Category: Sermons

Intro

The book of  John has several words that end up winding their way all the way through both his Gospel and his Epistles. In his Gospel John sets forth the Reformed antithesis with the repeated words “Light” and “Darkness.” St. John, inspired by the Holy Spirit sees men in only on of two camps. They are a people of the light or they are a people belonging to “Darkness.” There is no third category and no tertium quid.  If one belongs to darkness they belong to death. If one belongs to the light one belongs to Life.

As we are going to see this is is a theme that develops its way through the book of John.

I.) Light as Promised Re-creation (John 1:4-9)

When we look at Scripture as a whole one of the ways that we break it down is to speak of the Scriptures as God’s story of “Creation-Fall-Redemption and Re-creation.” This promised “Re-creation” is spoken of in Isaiah as connected to Light.

In Isaiah, for example, we can read of Messianic light that is coming that will announce God’s eschatological promised age to come,

Isaiah 60:1-3  Arise, O Jerusalem; be bright, for thy [a]light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. ² For behold, darkness shall cover the [b]earth, and gross darkness the people; but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. ³ And the Gentiles shall walk in [c]thy light, and Kings at the brightness of thy rising up (cmp. Isaiah 42:6-7, 16).

I begin here because this Isaiah passage forces us to begin even earlier for in Isaiah 60 here the way that “light” is mentioned echoes Genesis 1:2-4. When Isaiah says, “darkness will cover the earth, and deep darkness the peoples” likely is a connection with to Gen. 1

^2  …  and ^[e]darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God ^[g]moved upon the ^[h]waters.³ Then God said, Let there be light: And there was [i]light. ⁴ And God saw the light that it was good, and God separated [j]the light from the darkness.”

So Isaiah 60:1-3 is setting forth the coming re-creation and restoration of Israel against the back drop  of the initial creation. The re-creation will have light shine upon it just as the initial creation did. When we get to the Gospel of John and when we note the application that the Lord Christ is the light we suspect that He is the Light of which Isaiah wrote. In the Lord Christ the fulfillment of the Isaianic prophecies has come to pass.

John opens up his gospel by saying of Christ, “In Him was life and the life was the light of man.”

We are being told here the long awaited re-creation has come in the Lord Christ. Christ is the light that has come that Isaiah spoke of.  In Luke / Acts there is especial application between the Light in Isaiah as applied to the Gentiles but here we see that John opens with Isaiah’s idea the light has come to God’s people.

⁴ [k]In him [l]was life, and that life was [m]the light of men. ⁵ [n]And that light shineth in the wilderness, and the darkness [o]comprehendeth it not.⁶ ¶ [p]There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. ⁷ This same came for a witness, to bear witness of that light, that all men[q]through him might believe. ⁸ He was not [r]that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light. ⁹ [s]This was [t]that true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.

Side-note #1 — Christ as “the light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world,” confirms that all men are culpable. No man has an excuse against God for their rebellion for the true light which lighteth every man has come into the world.

Side-note #2 — When John speaks of the Light (the Lord Christ) having light in Himself this is another claim to deity we find in John. John will quote Jesus later saying that as the Father has life in Himself so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself.

II.) Light as that which exposes and condemns (John 3:19f)

^{John 3:19And this is the condemnation, that that light came into the world, and men loved darkness rather than that light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For every man that evil doeth, hateth the light, neither cometh to light, lest his deeds should be reproved. 21 But he that doeth truth, cometh to the light, that his deeds might be made manifest, that they are wrought according to God.}

Here the Lord Christ sets forth the reason that the world rejects Him. In His arrival the Lord Christ is the light that exposes whether a person is righteous or not. So, this light that comes into the world that bespeaks the restoration and re-creation is an offense and elicits hatred from those who love darkness.

And that is what we see in the ministry of the Lord Christ. He was despised, hated, and rejected by those who hated God.

