Introduction to Luke 11
Well, this morning I invite you to turn in your Bibles to Luke's Gospel, the 11th chapter. We're working our way through this chapter where Jesus has started by teaching his own disciples how to pray. And then he cast out a demon, was confronted by the crowds and his opponents, the Pharisees and the scribes, and then he corrected them by exposing the light of the gospel.
Now toward the end of this chapter, beginning in verse 37, we're going to see Jesus exposing sin so that sinners can be forgiven. And join me as I read from verse 37 of Luke 11 through the end.
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 was surprised when he noticed that Jesus did not wash before the meal. 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 now, as for what is inside you, be generous to the poor, and everything will be clean for you. Woe to you, Pharisees, because you give 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 former or the latter without leaving the former undone. Woe to you, Pharisees, because you love the most important seats in the synagogue and respectful greetings in the marketplaces. Woe to you, because you are like unmarked graves which people walk over without knowing it."
Then 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 ancestors who killed them. So you testify that you approve of what your ancestors 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 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 Zachariah, 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."
When Jesus went outside, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law began to oppose him fiercely and to besiege him with questions, waiting to catch him in something that he might say.
According to a report on the BBC from 2023, on a late August morning that year, there was a 12-year-old boy covered in open wounds who knocked on a neighbor's door asking for food and water. The boy had escaped a nearby home just moments before by climbing out of a window and running away even though there was duct tape still on his ankles. The boy was taken to the hospital and he had been suffering from malnourishment and he had deep lacerations on his body from having been tied up with a rope. That same day, the police took the boy and three of his siblings into their care and they arrested their mother, Ruby Frank, who was a parenting influencer on social media.
At the height of her influence, Ruby attracted over 2 million subscribers to her YouTube channel. Her videos about family life, along with her authoritarian parenting style, built a loyal following. Everything appeared okay. Frank's carefully crafted videos portrayed a typical middle-class suburban family. But what lurked behind the camera was something completely different than what she portrayed. Ruby Frank was abusing six of her, all six of her children. She later confessed when she was being sentenced to prison, "I was so disoriented, I was so disoriented that I believed dark was light and right was wrong."
In February of 2024, the state of Utah convicted Ruby Frank on four counts of child abuse and they put her behind bars where she remains today. Ruby Frank wanted the watching world to believe that she was a great mother when in fact she was an evil monster. When we hear stories like Ruby's, we are shocked and we are bothered, and rightly so, because of what she was doing against our children. And we can respond with either cynicism of saying, "Oh, I saw that coming. The hints were there all along." And there are certainly people on the internet who have said that.
But most of us want to believe the best, thinking that what this woman was presenting was not only her family but also a way to raise children that might be of benefit to others. And yet, when the truth came out, she was not doing any of those things. Ruby Frank was abusing her children into compliance; she was faking a happy family.
Throughout human history, whether it's Ruby Frank or other people, many struggle with this kind of hypocrisy. In fact, I would say Christians are hypocrites. I stand before you this morning as a sinner who does not live up to all the ideals of the gospel and all the principles that even I preach from scripture, because I sin. And it's a terrifying thing to be given the responsibility to preach and teach the word of God, knowing of my sin. And yet, I stand before you as one not hiding my hypocrisy, but one who acknowledges my hypocrisy, one who acknowledges that God is still sanctifying me.
It almost seems as if in recent years we have made sport of trying to find people's hypocrisy. Assuming instead of the best about people, assuming the worst, that they're just too good to be true, that that preacher can't be trusted because there's something fake there. There's got to be something sinister beneath the surface. And yet, the truth is there's something sinful beneath the surface of all of our lives. All of us put our best foot forward. Social media has made an enterprise over presenting ourselves in the best light possible. And yet, all of us know that in those quiet moments of the soul, we struggle with guilt and shame for the sins that we have committed, for the sins that we've contemplated, and the sins that we have yet to do that we may in fact perpetrate.
