Luke 11:37-41

Luke chapter 11 verses 37 to 41 for our text and study this morning. And as he, speaking of Jesus, as he spake, a certain Pharisee besought him to dine with him. And he went in and sat down to beat. When the Pharisee saw it, he marveled that he had not first washed before dinner. And the Lord said unto him, now do ye Pharisees may clean the outside of the cup and the platter, but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness. Ye fools, did not he that made that which is without, make that which is within also, but rather give ons of such things as ye have, and behold all things, are clean to you. May God bless to us. He is sacred and holy word this morning. The Cheyenne Indians of central Minnesota and northern South Dakota possessed a high level of morality. These people exhibited moderation, dignity, generosity, and a high degree of self-control. In many ways, these Indians were well-behaved people. They had some kind of form of godliness, but they weren’t Christians. They were far from it. There are many people that you’re going to meet who are religious people. They might even have a high level of morality outwardly about their lives, but they’re far from the kingdom of God. For Jesus Christ is not their Lord, and He’s not their Savior. They have a form of Godwins. They may even show an interest in the gospel of Christ and in the faith that you possess. There were some Pharisees in Christ’s Day who were like this. And Christ in our text here provides an example of how to deal with unconverted religious people. Now, there’s much to learn from Christ if we’ll take our time and ponder his actions in this particular passage of Scripture and give our careful attention to it. Let me begin by saying this. He may deem it useful to converse. with unconverted religious people. Verse 37, we see that Jesus is invited by a certain Pharisee to dine with him, and Jesus decided that he would do so. This Pharisee does not appear to be a disciple of Christ, but he wishes to have an opportunity to speak to Christ personally. He’s been hearing him preach. And he wants to speak to him more privately. Now, I’m willing to give this man the benefit of the doubt and suggest to you that he’s sincere in wanting to know more about Christ’s doctrine. But whether or not he had bad intentions or whether he had good intentions, you find that Christ is willing to use this occasion to promote the truth. I had Russell read a passage from, from Luke chapter 7, where there was another Pharisee to invite Christ to dinner and he went there too and was able to present the gospel of Christ. So Christ goes down to this man’s house and he sits down to dine with him. Jesus was not just a friend of publicans and sinners. You might say the scum of society. But he also shows an interest here in unconverted religious people who at least appear outwardly righteous. But there are people without a knowledge of the way of salvation through Christ’s righteousness and blood. They don’t understand. Christ’s conduct here gives us an occasion to see an example. Because there are times and occasions, when you and I have to mix with the ungodly people around us. We seek to have a spiritual discourse with these people. And thus, we may accept an invitation to dinner or something of this sort. Now, you can’t entirely withdraw from the society of the Unquestion of the unconverted and be totally isolated for then you must need to have gone out of the world as Paul says 1 Corinthians 5 in order to be salt and light we have to have some kind of connection with darkness and with the unconverted so we must not be partakers of their sins of course but we can eat dinner with them and you can do much good at times in private conversation with people. And so Jesus here provides an example. He’s willing to do that. He’s going to eat with this Pharisee. Now it’s important for you to have the same goal as Jesus had in eating with this Pharisee. Our Lord didn’t go to this dinner to satisfy his hunger. That’s not his primary concern. I’m sure he was glad to have something to eat. He wasn’t there just for a pleasant evening. As he once told his disciples in John chapter 4, I believe it is, I have meat to eat that you know not off. I don’t necessarily need physical meat. My meat is to do the will of my father. We’re saying. And that’s what he’s about to do here. So he has this higher purpose. We have to realize that Christ is always about his father. business. And his purpose here was to speak the gospel to this enlightened religious person and his guess, which were probably pretty much like him, and advance the kingdom of God. We see his boldness and teaching here, divine truth, and even his rebuke of the error of his host here. I mean, washing of hands. His goal, I think, in all this, is to strip away all pretense, all self-righteousness, and get down to the heart of the matter that their hearts need to be right with God, and this takes a work of God in their hearts. They need to be saved. They need a savior. Now, is your frame of mind the same when you dying with unconverted people? when you eat with them, are you thinking, how is it that I can best present the gospel of Christ to this person? What can I say a spiritual benefit for this person’s soul? Are you about your Heavenly Father’s business also? Are you seeking a way to somehow present the truth of the gospel as it is in Jesus Christ? So what you’re thinking and dealing with the unconverted here, be like Christ. present the gospel. That’s his main purpose in dealing with these people and eating with them. So you may deem it useful to converse with unconverted religious people. Now secondly, you find unconverted religious people often place human tradition on a par with the Word of God. Now, verse 38 says this. And when the Pharisees saw it, he marveled that he had not first washed before dinner. Now it should trouble you when religious tradition has such a hold on a person’s life. Now, the Pharisees and religious tradition we see here, the Pharisees carried the custom of washing their hands much