One Implication

Now in as much as we are reflectors of this light we  likewise will be  hated by those who doeth evil. Really, in this culture and in these times it really is the case that our expectation should be to be hated by all just the right people.  We need to remember that “If the world hates us, we know that it  hated Christ before it hated us. If we are of the light we will get the same response as He who is the Light.

As I mentioned at the beginning we should note here in John 3 the interplay with darkness. In John the theme is not only light but darkness. We shall see that as we move through these passages. One of the most interesting ways that John uses the idea of darkness is to note the presence of  nighttime. Nicdoemus comes to Jesus, John records, “when it was night,” and in the Judas betrayal. John tells us that Judas goes to betray the Lord Christ and then John adds, almost as an aside,  that “it was night.” Judas goes to do his hate work of quenching the light and He does so in the context of darkness (night).

III.) Light as a metaphor for God’s Law-Word (John 8:12)

In  Psalm 119 as combined with John 8:12 we notice a connection between the God’s law-word as a light that shines upon one’s path and the Lord Christ. In John 8 the metaphor of a light to illumine a path may well be a connection to  Psalm 119. This idea of God’s Law-Word being a light unto our path  is taken up by the Lord Christ as he applies it  to Himself.

The Psalmist says,

Psalm 119:105 Thy word is a ^[b]lantern unto my feet, and a light unto my paths.

The Lord Christ can say,

John 8:12 ^[d]Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am that light of the world: he that followeth me, shall not walk in darkness, but shall have that light of life.

So, we might say here that in this couplet of Psalm 119 and John 8 that the Lord Christ is declaring that He Himself is the incarnation of God’s Law-Word which for the Psalmist was his lamp and light. If we remember that Psalm 119 is all about the delight that the Pslamist finds in God’s laws, precepts, and judgments we would be well served to remember that there is no avoidance of walking in the darkness apart from the Light which is the law and whom also is Christ.

IV.) The Light as connected with the Healing ministry of the Messiah (John 9:4f)

In Isaiah we read of the promised Servant and His work,

^{Isaiah 42:16} ¶ And I will bring the ^[s]blind by a way, that they knew not, and lead them by paths that they have not known: I will make darkness light before them…

In John we see the Lord Christ as the Light that quite literally fulfills all that Isaiah spoke of.

^{John 9:4 [c]}I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is ^[d]day: the night cometh when no man can work.⁵ As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.

This passage is in the context of the man born blind. Immediately, after referring to himself as the “light of the world” Jesus heals the blind man. Those present would likely have seen Isaiah’s prophecy playing out before them.  Isaiah spoke of a Messiah who would be a light who opens the eyes of the blind and would make the darkness light before them.

The Lord Jesus is the Messiah who is bringing the new creational realities to bear upon the fallen world. In Christ, the age to come has come and in Christ, who is the Light of the World, the age to come is reversing the sin corrupted realities of this present age. The healing of the blind man (living in a world of darkness) is evidence that the re-creation has come in Jesus who is the Messianic light.

V.) Light as our identity (John 12:35)

^{John 12:35} [n]Then Jesus said unto them, Yet a little while is the light with you: walk while ye have that light, lest the darkness come upon you: for he that walketh in the dark, knoweth not whither he goeth.³⁶ While ye have that light, believe in that light, that ye may be the [o]children of the light. These things spake Jesus, and departed, and hid himself from them….⁴⁶ I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth in me, should not abide in darkness.

Isaiah 9:2 — The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone.

As we talked about earlier our connection to Christ is to be so intimate that we take on His character of light.

Conclusion

Really this has been just the briefest of survey of the usage of light in John. There are more connections that we could make. This gives us enough to see that this metaphor that Christ uses has an important background. The theme of “Light” weaves itself all the way from Genesis to the very end of Revelation.

We  speak of Christ as “the light” being a metaphor for God’s Truth, God’s presences, God’s recreation, God’s condemnation unto those who hate the light, God’s direction via His Law Word.

