Luke 20:45-21:4

Luke 20 45 21.

While all the people were listening, Jesus said to his disciples, Be aware of the teachers of the law.

They like to walk around in flowing rows and love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets.

They devour widows' houses and for a show make lovely prayers.

These men will be punished most severely as Jesus looked up.

He saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury.

He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins.

Truly, I tell you, he said.

All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth.

But she, out of her poverty, put in all she had to live on.

Amen.

Have you heard the saying, be true to yourself?

Have you heard that?

It seems like it's it's becoming more and more um popular, but do you know that it it harkens back to Shakespeare?

It's in Hamlet, right?

Yeah, and it says, To thine own self be true.

The most most recent occurrence of it, I was listening to um Kevin Hart talk on the uh Colbert show about this controversy.

Do you know what the controversy was surrounding Kevin Hart that he was invited to host the Oscars, and then he was disinvited, kind of, and then he he like disinvited himself, and then Ellen brought him on, and it was just a whole thing.

So he gets onto the the Colbert show and he's explaining it, as he did on the Good Morning America show and a bunch of other like sites, and and he said this idea of you know what, I've already apologized in the past, and I just want to be authentic, I want to be true to myself.

Um instead of apologizing and apologizing, which is what he felt like culture wanted him to do, he said, I'm gonna just be true to myself, I apologize once, and um I'm just gonna be authentic.

The interesting thing was that culture kind of accepted that.

Did you notice how quickly that was kind of like he went out for a day, he did these appearances, these media appearances, and just said, I am who I am, I'm gonna be true to myself, I'm authentic.

Interesting.

As an as kind of an observer of culture, kind of like a fish in water trying to feel out like what is water, it's in, or you know, for us to know like what is air.

It's interesting to look at culture and go, wow, that's interesting that by him saying, I'm gonna just be true to myself, I'm gonna be authentic, he offered a value to culture that said, okay, that's that's good enough for us, for most.

I know Don Lemon had some issues with it, but anyway, generally it was okay.

Um it appears that his career has survived.

The culture seems to be satisfied with this value of authenticity.

But here's the problem.

What if being true to yourself means that you let all your garbage hang out?

What if being authentic is you being a terrible person?

This is the cultural dilemma.

Our culture prizes authenticity, but when you are authentic in violating a cultural taboo, then you can't be true to yourself.

What if you're a political figure who is authentically who is authentic but gross at the same time?

Does the authenticity satisfy your opponents?

No.

Or what about this issue that I don't know if you're watching in the news, there was this issue with the vice president's wife.

And believe me, this is all going somewhere.

You're like, what is what's this be true to yourself, right?

We're gonna get into the text.

But Karen Pence, she went back to work for a private Christian school where she worked at.

So CNN's take on that, the way that they presented it, was that she's a bigot and she went to go and work for a homophobic school and she hates the gays, and that's that was like CNN's take.

Like maybe we should pull her secret service because it's the federal government paying to protect somebody who's who's a bigot, right?

But wasn't she as a Christian being true to herself?

Isn't a a Christian school that has a uh sexual ethic being true to itself?

Wait a second.

It works for Kevin Hart, but it doesn't work for Karen Pence.

So all that to say our culture does not have a consistent moral compass and only uh uh prizes authenticity as long as it is exercised in the direction of social norms.

Jesus, interestingly enough, also condemns the inauthentic, the disingenuous.

But instead of saying, be true to yourself, Jesus invites humanity to step into the light and to discover that no man is true to the original design.

Do you track with that?

So there is this sense of authenticity, but from Jesus' perspective, as he's appealing for authenticity, he's saying, you step into my light, and all that that my light says to you is that you are fallen from the original design that I intended for you.

Jesus came to restore humanity to be authentically, not just authentic, but to be authentically right.

Authenticity isn't good enough.

You need to be authentically right.

So in our text, we have Jesus here switching gears.

Now you remember back on December 30th was the last time we were in Luke, right?

So we're we're in the last week of Jesus' life, where we saw that Jesus came in on a donkey, uh, then on uh on a like he went back to Bethany to the house of Lazarus.

He's staying overnight at Mary and Martha's house.

