Beginning with Love for Our Lord

Luke 11:37-54 - Riley Boggs

When I was in either late elementary school, or early middle school (I can’t remember), I did something really dumb. But not just me, lots and lots of my classmates did it as well. When I say what it is we did, some of you will immediately know what I’m talking about, and some of you will be really confused, but don’t worry, I’ll explain it. And before I tell you what it is, let me just say to the kids here, do not do this. Hopefully none of you would be as thoughtless as we all were, but just in case, I am telling you, do not do what I’m about to tell you. Okay, the thing that we all did was something called, “Eraser burns”. An eraser burn was exactly what it sounds like it is, it was burning yourself with an eraser. For some reason, there was a trend where kids would get an eraser and see how long they could rub it on the back of their hand before stopping. I mean isn’t that dumb? You would just get an eraser and rub it against the back of your hand and burn yourself. At one point this became so popular that it seemed like half the school had these big burn-like wounds on the backs of their hands. And I was one of them, I even still have the remnants of a scar on the back of my hand from where I gave myself an eraser burn.

The question we should all be asking is, why would a bunch of kids do this? Other than the reality that kids just do dumbs things, why would they intentionally do something that causes nothing but pain? Well the answer is pretty simple actually. Everyone wanted to seem cool. See part of the whole thing was that everyone pretended like it didn’t hurt when you did it. I remember specifically when I did it trying to sit there with a straight face acting like it was no big deal, but in my head thinking, “This is dumb, and it really hurts.” But it didn’t keep me from doing it. I, along with lots and lots of other students decided that it was worth it if we were seen as the strong and cool kids.

Now to myself and you all, right here, when I tell you that story it seems very silly. But the truth is, as grown adults, we still do these kinds of things. We will go to extreme lengths in order to make ourselves look a certain way in front of others. Like myself in that elementary school classroom, we will act one way on the outside, and try to hide what it is happening on the inside. Most adults spend their entire life feverishly trying to make that the case. In the words of Robert Hunter, “Almost ablaze still you don’t feel the heat. It takes all you got just to stay on the beat. You say it's a livin, we all gotta eat. But you're here alone, there's no one to compete. If mercy's a business, I wish it for you. More than just ashes when your dreams come true.” In other words, everything around us and within us is on fire. And yet, we will ignore it and continue to try and put on an act like all it well until eventually we are standing in a pile of ashes.

This morning, we are looking at a story with a similar dynamic to this. In our passage Jesus rebukes 2 different groups of people, the pharisees and the lawyers, for doing a very similar thing. Both of these groups were primarily concerned about looking a certain way from the outside. They wanted to look clean and obedient and at the top of their religious game. They wanted to look holy. And to the world, they might have been pretty convincing. But to Jesus, the One who can see the heart, He was not fooled for a moment. See Jesus isn’t like those who can only see the outside. He isn’t like the classmate or the neighbor or the Facebook friend. Jesus sees the heart. He knows our thoughts, our intentions, and our desires, and He can’t be fooled. And because of that, He rebukes these 2 groups of people for what they are doing. Because the thing they are hiding isn’t their pain, but their sin. And they are hiding it behind their “good deeds”. He sees the error of their ways and calls on them to change.

This morning, I want to draw out the 3 truths from this passage. 2  truths that are more cautionary, and then one positive truth that will hopefully urge us in the direction that Jesus is teaching here. The first truth is this…

1.) We must not only be concerned with our outward appearance of obedience

Luke begins in verse 37 by telling us that as Jesus was speaking, a Pharisee asked him to come and dine with him. Jesus accepts the invitation, goes in, and reclines at the table to eat. The Pharisee sees Jesus do this and is astonished. He’s astonished because Jesus didn’t wash before sitting at the table to eat, and to the pharisee, this was a violation of the law of God. Now if this was actually an example of Jesus violating the law, then the Pharisee would have every right to be astonished. The issue, however, is that this isn’t a violation of the law of God, it’s a violation of the law of the pharisees, which is no violation at all. See the law demanded that priests wash before rituals within the sanctuary. As a matter of ceremonial purity, the law required that they do this. However, the pharisees had taken this law and applied it to further. They extended the law and said everyone must wash before handling food, in all circumstances. The law didn’t demand this, but the Pharisees did. This is what the Pharisee is so astonished by.

