Luke 11:37-54

Hey, welcome to the Haven City Church podcast.

My name is Josh Travansky.

I'm the pastor of Haven City Church.

We're a brand new church plant down in Fells Point, Baltimore, in the city.

We've been meeting together for the last three months.

The following sermon that you're going to listen to was recorded on July 1st, 2018.

You can find out more about the church by going to the church website, BaltimoreChurch.com.

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God bless.

Okay, we are in Luke chapter 11, not 1 through 13.

Luke 11 · chapter mention

That's the wrong reference there.

That's what happens when you're like up early.

Up early, getting your sermon notes ready.

We're going to be in verse 37.

Luke 11.

Does everybody have a Bible?

We got extra free Bibles when you walk in over here.

So if anybody needs a Bible, raise your hand.

Mr.

Marvin here will get you a Bible.

We'll grab a couple.

Anybody else?

Yeah, there's Bibles.

And if you don't have a Bible, you feel free to take one.

Take it with you on the way.

We've been going through the book of Luke since last uh Christmas.

And we're having a great time.

Alright.

Luke chapter 11, verse 37.

Luke 11:37

This is um this is gonna be an interesting text.

I think every week.

We're in the middle of some some just some deep stuff here, some heart-searching stuff.

So we're gonna read the text and then we're gonna pray.

And and what we're gonna pray is we're gonna just ask God to just speak to us by the Holy Spirit, because He knows us and He knows our story, right?

And so we need the Holy Spirit to speak right into us through this text.

So kicking off in verse 37, chapter 11, verse 37, it says, When Jesus had finished speaking, a Pharisee invited him to eat with him.

So he went in and reclined at the table.

But the Pharisee was surprised when he noticed that Jesus did not first wash before the meal.

Then the Lord said to him, Now then, you Pharisees, clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness.

You foolish people, did not one who made you, or the one who made you, the outside also, did he not make the outside also?

But now as for what is inside you, be generous to the poor, and everything will be clean for you.

Woe to the Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, roux, 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.

Woe to you, Pharisees, because you love the most important seats in the synagogues, and respectful greetings in the marketplace.

Woe to you because you like unmarked graves.

You are like unmarked graves which people walk over without knowing it.

Let's stop there.

Let's stop there, and then we will kind of work our way through this the three second woes in a second.

But but let's pray.

God, we we just um as we go through verse 54 ultimately of this text, we pray that you would speak to us.

You know our stories, you know what's going on in our lives, and God, we pray that you would speak to us by your Holy Spirit.

Each person that's here, would you make yourself known to them in a unique way?

Have mercy upon us, we pray.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

All right, so really quickly, this is the outline for our text.

We're in verse 37, and we're gonna go through 54, and there's three sections to our text.

So you have um the external actions versus internal attitudes.

Then verse 42 through 52 is these six woes to the Pharisees and the scribes, and then verse 53 and 54 is the response.

So let's look at these first, this first section there, verse 37 through 41.

And notice that the basic error of the Pharisees was thinking that righteousness was only a matter of external actions, and they minister they minimized the internal, the internal attitudes.

It's a it's a um the the Pharisees at Jesus' time were the religious leaders.

So imagine Jesus walking around, and and the people that are mainly opposed to Jesus' ministry are the Pharisees, the most religious, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and then we encounter the scribes.

These are the legal experts of Jesus' day, the ones that don't know like the Constitution of the United States.

That's not what they're talking about, the legal experts.

They know the Old Testament to the letter of the law, down to just the smallest detail.

And so Jesus is confronting them.

They end up in the setting where there is a meal taking place, and Jesus is strikingly harsh in dealing with them.

So this first issue that Jesus brings up is this whole issue of the internal, what's going on internally.

You'll notice the language throughout the text here is this picture.

The first idea here is this, you know, he says, you wash the outside, you wash the outside of the cup or the dish, but you leave the inside a complete mess.

In other words, the way that these Pharisees, these Pharisees were just focused on the external, what they were doing externally.

Over in uh Mark chapter 7, 1 through 5, we get this described.

Mark 7 · chapter mention

Look over at Mark chapter 7.

Mark 7 · chapter mention

Turn in your Bibles there.

Mark chapter 7, 1 through 5.

Mark 7 · chapter mention

Mark 7, 1 through 5.

It says, The Pharisees, I may have a slide for this actually.

