Luke 11:45-48

Luke chapter 11 verses 45 through 48 for our text and study this morning. Luke 11 beginning with verse 45. Then answered one of the lawyers and said on to him, Master, thus saying thou reproaches us also. He said, whoa, unto you also. Ye lawyers, where ye laid men with burdens, grievous to be born, and ye yourselves touch not the burden with one of your fingers. Woe unto you, for ye build the sepulchres of the prophets, and your fathers killed them. Truly, ye bear witness that ye allow the deeds of your fathers, they indeed killed them, and ye build their sepulchre, and God bless to us, his sacred and holy word this morning. Years ago, one of the largest gold dealers in the United States was caught in the act of deceiving its investors. A court-appointed attorney got an order to open the company’s vault. The sea, if it had two million dollars worth of gold, in the vault, according to what they were supposed to have. When they opened the vault, they saw all these gold bars stacked up in there, but upon closer inspection, they found that they were actually blocks of wood that had been painted gold. They weren’t gold ballers at all. Many innocent investors lost a lot of money because they sent money in for a gold, which they claimed they had, but they didn’t have the gold. and therefore they couldn’t fulfill the orders. Religious hypocrites are deceivers. They want to appear as gold bars, but the truth of the matter is they are fraudulent. They are just wood. There’s no value in them at all. In pronouncing this third woe, Jesus happened to include the lawyer. The scribes, if you would. These scribes were lawyers or the so-called legal experts in the Mosaic law. And despite their protest here about being lumped in with the Pharisees, the lawyers were as big a hypocrites as the Pharisees. The Pharisees and the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected the counsel of God against themselves, and one was not any better than the other. And so the lawyers are also taken to task by Jesus Christ. And the truth is, if we look at it carefully, one religious hypocrite is not much different from another. Down through the ages, it is held true. The very things that we see Christ listening here in our text are the very things that are true. of hypocrites today. I want to talk about religious hypocrites from this passage of scripture. Now you find people are commonly offended by just and faithful rebukes here in verse 45. Then one then answered one of the lawyers and said unto him, master, thus saying thou reproaches us also. Religious hypocrites us also. Religious hypocrites resent and they resist any reproofs as if they are absolutely groundless. What do you mean charging me with this crime or this hypocritical approach? As long as Christ was condemning the Pharisees, you know, the lawyers didn’t have anything to say. That’s okay. As soon as he touches on the lawyers, all of a sudden, since they’re guilty, of the same thing. They have a problem. It’s only when Christ got to this point that they protested. It’s amazing how people cannot see that they are guilty of the same kinds of sins as those Jesus denounced in others. If you can’t read through this passage of scripture, and apply it to your own circumstances and see, am I like that? Then you’re not, you’re going to be just like the scribes. You’re going to say, well, yeah, those those those Pharisees, they are bad people. What about you? So don’t miss this point. Consider if you’re guilty of the sins of the Pharisees and the scribes that are denounced here. You know, the mindset is always the same as we read in Jeremiah 610. Behold, the word of the Lord is unto them a reproach. and they have no delight in. Whenever the word is straightforwardly taught, it’s a reproach under them. It rebukes them, and they don’t like it. People hate the plain exposition of the Word of God. The get down to the level of the people and take it and take it one to one. From the scripture to their circumstance, they don’t like it. They don’t like it at all. For it exposes your hypocrisy. It strips away your self-righteousness. It convicts you of your sin. Remember what King Ahad said about the prophet, Makaya. I hate him. For he doth not prophesied good concerning me but evil. No wonder. Because everything you did was only evil continually in the sight of the Lord. So yes, everything he had to say was bad. And you deserved every bit of it. Our Lord himself declared the world hateth me because I testify of it that its works were evil. But if these things that are said are right and true, and if you can see them in your own life, life, then isn’t the simplest approach to repent of them? To confess, yes, I’m guilty. The religious hypocrite is loath to do that. And he is concerned that he needs to hide his guilt. He hardens his heart then when the word of God is preached. He does not want to receive it as the truth. So here’s a good task of where you stand before God. How do you receive the rebukes of Scripture? How do you