And please turn in your copies of God's word to Luke chapter 11. Luke chapter 11 and we'll read verses 37 to 44. While Jesus was speaking, a Pharisee asked him to dine with him. So he went in and reclined a table. The Pharisee was astonished to see that he did not first wash before dinner. And the Lord said to him, now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You fools, did not he who made the outside make the inside also? 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. Woe to you Pharisees, for you love the best seat in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces. Woe to you, for you are like unmarked graves and people walk over them without knowing it. So ends Jesus' words. Let's pray together. Our Heavenly Father, help us to receive your word now as Jesus has taught us, even in this last passage, that we are to be those who receive the light of the word, and that those who receive and do the word are those who are blessed, blessed beyond anything we might claim for ourselves through heritage or blood. Help us, Lord, to be those who are blessed as we receive the word now. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Children, do you know what the word hypocrite means? Some of you do. I did ask. You might be interested to know where that word comes from. The word hypocrite comes from the stage performances of ancient Greece. In those days, actors who performed plays would wear masks, and that's how they were able to represent different characters. If an actor was playing one character, he'd put on a mask for that character, then he might shift roles and put on another mask depicting another character. And these actors were just called hypocrites in the Greek, hypocrites. It wasn't an ill term. It wasn't designed to be offensive. They were just actors. They were hypocrites. That's what they were. But then over time, this word came to describe anyone who presents a public image in a certain way, but then in private or perhaps to other people, they are a completely different person. It's pretending to be one thing in front of others while actually being altogether different in reality. That's a very fitting word that Jesus uses to describe the Pharisees. That's a word he uses numerous times. You see, the Pharisees were very, very good at appearing pious and moral and upright. But as Jesus shows us, their hearts reveal something entirely different. In the passage we considered last week, Jesus spoke of our need to receive the light of his word. And as we receive the light, we'll be filled with the light. But you see, the problem with the Pharisees is that they always wanted to appear as having light on the outside, but because they rejected Jesus' words on the inside, well, within, they weren't filled with light, they were filled with darkness. The Pharisees were very much the religious conservatives of their days. The Sadducees were the theological liberals, but the Pharisees were the staunch conservatives. They were defenders of their traditions, traditions that went back generations and generations. They set themselves up as the great keepers of their laws and customs. But the problem was that their so-called law-keeping was always only a keeping of mere externals. And really, the laws that they kept were not God's laws, which always have the goal of having us love the Lord God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, and loving our neighbor as ourself. No, instead, the laws that they kept were their own petty, man-made laws that they had created, thousands of these laws that they had tacked onto the word. Well, it's this legalism and this hypocrisy that Jesus denounces with his prophetic woes. And beloved, as we are here today, and as we hear these same woes of our Lord Jesus Christ, we may not be sitting at that table alongside the Pharisees in front of Jesus, but Jesus is no less present with us now, and he is even now pronouncing these same woes against hypocrisy and legalism. And so let us receive the word of God today as he calls us to examine our own hearts. Let us repent of our own hypocrisy and legalism, doing so not in our own strengths or not in our own self-righteousness, but by looking to Christ, the one who is able to forgive us of all sins and cleanse us of all unrighteousness. Well, first we'll consider Jesus' rebuke against their legalism. Then Jesus rebuked against their hypocrisy. And finally, we'll consider the good news for legalists and hypocrites. Well, first, Jesus rebukes their legalism. So the scene that has just unfolded is that Jesus has been teaching this massive crowd of people, and as he's teaching, or perhaps as he finishes, wraps up his teaching, he receives this dinner invitation from a Pharisee. And so we read in verse 37, while Jesus was speaking, a Pharisee asked him to dine with him. So he went in and reclined at table. Nothing shocking about that, or is there? Well, before anyone has had a chance to take a bite of their starter salad, Jesus has already offended his dinner host. We read in verse 38, the Pharisee was astonished to see that he did not