And yet, the gospel is a message to sinners. It is hope for hypocrites. And it gives license to those who are enslaved by their own laws. Jesus is confronting just this kind of group when he gives the woes to the Pharisees and the scribes. Jesus is not fooled by their religious performance or the way that they present themselves to other people. In fact, throughout his ministry, Jesus was confronting people that were hardened in unbelief and people that were deceived by their religious hypocrisy.
Although they had heard Jesus preach repentance and offer the forgiveness of sins, they rejected his message. Although they observed his sinless life—that as Jesus had a family, as Jesus walked with the disciples, and as he met the crowds, he never sinned—and yet they accused him of being associated with the prince of demons. They tried repeatedly to reframe Jesus' message as heresy, as going against God's word, and they tried to reframe his works not as good but as evil.
Yet Jesus was never fooled by anyone's bluster or their self-righteous pride. Just like they listened to him and they watched his life, Jesus heard their words and he observed their lives, but he also looked beyond what they said and did. Jesus knew what was in the heart of every person, both good and bad. And Jesus used this knowledge of what was in people's hearts to offer them repentance and the relief of forgiveness. Yet most people rejected it. In fact, as we come to this passage this morning, we see Jesus confronting some of his most strident, self-righteous opponents. And Jesus and his grace to them moves to uncover the sin that is in their hearts.
Jesus uncovers the sin in our hearts
And this is my first point this morning: that Jesus uncovers the sin in our hearts. Jesus uncovers the sin in our hearts. After Jesus had exposed the crowd's unbelief and explained the light of the gospel just prior to this account of the woes of the Pharisees and the scribes, a Pharisee invites Jesus into his home for a meal, verse number 37. And given that the Pharisees and the scribes were constantly searching for ways to accuse Jesus of breaking the law, this was likely an attempt to catch Jesus in a trap. If the Pharisee had been sincere, perhaps he would have repented of his sin and followed Jesus. But in verse 54, that is not what happened. In verse number 54, the end of this account, instead they were waiting to catch him in what he might say. After all the direct confrontation that he brings to them in this narrative, their response is, "We're still going to get you."
Imagine how blinded to their sin they were. The Pharisees, for their part, had set this up. We don't know the individual Pharisee or whose home it was, but he brought Jesus in and Jesus accepted the invitation. And it says in verse number 37 that he went into this home and immediately reclined at the table. When you think of a home in first-century Israel, don't think of a house like yours. Think of a more open concept with a courtyard and a larger area for a group of people to gather. And no doubt the Pharisee had not only invited Jesus, but the disciples were probably with him and other Pharisees, and from the narrative, some scribes were there too. We don't know the number, but the point is there was a large group, and Jesus made his way in and found his way to the table.
But Luke records for us that this surprised the Pharisee. It surprised him because he expected Jesus to go through a ceremonial washing before the meal, verse 38. The Pharisee had made a public show of ceremonial washing before meals as an outward sign of their moral cleanliness. They were not washing hands for sanitation or hygiene before their food. They were using a washing ceremony meant for priests who served in the temple. And they used this washing as a symbol of their moral purity and to flex their superiority. Whenever the Pharisees dined with other people, they expected them to follow the same ritual, and especially for Jesus, who was a teacher and someone who had great influence.
Thus, Luke says the man was surprised. He was caught off guard when Jesus, a religious teacher, failed to do this. No doubt he was looking to trap Jesus in his words, but here Jesus gave him an opportunity with his misdeeds, or his perceived misdeeds. The Pharisees in general wanted everyone else to think of them as morally pure and above the fray. They were truly "holier than thou," to use a phrase. But Jesus knew the Pharisees and he understood their hearts, knowing what motivated their public acts of religious piety. And Jesus took his host's unspoken surprise about not washing and used it to uncover the man's sin.
This is why Luke called Jesus "Lord" in this account. It's asserting Jesus' authority over the man, that he is indeed more than a teacher, but he is the Master and none other than the Messiah. So it says in verse 39: "The Lord said to him, 'Now then, you Pharisees, clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you're full of greed and wickedness.'"
