Faith Presbyterian Church - Birmingham
At Faith Presbyterian Church we are seeking to exalt Jesus Christ the King and to exhibit and extend his Kingdom through worship, community, and mission.
Faith Presbyterian Church - Birmingham
Luke 11:37-44; Inside Out
Jamie Peterson January 26, 2025 Faith Presbyterian Church Birmingham, AL
Bulletin
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We're continuing on with this sermon series that Jason started at the beginning of this month, where, in the Gospel of Luke, we see Jesus either going to a meal, at a meal, or leaving a meal. And I think what's been particularly encouraging about this, or has helped me deepen my love for Jesus through this series, is it's obviously coming off the heels of the Advent series, and you can't talk about Advent without talking about the incarnation of Jesus, jesus taking on human flesh, coming to earth to be one of us. And what these meals remind us of is that Jesus just didn't come here to hang out, so to speak. He just didn't come here to exist. He didn't come here to pontificate, and what these meals demonstrate is is he really wanted to get into our lives. He wanted't come here to pontificate, and what these meals demonstrate is he really wanted to get into our lives, he wanted to come close. And even in our day, in the year 2025, meals are a very intimate thing. It's an expression of friendship, wanting to know somebody, it's an extension of kindness, but it was even more so in Jesus' day. So to see Him going to meal after meal after meal demonstrates just how important people were to Him and that they would know Him. And what we do is we see through these meals is he shows Himself to us, he shows us the need that we have for Him and, ultimately, he shows how he can and does meet our greatest needs. So, before we look at this particular passage where we again see Jesus at a meal, let's go to the Lord and ask Him for His help. Father, we thank you that you are a God who pursues us and, as we just heard Jason say, when we get tired of running after you, you never get tired. You pursue us. You pursue us with your Spirit. You pursue us with get tired. You pursue us. You pursue us with your Spirit. You pursue us with your Word. You pursue us with your people, and we thank you for that, lord. We pray that, as you pursue us with your Word, that you would open up our eyes and ears to it, so that we would see you clearly and then, in seeing you clearly, we would see our deep need for you and how you have met that need through your life. And we pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen. Luke 11, and we'll be looking at verses 37-44. Hear the word of the Lord.
Speaker 1:While Jesus was speaking, a Pharisee asked Him to dine with Him. So he went in and reclined at table. The Pharisee was astonished to see that he did not first watch before dinner. And the Lord said to him Now you, pharisees, cleansed 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 his 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. Here is a reading of God's Word.
Speaker 1:Many years ago, when I was much younger, not too many years out of college, one of the things I wanted is I wanted a Swiss Army watch. The problem is, is Swiss Army watches, depending upon what kind you got, could be anywhere from, you know, $100 to $300. And I was doing good enough to pay rent in those days, so I had to settle for my $18 Timex Ironman for the time being. Well, not long after I had that desire to get a Swiss Army watch, I had the opportunity to go to New York on a trip and started making plans of all the different things we're going to see the Statue of Liberty, empire State Building, times Square, the whole nine yards. But I also heard that if you went to Chinatown you could get a Swiss Army watch for $10. So, in anticipation of going on this trip to New York with everything that I could have experienced, I made a beeline to Chinatown to a street vendor where I was able to go get a $10 Swiss Army watch. And I go and look and he has a whole selection of different styles, different colors, and I pick out the one that I like and it looks like a Swiss Army watch. It feels heavy, there's a density to it with a Swiss Army watch and I wear it and it seems to be going fine. And I compare it to other people who have a real Swiss Army watch and I started to become, the longer I have it, that I've got a real Swiss Army watch. Well, a couple years later I'm playing a pickup basketball game. And again.
Speaker 1:This was some years ago, like I said, and I have my Swiss Army watch on and it gets knocked off, it hits the gym floor and it bursts into a million pieces. So I do the best I can to get as many of the parts up as I can. I put it in an envelope and I take it to a jeweler there in town and I say broke my Swiss Army watch. I want to see if you could send it off to Swiss Army people and see if I can get it fixed. I get a phone call in a couple weeks, mr Peterson. This is so-and-so at Ed White's Jewelers. I just want to let you know we got word from the Swiss Army people that this is not a Swiss Army watch. I knew it. Swiss Army people that this is not a Swiss Army watch, I knew it, but I'd had it long enough. It was running fine and I started to believe that it was a real Swiss Army watch.