first wash before dinner. The Pharisee is shocked, appalled, astonished. Amazed, disgusted that Jesus would be so rude as to not wash his hands before dinner. Children, maybe you've come to the dinner table before with muddy paws, muddy hands, and maybe you've received a similar kind of a rebuke or scolding from your parents. Well, that's not what's going on here. It isn't that the Pharisee is concerned with Jesus' hygiene or that Jesus has muddy paws. No, rather, the Pharisees considered it a legal and religious duty to wash your hands before eating. Now, to be clear, this was not something that God had commanded his people. But this had become one of the many traditions passed down over the centuries and was still preserved and practiced in that day by the Pharisees. They made this custom a mark of true holiness. If you wanted to be holy just like the Pharisees, if you really wanted to stand out and be fit in among the best of society, this is what you did. You washed your hands before eating this ritual. And so that's why the Pharisees here are shocked and appalled with Jesus. He's not doing what everyone knows that you do if you're really holy. Well, Jesus is just fine not fitting into their culturally created religious traditions. Because the law of God does not require it, Jesus' conscience, he's not bound to obey it. That's what we learn from this. And that's true for us as well. our consciences are not bound to the mere commandments of men. This doctrine, which we call the doctrine of Christian liberty, is something that is helpfully placed in our confession of faith in the chapter on Christian liberty. It says, God alone is Lord of the conscience and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men, which are in anything contrary to his word, are not contained in it. This hand washing as a mark of holiness isn't contrary to the word, right? If Jesus washed his hands like they did, he wouldn't be sinning because it's not forbidden. And yet, because it's not contained in the word, he is not morally obliged to follow it. And therefore, it has no power to bind Jesus' conscience and conduct. Make no mistake, the only thing that Jesus violates here is the religious sensibilities of these Pharisees. He has not broken God's law. Well, Jesus doesn't only teach through his actions and inactions. Next, he begins to rebuke them through words. And notice how instead of referring to him as he or even as Jesus, Luke inserts and thus emphasizes Jesus' title of Lord. reminding us who's in charge here. Verse 39, and the Lord said to him, now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. Jesus compares them to dishes and cups and utensils that are on the outside nice and clean, but inside are full of scum, of greed, of wickedness. It's like if you went to a restaurant and the waiter comes with your silverware, your utensils, your glass, maybe your cup and bowl and all of those things. And you're like, okay, good, I'm hungry. But the bowl comes and it's supposed to be empty and you look inside the bowl and it's all caked and crusted with someone else's meal from some other day. And oh, you're repulsed. You call the waiter over and so he comes over. Yes, yes, sir. And you say, can I make a face? And he goes, oh, oh, I'm so embarrassed. Let me take care of that for you. So he carefully takes up the bowl and kind of polishes and wipes the outside of the bowl. There you are, sir, my mistake. And he walks away. I mean, it's ridiculous, isn't it? And yet this is exactly what Jesus is charging the Pharisees with doing. filled with the scum and dirt and muck of their own self-righteousness and of greed. And all they're doing with all their external duties is simply polishing the outside of a dirty bowl. No one wants to eat from that. And Jesus says, it's all for nothing. You might look pious and clean and well put together on the outside. what inside you are rotten and you are defiled. And all of your attempts to clean yourself do nothing to cleanse your own hearts. To think otherwise, it would be foolish. And Jesus says so in verse 40. You fools, did not he who made the outside make the inside also? But give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything then is clean for you. Well, as we've seen in our Proverbs series, I know it's been a while, To call someone a fool in this context isn't an insult, right? Jesus isn't sinning. It may be insulting for them, but it's an accurate description. A fool is someone who refuses to live according to God's design for the world. A fool is someone who throws off wisdom. And only a fool would think that you could clean the outside of a cup or a bowl and the inside is still filthy, and that's somehow acceptable. because God, Jesus says, has made the inside and the outside. He has made our hearts and our souls and who we are in here, as it were, as well as what we do and how we present ourselves before others. And that's why Jesus says in verse 41 that the giving of alms is a call to do good to your neighbors out of hearts that are cleansed. Your external works are acceptable when you have a