The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law had come from Jerusalem and they gathered around Jesus, and they saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were defiled, that is, that were unwashed.

The Pharisees and all the Jews did not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing holding to the traditions of the elders.

When they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash.

They observe many other traditions, such as washing cups and pitchers and kettles.

So the Pharisees and the teachers of the law asked Jesus, why don't your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands?

Do you think that the Pharisees were just really clean?

Is that why they did this?

No.

No, no.

The reason was it was because they they thought that they were encountering Gentiles as they were walking through the marketplace, and that's what was defiling people as they kind of as they went through the marketplace.

So it was a unique setting, and the Pharisees felt like we better wash ourselves clean from just maybe we touched a Gentile as we went through the market, right?

So it was this focus on this religious act.

In fact, the way that they would wash their hands was so that the water, the drips of water would run back down into the bowl.

That was the whole focus, it was just on trying to keep the um the defilement of the Gentiles off of them.

And Jesus is rebuking them, saying, Your focus, your focus is on an external religion.

An external religion.

Here's some principles that we can glean from this really quickly before we get into the six woes.

First of all, religious traditions are typically carried out in the physical world.

I don't know.

We've talked about traditions a lot here.

Maybe you come from a religious background that uses trinkets, whether it's uh wearing a cross around your neck or burning candles or some kind of like statue or idol or some kind of special garment that you wear.

There's all kinds of religious observances that take place that are physical, external observances of religion.

Did anybody have that background?

Anybody been a part of something like that?

Yeah.

So a couple of you.

And what Jesus is saying about these Pharisees is like, hey, what's going on inside of you is what matters.

You've got this whole external kind of showiness about your religious faith, and what God cares about is your heart.

I have it written here, it's that it's easy to perform those traditions and leave our inner heart issues untouched.

And we can do these religious observances absolutely convinced that we are the most spiritual people on the planet.

Do you know that it's easy to go, it's easy to go to church?

You can go and you can do the rigor moral, something that seems religious, and then you can have this sense that you're a spiritual person because of those observances.

That's what the Pharisees were doing.

They walked higher than everyone else at their time in society.

They looked down their nose spiritually at everybody else because they thought they were better because of the external things that were going on in their life.

And yet Jesus is addressing them and saying, the internal, the internal is what matters before God.

Which is which is difficult.

I remember when um when I was 14, I was on a baseball team, and my um coach, my baseball coach, and my assistant coach, they used to trade um porn videos with each other.

And um is that a little too graphic for you?

So they I and I remember as a 14-year-old that um they would trade these porn videos, their libraries, with each other, and then I distinctly remember them saying, um, well, God doesn't really care um uh about this.

He only cares about the physical.

As long as it's just window dressing and it's like going to the mall, you know, looking through the window, as long as I'm, you know, not doing anything physically, then it's okay.

That's the same type of excuse that the Pharisees were kind of making in regards, they just thought, hey, as long as I'm doing my ceremonial washings, what's going on inside doesn't matter before God.

And Jesus is addressing that directly.

He's saying, God can look straight through you and he knows the condition of your heart.

Jesus' remedy is to identify the root, the inner issue, and call out radical obedience.

What God is looking for in us is he's looking for our hearts.

You remember David, why David pleased God?

He pleased God because of the condition of his heart, right?

He he bared his heart before the Lord.

So God is looking at your heart and my heart this week.

He's not looking at how well you dress.

You guys dress good for church today.

You look good, but that's not how God's judging you, you know?

He's not judging you off that.

He's not judging me off of being a pastor or the books I read or going to a pastor's conference.

He's dealing with me in the same way he's dealing with you, just what's going on in the heart.

Okay, let's go through these six woes.

All right?

Here's the first one.

Woe to you, Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, roux, 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.

So there was this tithe.

They were they were taking, they were literally growing like coriander.

You know, if you have cilantro and a cilantro tree or a plant grows up, what it generates is a coriander seed.

That's basically like if you let the weed grow.

And let's say you can go and pick ten of these coriander seeds off the top of your cilantro plant.

These Pharisees were taking one seed and giving it to God and nine seeds to them.

It was this meticulous counting out, right?

Yeah, it was fascinating.

And yet Jesus calls them on the carpet and says, You're you're tithing, you know, your your one leaf of mint and keeping nine, your rue, your roo, your cumin, um, but you're neglecting justice and the love of God.

Like those are some big things to neglect, huh?

