Luke 11:37-44
SS Lesson for 09/03/2023
Devotional Scriptures: 2 Tim 3:1-7
The Gospel of Luke is the first of a two-volume work attributed to “Luke, the doctor” (Colossians 4:14). The man Luke was likely the same individual mentioned as the traveling companion of the apostle Paul (2 Timothy 4:11). This would explain the use of “we” throughout the book of Acts (examples: Acts 16:10-12; 20:5-6; 21:1), which is the second volume of Luke’s writing (1:1-3). Together, the books of Luke and Acts describe the establishment and expansion of the first-century church. Today’s Scripture is part of a larger section that details Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51-19:44). Immediately prior to the events of this lesson’s Scripture, Jesus had been teaching (11:1-4) and healing (11:14-15). His teaching called out the wickedness of the people (11:29-32) and emphasized the importance of their internal spiritual transformation (11:33-36). The religious leaders undoubtedly heard what Jesus was teaching and doing as he traveled to Jerusalem. The New Testament Gospels describe Jesus’ interactions with the Pharisees more than any other party of first-century Judaism. The Pharisees were a small but influential sect. Their focus was on strict adherence to Judaism (see Acts 26:5), which would have involved obedience to the Law of Moses (also called Torah), the first five books of the Old Testament. The Pharisees believed that by faithfully obeying even the smallest parts of the law, they would experience blessing from God. In an effort to follow the law faithfully, the Pharisees had established a tradition to guide their behavior (see Mark 7:3-5). The Pharisees sought to “build a fence” around the Law of Moses by enforcing this tradition and their own rules. The expectation was that by following the Pharisees’ tradition, a person would faithfully keep God’s commands, even down to the most obscure command. The Pharisees’ zeal, however, had caused them to lose sight of the intentions of the law and the extent to which they had been influenced by tradition. They had focused so heavily on their prideful adherence to tradition that they neglected to cultivate hearts of worship that the law required (see Matthew 15:1-9). Jesus denounced the Pharisees for their pride and hypocrisy (examples: 23:1-7; Luke 18:9-14). As a result, instances of conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees arose (examples: 6:1-11; 16:13-14; John 7:28-34; 11:57). Despite the hostile relationship, Jesus accepted invitations to eat with the Pharisees. Today’s Scripture describes the second time in Luke’s Gospel that Jesus dined with a Pharisee (see also Luke 7:36-50; 14:1-6). Accounts similar to those found in today’s lesson are found in Matthew 15:1-20; 23:5-7, 23-28; and Mark 12:38-39.
Then the Lord said to him, "Now you Pharisees make the outside of the cup and dish clean, but your inward part is full of greed and wickedness
(Scriptural Text from the New King James Version; cross-references from the NIV)
37 And as He spoke, a certain Pharisee asked Him to dine with him. So He went in and sat down to eat.
38 When the Pharisee saw it, he marveled that He had not first washed before dinner.
39 Then the Lord said to him, "Now you Pharisees make the outside of the cup and dish clean, but your inward part is full of greed and wickedness.
40 Foolish ones! Did not He who made the outside make the inside also?
41 But rather give alms of such things as you have; then indeed all things are clean to you.
1 As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?
6 He said to me: "It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life.
13 Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
5 For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit."
13 The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. 14 How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!
22 let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.
11 And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
2 A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, "Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean." 3 Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. "I am willing," he said. "Be clean!" Immediately he was cured of his leprosy.
25 "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26 Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.
1 Blessed is he who has regard for the weak; the Lord delivers him in times of trouble.
1 And now, brothers, we want you to know about the grace that God has given the Macedonian churches. 2 Out of the most severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity. 3 For I testify that they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability. Entirely on their own,
12 This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of God's people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God.
10 Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.
42 "But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and all manner of herbs, and pass by justice and the love of God. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone.
43 Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces.
44 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like graves which are not seen, and the men who walk over them are not aware of them."
15 Acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent — the Lord detests them both.
23 These also are sayings of the wise: To show partiality in judging is not good: 24 Whoever says to the guilty, "You are innocent" — peoples will curse him and nations denounce him. 25 But it will go well with those who convict the guilty, and rich blessing will come upon them.
7 Extortion turns a wise man into a fool, and a bribe corrupts the heart.
8 If you see the poor oppressed in a district, and justice and rights denied, do not be surprised at such things; for one official is eyed by a higher one, and over them both are others higher still.
18 Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.
5 The Lord detests all the proud of heart. Be sure of this: They will not go unpunished.
4 In his pride the wicked does not seek him; in all his thoughts there is no room for God.
12 Do you see a man wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.
9 Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak.
10 Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble.
2 We all stumble in many ways. If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check.
6 But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.
Jesus had just finished speaking and a Pharisee asked Him to come to his house to eat. One cannot discern from the text what the motive of the Pharisee might have been for asking Jesus to share a meal with him. I would have thought that Jesus’ words would have offended the Pharisee, but they did not seem to. What surprised the Pharisee was the fact that Jesus did not wash prier to eating. We do not know whether or not the Pharisee spoke to Jesus about not washing. If not, then Jesus would have responded because He knew his thoughts.
