“HYPOCRISY EXPOSED”
LUKE 11:37-44

I. Introduction
Hypocrisy! Webster’s New World Dictionary defines it as, “…a pretending to be what one is not, or to feel what one does not feel; especially a pretense of virtue (or) piety.” The same dictionary defines a hypocrite as, “…a person who pretends to be what he is not; one who pretends to be better than he is, or to be virtuous (or) pious, without really being so.” In other words, a phoney!

Those definitions don’t surprise us, do they? We can readily recognize hypocrisy in general, and hypocrites in particular, can’t we? When we see it in others, we have no use for it. Yet, when it rears its ugly head in us, we tend to overlook it, or worse still, we fail to see it at all.

I believe this is one of the primary reasons that so much of the lost world tends to reject Christianity. It’s because of hypocrisy – not the hypocrisy of the world, but the hypo-crisy of those who claim to be Christians. Have you ever heard someone say, “I don’t want to be a Christian; they’re all a bunch of hypocrites”?

And if we are brutally honest with ourselves, isn’t there at least a modicum of truth in that? How often have we professed faith in Christ before the world, then slipped up and said or done something exactly the way the world would say or do it, and heard them say, “You’re supposed to be a Christian, but you’re nothing but a hypocrite.”

One of the first things you learn when you come to saving faith is that the world expects you to be perfect. We say we belong to Christ so they expect us to be what they know He was – perfect! And they watch us like a hawk. They can’t wait to pounce on our slightest error, misstep, or sin, so they can say, “See, you’re not perfect, you’re no better than me. You’re just a hypocrite.” Of course, they’re right. We’re far from perfect. But the old saying, “Christians aren’t perfect – they’re just forgiven,” is true.

When God’s people do act as hypocrites, it does at least two things. First, it shames us, and it should. But second, and infinitely worse, it gives the world an excuse to dismiss or ignore our Lord and Savior.

As such, hypocrisy, especially among those who profess belief in the God of the Bible and Jesus Christ, is a massive evil. So it is something that the Lord will not lake lightly.

This morning our study of Luke’s gospel takes us to a place where Jesus will hit the issue of hypocrisy head on. Over the course of the next thirty verses, He will expose it, con-demn it, and warn us against it. Along the way we will be tempted to cheer as the Lord deals squarely with the hypocrisy of those who stand against Him and His Word. He will leave no “wiggle room” as He bores in on a sin that we despise when we see it in others.
But if we’re so busy cheering Jesus on against the Pharisees that we don’t see how His words apply to us, we will have missed the point entirely. As Jesus exposes and con-demns the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and scribes may all of us be convicted as well.

We need to remember that when we’re hypocritical before the world, it not only does damage to our testimony as a Christian, it also damages the testimony of every other Christian as well. But even more than that, it saddens the Lord Jesus Christ who has loved us and suffered and died to save us, not merely from the sin and evil of hypocrisy, but from every other sin we have ever committed or ever will.
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II. Review
What has brought us to this point in Luke? Luke 11 began with Jesus teaching His disci-ples how to pray, and telling them about how God would respond to the prayers of His faithful. In vv. 14-26 the Lord cast out a demon and the religious leaders accused Him of doing so by the power of Satan. Jesus warned them that ascribing the power and work of God’s Holy Spirit to Satan, that is, calling God evil, was unforgiveable.

Then, in Luke 11:28, Jesus told the multitudes that they needed to hear God’s Word and obey it. In other words, He said, “Listen to Me and do as I say.” That’s precisely what His mother Mary had told the guests at the wedding at Cana, the site of Jesus’ first mira-cle. She said, “Whatever He says to you, do it (John 2:5b)!”

But in Luke 11:29-36 it became clear that the religious leaders and teachers of the Law were not interested in what Jesus said. They certainly showed no inclination to believe in Him or follow Him. They just wanted Him do more signs and wonders. They wanted Jesus to do “tricks” for them.

But Jesus told them there would be no more “tricks,” no more signs except one – “…the sign of Jonah (Luke 11:29).” As Jonah had spent three days and three nights in the belly of a great fish and was “resurrected,” so too Jesus would spend three days and three nights in the grave and be resurrected. That would be their only “sign!”
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III. Text
By the time this confrontation between Jesus and the Jewish religious leaders takes place, it is clear that the widening gulf between the Lord and these men has become virtually impassable. The scribes and Pharisees are hearing truths they don’t want to hear. And they are making little or no effort to hide their hatred and animosity toward Jesus. So it may seem a little strange that one of the Pharisees invites the Lord to his home for lunch.
*Luke 11:37-44 (Please stand with me in honor of reading God’s Word.)
37 Now when He had spoken, a Pharisee asked Him to have lunch with him; and (Jesus) went in, and reclined at the table.
38 And when the Pharisee saw it, he was surprised that (Jesus) had not first ceremonially washed before the meal.
39 But the Lord said to him, “Now you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and of the platter; but inside of you, you are full of robbery and wickedness.
40 “You foolish ones, did not He who made the outside make the inside also?
41 “But give that which is within as charity, and then all things are clean for you.
42 “But woe to you Pharisees! For you pay tithe of mint and rue and every kind of garden herb, and yet disregard justice and the love of God; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others.
43 “Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the front seats in the synagogues, and the respectful greetings in the market places.
44 “Woe to you! For you are like concealed tombs, and the people who walk over them are unaware of it.”

