Dirty Dishes, Clean Hearts

We read the word of the Lord from Luke chapter 11, beginning at verse 37, concluding with verse 54. And as Jesus spoke, a certain Pharisee besought him to dine with him, and he went in and sat down to eat. And when the Pharisee saw it, he marveled that he had not first washed before dinner, referring of course to the ceremonial washings.

And the Lord said unto him, Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter, but your inward part is full of extortion and wickedness. Ye fools, did not he that made that which is without make that which is within also? But rather give alms of such things as ye have. Or another way to read that would be, but dedicate once and for all your inner self to God, and behold, all things are clean unto you.

But woe unto you Pharisees, for ye tithe mint and rue and all manner of herbs, and pass over justice and the love of God. These ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. Woe unto you Pharisees, for ye love the chief seats in the synagogues and salutations in the marketplaces.

Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for ye are as graves which appear not, and the men that walk over them are not aware of them. Then answered one of the lawyers and said unto him, Master, thus saying, thou reproachest us also. And he said, Woe unto you also, ye lawyers, for ye load men with burdens, grievous to be born, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers.

Woe unto you, for ye build the sepulchers of the prophets, and your fathers kill them. Truly ye bear witness that ye allow the deeds of your fathers, for they indeed killed them, and ye build their sepulchers. Therefore also said the wisdom of God, I will send them prophets and apostles, and some of them they shall slay and persecute, that the blood of all the prophets which was shed from the foundation of the world may be required of this generation, from the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the temple.

Verily I say unto you, It shall be required of this generation. Woe unto you lawyers, for ye have taken away the key of knowledge, ye entered not in yourselves and them that were entering in, ye hindered. And as he said these things unto them, the scribes and the Pharisees began to oppose him vehemently, and to provoke him to speak of many things, laying weight for him and seeking to catch something out of his mouth that they might accuse him.

God wants both the inside and the outside to be clean. One of today's most successful rackets is the selling of counterfeit art. Unsuspecting collectors have lost millions of dollars buying what they thought were the old masters, only to discover they were new counterfeits.

Of course, that would be an embarrassing thing, to go to an auction and purchase a painting and bring it home and show it to your friends and tell them you've got something very valuable and then find out you have been tricked. Because none of us wants to pay for a counterfeit, whether it's a counterfeit painting or a misrepresented merchandise or an automobile that the dealer changed the mileage on. Nobody wants to pay for a counterfeit.

But worse than counterfeit merchandise is a counterfeit life. And the price that we pay for living a counterfeit life is far greater than any price we would pay for counterfeit merchandise. We can shrug our shoulders at the merchandise and say, well, I got taken in.

But, my friends, if we are living a counterfeit life, we pay for it dearly. That's the whole theme of our Lord's little message when he had lunch with one of the Pharisees, as recorded in Luke 11. When our Lord came in, he watched the Pharisees go through their ritual washings.

And they dipped their hands into the water so far, and then they had to turn them over and allow the water to trickle down only so far. They had a regular ritual they went through to purify themselves before they ate. Our Lord didn't do this.

He deliberately went to the table, reclined in preparation to eat. And, of course, they were offended. And our Lord took this as the opportunity to talk with them about the great sin of hypocrisy.

Now the word hypocrite used to be a good word. The Greek word from which we get our English word hypocrite used to be just a very fine word. It simply meant an actor, a play actor.

And whenever they had the dramas in Greece, these men would put on certain masks that would indicate they were either a god or a soldier or a villain of some kind. And the word that was used was the word hypocrite. The word originally meant somebody who interprets, somebody who explains.

And so an actor was someone who took somebody's play or poem and interpreted it. He acted it out. He helped you to understand it.

But over the years, this word began to be applied to those who pretend to be more spiritual than they really are. Now the word hypocrite is never applied by the Lord Jesus to any of his disciples. He warned them against it, in fact, in the very next chapter.

No sooner was the meal over and a crowd had gathered together that our Lord began to speak to his disciples and he said to them, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. He warned them about hypocrisy. He never called Peter a hypocrite because Peter denied him.

He never called Peter a hypocrite because Peter lost his faith at one point and began to sink. You see, a hypocrite is not somebody who fails. I've had Christians say to me, oh, pastor, I'm not going to come to church anymore.

I feel like such a hypocrite. A hypocrite is somebody who deliberately deceives. None of us lives up to all that he knows.

There's not a one of us here today who really has laid hold of all that we know. That's not hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is trying to make people think we're more spiritual than we really are.