further than was necessary for the purpose of cleanliness, getting off the germs and the dirt. So when you see this, Jesus ate dinner girls and Everett without washing their hands first, without washing his hands for, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t wash your hands before dinner. We’re going to talk about what it does mean what it does mean here in a second. It was like a religious ceremony to them necessary to prevent spiritual defilement. Look with me at Mark 7, verse 1 through 5. Then came together unto him the Pharisees and certain of the scribes and certain of the scribes which came from Jerusalem and when they saw some of his disciples, eat bread with defiled that is to say, unwashed hands, they found fault. For the Pharisees and all the Jews except they washed their hands off, eat not, holding the tradition of the elders. And when they came to the market, except they wash, they eat not. And many other things there be, what they have received, a hold as the washing of cups and pots, brazen vessels, and tables. Then the Pharisees and scribes ask him, why walk not thy disciples, according to the tradition of the elders, be eat bread with unwashed hands? Not the first time this is. issue has come up. John Gill says that the Pharisees not only washed their hands by immershing them up to the elbows in water before eating, but sometimes they immersed themselves all over. They took a bath. They took a bath before eating, especially if they were in the marketplace. Well, Jesus is out here with the crowd, with a multitude. And so they’re thinking, well, you’ve got to get your hands washed. You won’t be ceremonially clean when you sit down to eat. Now, this was not in the law of Moses. They were following, as we clearly see, the tradition of the elders. The elders were the leaders, if you would, of the various tribes. It was said that beside the written law that was given to Moses, at least this is what the Jews held, that many other things were revealed to him which were not. committed to writing and these other things were delivered orally under the elders who then handed them down from one generation to the other that’s the way they got around this and so they considered the tradition of the elders equal to the written word of God does that sound familiar to you it ought to is the very teaching the Roman Catholic Church nothing new under the sun is there and therefore the Pharisees here the Pharisee marveled that Jesus here’s a teacher of the people a man who was considered a prophet by man would defy the holy tradition of the elders he’s come from this mixed multitude of people who knows how many unclean people were there surely he needed to wash before eating so he would be ceremonially clean So to them, to the Pharisees, you see, not washing was sinful. And thus it would discredit Christ as a messenger of God. How could he be a messenger of God and not follow a tradition of the elders? So we see the Pharisees in human tradition. Now, you may be surprised to find that human tradition dominates various religious groups today. And it’s much more than you might think. I read a somewhat humorous story. Years ago, Harry Emerson Fawzdick told about a church in Denmark where the worshippers bowed before a certain spot on this whitewashed wall. And they’ve been doing it for centuries. Three centuries. And so when they went to the sanctuary, they always bowed before this wall. Nobody knew why. It was a lot of the sanctuary. a tradition the church held. One day they were renovating the church and they happened to strip the whitewash off the wall and guess what was behind the whitewash? There was a picture of the Madonna. Mary. At the exact spot where these people were bowing for centuries without knowing why. They become so accustomed to doing this that they just did it. It was the tradition. And here were people, in many cases, unwitting Mary. And you see where human foolishness leads to all this crazy stuff, because they’re following tradition. Perhaps, I guess, the most obvious example is the Roman Catholic Church, which teaches that church tradition is to be accepted on the same level as the Word of God. Here’s what they teach. Oral traditions of the Catholic Church are. to be received with equal piety and reverence as the books of the Old and New Testaments. And this is how you end up with the worship of Mary, the useless idols and images in worship contrary to the law of God, the worship of angels and saints. This is where you get auricular confession, where you have to confess to a priest and you’re not confessing to God or going to Christ. This is where you have the last rites for. those who are dying where this comes from, for the mass which ends up being, according to them, a continual sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Transubstantiation in the mass where somehow or other, the bread and the wine or the bread and the juice turns into the actual blood and body of Christ. The office of the pope with his infallibility comes from this. Lent, in all that many holy holy holy, day they have a look if be honest with you if you asked the Roman Catholic and I did they can’t even tell you how many holy days they have it’s almost one for every day of the year. That’s how many they have. But get the high holy one, you know, like the Lent season 40 days or whatever it is. The celibacy of the priesthood Mary’s Immaculate Conception, the perpetual virginity of Mary, her assumption to heaven, her being a co-redeemedemedium. and all, all this stuff comes from human tradition. Now here’s the dirty little secret. So, well, do we got this from the elders. It’s been passed down for generation. If you go back and read the church father, so to speak, you’ll find that none of them agree with one another. So don’t tell me this is oral tradition that’s been passed on. There’s so much confusion in the past, you wouldn’t know what to believe. So-called church fathers repeatedly contradict one another, so there is no unanimous consent of the fathers. Unanimous consent is a pure myth. It sounds nice, but