Hello and welcome to our program. We're in Lessons from Luke. We'll be looking in Luke chapter 11. We'll be starting at verse 29. If it's possible, have your Bible ready. reading in luke 11 verse 29 it says and when the people were gathered thick together he began to say well it's wonderful to see you folks here today and i'm just going to say a whole lot of nice smooth things to you so you'll like me and we can build a big church no that's not what it says that's the new reversed vision what it says here is when the people were gathered thick together he began to say This is an evil generation. They seek a sign, and there shall no sign be given it but the sign of Jonah the prophet. For as Jonah was a sign unto Nineveh, So shall also the Son of Man be to this generation. The Queen of the South shall rise up in the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them. For she came from the utmost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, a greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh shall rise up in the judgment with this generation. and shall condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah. And behold, a greater than Jonah is here." Well, that's quite a message for this crowd. Why did he start calling them a wicked generation? Now, we could look today and say, well, that's certainly true today. It is very wicked today, and it is getting more and more wicked as time goes by. Not only that, wickedness is being promoted in all its wretchedness. Sin and corruption and filth and perversion are promoted, they're publicized, they're paraded. Anything ungodly is in, and anything that is godly is out. We live in a wicked generation. But Israel, that generation was moral. They were religious. They were the most religious and God-conscious nation on the earth. They did not have a leadership that was promoting sodomite parades. They were a morally upright people. And yet Jesus said to them, this is an evil generation. Well, he said that generation was evil because, verse 29, they seek a sign. And then he gave the example. He says, well, for as Jonah was a sign under the Ninevites, verse 30, so shall also the Son of Man be to this generation. And so Jonah was a sign. And he said the sign is the Son of Man, the sign. What signs did they want? They said, give us a sign. What mechanical sign would have changed their mind? Here was Jesus healing the sick, casting out demons. He'd fed thousands of people with a handful of food. He calmed the storm. He walked on water. He even raised the dead, and they said, give us a sign. These things are not the sign. He said in verse 30, the Son of Man He is the sign. He is the sign. And Jesus said in John 15 and verse number 24, They hated the Lord because he exposed their true heart condition. You remember the first time that we have a recorded message that he preached in Nazareth? They tried to kill him. Well, here in verse 31, Jesus said the Queen of the South shall rise up in judgment. She came and she came to see the wisdom of Solomon and found out about Christ when she got there. And he said, Behold, a greater than Solomon is here. And then he used the men of Nineveh, who Jonah went and preached to. And so we had this Gentile queen that was searching for the truth, and then the men of Nineveh, who were pagans, they believed, and here's Israel with Jesus, a greater than Jonah is here, he said. Jesus was right there in their midst, and they rejected him. Now we're going to look at Luke 11 verses 37 through 54. It begins and it says, And as he spake, a certain Pharisee besought him to dine with him, and he went in and sat down to meet. And when the Pharisee saw it, he marveled that he had not first washed before dinner. Well, you've been invited for lunch. How would Jesus talk to this Pharisee? Well, he says, now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter, but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness. In verse 40 he said, ye fools. In verse 42 he said, but woe unto you Pharisees. In verse 43, he said, woe unto you Pharisees. Again in verse 44, woe unto you scribes and Pharisees and hypocrites. Woe unto you lawyers, he said in verse 46. Woe unto you again, he said in verse 47. Down in 52, he said, woe unto you lawyers. Woe unto you. Well, so much for lunch. Come on over for lunch. Is this how you talk when someone invites you over to lunch? The strongest public condemnation of someone was directed to the most religious people on the face of the earth at that time. These religious hypocrites were guilty for sending more people to hell than were the sodomites. Well, we read here, and it says in verse number 38, the Pharisees marveled that he had not first washed before dinner. Now, they had all kinds of ceremonial washings in case they had come in touch with a Gentile, and that's what that was all about. They hated the Gentiles. Well, verse 39, he said, you Pharisees, you make clean the outside of the cup and the platter, but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness. In verse 41, he said, woe unto you Pharisees, you love the uppermost seats in the synagogues and the greetings in the marketplace, the uppermost seat. That's talking about, I need to be up front here, I need to be on the platform. They had a serious desire to be elevated in front of the people. Those scribes and Pharisees and religious hypocrites got all dressed up in their religious garb because they wanted to be elevated above the people. They had a desire for status. And the same thing is true today. You look at the religions and how they put on these robes and they put on these special clothes and put some funny looking hats on their heads and carry crosses around. And they want to appear like there's somebody important, more important than the common people. And Jesus said in verse 44, Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees and hypocrites, ye are as graves which appear not, and men that walk over them are not aware of them. Now, they had such a rigmarole about being close to a dead body, and if they got anywhere, if they were to touch a dead body, they had a seven-day purification process, and the Pharisees included that into touching a grave. And Jesus was saying, well, you're like a grave that nobody's aware of, and they walk over top of you, that makes you the defilers. I want to say again, Jesus' strongest public condemnation of someone was directed at the most religious people of his day. Well, the Lord's not making too many friends here. He says in verse 45, we read here, Then answered one of the lawyers, and said unto him, Master, thus saying, thou reproaches us also. And he said, Woe unto you, lawyers, for ye laid men with burdens grievous to be born, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers. Woe unto you, for ye build the sepulchres of the prophets, and your fathers killed them. Well, is that any way to act when you've been invited over for lunch? Well, Jesus didn't come here to act. Acting is to pretend you're something that you're not. So he said, Woe unto you lawyers, verse 52, for ye have taken away the key of knowledge, ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered. More people are going to be hindered by religious hypocrites than anybody else in this world. Paul said in Galatians 5 and 7, you did run well, who did hinder you that you should not obey the truth. It seems like people want the truth in every area except when it comes to the eternal. If you're going to Talk to somebody who's gonna fix your car, you got a problem with your car, you want that fellow to tell you the truth. Don't tell me something that isn't true. You wanna buy a home, you want the truth. An insurance policy or some home appliances, if you're gonna have a business dealing, we even want the truth from our politicians. But when it comes to the things that are eternal, well, we would rather have some comfortable lies than some truth that might hurt us a little bit. We read in verse 53, and as he said these things unto them, the scribes and the Pharisees began to urge him vehemently and to provoke him to speak of many things. Why did they do that? 54 says, they were laying wait for him and seeking to catch something out of his mouth that they might accuse him. This laying wait for him is a hunting term. It's like a hunter who puts on his camouflage clothes and gets into a platform up in a tree waiting with his bow and arrow to shoot a deer that might come along. Well, chapter 12 starts out and says, in the meantime, When there were gathered together an innumerable multitude of people, insomuch that they trod one upon another, he began to say unto his disciples, first of all, Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. We'll look at that in our next program. Be sure and tune in.