At Home With the Second Pharisee
Luke 11:33-54
When Jesus Tears into You, He Goes Right for the Heart
Opening
As a teenager, I grew up among people who loved the Lord, cherished the Bible, and tried to avoid anything sinful. But during my teen years I began to sense some of them talked as if the Christian life was outside in, and others described it more as inside out. My memory of these things is so clear I can still identify these groups by individuals or schools or churches or camps or labels. Most all of them were genuine believers, but they came at the Christian experience from two different directions.
The first group emphasized various lists of sins we were to avoid. No smoking, drinking, dancing, or gambling. No profanity. Women couldn’t wear slacks. Men and women weren’t allowed to swim at the same time. Movies were viewed with deep suspicion. Shorts were out, as were women’s skirts that showed the knee. College students who dated couldn’t hold hands. Hairstyles and beards became issues.
Some of these concerns were truly valid—and still are. But this group unwittingly conveyed the idea to us teenagers that if we kept these rules we would be inwardly holy. We would please God. We would be respectable Christians.
The second group often had some of the same basic convictions and standards. But their emphasis was different. The real issue was the inward rather than the outward. If we yielded ourselves to the Lordship of Christ, if we fed our souls with the Word of God, and if we tended to the interior life, we’d increasingly conform to the person of Christ. What was happening inwardly through the process of sanctification would affect us outwardly in terms of our attitudes and actions.
That’s the group I gravitated toward. Rules have their place. But we didn’t become godly by keeping an outward set of rules but by letting Christ mold our lives from within. Holiness comes from the inside out; not the outside in.
What I’ve described so far is the difference I found among Christians as I was developing into adulthood. But my case wasn’t as extreme as what Jesus confronted during His life. At least I was dealing with sincere people who knew Christ. In the Lord’s case, His greatest enemies were those who had no spiritual life, just outward rules and rituals.
Jesus never spoke more bluntly than when He ran into these people, and many of them were members of the Jewish sect of the Pharisees. And in Luke 11, and things took an acrimonious turn from the very beginning when Jesus was invited to an early meal.
1. The Eyes
Let’s begin with the paragraph that precedes the story because it gives context. Jesus said in Luke 11:33-36: “No one lights a lamp and puts it in a place where it will be hidden, or under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, so that those who come in may see the light. Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are healthy, your whole body also is full of light. But when they are unhealthy, your body also is full of darkness. See to it, then, that the light within you is not darkness. Therefore, if your whole body is full of light, and no part of it dark, it will be just as full of light as when a lamp shines its light on you.”
Jesus began simply: “No one lights a lamp and puts it in a place where it will be hidden, or under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, so that those who come in may see the light.” He made a similar statement in His Sermon on the Mount, but here He draws a different analogy. Jesus Himself is the light. A person’s eye is the mechanism (the lamp) by which light enters the body and registers on the mind. But if a person’s eyes are diseased, they won’t see the light. If their eyes are healthy, they will.
Jesus said, in effect: “Make certain that your spiritual eyes are open and you have My genuine light rushing into your minds and souls. If you are filled with my light, your whole personality will be illuminated.”
The apostle Paul restated this truth in 2 Corinthians 4:4: “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is in the image of God.” But he went on to say, “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ” (verse 6).
When Jesus comes into your life, He opens the eyes of your heart and your whole personality is bathed in radiance and splendor. I love the way the Bible uses the word “radiant”:
When Moses came down from meeting with the Lord on Mount Sinai, his face was radiant (see Exodus 34:29).“Those who look to him are radiant…”—Psalm 34:5Isaiah 60:5 says, “Then you will look and be radiant….”“The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes”—Psalm 19:8.Ezekiel talks about being “radiant with his glory” (Ezekiel 43:2).And the apostle Paul said that Jesus Christ is in the process of creating a “radiant church” (Ephesians 5:26).This is what the Methodist missionary E. Stanley Jones meant when he said, “When I met Christ, I felt that I had swallowed sunshine.” When we open ourselves to Him, it lights up our personalities. We are walking in sunlight. But if we refuse to look upon Him with faith and obedience, we are plunged into darkness.