if you actually do some history reading, forget about it. Do you know that a lot of church fathers can’t even agree with themselves? What they wrote early on, they had to retract later. Augustine wrote a whole book called retractions. Well, a lot of the stuff he wrote early on, he said, well, I have to retract that, I have to retract this, I have to attract that. So which one are you going to follow? Which oral tradition was right? And how will you ever know if somebody’s going to retract it later? My friends, our faith isn’t built on church or human tradition. It’s built on the Word of God. Otherwise, you get just confusion and error. Human tradition is a very insecure foundation of which to build anything. It’s guaranteed to deceive you. It’s guaranteed to lead you astray. No true church places true tradition on an equal footing with the word of God. You can mark that down. So it should trouble you when religious tradition has such a hold on a person’s faith. And that’s what Jesus sees here. Now, you should follow Christ’s example by rejecting religious traditions. Why did Jesus refuse to wash his hands before he ate? it wasn’t because he you know I thought well I wanted to get the dirt and grime off that’s not the reason he didn’t wash his hands he didn’t wash his hands because he didn’t want to comply with the tradition of the elders in this case and follow in line with them as if it was just perfectly right because it wasn’t in the Word of God and it wasn’t to be accepted as the truth he wouldn’t participate in so he doesn’t he refuses He’s already stated, Matthew 151, you transgress the commandment of God by your tradition Matthew 159 in vain do they worship God teaching for doctrines the commandments of men and this is what happens so Jesus says I’m not going to accept this if it’s not in scripture I’m not following this Soliscript Torah must be our rule for duty and practice as well. The Word of God is complete. It provides everything you need for life, for living, for the worship of God. There’s nothing you don’t need to have. It’s not found in the Word of God. Don’t even think about the fact that you, what we’re missing something. No, you’re not missing anything. You may need to read more carefully but it’s all there for you. I read a story about Dr. Gordon Clark. It was a Presbyterian minister. He was once a guest speaker at a different Presbyterian church, and he was requested after the sermon if he would perform a baptismal service for one of their babies, infants. And he was asked to use this white lily to dip it in the water and then sprinkle it on the head of the child. So Dr. Clark said, well, what’s the significance of using the white lily? Because it wasn’t common practice. And he was told the white lily represented the innocence of the infant being baptized. And Clark said, I can’t do this. He says the confession, and he quoted a portion of the confession, which is using biblical language to glean from the word, says this, baptism speaks clearly of the remission of the remission of the remission of. sins. Acts 238, Acts 2216, Mark 1,44. How is it that the baby’s innocent? And you’re using an ordinance that speaks of the remission of sins. You see how you get into these traditions and they contradict even what we would say the scripture would command us to do. An infant born of Adam clearly isn’t innocent being a guilty sinner in God’s sight. So he refused to use the white lily. Now, as a Baptist, of course, I have other reasons that, you know, we believe in those who are baptized should profess faith. And certainly, our mode would be immersion rather than sprinkling. But the point I’m trying to get across is the Clark saying, what are you doing? Why are we doing this? A good question always ask. traditions are not to govern you. Scripture alone is the governing. When human tradition is given such great authority, don’t participate in it. You might, you know, a lot of people, and a lot of Protestants also get involved in Lent season and things like this, you know, people say, well, don’t, aren’t you going to participate in Lent? Said, well, I can’t find out the Word of God. Why should I participate in it? I don’t have to follow. We don’t have to have a Lenton season for the church and have Lenton service, sermons during that period of time and all this stuff. It doesn’t matter how long people have observed this human tradition. It doesn’t really matter. It only matters that it’s a religious tradition. It’s not found in the Word of God. So you find unconverted people often place human tradition on a par with the Word of God, and that’s the Word of God. problem. Thirdly, you should realize unconverted religious people focus on the externals of religion and overlook the state of the heart. And this is what Jesus takes up in verses 39 through 41. And the Lord said unto him, now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter, but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness. He fools. Did not he that made that which is without, make that which is within also? But rather give alms of such things as you have, and behold, all things are clean unto you. Now we see the absurdity of which you can be guilty here in verse 39. If you were a servant, you wouldn’t be a very good servant. If you only clean the outside of the cup. which your master used, or the bottom of the plate and not the top where the food goes in the dish of the plate. That wouldn’t be very good. Could you imagine doing the dishes out there? When you’re doing the dishes, you only do one side? Not do both sides? That wouldn’t work out very well, would it? That’s a poor washing. The master’s not going to be happy with that. In a similar manner, you can’t be considered spiritually clean if you’re only concerned about external washing, the outside, the hands. God is not pleased if you neglect the internal cleanse of the heart. Man looketh on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart. So God is looking at the heart in particular. So if you neglect your heart, it remains. defiled by guilt and the pollution of