Whether or not the Pharisees signaled his surprise with a silent gasp, spoken words, or bodily reaction, or no reaction at all, Jesus now spoke directly to the man's heart. He said that the Pharisees were intent on polishing what was on the outside that people could see, while the inside of their hearts remained filthy with evil and greed. So Jesus called the Pharisees out for their hypocrisy. And he said something highly offensive to them. If the Pharisee was rubbing his hands in delight that he had Jesus for a misdeed, now Jesus was going to give him an impolite rebuke that would have incensed him further. And he said, "You foolish people," didn't they realize? That the Lord who made their bodies the outside of their being also made their souls the inside of their being. Yet they were living as if the Lord only had authority over their bodies and no authority over their souls. They washed their bodies with a ceremonial ceremony, not an actual shower or bath, but more like a sprinkling of some water. But their souls were completely wallowing in greed and wickedness. And Jesus calls them out for
Actions revealing the heart
He calls them out because he knows that their actions are revealing what is in their hearts, that the ceremony was simply a religious ritual but it did not indicate purity at all. In fact, if they had had their souls cleansed by the grace of God, then he said verse 41, they would be generous to the poor. However, their unwillingness to be generous to the poor revealed their sinfulness and their hearts. They obsessed over appearing moral and religious and making other people impressed with their piety. But they ignored the sin that was corrupting their hearts.
Jesus exposed the sin that was behind the ceremonies and he uncovered what was inside them. Jesus didn't look simply at the outside. He understood what was happening on the inside. If we serve God or the church to be seen merely as good people, we can often trick the people that are around us. But God still sees our hearts as well. Just as Christ looked into the soul of the Pharisee, Jesus looks into our souls and knows us better than we know ourselves.
Jesus doesn't accept anyone who tries to earn his favor or tries to impress people. God accepts believers on the basis of them confessing their sin and relying upon his grace for salvation. And a sure sign of salvation, Jesus says here and elsewhere in his gospels, is our generosity. It's not our self-righteous deeds. It's not what we choose to preen and perform for other people, but it's generosity that flows out of a life that's been shown the generous grace of forgiveness.
James taught the exact same principle when he wrote these words in James chapter 1. Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves. And their religion is worthless. Religion that our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this, to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. The idea here is that James is saying exactly what Jesus was saying. That evidence that we have received grace is that our lives have been transformed from the inside out. And one of the ways that Jesus said that was tested is as the person's response to the poor.
You might remember the rich man who came to Jesus and said, "What can I do to have salvation?" And Jesus spoke to him the great commandment to love the Lord your God with your entire being. And then the second commandment that is like it, to love your neighbor as yourself. And the rich man said, "I've done all of that." So Jesus responded, "Then go, sell all of your possessions and follow me." And the rich man went away sad because he wasn't prepared to give up his lifestyle and the things that he had that he clung to for his identity in order to follow Jesus.
Jesus called the rich man out just as he's now calling the Pharisees out for their confidence in their performance, but in their lack of transformation. I quoted James chapter 1 where he draws the same principle as it relates to caring for widows and orphans. We have an opportunity this month. It's in God's providence that this all lined up but to give to Whispering Hope as Rick has directed us. And I don't want to use this sermon as a guilt to say, "If you don't take a baby bottle and if you don't give," but I would say our response and reaction to opportunities to care for the most vulnerable and to provide for women who find themselves in a difficult circumstance where they've considered perhaps an abortion and where they're interested in an alternative to abortion, they need our help.
It's not enough for Christians to condemn abortion, but Christians must also put some skin in the game and care for women who are in a vulnerable spot. And to care for their children who will, Lord willing, be born and may need adoptive families and other people to care for them. Whatever the case, Jesus said, this is a demonstration that you truly understand grace. Not that everyone has to become an adoptive parent or fill a baby bottle, but that we see the vulnerable, we see the helpless, and we move to help them without fanfare or attention but we quietly do it as God directs us.