Does Jesus’ way of talking to these men shock you? It shouldn’t. He told them the truth, didn’t He? But some of us will ask, “Doesn’t the Scripture say that we should always be, ‘…speaking the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15a).’”? Is our problem that we don’t think strong language can convey or express love? Well then, do we think that love is only conveyed or expressed in weak language?

I wonder if that isn’t precisely what we think. One of the reasons the gospel is so poorly preached today is because we tend to dwell on the love part (“God loves you.”) and mini-mize or ignore the truth part (“You’re a sinner and judgment is coming.”). It’s as if we think that we can love people into the kingdom without telling them the truth. But we are told to speak the truth in love. So how is keeping the truth from people loving them at all?

We don’t want to offend anyone, but the Gospel of Jesus Christ, by its very nature, is an offense. Jesus brought the gospel to the world, yet the world hates Him, hates His Father, and hates us as well. That’s what He said. “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you…He who hates Me hates My Father also (John 15:18, 23).”

Why such hatred? It is because the gospel offends people. It exposes their sin. It renders all their “good works” useless with regard to earning their salvation. It demands they lay aside their human pride, humble themselves before God, and repent. Of course, the gos-pel is an offense! It’s offensive to Jews because it tells them their religion can’t save them, and it’s offensive to Gentiles because, “Only fools would believe such a thing.”
1 Corinthians 1:22-23
22 For indeed Jews ask for signs, and Greeks search for wisdom;
23 but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block, and to Gentiles foolishness.

Peter actually refers to Jesus Himself as, “…a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.
(1 Peter 2:8).” So whether it’s the Lord Himself, His gospel, or us, His followers, we’re all offensive to a lost and dying world.
So in this morning’s text, the Pharisees and the scribes are offended. They have heard a great deal of truth, and they don’t like it. Now they are about to hear even more truth, and they will like it even less.
*Luke 11:37-38
37 Now when (Jesus) had spoken, a Pharisee asked Him to have lunch with him; and He went in, and reclined at the table.
38 And when the Pharisee saw it, he was surprised that (Jesus) had not first ceremonially washed before the meal.

The scribes and Pharisees lived lives that reeked of hypocrisy. They were rigid legalists who manifested their thinking in blatant hypocrisy, in an over emphasis on minor issues and a subsequent under emphasis on major issues, and in self-glorification. They placed impossible demands on people, and had no tolerance for any views other than their own. And we will see Jesus expose and condemn all of it.

So why does a Pharisee invite Jesus to lunch? He probably wants to know more about this man who is causing so much turmoil and controversy, and why so many people are enthralled with His teaching and are following after Him. But it may also be because He wants a chance to gather “evidence” against Him. Other Pharisees and scribes (lawyers) are also at the table with Jesus.

Look again at Luke 11:38. Since the Pharisees overflow with pride in themselves for keeping all the laws of God and man, they immediately question Jesus as to why He doesn’t wash His hands before He eats. Such washings had nothing to do with hygiene. They were all about ceremony and tradition. The OT has no law about hand-washing. But this is a “big deal” to these legalistic Pharisees. They’ve brought this up before.
Matthew 15:2
2 “Why do Your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread.”

This mixing or merging together of the Laws of God and the traditions of men is not limited to the Pharisees of Jesus’ day. Not by a long shot! Legalism, and the hypocrisy that grows from it, have been around since the Garden of Eden. But by Jesus’ day the Pharisees had raised it to an art form. In fairness, they hadn’t started that way. The sect had originally been a group of Jewish laymen who sincerely tried to understand the Mosaic Law and apply it to all of human life. That is not, in and of itself, a bad thing.

But the cold hard fact is that sinful man, left to his own devices, has a tendency to corrupt whatever he touches. The sect of the Pharisees had long since lost the heart of the move-ment and corrupted it. How things looked had become more important than how they actually were. What people did or didn’t do had become more important than what peo-ple actually were. The “externals” had become more important than the “internals.” In the process, a man-centered religion had replaced a God-centered relationship.
Aren’t you glad that we don’t have that problem today? Right! How does this kind of thinking manifest itself in the Church of Jesus Christ today? Let me ask it this way. “Are you trying to gain favor with God or impress people by doing certain things, or not doing certain things? In other words, do you think you can gain favor with God or man by being “good,” as you define the word?”