clean heart. But these Pharisees are like the people of Isaiah's day who Isaiah prophesied about when he said, this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips while their hearts are far from me. Well, in seeing Jesus challenge the legalistic practices of the Pharisees, we need to ask the same hard questions of ourselves. To use the language of James, we need to take a look in that mirror of God's law. Do we, as a church, have traditions It's not wrong to have traditions. Do we have traditions that are not commanded by God, but we use them as a mark to judge a person's holiness? For the Pharisees, it was hand-washing, not something God commanded. It was something commanded by them, and it became the mark of the holiness of a person. If you are truly pious, if you really want to fit in among us, well, this is what you have to do. Do we have legalistic marks of what, quote, and I am quoting, what makes someone a good fit at Grace Baptist Church? Are we imposing on the conscience of others what Christ has not commanded? Applied to ourselves, certainly as individuals, we're free to regulate our own lives. We're free to adopt practices that we think might be helpful. We're free to abstain from other things using wisdom that may be unhelpful. We're free to make those decisions for ourselves and for our families. But are there practices that fall under that category, that are issues of Christian liberty, where we can legitimately differ, but we take those things and we use those things to judge other Christians? Or, alternatively, we use those things to judge ourselves, and then boast in our own righteousness and holiness, just like with this hand-washing, to put it very bluntly. Try to be as blunt as Jesus. If Jesus walked into our church or your house, how would he astonish you? What false marks of holiness would he defy before your very eyes? Now let us make no mistake, Jesus is the Lord, and he's not afraid to challenge our own self-righteous religious sensibilities, not because he's rude, but quite the opposite. He challenges us because he loves us. He wants to call us away from the emptiness of man-made religion. He wants us to see the emptiness of being enslaved to man-made rules and stipulations. He wants to take us by the hand and lead us to the joys of true religion as we serve the Lord and love our neighbor from hearts set free by the gospel. Well secondly, after Jesus rebukes their legalism, he then begins to rebuke their hypocrisy. Children, as a reminder, a hypocrite is someone who says one thing but then lives another way. A hypocrite is someone who wears masks in front of other people in an attempt to hide who they really are. And this describes the Pharisees to a T. Jesus announces judgment woes against the Pharisees for their hypocrisy. He begins in verse 42. 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. Now tithing was something commanded by God. People were commanded under the old covenant to give a tenth of their income. If you were a farmer, it was a tenth of your harvest, your crop. That was the law of God, period. The Pharisees had taken this commandment to an excessive extreme by carefully cutting an exact tenth, even from the smallest of herbs. I mean, can you imagine this? How many of you have grown herb plants on your windowsill, maybe a mint plant or something like that, or basil or oregano or something? And imagine, with every little shoot and every little leaf, you're exacting a tenth Maybe it's one in 10 of the little leaves, but I mean, he would be ridiculous. But what makes this not only ridiculous, but also the object of Christ's woe and judgment, is that while they're carefully cutting off a 10th of every herb, they are neglecting much, much weightier matters of the law. Specifically, he charges them with neglecting justice. And in this covenantal context, what is justice? Justice is welcoming the stranger, defending the weak, protecting the poor, helping widows and orphans. But the Pharisees are doing none of this. They have no real love for God or neighbor. And thus, all of their scrupulous keeping of man-made traditions is mere hypocrisy. Well, Jesus dishes up another woe to the dinner table. Verse 43, woe to you Pharisees, for you love the best seat in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces. Jesus has just announced or declared that they have no love for God. And now we see, who do they love? Well, they love themselves. You love the best seats for yourselves. You love to be noticed. As one pastor said, the Pharisees were spiritual narcissists. They loved being the center of attention and receiving the praise of men. I mean, even in the synagogue, where they're supposed to be worshiping the Lord, even there, they're drawing attention to themselves. And thus, this is a further indictment of their hypocrisy. Jesus serves another woe in verse 44. Woe to you, for you are like unmarked graves, and people walk over them without knowing it. Jesus compares them to unmarked graves that someone could fall into accidentally. About 15 years ago, I went to a cemetery called the Bunhill