But it's interesting, James also links not only how we respond to the poor, but he links how we speak and use our tongue to this same principle. In fact, a person who considers him or herself to be a Christian and yet spreads malicious gossip and slander may be someone who is fatally deceived. We may attend worship on Sunday morning. We may even attend a small group during the week, but our tongue in other contexts may betray our real testimony. The words we speak offer a window into our souls. And if we're always critical and negative and putting other people down, then we may actually be condemned ourselves. Tim Keller, who once pastored Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City and is now in heaven with our Savior, once talked about God's judgment this way.
He said, God's eternal judgment may start with every sinner's testimony against him or herself. God could easily use each sinner's negative words, critical spirit, and false accusations against others to condemn them of their own sin. Then, after God judges the sinner by their own standards, He may introduce His perfect law of righteousness as the ultimate standard for their eternal judgment and damnation.
Consider that for a moment. Keller is essentially saying that self-righteous hypocrites who are always putting other people down in order to lift themselves up, if they're not truly saved, God may use their own harshness to condemn them. Their own words, the own standards that they held other people to, will be matched against their shortcomings and they will fall short of their own standard, let alone God's.
Now, ultimately, Keller was not saying the standard was ours to create, but he was saying that's how far short we fall of the glory of God, to quote Paul from Romans. So as we think about God's gracious work, He moves to uncover the sin in our hearts so we can confess it. He wants to bring it to the light, not to further shame us and embarrass us, though sin causes those things. But He wants us to confess our sins so that we can experience the peace of forgiveness—that Jesus took upon Himself all of our sins so that we could be made right with God.
The question before us is, what are you doing about your sin? When God uncovers your sin and exposes you, He knows the secret thoughts in your heart. He understands the things that you've contemplated, whether you've done them or not. And do you run from that, or do you run to Christ?
Jesus invites you to come to Him. I quoted the other day in an email to you a verse from Matthew where Jesus said that He is the Sabbath: "Come unto me, all who are weary and heavy burdened, and I will give you rest." Jesus was confronting the Pharisees not to make a fool out of them, though they were foolish, but He was confronting the Pharisees so that they would see their sin clearly as a problem of the soul that required confession and faith in a savior.
I would invite you this morning, if you're trusting in your own righteousness, to let the gospel expose you so you can enjoy the forgiveness of Jesus Christ. Jesus here uncovered the sin that lies beneath the outward works, the sin that was present in the Pharisees' hearts, as well as ultimately showing the sin in our hearts.
Jesus condemns religious hypocrisy
Secondly, I want you to see in this passage through the woes that Jesus also condemned religious hypocrisy. Jesus condemns religious hypocrisy. Beginning in verse 42, Jesus gave three woes to the Pharisees. These woes were warnings, they were stern warnings to tell the Pharisees to stop doing what they were doing and instead turn to him.
As these woes were confronting the Pharisees, he deals directly with their self-righteous deeds. You see, the Pharisees were fastidiously tithing one-tenth of the tiniest herbs in their garden, but they were completely ignoring the larger issues of God's justice and love. The Pharisees were giving trivial tithes to avoid doing what God commanded. Think of it this way: the smallest herb in your garden, if you were to dice the leaves finely or pick apart the seeds, perhaps different herbal seeds that are used for spice and seasoning, the Pharisees were exacting that you had to give exactly a tenth of that as an offering to God.
And yet the Pharisees were withholding their lives. While they were happy to give such a small pittance of their possessions, they were unwilling to give their souls. Jesus confronted them for this, and he said that they should have practiced the latter without having the former undone. In other words, they should have been as concerned about the justice of God and the love of God as they were with the tithe. They should have spent that much time and attention focused on the things of God rather than merely the things that pleased them and made them look good in front of others.
You see, the Pharisees cared far more about their public image than their private standing with God. This is why he confronts them with a second woe in verse number 43 when he says, "Woe to the Pharisees, because you love the most important seats in the synagogues and respectful greetings in the marketplaces." These Pharisees craved honor and recognition from mere men rather than humbling themselves before God. They wanted to be first in the eyes of other people. They wanted people to think that they were the role models, that they were the ones that should be followed.
