Well, good morning and welcome
to our continuing Bible study in the book of Luke, the Gospel
of Luke. We're in chapter 11, and today
we're going to be covering the last section of verses in chapter
11, beginning in verse 37. And it would be good to remember
that where this takes up regarding these Pharisees and some lawyers,
that they were present as he had been talking to these other
folks about the ones that sought a sign. And he said, there shall
be no sign given them but the sign of Jonas the prophet. And
the Ninevites shall rise up in judgment against the people of
this generation because they seek a sign. And then he said,
and the Queen of the South shall rise up in judgment because she
traveled many, many miles to hear the wisdom of Solomon. And
he says, and yet a greater than Solomon is here. He gives a at the close of those
two things then in verse 33 through 36 He goes into that excuse me
that the parable of the the lamp or the light and and no man when
he hath lighted a candle put it in a secret place or neither
under a bushel but on a candlestick that they which come in may see
the light and then he says take heed that the light that's in
you be not darkness and And he says, if the whole body therefore
be full of light, having no part dark, the whole shall be full
of light. And conversely, the same is true
if the eye is full of darkness and the whole body is full of
darkness. And so while he's saying these things and exhibiting that
infinite wisdom that he possessed and that he spoke, We begin in
verse 37 today, and as he spake, a certain Pharisee besought him
to dine with him, and he went in and sat down to meet. That's Christ, went in and sat
down to meet, and when the Pharisee saw it, He marveled that he had
not first washed before dinner. And that didn't have anything
to do with the hygiene of your hands are dirty, so you need
to wash. It was a ceremonial ritual procedure that the Pharisees
insisted on. He says, And the Lord said unto
him, Now do you Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup
and the platter, but your inward part? is full of ravening and
wickedness. Ye fools, did not He that made
that which is without make that which is within also? But rather
give alms of such things as ye have, and behold, all things
are clean unto you. But woe unto you, Pharisees,
for ye tithe mint and rue and all manner of herbs, and pass
over judgment and the love of God. And these ought ye to have
done, and not to leave the other undone. woe unto you pharisees
for you love the the uppermost seats in the synagogues and greetings
in the marketplace woe to you scribes and pharisees hypocrites
for you are as grays which appear not in the men that walk over
them, are not aware of them. And then answered one of the
lawyers, and said unto him, Master, thus saying, thou reproachest
us also. And he said, woe unto you also,
ye lawyers, for you laid men with burdens grievous to be born.
And ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers.
Woe unto you, for you build the sepulchres of the prophets, and
your fathers killed them. truly you bear witness that you
allow the deeds of your fathers for they indeed kill them and
you 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 you have taken away the key of knowledge. You entered not in yourselves,
and them that were entering in you hindered. And as he said
these things unto them, the scribes and the Pharisees began to urge
him vehemently, and to revoke him to speak of many things,
laying in wait for him, and seeking to catch something out of his
mouth that they might accuse him." And so that's our scriptures
for today. It's quite a lengthy reading,
but it kind of deals with these religious folks at the time,
and the religious folks of today are just in the same basket. And so, this key of knowledge, that to
me was the most interesting part of this. He says, you take away
the key of knowledge. And you don't enter in yourself.