It's pretending. It's hiding inward sin by outward culture and religious deeds like washing your hands the accepted way. And so the theme of this whole section is the high cost of hypocrisy.

And Jesus warns us that we must flee from a life of masquerading and pretending because of the losses that we experience when we practice hypocrisy. From this section, I want to point out five losses that you and I experience if we start to live a life of pretending and masquerading. First, we lose our integrity.

In verses 39 through 41, our Lord is talking about cups and saucers. He says, oh, you Pharisees, you wash your hands on the outside, but inside you aren't clean. We just came from the synagogue service.

This was the meal that they had at lunchtime after the synagogue service. We've just come from the synagogue service. And there you prayed and you heard the word of God.

You even sat in those special seats at the front looking at the congregation. You were so close to the law that is kept up in that place where the seats are. But he said, you're washing outwardly.

You've never been cleansed inwardly. He said, here's a cup. Do you wash the cup on the outside and leave the cup dirty on the inside? Do you ever sit down at a restaurant table and have a waitress bring you a glass of water and here was lipstick on the inside of the glass? That has happened to me on more than one occasion.

You lose your appetite. And our Lord says, you wash the outside of the cup, but you don't clean the inside. He's saying that the outside and the inside need to be together.

Integrity. That's a good word. The word integrity comes from the word integer.

An integer is a whole number, not a fraction. And God wants us to be whole numbers. God wants us to be together.

In fact, Jesus had been talking about this before the Pharisee invited him. Verse 34 of Luke chapter 11. The lamp of the body is the eye.

In other words, your eye brings the light into your body. Therefore, when thine eye is sound, thy whole body is full of light. But when thine eye is evil, thy body is full of darkness.

He's talking about people who have double vision. He's saying when your eyes are good, you see straight, your outlook determines your outcome. And the way you look at life determines what's on the inside.

But a double-minded man is unstable in all of his ways. And if you're looking this way and that way at the same time, you're bringing in darkness. Take heed, therefore, that the light which is in thee be not darkness.

If thy whole body therefore be full of light, having no part dark. That's integrity. Having no part dark, that is integrity.

And the word of God is telling us here that when we start practicing duplicity, deception, masquerading, then we lose our integrity. Now, it's a serious thing for us to lose our integrity because God made us to be one. Verse 40, ye fools did not he that made that which is outside make that which is inside also.

Did you ever stop to think that all of life comes from the inside? When God made this world, He made it in such a way that all life comes from the inside. The spring will soon be upon us, we trust. And we're going to see life coming from the inside out.

How do you make your fruit what it ought to be? Make sure the roots are what they ought to be. How do you make the flowers what they ought to be? Make sure the bulbs are what they ought to be. Life flows from the inside out.

And our Lord is saying here to you and me, if you practice one thing on the outside and practice something else on the inside, you're fighting against creation. God didn't make you live that way. That's why hypocrites, masqueraders have physical and emotional consequences.

The outside and the inside are fighting each other. This explains why people who, when they give their hearts to Jesus Christ, experience a new wholeness. They aren't fighting themselves anymore.

The tragedy of a hypocritical life is you lose your integrity. You know what happens? First, it breaks your relationship with God. Then it breaks your relationship with yourself.

Then it breaks your relationship with reality. Many people who are living a life of masquerading can't get along with themselves or other people. It's tragic.

It's a costly thing, my friend, for us to practice masquerading and pretending because we lose our integrity. Now, there's a second loss that we incur. It's found in verses 42 and 43.

We lose our perspective. Here were the Pharisees now, and they tithed everything they got. When they cut the little herbs in their garden, they would take those herbs and they would divide them up so that one-tenth went to the Lord.

There's nothing wrong with tithing. Not a thing wrong with it, provided we aren't majoring on the minors and minoring on the important things. Our Lord says you're so careful about tithing your herbs and tithing your vegetables, but that's not what God's looking for.

He quotes here from Micah chapter 6, verses 7 and 8. I owe God than it is to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with my God. Many of God's people have used their checkbook as a substitute for spirituality. I have paid my tithe.

I have given my offering. Now I can live the way I please. The tragedy is we lose our perspective when we start living a hypocritical life.

I'll tell you why. We're so wrapped up in pretending. We have to spend so much time and energy and power masquerading.

We have no energy left to relate to reality like we should. It's interesting that people who practice pretending, little things become very big. The least little thing turns them off.