He came back into the into Jerusalem proper.

He turned over the money changer's tables on the Temple Mount.

And then what we've spent a couple weeks on, and what we looked at back on the 30th was this interaction that Jesus had with the Pharisees and the scribes.

Remember, there were some paid spies who were kind of put up to trapping Jesus to ask him questions like, hey, is it right to pay your taxes to Caesar or not?

Right?

And Jesus answers the question in a way that shuts down the spies.

And there's a series of questions that they're asking Jesus to really try to trap Jesus because Jesus has crossed the line with them and they want to destroy him.

So we finished off with this question that Jesus poses back to the scribes, and he says, Why does David say in the Psalm, Psalm 108, that the Lord will sit, my Lord will sit at my right hand, right?

The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand till I make your enemies a footstool.

Jesus is his is stretching them, saying, your conception of the Messiah isn't good enough.

You need to understand that it's not this just political next in line, that we're gonna jump from David to Messiah and it's gonna restore the golden age that David kind of ushered in for Israel.

No, we're talking about something completely different, that the covenant that God made with David and the way it's fulfilled is not the way that you're tracking in terms of it being a political fulfillment.

So now Jesus turns his attention back to the disciples.

He's teaching his followers who have been observing this exchange.

And he gives them a warning about the individuals he had just been entangled with.

Now, those were called the teachers of the law.

In your text, in the NIV version, they're called the teachers of the law.

These are the scribes, and they're not identical to the Pharisees, but there was a big overlap.

Like you could be a Pharisee and you could be a scribe.

But it was unlikely that you would be a scribe and a Sadducee, right?

But you could be a scribe and just a scribe by itself.

So Jesus warns, he's warning against these individuals, and he says, beware of them, and then he lists out why, which we're going to look at in a second.

And he says, These men will be punished most severely.

Now, this account that we have is mirrored in Mark chapter 12.

Mark 12 · chapter mention

And if you're familiar with how Scripture was composed, we believe that there was a document called the Q, which was a source document of the sayings of Jesus.

It was kind of like a file folder that was a source.

And we don't have um we don't have that source document, we don't have the cue, but because of the similarity of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we believe that these men were able to access the Q.

And we also think that the Gospel of Mark was written first.

So it's probable that Luke is either drawing this account from the Q document or from Mark chapter 12.

Mark 12 · chapter mention

Now, if you go over to Matthew chapter 23, you have the same story, but it's an entire chapter.

Matthew 23 · chapter mention

It's an entire long indictment where Jesus is like, woe to you scribes and Pharisees, and he lists it out, and it's eloquent and it's beautiful and it's hard-hitting.

But that's not what's in Luke.

Why?

One of the ideas of why there's why Luke is different from Matthew is because Matthew is written to a Jewish audience.

Luke is written to a primarily Gentile audience.

And so this conflict with the scribes would have not been much of an issue for the people living in Rome or the people in the region of Galatia or those in Calasse or Laodicea.

They could have taken the bullet point format that we have here.

So Jesus, in our text that we're looking at, he has five indictments against the scribes.

He says, they walk, they it's really important, not that it's just that they do it, but they like to walk around in flowing robes.

They're in an outfit.

They love to be greeted with respect in the marketplace.

They have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of banquets.

Fourth, they devour widows' houses.

And fifth, for a show, they make lengthy prayers.

So these are the five indictments that Jesus gives against the scribes.

In Matthew 23, there's this summary statement.

He says they do everything to be observed by others.

They are constantly on stage.

They're constantly aware of what other people are thinking.

That's a really tough way to live life.

There's a lot of pressure there, you know.

I think that I, in my personality, as I'm reading this, I'm just thinking and I'm feeling convicted.

Like I'm kind of wired like that.

It would be healthier if I cared less about what other people think, you know.

Um, there's a good healthy aspect like to self-awareness.

I think that's good, which we'll talk about in a second.

But these guys, they were just wired and doing everything.

They're like religion was all about show.

Like the outfit that they wore, the the positions that they held within society, it was all about just a show.

It didn't reflect what was going on internally.

I also just really quickly want to say, just summarize the next scene, because we go into this.