And remember back on our last lesson, they that enter in, that
they may see the light. And he says nobody covers that
up so that they that enter in can see it. Boy, what these Pharisees
did with the Gospel is covered it up bad and ignored it and
didn't see it and couldn't know it. And the lawyers. It reminded me of a verse. I mentioned this to Norm this
morning in 2 Corinthians 4, verse 6. God, who commanded the light,
to shine out of darkness, and we read that back in Genesis
chapter 1, has shined in our hearts to give the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. That's the difference. It takes
that divine work of God to shine that light in our hearts, and
that's a spiritual shining. But it means to illuminate us,
to give knowledge about the Lord. You know, the true purpose of
these Pharisees inviting the Lord to supper, it was kind of
exposed here at the end of our reading there where it said they
were trying to get Him to say something, that they might accuse
Him. Verse 54. You know, the traditions of the
Pharisees were well known and especially transparent to the
Lord of Glory, to whom nothing is hidden and all things are
naked. It's what it tells us in Hebrews
chapter 4, verse 13. There's nothing, no creature
that's not manifest in his sight. All things are naked and open
to the eyes of him with whom we have to do. And, you know,
that's just a big mistake that man in his natural condition
makes about God they say God says you think I'm just such
a one as yourself and I'm not and You think that I have the
same? Characteristics and attributes
of men, you know, we have our secret thoughts our secret parts
of our heart or inner most secret things and and We think well,
no one can see that I can't tell what's in your heart. I can't
tell unless it's exposed externally And they seem to think that's
the same way about God. He can't know what they're really
thinking. But the Lord, He could see right
through them and know from eternity what they were about, because
they were ordained unto this work, to do what God had before
determined to have done from before the foundation of the
world. They supposed that he couldn't
tell or see what they were up to. And you know the Pharisees
went to great lengths to observe traditions which they themselves
originated. It's called the traditions of
men and it's spoken about in the Bible all the time. you give
for the commandments of God, you give the traditions of men
in the place of them. And the traditions of men don't
have much to do generally with the gospel. And the commandments
of God had to do with the light of the gospel shining in people's
hearts. And God chose by the foolishness
of preaching that gospel to save them that believe. So to ignore
that and to go with the other is just a heinous situation there. And this ritual washing was just
a clear example of that. There was no commandment from
God issued for ritual washing before you ate. There just wasn't
one. And if there was a commandment
from God, if there was a law of Moses that said, thou shalt
wash ritually before eating, then Jesus would have been bound
to do it. Because He fulfilled all the
law for us that we couldn't do ourselves. He fulfilled every
jot and tittle of the law. So that this case, there wasn't
any law like that. And so he didn't participate
because it was a fakery. Ritual washing described in the
Law of Moses, as far as men were concerned, if you go back and
read the Old Testament and the Gospels of Exodus, Leviticus
and Deuteronomy and such. The washing with men primarily
dealt with the ceremonial washing of the priests before they were
clothed with the priest's garments and before they entered into
the holy place. You can find that in Exodus chapter
29 in verse 4. I'll read that for you if you
don't want to turn there. And Aaron and his sons shalt thou
bring to the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and shall
wash them with water." And in Exodus 30-20, when they go to
the tabernacle of the congregation, they shall wash with water that
they die not. You can't go in to God without
washing. the washing of the Word. It's
a spiritual metaphor for the washing of the Word and the cleansing
of the blood of Christ. They shall wash with water that
they die not, or when they come near to the altar to minister
or to burn offerings made by fire unto the Lord. So they shall
wash their hands and feet that they die not, and it shall be
a statute forever to them even to him and his seed throughout
all their generations. It's not optional. Can't go into God unclean, unwashed,
uncovered by the blood of Christ. And so certainly there was no
law given by God instructing ritual washing before a meal
or the Lord would have, he would have observed it. He would have
done it. he would have done the best job of it. So by not participating
in their religious falsehood here, he kind of calls attention
to their hypocrisy and he says, you Pharisees, you just spend
a lot of time and effort with this ritual washing to make the
outside appear clean, but inside you're You're full of ravening and wickedness. You know, the Lord knew what
they were up to. Kind of reminded me in our last
lesson about Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. He knew all her
questions before she even asked them. He was given that wisdom
from the Lord. He knew their hearts. So he gives
a spiritual rebuttal regarding their problem, which was the
same problem everyone has is sin and self-righteousness and
unbelief and failure to observe the true essence of the Gospel
of God. Washing the outside to appear
clean and righteous and religious and above others in moral character.
It's like that Pharisee and the publican that went to the temple
to pray. I thank God I'm not like other men. Especially this
publican. I wash. I fast. I give tithes. I do this and
I do that. I really like to give tithes
when a lot of people can see me do it. I remember in one of
our studies on the temple in one of our other classes, that
inside when you went into the temple they had the pillars that
held up kind of the portico along the sides and they had the boxes
for the offerings, one for each tribe and then they had a thirteenth
box there that was for unaffiliated folks. And they had these big
brass like tuba things that came out of them so that when you
cast in your shekels it made a noise and so people could hear.