respond when the Word of God begins to prick your conscience? Yeah, I could be guilty of that myself. You know, when I was younger, I read about the Israelites traveling through the wilderness and I’m thinking, man, after God has blessed these people so much, opens the Red Sea, provides man for him, how could he be like that? Until I got old enough to realize, well, I’m not much different, am I? After all the good things God does for us, his grace to us, his forgiveness of our sins, and yet we still sin against them. So if you’re a religious hypocrite, you’re going to oppose and resent what God’s word says because it exposes you. The ungodly hate reproofs. Now the godly benefit from reproofs. If you’re a child of God, and you’re reproved by God’s word, you take it to heart. It doesn’t fall on a deaf ear when it comes to you. It brings conviction. It brings a sense of remorse, a sense of, I need to repent, I need to make this right. You weigh carefully the reproof. And if indeed it applies to you, it applies to you, then you benefit from it. You improve from it. Yes, even if friendly and faithful reproof stings, who likes to get reproved? But your heart receives it as a good thing. Proverbs 2512, as an earring of gold and an ornament of fine gold, so is a wise reprover upon an obedient ear. Psalm 141. 5. Let the righteous smite me, it shall be a kindness. Let them reprove me. It shall be an excellent oil, which shall not break my head. Proverbs 276, Faithful are the wounds of a friend. The kisses of an enemy are deceiving. Your friend is telling you what you need to hear. A minister once preached a sermon on John 13, 14, on the duty of disciples to wash one another’s feet. And of course he was taking it, which I think we should, in a symbolic sense. And he observed that one of the ways in which disciples wash it for one another’s feet is by reproving one another. But then he said, you know, the reproof has to be crouched, not in angry words, so as to destroy the effect of it. And not so timid. so that it doesn’t have an effect. He says, just as you, if you were washing your brother’s feet, you wouldn’t get scolding hot water to wash his feet. And you wouldn’t get ice-cold water to freeze his feet. You know, you get lukewarm water to wash his feet in order to he might receive it. We read about David receiving this rebuke from Nathan this morning in the reading that Russell gave. that shows us how when he was rebuked by the Lord, he just confesses, I’ve sinned against the Lord. You’re right. I’ve did evil. There’s no use hiding it. I’m guilty. That’s the way we should respond. That’s the proper way. May we have that kind of faithful response to such a rebukewerewerew. So you find people are kind of faithful. commonly offended by just and faithful reproofs. If they’re hypocrites, that’s the way they’re going to be. Secondly, the standard you impose upon others, you should follow yourself. Verse 46. Jesus says this, well, woe unto you also, you lawyers, for you laid men with burdens grievous to be born, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers. false prophets heap up all sorts of human regulations for a person to obey. The law of Moses, the holy, just, and good, had many regulations for men to observe. It was demanding itself on its own, and so God only gave us a minimum of what he deemed necessary in his law. However, the scribes had to come up with all these man-made regulations that they demanded that people follow. These additional regulations, for which there was no biblical support, were based solely on tradition. They had great many regulations regarding the Sabbath day, and they greatly burdened men. with them. Probably, I would think, that the Sabbath day was probably one that they had the most regulations on. You recall how they condemn Christ’s disciples for merely plucking some heads of grain on the Sabbath day because they were hungry and they were walking through the cornfields or the fields of grain, and so they thought they’d grab a few things, you know, a little bit to eat. Oh, can’t have that. That’s like harvesting, you know, plowing and harvesting on the Lord’s or how Jesus healed on the Sabbath day and he gets condemned and they told the people come on a different day. Don’t come on the Sabbath day to get healing. As if it was some great evil that he would heal on the Sabbath day. They had restrictions regarding how far he could walk on the Lord’s Day. They had restrictions with regard to even where you could spit. on the Lord’s Day, you know, whether it was work or not in that spit is where it landed. It would be bewildering, I think, just to remember all the Pharisees and scribes Sabbath regulations. I don’t know how anyone would keep track of them. Their rules for washings were very strict. Obviously, we talked about, you know, washing before you eat, and it was a ceremonial washing, not just get the germs off. Washings if you came in from the marketplace, you were contaminated by all these unclean people. They even washed their