Like you're totally missing justice.

You're missing loving God, and yet they have this sense of self-righteousness.

And so Jesus said to them, you should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone.

A woe, when Jesus says woe, it's like when you go to a gas station and they have that like diamond-shaped sign, and it says, Don't smoke here, or you're gonna blow up the gas station, you know?

That's what a woe is, right?

It's it's like an warning sign.

And so Jesus is basically throwing up these six warnings, saying, Hey, you Pharisees need to take heed to yourself.

You need to really take account of your life and be careful that you're not self-righteous.

And in this way, what they were doing was they were being meticulous in one area and then completely missing righteousness in another area.

Let's go to um, so here's what it says.

They were confident in their accomplishments of tiny religious acts, while much more important religious activities were completely absent in their life.

In James chapter 5 or James chapter 1, what does it say is true religion?

James 5 · chapter mention James 1 · chapter mention

To care for the fatherless, to look after the widows, right?

That's one of the reasons I love the fact that God's opened up a door for us as a church to care for the poor, right?

That's what we're we're trying as a church to be a um a blended church of both poor and wealthy, where God is providing for both, right?

It's this ecosystem where people's needs are being met.

And that I think is um that sh that has to flow from the heart, right?

It's one thing to tithe some grain out.

It's another thing to give your life, right?

To contribute your life to the people that are around you.

So the next woe is this you fair, you woe to you, Pharisees, because you love the most important seats in the synagogues and respectful greetings in the marketplace.

So the Pharisees would have like designated seats places to sit in the synagogue and uh a notable position.

So translate that over to our world.

When somebody recognizes you on the street, doesn't that make you feel good?

Right?

Now imagine being somebody who's recognized on the street because you are you are apparently like religious, you know, or you're a religious leader.

And Jesus is saying, you're resting in that.

Like you're you're you're comforting yourself, you're having a sense of um that you're all good because of these greetings that you're receiving publicly.

They thought they were spiritually superior because of their public reputation, signified by seating arrangements and greetings.

Here's the thing God is looking at your and mine heart, right?

He cares about our hearts and where we're at with him.

Maybe you're not, maybe this isn't you.

Maybe you do not have a place of preeminence within culture.

And here's the thing, take that as maybe a gift, right?

Because God draws close to the humble, he's able to give grace to the humble.

And it can be a it can be a stumbling block to be having, you know, this great reputation or having a special seat to sit in.

No, God, God's looking at you, He cares about you and He wants to work in your life regardless of your place within society.

All right, here's the third woe.

Woe to you because you are like unmarked grave, which people walk over without knowing.

So what's what's up with that?

What's going on here?

So you have Jesus likening these Pharisees to a grave that's lost its gravestone.

Well, you have to know the culture, right?

What's the culture for the Jew?

You walk through a graveyard or you walk over a grave and you become defiled, right?

You become unclean, ceremonially unclean.

And so Jesus is saying that by people having contact with you, it's like just all of a sudden becoming defiled accidentally by walking over a grave.

Can you imagine?

I mean, you go back to the Levitical law, right?

In the Levitical law, if you were defiled, you had to go through a whole process of offering a sacrifice in the temple and a ceremonial cleansing that you had to do.

It was a pain if you became unclean.

And yet Jesus is rebuking the Pharisees, saying that you are like an unmarked grave.

By coming in contact with you, by just coming in contact with you, you're becoming, uh you're making people defiled.

You know, in our um in our day and age, it's easy to be in the church and to be duped in your relationships with Christians and to end up poisoned.

I want to I want to give you six, six people, six types of people, even within the church, that will spiritually poison you, that we are warned about.

Can you imagine going to church or being around other Christians and being spiritually poisoned?

Well, the Bible warns about that.

The first is the legalist.

We we hear about the legalist in Galatians chapter 2.

Galatians 2 · chapter mention

That's a person that still thinks that they can, even though they've accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior, they think that the rest of their life is to be done, um, that they're to relate to God by doing the law.

That they get saved by faith, but then their relationship with God is now exists within the context of keeping um of keeping the law.

So it's a focus on um, you know, I'm not doing this and I'm not doing that.

That person, and and sometimes you'll encounter that person and they'll come up to you and they just want to, they want to bring the law into your life, right?

They want to say, like, this is what um this is what you can't do, right?

This is uh this is the limits.

And sometimes that person may even give you extra limits.