Speaker 1:What Jesus is doing in this passage is smashing the fake Swiss Army watches of the Pharisees' self-generated surfacy religion that, as Paul says in 2 Timothy, has a form of godliness but denies its power, and it's like what Jason said earlier. The problem with Pharisees is. You can do so many good things and so many people say so many nice things about you that you start to believe your own press and you get duped into thinking that you're better than you really are. And it's hard to say exactly what this Pharisee's motive was for inviting Jesus. But Jesus wastes no time, he wastes no words and Jesus capitalizes on this opportunity to speak truth to the host and to those who are present and to us to this day.
Speaker 1:And if you're wondering who the Pharisees are and I know Jason and Martin have talked about this, but I also know that we have some people here that may not be familiar with who a Pharisee is, on the surface they were not bad people. They were actually very good people. If you're living in your neighborhood and you heard that a Pharisee was moving in your next door, you think, man, this is great, I could trust him, he's probably going to help our property value the whole nine yards. And they were the religious elite. They were the religious special forces of their day. They were the army rangers. They were the navy seals, in the sense that there were never more than five or six thousand of them to exist at one time, and to the astonishment of this Pharisee, this religious elite, jesus does not wash His hands before dinner.
Speaker 1:And the reason that this Pharisee was astonished wasn't because he thought Jesus was spreading germs or anything like that, but it was in violation of an extra-biblical law. This was not in the Mosaic Law, it was somewhere, just like a lot of traditions we have. It was started this is just what we do and it went on for many, many, many years. And it was expected that you were to wash your hands and not just wash your hands before a meal. But there was a particular way in which the hands had to be washed, and if you didn't do it that way, it didn't count.
Speaker 1:Jesus uses this opportunity to point them to the futility of focusing on external cleanliness while ignoring internal cleanliness. Is not the inside more important than the outside? And by Jesus doing this, he is pointing to the other hypocrisy of man-made religion. We may look good on the outside, but the inside is full of filth and darkness. In addition to pointing out the danger of religious hypocrisy, he also uses this opportunity to point out legalism. While tithing was certainly part of the Mosaic law, tithing on things as minuscule as herbs and spices was not, but that didn't stop the Pharisees from doing it. But what Jesus points out here is that we can be so focused on keeping the law, dotting the I's and crossing the T's that we can actually miss out on what the law is all about. And the law is about loving God and loving others. But instead, what we do, we make the law about ourselves and try to impress other people. And the third thing that Jesus shows here is how this hypocrisy and legalism leads to pride, which shows itself by sitting in the best seats in the synagogue and parading oneself in the marketplace. This pride and the way it manifests itself is not only dangerous to the prideful, to us, but it has consequences to those around us, as we will see a little bit later.
Speaker 1:As Jason and Martin have said in previous weeks, we need to ask ourselves anytime we read the Bible where do I fit in to this passage? As Martin said last week, we need to see ourselves in the 5,000 people. But here today I'm going to challenge ourselves to see that we are the Pharisees in this passage. We are all guilty of hypocrisy and legalism and pride, as we will see, but we also see a gracious Savior who came to pursue us, to point out this sin and to show how we can be saved from ourselves and our sin. So we're going to look at three things First is we're going to look at Jesus' concerns. The second is we're going to look at Jesus' heart and then, third, jesus' power to save.
Speaker 1:I had the privilege, again many years ago, of attending and graduating from Sanford University. It was an amazing gift for me to be able to go there. It set the course for me on my life and many of the things I enjoy now goes back to then the opportunities it afforded me, the relationships I had, the ways in which I was able to grow. But just like any other institution, just like any church or family or school or anything else, it's not perfect and it certainly had its quirks. And one of the things that was quirky about Sanford and I had some people come and speak to me after the first service and they said this still goes on is that there is this peer pressure to go to church on Sunday, which isn't bad, but the peer pressure was so great that if you overslept or skipped church before you went to the dining hall, which is affectionately known as the CAF, people would put on their church clothes to go eat lunch so people wouldn't know that they had skipped church.
