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March 12, 2023 - Just Informed Talk - Craig James
16:14
Jesus Warns To Beware Of The Yeast Of The Pharisees - Luke 11:37-54, 12:1-4 | God's Grace Is Greater
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Hi, welcome to another God's Grace is Greater segment where we're going to do a deep dive into scripture.
We're picking up where we left off in Luke chapter 11.
Now, where we left off specifically in Luke chapter 11 was where Jesus was teaching us that the eye is the lamp onto the body, and that if our light is filled with light and good, then our body will be filled with that energy.
And if our light is filled with darkness, then that's what your body will be filled with.
And he was saying that as he was essentially rebuking those who had turned their back on him and his teachings, giving an example as Jonah as the example he was giving.
And we covered that in the last segment.
So if you want to learn more about the previous scripture, always go to the video right before this for the God's grace is greater because they're released in order.
And that'll be picking up right where we left off.
We're talking about religious hypocrisy.
Interestingly enough, there is a lot of hypocrisy in this world, and there was a lot of hypocrisy when Jesus was around as well.
These verses talk directly to that, so I'm going to share them.
We're going to read through...
The end of chapter 11 and the beginning of chapter 12.
And this is just a fascinating set of verses that talk about religious hypocrisy.
An encounter Jesus has with the Pharisees as he says, woe to the Pharisees and woe to the experts in the law.
Essentially telling us, giving us a good...
So let's go ahead and read.
Luke chapter 11, verse 37.
I'm going to read all the way up to 54 at the end.
Then we're going to read 12, 1 through 4.
So let's go ahead and read.
It says, As he was speaking, a Pharisee asked him to dine with him.
So he went in and reclined at the table.
When the Pharisee saw this, he was amazed that he did not first perform the ritual washing before dinner.
But the Lord said to him, Now you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and evil.
Fools!
Didn't he who made the outside make the inside too?
But give from what is within to the poor, and then everything is clean for you.
But woe to you, Pharisees!
You give a tenth of a mint, rue, and every kind of herb, and you bypass justice and love for God.
These things you should have done without neglecting the others.
Woe to you, Pharisees!
You love the front seat in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces.
Woe to you!
You are like unmarked graves.
The people who walk over them don't know it.
One of the experts in the law answered him, Teacher, when you say these things, you insult us too.
Then he said, Woe also to you, experts in the law!
You load people with burdens that are hard to carry, yet you yourselves don't touch these burdens with one of your fingers.
Woe to you!
You build monuments to the prophets, and your fathers killed them.
Therefore you are witnesses that you approve the deeds of your fathers, for they killed them, and you build their monuments.
Because of this, the wisdom of God said, I will send them prophets and apostles, and some of them they will kill and persecute, so that this generation may be held responsible for the blood of all the prophets shed since the foundation of the world, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary. from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, Yes, I tell you, this generation will be held responsible.
Woe to the experts in the law.
You have taken away the key of knowledge.
You didn't go in yourselves, and you hindered those who were going in.
When he left there, the scribes and the Pharisees began to oppose him fiercely and to cross-examine him about many things.
They were lying in wait for him to trap him in something he said.
It goes on, In these circumstances a crowd of many thousands came together, so that they were trampling on one another.
He began to say to his disciples first, Now I've said, I bring up these verses because...
bring them together, I guess you could say, because I think they all speak to one another very well.
And they speak to times that not only Jesus was experiencing then, but times we were still experiencing to this day.
Now, in this rebuke of the Pharisees, the story starts pretty simply and kind of benign.
Jesus is invited by a Pharisee to have dinner.
And...
This all starts when Jesus neglects to do something that the Pharisee thought made Jesus unclean.
When Jesus entered the home to sit down and dine with the Pharisee, he doesn't do, as it's said here, the ritual washing before dinner.
Now, a lot of the ritualism that had been built up by the Pharisees, Jesus had come to tear down.
He had made it very clear, we've read in Matthew and Mark and all the way up here through Luke, of many instances of Jesus who comes and says, For yourself, while ignoring God's commands and making God's commandment secondary to the command that you want to enforce because you covet power and you covet authority more than you covet the grace of God and God's eternal power.