We have come to the second of those terms which might be misunderstood, “wash,” appears in verse 38. This is not the kind of
“washing up” which our mothers used to insist we did before we could eat our meal, the washing which is required by good hygiene. The concern is not “dirty hands” but ceremonial defilement. This was a “washing” that was required by the traditions of the Pharisees, rather than by the Law itself. It is more clearly explained in this text from Mark’s gospel:
The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the Law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and saw some of his disciples eating food with “unclean”—that is, ceremonially unwashed—hands. (The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles.) (Mark 7:1-4).
The surprise of the Pharisee all the more interesting in the light of what Luke has already written in chapter 7 of his gospel. There, Jesus was also invited to dinner by a Pharisee whose name was Simon (7:40). This is the occasion when Jesus’ feet was washed by the “sinful” woman, who accomplished her task with her tears and her hair. What is of interest to us is that Jesus pointed out to Simon that he had not greeted Him with a kiss, washed His feet, nor anointed his head. This Pharisee, who would not have thought of eating without a ceremonial washing, and who apparently provided the means for Jesus to wash ceremonially, did not provide Him with the one washing He really needed. The Pharisees were meticulous in the matter of an unnecessary washing, but careless in a beneficial and practical one, at least Simon was, and I find it hard to think that he was an exception.
It seems to me that the Lord’s failure to wash was purposeful, deliberate, and perhaps a new phase in His ministry. The Pharisee would have had to provide for the ceremonial washing. It would seem that all of the others at the table that day must have excused themselves and gone to wash ceremonially. Only Jesus remained. They may have waited, politely, for Jesus to do so also, only to realize that it was not going to happen. Jesus began to eat without washing. He did not “forget to wash” as our children often do, He refused to wash, in my opinion.
This seems to mark a change in His practice. I am inclined to conclude (by reading between the lines) that Jesus initially observed this ritual. After all, there was really nothing intrinsically wrong with it. Up till now, Jesus is never said to have refused such washing. We do know, however, that His disciples were accused of not washing (e.g. Mark 7). Jesus may well have taught His disciples that these washings were not necessary and they may have quickly ceased from them (if indeed they ever washed this way). Jesus may have persisted only for the sake of ministry, simply living in a way that would not cause needless offense (cp. 1 Corinthians 9:19-23).
Now, however, Jesus seems to have ceased to wash ceremonially, as a matter of principle. It was now time to take a firm stand against the traditions of the Pharisees, for they had become of more importance to them than the written Word of God. Jesus seems to have deliberately refrained from washing here to make a point, to demonstrate the difference between Him, His teaching, and His practice, and that of the Pharisees. This is no oversight, it is a deliberate move, one which Jesus knew would make the differences between Himself and the Pharisees clear, and indeed which would widen the gap between them.
Jesus’ response to the Pharisee is an answer to his surprise at the Lord’s avoidance of ceremonial washing. While our Lord is addressing His host He is also confronting the evils of the Pharisaic system (“you Pharisees,” v. 39), of which this man is a part. Thus Jesus’ answer is a response to all of Pharisaism.
Our Lord’s words here are difficult to follow because the imagery changes so quickly and so often. The overall thrust is the contrast between the outside, which is secondary, and the inside, which is primary. Jesus begins by talking about the washing of the outside of a cup or a dish, but then moves to the inside of a man. He then moves back to the dish imagery and tells His host that he can make the dish clean by emptying its contents and giving them to the poor. It is my opinion that Jesus constructs this mental puzzle so that its meaning and message will be pondered for a good while. Let these great minds ponder these thoughts.
The overall impact of Jesus’ words is clear. Jesus differs from His host and the other Pharisees by seeing the inside as more important than the outside, the heart as being more important than appearances, man’s attitudes and motives as more important than one’s actions. The Pharisees believed that a man is made holy by working from the outside, in. Jesus believed that holiness (and defilement) came from the inside, out.
Who can disagree with the fact that cleanliness on the inside is more important than cleanliness on the outside? I know a man who went out to a rural church to preach, where he spent the night at the home of a farmer. In the morning, the farmer’s wife fixed breakfast. She went out to the hen house to gather some eggs. When she came in with the eggs, this preacher noted that they had some of the barnyard on them, which the woman had not washed off. He didn’t worry about it, though, because she put the eggs into boiling water to cook. The pollution of that water couldn’t hurt the eggs, protected as they were by their shells. The woman then asked him if he would like a cup of coffee. He gratefully accepted, only to be as he watched the woman put instant coffee into a cup and then pour the dirty egg water into it. What is on the inside of the cup is more important to us than what is on the outside.
The Law dealt with external things, but its purpose was to teach Israel with reference to the heart. Jesus could therefore summarize the whole Law in terms of love: love for God and love for one’s neighbor. The Sermon on the Mount makes this point forcefully. Jesus taught that seeing the Law’s application only to outward acts was inadequate and inconsistent with God’s intent in giving the Law. He taught that obedience to the Law must be a matter of spirit, and not just of letter. This was not an added meaning, but the original meaning of the Law. The Pharisees did not see it this way.
