“JESUS EXPOSES HYPOCRISY”
LUKE 14:1-6

I. Introduction
As I have studied through Luke’s gospel in preparation for these messages each Sunday morning, I have been reminded again and again that Jesus Christ is not the least bit inter-ested in trying to make us feel good about ourselves.

The world tells us that we need to feel good about ourselves. Only then can we accept ourselves and love ourselves. Self-esteem and self-love are zealously promoted and even deified by the world’s social, political, economical, educational, and religious systems. The world goes so far as to tell us that self-esteem and self-love are not only important for our own well-being, but they’re absolutely necessary for our mental health. But, of course, that’s the world’s systems.

If any of that were true, do you think that just maybe Jesus would have agreed – at least a little? As Bible-believing Christians, you’ll not be surprised to know that self-esteem and self-love and anything else that finds merit in “self,” are completely lacking in Jesus’ teaching. Anyone studying the NT, and the gospels in particular, will soon find that our Lord spent the majority of His time on this earth teaching the exact opposite.

Yet today much of the professing church seems to think that self-esteem and self-love are two of the basic Christian virtues. Such is taught by so-called “Christian psychologists” and by far too many popular and widely accepted Bible teachers.

Now I know I just said that the “self” is lacking in Jesus’ teaching. But let me clarify that just a bit. Jesus did teach one very important thing about the self. He taught self-denial. And He taught personal humility before God. And He taught personal broken-ness before God. And He taught us not to embrace our sin and look for ways to excuse it, but to root it out, to call it what it is, and to confront it head on.

What do the Scriptures say? More to the point, what do the Scriptures say they are for?
*2 Timothy 3:16-17
16 All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness;
17 that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.

The word “teaching” in v. 16 is “didaskalia.” It is not the act of teaching. Rather, it is what is taught. In this case, Paul is talking about doctrine – biblical truth. The word “reproof” has to do with conviction. Biblical truth is meant to convict us of our sin and “grow us up” in Christ. “Correction” and “righteousness” mean exactly what they say.

When we read 2 Timothy 3:16-17, we usually let the passage stand alone. But the impor-tance of those two verses becomes even clearer when we see them in context.
So let’s read on.
*2 Timothy 4:1-4
1 I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom:
2 Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction.
3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine (teaching); but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires;
4 and will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths.

So not only are we called to use God’s living Word for teaching doctrine and for convict-ing and correcting each other, but we’re to exhort, that is, come alongside each other and encourage each other to love and good works. We need to do this because, in the last days, even professing believers will refuse to receive sound doctrine and will buy into the lies of the false teachers. And there will be no shortage of false teachers.

So if it seems to you that Jesus has said a great deal about false teachers, you’re right. And if it seems to you that He’s said a great deal about hypocrisy and pride, you’re right about that too. He has! And as we move through Luke’s gospel, He will say still more.

Why? It’s because hypocrisy, pride, and false teaching go hand in hand. And now, in these last days, it’s only getting worse. So God has charged elders with the responsibility of caring for and protecting the Church of Jesus Christ.
Acts 20:28 (spoken directly to the elders at Ephesus but a command to all elders)
28 “Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He pur-chased with His own blood.”

And so, here at LBC, Jeff, Tim, and I are called to, “Preach the word; (be) ready in sea-son and out of season; (to) reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction.” The reality is that there are times when such preaching has to be confrontational. Propo-nents of the self-esteem movement within the church like to say that people are drawn to Jesus because He was so gentle, because He made people feel so good, and because He was such a “positive person.” It makes you wonder what gospels they’re reading.

They must be missing Luke 14 where Jesus exposes and confronts the hypocrisy of His hosts at a dinner party, and where He exposes and confronts the pride of the other guests. Before He is finished, He will rebuke His hosts for inviting the wrong people in the first place. Who are the hosts at this dinner? They are false teachers of Jesus’ day – the scribes and the Pharisees.