The least little thing makes them stumble and they neglect the big things of the Christian life. Watch out for that person who is going with a fine tooth comb, looking for the little details, who forgets things like being kind to people, doing the thing that is right and just, showing love. Our Lord warns us here that when we start living a false life, we start having false values.

And things that used to be so important to us aren't important anymore. And things that are important to God aren't important to us. But little minor details.

The Pharisees, you will recall, strained out the gnats, said Jesus, and they swallowed the camels. Now they didn't have pure water like we have. Come to think of it, they may have had better water than some of us have today.

But they strained it and they would strain out the gnat. But here was a camel swimming around in the glass and they'd swallow the camel. They took their water with the camel and never thought a thing about it.

This is what happens when you start living a life of hypocrisy. You lose touch with reality and the minors become major and the important things are forgotten. Well, there's a third loss that we incur when we start practicing pretense and hypocrisy.

We lose our integrity. The outside looks clean, but the inside is dirty. We lose our perspective.

And thirdly, we lose our godly influence. Our Lord makes a very, very sobering statement in verse 44. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, play actors, for you are as graves which appear not.

And the men that walk over them are not aware of them. Now, you must remember that in the Old Testament law, God commanded his people not to be defiled. God had many, many laws back in the Old Testament just to teach his people to keep clean, keep clean, keep clean.

And one of them was this. Don't touch a dead body. Don't touch a dead man's bones.

And don't touch a tomb or a grave. Now, for this reason, the Jewish people used to whitewash their tombs and they used to mark their graves because if a Jewish man were going through a field and he walked upon a grave, he was defiled for seven days and he had to go through a certain ritual. And so they were always careful where they walked.

And that's a good thing to do. Be careful the way you walk. In fact, Paul says that.

Walk circumspectly. In this world, there are many places and many ways that lead to defilement. Don't get dirty.

So it's a good law. Well, says Jesus, these Pharisees are like graves that aren't marked. In other words, the people who looked at the Pharisees said, oh, if I could only be like them, they're so spiritual.

And actually, they were full of dead men's bones. Something else. These Pharisees always wanted the chief seats in the synagogues.

Verse 43, when they walked into the synagogue, the people would move and say, oh, we feel honored to give you the best seat. And actually, says Jesus. Now, please believe this.

Actually, said Jesus, everybody who touches you is defiled. That's one of the awful consequences of hypocrisy. People touch us and they think they are being blessed when actually they are being defiled.

And the defilement doesn't show up right away. That defilement stays there and grows. That's why Jesus, in chapter 12, verse 1, compares hypocrisy to leaven, yeast.

Now, you know, during Passover season, the Jews were not supposed to have yeast in their home. It was a symbol of sin. Yeast is small.

You put a little bit of it into the meal, it grows, it pollutes, it poisons. Really, you've got to put the loaf in the fire for the heat to drive out the poison and it puffs up. And sin is this way.

A little bit of hypocrisy gets into a person's life. It grows, it puffs up. It defiles.

It takes a while for it to happen, but it happens. And our Lord is saying, you know, when you practice hypocrisy, you lose your godly influence. My friend, one of the greatest blessings we have is the blessing of a godly influence.

Rather than have a million dollars in the bank, I would much rather be able to be a blessing to people. I would much rather people say, that man encourages me. He helps me.

But what an awful thing it would be if you touched my life and you were defiled by it and didn't even know it. Now, it gets worse. You see, in verse 44, he compares them to graves that defile.

But down in verse 46, he says that they are burdening people. I have a friend, and some of you know who he is, and he prays every day, dear Lord, help me today not to add to anybody's burdens. That's a good prayer.

There are some people who manufacture burdens. You know, when you and I are walking with God, we're helping people carry their burdens. When we are pretending and masquerading, we are adding to people's burdens.

Think of the burdens that people have to carry because of our hypocrisy. And our Lord is saying to you and me, why don't you go out into the world and be an influence to help people, to help carry their burdens, to make life easier for them? But you get a hypocritical son or daughter, and you've got parents who are burdened. You get a hypocritical husband, you've got a wife who's burdened, or vice versa.

And oh, what a tragedy it is. First, we are graves that defile secretly. Then we are people who add to the burdens.

But it gets worse than that, because down in verses 47 through 51, He talks about murder. He talks about people being killed. He talks about tombs.