Fields. It's a place in England, in London, and it's an incredible place, really. It's a graveyard that contains so many of the wonderful men and women of church history, many of the English ones, at least. Buried there are figures like Isaac Watts, John Owen, John Bunyan, and so many more. It's basically like a Disneyland for church history nerds and foreign pastors. So the graveyard is hundreds of years old, and because it's so old, many of the spots and many of the areas have unmarked graves. And because it's so old, I guess sometimes the ground caves in because of all of the folks buried there. And so for that reason, there are all kinds of fences along the paths, and you're not allowed to stray from the paths for fear that you might fall in. I don't know, I wouldn't mind falling into John Owen's grave or something, you know. Be another sermon illustration. But that's basically the idea here. That's what Jesus is describing. He's saying that you Pharisees, you're like these unmarked graves that could just collapse at any minute. Someone could walk along and not knowing and just fall in and break their neck or something. What's he saying? He's saying, you're a bad influence on others. You're dangerous. You claim to be leading people to life, but you're gonna lead people to death. And the worst part is, they're unmarked. People are unknowingly being led to their own destruction. Not only will you not lead people to purity with all of your hand washing, actually, you're like a rotting corpse, and people are gonna fall in and become defiled by your rotting corpse. I don't know what the Pharisee was expecting when he invited Jesus over for dinner, but Jesus doesn't hold back from saying hard things at the dinner table, even things that challenge the Pharisees to the core of their religious identity and their heritage. And the purpose of Christ then is his purpose now, to challenge our hypocrisy in whatever form it takes. How does hypocrisy manifest itself in our lives and in our church? Well, anytime we uphold man-made church policies over people, when our policies cause people to suffer and are to their detriment, Well then we are no different from the Pharisees, who are cutting off a tenth of a herb with an exacto blade to get it just right, all the while neglecting the visitor, the widow, the disabled, and the vulnerable among us. We're guilty of hypocrisy whenever we are more concerned by the sin of others than with our own sin. We are hypocrites when we stand in pulpits or behind podiums or in Sunday school classrooms and teach of the law and the grace of God and yet in our own lives it is completely absent. We are hypocrites when we are so concerned about a brother or sister's sin that we just have to go and tell someone else and we ignore the fact that we have become a gossip and we are sinning in that very act. We are hypocrites when we present ourselves one way at church or to our families. But who we are online is a very different story in how we treat people and speak to them or even in the things we choose to look at. We are hypocrites when we pray our lungs out asking God to draw sinners to himself and draw people to the church. And then we see the kinds of people he draws to the church and we tell them, well, I don't think you'd be a good fit at Grace Baptist Church. James says we're hypocrites when we are so lofty in our prayers and we're blessing God our Father and we're exuberant about prayer. And then with those same lips, James says, we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. And from the same mouth come blessing and cursing. And James says, my brothers, these things ought not be so. We've considered Jesus' rebukes and woes against legalism and hypocrisy. Is that where it ends? No. Third, we'll consider the good news for legalists and hypocrites like us. Well, where is there any good news in a passage like this? Well, when Jesus begins each charge with woe, Jesus is deliberately speaking in the language of the prophets of long ago, those prophets who condemned Israel's sin and warned of judgment with these woes. But even with the pronouncement of woes, there was always an implicit call to repent. and the promise that God would relent and show mercy. Last week we saw that with the prophet Jonah. He went to Nineveh, he proclaimed judgment and woes. The people repented and the Lord had mercy. And so even here, as Jesus is pronouncing woes, we must remember that like the prophets before him, he's calling them to repent. He's calling them to be cleansed, not through their own works and efforts, but through something else. You see, what these hypocritical Pharisees need, and what we need, is not more external cleansing. That's how man-made religion works. If I just do a little bit more, or if I abstain a little bit more from a little more things, if I just clean up my act just a little bit, well, then I'll be better. Maybe then I'll be accepted by God. Maybe then I'll fit in with the religious crowd. But the fundamental problem of every living person isn't just that our behavior is wrong. It's that inside our