And if you only threw in one shekel it just kind of went rattle,
rattle, rattle, clank. But if you threw in a whole handful
of coins It made a shhh noise and everybody could look up and
say, he's really righteous. Look what he threw in there.
And the Lord says, you know what, that widow woman, she had her
two mites and she threw them in. That was all she had. and
she's blessed and you're not. You can't fool God. So this washing
the outside to appear clean and righteous, the error of this
is exposed in its entirety by the Lord. He says your insides,
your hearts are desperately wicked. And can you imagine sitting there
and having a dinner conversation and the Lord says, well, the
inside of your hearts is bad. Can you imagine? They just went,
oh, my word. How can you say that to us? We're
the religious guys, you know, we're in charge of the religion.
How can you say that about us? They didn't know the very Christ,
the Lord Almighty, right, sitting at the table with them. Their
actions, which they assumed the Lord was not privy to, were just
laid bare and revealed that they weren't believers or followers
of Christ. And the proper thing which they
should have observed, had they truly been the Lord's people,
is, he says, here's what, this would indicate a difference.
And it's from the scripture. He gives them, he goes right
to the Old Testament from Deuteronomy chapter 26. And he says, you fools did not he that made
that which is without make that which is within also, but rather
instead of doing all this exterior, external show stuff, he says,
rather give alms of the things that you have, and behold, all
things are clean unto you. So I turn your attention now,
if you want to go back to Deuteronomy 26, verse 10, it would be the
Scripture that he's kind of referencing here. Because he said, you know, you
ought to... tithing was correct. You should tithe, but you shouldn't
leave the other stuff undone, which mainly is to love the Lord
thy God with all thy heart and all thy soul and all thy might,
and to love thy neighbor as thyself. This contains all the law and
the prophets. So in Deuteronomy 26, 10-15,
it says, And now, behold, I have brought the firstfruits of the
land which thou, O Lord, hast given me. See, they attribute
everything to God. They say, You have provided us
with all things. The firstfruits of the land.
And thou shalt set it before the Lord thy God and worship
before the Lord thy God, and thou shalt rejoice. in every
good thing which the Lord thy God hath given unto thee, and
unto thine house, thou, and the Levite, and the stranger that's
among you. And when thou hast made an end of tithing all the
tithes of thine increase, the third year, which is the year
of tithing, and has given it unto the Levite, the stranger,
the fatherless, and the widow, that they may eat within thy
gates and be fulfilled. Then shalt thou say before the
Lord thy God, I have brought away the hallowed things out
of mine house, and have given them unto the Levite, and unto
the stranger, and to the fatherless, and to the widow. according to
all thy commandments which thou has commanded me i have not transgressed
thy commandments neither have i forgotten them i have not eaten
thereof in my morning neither have i taken away ought thereof
for any unclean use nor given ought thereof for the dead but
i have hearken unto the voice of the lord my god and have done
according to all that thou hast commanded me. Look down from
thy holy habitation from heaven, and bless thy people Israel,
and the land which thou hast given us, and as thou swarest
unto our fathers a land that floweth with milk and honey."
Boy, what a spiritual picture there that he gives all things. He blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in Christ. And every good thing that comes
to us comes from above. And we recognize that and we
give thanks and praise to God for it. And instead of doing
a bunch of external stuff and saying, I'm really religious,
I'm going to wash twice before I eat and ceremonially and do
all this abracadabra stuff. He said, you know what, before
you eat, you should go out and make sure that all the widows
had something to eat. You should make sure that the fatherless
had something to eat. Give alms of such things as you
have. And if you do that, then that
marks you down probably more likely as a child of God. than
just doing this external religious stuff. And isn't that what the
Lord said? By this shall all men know that
you're my disciples. If you have love one for another,
take care of one another. 1 John 3.17 says, Whoso hath
this world's good, and seeth his brother hath need, and shutteth
up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of
God in him? You know, and it's from the heart. It's not, you
know, I'm certain these Pharisees, they probably flipped an alm
or two to the blind guy on the gate on their way into the temple
or the synagogue and, you know, made sure that everybody saw
them because that's kind of what the scripture tells us here.