I know that’s a hard question. Does it make you uncomfortable? It should. It certainly makes me uncomfortable. It cuts right to the very core of our being, doesn’t it? Please understand that I do not ask you that question without having asked it of myself all week. I don’t know how you can study a passage like this and not be convicted of your own sin.

We need to be honest with ourselves and admit that even the best of us struggle with hypocrisy to one degree or another. So it’s important that we all understand just how much Jesus hates the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and scribes, and the legalism that goes along with it – and why He so strongly condemns it.

It’s interesting to note that hypocritical Pharisees were even condemned in the Talmud. The Talmud is basically a book that discusses and comments on Jewish history, laws, customs, and culture. The Talmud is not Scripture, but it is a rich source of information about Jews and Judaism. Listen as it describes seven kinds of Pharisees.
1. The “God-loving” Pharisee who truly loves God from his heart.
2. The “God-fearing” Pharisee who lives his life in holy awe and fear of God.
(Nicodemus? Joseph of Arimathea?)
3. The “shoulder” Pharisee who wears his good deeds on his shoulder for all to see. “I want you to know that I cared for my neighbor’s field while he was sick. Of course, I would never say anything about that. Oops, I guess I already did.”
4. The “no-rush” Pharisee who finds endless excuses for putting off good deeds. “I know they have a need now, but I’m too busy. Besides, think how much more they’ll appreciate it if their need is even greater when I finally decide to meet it.”
5. The “ever-balancing” Pharisee who weighs his good deeds against his bad. “Certainly I have done enough good things to cancel out the few bad things I may have done.”
6. The “hunched-over” Pharisee who walks bent over in pretended humility. His pained expression says it all. “I’ve sacrificed so much. I’m so humble that I’m proud of it.”
7. The “bruised” Pharisee, who in order to avoid looking a woman runs into walls and shows you his scars. “Look at the pain and suffering my piety has caused me.”

We tend to laugh at that, but do we not see at least some of that in ourselves? And do we really think we’re fooling anyone, least of all God? Listen, every true Christian wants to serve God and His people, but it’s critical for us to recognize that our very best efforts for Christ and His kingdom can easily be accompanied by hypocrisy. And that hypocrisy can easily develop into legalism. Think about it.
The better we do, the more holy our lives become. The more holy our lives become, the more likely it is we will struggle with hypocrisy, our own brand of legalism, and personal pride. Neither the God-loving Pharisee nor the God-loving Christian is exempt from this.

So in Luke 11 Jesus responds to the question of why He isn’t washing His hands.
*Luke 11:39-40
39 But the Lord said to him, “Now you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and of the platter; but inside of you, you are full of robbery and wickedness.
40 “You foolish ones, did not He who made the outside make the inside also?”

Let me try to paraphrase these two verses. “Washing your body while your heart is impure is as foolish as washing the outside of your dirty dishes. Don’t you know that the God who created the body also created the soul that lives in the body?” The clear impli-cation is that God is more concerned with the eternal soul than He is with the physical body. But the Pharisees’ concern is the polar opposite – how things appear to be rather than how things really are.

When King Saul sinned against God, the Lord told Samuel that Saul would never be king over Israel. Saul looked good to the people, but the people didn’t see what God saw.
1 Samuel 16:7 (one of the key verses of the OT)
7 …the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”

Genuine religion is never compliance with rules, regulations, rites, ceremonies, and man-made duties. It is always a matter of the heart. In the verses that follow, Jesus will not condemn tithing or being careful with your spiritual walk. But what He will condemn is pretense and the condition of the heart that is so self-centered that it neither sees nor hears those who are truly hurting.

Here is where pride aligns itself with hypocrisy and legalism. We can speak but we can-not hear. Having said that, let me also say this, and please hear me well.

It is never wrong for us to confront a brother’s or sister’s sin IF, and only if, when we do so, we are willing to do it with an attitude that we too are tempted, and that we too can fall into sin just as quickly and just as easily our brother or sister in Christ did. (repeat)
*Galatians 6:1-3
1 Brethren, even if a man is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual (not hypocritical, not prideful), restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; each one looking to yourself, lest you too be tempted.
2 Bear one another’s burdens, and thus fulfill the Law of Christ.
3 For if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives him-self.
In Matthew 23 Jesus is confronting a group of Pharisees as well. It is months after this confrontation in Luke (likely the week before the Passover), and a different location (a large public gathering in the temple in Jerusalem), but the subject is the same – hypocrisy, legalism, and personal pride. And the Lord hits this topic again.
*Matthew 23:25-26
25 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside they are full of robbery and self-indul-gence.
26 “You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and of the dish, so that the outside of it may become clean also.” (back to Luke 11)

*Luke 11:41
41 “But give that which is within as charity, and then all things are clean for you.