We would note again that Light in the OT was spoken of in the context of the Messiah and the promised re-creation. The Messiah has come and, in principle, this present wicked age has been and so is being rolled back.

This is objectively true and does not depend upon how we personally feel about it. The Light has come. We are children of the Light.

We have to live then, as we have been fully declared to be.

Introduction — Preliminary Considerations

When Simeon’s pronouncement concerning the Messiah is read in concert with Mary’s Song and with Zacharias’ Prophecy one sees that the shared theme is that God has remembered His past promises.

Mary

^{Luke 1:54} He has helped his servant Israel,
    in remembrance of his mercy,
⁵⁵ as he spoke to our fathers,
    to Abraham and to his offspring forever.”

Zachariah

^{Luke 1:72} to show the mercy promised to our fathers
    and to remember his holy covenant,

Simeon

For my eyes have seen your salvation

The salvation that had long been promised

In each of these outbursts of praise the central point is God remembering His covenant promises of salvation. The central point is most definitely NOT the impoverished social class to which these Hebrews belonged. Yes, Mary, and Zachariah, and Simeon, and Anna, by all accounts were oppressed and likely comparatively impoverished people but we moderns have taken the wrong point from that. Instead of marveling at God who remembers His promises we focus on the economic and social class position of  Zachariah (or Mary, or Simeon, or Anna, etc.). as being poor. Yet, poverty as poverty doesn’t score you any points in the Kingdom of God if one doesn’t belong to Christ and the people of God.  The primary focus here is on the God who keeps covenant. We know that because that was the primary focus of the Saints here.

Simeon was waiting for the “Consolation of Israel.”

Israel had been under the boot of its enemies for centuries. Consolation is the hope of renewal and restoration.

Anna, “Spoke to all those who looked for redemption in Israel.

Redemption is likely the idea that God had provided a deliverer.

In both cases the emphasis on these Saints is what God is doing. The long wait is over. God’s consolation has come. The weariness acquired will be removed.

The focus clearly is both Trinitarian-centric. Still, many are the exegetes who want to come to these passages and talk about Liberation Theology. They want to look at the impoverished state of the Holy Family and all these witnesses but that is manifestly NOT the point.

The antithesis in the Scripture is not between Rich vs. Poor but between the Seed of the Serpent vs. The seed of the woman. And what these representatives of the Old Testament (Simeon and Anna) are doing is shouting the arrival of the long anticipated seed of the woman.

I.) Simeon’s Prophecy — The Work of the Holy Spirit

Mention of the Holy Spirit — 25, 26, 27

This work of the Holy Spirit upon Simeon brings to the fore the work of the Holy Spirit in the whole life of Christ. Here the Holy Spirit is directing the feet of this old saint to magnify Christ as the Messiah. This same Holy Spirit, who came upon Mary in order that the Virgin would conceive, now comes upon Simeon to testify to the Messianic reality and purpose.

For our Lord Christ there is a dependence, during His humiliation, upon the Holy Spirit at every turn and at every turn the Holy Spirit is magnifying Christ. We see that here. The Holy Spirit is directing Simeon to witness to the reality and purpose of Jesus as the Christ. Later, the Holy Spirit will anoint Christ at Baptism and then will immediately lead Christ into the desert to be tempted and then upon completion of the Temptation, Christ will tell all that the Spirit of the Lord is upon Him.

^{Luke 4:16} And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. ¹⁷ And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,

In our first week of Advent I took some time to speak about the culture wars, particularly how those culture wars have manifested themselves against Christmas. I looked at how Christmas has been subtly undermined and challenged us to not be swept away by the Cultures re-definition of Christmas.

The Next two weeks I tried to set out how the birth of Christ was consistent with the expectation of earlier portions of prophecy in the OT. First, we looked at Herod’s slaughter of the Innocent and the escape of the Holy family and their return as well as the significance of Christ being a “Nazarene.” We noted the ways that that event in the NT served as a recapitualtion of the Narrative of OT Israel in the life of Jesus. Last  week we considered the prophecy of the Virgin Birth in the OT and how that fit with the Birth of Christ.