But rather than being first, Jesus compared the Pharisees to death. And this is the third woe that he issued them in verse 44, when he says, "Woe to you because you are like unmarked graves which people walk over without knowing it." These Pharisees were like graves that were tripping people up. You see, in the first century, the Jewish people whitewashed their graves so that others could avoid touching them, especially walking over them. And now Jesus was calling the Pharisees, who were whitewashing their lives with religious ceremonies, unmarked graves.
In other words, these men appeared clean. They appeared to be religious and the kind of people that would be helpful. But instead, they were defiling everyone that they came into contact with. Instead of helping others love God and promote divine justice, Jesus condemned these men for leading people away from God. Now, he pointedly warned them with these woes as a matter of divine intervention. He was confronting them so that they would confess. He was calling them out for their religious hypocrisy so they would humble themselves.
Yet they were leading people away from God under the guise of being super religious. These Pharisees ceremonially washed their hands, but their hearts remained filthy before God. They tithed the tiniest of herbs, but they refused to give their hearts to Christ. And they exalted themselves in positions of honor, but they treated Jesus with contempt. So Jesus condemned their religious hypocrisy so they could find forgiveness.
Jonathan Pennington reminds us from this passage that he says, "God sees the heart of all humans and is not impressed with outward religion." Jesus condemns religious hypocrisy in every one of its self-righteous forms. We may be able to deceive our coworkers, fool our family or our friends with some occasional good works and being nice, but God knows our true motives and he knows what is in our hearts.
Genuine repentance begins when we stop whitewashing our sins. We no longer act as though our sin isn't a big deal because it is a big deal. Our sin offends a holy and righteous God and our sin deserves death and punishment for eternity. We can stop whitewashing when we no longer blame other people for our sin, saying, "It wasn't really my fault. If you had my family, you would understand." All of those are excuses and we must take responsibility for our own sinful deeds.
And we can stop whitewashing when we no longer wallow in self-pity saying, "I just wish people would leave me alone. I wish God would get off my back." And we can stop whitewashing when we no longer justify ourselves saying, "Well, everybody messes up from time to time. I mean, I'm just a sinner," and making excuses. Instead, we must repent. We must confess our sins. John says it this way in 1 John 1: "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 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 is not in us. John echoes what Jesus is teaching, what he's confronting here in the Pharisees. And that is that we must acknowledge our sin and confess it, knowing that Jesus has promised to forgive it and to purify us from all unrighteousness.
As we move to do that, Jesus wants to rescue us from our religious hypocrisy. He doesn't want us to create more religious hypocrisy. And that hypocrisy looks different for different people.
Some people are religiously hypocritical in our time by simply saying, "Well, I'm going to go to church on Sunday. I'm going to pay my time. I'm going to settle the score. I'm going to make God happy." All kinds of phrases are used, but the point is we come to church sometimes as if this will satisfy God.
And while we should certainly want to be involved in active participation in the life of the church, we don't merely do that to signal to other people that we're good people, that we're nice people, that we're even moral people. We do it to signal that we are forgiven people, that we are people who acknowledge our hypocrisy, who acknowledge that we fall short of the glory of God, and acknowledge that we need the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
Jesus condemns our religious hypocrisy so we can be humbled by the gospel.
Jesus confronts deceitful legalism
But last in this passage, Jesus confronts deceitful legalism. So this is point number three: that Jesus confronts deceitful legalism. The scribes who were also present at this meal, also known as the experts in the Old Testament law, heard Jesus' warnings to the Pharisees. And they said to him with indignation, you can almost hear it dripping off the man's tongue in verse number 45, "Teacher, when you say these things, you insult us too."
Not only have you made the Pharisees mad, you've made everybody at this party mad. I wonder how it went when dessert was served, if it was served at all. You talk about a socially awkward situation. Jesus has called the Pharisees out for being fools and warned them against their folly. Now the scribe is saying, if you insult them, you insult us. He's essentially saying, Jesus, you've attacked our friends and allies, and now you are attacking the scribes too. After all, it was the experts in the law who had created the very rules that Jesus was condemning the Pharisees for following. They recognized that the Pharisees were the ones doing the performance, but they were the ones directing the performance.