Jesus will have no part of this. He is not a lawbreaker, and he rebukes the Pharisee for their hypocrisy here. In verse 39 He says, “Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. 40 You fools! Did not he who made the outside make the inside also?” Jesus gets straight to the heart of the matter. The Pharisees were only concerned about with their outward appearance of obedience. They wanted to appear like the good and righteous law-keepers. Meanwhile, as Jesus points out, their hearts are were full of greed and wickedness. They had become so consumed with their outward appearance that they had deceived themselves into thinking that they were doing what was right and in turn had become fools.

Then Jesus gives more examples of how they do this. Starting in verse 41 He says, “But give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you. But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and every herb, and neglect justice and the love of God. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. 43 Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the best seat in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces. 44 Woe to you! For you are like unmarked graves, and people walk over them without knowing it.”

What Jesus is saying is that though they give like they ought, they do it with wrong intentions and motivations, and in doing so, miss the aim of their giving. They neglect the justice and the love of God. They take the best seats in the synagogue and use the high honor greetings in the marketplace so that they might look very holy and righteous to others. Meanwhile, they are filled with wickedness.

He compares them to graves, that people walk over without knowing. Now that might not make a bunch of sense to us, so let me try to explain it a bit. In this time, according to the law, touching a grave made you unclean. And so as a preventative measure, the graves would be clearly marked so that no one would accidentally come into contact with a grave and become unclean. What Jesus is saying is that the Pharisees are like graves that are unmarked. That is, the defilement that is taking place is hidden, it’s veiled. Like the unmarked graves, the defiling thing lies below the surface of the Pharisees. And so as the Pharisees go out and led people down their path, they are defiling people without them even realizing. They are liked unmarked graves, burying their wickedness below the surface of so-called good deeds.

Jesus doesn’t mince words with the Pharisees here, and so we shouldn’t mince words when it comes to applying this to our own lives. We cannot only be concerned about our outward appearance of obedience. When we do, we deceive ourselves. I use that phrase, “deceive ourselves”, because I think it’s actually what happens when we do this for an extended period of time. When we spend a lot of time putting on a good Christian act, we can make ourselves believe that we are in a better spot spiritually than we actually are. This is what happened with the Pharisees. They played the part, and they played it well. They played it so well that they believed that they were who they were pretending to be. That is so very dangerous, because it gives the illusion of safety, which is right where the enemy wants you. In a place where you say, “I’m good and all is well”, when that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

As followers of Christ, we cannot only be concerned about our outward appearance. We can do all sorts of really good things, and still be full of greed and wickedness. We can go to church and pray before dinner and have Jesus bumper stickers and post Scripture on Facebook and still be incredibly lost. You can make your life reflect that of a Christian and still have a heart that has no clue who Christ is. The Pharisees did this and Jesus warns them of continuing down that path. Let this be a warning for us here this morning. Let’s not be a people who are not only concerned about giving off the appearance of Christian, but who are concerned with having a heart for Christ. A people who aren’t just concerned about looking the part when there are watching eyes, but a people who want to please a God who sees within us. Let’s not be hypocritical, let’s be genuine.

The second point that I think Jesus is making is this…

2.) We burden ourselves and others when we demand more than God has demanded

As Jesus is saying this to the Pharisees, the lawyers overhear and take offense. One of the lawyers speaks up and says to Jesus, “Teacher, in saying these things you insult us also.” In other words, hey we do the same thing that the Pharisees do, which personally isn’t something I’d say out loud. But they do and so Jesus turns and begins to warn them for what they do. He says, “Woe to you lawyers also! For you load people with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers.”

What Jesus is saying is that the lawyers had framed in the law with their own laws. That is, they had created laws that were put into place so that they wouldn’t break the actual laws. Let me give you an example of what I mean. We all know that it is against the law here in the United States to drive above the speed limit. We all know that police officers can and do pull you over and write you a ticket, or worse, for doing so. It’s against the law. Now what these experts in the law would do is add laws that would keep people from potentially breaking the law of speed limits. They would say something like, “Okay, since we know it is against the law to speed, we are now saying that it is against the law to even own a car. Because you cannot break the law by speeding if you don’t have a vehicle to do it.” This is the kind of thing that they would do with all of the Old Testament law. They would frame it on, on all sides, with their own laws.

This is why Jesus says that they have loaded people with burdens hard to bear. The law was already unkeepable by sinful people. There was a constant need for atonement as it was. And yet, now, these lawyers had extended it even further and made their own laws, demanding that people keep them in the same way. They had loaded people with burdens.