2. The Hands
Having spoken those words to the crowds, Jesus promptly accepted an invitation to share a meal with a Pharisee. But He started eating without washing His hands. When that upset the Pharisee, Jesus tore into him and went straight for the heart. This man thought he was walking in light, but his eyes were closed and his whole life was enveloped with darkness.
Luke 11:37 says, “When Jesus had finished speaking [about spiritual sight and blindness], a Pharisee invited him to eat with him….” The Greek word here often means to have breakfast or to have a meal early in the day. The Jewish scholar, Alfred Edersheim calls this a “morning meal.”
But the Pharisee was surprised when he noticed that Jesus did not first wash before the meal. This had nothing to do with whether Jesus’ hands were dirty. The Pharisee was concerned with legalistic ritual (see Mark 7:3-4). Jesus responded in verse 39: “Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness.”
The other day I picked up a plate from an upper shelf. From my vantage point it looked like a clean plate. The edges were clean and white and shiny. But when I started to use it, I realized it had never made it to the dishwasher. It was filthy with old food. Jesus said it’s that way with a lot of people. On the outside they look respectable, but inwardly they’re filled with the corruption of sin.
Jesus went on in verse 40: “ You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? But now as for what is inside you—be generous to the poor, and everything will be clean for you.”
And now Jesus introduces one of the most dangerous words in the human vocabulary—woe. Jesus is about to launch a barrage of woes. One after the other. Six in all. Two sets of three. The word “woe” was a warning of coming disaster. It was a word of condemnation that portended something dreadful about to befall someone.
The first woe is in verse 42: “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.”
Jesus said, “You are meticulous when it comes to tithing. You even give a tenth of the herbs on the kitchen counter. But you don’t treat people with fairness nor with the love of God. You should practice your tithing without neglecting fairness and love.”
The second woe is in verse 43: “Woe to you Pharisees, because you love the most important seats in the synagogues and respectful greetings in the marketplaces.” They loved to be noticed and respected by people, but they had no sense of humility before God.
The third woe is in verse 44: “Woe to you, because you are like unmarked graves, which people walk over without knowing it.” In Jewish tradition, if you walked over a human grave, you were ceremonially defiled. So gravesites were clearly marked. Jesus said, “You yourselves defile the people you come into contact with. People rub shoulders with you and it makes them think they’ve been with a godly person, but your influence has only damaged them. To put it as bluntly as Jesus intended, He said, “You are walking dead people who defile everyone who comes into contact with you.”
That barrage of three “woes” silenced the Pharisee. But there was another person at the table. He was a biblical scholar, and he joined the conversation, saying, “Teacher, when you say these things, you insult us also” (verse 45). So Jesus turned to him and unloaded the next three “woes.”
In verse 46, Jesus started a new set of woes, “And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.”
The Pharisee and experts of the law had created so many rules that it was impossible to keep them all. They were trying to make people holy from the outside in, and the pressure from all the rules was backbreaking.
Jesus continued with His fifth “woe” in verses 47-52: “Woe to you, because you build tombs for the prophets, and it was your ancestors who killed them. So you testify that you approve of what your ancestors did; they killed the prophets, and you build their tombs. Because of this, God in his wisdom said, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and others they will persecute.’ Therefore this generation will be held responsible for the blood of all the prophets that has been shed since the beginning of the world, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, this generation will be held responsible for it all.”
Jesus is accusing the Pharisee and legal experts of opposing those who were truly inwardly godly, even to the point of violence.
Finally, He said in verse 52: “Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering.” These religious leaders had never taught God’s Word in its richness or fullness. They had only developed external commands that didn’t transform the heart. And with that, Jesus got up and left.
The story ends: “When Jesus went outside, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law began to oppose him fiercely and to besiege him with questions, waiting to catch him in something he might say” (verses 53-54).
3. The Heart
All of us have witnessed some aggressive arguments. I’ll be honest and tell you that when I see a heated conflict like this, it sends my nerves into a tailspin. I slide right into a panic attack. And yet I’m glad I witnessed this one. It reinforces what Samuel said to Jesse about his sons: “The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).