So Jesus responded to the scribes with three additional woes to these experts in the law. First, he warned the scribes against their backbreaking legalism. He said that the experts in the law loaded people down with burdens they could hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them. Verse 46. The scribes added extra rules around God's law to prevent people from breaking the law itself. They thought if people would obey their rules, then there's no way they could break God's rules. But the scribes were putting burdens and barriers between people and God. They increased the demands of the law. They added rules upon rules. There were over 600 rules that they added to the Ten Commandments. And with their rules about the Sabbath and sacrifices and ceremonies, they made it impossible for anyone to keep up with all of their requirements. Rather than helping people obey the law of God, they were pointing people to their rules and condemned anyone who violated their standards.
So Jesus announced a second woe that followed the first, but was worse. He said, not only did the experts in the law prescribe backbreaking legalism, they also silenced God's prophets. The scribes continued to build and rebuild elaborate tombs for the prophets God had sent to Israel, men the scribes' ancestors had silenced with murder. They had ignored God's prophets and killed them so they would not have to hear their message. Therefore, Jesus indicted the lawyers. The tombs that they built for the men their ancestors killed testified that they approved of what their ancestors did, he says in verse 48. The scribes supposedly honored Israel with their monuments, but Jesus said they were rejecting the prophets' message about Israel's Messiah. No matter who God sent, prophets or later apostles, the scribes ignored God's messengers.
Jesus summarized the scribes' guilt for killing the prophets from A to Z. The first recorded murder was Abel in Genesis chapter 4, and the last murder in the Hebrew canon was Zachariah in 2 Chronicles 24. And Jesus said, this wicked generation will be held responsible for all of it because they rejected him. Though they did not actually murder the prophets themselves, they were complicit in silencing them because they ignored their message. The prophets had foretold of the Messiah and they would not have anything of it. Jesus came to fulfill the law and the prophets. Here he's condemning the lawyers for ignoring the prophets and he's holding them accountable for their folly.
While Jesus compared the Pharisees' lives to unmarked graves, he compared the scribes' laws to meaningless monuments. The Pharisees led people away from God with the graveyard of religious hypocrisy. They made well-meaning people unclean because they could never be good enough. And the scribes prevented conscientious people from knowing God with monuments inscribed with their deceitful legalism.
Thus, Jesus' last woe to the scribes summarized the sin of these lawyers. He said, these experts in the law had taken away the key to knowledge, verse 52. Their distorted interpretations of God's law, along with their burdensome rules, kept anyone from knowing God, and they hindered those who were entering verse 52. The scribes made what should have been easy to understand so complicated no one could understand it.
In fact, sometimes people who seem like experts in the Bible are actually the ones leading people away from God. The airwaves of religious television and the pages of religious websites are filled with smooth-sounding legalism and impressive-looking hypocrisy. They make monuments to man's teaching and they whitewash their sinfulness in their impressive good works. Having lived in Scotland, I've seen some of this in an extreme way. I've been to St. Andrew's University multiple times. I've been in the halls of St. Andrew's. I've eaten and slept at St. Andrew's with different activities that I've done with other pastors. And you'll see picture, or I should say portrait after portrait, of great theologians. And people take great pride in tracing their academic lineage all the way back to the beginning of that university and farther.
They have monuments and museums dedicated to how that school was started and the legacy that it has today. We may not identify with that, but many times we can fall prey to identifying ourselves as someone and saying, "Boy, I really like the teaching of so-and-so." "Boy, I really like the school of thought that comes out of X seminary." Or, "Man, I read every book that that author writes. I listen to every podcast by that pastor or that preacher."
And while those things can be helpful, I don't want to decry them. Be careful if that's all you're consuming, because I'm more and more convinced of the necessity of the local church and our discipleship.
What I mean is this: Ruby Frank deceived over 2 million people on YouTube who followed her for one reason or another, mostly because she gave parental advice to desperate mothers looking for answers to their crazy children. Her answers seemed to be good. They seemed to offer order amid the chaos. Her answers seemed to produce smiles all around and family fun and happiness. And yet, lurking behind the scenes on the other side of the lens was a mother who was tormenting her children. Ruby Frank did not have a relationship with 2 million followers. They were more like voyeurs who were watching her life, or at least what she presented of her life.