This week in our 4th Advent Sermon we want to look at the Scriptures that speak of the great glory of the King and the implied inevitable victory of that Great King over all his opponents. What we are suggesting is that with the coming of Christ God’s triumph has arrived and His victory is inevitable.

This inevitability and certainty of victory has been a truism of Christianity that has been stolen from us by one of the great Christian Heresies — Marxism. Marx wrote, “the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.”

When once believe their cause will inevitably be victorious they live and move in terms of the inevitability and certainty of that victory.  Christians need to regain this sense of inevitable and certain victory that was characteristic of their Faith for generations.

And that inevitability and certainty of Victory is caught up in the celebration of Christmas.

“The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,
on them has a light shined.
You have multiplied the nation;
you have increased its joy;
they rejoice before you
as with joy at the harvest,
as they are glad when they divide the spoil.
For the yoke of his burden,
and the staff for his shoulder,
the rod of his oppressor,
you have broken as on the day of Midian.
For every boot of the trampling warrior in battle tumult,
and every garment rolled in blood
will be burned as fuel for the fire.
For unto us a child is born,
Unto us a son is give;
and the government will be upon his shoulder,
and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and of peace
there will be no end,
on the throne of David and over his kingdom,
to establish and uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from this time forth and forevermore.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.”
(Isaiah 9:2-7, emphasis mine)

Here we have a promised change coming for the burdened people of God. The passage describes them as living under the oppression of Darkness to now living under the dawning of great light. All this as metaphor for going from being downtrodden to being released.

Then we have briefly described a people who are transitioning from oppression to liberty. The yoke of the enemy has been cast off and the rod of the oppressor has been broken by a deliverer. In place of the enemies yoke and rod comes the kind of joy and gladness associated with harvest and military victory.

In all this God has done something to make the tools of the enemy’s warfare be abolished. There is the introduction of a child who will rule as King.

When we consider again the mention of “Light” in the beginning of this passage

“The people walking in darkness have seen a great light”

we are reminded that ‘Light,’ throughout the book of Isaiah as well as all of Scripture is a metaphor  for God’s blessings, presence and revelation (Is. 9:2, 30:26, 42:6, 16, 60:1-3), unto His people. So, again, what is being promised here in reversing travail and oppression is the very presence of God.

We must not miss the idea of this Light because when the utter fulfillment of this promise comes to pass and when this child arrives what we read of is Light,

“⁹ And lo, the Angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone about them, and they were sore afraid.”

And John’s Gospel can speak this way of the Lord Christ … And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.

And our Lord Christ will even speak of Himself as being the “Light of the world.”

We capture something of this idea of the promised coming Light when we sing during this season our songs,

O Little down of Bethlehem

Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light,
The hopes and fears of all the years,
Are met in thee tonight.

O Come All Ye Faithful

True God of true God, Light from Light Eternal,
Lo, he shuns not the Virgin’s womb;
Son of the Father, begotten, not created;

Hark, the Herald Angels Sing

Hail the heav’n-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Son of Righteousness!
Light and life to all He brings
Ris’n with healing in His wings

Christ is that male child spoken of and is the Light that God promised in Isaiah. The Lord Christ is the one who was promissory of the great reversal in the fortunes for His people.  The Lord Christ is the one who occasions the great reversal in the circumstances of God’s people.

This whole passage in Isaiah is indicative of the great anticipation that we as Christians continue to have — especially in this Advent season.  We do believe that the Light has dawned upon us with the coming of Christ but we also believe that we go from Light unto Light. This is to say that while we confess that God’s presence has come in Christ we anticipate the presence of God to magnify itself in the affairs of men over the course of time. We take seriously the phrase in this passage which teaches that

the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end,

And so we anticipate that He who is now on David’s throne and who is now ruling will continue to extend His dominion progressively over the whole of a earth which He already rules now in Principle.