Speaker 1:This is a great definition of hypocrisy it's being something that you're not. It's being legalistic, feeling like you've got to score points with those people around you. And it's also very prideful, because I think about the people who would walk in and have their Sunday best on, even though they hadn't gone to church. They'd walk by the guys I knew on the football team that had their T-shirt and gym shorts on. They would look at them like that French aristocrat in the meme, just like this I'm like there's no difference between y'all. You just like this. I'm like there's no difference between y'all. You just look different. And this is what Jesus is addressing right here in this passage is the hypocrisy and legalism and pride that comes from it.
Speaker 1:Philip Ryken, who is a longtime pastor at 10th Prez in Philadelphia and also is the current president of Wheaton, says this about hypocrisy and legalism. He says. He says we see this in this passion as a way in which they are more concerned about hand-washing than the purity of their hearts, tithing on herbs and spices rather than loving God and loving others and putting themselves ahead of others in order to be able to make a show. Ryken goes on to say that legalists and hypocrites, we are guilty of that when we crave for people to recognize our spiritual accomplishments. We are guilty of that when we crave for people to recognize our spiritual accomplishments.
Speaker 1:Legalists and hypocrites refuse to speak directly to those whose behavior bothers them, which is gossip. We see this over and over again. We really don't ever see a Pharisee coming up and pointing out something directly. They talk behind people's backs. It takes Jesus' omniscience to be able to point them out and what's going on with them and the sin of which they are guilty. And what gossip does. By its very nature, it seeks to promote oneself and keep others in their place. Legalists and hypocrites are quick to criticize and slow to help, which is so antisocial and antirelational, which, as we will see, is the opposite of Jesus' approach to people, which is extraordinarily costly and relational.
Speaker 1:Legalism and hypocrisy will inevitably lead to pride, where we think we are better than everyone else. Pride makes us non-listeners because we think that no one else has anything else to tell us that we don't already know listeners, because we think that no one else has anything else to tell us that we don't already know Kevin Van Hooser, who's a great biblical scholar, has this great one line that says the danger with pride is that pride doesn't listen. Pride knows, and the pride that comes from legalism and hypocrisy can blind us to our deep spiritual needs. This is what Jesus is getting at when he says in verse 44, woe to you, for you are like unmarked graves. People walk over them without knowing it. In the Jewish culture, if you came in touch with a dead body, you would be ceremonially unclean and this is obviously not rocket science but an unmarked grave would have a dead body in it and if you came in contact with it, you would be ceremonially unclean. Jesus tells these Pharisees right here that you are essentially like an unmarked grave You're leading people astray. People are unclean because they are coming in contact with you, because you're dead on the inside. This is a huge problem with the Pharisees and them leading others astray and bearing a false witness on who God really is.
Speaker 1:At a church where I once served, michelle and I became friends with a couple. They were in their late 20s, early 30s. They didn't come to faith in Christ until they were out of college, when they were adults. But as I began to know the husband and their relationship, I began to understand that they had a real sordid past, especially in their high school and college years and, just to be honest, a lot of really wild living. But they came to faith in Christ, they got involved in the life of the church. But one of the things that he would share with me is and this is particularly tragic and we need to be mindful of is he said every year when she would go to the doctor for her regular checkup, she was fearful that she was going to be diagnosed with some disease or something was going to be wrong with her. That was a result of her past life and he said it didn't bother as much that she would have something wrong with her as it was that the people of church would hear that she had something and they would put two and two together and they would know about her past. That's sad.
Speaker 1:We have to be very careful how we talk, how we walk around people, that we don't put off airs that we're actually more holy than what we really are, because we can actually be the stench of death. When we do that, we think that we're doing a good thing, when we're actually doing something very bad and very harmful to the people around us. Our hypocrisy and legalism and pride are dangerous on so many levels. They blind us to our need for Jesus' grace and that we think that we are fine on our own, and they are antithetical to the law in that it shows that we are to love God and to love others, and our hypocrisy and legalism and pride stake a flag of independence in the face of God by telling God that we really don't need Him, and it tells others that we are better than they are what messes we are. Thankfully, christ still came for us and did not leave us to fend for ourselves, but he came for us and we see His heart in this particular way in this passage.