In a local church, we can't fake it until we make it. We know each other because we rub shoulders with each other. We have relationships. People in this room that I know well, that you know me. And I've sinned against many of you. I've sinned by saying things I shouldn't say, by not responding to an email, or telling you that I would do something and then failing to do it. I've sinned against you in all kinds of ways. I've been frustrated with people. People have been frustrated with me. These are things that bubble up in real relationships.
You also have the opportunity to observe my family. And you get to see that we're not a perfect family. We have our faults. And yet we want to admit before everyone that we are hypocrites. And we know it. And yet we're hypocrites who have been humbled by the power of the gospel.
This message of Luke chapter 11 toward the end is an opportunity to confess. But look at how the scribes and Pharisees responded. Not with repentance and faith. In verse 52, it says, "When Jesus went outside, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law began to oppose him fiercely and besiege him with questions, waiting to catch him in something that he might say." They didn't feel the weight of their sin. They condemned Jesus for their sin. They turned against him.
And it says they fiercely opposed him and worked to besiege him. Rather than turning to Jesus with confession, they turned to Jesus with their own confrontation. They were going to take Jesus down, not because of what they had done, but because they transferred what they had done onto him. They were the pot. But in this case, the kettle was not black. The kettle was pure and clean. These Pharisees, rather than turning to repentance, turned to rebellion.
And many times in our own lives, if we're not careful, we can hear a message about the gospel. And rather than turning it over to Christ and confessing our sins, we can simply dig in our heels and say, "Well, I can't help it. That's just the way I am. Just deal with it." And we have all kinds of other rationalizations that simply whitewash either in belligerence or whitewash in hypocrisy or legalism what is actually in our hearts.
Jesus created our bodies and our souls. He provided the remedy of our soul, which is the gospel of Christ, that if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Are you depending on your own religious performance or keeping some set of rules that you've either received from someone else or you've created in your own mind? Are you committed to keeping a short account with Christ? Confessing your sin as soon as you realize it, acknowledging your ongoing dependence on the mercy of the gospel, and taking joy in your position as sons and daughters of God?
Trusting Jesus for forgiveness
Whether you're a child, a teenager, or an adult, I would challenge you and encourage you this morning to trust Jesus. Admit that you are a mess. Confess that you're a hypocrite, that you don't always live up to your own ideals, and you certainly don't live up to God's righteousness.
And when you confess this, trust Christ to forgive you. And he'll give sweet evidence of your forgiveness because it will change your outlook. It will lead to prayer like he started this chapter with in the Lord's Prayer. And it will lead to treating other people in a way that can only be explained by grace, not performance. Because to truly support and pursue the justice and love of God, we can't fake that. It's something that only God can work in us.
And my prayer is that for us as a church, we would be a church increasingly marked by the grace of God, that we would know our sin and not be self-righteous or prideful, but we would know our sin because we cherish Christ. Are you cherishing Christ or are you clinging to something else? I beg of you to cherish Jesus.
And I'm available and the other elders are available to talk to you if you have questions about this or if you're convicted or concerned about it. We would love to meet with you and clarify it.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, as we close this passage, we are sobered by our own sinfulness. We see ourselves in the story of the Pharisees and the scribes because there are times when we just simply go through the motions and present ourselves as nice people when below the surface we are not the nice people. We're the ones criticizing and tearing down other people.
We also sometimes depend on works righteousness, different forms of legalism that some never stated out loud, but we operate as if we can please you if we do some things and don't do others. So, God, forgive us again for leaning on our own understanding and help us instead to lean on the power of the cross. Help us to depend on the forgiveness that has been given us through your life, your death, and your resurrection.
And thank you for the work of Christ. I pray that you would work in our church a culture that is gracious because we have received the generous grace of the gospel. And we pray all these things in Christ's name. Amen.