Um in my own life, I've encountered people who are, you know, maybe the laws again, their laws like, oh, you can't get tattoos.

You know, that's that's that's not something that you can do, you know, or maybe another law that somebody may come up with is oh, you know, you gotta make sure that you eat in this particular way.

You know, if you eat sugar, uh, that's not good.

You're not honoring the body that God gave you, right?

Laws can be developed in all kinds of crazy ways, but this is the thing.

We do not please God by following the law, right?

Why is God happy with your life?

Why is God happy with you?

Why is God delight in you?

Because he looks at you and he sees that Jesus has forgiven you of your sins.

That Jesus has paid for your forgiveness.

So when he sees you, he sees you as covered by the blood of Jesus.

It's this amazing thing.

So be careful the legalist.

The second is the moralist.

A moralist is more a focus on you gotta do this, right?

The legalist is like, don't do that, don't do that.

The moralist is still saying the way to relate to God is you've got to include these three things, right?

You gotta include these ten things.

They got a list for you, man.

All right?

And you've ran into these people as well.

They will poison you.

Here's why that's poison.

The reason that that's poison is because God is pleased with you because of Jesus.

He absolutely loves you because of Jesus.

And if you start thinking that God's happy with you because of the good things that you do, what happens when you stop doing those good things?

Yeah, it takes your focus off Jesus.

Yeah, it's poison.

In the early church, over and over again, the new the baby church had to be warned be careful, be careful, do not get caught up.

Do not get caught up with the legalists or the moralists.

Here's another one it's the know it all.

The know it all.

This is this is found in 1 Corinthians 8 1.

1 Corinthians 8 1, it says.

Knowledge puffs up, but love what?

It builds up, it edifies, right?

You may know your theology, you may understand Christian truth, you may be able to teach the claim one class, right?

But if you don't have love, you don't have anything.

And man, if you are that Christian, man, if you're the Christian that is the know it all, you got an answer, right?

You're you're quick to speak and tell people the Bible verses.

Woo! You aren't helping anybody.

You are not.

Yeah, it's poison.

It's poison, right?

Okay, the fourth, the fourth is a sensationalist.

The sensationalist is found in Colossians 2, 16 and 17.

The sensationalist spiritualizes everything.

The pepperoni pizza is spiritualized, right?

And this holiday is spiritualized.

The Christmas tree in the shape of the cross is spiritualized, like I told last week, right?

It's just everything's sensationalized.

And again, it can be a poison in your relationship with God.

Then the fifth is the critiquer, the critiquer who thinks they are more spiritual than everybody else because they can identify what's wrong with that church and what's wrong with that church and what's wrong with that church.

Man, we as Christians are so good at cannibalizing themselves.

It's like once a person is successful, once a person is successful, it's like, oh, something's got to be wrong with that guy.

You know, oh, there's something wrong with that church over there.

The critiquer.

Man, Lord save us from being the critiquer.

Because, and and this is the thing, the critiquers that I've met, they're oftentimes online, right?

They sit in their pajamas in their mom's basement and they write these blogs about how everybody else, they like they shoot in the 360 degrees and they can never attend any church because no church is good enough for them.

They're the critiquer, and man, they think they have this sense of self-righteousness that comes from their ability to critique others.

Whew.

I think Jesus said, take the the speck, the plank out of your own eye before you start operating on other people's specs.

And the sixth, the sixth is the cynic.

The cynic is the person who just is kind of like the Eeyore Christian, like oh humbug.

They're the opposite of the sensationalist.

It could never be God, right?

God could never work.

They are like a wet blanket to every good thing that God wants to do in your life, and that's poison, right?

That's poison.

Why are we talking about this?

Because Jesus says that there are these unmarked graves.

He says to the Pharisees, man, you can become a self-righteous person like the Pharisees so easily.

Any of those six directions, you can run and you can have a sense of self-righteousness.

And it is dangerous.

It is dangerous to the people that you are around.

These are the people.

Who's Jesus hard on?

Jesus isn't really hard on he's like, he's merciful to the woman caught in adultery, but he is hammering the Pharisees.

Right?

This is Jesus at a dinner party.

This is rough.

This is some rough ground, man.

Okay, we got to keep going here.

We got to keep going.

We got three more woes, okay?

So this is the one we just covered.

Let's go.

That's the ceremonial uncleanness.

Okay, fourth woe.

Jesus replies to the experts.