It's just literally in verse 1 of 21 that Jesus looked up and he's in the location on the Temple Mount where the treasury was at.

This was a public space where women could be, where Gentiles could be, and where people would offer.

They would just put money into the treasury.

And Jesus is observing the wealthy putting in their gift, and he's observing the widow, and he says that this widow who would have been socially incidental and easily overlooked, he says she's contributing the most.

So let's talk about the implications of this text.

The scribes that we're looking at here should have been the greatest manifestation of godliness in society.

They had dedicated their lives to understanding scripture.

Everything that we know of as the Old Testament was something that they had memorized, that they had meticulously gone over.

So they served a role in Judaism, a very important role within the synagogue.

So the the whole idea of these um uh faraway centers for um worship on the Sabbath, where you would learn about the Jewish faith, the scribes were instrumental in overseeing the synagogues.

And they should have um had character that manifested God in the midst of society.

Um the law said, here is how you ought to act towards God and your fellow mankind.

I mean, the thing that they were an expert in was like human behavior and human relationship with God, and yet they are living in a way just to kind of stroke their own pride with a human audience.

Jesus says that these particular scribes are going to be punished most severely.

So let's talk for a second.

It's important to talk for a second about God's punishment.

Um, many people who are not Christians are aware that Christianity has this teaching about God's punishment.

Unfortunately, people um have such warped views of God's punishment in all different kinds of directions, and they perceive like how could God be loving and discipline people?

Really, the question is how could he be loving and not disciplined people, right?

But then there's also the whole idea of hell, that there's a final judgment that God um renders to those who ultimately reject him.

But the judgment, the punishment that we see God issuing is um related to revelation.

Not the book of Revelation, but understanding.

You get judged, I get judged based on how much our activity is aligned with what we know.

Also, what do you do with your opportunity?

So God's judgment of us, both non-Christians and Christians, is based on our response to knowledge and opportunity.

Um let me just point, look look in your Bibles really quickly at Romans chapter two.

Romans chapter two.

This um this is how we answer the whole question of like if babies die, do they go to heaven?

This is how we know how to answer that question is from the material found in Romans 1, 2, and 3.

So look at look at um God's righteous judgment.

Now, mind you, when Paul writes this in Romans chapter 2, he's telling a Gentile and a Jewish audience that it's right and good for God to judge, that it's not unfair.

Romans 2 · chapter mention

So you you've heard people in our culture say God's bad, the Christian God is bad, because he judges people, right?

And this is what it says.

This is just a little bit, we'll go maybe a few verses here, four verses.

Uh it says, you therefore have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you're condemning yourself because you pass judgment.

You who pass judgment do the same things.

Same, same with the whole, like when you point a finger through or pointing back at you.

Same idea, right?

Paul's saying, when you judge, you're exercising a capacity to evaluate and you're condemning yourself.

Isn't that interesting?

So he says, now we know that God's judgment against those who do such things is based on truth.

Truth.

Revelation.

So when you, a mere human being, pass judgment on them and yet do the same thing, do you think you will escape God's judgment?

The obvious answer is no.

You're condemning yourself.

Or do you show uh uh contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance, and patience, not realizing that God's kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?

Look at verse 5.

But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you're storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God's wrath when his righteous judgment will be revealed.

The idea is that you got a bank account, and as you reject the revelation of God, you're storing up for you judgment, like in a bank account, judgment against yourself on the day of wrath.

Right?

That's scary.

That's a pretty scary thing to think about, right?

But again, it's according to truth.

God's saying, like, you are demonstrating your capacity to evaluate morality by judging somebody else.

If you've ever judged anybody else, right?

Anybody here never judged anybody?

No.

We've all judged people, right?

We do it every week.

Like we make these evaluative decisions about other people around us.

That guy's a terrible driver.

That person should get a job.

That person, they're they're messed up, they're reaping their rewards, right?

We we make these terrible judgments.

As we do that, as we engage in that, we're condemning ourselves, right?

We're showing that we have the capacity to evaluate right and wrong, and it's based off of that that God is right in judging us, right?

We're making God's case for him.

Isn't that amazing?