Jesus was anything but the positive, gentle person, concerned with people feeling good about themselves. He was confrontational!
This morning, in Luke 14:1-6, Jesus will confront the sin of hypocrisy. It’s a sin that can always be seen in the false teachers. Next time, in Luke 14:7-14, He’ll confront the sin of pride. It too is a sin that can be readily seen in false teachers. And Jesus confronts it and He warns us against it.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

II. Review
In Luke 13 Jesus has taught about God’s kingdom, how it grows, and how difficult it is to enter. He has taught that both the road going to it and the gate that opens into it are narrow. He has taught that taking the narrow road and passing through the narrow gate will not be easy. Rather, it will be a struggle. As such, He has taught that few will be saved. He has also taught that many will take the broad road and try to enter in through the wide gate, but will not be able. In short, Jesus has taught many will be lost.

The tragedy is that so many have been led not to the gates of heaven, but to the gates of hell. And they have been – and are being today – led there by false teachers. It isn’t hard to see why Jesus hates false teaching and the hypocrisy and pride that accompany it.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

III. Text
Before we go to this morning’s text I want to give you three concrete examples of the deception, power, and destructiveness that false teachers can wield among those who seek God’s kingdom by some means other than Jesus Christ and His written Word.

Jim Jones, a drug abuser and sexual predator, had been given the pastorate of a Methodist church in Indiana. This was despite the fact that he was known as a Communist sympa-thizer and an avowed atheist. Over the years he used the church and his leftist political leanings to gain credibility and establish the “People’s Temple.” He ridiculed biblical Christianity and called the Bible a “paper idol.” He deified himself and claimed to be the reincarnation of Jesus, Buddha, and Lenin.

Yet with all of that, hundreds of people believed in him and obeyed his commands. He finally moved his “temple” to the small South American country of Guyana, where he built “Jonestown.” There, on November 18, 1978, after murdering a visiting congress-man and four others with him, Jones ordered the mass suicide of more than 900 of his followers. But before they killed themselves, they poisoned 303 of their own children.

Do you remember the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas? In 1993, their leader, David Koresh, who claimed to be “the Son of God – the Lamb,” talked his followers out of turning themselves in to federal authorities on allegations of child abuse. All 76 of them, including 17 children, died in the ensuing fire that destroyed their compound.

Do you remember the Heaven’s Gate cult in Rancho Santa Fe, California? In 1997, led by Marshall Applewhite, all 39 members of that cult committed suicide so their souls could be picked up by a UFO and fly off to the “Kingdom of God.”
Are those extreme cases? Certainly they are, but people can be just as misled and just as lost by following after any false teacher – even the so-called “respectable” ones. Being misled and ending up lost can happen whether one is following a radical cult leader like Jim Jones, David Koresh, or Marshall Applewhite, or any one of hundreds of today’s respectable preachers who tell people what they want to hear, and think nothing of bend-ing, shading, and twisting the truth for the sake of fame, power, or financial gain, and yes, even for having a bigger church.

Listen, it goes on all around us. It isn’t new, but in these last days, it has become more frequent and more intense. What did Paul say? “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires.”

If we’re living in the last days, and I believe we are, then that time is here. And the dam-age that can be done by hypocritical and prideful false teachers is staggering.
*Luke 14:1-6 (Please stand with me in honor of reading God’s Word.)
1 And it came about when (Jesus) went into the house of one of the leaders of the Pharisees on the Sabbath to eat bread, that they were watching Him closely.
2 And there in front of Him was a certain man suffering from dropsy.
3 And Jesus answered and spoke to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?”
4 But they kept silent. And He took hold of him, and healed him, and sent him away.
5 And He said to them, “Which one of you shall have a son or an ox fall into a well, and will not immediately pull him out on a Sabbath day?”
6 And they could make no reply to this.