And in this exchange, you actually see this on full effect.
The hypocrisy of the Pharisees is outlined very well, and Jesus gives a list of woes and a list of ways that they are hypocritical.
Jesus, first though, accuses the Pharisee of outwardly presenting himself as clean and pure and good, but inwardly being dirty and being evil, essentially.
Because he says, the Lord said, he says, you clean the outside of the cup and dish, but at the inside you're full of greed and evil.
He's saying, like a cup, if you wipe the outside of the cup and you don't clean the inside, the inside's still going to be dirty.
And like the Pharisee, he's saying that you present yourself outwardly as this good, moral, good human being, this authority figure, this man of God, and essentially that's what they were doing.
And Jesus says, but inwardly, you're evil, you're greedy.
You do not believe in the things that you present outwardly.
In another way of saying it, they were two-faced.
They acted one way in front of people in public, but then inwardly were totally different.
He gives all these woes, saying that they give a tenth of everything they have, their mint and rue and their herbs, but they ignore justice and love for God.
Jesus says you should have done these things without neglecting others.
He says you love the front seat of the synagogue and greetings in the marketplaces.
Well, do you know people like that?
They want to be seen all the time.
They want to be heard.
They want to have the outward perception of being so much holier than thou.
Their piety comes before their true belief in God.
If you're one of those people, I encourage you to stop that and cleanse your inner soul.
Bring yourself to Christ.
That's what Jesus is trying to tell the Pharisees.
And then he compares them to unmarked graves.
Now, in the Pharisees' tradition and their ritualism and all the stuff that they had put together with their ceremonial clean and unclean practices, going to graves was actually something they didn't do because they thought it would make you ceremonial unclean.
They wouldn't even let their shadow cast onto a grave because they felt that that made them ceremonial unclean, and they would chastise others who did it.
And you'd be forced to go through the ceremonial cleaning and all these ceremonies to get yourself right with God.
So Jesus, though, kind of in this incredible exchange, compares them to the unmarked graves.
And essentially saying that people are walking by and they're being tainted by you and they don't even know it.
Now, one of the experts in the law, which you would probably call like a modern-day version of an interpretation, would be like a lawyer, right?
Somebody who studies the law and helps enforce the law and make interpretations of the law for the Pharisees, basically says to Jesus, when you say these things, you're insulting us too!
Because they're saying, we follow the law too!
You're knocking us too!
Why are you doing it?
Well, what does Jesus say?
He says, woe to you as well, experts in the law.
He says, you load people with burdens that are hard to carry, yet you yourselves don't touch these burdens with one of your fingers.
Again, more hypocrisy.
Those who, it's the do as I say, not as I do mentality.
Now, where do we see that in today's society?
Well, I think you guys know very well.
We see that all the time.
Especially with non-Christians, but sometimes with Christians as well.
People who will always tell you the right thing.
They know exactly what to tell you how to do your life, but then when it comes to their life, well, you know, not so much.
And we see that on a larger scale, and it only gets worse the more power that a human being has in this life.
So what do we do?
Well...
We put our lives to God.
We humble ourselves before God.
We admit that our power is meaningless before the great glory and power of God.
They weren't doing that though.
They cared more about their power in this world than they did about the power that they were able to gain through the eternal salvation and the gift that comes from God's grace and His Son, our Lord, Jesus.
He tells them essentially that they build monuments to prophets, but their fathers killed them.
And essentially what he says, Jesus says to the lawyers, is woe to you who, again, practice this hypocrisy of presenting yourself one way, showing the whole world, look at how we worship the prophets, they're so great and good, but not acknowledging their own sinful nature and how they don't do what the prophets told them to do, what they prophesied about, which was the coming of the Messiah.
They ignore him straight to his face.
Jesus says the wisdom of God says, I will send them prophets and apostles, some of them they will kill and persecute, while again foreshadowing to what Jesus is about to go through, his death and persecution and then resurrection.
So that this generation may be held responsible for the blood of all the prophets shed from the foundation of the world.