Men who are opposed to Christ and His Kingdom will be conquered and will find themselves to be glad subjects of this great King who upholds His Kingdom with justice and righteousness.

This is captured in a verse of “Angels from the Realm of Glory,”

“Sinners, wrung with true repentance,
Doomed for guilt to endless pains,
Justice now revokes the sentence,
Mercy calls you; break your chains.”

This all begins with the Birth of this promised child spoken of in Isaiah 2.

R.J. Rushdoony, in his book Institutes of Biblical Law: Volume 1 tells us,

“The joyful news of the birth of Christ is the restoration of man to his original calling with the assurance of victory. This has long been celebrated in Christmas carols… The cultural mandate [i.e. fulfilling the Dominion Mandate (Genesis 1:26-28) and the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20)] and postmillennialism is either explicit or implicit in Christmas carols.”

During this Christmas season we are reminded from this Isaiah passage that with the birth of the Lord Christ comes the promise of His eventual total Victory, in time and space, over all that and all who oppose Him. This is the essence of meaning of that 10 dollar word “Postmillennialism.”

With that Birth of Christ we expect that, in the words of Ken Genty,

“the proclaiming of the Spirit-blessed gospel of Jesus Christ will win the vast majority of human beings to salvation in the present age. We expect Increasing gospel success (which) will gradually produce a time in history prior to Christ’s return in which faith, righteousness, peace, and prosperity will prevail in the affairs of people and of nations. After an extensive era of such conditions the Lord will return visibly, bodily, and in great glory, ending history with the general resurrection and the great judgment of all humankind.

And that expectation, contained here in Isaiah 9 we sing of every year in our songs.

“Joy to the World”:

Joy to the world, the Lord is come,
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room,
And heaven and nature sing.

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow,
Far as the curse is found.

He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove,
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love.

Note the language. The Birth of Christ is “Joy to the World,” …. the whole Earth is to “receive her King.” The effect of the arrival of the Lord Christ is the ending of thorns and the curse. He “makes the NATIONS prove.”

The birth of the Lord Christ is not some provincial affair that can be kept secret. The Lands of Allah will surrender to Christ. The inroads of Marxism and Humanism that has captured nations will totter and fall down to be replaced by the already present Lordship of Jesus Christ. Men who now curse the thought of Christ and who are now in the chains of their own spite and the shackles of their own sin will be conquered and set free to gladly serve Christ. This is what Isaiah speaks of and this is what our Western Christmas Carols echo. Consider,

“I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”:

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep,
God is not dead, nor doth He sleep.
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With Peace On Earth, Good Will To Man.

The Christian religion is a faith of ultimate and total victory, where the very gates of hell cannot prevail against Christ and His chosen people (Matt. 16:18).

The triumph of Christ and of the Christian faith should be celebrated annually during the Advent season. In the Incarnation — from Birth to Crucifixion, Resurrection and Ascension — the Lord Christ has gained the victory that is now being worked out in space and time. He is even now, as He was upon His Birth,

“Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

And He is even now increasing a government and a peace that shall know no end. This Mighty God champions over men by His Gospel which announces that those who are prisoners to their sin and who are in hostility to the great King can sue for pardon and be forgiven and so released.

Well could Charles Wesley write emphasizing this reconciliation that Christ brings to those who walked in darkness and who even loved that darkness they walk in,

Hark the herald angels sing
“Glory to the newborn King!
Peace on earth and mercy mild
God and sinners reconciled”
Joyful, all ye nations rise
Join the triumph of the skies

So when we celebrate Advent and Christmas we celebrate not only the coming of a child lowly born. We celebrate the fact that this Child is “God with us– Emmanuel,” and we celebrate the sure and certain victory His life, death, and resurrection guarantees. Christmas is about the present and future triumph of God in space and time History against all those who would mute the voice of justice and righteousness and would think that they can forever successfully make war against the King of heaven. Christmas is about the Prince of Peace bringing in that Peace that He has already brought in.