furniture. They would actually dip furniture under water in order to cleanse it. So when they, you know, I guess their couches and stuff, they keep it all nice and clean so you could sit on it and not get made be made unclean. So these innumerable and crushing regulations made it intolerable weight for people. to follow and for any man to carry. You’d have to have a book. With all this stuff written, it’s probably to be larger than the Bible, with all the regulations that the Jews had regarding dues and dons. Many of these rules were grievous enough, but altogether they formed a yoke that nobody could bear. Nor is this just an ancient problem. Let me say that many churches today have a host of man-made regulations which they impose on people. A common example, of course, is the Roman Catholic Church. Bishop Valermein that said this, we ought to serve God according to the traditions of the ancients. We ought to receive with obedience of faith many things which are not in the scriptures. You imagine that. So they have a season of Lent and Ash Wednesday. You know, you see people walking around with that ash in the middle of their forehead on Ash Wednesday. They have these, you know, 40 days of Lent. They have Mary as the co-redeemer and is worshipped. They have the worship of angels and ancient saints. They have transubstantiation. in the mass where the bread actually becomes the body of Christ. Cup actually becomes the blood of Christ. They have holy days of obligations that you are required to observe. Here are some of them. Christmas, circumcision, ascension, assumption, Immaculate Conception, and All Saints, these are the required ones. Now, there’s actually probably enough for almost every day of the year as many holy days as they have. But these are the required ones that you’re supposed to fall. Priests are forbidden to marry. You have to confess to a priest. Never find that in scripture. Indulgences where you can purchase remission of sins. Acceptance of the Pope’s infatience. and of course a holy person, we’re told can gain excess righteousness to which they can pass on to somebody else. We could go on and on and on. But these are all man-made. You will never find these things in scripture. Now many so-called evangelical churches have their own regulations. And I remember when I was growing up, you’re not going to find those things. them in scripture either. Mixed swimming was forbidding. Now, somehow or other, it was okay to get baptized together. And we believe in an immersion. You know, we get down into the water when we did it. But somehow or other, you couldn’t mix swim. And I guess little kids couldn’t, you know, you couldn’t mix swim with little kids either. Drinking any alcoholic beverage was forbidden. And some of the churches I attended and I was a member of at the time. You weren’t allowed to drink. What? Nothing whatsoever. I guess you couldn’t even drink a little wine for your stomach’s sake. It was not, you know, it was bad. Women wearing slacks was forbid. I guess it didn’t matter if you went horseback riding or were you praying volleyball or even in the winter. You know, you couldn’t cover yourself up like that. Some of the church. I grew up around. You had to have the Lord’s supper in the evening. You couldn’t have it in the morning. Because Jesus did it in the evening. So you have to have it in the evening. Some of the churches had Lenton season. Can you believe that? Why? I have no idea. You would think that something that’s related to the Catholic religion that they would be running away from as far as they could get. And yet, many of them, and we have it even today. They still have Lent and seasons. And holy days. I know God gave us one holy day that we are supposed to observe, which was not observed when I was growing up. But we sure had our holidays. We sure had a special, you know, Christmas and Easter and other holidays that we made up. There are churches that I know of that the elders decide who you get to marry. You don’t get that, make that decision. They make the decision. We have churches that allow for women and homosexuals to be pastors and elders. You grew up in some churches, you couldn’t take an oath. If you went to court, you weren’t allowed to swear that you were telling the truth. Even though Paul does take some oaths in Scripture, and I’m not saying, we should take oath slightly, but I think the Bible does allow us to swear by God that we’re telling the truth. and we better be telling the truth when we do that. But think about all this. We can be guilty, just as guilty. Coming up all these regulations and rules that the scripture doesn’t have. and there are some things I probably would talk about and say, It might be best if you don’t do this, but we have to realize there is some freedom and things that we do in this life. Now, people today may not be as burdensome as the Pharisees and the lawyers were, the scribes. But don’t think that we’re not guilty of the same thing, because I think we are in many ways. So