Luke is not specific about when this incident took place, but it was some time during the Lord’s final journey to Jerusalem. Jesus had been invited to other Pharisees’ homes in the past. The first time we saw this was back in Luke 7:36-50 where a repentant prosti-tute had come and poured expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet. We know her repentance was genuine because Jesus forgave her. He told her, “Your sins have been forgiven,” and, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace (vv, 48, 50).” The Pharisees’ response was, and I paraphrase here, “Only God can forgive sins. Who does this man think He is?”

The second time we saw Jesus invited to a Pharisee’s home was in Luke 11:37-52. The host rebuked the Lord for His failure to honor the Pharisees’ ceremonial rite of hand-washing before the meal. Jesus responded by pronouncing no less than six woes (grief and judgment) upon them. As always, Jesus pulled no punches in dealing with them. He blasted them for their legalism, their hypocrisy, their pride, and worst of all, for their keeping the true knowledge of God from the people they had been called to shepherd. What was their response?
*Luke 11:53-54
53 And when (Jesus) left there, the scribes and the Pharisees began to be very hostile and to question Him closely on many subjects,
54 plotting against Him, to catch Him in something He might say.

Knowing all of that, we can readily see why Jesus was invited to the Pharisee’s house in this morning’s passage.
*Luke 14:1
1 And it came about when (Jesus) went into the house of one of the leaders of the Pharisees on the Sabbath to eat bread, that they were watching Him closely.

Of course, they’re watching Him closely! They’re looking for a reason to condemn Him.
*Luke 14:2
2 And there in front of Him was a certain man suffering from dropsy.

It is clear that the Pharisees want to catch Jesus, to draw Him into the trap of breaking another one of their precious man-made laws. And today is the Sabbath, the day awash in countless laws, most of which are extremely strict. Although Luke does not say so spe-cifically, it would seem obvious that the man suffering from dropsy is a plant, the bait, if you will, to lure Jesus into violating another of the Pharisees’ laws.

What is dropsy? Today we call it edema, the swelling of some part of the body caused by excess fluid retention. Edema itself is not a disease. Rather, it’s a symptom of a disease of the heart, lungs, kidneys, or liver. To the rabbis of Jesus’ day, a condition like edema was proof of God’s judgment for a person’s sin. They argued that such a person was “unclean.” They used a passage in Leviticus to justify their position.
Leviticus 15:1-3
1 The LORD also spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying,
2 “Speak to the sons of Israel, and say to them, ‘When any man has a dis-charge from his body, his discharge is unclean.
3 ‘This, moreover, shall be his uncleanness in his discharge; it is his un-cleanness whether his body allows its discharge to flow, or whether his body obstructs its discharge.’”

This speaks directly and specifically to the male reproductive system. This passage in Leviticus has nothing whatsoever to do with edemas like those found in the legs of peo-ple who are suffering from congestive heart failure. But does that keep these rabbis from twisting the Scriptures to make them say what they want them to say?

So in their view, and in the view of the scribes and Pharisees at this meal in Luke 14, this man, whom they have placed in Jesus’ path, is not only immoral, he is ritually unclean.
But wait a minute. No legalistic Pharisee would permit such a person to contaminate a meal, so they must have him there to get Jesus to do what they really hope He will do.
What does Jesus do! Well, even if you haven’t read the next verse, you know what He does. He “takes up their challenge.” This won’t be a quiet and peaceful meal.
*Luke 14:3
3 And Jesus answered and spoke to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?”

Jesus’ hosts want Him to break their laws and He obliges them, but not before He con-fronts them with a question He knows they will refuse to answer. They think they are putting Jesus in a box, but the reality is just the opposite. He is putting them in one. If they answer, “Yes, it is legal to heal on the Sabbath,” they tacitly admit that their laws add to, and thereby violate, the real Law of Moses.