You love to be seen doing stuff. You love to be greeted in the
marketplace and said, Rabbi, Rabbi, oh, Can I have my selfie taken with
you here?" You know, that kind of thing. You're a really famous
religious person. So, you know, tithing according
to the letter of the law but not the Spirit is not from the
Lord. And acknowledging that all things
are from God and true worship and love, he says you tithe. And you pass over judgment and
the love of God there in verse 42. You know, we kind of ran into
that same thing in Luke chapter 10 when we were, the last chapter
we were in, in Luke 10, 25. Behold, a certain lawyer stood
up and tempted him. He wasn't really in it for a
spiritual good reason. He was just in it to see if he
could catch the Lord in some kind of verbal snare. And he tempted him saying, Master,
what shall I do to inherit eternal life? Because he secretly thought,
you know, I've pretty much done everything. I'm good. I do all
the things that's required. And the Lord said unto him, What's
written in the law? How readest thou? And boy, what
a telling verse that is. What's written in the law? How
readest thou? And you know, we just don't have
a better example of that in our pastor. has been teaching out
of the Old Testament Law and the Prophets now for years and
years and years. He calls them the Gospel of Leviticus,
the Gospel of Zechariah, the Gospel of Numbers. How readest
thou? What do you read in there? Do
you read in the Scriptures? Well, here's a bunch of stuff that
you need to do to comply. Or do you read in there and see
the light? Do you read in there and see
the Christ that the Scriptures are talking about? Because that's
what the Lord says, beginning at Moses. He expounded to them
all the Scriptures concerning Himself. And we believe here
that that means all the Scriptures, not just these certain ones that
you might have a star in your Bible that says, oh, this is
a Messianic prophecy. But all the sacrifices, all of
the creation, starting at Genesis all the way through Malachi and
in the New Testament. Someone's coming, someone is
here, someone's coming back is what he always says. So he's
always giving us the gospel, and that's what we look for.
It was Spurgeon that said, whatever scripture I'm at, I just start
there and make a beeline for Christ. And that's the only thing
that matters. That's the only thing that has
anything that's any good. And this pharisee, this lawyer
that he's dealing with here in Luke chapter 10, he says, What
saith the law? How readest thou? And he says,
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with
all thy soul, and with all thy strength, with all thy mind,
thy neighbor as thyself." Boy, there's a couple of really good
articles in the Bulletin this morning, and this one pastor
that was getting ready to be with the Lord, he was dying,
and he said, I didn't pass any of these tests. It's only by
grace. It's all I can count on. Can anyone here say, I love the
Lord 24-7? Every second of every minute
of every day, I love the Lord God with all my heart, all my
soul, and all my might, all my strength. Well, we just fall
short of that just as the seconds tick by, and our neighbor is
thyself. And the Lord said unto him, Thou
hast answered right. This do, and thou shalt live.