Mind-blowing.

So um, Paul, Paul goes on, you can read through this whole thing, and he just explains the judgment of God.

But it is so fascinating to just see how um how God's judgment is justified based off what we know and how we respond to opportunity.

So you take a little child, um, can that child like connect the dots?

Can they do one plus one?

No.

They don't have the ability to reason or rationalize what's going on, right?

So that's why we believe that they don't have, same with a handy, somebody who's handicapped, right?

Somebody who's like adult handicapped may not have the rational capacity to respond.

Same with the guy on the island, right?

The guy on the island is not gonna go to hell according to his inability to repent and believe in Jesus if he doesn't know about Jesus.

Because the judgment of God is in response to the degree of what you know, right?

God, it says in Romans chapter 1, is revealing himself in nature.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

He's revealing himself in the conscience.

So there is a responsibility in all of humanity to respond to the revelation of nature and the revelation of the conscience.

That makes us all guilty to a degree, but even a little child can't process nature, they can't process their their the signals of their conscience early on.

So that's why we believe in the age of accountability, just um just so uh you're kind of aware of that.

So, but let's talk about just the beam accept for a second.

You guys are aware of the the term.

Bemisit.

This the bemisit is the idea of evaluation for Christians.

Because we know that when we accept Jesus Christ as our Savior, that Jesus becomes the envelope, he becomes our covering so that we are not judged, right?

He becomes what we call the propitiatory shield.

And I've used this example before, but the covering of the outside of the space shuttle, those tiles, are called the propitiatory shield tiles, right?

And they're they're meant to shield the people in the vessel as it goes through the re-entry process.

There's this all-intense heat on the outside, and yet the propitiatory shield is protecting, it's protecting the contents of the shuttle.

So Jesus becomes our propitiatory shield from the wrath of God when we when we believe in him, but yet we are going to face a judgment seat.

We're going to be before God.

So when we die, we're going to we're going to appear before the throne of God.

And our acts are going to be evaluated based on what we did in the body.

Let's look, turn with me really quickly to 2 Corinthians.

Turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 5 really quickly.

2 Corinthians 5 · chapter mention

Because here we have, the reason why we're doing this little bit of kind of excurgion here is because here's Jesus who's going to judge the world.

Here's Jesus who's going to judge the world.

He is saying, these people here are going to be judged.

So it's important to us.

Also, you notice the next step, the next step is Jesus is going to evaluate a widow and he's going to say, She's winning.

Right?

So it's important for us to know, it's important for us to know how the judge of the whole earth is going to judge, right?

Because you and I are going to appear before that judgment seat.

Okay, 2 Corinthians 5 says this.

Therefore, we are always confident and know that as long, this is verse 6, we know that as long as we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord, for we live by faith, not by sight.

We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body, and at home with him, with the Lord.

So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from him.

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ.

Do you see that in verse 10?

We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is done for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.

I feel like I've got my friends that are coming on the stage.

My friends that love to come up on the stage.

Okay.

So we're going to appear before the judgment seat of Christ, right?

That's the point.

What is going to happen there at the beam of seat?

When you stand before the beam of seat, we're not going to experience the wrath of God, right?

Instead, we're going to be evaluated off of the things that we've done in the body.

So all of that to say, all of that to say, we're encountering the judge of the whole earth three days, 72 hours before his crucifixion and his resurrection.

Right?

He is going to be given a name above all names.

At his name, every knee will bow.

He is the perfect and just judge of the whole earth.

And here he is saying, of these scribes, that they are going to receive a greater judgment.

Again, you and I are still, when we peer before the Bhima seed, we are going to be judged based off of our knowledge, our opportunities, and our capacity.

Okay?

Even at the Bima seat, you're not going to be judged, you're not going to be thrown into hell.

I see some of you, like, sometimes we're talking throughout the week, maybe in the compassion center, and things are going bad, right?

You're having a bad week and you're like, I don't know what's going to happen to me.

If I die today, I don't know.

You know, maybe God's, you know, mad at me.

No, Romans 8 says that nothing can separate you from the love of God.

Once you've given your life to Christ, you are inside of that shuttle.

