truth in what the Pharisees believed. They believed in the inspiration and authority of scripture. They believed in Satan, in heaven and hell, in angels, and in the resurrection of the dead. They were the fundamentalists of their day. Where they went wrong, as we've just read, is they were so focused on obeying every small detail of the law that they neglected the spirit behind it. Another way of saying this is they focus on the law, and not only the Old Testament Torah, but also on the hundreds of rules and interpretations that have been added by the scribes and lawyers. And they neglected the Old Testament prophets. They focused on the letter of the law, and they neglected its spirit. And this then led to pride since they could pat themselves on the back for obeying the law so well. And they also had a love of praise from others. So that was the Pharisees. The other group that Jesus speaks to are the lawyers. They were experts in the law. We met these people before because it was a lawyer who asked Jesus in Luke chapter 10, what must I do to inherit eternal life? a question that led to the parable of the good Samaritan. They were the ones skilled in identifying all the 613 commands of the Torah and then adding detailed rules about how to obey these commands. And sadly, in many cases, the Pharisees and the lawyers were so tied up with the details of keeping the law that they failed to recognize its ultimate purpose of leading men and women to love God and their neighbors. So instead of being the first to welcome Jesus as the Messiah, they were the first to plot against him because his teaching was a direct threat to their position as Jewish teachers and religious leaders. So today's passage comes at the end of chapter 11. And in the preceding part of chapter 11, to put this passage in context, we read the story of Jesus casting out a demon And this is viewed by a crowd, some of whom said that he was doing this by the power of the devil. And if you look at the parallel passage in Matthew chapter 12, it turns out it was the Pharisees who said this. And it may even have been the Pharisee who invited Jesus to lunch was one of these Pharisees. And then later on in Luke chapter 11, verse 29, we read the crowd had increased. And after the crowd increases, the Pharisee then invites Jesus to dine with him. And at first sight, when I first read this passage, I thought, well, that's a decent thing for him to do. Here's this Pharisee inviting Jesus to have a meal with him. But the more I thought about it, the more I studied it, I've come to realize, at least my judgment is, that this was in fact a setup. The Pharisee wasn't really interested in learning about Jesus and giving him a meal and being nice to him. He was more interested in putting him through a grill because he invited other Pharisees and lawyers to join him. So it had a whole bunch of these people, potential opponents of Jesus were invited to this meal with him. It may even have been, as I said, that this Pharisee who invited Jesus was one of those who said he was casting out demons by Beelzebub. And the invitation also comes after Jesus said, as the crowds increased, Jesus said, this is a wicked generation. It asks for a miraculous sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah. And I think the Pharisee was probably not too pleased at being called part of a wicked generation. So here we have what I think is a setup. The Pharisee invites Jesus, and I think they're intent on grilling him, on posing difficult questions, getting him to say something that would be heretical, and thereby accusing him of perhaps something worthy of death. They were not interested in hearing him honestly. They're interested in trapping him out. And if that's correct, that explains why Jesus provoked a response from the Pharisee by not washing his hands before the meal. Now, this is not the sort of washing up that we do before a meal to make our hands clean in the interest of good hygiene. This was instead a ritual of pouring water over your hands to signify that you had washed away the ceremonial defilement of the outside world. It's a way of setting yourself apart from the hoi polloi, the outside people. You're a special people. You pour this water of your hands. You are therefore ritually clean from all the defilement of the outside world. And the Pharisee would have had a pitcher of water set out for his guests, and all the other scribes and Pharisees who were going to the meal would have poured the water over their hands, and Jesus didn't do that. And so in verse 38, we read, the Pharisee noticing that Jesus did not first wash before the meal was surprised. And I think Jesus did this deliberately as a way of getting the Pharisee to react so he could then bring in this series of warnings that he did to the Pharisees and the lawyers. Jesus notes the Pharisee's heart and he responds with this serious warning. But before he gets the warning, I'd like to make one very simple point. It's so simple that you learned it in Sunday school. If you ever went to Sunday school, it's so profound that we neglect it at our peril. And the point is this, is God sees all things. God sees all things. Although the Pharisee did not say anything, Jesus knew what he was thinking. He was probably thinking something like this. If this teacher were a careful follower of the law, he would wash his hands in the proper way, but he didn't do that, so he must not be a careful follower of the law like me, and so he must be a bad man. I think that was the Pharisee's thinking, but Jesus could read his thoughts and responds by warning the Pharisee of the dangers of external legalism without internal righteousness. So we note that God sees all things, he knows our hearts. Because Jesus was fully God as well as fully man, he knew this Pharisee's heart and discerned that it needed some warning. Do you know what? God has not changed and Jesus has not changed and God still knows our hearts better than we do. One other example of this, when the