Speaker 1:Someone once told me this is one of these things you could debate for a while. But this man said you can determine how successful a life someone is going to have based upon the hard conversations they have, or the number of hard conversations they have, and there's probably an element of truth to that. Whether it's really totally true, I don't know, but I do know this. Let's say hypothetically that this statement is true, that someone is successful based on the number of hard conversations they have. By that definition alone, jesus would be the most successful person that ever lived. His whole life was a hard conversation, and not only was he having hard conversations, but he was willing to go and have them and happily have them as even more mind-blowing. When we think of Jesus' suffering humiliation on earth, we immediately think of his trial, his beatings and crucifixion, and that was certainly a part of it. But think about the suffering he endured while willingly going to have these meals that he attended and the interactions he had with people. He knew exactly what was going to happen. He knew the intents of the heart. I think about different meetings that I'm asked to attend and I may or may not know what's going on, and sometimes I can be pretty pessimistic about it. It says I don't know about this meeting, this is probably going to be said and I'm hoping I get the flu or something. I don't want to go. I'm being honest with you to go. I'm being honest with you and that's me and something that may or may not happen. Jesus knew exactly what he was going to and he did it happily and he did it willingly.
Speaker 1:I had a seminary professor who had once gone on a mission trip to Africa. During his time there, he went and visited a leper colony and one of the things he noticed when he was going through that leper colony was just how repulsed he was by the disfigured men and women that were in his midst. And as he started thinking about it, thinking, what must it have been like for Jesus to come and walk on earth, which was a spiritual leper colony? We have this facade on us and we look nice and we do seemingly good things, but Jesus is able to look into our souls, he's able to see the rot, he's able to see the disfigurement, and this is what he saw and still pursued us. It's amazing that Jesus, as we saw last week, would feed 5,000 people only to know that within 24 hours they were all gone to ditching and he was left with his 12 disciples. And then he would enter into the home of the spiritually dead Pharisee, who had passed judgment on him, the second person of the Trinity, the eternal son of God, and he's repulsed by him because he doesn't wash his hands before dinner. Think about how trite that is.
Speaker 1:Jesus stays there, but we see Jesus going headlong into these conversations and meeting with people who don't understand Him or even oppose Him, as my fireman friends like to say, is that we go running into burning buildings while everybody else is running out. Jesus runs into a burning building of our sin and our suffering, and it's Jesus' love and honesty that drives Him to say the things that he did, especially with regards to the three rebukes, or the three woes. We see and there's some more that follow this in the verses that go after the passage we're looking at today, and I think it's very easy for us to look at these and to think, especially in light of our sinful hearts and how we were to react to people that Jesus is dismissing them with these woes, that he's throwing His hands up in frustration, that he's leaving without hope. When he says these woes, I'm done with you, I don't want to have anything more to do with you, but if we stop and we slow down, we see that these woes are not just filled with a righteous anger over the state of the world, but they're also filled with love and sorrow as well. We see Jesus' grief in these woes. I think one of the things that makes this very clear is we see Jesus weeping over Jerusalem in Luke 19, just a few chapters after this one and he says Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that would make for peace, but now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another in you because you did not know the time of your visitation. He says this while he's weeping, while he's grieving, not in a mean-spirited way, not in the way that we often act.
Speaker 1:My father, who passed away four and a half years ago, was one of the most gentle men I'd ever known in my life. I could count the times, on one hand, where I ever saw him really get angry, and I can say in those five times he was justified in it, and, as I look at it from my perspective right now, I'm surprised he didn't lose it even more than he did. One of those particular times was when I was 12 years old and had begun deer hunting and he and another man took his son, who was a friend of mine, on a deer hunting trip, and we were hunting on this piece of property and they dropped me and my friend up on the northern edge of the property and we had each had a 12 gauge shotgun loaded with buckshot. Because what they were going to do was they were going to go down to the south end of the property, get out of the car and walk up our way and hopefully be able to drive a deer up towards us. Well, within my sight I see a 12 foot ladder stand. I don't have any rope, I don't have a sling, so I've got to get that gun up there. And I walk up my 12-year-old self, walking up a 12-foot ladder stand, holding a loaded shotgun here, using this other hand to hold on to the rungs and trying to keep my balance with my two feet. And I get up and I'm thinking this is going to give me a better chance to get a deer. Well, my dad gets up on me before I'm able to get down out of the tree stand and he starts losing his mind.
Speaker 1:Jamie, what in the world are you doing? Do you realize how dangerous this is? You could have killed yourself. You could have killed someone else. Don't ever do this again. You could have killed someone else. Don't ever do this again.