Apparently the Pharisees explained their emphasis on the outward, the “outside of the cup” by insisting that it was important because God made it. We must keep the outside of things clean, including ourselves, because God made them. Jesus simply points out that God also made the inside, and thus they, by the same logic, should be kept clean as well.
When viewed by outward measurements, the Pharisees looked good, but Jesus exposed the vileness of their hearts when He told them that they were “full of greed and wickedness” (v. 39). When we look at the gospels as a whole we see that the greed and wickedness of the Pharisees was worked out in ways that seemed commendable, in ways that looked pious, in ways that may have even brought them praise, but which were evil (cf. Matthew 23:5-7).
Jesus then told the Pharisee that the way to “clean up” was to empty the contents of the dish—what was inside—and thus all things would be clean. It is really a very simple image. I clean my coffee cup by first pouring out what is in it. You cannot clean the inside of a dish if the dish is full. One of the evils of the Pharisees was greed (v. 39; cf. also Luke 16:14), and thus Jesus proposed generosity as its antidote.
We do not know how the Pharisee responded to Jesus’ words, but it would seem that he had no opportunity to say anything, as Jesus followed up with three stinging woes. The term “woe” is another important element in understanding our Lord’s words. It is not so much a stinging rebuke as much as it is an expression of grief. When we say, “Woe is me,” we are not rebuking ourselves, but expressing grief. The flavor of this term “woe” is to be found at the conclusion of Matthew 23, where many woes have been spoken with regard to the Pharisees. Note the grief in our Lord’s words, which conclude a series of “woes” directed toward the Pharisees:
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’” (Matthew 23:37-39; cf. Luke 13:24-25).
The first woe of our Lord concerns the Pharisees’ focus on the fine points, while missing the fundamentals. They majored in the minors:
“Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone (Luke 11:42).
The Pharisees were meticulous in the details of the Law, and yet they lost sight of the design of the Law. In the words of our Lord, spoken elsewhere, they “strained gnats and swallowed camels” (Matthew 23:24). Jesus did not criticize the keeping of the Law in its small points—the tithing of mint, rue, and other garden herbs—but He did say that the major thrust of the Law—justice and the love of God—must be fulfilled. While both are important, the former is secondary; the latter, primary.
The second woe concerns the Pharisees’ preoccupation with position, prestige, and the praise of men:
“Woe to you Pharisees, because you love the most important seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces (Luke 11:43).
According to Jesus, the Pharisees were “full of greed and wickedness” (verse 39). They were not publicly regarded as such, however. These hypocrites loved the praise of men and to be placed in positions of privilege and honor. In short, they sought the praise of men, rather than the praise of God. They were driven by their desire to have men’s approval, rather than God’s. Having this motivation, they could not speak the truth, nor could they interpret the Scriptures accurately, for then they would have been hated and rejected, just as the prophets (who did interpret the Old Testament Scriptures accurately and who spoke truthfully).
Incidentally, it is interesting that Jesus accused the Pharisees of desiring “greetings in the marketplaces.” It was in the marketplaces that they would have contact with those they considered “unclean,” and probably those from whom they received honor and praise. It was this very defilement which, in their minds, necessitated the ceremonial washings which they so diligently observed.
The third woe is the most painful and pointed. Jesus accused the Pharisees of being a source of defilement, rather than of purification:
“Woe to you, because you are like unmarked graves, which men walk over without knowing it” (Luke 11:44).
In the Law which the Pharisees revered (Numbers 19:16) the Israelites were taught that a person was rendered ceremonially unclean by coming into contact with a grave. The Pharisees thought of themselves as holy, and they saw their contribution as leading the nation in the direction of holiness. Jesus told them that the exact opposite was the case. They were themselves both unclean (sinful) and defiling to others. Those who came into contact with the Pharisees were thus rendered unclean. That which the Pharisees prided themselves in being and doing was the very opposite of the reality of the matter. Here was the most stunning blow of all to the self-righteous Pharisees.
(Adapted from URL:https://bible.org/seriespage/40-fundamentalists-formaldehyde-luke-1137-54)
In many ways, faults similar to those Jesus pointed out in the Pharisees can be found in people today. The Pharisees prioritized outward displays of holiness, while failing to do the important work of love, mercy, and justice. Pursuing counterfeit displays of holiness, while potentially easier than going after what God requires, leaves people as hypocrites. God wants his people to experience holiness in all aspects of their lives. Followers of Jesus must remember to honor the commands to love God, show justice, and demonstrate merciful love, above any other traditions. Only then will believers exercise a “pure” religion before God (James 1:27). A failure to do so indicates that one’s heart has not been transformed. Consider the following questions: Does your behavior lead you to love God more deeply? Does your behavior lead you to act justly or advocate for justice for others? If you can answer positively to both questions, then you are on the right track to loving God and your neighbor