We moderns speak so foolishly about Peace

Imagine all the people living life in peace — John Lenon

‘Cause out on the edge of darkness,
There rides a peace train.
Oh, peace train take this country.
Come take me home again.  — Cat Stevens

But the only way peace can come between man and man is when man’s warfare against God is ended and in the Birth of Christ the provision for the end of that warfare has arrived.  We sing of this every Christmas,

“O Holy Night”

A thrill of hope, a weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn,
Fall on your knees, O hear the angel’s voices,
O night divine, O night when Christ was born.

“A new and glorious morn breaks”, because Christ’s blood has been spilled, the just for the unjust  that those who were once afar off from God could come near and know the end of their hostility and the meaning of genuine peace. This peace of God, is found only in the Christ of the Bible and His finished work.

A weary world can rejoice because in the death of the Lord Christ their rebellion against God has been punished and they now can sue for peace. All those hostilities that find themselves manifested in long simmering hatreds, jealousies, and individual twisted-ness can be brought to the Cross and laid down and men can find peace with God and so peace with man.

And none of this would be true save for the birth of He who remains Mighty God and Prince of Peace.

Because of God’s work in sending Christ, Christianity anticipates that definitive conquest of God and His people in the affairs of men precisely because in the incarnation and Redemptive work of Christ God already has conquered over His enemies. We Christians are confident of God’s Victory,and so are Heralds of this Gospel triumph that God has gained in Christ. We command all men everywhere to repent and remind men that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. Our Christians Fathers so believed in the inevitability of this victory that is set forth in Isaiah 9 and throughout Scripture that they wove that Triumph into our Christmas songs.

Hark, The Herald Angel’s sing

Joyful, all ye nations, rise,
Join the triumph of the skies;

O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant

Those who are in Christ are the happy humble warriors. Happy because they know the one promised has come and so they know that their victory is certain, no matter the opposition.

Of the increase of his government and of peace
there will be no end,

Introduction

Using something that was made for one purpose in a way other then what it was made for.

Winnie the Pooh hair brush that I have stolen from my daughter to use for my beard.

Using a hammer to fix a laser printer

Bobby Pins = Inner Ear Scratchers

I dug a hole with an umbrella when I was young

Frisbee as a dinner plate

This morning we want to consider the ways that the Pharisees ended up serving the opposite purpose for which they were intended.

Read Luke 11:42-51

WOE — An exclamation of judgment upon God’s enemies, or of misfortune on oneself, or, in the ministry of Jesus Christ, of sadness over those who fail to recognise the true misery of their condition.

Woe to those whose religion blinds themselves and misleads others Lk 11:52 See also Mt 23:13-33; Lk 11:42-51

In this case in Luke 11 it may well be the case that Jesus is pronouncing judgment while at the time expressing sadness over those who fail to recognise the true misery of their condition.

I.) Woe #1 — Pharisees have missed the point

“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 Religious experts and cultural gatekeepers were so focused on the important minutia — mint, rue, and cummin — (comparatively speaking) that they missed the larger purposes in the midst of the important minutia. The Lord Christ did not say to ignore the important minutia but he did clearly communicate that one can get so bogged down in details that one misses the forest for all the trees.

This is why the Lord Christ told them at another time that you ““strained gnats and swallowed camels” (Matthew 23:24).

So what was the larger point that the Lord Christ is faulting them for missing.

Luke 11:41 be generous to the poor, and everything will be clean for you.

There was a lack of generosity on their part. There were people in genuine need but they were being bypassed so that the religious experts could pad their pocketbook and escape their responsibility.

Another example of this is in

Mark 7:9 And he continued, “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe[c] your own traditions! 10 For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and mother,’[d] and, ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’[e] 11 But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is Corban (that is, devoted to God)— 12 then you no longer let them do anything for their father or mother. 13 Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that.”

