Luke 11:37-54 "Insults from A to Z" Introduction: Wash for Dinner! (11:37-41) How many times has your mother told you to wash your hands before dinner! If you came to the dinner table with filthy hands, that would be an insult to your mother! You are sitting at the table with grimy, greasy hands, and what does your mother say? "Go wash your hands!" Or worse yet, your family has been invited over to friend's house, and you are sitting there with dirty hands just grinning away, blithely ignoring your parents' horrified looks. Would that be bad? That is not polite. But what Jesus does is far worse! After all, he is an adult. He knows better. Worse still, it is not only a breach of etiquette it is a religious insult. The Pharisees did not wash their hands simply to get the dirt off. They also washed their hands in order to make sure that they were ceremonially clean. If they had accidentally touched something unclean, then they themselves would be unclean. And you also have to understand how meals were served in those days. You didn't use a knife and fork. You had no spoon. You all put your hands into the same dish. So if you were ceremonially unclean, and you put your ceremonially unclean hand into the dish, you would contaminate everyone else at the meal. There is one more part of the insult that you need to understand. They didn't have bathrooms or sinks where they would wash their hands. Before the meal, as they were reclining at the table, one of the servants would have brought water to Jesus, and offered it to him. In other words, he didn't just forget to wash his hands! Intentionally in front of all the guests in front of his host Jesus rejected the water that he was offered. So Jesus is not just guilty of a social faux pas, "Oops, I forgot to wash my hands..." Jesus is deliberately insulting this Pharisee and all his friends. The Pharisee is "astonished" that Jesus would risk contaminating the whole dinner party. Jesus response sets up the whole passage: 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. Several weeks ago we talked about the Pharisees. We said that the Pharisees were interested in the purity of Israel. What does purity mean? 1) ceremonial purity they insisted upon strict adherence to the Mosaic purity laws. 2) moral purity Israel must live faithfully as God's holy people. But why were the Pharisees interested in purity? Sometimes, I think, we see the legalistic tone of the Pharisees, and we stop there. Why did the Pharisees emphasize ceremonial and moral purity? Why did the Pharisees want Israel to be pure? The Pharisees believed that God's promises to Israel would come to pass when Israel finally lived up to God's law. In other words, they read Isaiah's servant songs the ones that say, "Israel is my servant"-- and believed that Israel was God's servant who would pass through suffering and come to glory. The reason why the Pharisees wanted to see Israel achieve the ceremonial and moral purity the Law demanded was because God had promised blessing to righteous Israel. And so long as Israel continued to fail, the kingdom of God would never be established. The Pharisees insisted upon strict conformity to the law of God in order to protect Israel. After all, think back over Israel's history: what happened when Israel rebelled in the wilderness? God destroyed a whole generation. What happened during the apostasies in the era of the judges? God brought judgment against his people. What happened when the kings rebelled? The exile which still wasn't over, because Israel had no king! But it sounds like Jesus is saying that the Pharisees are ignoring moral purity. They are concerned only with the outside of the dish, and not paying attention to the inside. This misses the heart of Jesus' point. The heart of Jesus' point is the heart. The Pharisees are focused on the outside of the dish ceremonial purity and outward moral conformity. The key to Jesus statement is the last line, give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you. The Pharisee is afraid that Jesus would contaminate them with his unwashed hand. You can understand their concern: this is the same hand that has touched lepers (5:13); this is the same hand that has touched the sick and even the dead (4:40; 7:14; 8:53). But if the Pharisees had realized who Jesus was, they would not have been afraid that his unwashed hand might contaminate them! 1. Insulting the Pharisees (11:42-44) Therefore Jesus pronounces three woes against the Pharisees. The exclamation "woe" is the language of curse. It is paralleled in chapter 6 with the beatitudes, where Jesus pronounces blessings and woes blessings and curses. The language of blessing and cursing is the contrast between honor and shame. Jesus is heaping shame upon the Pharisees publicly humiliating them. That's what an insult does. An insult is designed to make somebody look and feel inferior. So if you are going to insult someone, you had better make sure that they deserve it! 1) 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. Some have said that Jesus is not being fair. After all, the Pharisees were very concerned with justice and the love of God! They were zealous to see to it that every Israelite loved God and obeyed him! But that misses Jesus' point. Mormons are very zealous in their desire to see justice and the love of God. But they do not acknowledge Jesus as the eternal Son of God. The Pharisees have zeal, but their zeal is oriented in the wrong direction. Zeal for God that is not oriented around Jesus is not truly zeal for God. So Jesus insults the Pharisees by saying