I think this is an important word for us to heed this morning. It is not our job to decide what is and isn’t sin, God has already done that. We were never meant to, even out of an abundance of caution, begin to create our own “mini-commandments”, and put them around God’s actual commandments. We are not supposed to hold one another to a standard that the Bible does not put forth. Now of course we can have conversations and disagreements about what is wise and how to apply biblical truths. But that does not mean that we have the ability to bind other people to convictions that we ourselves have, when Bible doesn’t speak in that way.

As the Lord began to prepare me to be a pastor and I started following that path and telling others that I was pursuing pastoral ministry, I got a lot of interesting responses. Some people were excited, but most people would sigh and say, “Good luck…” and just chuckle. I would sort of ask them why they responded like that and almost every time they would begin to tell me about the time an old lady in the church cussed at the pastor because he changed the carpet color in the sanctuary. I mean not always that story, but something to that affect. I heard endless stories about church people treating pastors in absolutely horrible ways over things that really didn’t matter at all. Things like the carpet color. They were warning me of that. Thankfully, the Lord brought me to you all and we have hardwood floors.

But do you know that what is happening in this story in Luke 11 and what is happening in all those stories I was told aren’t all that different? In both of them, there has been an extending beyond the law. There has been a fence placed around what God has said and hidden behind a lot of things we just really care about. This is happening all throughout churches in the Bible belt and as a result, they are dying. We see it and hear it all the time. A church runs off pastor after pastor until eventually pastors stop showing up. It’s all boils down to the reality that if we demand more than God has commanded of people, we are just laying more burden on ourselves and others, for no reason. Instead of grace, mercy, and hoping the best, there is a cold rigid demand for a law that God has not given.

Our goal, as followers of Christ, is to obey all that Christ has commanded. That’s what we have been tasked with. That means we teach and preach and study what the Word of God says, and we seek to apply it our lives through and through. We don’t go beyond that, and we don’t try to fence it in with our own laws. We simply trust and obey what God has said. It’s sufficient, it’s good, and it’s all we need to grow as beleivers.

So we have these two sort of one-off truths that Jesus is rebuking the pharisees and lawyers for. First, He reminds them that they must not be only concerned with our outward appearance of obedience. Then secondly, He reminds them that they burden themselves and others when we demand more than God has demanded. Maybe not your typical Easter sermon, but I think that’s a good thing. This is the Word the Lord has for us. Now the final point I want us to see is the more positive reminder. It is this…

3.) True obedience is driven by the Gospel

The lawyers in this story had not only fenced in God’s law, but they also denied Jesus Christ who stood before them. Jesus says to them, starting in verse 47, “47 Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets whom your fathers killed. 48 So you are witnesses and you consent to the deeds of your fathers, for they killed them, and you build their tombs. 49 Therefore also the Wisdom of God said, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute,’ 50 so that the blood of all the prophets, shed from the foundation of the world, may be charged against this generation, 51 from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, it will be required of this generation. 52 Woe to you lawyers! For you have taken away the key of knowledge. You did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering.”

Now there is a lot going on here, so let me try to explain. What Jesus is saying here is that these men think they are much better than they actually are. They build tombs for the prophets of old, signaling to everyone that if they were alive when the prophets were alive, they would have listened to them and believed their words. They are experts in the law, they know the prophets words, and they are just so sure that they would’ve been on the good side had they been there. Jesus isn’t so sure about this. Actually what He tells them that they are guilty of the blood of all the prophets, from the first to the last. Though they might think that they would be those who listened and believed, Jesus knows that they wouldn’t have been. They would have been right there with those who were demanding for the death of the prophets.

And the reason that Jesus is saying this is because these lawyers are standing there denying the one who all the prophets spoke of. The prophets told of a coming Messiah, the Christ. The one who would come and rule and reign by laying down His life on behalf of His people. And now, that One had come. Jesus Christ had come. And yet, the lawyers stand there denying every word from His lips. They try to provoke him and get him to stumble. They wait, hoping they can catch him off guard. These men, these lawyers, are no better than the ones who killed the prophets. In fact, they are just like them.

Both the Pharisees and lawyers completely misunderstood where obedience to God begins, because they both denied the Lord Jesus before them. They were so caught up in other things. The Pharisees were concerned about looking the part in front of others, neglecting to consider their wicked hearts within. The lawyers were concerned about others keeping the laws that they themselves had put into place. They loved to point fingers and lay heavy burden. Meanwhile, they had taken away the key of knowledge. That is, they had missed the entire point of the Law and denied the Lord who stood before them. Both the pharisees and the lawyers had missed it entirely.