ATS Bible Dictionary

The son would say to his needy parents, “It is a gift- whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me,” that is, I have already devoted to God that which you request of me, Mark 7:11; and the traditionary teachings of the Jewish doctors would enforce such a vow, and not suffer him to do aught for his parents against it, although it was contrary to nature and reason, and made void the law of God as to honoring parents, Matthew 15:3-9. The Pharisees, and the Talmudists their successors, permitted even debtors to defraud their creditors by consecrating their debt to God; as if the property were their own, and not rather the right of their creditor.

The point of application is to look not only to our own needs but also to the needs of others … the needs of others who very likely cannot do us a favor back.

Illustration — Two Seminary Students tithing to one another.

II.) Woe #2 — Pharisees have a wrong preoccupation

“Woe to you Pharisees, because you love the most important seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces (Luke 11:43).

Already a theme is developing here. That theme is that the Pharisees had prioritized themselves. They were their own gods and all of their reality was spinning around them. The problem here, when reduced to its essence, is that they were selfish idolaters worshiping themselves.

There is another sub theme going on here and that is the idea that the religious gatekeepers were pimping it up for their own clique. While Jesus identifies them as “full of greed and wickedness” here and elsewhere as full of “dead men’s bones,” they moved in a context that never would have told them that truth.

Instead they were part of a “mutual admiration society,” and that society played the game of “you stroke me, and I’ll stroke you.” So, they’d attend, for example, their version of the Oscars or their version of Synod and the mutual admiration society would go out of their way to compliment or exalt their own who were also members of their clique … their mutual admiration society.

The problem here again though, is that they were doing this all at the expense of looking out for and caring for those in need.

It is the same type of thing that Jesus gets at in the Parable of the good Samaritan. The fault there was that the religious gatekeepers took no pity upon the one in need, to busy to do for themselves or for members of their own mutual admiration society.

So … they were motivated and driven by their desire to have the approval of their fellow members of the mutual admiration society, rather than God’s.

“they loved the most important seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces”

We should pause to note the consequence of this sniveling groveling for recognition from fellow members of their cult clique.

1.) A loss of the ability to speak the truth

One is not recognized by the mutual admiration society when one speaks truth to fellow mutual admiration society members. As such one simply ceases to speak the truth and eventually, if practiced constantly over a long course of time, one loses not only the ability to speak the truth but also the ability to recognize the truth.

At bottom all of this, for the religious gatekeepers, is not only about padding their credibility with the Mutual Admiration society but it is also about avoiding the opposite and that is the curse of being seen as irrelevant, unimportant and insignificant to those who comprise the mutual admiration society. Prophets have always been hated and rejected and the religious gatekeepers in this passage would rather disassociate themselves from the truth then to experience the fate of being despised and rejected.

WARNING

Now, the danger in all this is that it could be the case that people who hear this kind of message resolve to be as insulting as possible in the name of “telling the truth.”

First, remember that Jesus did not speak this way to all men. This kind of speaking was reserved for the religious gatekeepers who were locking everyone else out from true religion.

Second, remember that there is a time and a place for everything under the sun. Not every opportunity to speak like this may be the best time to speak like this.

Thirdly, none of this overturns Scriptures requirement that our speech must be seasoned as with salt.

Fourthly, remember we said at the outset that the woes were pronounced in the context of Jesus sadness that these men he is speaking to do not recognize the true misery of their condition. It is comparatively easy to get righteously indignant but perhaps we should never speak this way until we are genuinely saddened that we have to speak this way.

III.) Woe #3 — Pharisees Have Inverted Their Purpose

“Woe to you, because you are like unmarked graves, which men walk over without knowing it” (Luke 11:44).

