Washing, Works and Woes

Series on Luke

IV The Imperatives of the Kingdom

A Increasing Opposition

9 Six Woes

Text: 11:37-54

Introduction

Jesus has just told the leaders of the Church of His time that they are wicked. This was the people of God. What would your reaction be if Jesus said this to you? I hope you would say he was right, but they were a “holy” people. They avoided contact with publicans and sinners. They observed a strict set of laws which divided them from the rest of men, and they were separate. And so it was very difficult for them to admit that they were sinners. As a consequence they also missed the message of God’s grace and forgiveness. This passage of Scripture is the ultimate instruction on how to be religious without being good. This is a primary emphasis in our society. As moral commitment declines obedience becomes less important than being religious. Religion is a big deal as an expression of our personality but not as an expression of salvation from sin. That’s what this passage is really about. So consider with me sin left out by the Pharisees and salvation locked up by the scribes. This is a perfect one-two punch for misery.

I Sin Left Out by Pharisees

A Washing

Someone suggested when they saw the title “Washing, Works and Woes,” that this might be a sermon for homemakers. It’s not but it reminds me of that old saying cleanliness is next to Godliness. That’s not in the Bible, which will be a tremendous relief to some of us, and I hope, quite clear to all of us from this text for we read in verses 37-41, 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 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. What God is primarily concerned with is cleansing the inside, not the outside. Soap and water will not wash away sin. The Pharisee notices that his guest does not wash his hands. It is not that he was concerned about germs. It was a ceremonial washing to remove the pollution of contact with sinful people. It was very dramatic. You had a pitcher and a basin. First you poured the water on your hands from the fingers toward the wrists, then you put your fist in each palm and turned it, then you poured the water from the wrist down the fingers. You couldn’t miss this action, and Jesus didn’t do it. It was intentional to make a point. You cannot wash away sin with soap and water. Ask a rape victim who spends hours in the shower trying the wash away the ugliness and brutality and really only the grace of God can help. How much more the one who has sinned cannot get rid of the pollution in this way. The sad story of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, who says, after murdering Duncan, “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red.” And now consider the woes.

B Woes

These are pronouncements of judgment in verses 42-52, “Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth 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.“Woe to you Pharisees, because you love the most important seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces. “Woe to you, because you are 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 it 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.” Woes are the opposite of blessings, and the judgment comes because they wash the outside of the cup but not the inside. In other words they do not recognize the sinfulness of their wicked putrid and faithless hearts. Sin is left out! Because they do not see their need, they tithe with mathematical meticulousness, but do not see the needs of others. They omit justice and the love of God, they take the best seats instead of giving them to others, and preferring others above themselves. This is a clear indication that they are blind to their own sin, and the great irony is in the last woe. They are like unmarked tombs, because the law specified no contact with the dead and the Jewish people whitewashed their tombs to make sure this did not happen, but the Pharisees are like graves you fall into because you can’t tell that they are graves. The very thing they were trying to prevent was what they promoted because contact with them was equal to contact with the dead. Ultimately we must come to one conclusion. If we do not confess our sins we cannot know Jesus or be saved, as I John 1:7-10 declares, But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.

II Salvation Locked Up by Scribes

As the students of the Bible, the scholars of Scripture, and the teachers of the truth, the one thing the scribes should have noticed is that the Old Testament taught that you could not work your way out of sin. What you need is the grace of God; the full free forgiveness of a redeemer. They needed to be rescued from sin as much as they needed to be rescued from Egypt or Babylon, but the scribes focused on works.

A Works

You probably don’t have any idea of the scribes teaching but let me give you an example. It was forbidden to carry a burden on the sabbath so they said if you carry one in your right or left hand, your bosom, or your shoulder you have violated the commandment. but you could carry it on the back of your hand, your foot, your mouth, your elbow, your hair, or in the fold of your shirt or your shoe or your sandal, and they even said if you can carry the burden between your money bag and your shirt or with your money bag turned upside down it’s OK. It is incredible that anyone could think God cared about this nonsense, but the point is that the whole thing was a smokescreen which obscured the truth of the Bible. By inventing ways to circumvent the law, the scribes destroyed the message of the prophets. Their message was, here is the law, you are not keeping it, you need a Savior. This is why our Lord puts such emphasis on the message of the prophets and their ignorance of it, and thus the woes follow.

B Woes

All of the woes apply equally to the Scribes and Pharisees as we read in verses 45 and 46, 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. Jesus said that their fathers killed the prophets, and they do not listen to the message in verses 47-51,“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 it all. Previous generations had killed the prophets and now they built great tombs to the prophets. Strange phenomenon in their sinful earthly lives that they honored the prophets but not their words. But maybe not so strange. Our own age has its special version of this. First we heard the message of the Bible, that all had sinned and we need a savior, and then liberalism and modernism rejected the Bible so that we were no longer sinners in need of salvation but citizens in need of freedom. For a long time secular humanism has prevailed. Now there is a strange and perverted interest in the supernatural, and the New Age movement. Though the naturalism of secular humanism is still in vogue at the same time we are seeing a movement towards spirituality. We always want religion without dealing with the real problem which is sin! New Age spirituality has nothing to do with sin or morality. It has to do with communing with the dead, with past lives, with the cosmic spirit. Children are encouraged to lie down and visualize themselves as full of light in a public school, and death is good because they will be reincarnated. The Pharisees obscured the problem of sin, but the scribes obscured God’s answer. and what is the answer? the prophet Isaiah makes it very clear in Isaiah 1:18-20, “Come now, let us reason together,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the best from the land; but if you resist and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword.” For the mouth of the LORD has spoken. And then the prophet says in 53:6, We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Conclusion

It is no wonder that the Lord concludes with a terrifying threat that the guilt of all the blood of all the prophets would fall upon them. Surely others were complicit from previous generations. Jesus even says so. But they were the last generation of the physical descendants of Abraham. After they refused to repent, God would abandon the nation forever and turn to the whole world instead. They could still be saved, but only if they trusted in the very Messiah that they were presently rejecting. You cannot wash away sin with soap and water. We sin in our hearts, and we need the blood of Jesus to cleanse us. You cannot be clean by washing as the Pharisees said, and you cannot keep the law in the way in which the scribes prescribed. You must confess your sin and know that there is only one remedy and that remedy is Jesus.The key they took away and buried is Jesus the Savior, who loved us and gave himself for us. Paul says in ii Corinthians 5:21, God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. How much sin did he bear? All that you have. How much righteousness can you receive? All that you need.