prophet Samuel was checking out Jesse's family to see which of Jesse's sons God was going to anoint as king over Israel. The first son to come was this chap Eliab, who was a fine looking fellow. And Samuel thought to himself, this must be the guy. And, but then the Lord said to Samuel, do not consider his appearance or his height for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. One of the songs I would sing when I was in Sunday school in England about the middle of the last century was, Oh, careful little eyes, what you see. The first verse runs, Oh, careful little eyes, what you see. Oh, careful little eyes, what you see. There's a father up above and he's looking down in love. So be careful little eyes, what you see. And later verses go on to apply this to our ears, our hands, our feet and our mouth. So let me just remind myself and each one of us that we are living in the sight of a holy and loving God. Let us guard our eyes, our ears, our hands, our feet, our mouths, and our hearts, and so live that we will not be ashamed when we stand at the judgment seat of Christ. Can we do this in our own strength? No way. But by God's grace and the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives through faith, we can seek to live lives that are pleasing to God. Second thing I'd like to say is a very simple one. It's one that we I'm sure all know. It is that God hates hypocrisy. God hates hypocrisy. The hypocrite in the Greek theater was a man behind a mask, basically with their masks when they're in there acting their plays. And so the man behind the mask could be doing anything he liked, but the mask gave an impression of maybe a smile or something like that. And Jesus said to the Pharisees, the Lord said to him, now then you Pharisees, clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You foolish people, did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? But give what is inside the dish to the poor and everything will be clean for you. So the first way is very clear. The Pharisees laid great emphasis on external appearances. They looked clean and holy on the outside, but inside they were anything but holy. And Jesus points out that the outside and the inside were all made by God, and thus that both need to be clean. And the final sentence, but give what is inside the dish to the poor and everything will be cleaned for you is probably Jesus' way of saying that when we give to others, whether to the church or to missionaries or to the poor, we should give generously and humbly from our hearts, not grudgingly or ostentatiously. And In the hymn that Jared sang for us, it just speaks that so clearly about us giving from the hearts and not from the outside. Lord, I give you control, consume me from the inside out, Lord, that justice and praise become my embrace to love you from the inside out. A very appropriate hymn for this particular passage. The next thing we can learn from this passage is that God values justice and love more than carefully calculated giving. Verse 42, woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a 10th of your mint, rue, and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone. So these verses remind us again of God's concern for the inside of our hearts, and in particular, for love and for justice. What is justice, you may ask? One definition that was shared with me is promoting biblical fairness and equity for all people. And our Lord is lamenting the fact that the Pharisees were so careful about observing the details of the law, as amplified by generations of rabbis and teachers, that they miss the big picture, which is acting justly and loving God. Jesus says, in effect, that acting justly and loving God should be our number one concerns. He does, however, make clear that tithing is important. He says, you should have practiced the latter, that is justice and loving God, without leaving the former, that is tithing, undone. And to put this in today's context, no amount of giving, whether it is money or our time, is as important to God as living lives of justice and love, but tithing is really important. And this church could not continue to minister and missionaries could not continue to serve without the faithful giving of God's people. Let's also remember that justice is crucial for us as God's people. In Isaiah's prophecy of a coming king in chapter nine, the familiar words of Isaiah 9, 6, for to us a child is born, to us a son is given, are followed in verse seven by, he will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. So justice is one of God's defining characteristics. It's key companion of his righteousness. And God expects that of us in Zechariah chapter seven and verse nine. This is what the Lord Almighty says, administer true justice, show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor. In your hearts, do not think evil of each other. This gives me an opportunity to put in a little sidebar to clarify a couple of things I said or didn't say in my sermon on June 21st when I preached on justice. And so in that sermon, I cited several examples of unjust acts against African-American fellow citizens, including some by police officers. What I omitted to make clear is that the vast majority of our police officers are not racists out to target African Americans and other non-white groups, but are good men and women doing a difficult and often dangerous job to protect us and enforce the law. These officers deserve our respect and support. The second issue concerns my comments on our response to racism, where I quoted a prayer by the president of Denver Seminary, Mark Young, that appeared to indicate I'm a supporter of something known as critical race theory. If you don't know what it is, don't worry. It's a theory that is unbiblical in its basis and its conclusions. And I want to make clear I'm not now and never have been a proponent of this theory. On the contrary, I believe, as Paul teaches in Colossians 3.12, here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all