hearts are filled with greed and wickedness. As Jesus said, that is what is within us, and that is the real problem of humanity. For that reason, what we need is more than a little cleansing on the outside. What we need is far more than just a few more man-made regulations to keep us clean on the outside. No, all of that is just cleaning the outside of a filthy bowl. What we need is a deep spiritual cleansing from within. I've never been a big fan of church signs that display different messages, and church can put different messages up. They're usually a bit cheesy. But one Reformed church that I know had this sign up, and it says, you know, you think of how people often say, well, I would never go to church because it's full of hypocrites. Well, that's true. But this sign said, hypocrites welcome here. Hypocrites welcome here at church. You see, the good news of the gospel is not only for the scandalous woman who came to Jesus' last dinner party with the Pharisees. It's also for hypocrites like you and like me. Ultimately, what every living person needs is the same cleansing from within. Not only are we legally guilty of breaking God's law, but sin has left its stain, its mark upon us. like the inside of that cup. What we need is not only washed clean hands, we need a pure heart. And the good news of the gospel is that God does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. We cannot make ourselves clean. We cannot by our best efforts remove that stain of sin. But God says, I can. God says, I will wash you. I will clean you. In Ezekiel chapter 36, as we read earlier, God promises to do this work for his people. He says, I will sprinkle clean water on you. You shall be clean from all your uncleanness. And from all your idols, I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules." Boys and girls, it's like if you were playing outside in the mud for a couple of hours and you just get covered. It's been raining, there's muck puddles and you've been making mud castles and you're just covered in muck from head to toe. And then mom calls and calls from the kitchen to come in for dinner. And so then you come in and mom takes one look at you and says, no way, get out, I've just washed the floors. You can't come in like this. And so then you go out on the porch and you're standing there in all of your muck. Maybe you find a rag and you try to wipe some muck off and you know it's not doing anything. What are you to do? But then dad comes along and he grabs you and he takes you up to the bathtub and he washes you and he cleans you and he puts on fresh new clothes on you and now you are acceptable to come for dinner. Well, that's what God does for us. He does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. He washes away our filth and our grime, and then he clothes us. This is ultimately what Christ accomplished for us in redemption. He was the only one who ever fully obeyed the law of God. He is the only man who truly had clean hands and a pure heart. He was obedient throughout his life and even to death. At the cross, the one who knew no sin, the one who had no filth, became sin. He became filth that we might become the righteousness of God. Jesus took our filthy rags upon himself. He was judged in our place. And through his death, he washes us, he cleans us, he forgives us. And then he sends us away to start from scratch. No, then he puts his righteous spotless robes on us so that we are made fit to come before the Father. And this he does for all of his people. Such that Paul could write to a motley group like the Corinthians and say, and such were some of you. Dear Christian, what is your past? Whether it's a past that's like the scandalous woman of the town earlier in Luke, or it's the hypocrite and the legalist. Paul says to you, God says to you, and such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. Beloved, what is your response to Jesus' woes to hypocrites? We can respond one of two ways. We can respond to his woes by doubling down like many of the Pharisees did. We can keep polishing the outside of our own filthy bowls. Or we can respond as David did in Psalm 51, when his hypocrisy was revealed. And he cried out, have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity. Cleanse me from my sin. So let us all receive Christ's word of rebuke, that we may repent of our own legalism and hypocrisy, knowing that there is a deep fountain of cleansing mercy in Jesus Christ our Lord. Let's pray. Lord God, we thank you that you call us to yourself. You call sinners filthy, wretched, vile to yourself. But you do not leave us that way. You have promised to give us new hearts, which we in Christ have. You have promised to cleanse us and to forgive us of all unrighteousness, which you do. And we thank you that you even continue to make us righteous through sanctification. Lord, do this for us. Give us more of your Holy Spirit. Cleanse us of whatever sin we have that we may be aware of or may not be aware of. Cause us all to call out to Jesus for more grace, more grace. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.