The precise meaning of Luke 11:41 is debatable, but it probably speaks to the difference between inner reality and outer ceremony. Charity is to come from the overflow of the heart, not so that others may see and be impressed by your generosity to the poor. What would a practical application of this verse look like? Well, someone has said that we are to hold our possessions with an open hand. What does that mean? Within the context of the passage it may be saying that if a greedy heart is cleansed through repentance it will be transformed into a generous heart.

But these Pharisees and scribes display precious little in the way of generous hearts. As such, the Jesus comes down hard on them.
*Luke 11:42-44
42 “But woe to you Pharisees! For you pay tithe of mint and rue and every kind of garden herb, and yet disregard justice and the love of God; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others.
43 “Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the front seats in the synagogues, and the respectful greetings in the market places.
44 “Woe to you! For you are like concealed tombs, and the people who walk over them are unaware of it.”

The Pharisees are bent on making themselves look humble and pious, but it’s all just a game they play. They’re very good at it, but all of their so-called humility is false. It merely serves to expose their pride in themselves and in their man-made religion. Their legalism discourages and weighs down the very people they should be encouraging and lifting up. Their piety is nothing more than shameless hypocrisy. And Jesus hates all of it! Three times Jesus pronounces “woe” on the Pharisees, and by extension, on all of those who think, speak, and live as they do.

What exactly does “woe” mean? The Greek is “ŏuai,” a strong word meaning “grief.”
“Ouai” carries with it the idea of misery, sorrow, and pain. It signifies a calamity, or a disaster. It’s onomatopoeia; a word that tries to imitate the sound it describes. Words like “bang,” “tick-tock,” or “moo” are onomatopoeias. In the face of disaster you and I might say, “Oh!” That’s woe – “ŏuai!” And that is the word Jesus uses to pronounce grief on these men. (syn. “anathema” – ant. “hosanna”)

Can you imagine the horror of the God of creation, who holds eternity in His hands, pro-nouncing misery, sorrow, pain, calamity, and disaster on the lost? I can’t. But this is what awaits unbelief at the final judgment. “Ouai! Ouai!” It is what the Lord Jesus Christ is pronouncing on the Pharisees.

His words in Luke 11:42 are powerful, but later, in Jesus’ meeting with the Pharisees in the temple, they are even more so.
*Matthew 23:23
23 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin (little tiny things, little tiny details), and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law; justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others.”

What’s the lesson? It’s this: Our religion, our ceremonies, and our traditions are all fine, as far as they go. But all of it is worthless and useless if we do not engage ourselves in justice, mercy, and faithfulness. These are matters of the heart, and they are things the Pharisees did not do.

So in Luke 11:42 Jesus pronounces woe on them because of their hypocrisy and the rigid legalism that accompanied it. In v. 43 He pronounces woe on them because of their self-glorification. They wanted to be recognized in public and treated as if they were royalty. And in v. 44 the Lord pronounces woe on the Pharisees because of their subtle corruption of others. Many interpret Luke 11:44 as meaning that those who followed the Pharisees were unaware that their teaching would lead only to death, destruction, and “Ouai!”
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IV. Conclusion
It isn’t hard to see why Jesus hated everything the Pharisees represented. They claimed to speak for God, but they really spoke for Satan. They were all about them. Their so-called love of God and His Word was really about their love of themselves. In fact they hated God and His Word.

Jesus, to quote the KJV, “…came unto His own, and His own received Him not (John 1:11).” Not only had they failed to receive Him, they had accused Him of being in league with the devil. After this confrontation with Jesus, they would intensify their efforts to kill Him. At this point the cross is probably not more than six months away.

But I get ahead of myself. Next time we will see Jesus focus on the scribes. And He won’t go easy on them either.
What does Jesus expect of you and me? He expects us to obey God’s commandments, His laws. You say, “But, isn’t that what the Pharisees did?” Outwardly they did, or so they tried to make everyone think. But the fact is that they were hypocrites. Matthew described them as being “…like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beauti-ful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones (Matthew 23:27).”

So let me ask it again. What does Jesus expect of you and me? Again, He expects us to obey His commandments. But not the way Pharisees did – for show, for personal gain, and to receive the praise of men – but the way Jesus defined obedience to His command-ments.
*Matthew 22:36-40
36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”
37 And He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’
38 “This is the great and foremost commandment.
39 “The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
40 “On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”

The Pharisees knew their religion up one side and down the other. But they knew nothing of such love as that. Jesus said of them…
*Matthew 15:8-9
8 “This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far away from Me.
9 “But in vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.”

May that never be said of us.

~ Pray ~