And then he says, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah.
Now who are those?
Well, Abel was one of the first, I think the first person to be murdered, according to the Bible.
And Zechariah, I believe, was the last person in the Old Testament to be murdered.
So...
From Abel to Zechariah, you have everyone in between.
The blood of all of the prophets who were shed is on the shoulders of these people because they're ignoring the Messiah who's standing right there in front of them.
He says, I tell you, this generation will be held responsible.
Woe to the experts in the law!
They've taken the key of knowledge, and they didn't go in themselves, and they hindered those going in.
Well, again, who does that sound like?
What he's saying is that they took the knowledge and they used it greedily for themselves.
And they didn't try to help others understand the rules and the laws if they knew it could give them an advantage.
I think what Jesus is telling us is that these are not things that Christians should do.
Finally, it says that Jesus left there and the scribes and the Pharisees were opposing him fiercely.
They tried to cross-examine him about many things and they were lying in wait for him to trap him in something he said.
And again, they never stopped with the attempt to trap Jesus in things that he said.
But then, just after this, you have a crowd of thousands come together.
Now they say it could have been tens of thousands.
We don't know.
Probably thousands of people that came together to the point where Luke actually writes that they were trampling on one another.
So then what does Jesus do?
He tells his disciples these words.
He says, Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.
Now, yeast can be interpreted many, many different ways, but in this particular instance, I guess it would stand to reason that yeast is essentially talking about a mold, something that you don't want.
I think yeast would have ruined a lot of things in the olden days, and it was not looked at.
It's why they used unleavened bread.
They wouldn't want this kind of bacteria in their, you know, body, because it could Faster, and it could become very toxic.
So he's saying, beware of the toxicity of the Pharisees, is another way to put it, and that it is their hypocrisy that there is their toxicity.
Because he says this, nothing, there is nothing covered that won't be uncovered, nothing hidden that won't be made known, therefore whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and whatever you have whispered in the ear in private rooms will be proclaimed in the housetops.
What does that mean?
That means, in the end, when it's all said and done, all these things that Jesus has just listed that they've done, all of the hypocrisy, all of the manipulation, all of the greed, all of the evil, all of the things that they were thinking they got away with, It was all going to be for naught.
Because God's judgment will come.
And these things, whether they are proclaimed at the time that they are happening or it comes sometime thereafter, the truth will be made known.
And the truth is that God's grace is greater.
So I'm going to go ahead and leave it there.
We'll say a prayer and wrap it up.
Dear Lord and Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day.
We thank you for allowing us to share in this incredible scripture.
We pray, Lord, that you'll help us to live according to the example that you give us, Lord.
To not present ourselves outwardly as something that we are not inwardly.
To not live in a hypocritical way.
To not tell others to do things which we are not able to do or willing to do ourselves in honoring you.
But most importantly, Lord, to recognize that your power is greater than all of our sin.
And that if we come to you humbly, Lord, and ask that you will grant us forgiveness.
And your grace is enough.
We thank you for that.
We thank you for your son, our Lord Jesus, and his sacrifice on the cross so that we can be cleansed of these sins.
Lord, we pray that we don't fall into the traps.
of the generation of evil that came before and the evil that exists today.
Help us overcome it, Lord.
Become better through you, for you, so we can be there for others to help bring them into your great and glorious kingdom by your power and your son's sacrifice and the Holy Spirit.
In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.
Alright, well, I hope you guys enjoyed that.
We're going to leave it there.
Thanks for watching.
There's comments below.
I want to hear your thoughts on everything that we talked about.
If you're watching this over on YouTube, I do a new show on Rumble, and I try to post segments on YouTube, but today's show I don't think I'm going to be able to post on YouTube because...
The subject matter would probably get the channel deleted.
So, unfortunately, it's probably going to just stay on Rumble for now.
But with that being said, I want to say thanks for watching this episode of God's Grace is Greater.
And I hope you guys tune in to all the other channels.
There's links in the description below.
If you want to support this channel, there's a link to donate below.
All that helps out big time.
But with that being said, thanks for watching.
My name is Craig.
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