sin. Ravening here has to do with extortion or plundering or pillaging someone, robbing someone. It comes, it’s akin to the word that means to seize or to carry off by force. Wickedness here is some type of malice that resides in. So the Pharisees were known for such corruption of heart. They had all this external religious religion, but you devire widows’ houses, is what Jesus condemned them for. Oh, you’ll find a way to fleece that poor widow out of all her wealth. That’s the kind of people you are. They were full of extortion and excess, Matthew 25, excuse me, 2325. Yeah, that’s what’s inside extortion. So they were very careful about washing the age of. hands and eating with clean plates and cups, but they procured their meat and drink with unclean hands. The point is this. You ought to begin with the purification of the heart. For if the heart be renewed and sanctified by grace, then your life will be reformed. What your hands will do will be right if your heart is right, because out of the heart are the issues of life, the Bible says. If the spring or the fountain produces pure water, then all the streams that come from it will be pure. But if the heart has polluted, if the spring has polluted water in it, then all the streams are going to be polluted, right? So your heart is purified by faith in the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, according to Acts 15, 9, without Christ, there is no cleansing of the heart. So we see of the absurdity of which you can be guilty by neglecting the heart. Now, you shouldn’t think your creator is only concerned about your external state. Look at verse 40 here. He says, you ought to know better than this. He fools. Boy, you persons without mind or reason or understanding here. By the way, this is not the same word that Jesus forbade us to use in the sermon of the mouth. This is a different Greek work here. But the point is this. Your creator made your external body as well as your internal soul. Yeah, you were formed out of the dust of the earth, but he breathed into you the breath of life and you became a living soul. So he created both aspects of you. Do you think it reasonable that God would be? happy with only one part being clean, just the body, while your precious soul remains defiled? How many times does God tell the Jews in the Old Testament, you circumcised the skin of your body on your foreskin? But he says you need to have circumcised hearts. Your heart’s aren’t circumcised. You’re circumcised in flesh but not in heart. Isn’t the same. same thing here. You’re washing your hands, but your heart’s dirty. Was God satisfied with men who praised them just with their lips when their heart was far from him? Doesn’t he condemn them for that? Blessed or the pure and heart for they shall see God, the Bible tells us, in Matthew 5’8. That’s the plain teaching of the Word of God. My friends, we can even do this. You can take your body and you can be washed by baptism. But if you lack the washing of regeneration of the soul, you’re still not going to be acceptable before God. Titus 3.5, the washing of regeneration. So you shouldn’t think of your creator, that your creator is only concerned about external state. Now, the last thing I want to mention is verse 41 here. For your works to be acceptable to God, your heart must be right with God. This is admittedly a difficult verse. And the commentators give all sorts of interpretation of this. I suppose I could spend the whole time this morning, probably several hours, going through all the different views on this, telling you why the pros and cons of each part of it. But I don’t deem that why. it’s a very long process. Let me just give you an interpretation that I think is the most useful here. It was suggested by J.C. Ryle is this. The literal meaning of the Greek, he says, is this. But rather give the things that are in as alms. Green’s interlinear Greek New Testament says this, but of the being, within give alms. Similar. And the meaning is this. First give an offering of the inward ban. Give your heart. Give your affections. Give your will to God as the first great alms that you give. And then all your other actions that proceed from a right heart are acceptable sacrifice and a clean offering to to God. And I think that’s what he means in this text of Scripture. It fits in with what he’s teaching here. So give the inner man first and then the gifts and services of the external man will be acceptable. If your person is first accepted, then your works are acceptable. You remember all the way back in Genesis chapter 4, the Lord had respect unto Abel, and unto a sacrifice. First to able, and then do a sacrifice. First, the heart, and then the works that proceed from the heart. So you should realize this is the case here. We should realize that unconverted religious people focus on the external religion and overlook the state of the heart. Let me close. The Cheyenne Indians had this high-level morale. moderation, generosity, self-control, and all this stuff. But they weren’t even close to the kingdom of God. You can be very religious. You can be moral, so to speak, outwardly at least. But it can still be a heathen, far from the kingdom of God. And Jesus Christ is not your Savior. Jesus focuses here on dealing with these people, not being trapped by human tradition, and giving them the message of really the need to be born in a story. again. They need to be saved. They need renewed hearts. So the key point to remember is this. Unconverted people always seem to focus on the externals of religion. So in our witness to them, we have to focus on the internals. What God must do in your soul, how you must, by faith, believe in Christ. You must be brought to repentance. It’s not how, somehow I live, and if I just do this much good, that that will make up for the bad. That’s the kind of foolish thinking we have in our world. What we need to talk to people about is they need a change of heart. They need a spiritual renewal by God. Salvation in Christ. Otherwise, everything they do is polluted. Let’s close with a word of prayer.