Because the experts in verse 45, they speak up and they're like, hey, what about us?

What about us?

And Jesus says to them, 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.

Here's the idea.

They're creating laws that were difficult to follow, but didn't even observe them on their own.

They didn't even observe them on their own.

They didn't have any skin in the game.

I'm reading a book right now.

It's not written by a Christian guy, but he he um he it's all it's called Skin in the Game, and it's the asymmetry of life.

And what he's saying is like uh he's basically saying you need to in your life listen to people that have skin in the game.

And he's complaining about higher education, which I served in for 15 years.

And he says the acimedician or the academic, they are a dangerous person to follow because they don't necessarily have skin in the game because they're sitting in the classroom.

And so he's he goes, it's a lengthy book that's uh really fascinating.

But he's he's saying you you want to be in close proximity to people at risk.

How do we translate this?

So basically, in your own walk with God, don't take advice from people who have no tail.

Why do I say a tail?

It'll take a little bit of unpacking.

When I was a kid, my dad said to me, if somebody walks up to you and says, You got a tail, then you say, You're nuts.

But if five people walk up to you and say you have a tail, then you go find the mirror as fast as possible.

Right?

Right.

So there's there's um evidence.

There's evidence in what other people are saying.

I want to find people with a tail, right?

That there's as there's there's um proof.

There's proof in their life.

There's a lot of people know how to talk.

You get a lot, you you could go out there.

I mean, I think throughout the day out the out the day in the compassion center, I get all kinds of spiritual advice.

But to me, it's like show me the life.

Show it to me in your life, right?

You want to tell me you want to be in ministry, you want to tell me you you have a heart for God, show me it in your life, right?

You gotta have skin in the game.

I want to see you doing it.

Be a tactician or a practitioner, right?

And not a theoretician, right?

Those are the people that I want to receive wisdom from.

Fifth is well, this is this is um this is a great passage.

Do you know Matthew 11, 28?

Are you familiar with that passage?

That God wants to give you rest.

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

Right?

This group, they wanted to put burdens, the scribes wanted to put burdens on these people that they just they themselves wouldn't bear.

That's why I put this up here.

Jesus is all about giving you rest.

So if you're around people that are tripping you out, you'll notice my leadership style is pretty loose.

Right?

You're gonna show up late?

Great, show up late.

You want to help?

Great, come on and help.

But um I think I'm I'm almost too loose sometimes because I I had some abusive ministry settings that I served in where the people were, where the one particular pastor was really just uh just a burden, right?

It's too too uh too much of a trip.

I think that Jesus will motivate and work in your life.

He's working in my life.

I expect uh I expect God will give you the burden that you're supposed to bear.

We got to keep going here.

Verse 47, 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.

So 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 Zachariah, who was killed between the altar and the sanctuary.

Yes, I tell you, this generation will be held responsible for it all.

Go back and read through this, but essentially, this is this is it.

These scribes were celebrating past spiritual heroes who were martyred, but they were actively engaged in martyring present-day spiritual heroes.

They had this whole rigmarole where they were like leaving flowers at the gravestones of past spiritual heroes while they were actively rejecting John the Baptist and would then crucify Jesus.

It's ironic.

It's ironic.

Jesus is saying that you are a walking contradiction in your spiritual righteousness or your self-righteousness.

And sixth, woe to you, experts in the law, because you've taken away the key to knowledge, you yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who are entering.

Here's what he means.

Not only did they fail to live as God's as the word of God prescribed, but they were keeping others from knowing the simple truths of the scriptures.

You would have thought that an expert would have taken it upon themselves to enlighten those who were receiving from them, to teach those who wanted to receive.

And yet, instead of teaching, they were making it comp more complicated than it ought to have been.

This happened way back in the Catholic Church when the Catholic Church was only in Latin and they did not want to see the Bible translated into English.

They didn't want scripture to be um accessible to common man.

And God wants, he wants people to understand the truth.

So praise God that we have, that we now live in a day and age where we can get an English translation of the Bible.

So Derek was talking, you should talk to Derek.

Derek wants to take a group down to the Bible Museum, which is an awesome, would be an awesome time down in Washington, D.C.

It's free for anybody that wants to go.

And one of the things that they have, you want to go?

Okay.

One of the things that they have is a room where they have brown books that represents all the languages that have had in the world that have had scripture translated.

It's like a wall as long as this that are just brown volumes representing different languages.