Well, we can't do that. The only way we can do that is
through Christ, through Him doing it for us. But he willing to
justify himself said unto Jesus, Well, who's my neighbor? Here's a lawyer question for
you. Love thy neighbor as I, well, who's my neighbor? Well, wrong answer. You know, loving the worship
of men rather than worshiping God is the issue that comes up
in verse 43. Woe unto you Pharisees, for you
tithe mint and rue, and that's some kind of leafy plant, some
kind of vegetable spice or something that they, a commodity that they
traded. All manner of herbs, and you
pass over judgment and the love of God. You just spend all your
time on the do things. and you skip judgment, and you
skip the love of God that we just read about this lawyer from
Luke chapter 10. It says you love the uppermost
seats. Well, we think about that like
a stadium, like in the football games or in the bowl games that
are going on. The uppermost seats, we call them the nosebleed seats,
but the seats that the Lord's talking about here is on the
50-yard line at the ground level. These are not the uppermost seats,
but the most prestigious seats. The seats where everybody can
see you and say, well, he's right in the front row. Everybody can
see him and how religious he is. You love to be recognized in
that fashion. You love to be recognized as
being religious. And it's just the opposite where
you just say, I'm the chiefest of sinners saved by grace. And you know, in verse 44, he
makes this comparison with dead men's graves. And that's an interesting
scripture there. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees,
you hypocrites. Hypocrites is not a good word
for the Lord to call you. Say, do one thing and say another,
you know. But you're as graves which appear
not, and the men that walk over them are not aware of them. Well,
you know that comes from numbers, if we ever get there in Norman's
numbers class. Chapter 19 is a long ways away. Verse 16 says, "...whosoever
touches one that is slain with a sword in the open fields, or
a dead body, or a bone of a man, or a grave, shall be unclean
seven days." So if you touch a grave, you're ceremonially
unclean for seven days. It's kind of like COVID. You've got to quarantine yourself
for a week and then do some... whatever the law prescribed to
get over that. And so, you know, during the
Passover in Jerusalem, there'd be like three million people
coming to town from every different direction to observe the Passover. And so they would go out where
the people were buried and they would whitewashed the sepulchers
and the graves that they could find so that people wouldn't
accidentally walk over them and touch them and be unclean because
they wouldn't be able to participate in the Passover unless they had
a whole week to get over the uncleanness part. You're as graves
which appear not and the men walk over them are not aware
of them. And so spiritually what that means is you pretend to be religious,
but you're kind of, the people that come in contact with you
are contaminated because you're not giving them the gospel. And
you're disguised just as these unmarked graves are. And people
unaware, well, you come to the church, you expect to get the
gospel. And if you come to the building and you sit down in
the pew and, you know, I was watching this fellow the other
night from where we used to live up in Alaska. And he says, we're
studying the life of David. Open your Bibles to 1 Kings. Then he goes on and gives us
a 20-minute lecture on geography and history. Didn't mention Christ
one time. Didn't mention the Gospel one
time. And I quit listening then, but I'm sure that's the way it
ended the same way as it started. It was just so disappointing.
My wife, she says, Blech! That just summed it up. But if you're unregenerate, you
think, well, that was a really good lesson here. I know a lot
about geography and this hill of so-and-so and where this took
place and where that took place. But God did not choose to save
people by preaching geography history, he chose to say them
by the preaching of the gospel. And those things might very well
contain the gospel if you look for Christ in them and what they
represent. But just You know, I could sit
here and give you a geography lesson on the Dalles and the
Columbia River Gorge, but it's not going to lead anybody to
the gospel of Christ. It's just not. So disappointing. So he says, you're just like
those graves that are unmarked. They're there, and people touch
them, and then they're unclean. And so, you know, if we had a
big white paintbrush, we could go around to all the gospel,
the preachers that are not preaching the gospel and just, we'd give
them a whitewashing, coat them, you know, and say, stay away
from that. That's what we do. And so, you
know, the people were just contaminated by these religious fakers who
appeared righteous outwardly, but In Matthew 23,
it says, they're full of dead men's bones. Woe unto you, scribes
and Pharisees, you're like unto whited sepulchers. That's where
that whited comes from, what we just talked about, which indeed
appear beautiful outwardly, but are within full of dead man's
bones and all uncleanness. What a, what an indictment. And
then right after that, we come to verse 45 and one of the lawyers
that was at this supper says, wow, he's talking about us too.
How can that be? Then answered one of the lawyers
and said unto him, Master, thus saying, thou reproachest us also. No kidding. And the Lord says, OK, since
you speak up, woe unto you lawyers. You laid men with burdens grievous
to be born, and ye yourselves touch not one of the burdens
with your fingers. You build sepulchres of the prophets,
and your fathers killed them." And they're in the process of
killing him. They just haven't got around
to accomplishing it yet. And they said, well, we reverence
the prophet Isaiah, and we're going to build a nice monument
to him. But he said, which of the prophets
have you guys not stoned and killed? And every one of them, practically.