false teachers will heave up all sorts of human regulations for a person to obey. may we not be guilty of that. Now notice here that false teachers do not practice what they preach. Last part of verse 46, you yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your finger. You don’t even attempt to pick these things up and do them. So they were very extremely rigorous in implying that everybody else ought to follow these regulations, but they weren’t going to follow them. The scribes and the Pharisees say, do not, Jesus says, in Matthew 23. They were severe on others. They were lenient on themselves. They had all these regulations, all what you can and what you can’t do on the Sabbath day, but somehow rather it was all right for them to plan the death of the Lord Jesus Christ on the Sabbath day. That wasn’t violating the Sabbath. Think about that a minute. This is typical of hypocrites. One set of rules for you. you, but a different set of rules for me. Remember how Paul pointed out the Jews for a double standard. You tell the Gentiles, thou shalt not steal. Does thou steal? What about you? You tell others what God’s law says. Do you practice what God’s law says yourself? When I was growing up, there was a front-page story on the Pittsburgh Press. It caught your eye because it was like the top fold of the paper. And it was about a Roman Catholic bishop that was found dead in a prostitute’s house in Rome, Italy. And this Roman Catholic high official who made policy decisions for the Roman Catholic membership throughout the world was a regular customer of this prostitute. and it’s reported that he had a heart attack while engaged in using the services of the prostitute. It was quite scandalous. What hypocrisy. Now, today, it probably wouldn’t make the front page of the newspaper, but when I was a kid, it was like, whoa, look at this. And it was on the front page of the newspaper. Christ’s stern reproof can be applied with great force to many. in the professing church, so-called evangelicals. Obviously, ministers and elders need to hear this message about hypocrisy. We get up and we say what God’s word says, but we must also do what we’re teaching. Heads of families, the husband, the family leader. He’s leading the family. He better do what he’s saying. Parents. and they’re raising their children. Better follow what they teach if they want their children to follow their teaching and say, yeah, that’s right. The mom and dad say that’s right. They don’t do that. Let us beware of setting a standard for others, but not obeying that standard ourselves. You do have a right, I think, to expect a person’s words to match their behavior. Paul could say those things which you have heard, and then he adds, and seen in me, do. Not only if I taught you these things, you’ve seen me doing them. I thought about an esop fable, which I think is appropriate for parents in regard to this subject. It seems that a mother crab said to her son, why do you walk sideways like that? You ought to walk straight. And the young crab tried to walk straight, but he couldn’t. So he decided to watch his mother. and he’d figure out how to walk straight but he found his mother walked sideways too how foolish she had been the fine fault with her child when she was guilty of the very same thing and I think the lesson there is don’t be guilty of telling others what to do and you’re not doing it yourself so the standard you impose on others you should follow also the third thing he says is this you may claim to admire dead saints but how do you treat living ones notice verse 47 48 woe unto you for he build the sepulchres of the prophets and your fathers killed them truly you bear witness that you allow the deeds of your fathers that they indeed killed them and you build their sepulchres you know it’s easy to admire dead saints there’s a vast multitude of believers down through the years who have given their life for Christ. We call them the martyrs. Thousands of men and women have laid down their life rather than denying Jesus as their Savior. If you read the Old Testament records the deaths of many saints who were killed because they served the Lord. But they were hated by those in political power, their various evil kings and religious leaders of the time. This was especially true of God’s prophets who tried to turn Israel and Judah from their wicked ways. Think of all those prophets that were put to death by King Ahab and Jezebel. Think about what Hebrews talks about. Some were sonder. Some were stone. Some were slain with the sword, so forth. Our text indicates the scribes and the Pharisees beautified the sepulacres of the dead saints, the graves. This was a way of indicating that they were holding these prophets in high regard. They were honoring their memory. Matthew’s Gospel declares this. Wo unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, here, truly you bear witness that you allow the deeds of your fathers in verse 48. That explains it. So here are the scribes and the Pharisees pretending