This was the point of the Sermon on the Mount. Adultery is not just a matter of outward immorality; it’s a matter of having a heart that fantasizes lust. It’s not just about murdering a person; it’s about hatred in your heart.
Jesus said, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” (Matthew 15:8). He said, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them” (Matthew 18:19-20).
The Bible says, “For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him” (2 Chronicles 26:9).
Recently my grandson and I went to the gym to work out, and we popped into the sauna. A couple of guys were in there, sweating away and talking about their tattoos. One guy pointed to his chest and said, “This is my first tattoo and my favorite one. It’s a verse from the Bible.”
I asked him what verse, and he said, “It’s Isaiah 40:31,” and he quoted it from memory: “Those who wait upon the Lord will renew their strength. They will mount up on wings like eagles; they will run and not be weary, they will walk and not be faint.”
I asked him why he had chosen that verse. He said when he was a teenager in high school playing basketball he wanted to get a tattoo, but he lived with his grandparents and he knew they would be upset. But he also knew his grandmother’s favorite Bible verse was Isaiah 40:31. She was always quoting it.
So he snuck out somewhere and had that verse engraved on his chest. “What did your grandmother say?” I asked. He smiled from ear to ear and said, “She loved it!” He was so friendly, I took the opportunity of asking him a question: “Is your tattoo—is that verse—more than skin deep?”
He thought a moment and grinned and said, “Yeah, I think it is.
A holy and upright and God-fearing life is more than skin deep. It’s not a matter of what’s on the outside, but what’s on the inside. That that only happens when the Holy Spirit gets hold of us!
Years ago I heard a Victorious Christian Life speaker share the difference between an apple tree and a Christmas tree. The Christmas tree looks beautiful with its lights and tinsel and ornaments. But the tree is dead. It’s cut off from the roots and sitting in a pot of water; it may even be artificial. The fruit tree, by contrast, is rooted and grounded and the ornaments that it bears comes from within. The apples are produced by the internal God-ordained operations of His laws of nature.
Lots of people appear to be Christians. They may call themselves Christians. They may be Protestant, Orthodox, or Catholic. They may attend mass or worship. They may be members of a church. They may even have moral codes that align with biblical teaching. But they are like Christmas trees—dead on the inside even while they are decorated with the trinkets and trimmings of external Christianity.
When we truly understand that knowing Jesus requires a total transformation of our interior life, we’re able to see ourselves as we are, confess our sins, and ask Jesus to renovate our hearts. The Holy Spirit comes and begins a work inside of us.
One of the greatest ways we can cooperate is by praying for the Spirit’s work in our lives. Listen to what Jesus said: “And so I tell you, keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.
“You fathers—if your children ask for a fish, do you give them a snake instead? Or if they ask for an egg, do you give them a scorpion? Of course not! So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him” (Luke 11:9-13 NLT).
We are to ask God for the Holy Spirit to invade, to overrun, to penetrate, to permeate our hearts. The word “disciple” disappears from the pages of the Bible in the book of Acts. It just evaporates, and it is replaced by the concept of being Christ-centered and Spirit-filled.
It’s true that Jesus told His disciples to “go into all the world and make disciples.” He was using Gospel era language. For a little while, that terminology continued. But something happened to the New Testament vocabulary as we thumb our way through the Bible. The word disciple is not found anywhere in the first five chapters of Acts. It shows up in chapters 6, 9, 11, 23, 24, 16, 18, 19, and 20. Then it occurs for the final time in the Bible in Acts 21:4. In that verse, Luke says, “We sought out the disciples there and stayed with them seven days.”
That is the last time in the Bible that the discipleship group of words occurs. Remarkably we never again read of disciples, discipleship, or discipling. The apostle Paul does not use any of those terms even once in his thirteen epistles, nor is it found in Hebrews, Peter, James, John, Jude, or Revelation.
The word disciple was a literal Gospel term that implied following Jesus and learning from Him. That’s what the original disciples did, and that idea lingered through the early days of the Acts of the Apostles. But as these early believers realized more and more the role of the Holy Spirit after Pentecost, there was a progression of thought.
As Paul presented the essence of the Christian experience, it wasn’t just following Christ and learning from Him. It was letting Christ Himself come into your life by means of His Holy Spirit so that Jesus could live His life through you.
