Luke chapter 11 and verse 45. So this is a lawyer who is speaking to the Lord Jesus. Then answered one of the lawyers and said unto him, Master, thus saying, thou reprochest us also. And he said, Woe unto you also, ye 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. Truly ye bear witness that ye allow the deeds of your fathers, for they indeed killed them, and ye build their sepulchres. Therefore also said the wisdom of God, I will send them prophets and apostles, and some of them they shall slay and persecute. that the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation. From the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, which perished between the altar and the temple, verily I say unto you, it shall be required of this generation. Woe unto you, lawyers, for ye have taken away the key of knowledge. Ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered.

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, laying weight for him and seeking to catch something out of his mouth that they might accuse him. Amen. May the Lord bless to us this reading from his word.

The whole of this passage whether it is a continuation of what the Lord was speaking about in the Pharisees' house at dinner, or as perhaps seems likely, was spoken elsewhere and inserted here by Luke. The whole of the passage is directed to the denunciation of the Pharisees, the scribes, and the lawyers. The very people who appeared to be the most religious and righteous in the society at that time and were so at least in their own estimation.

The lawyer who speaks in verse 45, he seems to have thought, at least initially, that the Lord's words were directed at someone else, directed against the Pharisees. that the Lord was having a go only at the Pharisees and that the scribes and the lawyers could enjoy the spectacle of their associates or their sometime opponents being berated and blamed for their sins without the Lord's words actually touching them. And it's very interesting, I think, how Luke shows that suddenly this lawyer realises how Christ's words are directed not only to the limited number of Pharisees present, but included him and his friends as well. they being lawyers and scribes. Maybe they were Sadducees and that was the distinguishing marker that he was making in his own mind.

However, the Lord is quick to show him that he and the other lawyers were not excluded from his list of woes. And I think there's a wee lesson there because it shows us how readily men and women self-justify in the face of God's Word and in the face of God's truth. They assume that the accusations in scripture about right and wrong and good and bad and righteousness and wickedness, they assume that these things and the judgements from God's law apply to someone else. Not me.

Hypocrisy is a great offence to the Lord. And what we're being taught here, I'm sure, is that true conviction of sin is a spiritual experience, just as faith is and assurance of salvation is. It is the role of the Holy Spirit to convince a man of having sinned before God. And unless it is a Holy Spirit work, men and women will always justify their wickedness by passing on the responsibility to someone else or finding some other mitigating excuse to minimise, if not completely remove, altogether their guilt.

And perhaps the most egregious, the most notorious example of this is Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Adam sinned, but he blamed the woman. The woman blamed the serpent, from which we learn that even true repentance has to be spiritually implanted. It has to be a spiritual gift without which we will always remain righteous in our own eyes. Paul tells Timothy, it is the Lord who must give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth. And that is what this lawyer did not have. He neither had a knowledge of the truth, nor any repentance to recognise the legitimacy and the authority with which these accusations were being levelled against him and his compatriots.

The Lord says that every mouth must be stopped, that all the world may become guilty before God, and that will be One of the great effects of the judgment of God in that last day is that every mouth will be stopped and men will be silenced from trying to excuse their own wickedness in the face of God's holiness and the perfect judgment of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And speaking of Christ, I would like us to notice the Lord's repeated use of this word woe. Woe is an expression of deep sorrow and deep hurt. And yet, here it is coming from the lips of the gentle Saviour, whose denunciations here in this passage seem especially severe seemed to come with added force. Given that we know Christ said, I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. Nevertheless, he also said that he came not to bring peace, but a sword and truth always divides and separates.

These men trusted in themselves that they were righteous. They judged and criticised others but now the tables were turned and they were being authoritatively judged and criticised with a judgement that they could not gain say. Christ's words stuck to them and could not be shaken off. They weren't general allegations of everyday sin, but accusations that pierced to the very heart of their whole religious life and understanding. Indeed, theirs and their fathers for many generations.

The whole religious structure, the whole edifice of the Jews built over centuries and perpetuated now by these most recent culprits, these offenders, was being condemned as anti-God and anti-scriptural. And what a terrible matter it is to be condemned by the almighty judge who cannot err and whose word is truth. What a looking forward to there is by the men and women of this world who will be judged at that great white throne judgment in that day and hear these accusations levelled against them. What woe is that which is pronounced by God, what condemnation could be worse than that which proceeds from the judge of all the earth, final, damning, and without appeal? And yet many will hear that judgment very, very soon.