For a handful of years I worked on the grounds crew at the college I attended. We worked to make sure that the campus stayed looking good throughout the year. We mowed and weed-eated and maintain flower beds and picked up trash and all of that stuff. Well there was one time where we were tasked with pressure washing the backside of a building. Now typically this isn’t a big deal, I kind of enjoyed pressure washing. But on this occasion, it was a big deal. It was a big deal for 3 reasons. First, the building was huge. It was going to take most of our crew to do it. Some on lifts getting the top of the building, some on the ground doing the lower parts of the building, and everyone else doing the sidewalks and fountain behind it. It was a ton of pressure washing. The second reason it was a big deal is because someone very important was coming very soon. The whole reason we were doing this is because a very high-profile donor was coming to campus and he was going to be spending time in this area. And the notice was short, so we didn’t have much time. The third reason this was a big deal is that it was the middle of the winter. It was absolutely freezing outside the entire time.

  So we did it. We worked incredibly hard, taking shifts to thaw our hands in the building, and having to change clothes at lunch because we were drenched and freezing. We did this for about a week and a half non-stop until it was finally done. And man, when we stepped back, I was ready for this guy to come by and see it and be amazed. It went from looking super gross to looking really good.

Do you know what happened? The guy cancelled. We showed up to work on the Monday after the weekend he was supposed to be here and we asked how it went, to which my boss replied, “Oh, actually he couldn’t make it”, and then proceeded to tell us the plan for the day. That was it. We all just looked at one another like, “Are you kidding me? All of that hard work was a complete waste of time. It was pointless. It was for nothing.”

I think, sometimes, we do this same thing when we obey God in ways that aren’t observable by others. Maybe you are prone to lash out in anger and one time, even though you get really frustrated, you choose to not give in to that temptation. Or maybe you are tempted to look at something on your phone that is inappropriate, but you choose not to do that, and resist the temptation to sin and instead flee from that thought. We do those things, and it can feel a bit underwhelming. No one sees us do it. It’s all just happening in our heart and mind. It might have taken all the strength the Lord has given you to fight off that temptation, and yet, seemingly no one knows.

Can I tell you, God is not like the man who never showed up to see all we had done. God sees every moment of your life. He knows your every thought and desire. And when you fight off the temptation to sin, and instead cling to Him and His Word, I want you to know that He delights in you. He delights in the fact that are you walking in the ways that He desires for you.

Our obedience to God must be driven by the Gospel. We must remember that God sent His Son to die for us. That He, Jesus Christ, lived an entirely sinless life, keeping the law perfectly. And yet, because of His great love for us, He died on the cross. And on the cross He bore our sins and shame. God’s wrath that was intended for us, was placed upon Him. Then, He was buried, but not for long. For 3 days later He rose again, proving His power over sin and death itself, and then ascended to the right hand of the Father, where He rules as King, patiently awaiting His return. Our obedience must be driven by that.

What that means is that we obey God not because others will see, but because we love God. We obey God because He came and He saved us from our bondage of sin, and caused us to walk in His marvelous light. We obey God because in Him, for the first time in our lives, we can. We aren’t like the pharisees, who just want everyone to see how good we are doing, while veiling all kinds of sin. We aren’t like the lawyers who try to do more for God than He has asked. And we also aren’t like the lawyers who deny the Lord who has come to save us. We are those who have been saved and covered by the blood of our Risen Savior, who now can and will pursue righteousness that begins with the new heart that our Lord has given us. From the inside out, we have been changed, and so we pursue obedience in the same way. We seek to obey all that Christ has commanded, clinging to His every word, and remembering all that He has done for us, as we seek to honor Him with every moment of our lives.

Church, this passage is not one where we ought to wag our fingers and look down at our noses at the pharisees and lawyers and say, “how could they?”. That’s not it. No, instead we stand together and say, “God, thank you for what you have done for me. Thank you for Jesus. Thank you for His atonement. Thank you for opening my eyes. Now, by the power of your Spirit in me, help me to never fall into these traps. Help me to have a heart that longs to glorify you, and let my outward actions show that. Help me to never go beyond your Word, trusting that what you have done on my behalf is sufficient, and I am simply to obey what you have said. Help me to love you with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength.”

This is what obedience that is driven by the Gospel looks like, and it’s the kind of obedience that the Lord is calling us to. And as He is faithful to call us to it, let us be faithful to walk in it. Amen.