Luke 11:37-41 Dirty Dishes
Good morning! Turn with me in your Bibles to Luke chapter 11, verse 37, that’s on page 870 in the Pew Bibles.
We’ve had a wonderful week of VBS this week. We spent a lot of time focused on the Apostle’s Creed, a declaration of faith that has been used by the church since around the Second Century.
But things like the Apostle’s Creed can be dangerous. While they are useful tools to help us summarize the basic teaching of the Christian faith they can easily become empty religious ritual. And while there are groups that faithfully recite the Creeds as part of their weekly worship gathering the temptation is to simply go through the motions and what was once live giving is devoid of life altogether.
And that’s the focus of our text for this morning in Luke 11.
37 While Jesus was speaking, a Pharisee asked him to dine with him, so he went in and reclined at table. 38 The Pharisee was astonished to see that he did not first wash before dinner. 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. 40 You fools! Did not he who made the outside make the inside also? 41 But give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you.
Let’s pray.
The Word of God, the Bible, is like a mirror. Sometimes when we look into intently we don’t like what we see looking back at us. That’s what this passage is for me, I look here and I don’t like what I see looking back at me.
In this interaction between Jesus and the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law Jesus’ main concern was their hypocrisy.
The Greek word for hypocrisy means to pretend or to play a part. The whole idea of acting in plays was the invention of a man named Hypocrites. In our context here it is clearly the hiding of interior wickedness behind the appearance of virtue.
So Jesus is invited to lunch by one of the Pharisees whose motivation we can only guess at. Whether he actually wanted to hear what He had to say, or he simply wanted to get Him to stop teaching the particular crowd that was around Him, or that he wanted to be seen as more favored by getting Jesus to come to his house, or maybe he was trying to trap Him in something He said, we don’t know.
What we do know is that it didn’t take long for Jesus to expose the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law.
The Pharisees had a way of adding their own rules to the law of God, they took the Old Testament and added their own book of rules called the Mishna which included all the rules for proper hand washing and how many steps you were allowed to take on a Sabbath day, things like that.
So when Jesus sat down to eat and didn’t wash His hands, it wasn’t a violation of the Law but a violation of the traditions of the Pharisees.
JJ vanOosterzee wrote, “Pharisaism, far from being a merely accidental form of the Judaism of that time, is on the other hand the natural revelation of the sinful condition of the heart when men will not give up the hope of becoming righteous before God by their virtue and merits. They are proud of that which they imagine themselves to possess, and continually inclined to assume the guise of that which they well know they do not possess.”
The Word of God had plainly taught them how to walk with God but they rejected God’s way of walking by faith and added all kinds of outward effort to try and prove their own righteousness.
Our problem today is that we try and laugh that off as being silly when sometimes we are just as guilty.
38 The Pharisee was astonished to see that he did not first wash before dinner. 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. 40 You fools! Did not he who made the outside make the inside also? 41 But give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you.
It’s ridiculous to try and separate the inside of the cup and the dish from the outside, if the outside is clean but the inside is dirty, it is still unsuitable for use.
Again JJ vanOosterzee wrote, “Since God has created the inside as well as the outside, one as much as the other must be held holy; and it is not only evil but foolish to wish to separate, even in thought – to say nothing of act – that which in the nature of things is absolutely inseparable.”
The Pharisees were guilty of hypocrisy, they claimed to be clean because they appeared clean on the outside. They had the approval of the people and that’s all that really mattered to them.
“Having no desire for purity except before the eyes of men, as if they had not to deal with God… The chief reason why men are deceived is that they do not consider that they have to deal with God, or, they transform Him according to the vanity of their senses, as if there were no difference between Him and mortal man.” –John Calvin
This kind of religious hypocrisy, ignoring the eyes of God in favor of the eyes of man, or imagining that God doesn’t see or doesn’t really care what they were like on the inside, is really idolatry.
Any attempt to make God out to be any way other than He represents Himself to be in the Bible is idolatry, it’s an attempt to create a god in our own image. If we imagine a god that is all love and all mercy but is in no part righteous nor just, we are doing just that, imagining a god that is not real.
The Pharisees main concern was with what they did versus what they were.
When what we do does not match what we are, or when what we are does not match what we do, we are hypocrites, playing a role, just like them.
“Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. 40 You fools! Did not he who made the outside make the inside also? 41 But give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you.
Micah 6:8 says, He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of you But to do justly, To love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God?
The Pharisees had neglected justice, mercy, and humility. We’ll look at that more closely next time as there is a lot more to say about this subject.
But here is what really bothers me about this passage, this truly is a mirror…
There are two things.
First, it is far too easy for us to clean up the outside of our own dishes and be content with that.
As long as other people see that we are doing the religious stuff, going to church, doing all the events, carrying our Bibles around, just being known around town or at work for being part of the church, that we are all set as if we will never have to contend with God over the issue of our own personal righteousness.
To live is this way is beyond foolish. What good is it to fool the eyes of people when we will still have to one day look into the eyes of God?
You fooled me! Good for you, it’s not hard!
But apart from true faith in Jesus you will still answer for your sin.
The second thing that bothers me is…
Just as the Pharisees were content with the outside appearance of cleanness, we are often content to, not only appear outwardly clean, but to assume that everybody else is clean too.
What would happen if you were willing to show the inside of your cup and dish? What would happen if you loved enough to look inside someone else’s cup and dish?
My fear is that if you really knew me and what was on the inside of me, you wouldn’t listen to one word I said, and if I knew what was inside of you I wouldn’t want to speak to you anyway!
Do you really know each other? Do you know the burdens that your brother or sister is carrying?
Now, praise God that unlike the Pharisees, through faith in Jesus our sins are washed away and in God’s sight we have been made clean.
And if that’s not you today, I would encourage you to turn from your sin to Jesus, ask Him for forgiveness and put your trust in Him.
But likewise I would encourage you all to no longer count on your outward appearance to try and trick everybody into thinking that you’re fine if you’re not.
Now we’re going to have a baptism! So if you’re getting baptized you can go get ready while we sing and then come down to the front row here.
Let’s pray.