that they are not really interested in justice and the love of God. They are good at tithing! They are good at outward conformity! But they do not truly love God Because if they loved God, they would love Jesus. Notice here that Jesus does not oppose the principle of tithing. But in order to blessed by God, the tithe needs to be given from a heart that remembers justice and the love of God! In other words, the tithe needs to be given to Jesus. In the tithe we give the first part of our wealth to God, as a symbol that all that we have belongs to God. Now is not the place to go into the details of biblical principles of giving that is not Jesus' point here. It is sufficient to point out that Jesus is saying that the Pharisees' attention to detail was commendable but they have lost focus. Their neglect of Jesus brought woe upon them. The way to seek the kingdom is to seek Jesus. 2) Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the best seat in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces. The kingdom of God is not characterized by self-aggrandizement. The second woe against the Pharisees is directed at their pride. They like to sit in prominent places, and make a big show in public. Why did the Pharisees like to do this? They saw it as setting an example for the people! As the religious leaders, as those who were zealous for the law, they wished to set a public example for the rest of Israel. After all, their hope was that all Israel would become like them! Because when all Israel became like them, then the kingdom of God would come! They did not understand that the kingdom of God comes through weakness through humility through becoming a servant. This second woe strikes at our pride. What do you love? Do you love the best seat? Do you love to be the most important person? Or do you love Jesus? Will you humble yourself, and be a servant? For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, But those who humble themselves will be exalted. 3) Woe to you! For you are like unmarked graves, and people walk over them without knowing it. For the Jews, if you touched a dead body, you became unclean. Even to walk on the grave of a dead person made you unclean. Jesus is saying that the Pharisees are like unmarked graves. When people listen to the Pharisees, and follow the Pharisees, they unwittingly become unclean. The problem with walking over an unmarked grave, is that you have no idea of what you just did! You are unclean, but you don't know that you are unclean. Even so, those who follow the Pharisees will become unclean. What does that mean? An unclean person cannot enter the worship of God. An unclean person may not partake of the sacrifices. An unclean person is cut off from the people of God they have no place in the assembly of Israel. Jesus is saying that those who follow the Pharisees have no place in the assembly of Israel! Ironic, isn't it? The Pharisees were afraid that Jesus would contaminate them with his unwashed hands. But Jesus says that the truth is that they contaminate others with their unwashed hearts. The Pharisees are leading people away from God and into judgment. So Jesus insults the Pharisees by saying that they do not seek justice or the love of God, they are proud and haughty, and they are leading the people away from God. 2. Insulting the Lawyers (11:45-52) Well, one of the lawyers responds, Rabbi, in saying these things you insult us also! (Remember that "lawyer" means a teacher of the law of God) Many, if not most lawyers were Pharisees, or at least closely related in their interpretation of scripture. Nowadays if someone said, "teacher, you are insulting us!" Most people would respond, "Oh, I'm so sorry, I did not mean to do that!" Jesus responds by heaping more insults on them! 1. 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. The lawyers loaded people up with the demands of the law. They reminded the people of all that God had called Israel to be. They called Israel to faithfulness, and demanded that the people live up to their calling. It would be as if I stood up here every Sunday and laid out for you the demands of God's word, and never mentioned Christ's sacrifice. The teachers of the law set forth a moralistic vision of the kingdom of God if God's people would only do what God says, then the kingdom would be established. The lawyers will not touch the burdens with one finger. Jesus will take the burden upon his own back! So the first woe against the lawyers is that they are moralists, and they do not preach God's grace. 2. Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets whom your fathers killed. So you are witnesses and you consent to the deeds of your fathers, for they killed them, and you build their tombs. Therefore the Wisdom of God said, "I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute," so that the blood of all the prophets, shed from the foundation of the world, may be charged against this generation, 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. The origin of the quotation from the Wisdom of God in verse 49 is unknown. It is possible that Jesus is referring to a document that was generally known by his contemporaries, but has since disappeared. The apostles will occasionally refer to non-inspired documents in the same way that I do in my sermons. If I say, "as the prophet Isaiah said" then you know that I'm talking about the word of God, but if I say, as Dick Gaffin said then you know that I'm referring to one of my seminary professors. And if I say "Frodo and Sam" then you know that I'm referring to fictional characters