Conversely, if they answer, “No, it is not legal to heal on the Sabbath,” they will display the emptiness of their religious traditions and the coldness of their sinful hearts. But beyond that, if they answer that it is not legal to heal on the Sabbath, a new question will arise: “Then why is this so-called unclean man here in the first place? Doesn’t your law make it clear that such a one cannot be present at a meal?” So who is really cornered here? Is it Jesus or is it the Pharisees? And how do they respond?
*Luke 14:4a
4a But they kept silent.

They give no answer because they have no answer. Think about this. In one fell swoop the Lord’s question has condemned them. He has exposed their hypocrisy, their pride, their indifference, and their cold, hard, calculating, and evil hearts. And you wonder why they hate Jesus with such a passion. And now, as if to add insult to injury…
*Luke 14:4b
4b And (Jesus) took hold of (the man), and healed him, and sent him away.

Ministering to a sick person doesn’t violate any OT principle or Sabbath law. But the legalism of the Pharisees has come so far that such ministering is said to be work, and work is unlawful on the Sabbath. The Pharisees’ laws say that this man is unclean so, according to their laws, he shouldn’t even be here. Again, this is why it seems safe to assume he is there for the express purpose of causing Jesus to break another of their laws.

They know Jesus will heal him. They also know He can do so simply by speaking. He’s healed others that way. But Jesus really plays into their hands by touching this unclean man. There is still another breach of their laws. In v. 4 it says, “He took hold of him…” The full impact of this becomes clear when you look at the Greek word that is translated “took hold of.” It is “ĕpilabanŏmai.” It is a compound word that implies the use of force, and carries with it the idea of grabbing on to something, of seizing it.

I believe it gives us a picture of the intensity of Jesus’ anger and frustration with these legalists, not only by what He did, but by how He did it. It’s as if the Lord is saying to them, and again I paraphrase…
“Watch closely now. Today is the Sabbath and I am the Lord of the Sabbath (Matthew 12:8), and today I will touch, and today I will heal, and today I will break two more of your laws.” Then the man was healed, and he was healed instantly and completely.

Can you imagine the shock of seeing this man cured, the excess fluid gone, and his swol-len body restored to normal? If you were to witness such a thing, wouldn’t you fall on your knees before the Lord and praise Him? But what do the Pharisees do? Driven by their hard hearts, their spiritually blind eyes, and their utter hatred for Jesus, they rejoice that their plan has worked! He has played right into their hands.

Try to comprehend their logic. “Aha! He’s done it again! He’s not only touched an un-clean person on the Sabbath, but He’s healed him as well. He has performed a miracle that no one but God could do. What more proof do we need that He is not God?”

You ask, “How can this be? These people aren’t mental midgets. They’re brilliant men. They’re educated scholars, lawyers, and religious leaders. How can they be so stupid?”
The answer is really quite simple. And this is really important. You are not looking at stupidity, not at all. They’ll be happy to tell you that they’re the “smartest guys in town.” What you are looking at is hardness of heart and spiritual blindness taken to the max!

At this point Jesus gives them no time to respond or make further accusations.
*Luke 14:5-6
5 And He said to them, “Which one of you shall have a son or an ox fall into a well, and will not immediately pull him out on a Sabbath day?”
6 And they could make no reply to this.

The answer to this question is painfully obvious, isn’t it? Who would leave their boy to drown in a well saying, “Tread water son – just nine more hours until sunset.” No one would leave an animal in a well either. They cost too much to replace. Just to add to the irony and hypocrisy of it all, in Luke 13:15 we’ve already seen that the Pharisees had a law allowing them to “do the work” of watering their thirsty animals on the Sabbath.

So in v. 6 we find the scribes and Pharisees speechless again. It would be funny if it were not so tragic. “They could make no reply…” All they could do was ratchet up their hat-red and continue to plot and plan the murder of the One who had come to save their eter-nal souls. But Jesus isn’t finished with these Pharisees or the other people who are in attendance at this meal. Next time we’ll hear what He has to say to them.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

IV. Conclusion
How can you spot hypocrisy in false teachers? There are at least five things you can look for. And these five things apply to others as well, not just those who occupy positions or power or authority in the church. But they are especially dangerous when they are found in religious leaders.