And then they have another wall on this side that are all yellow volumes, and all those yellow volumes represent all the languages that the Bible has not yet been translated into.

It's a gift that you have the ability to read the Bible in English.

Alright, let's let's wrap things up here.

This is the final verse that we're looking at.

When Jesus went outside, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law began to oppose him fiercely and to be besiege him with questions, waiting to catch him in something he might say.

No kidding.

I mean, this was a pretty contentious moment for Jesus.

I mean, talk about calling the kettle black.

Jesus has directly addressed the Pharisees and the scribes, and we would definitely say now that their relationship becomes contentious.

So we're moving towards the cross.

These are in the final months of Jesus' ministry on earth, where we're at in the text here.

And uh Jesus did not win friends or influence people by his uh six woes, did he?

Here's a few points.

Jesus is the antithesis of what is warned against here.

If you were to take the six woes, let's just go through this really quickly.

First of all, with the first woe, it was this woe against this accomplishing, uh they were doing the tiny religious acts, they were tithing mint and cumin.

But for Jesus, he fulfilled the law and showed perfect love and justice.

So the Pharisees were missing love and justice, but Jesus was perfect love and justice.

Then the second point, Jesus was secure in his relationship with the Father.

He did not depend upon a public reputation or special greetings.

You remember they had the seats, they relied on the special greetings, but Jesus was secure.

Jesus was secure in his relationship with the Father.

Jesus did not accomplish his ministry by gaining a good or a great by gaining fame.

Right?

Isn't that interesting?

Jesus did not need to have a special seat in the synagogue.

He didn't need to make synagogue people happy in order to accomplish God's mission.

Amazing.

Amazing.

Because we oftentimes think in order for God to use me, I gotta go through this seminary or I need to fill, you need to follow this thing over here.

No, God can work through you.

You need to be secure in your relationship with God.

That's the fundamental thing.

Third, Jesus is the only ex is the only accessible and available agent for spiritual purity.

You remember that they were like unmarked graves that were defiling people, but yet when we come to Jesus, rather than being defiled by Jesus, we're made clean by Jesus.

So again, an amazing antithesis.

Four more or three more.

Jesus fulfilled the burden of the law and calls us to take up his easy yoke.

The scribes they're burdening people with the law, and here's Jesus unburdening you and I, saying, Let me let you know, let me take your yoke or take my yoke upon you, which is light.

Amazing.

Fifth, Jesus was the ultimate fulfillment of the prophets being rejected and killed.

So here they are, they're celebrating their past history and rejecting prophets.

Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of prophets being killed.

He is the prophet to ultimately be killed.

And sixth, Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, right?

These scribes were making it difficult to see the way.

Jesus is the way.

Jesus is the way.

He wants to be for you and I the guiding light.

Here's what I'd say in landing the plane, because we're we're over time here.

Spiritual righteousness or self-righteousness may feel good, but it is the primary thing that will keep you and I from experiencing the work of God in our life.

Do you understand that?

Walk in humility before God, be humble before God, and be on guard.

Be on guard against a spiritual self-righteousness, a sense of well-being, that you've got your act together.

We don't.

Why does God love us?

He loves us because Jesus died on the cross for your sin and for my sin.

He is absolutely in love with you.

You have the favor of God today.

If you have placed your faith in Jesus Christ, you've been translated from death to life, and the favor of God is upon you.

He's not looking to you.

So you say, well, Josh, where does the where does tithing, where does, where do these acts work fit in?

Well, the place in which our good works fit in is obedient.

Now that God saved us, we want to obey him because we love him.

And he empowers us to obey him by his spirit.

But when we do those things, he doesn't love us more.

He doesn't love us anymore because we do those things.

But he loves us because of what Jesus has done.

Amen?

Amen.

Let's pray.

Lord, we um we uh can so easily become proud.

I know I can.

In my heart, I can become just secure in things other than Jesus.

And I and I can become um just self-righteous.

I know I I've been the legalist at point at times, I've been the moralist.

Lord, I've I've been the cynic at times.

Lord, I I I've been the um, I don't know if I've been much of a sensationalist, but those are irritating too.

God, forgive us.

Forgive us for getting off off course.

And we pray that you would just root us in Jesus, that we would be humble before you and that we would just trust you, that we'd obey you because we love you.

Let's uh let's stand and we're gonna sing one one more song, and then we'll close out with a final word of prayer.