to have a high regard for these dead saints, maybe these Old Testament prophets, these holy men of the past. So they set up their monuments for their memory. They adorn. They adorn. mourned the graves. They put on a big show about the whole matter. And there are many today who would honor with their lips, those who faithfully live for Christ in ages past. The Roman Catholic Church has built many sacred sites to commemorate the so-called righteous dead. Especially in the land of Israel, they have all kinds of things set up. to many of, you know, whether it be Abraham or Isaac or Jacob or whatever, they have all kinds of sites besides the Lord’s called site. Many sites there. Many evangelical churches may even say positive things about Calvin and Luther during the Reformation period. It’s easy to admire dead saints. You may hold the the same hostility, though, towards God’s truth which caused the death of these martyred saints. This is what Jesus is getting to. Jesus denounced the scribes and Pharisees for their hypocrites. Hypocrats. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves that you are the children of them which killed the prophets. In effect, Jesus is saying you confess to me that your own fathers are the ones that put to death, these men of old, these godly men. You admit that you’re the children. Now, we have to understand when Jesus used the word children here, he’s using it not merely in the plain sense of well, you are their children in the sense that you are their physical descendants. He’s using it also, in the sense, you have the same spirit and character. as they do. That’s the point. That’s the pregnant point here. These men had lived, if they had lived in the days of the prophets, they would have print these righteous men to death just the same. That’s his point. They would have joined in with their forefathers. How do you know this? Well, Jesus Christ, the great prophet that Moses talked about, is presently in their midst. And what are the scribes and the Pharisees doing, scheming how they can kill them? What did they want to do to all the apostles of Jesus Christ? They wanted to kill them. Don’t fool yourself. Many so-called evangelicals, if they lived in the days of Christ and his apostles would have adamantly opposed them. How do you know? Look at how they treat God’s faithful servants today. They hate their teaching and their doctrine. And it’s if you’re teaching the same doctrine as Jesus taught and as the apostles taught, then that means they would have hated Christ Christ and the apostles if they lived in their day. Like the two faithful witnesses in the book of Revelation, the faith will minister, torment them that dwell on the earth with their doctrine, their example, their reproofs. It’s too much for people to handle. Some appreciate Calvin and Luther’s stand against the Roman Catholic Church during the Reformation, but I guarantee you if Calvin and Luther were alive today that you would find they would be despised and hated for their strong Calvinism. The sword of the Lord, which is an evangelical Armenian magazine, loves to print sermons by C.H. Spurgeon. They’re often on the front page. It’s got a picture of Spurgeon on there. He’s got a picture of Spurgeon on there. He’s looked upon as a great soul winner. What they won’t tell you is they edited out of all the sermons they reprint any Calvinism. They don’t seem to connect the fact that maybe, maybe all those people getting saved had something to do with the doctrine that he taught? Just maybe. So simply watch religious people today and see how they treat God’s faithful servants. That’s all you’re going to do. Those who teach the whole council of God. Faithfully proclaim the sovereignty of God and salvation. The reality of hell. The need for holiness of life. How these people will treat it by the evangelicals them. I can tell you just doing funeral services. You get up and you teach the Word of God and you can get some very hateful looks by people who go to the evangelical churches. You’re calling them the truth, but they don’t want to hear it. So you may claim you admire dead saints, but how do you treat the living? Well, these are all hypocritical situations. The gold dealer tried to pass off fake gold bars is the real thing that got caught. They got exposed. Religious hypocrites are deceptive. But Jesus Christ exposes them here. and you have these basic teachings regarding hypocrites that we should take into consideration. People are commonly offended by just and faithful reproofs, but if you’re a child of God, the Bible says you’re going to accept these reproofs because even though they sting, they’re beneficial for you. The standard you oppose upon others, you need to follow yourself. Don’t be hypocritical. You tell others that they ought to do this, then you better do it too. You may claim to admire dead saints. How do you treat the living ones? That’ll tell you everything you need to know. Jesus is right on all these things. Let us take them to heart. Let’s close.