Speaker 1:What my dad was saying wasn't punitive. It was to get my attention and ultimately, the reason he did what he did and the way that he did it is because he loved me. He didn't want something bad to happen to me. What I was doing was really a matter of life and death, and this is what we see Jesus doing right here. He's not losing his mind. He hasn't lost control. It's focused, and what he's trying to do is these people from which he came to get their attention. Look, you have me sitting before you. The hopes and fears of all the years are right here with you and you're focused on washing hands and tithing your herbs and your spices. But what we see Jesus doing is not only giving a warning and showing His heart. Through that, we also see His power to save.
Speaker 1:A pastor friend of mine once told me a story about a young mother and father who had a young son who had special needs, and the way his special needs manifest itself was he had a hard time expressing himself verbally, and this father had a very successful job, but he was on the road many nights during the week and was not able to spend time with his wife and child as he would like, and one night he had come home for the weekend, had spent all sorts of time with the child, taken him to the toy store, buying everything they wanted, just like any other weekend. But things had finally come to a crescendo and this man and wife were yelling at each other and saying all sorts of mean, harmful things. The kid is crying off in the background and finally the dad looks over at the son and says what are you crying for? I've bought you all these toys. Go play with these toys. I've done all these things. You know you and I are going to go do this tomorrow. And the kid looks up at his dad and says I want you.
Speaker 1:This is what Jesus is saying here in this passage To those who are listening. He says this today, I don't want your religious game, I don't need your t. In this passage To those who are listening, it says this today, I don't want your religious game, I don't need your tithes and offerings, I don't need your religious dress. I want you. This is what he's saying in verse 41. But give as alms those things that are written and behold, everything is clean for you. What he's saying is I want your hearts, I want you, I want your affections. Let's start from the inside and the outside will be changed. You can't be changed from the outside in. It's the stench of death.
Speaker 1:What he's saying is you must be changed from the inside out and you may be saying to yourself well, following that logic, if my heart is sinful and if I'm broken, what good is that to Jesus? Well, just like Martin said in terms of feeding the 5,000 last week, we're wondering how in the world could he feed 5,000 with five loaves and two fishes? Jesus looks and says I can work with that. And what Jesus does when you come to Him with a broken and a contrite heart, offering yourself and your heart and your confessions. He looks and he says I can work with that, but I won't work with all this other stuff. This is consistent with what David says in Psalm 51 in his confession over sin with Bathsheba For you will not delight in sacrifice or I would give it. You will not be pleased in a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. O God, you will not despise.
Speaker 1:And it's within that same passage he asks God, create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit within me, and I know where people are coming from when they talk about asking Jesus into their heart. I mean, I grew up with that. I know where people are coming from, but I think we've got to be careful how we talk about that asking Jesus into our heart. Jesus gives us a new heart. We need a new heart. Our heart of stone needs to be changed into a heart of flesh, and he changes that. We see Jesus fulfilling this in what comes from Jeremiah 31.
Speaker 1:It talks about how, with this new heart, he will write His law upon it. Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord. I want to make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel. After those days, declares the Lord, I will put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts and I will be their God and they will be my people, and no longer shall each teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying Know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more. From death to life, from love of self to love of others, from dependence on self to dependence on God. It comes from the inside out. If you want Jesus, you can have Jesus, and Jesus can give you exactly what you need, and that is a new heart and new affections, where you'll be renewed more and more into His image.
Speaker 1:Don't be clinging to religion. If you do, you're forfeiting the greatest thing that there is. It's not another set of rules, but it's a person. It's a person of Jesus Christ, who can not only save you but change you and be with you for forevermore.
Speaker 1:Let us pray, lord in heaven. We thank you for the many ways in which you have pursued us. We thank you for the way in which you have pursued us through your Son, jesus Christ. We thank you for the gift of your Holy Spirit. We thank you for your Word. We thank you for your church, body and Lord. May you, by your grace and through the power of your Word and your Spirit change us from the inside out. Create in us a clean heart, o Lord, and renew a right spirit within us, lord. Give us a clean heart, o Lord, and renew a right spirit within us, lord. Give us a broken heart, give us a heart of contrition, so that we may come to you spiritually bankrupt, and that you will give us everything that we need, both now and forevermore, through your Son, jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.