who never even existed. Do you ever get confused when I do that? I sure hope not! In the same way, when Jesus or the apostles refer to non-inspired documents, they feel no need to explain that these documents are not inspired, because every Jew knew which documents were part of the scriptures, and which were not! It is also possible that Jesus is not referring to a document, but to God's general disposition toward this generation. If I said to you that God said, "I will send hurricanes and earthquakes and tsunamis upon the nations in order to call men to repentance," you probably would nod your heads and say, "Yup, that is quite obviously what God has said." I can't give you a quotation from scripture but that is a biblical summary of at least one reason why God sends natural disasters. Even so, Jesus is saying to the Pharisees and lawyers that God sent the prophets in order to bring down judgment upon Israel for their unbelief and rebellion. This is why Jesus uses Abel and Zechariah as his examples. In English it works well to say, all the martyrs from "from A to Z." Of course in Greek (as in Hebrew), Z is not the last letter of the alphabet. But in the Hebrew Bible Abel is the first to die for his faith, as he is killed by his brother Cain in Genesis 4. And Zechariah is the last to die for his faith in 2 Chronicles 24 since Chronicles is the last book of the Hebrew Bible. To say "from Abel to Zechariah" is to give not an alphabetical list of the martyrs, but a historical list. From first to last, all the blood of the prophets will be required of this generation. 3. 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. Jesus concludes his insult against the lawyers with the same point as his insult against the Pharisees. It is all about being part of the people of God. Just as the Pharisees were unmarked graves, rendering people unclean and preventing them from being part of the Assembly, even so the Lawyers, through their mishandling of the scriptures, have taken away the key of knowledge. They themselves have not entered the kingdom and they have hindered those who were entering. So the three insults the three woes against the Lawyers are that they are moralists who are heavy on law, that they are guilty of the blood of the prophets, and that they are keeping people out of the kingdom of God. Conclusion: Insulting God In short, the Pharisees and the Lawyers are insulting God. It would be easy for us to think of people who fit this category today, but Luke does not write these things so that we can sit smugly in our pride. That, after all, was one of the things that Jesus insulted the Pharisees for! But why does Jesus directly attack the Pharisees and Lawyers? Why does he insult them, curse them, and call down God's judgment against them? I would suggest that there are two reasons: 1) Jesus' second woe against the lawyers in verses 47-51 reveals the first purpose of his insults. Jesus insults the Pharisees and Lawyers because they have insulted God. God had said to Abraham, I will bless those who bless you, and those who curse you, I will curse. Jesus is saying, you think that you are the seed of Abraham, but you are cursing the seed of Abraham, by not believing in me, and by teaching the people not to believe in me. Therefore Jesus invokes the Abrahamic Promise: and he invokes the curse of Abraham upon those who will not believe. 2) Jesus' second purpose in insulting the Pharisees and lawyers is in order to provoke them. They deserved it that was the first point. But Jesus wishes to become their target. He has said that the blood of all the prophets shed from the foundation of the world will be required of this generation. How can God hold one generation guilty for what all generations have done? Because this generation will do what all generations have longed to do: shut God up! Why did they kill the prophets? Because they wanted to kill God and make him stop talking! Now God has come in the flesh. This generation will do what every prior generation wanted to do! The cross is the place where God is silenced. God turned his back on his own Son, and handed him over to wicked men to do what God had determined beforehand. There on the cross where God is silent as Jesus is insulted and mocked, as the curses of God and man fall upon him, as he becomes truly unclean as our sins were laid upon him as he is cut off from God's people and from the worship of the most holy place it is also there where God's voice proclaims, "It is finished!" The one who is cursed and insulted and shamed becomes the one who receives blessing and honor and glory and power. The one who bore our sins and took our uncleanness upon himself and was cut off from the Father becomes the one by whom we have access to the Father! "I am the way, and the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me." From Abel to Zechariah, all the history of Israel, comes to its glorious fulfillment in Jesus. And from Stephen to today, Jesus is still the center of history. There are still those who are suffering and dying for the sake of Christ. The insults that fell upon Jesus now fall upon his church. That's why Jesus calls us to take up our cross and follow him. There will always be those who are preoccupied with outward appearances. There will always be those who seek their own honor and standing. There will always be those who contaminate others with their unclean ways. But you are called to follow Jesus. The point isn't whether you wash your hands before dinner. The point isn't whether you get all your do's and don't's square. The point is your heart.