He says, you scribes and Pharisees and you lawyers, you don't really want God's truth. By the way, the word lawyer here has nothing to do with our lawyers today. When the Lord Jesus said, woe unto you lawyers, He wasn't talking about the American Bar Association.

He was talking about those experts in the law who wrote the theology that made it easy for the Pharisees to be hypocrites. There is a theology of hypocrisy. You can twist the word of God around and change the word of God, and you can write a theology of masquerading.

That's what the lawyers did. And this lawyer said, Lord, when you criticize them, you're talking about us. He said, that's right, I am talking about you, because what you believe determines how you behave.

And he says, not only do you people act like graves that defile, and you put burdens on people, but actually you kill those who really live for the truth. What starts with defilement ends with destruction. That's an awful thing to be a hypocrite, to be a pretender, so that things I touch are defiled, and things I touch are burdened, and things I touch die.

It's my privilege to preach in many, many places, and I'm thankful for the privilege you give me. And I have noticed in every church, there are some people who outwardly are as moral and clean from human point of view as anybody could be, but whatever they touch dies. Whatever they touch dies.

There doesn't seem to be that stream of living water flowing through them. There doesn't seem to be that touch of God from heaven. Whatever they touch dies.

It's not our place to judge. God did not make us tomb inspectors, but sometimes I wonder if there isn't some masquerading and some pretense someplace that's robbed them of God's power. And so that's the third loss that we incur.

We lose our godly influence. My friend, when you've lost your godly influence, you have no reason for living. We are here to be a blessing.

There's a fourth loss that we incur. We lose the truth of God's word. That's what our Lord is talking about here in 45 through 52.

He says, I've sent prophets and apostles to you, and you wouldn't listen to them. You persecuted them. You killed them.

And then after you killed them, you built tombs for them and said, oh, what godly people they were. Now, will you listen closely to this principle? When a person is living a life of pretense, he honors the dead and fights the living. He doesn't know his friends from his enemies.

When a person is living in masquerading and pretense, those who come to him in truth, he rejects. Those who come to him with lies, he accepts. He's talking here about the word of God.

And one of the great tragedies in a life of masquerading is this. We lose the truth of the word of God. He says in verse 52, you've taken away the key of knowledge.

Now, here's God's word. One of the tests of my sincerity and my integrity is, does God's word talk to me? If when I open my Bible in the mornings to have God speak to me, God doesn't say anything, I've got to stop and say, Lord, what is there in my life that's robbing me of your truth? David makes a statement like this. He says, oh, Lord, please speak to me.

If you don't speak to me, I'm like one of those who's gone down into the pit. In other words, for God not to talk to us is like going to hell. For God not to talk to us is like being buried in the grave.

It's death. And Jesus says to these men, you think you know the word of God. Oh, you've listened to all the prophets and you've killed them.

That's a tragedy, isn't it? To be living such a life of pretense that we lose the truth of the word of God. God hands to us the key to the Bible. Now, what is that key? It's Jesus Christ.

Our Lord says to these lawyers, you've taken away the key of knowledge. You wouldn't receive me and you're standing in the way of those who want to receive me. And so you've locked up the word of God.

You cannot understand the Old Testament law by tradition. You can't understand it by human reasoning. It can only be understood by the key of Jesus Christ.

When you know Jesus Christ, it unlocks Genesis. It unlocks the book of Psalms. It unlocks the prophets.

He said, you've taken that away. You know what he's saying here? When we live a life of hypocrisy and pretense, we've broken our fellowship with Jesus Christ. You can't walk in the darkness and have fellowship with him.

And when you're walking in the darkness and out of fellowship with him, you've lost the key. And you sit down, open your Bible, and God doesn't talk to you. Oh, what a tragedy.

If God's not talking to you, how do you know what to do? If God's not talking to you, how do you know where to go? If God doesn't speak to you, where do you get comfort and encouragement and wisdom and strength? Oh, what a tragedy. This explains why, when a person is, to use the Old Testament term, backslidden, one of the first symptoms is he closes his Bible and doesn't pick it up. Over and over again, when folks have come for counseling, oh, pastor, there's something wrong with my life.

My first question is, tell me about your devotional life. Tell me about your Bible reading, your prayer. Pastor, I haven't read my Bible in months.

That's one of the symptoms of a hypocritical life. There's a fifth loss that we incur. Not only do we lose our integrity and lose our perspective, so our values get twisted.

Not only do we lose our godly influence and we lose the truth of the Word of God, but the result of all of this is loss number five. We lose our future. Did you notice what he says in verse 52? Woe unto you lawyers, you've taken away the key of knowledge.

