Such Fatal Confidence • Luke 11:37-54
56:32 Teaching begins
Notes
You have to be pretty confident to tell God He’s got it wrong.
But a group of people are just that confident. Jesus Christ tells them the truth, they say, “You’re insulting us.” They treat the Son of God as an enemy.
Because they do their religion right, they can prove that they’re right.
Religion gives you such fatal confidence in yourself that God Himself can’t tell you a single thing.
We’re reading in Luke 11, from verse 37.
1. Jesus surprises the Pharisees.
A. A Pharisee invites Jesus to either breakfast or lunch, but it wasn’t a main meal. And Jesus accepts.
B. A problem develops almost immediately. Jesus reclines to eat while the others are ceremonially washing their hands to remove defilement.
C. The Pharisee is genuinely surprised that Jesus would ignore something so fundamentally important as hand-washing in the prescribed way.
2. Hand-washing is a hot topic of the first importance. To these men.
A. Alfred Edersheim researched this in his Life and Times of Jesus, the Messiah, 1886.
B. The reason this is called “the tradition of the elders” is not because it came from distant antiquity. It had only recently been established.
1. This decree dates from the time just before Jesus, and was finally carried into force in the very days of Christ. That’s why everyone was so exact and zealous for it.
2. The elders were Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Shammai. They were contemporaries of Jesus, though both died before Jesus began His ministry. Both rabbis bear the designation, “The Elder.” They each had disciples and their schools lasted longer than they did. The son or grandson of Hillel was Gamaliel, the teacher of the Apostle Paul.
3. Hillel generally favoured a freer interpretation of the biblical text than Shammai who usually adhered to the letter of the law. They rarely agreed on anything. So it was unusual that they agreed on this topic of hand-washing. That’s why it is known as the tradition of the Elders, meaning both Hillel and Shammai.
C. The purpose of hand-washing was to deal with defilement from the Gentiles, to make a person clean before God.
1. Water for purification was kept in large jars or vessels. Jesus used those kind of jars at the wedding at Cana to turn the water into wine.
2. You draw out at least one quarter of a log, equal to 1 1/2 eggshells.
3. Water is poured on both hands, rubbed, and the hands are lifted up so that the water reaches the wrist. If it doesn’t go to the wrist, the hand isn’t clean.
4. The second pouring over the hands is to cleanse of defiled water, this time the hands go down so that water runs off the fingertips.
D. The ceremony and meaning of hand-washing is purely man-made.
1. It is found nowhere in Scripture. It was only after they developed this ceremony that they looked for scriptural justification.
2. It’s purely ceremonial. There’s no soap, no real cleansing. It’s just water, you make it drip to the wrist, that’s it.
E. These ordinances were declared more precious and of more binding importance than the Scripture itself.
1. To neglect it was like being guilty of gross carnal defilement. You were risking temporal destruction or at least, poverty.
2. The Rabbinic principle was, if an ordinance had only been re-enacted, it might not be called into question or invalidated. It had total authority.
E. Can you imagine the surprise of the Pharisee? How can a good Jew like Jesus throw out both Hillel and Shammai at the same time? How can You ignore the need for cleansing? You’re risking destruction and poverty. Jesus is offending all morality.
3. But Jesus goes further. He testifies that these Pharisees are complete sinners and that hand-washing is pitifully inadequate to cleanse sin.
A. Sin is inward, of the heart, and not merely outward and ceremonial.
1. When you clean the outside of the cup and the plate you go halfway at best, but you’re not finished yet. And the half that you ignore is the most important part.
2. Inside you’re full of robbery and wickedness. Taking from others what belongs to them. Coveting, greed, brutality, stealing, lying, injustice.
3. This is sin against others and against God. All sin is against God first, who is the Author of all things and therefore has the authority to determine one’s thoughts and behaviour. If you sin against others you sin against God.
4. Jesus isn’t guessing. He knows their hearts. He knows!
B. To neglect the heart is foolish.
1. Doesn’t God see the heart? He sees the heart like we see the inside of the cup.
2. If you don’t realise God sees all the thoughts and motives of the heart you aren’t thinking. It is foolish.
C. Jesus says give that which is within as charity, and then all things are clean for you.
1. When you give charity you don’t expect that money to come back. What you give belongs to someone else now, for their benefit, not yours.
2. Charity costs you. An offering has to cost you or else it doesn’t mean anything.
3. You are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.
4. When your heart, mind, soul, all that is within you, and your bodily outward strength has been given to God, then all things are clean for you because there is no reserve, no idea of, “This is God’s, and this is mine, and I’m in control of what’s His and what’s mine.”
D. But is that the way their hearts are?
4. Jesus goes on to show that their hearts are not clean.
A. Woe to you Pharisees! You tithe your insignificant garden herbs but you refuse to look at justice and loving God. Tithing garden herbs isn’t wrong or criminal, but ignoring loving God is criminal.
B. Woe to you, Pharisees! You love the focus of the people on you. Where is your focus on God? Does your humility and purity cause people to think on God? Or do you do what you do so people think, what a wonderful person you are?
C. Woe to you! You’re defiling people without them being aware of it. You look good on the outside but you influence people away from God to being unclean.
D. A lawyer pipes up and objects.
1. Lawyers here are also called scribes. They are experts in the law of Moses, in interpreting and applying them.
2. He says, “You are insulting us, too.” He’s taking what Jesus is saying simply as a man’s opinion. “It’s not true what You say about us. You don’t like us for whatever reason, and You are name-calling.”
E. Jesus tells the truth about the lawyers, not an opinion.
1. You lay responsibility and obligation on others that you have made up. You don’t touch those burdens with one of your fingers. You tell others what to do, but you don’t apply that to yourselves.
2. Remember, these men do that. But they don’t stop and say, “You know, now that I think about it, He’s right.” They don’t accept that at all.
F. Woe to you for you build the tombs of the prophets and your fathers killed them.
1. The prophets were sent from God to tell the people they had forsaken Him and His word. They called the people back to God. Repent or judgment is coming.
2. The fathers didn’t want to hear that word, didn’t believe the truth. They persecuted and killed the prophets.
3. If you really want to honour the memory of the prophets you repent and believe their words. As Jesus just said, “Blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.”
4. But these men merely finish the job their fathers began. Here’s a piece of stone we raise as a monument to a dead prophet. It’s impressive, but so what?
G. Jesus says you are going to surpass your fathers, so that on this generation will fall the guilt and blame of all the prophets. They prophesied the coming of the Messiah. You will be the Messiah’s murderers.
H. Woe to you lawyers! You’ve taken away the key of knowledge. You not only refused to enter into knowledge of God, you prevent others from entering. You are working against God. You’re not on His side. You’re His enemies.
5. Jesus leaves, and the lawyers (scribes) and Pharisees decide they’re going to get rid of Jesus.
A. They could have thought and considered: “You know, it was hard listening to Him, but He knows my heart. He is right. Do I love the Lord my God with all my heart, soul, mind, strength?”
B. They have such fatal confidence in their righteousness they refused to think and said, “He’s got to go. We’re going to find a way to catch Him and get Him killed.”
6. So what? You don’t need confidence that you are right. You need confidence that God accepts you.
A. You have a powerful need to be right.
1. You hate it when you’re wrong, when you’re guilty, when you shame yourself. It’s awkward, uncomfortable, causes stress, anxiety, discouragement. You are degraded and made worthless when you’re wrong.
2. The reason you have this need to be right is, you are wrong. God sees your heart and He knows, you have sinned against Him in countless ways. You have broken His laws. Your guilt lies heavy on you.
B. There’s only two ways to be right in the universe. God makes you right, that’s relationship. Or you make yourself right, that’s religion.
C. Relationship is about the heart. God begins to make you right in your heart by right relationship with truth. The example is David in Psalm 51. He committed adultery and murder.
1. Psalm 51:6 Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being, and in the hidden part You will make me know wisdom. God made David right by first of all bringing truth into his heart: he sinned against God.
2. Then David agreed with the truth. It was humbling to admit he sinned against God. He was not good as he looked before men. But God knew!
3. When he agreed with the truth he was helpless in his guilt and shame, because it’s impossible for a man to remove that. David had to depend on God to take away his sin, his guilt and shame, and restore him to relationship with God, and God did that.
D. The only other way to be right is to make yourself right, that’s religion. Religion is not about your heart because it doesn’t touch your inward person.
1. You don’t have to change your mind about yourself. You’re basically good, and you only have to do a few things to make yourself right, and you can do them, like hand-washing to your wrist.
2. You can decide for yourself that you’re right, you tell everyone who disagrees with you to go jump in the lake. I’m right and you’re all wrong. Or you decide that what this religious authority tells me, this is effective. When I do this, I’m okay. Go to religious services, pray these prayers, do this religious exercise, keep the right festivals.
3. To do this you have to completely do away with God and live as though there is no God and no Bible, because you are not asking, “What do You require for me to be right?” You live a lie: you’re outwardly religious but inwardly you have no relationship with God. You’re against Him.
E. Confidence in Jesus gives you peace with God. He really takes guilt and shame away. Jesus dying on the cross really did pay for your sins. God really accepted that sacrifice as sufficient and perfect. The proof is that He raised Jesus from the dead to new life. You trust in what Jesus did for you, and God answers with peace.
F. Confidence in yourself gives no peace because you’re not perfect, you’re a sinner. God doesn’t accept you. You’re still wicked because you reject God’s way to be right. There is no peace, says my God, for the wicked.
G. This is self-evident truth. This morning you are either trusting in Jesus’ death for you and you have peace, or you are trusting in yourself and you don’t have peace. Can God show you where you’re wrong, and you accept that? Or do you say, “You’re insulting me!”
H. David says in Psalm 139:23-24 Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts; and see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way. That’s how you stay in relationship with Jesus.
Let’s pray.