The propitiatory shield is going to protect you.

Jesus is your propitiatory shield from the wrath of God.

You are loved by God.

When you get to heaven, you're going to appear before a throne, a bima seat, where what you've done is evaluated.

Okay.

So inner text, Jesus is telling his disciples to beware of the scribes.

They will be punished most severely.

And the reason for their harsh judgment is because of this deep hypocrisy.

Right?

They have the knowledge of what they should be doing, but there's this gap, this massive gap between who they are, who they uh who they are, and what they know, and um how they should be acting.

The word the Greek word hypocrite, right?

It's it's it's comes from acting.

It's the idea to play the role.

To play the role.

It wasn't really a bad word.

It wasn't a negative word.

It just means to be the actor.

Now, there were some people who it said, well, you didn't play the role well, you didn't interpret the role very well.

You probably have had your experiences of seeing really bad acting.

But then we have other good actors, other good hypocrites, like uh Harrison Ford, uh Denzel Washington, Jodie Foster, uh Tom Hanks.

There's lots of great actors that are out there.

Those are hypocrites, they're playing the role.

But then Jesus takes that Greek word that was used at Jesus' time, and he says, You are playing the role well.

You're playing the role well.

He actually affirmed the Pharisees for their tithes.

So he says, like, you're tithing your mint and cumin, but your whole, the inward life is like corrupt.

It's a mess.

It's it's rotten.

It's like he says, like if you if you come across a Pharisee, he says it's like walking over a grave.

Because inside are dead men's bones, right?

It's just this morbid, morbid view.

Jesus is, if you go back to Matthew 23, the whole attack, like the whole thing is just hypocrisy, hypocrisy, hypocrisy.

So this is where we see a difference between human evaluation and God's evaluation, right?

So these scribes had, like, they didn't get their seats of significance because they were uh they did it by force, right?

No, they were given preeminence within their culture because of their culture affirming them.

But yet here's Jesus evaluating them and saying, you're gonna be judged most severely.

You see, it's that's really important for us this morning to recognize is that when God looks at the room, when God looks at our life, when God looks at our neighborhood, when God looks at our churches and our business place, and our like it just he looks at the world.

He looks at it differently than we do.

And we see how wrong, how wrong this culture had it.

That they were giving these seats of prayments to the people that were going to be most judged most severely by Jesus.

There is a gravitational pull to abandon internal character and instead play the part to be the hypocrite, to pretend we are righteous when the truth is we are full of sin.

In 2 Timothy, Paul picks up this theme and he says, he lists out the hypocrites, he talks about them, and the instruction that he gives, he says, you need to avoid them.

Right?

Sometimes we think of like when we talk about discipline in the church and correction, we oftentimes think of Matthew 18, where you go and confront your brother, and if he doesn't listen, you take two or three with you, and you take, you know, the church with you, hopefully he'll listen.

Well, in Timothy, Paul just says, if that person is a hypocrite and they're divisive, just avoid them.

That's the discipline that you render, right?

Just avoid them.

Turn your back on them, right?

So, what's the answer or the anecdote to hypocrisy?

I want to give you four remedies.

Four remedies to hypocrisy.

The first two are found in our text.

The second two are found elsewhere in Scripture.

The first anecdote to hypocrisy is a fear of judgment.

We face a personal evaluation before God, possibly public.

We face this evaluation.

In Luke 24, 7, or Luke 20, verse 47, and James 3.1, we see Scripture testifying that there is a point of judgment.

Luke 20:47

The Bhima seems to be something that happens in public.

And so fear of judgment is the first remedy that we see.

The second that we see here in the text is the affections of our heart need to be changed.

The affections of our, do you see the way that Jesus describes the sin of the Pharisees, the scribes?

He says they love to wear this type of outfit.

They love these chief seats, they love to be greeted in the marketplace.

You see, the affections of their heart, the motives of their heart were wrong.

So the first is fear of judgment.

The second is the second is the affections of the heart.

The third is a self-awareness.

Romans chapter 2, verses 1 through 4.

Romans 2:1–4

That whole passage that we read just a minute ago out of Romans 2 is a great passage about self-awareness, the ability to understand that you, when you judge somebody else, you at the same time have three fingers pointing back at you.