And what makes such woes more terrible is that they're spoken by the one who is himself meekness and gentleness personified. It is the Lord Jesus who is speaking here. And at the very least, this shows us the seriousness of sin. But it also puts the lie to those who imagine that there is only love and mercy in Jesus Christ. It is Christ who declares these woes upon these men and condemns them to the sorrow that they will experience for their rebellious attitudes and their sinful actions.

And those of us who by grace have discovered something of the holiness of God and understand something of the seriousness of sin We recoil at the prospect of hell and eternal separation with the suffering that it entails. But here we see the reaction of the natural man. These men were not humbled by what the Lord had to say. They did not express any regret or repentance under the searchlight of these honest and true accusations, but rather anger and they rose up in opposition to Christ and they railed against him in response to his words, the words of truth.

And the essence of the Saviour's accusations is, the content of the Saviour's accusations is also interesting. These men were surely guilty of many crimes. The Lord speaks of many crimes that they did act out on other occasions. But here, it's their opposition to God's truth that seems to be in the spotlight. It is their misapplication of God's law. It is their aggression against God's true prophets and their manipulation and distortion of the scriptures that's principally in view.

And for generations, Satan has set up religious opposition to God's truth. That was true in the Old Testament when these religionists opposed God's prophets and slew those who preached the truth to Israel. It was true when they opposed the Lord himself and hounded him to death. It was Pilate and the Romans who executed Christ, but it was the Jewish religious order that forced Rome's hand in this matter. It was true when Saul of Tarsus harassed the church and murdered Stephen and others.

And we would be foolish to imagine that the devil has given up this means of attacking the true church of Jesus Christ in these days of ours. To the blood of the prophets, we can add the blood of the apostles. To the blood of Abel and Zacharias, we can add the blood of James and Peter.

But it is not only actual killing that is alleged against these men, their means extended far beyond the mere removing of their opponents. The Lord says, they have taken away the key of knowledge. ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered. They've taken away the message of the scriptures, the meaning of God's word, the truth of the gospel. They've maliciously misconstrued what God says and twisted God's words to make them a heavy yoke and a burden to God's people.

There are still Pharisees and scribes and lawyers in church pulpits today, and they still take away the key of knowledge from the Lord's little ones. The sheep look up, but they are not fed. The key of knowledge is the person of Jesus Christ and the message of Christ crucified in Scripture. We cannot know truth if Christ is hid. We cannot know life if we don't know Christ, who is life. We cannot know the way to heaven if the efficacy and meaning of the cross is denied by those who insert a contribution from man into any aspect of the gospel. personal salvation is in any way dependent upon the will or work of individual men and women, then Christ has been hidden and they who do not enter in by themselves, for they know not Christ, prove to be a hurdle and a hindrance to those to whom they preach their false gospel. And there are many, many churches And there are many, many denominations. And they have people in their pulpits who do not know Christ and cannot preach Christ aright to those who come to hear.

Now, of course, the Roman church for centuries hid the scriptures from ordinary men and women. They conducted their services in languages alien to the common people. They vested their priests and their church with infallibility and the right to include and exclude members from their church and thereby according to their thinking from heaven itself. And what horrendous pride that is. And yet it is only what the Jews did before them and what many replicant denominations have done since.

Every believer has the key to knowledge who knows God in Christ, for Christ is made unto us wisdom and truth. And we have, brothers and sisters, very much to be grateful for that our Lord Jesus Christ forcibly combated these false teachers. that he installed a new apostolic order for the teaching of his truth. We have much to be grateful for that the Holy Spirit has preserved the scriptures for us and placed them into our hands in our own language to be understood, given them to us, supplied them to us.

together with teachers in the faith, pastors after his own heart, having given some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the saints and for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ. We have very much to be grateful for, that in the midst of so much confusion in our age, so much false doctrine and spiritual ignorance, our God has made us the temple of the living God.

As God hath said, I will dwell with them and walk with them, and I will be their God and they shall be my people. Wherefore, come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you and will be a father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.

May the Lord give us that understanding of the source of true repentance. May he speak to us the wonderful words of grace. May he teach us the privileges that are ours as his sons and daughters and the blessedness of being able to call him Abba Father. Amen.