and in all. As believers in Jesus Christ, there should not be any barriers dividing us, and that includes barriers of race. So I ask for forgiveness for anyone I offended by my failure to clarify these two matters. Moving on, further woes on the Pharisees in 43 to 44, woe to you Pharisees, because you love the most important seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplace. Woe to you, because you're like unmarked graves, which men walk over without knowing it. So the first of these woes condemns the Pharisees' love of public praise. Far from being humble teachers of God's word, they sought approval from men rather than the praise of God. And because of this, they focused on external things that men could see rather than on heart issues. By contrast, the Old Testament prophets were the exact opposite. They spoke to the hearts of the nation of Israel and Judah. They ignored external appearances, often suffering for their God-given messages. So Pharisees were like anti-prophets. They're the exact opposite of God's prophets, seeking praise from men and failing to declare the whole counsel of God. They had misplaced affections. We saw just a moment ago, they did not love God. They neglected justice and the love of God. They didn't love God wholeheartedly, but they did love the praise of men. They'd substitute the love of praise of men for the love of God. Not only were they lovers of praise, they were also a positive hazard. To a Jew, walking on a grave or even letting his or her shadow fall on a grave made them ceremonially defiled. So an unmarked grave was a serious hazard to an observant Jew. And for this reason, graves are often whitewashed, particularly during the Passover season. So Jews traveling to Jerusalem, for example, could avoid them and not be contaminated by this ritual defilement. And so the application of Jesus' words here is that those who follow the teachings of the law, follow the teaching of the Pharisees, are contaminated spiritually by them. People who walked over unmarked graves became ceremonially unclean. People who walked in the teaching of the Pharisees became morally unclean. So to wrap up what Jesus said to the Pharisees, we just asked a couple of questions. to apply these messages, what is more important to you? The praise of men now or the praise of God when you stand at the judgment seat of Christ? Where is your value coming from? Is it praise from men or praise from God? And secondly, if you're the only Christian that an acquaintance of yours knew, would he or she be attracted to Christ by your humble and godly behavior or repelled by your pride and legalism? I'm sure these would be good answers, but I just want to raise them to think about. We now turn to the teachers of the law. So one of the experts in the law said, teacher, when you say these things, you insult us also. And Jesus agreed with him and goes on to tell him some home truths. But before we do that, let's remind ourselves, these are called lawyers in some translations, experts in the law, teachers of the law, and scribes. They're all basically the same group of people, those who could interpret the law in its great detail. They were the ones who sought to specify how the 613 laws in the Torah, how they should be obeyed, and their process, how they could be skirted if they need be. In so doing, they made the Torah a burden rather than a delight. The Mishnah, which is a written collection of Jewish oral traditions, lays it down that it's more important to observe the scribal interpretations of the Torah than to obey the Torah itself. More important to believe what somebody says about the Bible than the Bible itself, in other words, putting it in our own terms. And although the Mishnah dates from about 200 AD, it reflects the oral traditions of the time of Christ. So it reflects the thinking of the lawyers and scribes of Jesus day. Leon Morris and his Tyndale commentary on Luke gives an example from the Sabbath rules. He writes, Quote, on the Sabbath, they taught, a man must not carry a burden in his right hand or in his left hand, in his bosom or on his shoulder, but he may carry it on the back of his hand or with his foot or with his mouth or with his elbow or in his car or in his, sorry, in his ear or in his hair or in his wallet carried mouth downward or between his wallet and his shirt or in the hem of his shirt or in the shoe or in his sandal. Such detailed rules and regulations were a real burden to faithful Jews who wanted to obey the law, while at the same time giving plenty of loopholes for a lawyer who knew the rules to do pretty much whatever he wanted to do. So it's no surprise that Jesus responds, 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 a finger to help them. The writer of Psalm 119 delights in God's law. In verses 18, he says, open my eyes so that I may see wonderful things in your law. My soul is consumed with longing for your laws at all times. But these experts in the law, these lawyers, had turned God's law into a burden, not a delight. Jesus then goes on to hold the experts in the law accountable for the deaths of the prophets. Woe to you, because you build tombs for the prophets. It's your forefathers who killed them. So you testify that you approve of what your forefathers did. They killed the prophets, and you build their tombs. Because of this, God in his wisdom said, I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill, and others they will persecute. So therefore, this generation will be held responsible for the blood of all the prophets that has been shed since the beginning of the world, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, this generation will be held responsible for it all. By way of background, Abel, of course, was the first righteous man to be killed, and the prophet Zechariah was shamefully killed by order of King Joash in 2 Chronicles 24. It's the last death of a prophet recorded in the Old Testament, taking the books in their normal Hebrew order, where Chronicles comes towards