1. Hypocrites often know their Bibles very well. But instead of guarding truth, applying it to themselves, and loving their people, they use Scripture like a loaded gun, holding it to the heads of those allotted to their charge. This is classic spiritual abuse. Living in constant fear of punishment for any perceived error, the people are crushed under the weight of legalism.

Of course, the same rules rarely apply to the leaders. Here’s an example: Have you ever heard of a husband who uses the Word of God against his wife? “I am the head. You must submit to me.” But the Bible doesn’t command husbands to be the head of the wife. The Bible teaches wives that husbands are the head, but the command to husbands is…
Ephesians 5:25
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her…

2. Hypocrites will try to bring down anyone who confronts their sin with God’s Word.
In this morning’s passage the Pharisees invited Jesus to set Him up and bring Him down. They weren’t the least bit interested in learning anything from Him, were they?

In our early years we had one individual and one family who attended LBC. We soon learned that none of them were here for fellowship or growing in the grace and know-ledge of the Lord. They were here for the purpose of correcting us. They weren’t here to learn anything because they already knew everything. One knew everything about pro-phecy and the others knew everything about salvation and how you could lose it. If they didn’t agree with every little detail of a sermon they would literally pounce on us.

Such thinking is out there today in the radical “King James Only Movement.” Anyone using a different translation of the Bible is immediately written off as a liberal or worse, a heretic. I just heard of a case where people were told they were no longer welcome in their church, and have been shunned because they questioned the whole concept of “King James Only.”

3. Hypocrites love their man-made rules above all else. The lesson in Luke today is clear. The Pharisees cared nothing for the man with edema. Why should they? They thought He was sick because he was a sinner. They didn’t care about him, they cared about their laws. And anyone could see how well they kept them. Of course, no one could see their dead hearts. That is, no one but Jesus. On another occasion He had said to them…
Matthew 23:27-28
27 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like white-washed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.
28 Even so you too outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”

4. Hypocrites rigidly apply their rules, regulations, and laws to others, but apply them loosely, if at all, to themselves. Do you think there would have been any objection if Jesus had healed one of the Pharisees of some malady or disease?

One of the great errors parents often make is raising their children by rules and standards the parents refuse to live by themselves. “I drink, but you had better not. I smoke, but you had better not.” Or, conversely, “I expect you to be in church on Sunday morning, but I don’t believe in all of that.” It’s the old, “Do what I say, not what I do” method of child-rearing. Such parents may be obeyed out of intimidation and fear, but they’ll never be obeyed out of love and respect.

5. Hypocrites often ignore the obvious in order to continue in their own sin. Anyone paying even the slightest bit of attention to what Jesus was saying and doing should have at least suspected that He was right and they were wrong. But the hard heart and the spiritually blind eyes of the hypocrites made it impossible for them to receive the truth.

Richard Baxter was an English Puritan preacher who lived from 1615-1691. He exhorted his fellow preachers to, “…preach to yourselves the sermons which you study, before you preach them to others.” That’s good advice for me, and for Jeff, and for Tim.

And it’s good advice to you, too. You may not be a preacher or an elder, but you are living a Christian life before your brothers and sisters in Christ, and before a lost and dying world. So in that respect, your very life is a sermon that you’re in the process of preaching every day. Listen to Richard Baxter… “Preach to yourselves the sermons which you study, before you preach them to others.”

The scribes and Pharisees in the gospels are examples for us – not for what we should do and be, but for what we should not do and be. Jesus reserves His harshest words and strongest denunciations for them. He calls them out again and again for their hypocrisy, their personal pride, their lack of care for others, and their false teaching. They are hard-hearted and spiritually blind. And when the blind lead the blind, they both fall into a pit. May God soften our hearts and open our eyes.

~ Pray ~