That self-awareness should be a cure to hypocrisy.

And the fourth is peer review.

Peer review is this whole idea in 2 Timothy 3, 2 through 5, Matthew 18, church discipline, the idea of that we have a voice in each other's life.

Right?

In the academic arena, we call it peer review.

Um, but in the church, we call it koinonia or accountability.

That's the fourth aspect, that's the fourth thing that should remedy hypocrisy in our life.

We see how vital this issue is when we turn to the story of Ananias and Sapphira, right?

You guys are familiar with it, but there are a couple that uh, well, it's really cool in the church to sell your property and give the proceeds to the church.

They wanted to do that, they wanted to participate in it, but they misrepresented the amount that was given.

They said, Yeah, we sold our our our property for this much, when they didn't.

And they were struck dead on the spot.

That's how severe hypocrisy was in the early church.

Um, let's finish, let's, let's conclude with this because there's a bunch of stuff that we've gotta, I'm just going too slow for my own notes.

But I I want to finish by just encouraging us, okay?

Because here's the reality.

You're sitting there and you're like, if you're anything like me, you feel uncomfortable with your own hypocrisy.

Because that's the truth.

We're all hypocritical to a degree.

We're all inconsistent with we're unable to practice what we preach.

We're able to sing a good tune, but we can't dance the song, right?

There's just uh there's a lack of proof in the pudding.

Whatever analogy you want to use, we are all hypocritical to a degree, right?

You when you came in here, you came into the fellowship of the hypocrites, right?

Unfortunately, Christians don't do a good job of embracing that truth.

Unfortunately, Christians oftentimes present themselves in public as if they're better than everyone else.

No, that's not the that's not the case.

The thing we have in common is that we're hypocrites and we're a forgiven people.

So we have a cause for putting on a happy face.

Not because we want to pretend that we're okay or think happy thoughts so we can fly with Peter Pan.

No, we want to put on a happy face because we're a people that God knowing our hypocrisy, knowing the gap between our position and our walk, he's forgiven us, right?

And so we are a happy people, not because we're better, but because we're forgiven.

So the first encouragement let me give you is with your standing.

You are in that space shuttle with a perpetuatory shield around you, and you can sing happy day, because the fire of hell is not gonna send your clothes.

You're gonna be with Sadrach and Meshach and Abednego in the fire, preserved from the wrath of God.

The second thing I want to encourage you with is that is based off of Ephesians.

The book of Ephesians has this sit, walk, stand kind of structure.

Watchman Knee kind of outlined it that way.

The reason it says sit, walk, stand is because the first three chapters are about your beautiful, you're seated with Christ in heavenly places.

Everything you possess when you become a Christian.

It says you're a wealthy person.

But then we get to chapter four, and he says, here's how you gotta walk.

Here's how you should walk in your home, here's how you should treat your fellow believers, here's how you behave in the church, here's how you should be as a married person with your kids, with the people, your employees.

And all of a sudden you're like, oh my gosh, my walk falls so short of my position.

Like, I don't walk how I should.

But do you know the posture in between this where you're seated with Christ in heavenly places and how you ought to walk?

It's at the end of chapter three.

Paul says, I bow my knee to the Lord of heaven.

You see, there's a posture between sitting and walking, and it's a posture of prayer.

As we pray and as we as we relate, as we take advantage of the relationship we have with Christ, we have the joy of knowing that we're being transformed into the image of Christ.

We're not this hopeless people, like the Pharisees, like the scribes, with impending judgment.

We know we're in the shuttle with the propitiatory shield protecting us, and we're being shaped into the image of his dear son.

Amen.

Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you.

Thank you that um we will not bear the punishment, the severe punishment that you talked about in this text.

But you're gonna protect us from that because you died on the cross for our sins, that we are hid in you.

Our life is hid in Christ.

God, would you encourage our hearts as we see such a gap between who we are and who you have, what you've given us as our our possession in Christ.

Lord, let our hearts not be discouraged, but let us be encouraged as we are shaped and formed into the image of your dear son.

And we thank you for this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Let's stand together and let's sing this last song.