the end. So how could Jesus blame this generation for their deaths? I think there are probably two reasons. The first is that they honored the memory of the dead prophets by building tombs for them, but they rejected the spirit of the prophets, which is called repentance and renewal. They were just showing that they would have been among those who rejected and killed the prophets. In the second place, Jesus knew that these same experts in the law, along with the Pharisees and the priests, would go on to become his fiercest opponents, and would eventually lead to his death on the cross. So Jesus puts it on the line by summing up, woe to experts in the law, because you've taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering. God's law was given for the good of the people. But these experts in the law had made God's law, which was given for the blessing of God's people, into something that was complicated and difficult for the average Jew. Instead of being the delight of the psalmist, it was a burden which only a self-styled spiritual elite could even begin to follow. The average Jew had no hope of following their version of the law, and was thus despised by the ruling class. And as evidence of the fact they were despised, this is a story from John's gospel about Jesus teaching the temple and his people are starting to think he's the Messiah. So the Pharisees send temple guards to arrest him. And this is what happens when the guards come back. Finally, the temple guards went back to the chief priests and Pharisees who asked them, why didn't you bring him in? No one ever spoke the way this man does, the guards declared. You mean he's deceived you also, the Pharisees retorted. Has any of the rulers or the Pharisees believed in him? No. This mob that knows nothing of the law, there is a curse on them. Do you hear their disdain? In that response, the average Jew seeking to worship God in the temple was declared to be part of a cursed mob by the Pharisees. Why? At least in part, because they could not and did not follow all the complicated rules that the teachers of the law had developed. So Jesus' words were only speaking the truth when he said, woe to experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered. You have hindered those who are entering. And so finally we come to the response, a predictable response, I think, In verse 53, when Jesus left there, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law began to oppose him fiercely and to besiege him with questions, waiting to catch him in something he might say. Instead of recognizing their sins of pride and lovelessness, they turn on Jesus and look for ways to trap him by something he said so they could charge him with some crime. This was the beginning of the end. The cross is on the horizon. So one of the lessons we can learn from this passage are the several possible ones, I would suggest just three. The first one we've already shared, that reminder we're living in the sight of our loving and yet holy God. He knows our hearts, He knows our thoughts, and He sees our actions. Secondly, this scripture is a vivid reminder of the dangers of legalism. The Pharisees thought they'd had it all figured out. They could get right with God and stay right with him by following a detailed set of rules. But in doing this, they were in effect washing the outside of the cup while not caring about all the filth inside the cup. They looked good and spiritual on the outside as they appeared to fulfill all the demands of the law, but inside they were full of pride and greed and wickedness. And legalism, which is, we can define as an attempt to secure righteousness in God's sight by good works, is the same thing. Legalists believe that they can earn or merit God's approval by performing the requirements of the law. Not only do they believe this, but they also seek to make others follow their bad example. So what is the antidote to legalism? It is that God has reached out to save us, not on the basis of whatever good works we think we do, but on the basis of Jesus Christ's death for us on the cross. Our sins are so bad in a holy God's sight that nothing we can do will ever be enough to avert God's judgment. As Paul puts it in Romans 3, verses 19 and 20, now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore, no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law. Rather, through the law, we become conscious of sin. There's a real danger in thinking we can get right with God by following rules and regulations we cannot. It does not work. It did not work for the Pharisees. It will not work for us. But finally, the scripture demonstrates the need for Christ to die for our sins. Observing the law cannot remove our sin. Legalism cannot make us right with God because we're all sinners in God's sight. but God in His love provided another way for sinners to be forgiven. The wages of sin is death, but God provided a perfect substitute for each one of us, His perfect and infinite Son, whose death on the cross was a perfect and complete substitute for our death. as a perfect sinless man, he and he only could pay the price that God's justice demanded. So again, we hear from Paul in Romans 3 in verse 22, there is no difference for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood. So Jesus paid the price that we could not pay. He died that we might live. He rose again from the grave so that we know his death was accepted by God as a full and complete sacrifice for sin. For most of us, it's a simple reminder of why we're here, why we call ourselves Christians as Christ followers. But it may be that someone is hearing this message and this truth for the first time, or perhaps understanding it for the first time. If you are that person, please call one of the elders, our names are in the BCF website, or talk to a Christian friend about how you too can become part of God's family. May the Lord bless each one of us as we think about these things. Gerard, will you come and lead us in a hymn, please?