We are convicted of sin by the Holy Spirit and born again by the action of the Holy Spirit on our personalities. And then the Holy Spirit sets to work conforming—rather transforming—us into the image of Christ from the inside out. And the purpose and plans He has for us are accomplished by the Holy Spirit working within us.
The Bible says, “And the Lord—who is the Spirit—makes us more and more like him [Christ] as we are changed into his glorious image” (2 Corinthians 3:18 NLT).
The apostle Paul told us to be filled with the Spirit; to walk by the Spirit; to be led by the Spirit; to keep in step with the Spirit; to live by the Spirit; to pray in the Spirit; to let our minds be governed by the Holy Spirit; and to exhibit the fruit of the Spirit (Ephesians 5:18; Galatians 5:16; Galatians 5:18; Galatians 5:25; 1 Corinthians 3:1; Ephesians 6:18; Romans 8:6; Galatians 5:22-23).
How can we do all this? It begins when we really let Jesus have all there is of our hearts. And sometimes the Lord exercises spiritual discipline to get us to that point. He used harsh verbal discipline with the Pharisee, but sometimes He has His ways of tearing into us. And when Jesus tears into us, He goes straight for the heart.
My friend, J. T. Latham, went to church and had a personal relationship with Christ, but he had a half-hearted commitment to doing God’s will. He knew how the Lord was trying to lead him, and he simply said, “No.” It was a bit like Jonah. And, like Jonah, J.T. was thrown off a ship. But unlike Jonah, it happened during his honeymoon.
J.T. and his girlfriend, Mariana, got married in May 2018, and boarded a cruise for their honeymoon. Their first stop was Bermuda, and they left the ship for a couple of hours to enjoy the beautiful pink sand beach. But then they decided to return to the ship and lounge by the pool. But when the authorities ran his backpack through the scanners, they found a 38-caliber silver bullet. To this day, J.T. has no idea how it got there.
In front of a thousand passengers who were reboarding the ship, J.T. was led away to jail, with his frantic wife following them. When the ship sailed without them, Mariana found a hotel room but J.T. spent much of his honeymoon in a cell in Bermuda.
“While I was sitting in the cell, all I could think of was Joseph, who was arrested for something he didn’t do. I thought of Paul for being in jail many, many times. And I thought, ‘God, why am I being persecuted like this? What did I do? What is going on here?’ So all I could do was pray – that was how I sought comfort. I knew He was with me, but I was angry and upset. I didn’t know why this was happening.
“But all of a sudden I heard His voice loud as could be. I just sat up on my little concrete slab that was a bed and began praying, and I just said, ‘I’m all yours! I’m done running now, I know that this was your way of getting my attention. I’m sorry that I was running, but if you want to use me, I’m all Yours. When you get me out of here, just open the doors and I will walk with You the entire way.’
“At that moment I heard one of the police officers walking down the aisle of cells and I whistling a familiar tune. It was “Amazing Grace.” I knew it was an incredible sign of knowing this was all from God. I realized He was willing to do whatever it took to get hold of all there was to my heart.”
J.T. and Mariana eventually made it home, but they were different people. The Lord Jesus doesn’t fool around. When He tears into you, he goes straight for the heart.
In my own experience, I spend a few minutes every day in my morning Quiet Time rededicating myself to Christ and asking God for a fresh indwelling of the Holy Spirit. I grew up singing about this. We used to sing invitational hymns—hymns especially designed for us to use in giving our lives afresh to the Lord. Adelaide A. Pollard wrote:
Have Thine Own Way, Lord,
Have Thine Own Way.
Thou art the Potter,
I am the clay.
Mold me and make me
After Thy will,
While I am waiting,
Yielded and still.
Have Thine Own Way, Lord,
Have Thine Own way.
Hold o’er my being
Absolute sway.
Fill with Thy Spirit
Till all shall see
Christ, only, always,
Living in me.
A prayer similar to that, offered sincerely, presented to Christ daily, will allow the Lord to open our eyes, flood our personalities with light, and make sure that our Christianity is more than skin deep.
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