In order to make full sense of this verse we have to correlate it with a passages in the law,

Numbers 19:16

16 “Anyone out in the open who touches someone who has been killed with a sword or someone who has died a natural death, or anyone who touches a human bone or a grave, will be unclean for seven days.

So … the Lord Christ is telling them that people who come in contact with them were defiled.

The stated purpose of the Pharisees was to lead the people and nation back into righteousness and holiness but instead they were having the exact opposite effect. And this was being done without even the courtesy of they themselves being marked as “graves.”

Keep in mind the obvious that the problem here wasn’t with their physical person but rather was with what they were communicating and teaching to the people.

Woe unto a people or nation when their putative leaders in holiness and righteousness becomes a means by which they are infected by a cesspool of uncleanness.

So, the Pharisees were themselves both unclean (sinful) and defiling to others. Per Numbers 19, those who came into contact with the Pharisees were rendered unclean. Doubtless this is why the Lord Christ says to them elsewhere,

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.”

They, who were intended to be a blessing, were a curse.

That which the Pharisees prided themselves in being and doing was the very opposite of the reality of the matter.
This pronouncement by the Lord Christ may have been the deepest cut of all to the Jewish Ministerial Corps.

We’ve talked about this before … but will mention it again here … those who abandon God’s law word begin to occupy an upside down, inside-out world and in that “Alice in Wonderland World” everything becomes inverted.

“In A Pilgrim’s Regress, C.S. Lewis wrote about a man who ordered milk and eggs from a waiter in a restaurant. After tasting the milk he commented to the waiter that it was delicious. The waiter replied, “Milk is only the secretion of a cow, just like urine and feces.” After eating the eggs he commented on the tastiness of the eggs. Again the waiter responded that eggs are only a by-product of a chicken. After thinking about the waiter’s comment for a moment the man responded, “You lie. You don’t know the difference between what nature has meant for nourishment, and what it meant for garbage.”

The Spirit of the Age when uninformed by the Spirit of Christ always teaches this kind of upside down world, where good is evil and evil is good. Bertrand Russel, the 20th Century renown Atheist caught something of how this achieved methodologically speaking,

“The social psychologist … will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will soon be arrived at: first, that influence of home are obstructive. Second, that not much can be done unless indoctrination begins before
the age ten. It is for the scientist to make these maxims precise and discover how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies of policeman”

This is the kind of thing that happens when a person, a family, or a culture falls into the Rabbit hole.

Luther, echoing the point that the Lord Christ is making here said,

“It is the nature of all hypocrites and false prophets to create a conscience where there is none, and to cause conscience to disappear where it does exist.”

We should not only be on the lookout for this in others or in the culture around us. We should also pray fervently that God would press His finger upon where we are living in the upside down world… where we have become unmarked graves. We are … I am … also a carrier of upsidedownitis. May God be pleased to open our eyes so we might repent.

So … the Pharisees had inverted their purpose. How much more the modern Church today?

Examples,

1.) ” Do forget the OT, please. Seriously. You must understand that Romans 12 – 13 and the rest of the NT is a radical departure from OT Israel. Israel’s mandate was to make the land of Canaan (and other nations by extension) submit to its rule and reign. The NT Church is to submit to the reign of the nations. These two mandates are not only different, they are opposite.”

2.) “We express a passion for the supremacy of God… by making clear that God himself is the foundation for our commitment to a pluralistic democratic order … We have a God-centered ground for making room for atheism.”

3.) “There is no reason why Christians should argue against having a Muslim holiday on the school calendar if there is a significant group or percentage of Muslims in the community – that would simply be fair and it would simply makes sense. We should not claim the privilege of having our religious holidays on the calendar and consider it some kind of Christian victory to keep other religious holidays off the calendar.”

4.) “Here we have two people who desire to be married and what does the Church tell them? What does the Church say? The Church says ‘no.’” “Can you believe that the Culture and Corporations are fully invested in giving homosexuals “marriage” rights and yet the Church is lagging so far behind?

Conclusion