Isaiah said, Lord, I'm all alone, and they're after me. They seek
to kill me. And the Lord said, thank God,
the Lord. You know, I've reserved 7,000
men to me that haven't bowed the knee to Baal, a remnant according
to the election of grace, what Paul called it in Romans. And
even at this present time, there is a remnant according to the
election of grace. But at the time, Isaiah says,
they're trying to kill me. And all the prophets, they were
hiding in caves They preached the word of God
and were stoned. And yet these guys pretend to
worship them, but they didn't bring out the view of Christ
in the gospel of Isaiah or Zechariah or Zephaniah or Malachi or any
of those scriptures, and the part that they did bring out,
they brought out wrong. Well, can any good thing come
out of Nazareth? And they just ignore the whole
thing. So, you know, it's sometimes
better to just be quiet and not engage in argument with the Lord
God Almighty. Be still and see the salvation
of the Lord. And you know, one of the woes,
he pronounced kind of three woes against them. The first one was,
you know, you just place religious burdens on men that nobody can
comply with, instead of preaching the gospel of grace and salvation.
Now, the purpose of the law was to show us that we couldn't keep
it, and we needed somebody to keep it for us. We needed a substitute. And we don't need someone to
say, well, you need to keep this law. That young man that said,
all these have I kept from my youth up. Well, what about the
one about lying? Failed on that one already. But
you know, they place religious burdens on men. You know, that's what it says
in Acts 15. He says, Why put a yoke on the neck of the disciples
which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? Why do
that? Don't pretend to say that here's
a bunch of stuff you need to do to be saved when it just comes
down to by faith or you're saved through grace and not of yourselves.
It's a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. Acts 15.11, the next verse where
he says, we can't keep the law, but we believe that through the
grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, we shall be saved even as they. That's what you should be telling
them. You build elaborate memorials to the prophets that they killed. And lastly, but not least in
importance is in verse 52. Woe to you lawyers, for you have
taken away the key of knowledge. What an indictment. You've taken
away the key of knowledge? You entered not in yourselves,
and them that were entering in ye hindered." Kind of takes us
back to verse 33 of earlier where it says that they that come in
may see the light. Well, if you put a sack over
the light so that those that are coming in can't see it, that's
not good. you entered not in yourselves,
and them that were entering in you hindered." And really kind
of that, you know, we think of hindering as maybe creating an
obstacle by making something more difficult, but it's a little
more serious than that because they're denying the Lord God
Almighty and salvation. And it almost has the sense of
a preventing, a prevention kind of a sense. You take away the key of knowledge,
the gospel of the Son of God. You enter not in yourselves,
you deny His very presence. not believing the record that
God gave of his son from Genesis to Malachi. And you hindered
them that were coming in, controlling the religion of the day with
traditions of men, and failing to preach that gospel that's
in every book of the Old Testament, and giving out rules that no
one can comply with. Boy, you go to a church and they
have the big list of rules on the wall. Here's all the stuff
you need to do. here's all your well fill out
this form kind of thing that we always kind of mock and ridicule
or you know repeat after me here's a rule or you have to dress this
way or not that way or you must attend every service, or you
get a checkbox against you, or things that are more designed
for control. You can't do this, or you can't
do that. Things that, it's like that ritual
washing. God didn't decree that. You know, Paul wrote in Romans
10, verse 2, he's talking about his brothers and the nation there,
and he said, I bear them record that they have a zeal of God,
but not according to knowledge. And we know we just know lots
of people like that. They have a zeal of God, but
not according to knowledge. They seem religious. They seem
zealous. They seem sincere even, but sincerely
not knowledge. Ephesians 1.17 says, The God
of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto
you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of
him." And that comes through the gospel, the preaching of
the gospel, and he uses that. So when you take that away, you
take away an important thing. We'll stop there, and next time,
Lord willing, we'll begin in chapter 12. Be free. It's very sad.