You entered not in yourselves and them that were entering in you hindered. He pictures them as men standing before a great door, and the door is shut and locked. And God hands them a key, and instead of using the key to open the door to get knowledge and to move ahead, they stand there and they lose the key.

No future. You see, the Christian who lives a life of hypocrisy is not going forward into the future, he's going backward. You know, it's wonderful to have the key of knowledge, Jesus Christ, to open up the Word of God.

I'll tell you why. You take the key and you open one door and it leads to another door, and you open that door and it leads to another door. And just life is a series of steps of faith going through the door, entering into more knowledge, growing in grace, growing in knowledge.

It's a marvelous experience. You get a truth and that truth becomes a key to another truth, and those two truths become keys to a third truth, and you grow. And God prepares you for your future.

But you see, the hypocrite doesn't do this. He doesn't want to know too much. He's trying to forget what he already knows.

As you grow in the Word of God, you know more about yourself, but the hypocrite doesn't want to know about himself. He wants to cover himself. And consequently, says Jesus, if you and I live lives of pretending, there's no future for us.

In fact, instead of walking through the door into the future, they're taking care of a cemetery. They're building the tombs and painting the tombs. Many Christians are doing nothing but taking care of cemeteries, honoring the past, watching over the dust, instead of walking through the door into a wonderful future and laying hold of God's knowledge and opening other doors.

I hope you're doing this. I hope this morning as you opened your Bible, God talked to you and you took a couple of giant steps forward into the future. But my friend, if you're practicing hypocrisy and pretending, all you're doing is being the custodian of a cemetery.

Your future is behind you. That's tragic. And so there sat the Pharisees and the lawyers.

And instead of listening and obeying, they argued with him. In verse 53, they vehemently began to provoke him. That's always a sign that a person doesn't want to face the truth.

My Bible says, Let every man be swift to hear, hear the word of God, slow to speak, slow to rap. And when Jesus delivered this message, they should have said, Oh, you're right. You're right.

We are pretenders. We have a self-righteousness, not God's righteousness. We have a religion that is giving us a good reputation, but no character.

Our character is eroding. We've lost our integrity. We've lost our godly influence.

And we want to be saved. But they didn't. They argued with the Lord.

And that only made it worse. Because when you argue with the Lord, my friend, you aren't hurting him. You hurt yourself.

Oh, that they might have submitted to the Lord and said, Lord, cleanse us today and make us what we ought to be. And so when it was all over, the Lord Jesus spoke to his disciples. In chapter 12, verse 1, he said, Man, above everything else, beware, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.

For there's nothing covered that shall not be revealed. Who are they trying to fool? It's all going to come out in the open. And there is nothing hidden that shall not be known.

To put it in a positive way, cultivate honesty, yield the inner man. The whole solution is up in verse 41. But dedicate once and for all your inner self.

And behold, all things are clean unto you. You know what he's saying? Yield the inner man to God. Give God your heart.

Give God your soul, your mind. Give God all that you are on the inside. And if the inside is what it ought to be, the outside will be what it ought to be.

Your relationship to other people. The prophet said this over in Isaiah chapter 1. He said, you're washing the outside, but the inside is so sick. Jeremiah said the same thing.

The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Solomon said it. Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.

In other words, start with the inside. We ought to do that today. Start with the inside.

Not somebody else's inside. Your inside, mine. God sees the heart.

Nothing is hidden from the eyes of him with whom we have to do. I wonder today, how do you respond to our Lord's warning against masquerading and pretending? Is someone here today losing his integrity? Losing his godly influence? Losing God's word? Someone here today selling his future? Oh, my friend, the Lord waits to cleanse and forgive and make whole. You say, well, I don't want folks to know about it.

Wait long enough and folks will know about it. Take heed and beware of hypocrisy. Now, there could be someone here today who's even pretending to be saved, but you've never been saved.

You ought to come and give your heart to Christ. There might be someone who says, up till now, I didn't realize I was lost. Then you ought to come and give your heart to Christ.

Take heed and beware of hypocrisy. Beware of the leaven that grows and poisons and pollutes and puffs up. Instead, says Jesus, yield the inner man to God and everything else will be taken care of.

It's a costly thing to pretend. Gracious Father, I pray that your spirit will use your word in such a way today that lives might be rescued. I pray that you'll speak to hearts today and cause that we will make the decisions you want us to make.

For we pray in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen.