Wednesday, June 22, 2022 PM

And we'll read through chapter 21 and let's begin with a word of prayer.

Father, I thank you so much for the day that you've given to us, the way you've provided for us these last few days and the last week.

Thank you for the meal that we were able to have that we may feast together and rejoice in your goodness and prepare our hearts for your truth.

We pray that what we study here tonight from your word would nourish us in a way that is far more important and lasting than this wonderful meal we've just shared.

And I pray, Lord, that our communion together tonight with you and with one another as we intercede for the needs of those who are hurting and who are in need of your help.

Lord, I pray that everything here would be honoring to you and that you would extend your grace and mercy toward us because of your

Son, Jesus Christ, and it's in his name that we pray. Amen. Luke 20, beginning in verse 45.

Then in the hearing of all the people, he said to his disciples,

Beware of the scribes who desire to go around in long robes, love greetings in the marketplaces, the best seats in the synagogues, and the best places at feasts, who devour widows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayers.

These will receive greater condemnation. And he looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury, and he saw also a certain poor widow putting in two mites.

So he said, Truly I say to you that this poor widow has put in more than all, for all these out of their abundance have put in offerings for God, but she out of her poverty put in all the livelihood that she had.

Then as some spoke of the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and donations, he said,

These things which you see, the days will come in which not one stone shall be left upon another that shall not be thrown down.

There's a lot of interesting tidbits about this passage. And one of the first things that should catch our eye is that as Jesus begins his evisceration of the scribes and Pharisees, the religious leaders, and his talk about the temple, we see it begins this way.

Then, in the hearing of all the people, and we go back and we look at this mix of people, and there's a great big crowd who have come down with him on the journey, on the ascent up to Jerusalem for Passover.

They have traveled with him from Galilee, and they made a big ruckus when they came into town.

The triumphal entry caught everybody's attention. Jesus got all the way to the temple where he proceeded to clean house.

To clean out his threshing floor. And then, his authority was questioned by the chief priests, the scribes, the

Pharisees, and Sadducees. Who gave you the right to do all these things and say all these things?

So he begins to engage with their authority questions, and they try to trip him up with their hard sayings and riddles.

And he passes the test perfectly, of course, and then asks them a riddle they can't solve.

And this brings us up to this point. There's the crowd that came with him from Galilee.

There's the crowd that gathered because of the ruckus that has been made.

There are the religious leaders who are there. In other words, we have a wonderful sampling of the

Jews living in Israel, living in Jerusalem. This is the people who are living, even now, under the

Old Covenant. And their religious leaders are under attack, under assault, especially here in this passage.

Now, Paul, in his letters, does tend to warn here and there, and with good reason, about men who just can't seem to conduct their way in the church without fighting everybody.

Paul warns against wrangling words. Back where I pastored in Tennessee, it was customary that there be a team roping very regularly right near my house.

And when you go watch the team roping, out goes the steer, and there go the riders, one on either side.

And the first one had to get his lasso around the head of that animal as fast as he could.

And he would wrap that lasso around the horn of his saddle and veer his horse to the left.

And there, that steer would suddenly be wrangled sideways, barely keeping its feet, back legs kicking up in the air.

And the partner on the other horse, who's been coming up behind him, has already got his lasso going, and he's putting that noose right underneath the back hind legs of that steer and pulling it tight.

And they practiced that and practiced that and practiced that. They thought it was amazing fun. I was just lucky to stay on the horse if they gave me a ride.

But the wrangling, to take something that is a normal way of understanding something and to wrest it out of position and to have arrogance and pride,

Jesus, of course, would not want his followers to do that. And we have to be concerned about that for sure.

On the other hand, of course, is simple cowardice and not calling out things that are wrong and being taught wrong and just saying nothing about it and declaring peace, peace when there is no peace.

Jesus said when he looked upon the people of Israel, he looked out at the people of Israel and he saw them as what?

Sheep without a shepherd. That's right. Sheep without a shepherd. And in fact, those who were supposed to be shepherding them and guiding them in the proper worship of the

Lord and the fear of God, they were actually the wolves. They were the ones who were preying upon the people and devouring them.

Now, in this case, this is in the hearing of all the people. Folks from Galilee, the folks who live there in Judea, all these

Pharisees and scribes and Sadducees. They're all right there. And in a passage which

I think is probably the most clearest rendering about what is legitimate for Christians on social media, he calls a spade a spade.

It's in the hearing of all the people out in public. He says these are false teachers.

You can see it in the pattern of their lives. All you have to do is observe. Look at this, this, this, and this.

Here's the evidence. Don't trust them. He says beware.

He intentionally says you need to be on your guard. You need to make it a point of noticing and guarding yourself against the following kinds of religious professionals.

So he says beware of the scribes and he begins to describe the scribes. They desire to go around in long robes.

When you had to get work done, you didn't wear long robes. This is one reason why, this is one reason why

Joseph's brothers got so jealous. Joseph was the firstborn of Jacob's favorite wife, and so he was giving him the firstborn's job.

Which meant to oversee the household. And so Jacob gave Joseph a coat of many colors, a very colored tunic.

But the tunic itself, the way that that garment is described, is something that is long and flowing. It is something that the foreman or the

CEO, the executive wears, and he watches everybody else do the work. So Joseph wasn't going out there to do any kind of menial labor with the flocks.

He was there to supervise. He was management. Okay, in this case, the scribes are wearing the long robes.

They were professionals. They had a very special job. It was a special job and God has used it for the providence of the church today that the scribes are so careful in copying down God's word letter for letter, line for line, being so careful about it.

But they were very arrogant about it, very prideful about it. So they would go around in their long robes.

Hey, look at me. I'm a professional. I'm something. And that would draw attention to themselves and everybody would know, oh, there goes the holy man, right?

Now, there are some people today who are religious professionals and they go about everywhere they go and they're wearing long robes.

You ever seen that? And if they're not wearing the long robes, they're wearing the thing that used to hold the long robes together, a little white collar.

Why? What's the point? Hey, everybody,

I'm a holy man. Call me father, right? Jesus says that's not the way it's supposed to work.

He also says they love greetings in the marketplaces. They love greetings in the marketplaces.

They wear the long robes because they want people to know who they are and how important they are so people come up to them and say wonderful things to them.

They like the best seats in the synagogues. You know, thankfully, we don't have so many people just busting down our doors that we don't get our favorite seats every

Sunday. Praise the Lord. We always get our favorite seats every Sunday. Yes, hallelujah.

And every seat you sat in, you know, is the best one and you have your reasons why. But these seats obviously were crowded and they wanted the best seats.

Well, they got them because they were the professionals. And they like the best places at feasts.

They were trading in on their religious cover for the good life, okay?

Now, the Bible is not anti -religious. Religion is simply a way of organizing our lives in order to love

God. And religion is a good thing when we use it for communion, to love

God. But religion is bad when we use it for a covering to look good.

And that's what Jesus is against. He's against using religion as a covering to look good. And that's what these folks were doing.

This goes on today. Professional purveyors of religion are doing whatever they can to look good.

They want to be impressed with the people. They want to have the best seats. They want to be welcomed by the people.

Whatever the public wants, we want to be accepted and appraised and approved of by the people.

Jesus says you're going about it the wrong way. Going about it the wrong way. That is not a valid approach.

Now, at some level, you might excuse somebody for liking fine clothes and being gregarious and, you know, showing up early to get good seats.

And you're like, well, what's the big deal about all of that? But it's sinister. This is their covering, but what do they do?

Verse 47, who devour widows' houses.

Later on, we read about wolves in sheep's clothing. Wolves devour.

And now these religious leaders are devouring, but they've got the sheep's clothing on.

They've got the appearance that everything is good and well. This goes on very much so in our day.

People wearing the raiment of religion. Look how good

I am. And look at my television program. And listen to my professional radio program.

And they devour widows' houses. They don't care if some widow gets strapped and poor.

They'll just take their money. For a pretense, make long prayers. For a pretense, make long prayers.

Are you telling me that people will gussy up their prayers and sound really, really filled with the

Holy Spirit and very religious and spiritual, and they'll do it just for a pretense? You telling me people do that?

Jesus knew the heart of men. He knew that people did this, and he warns against it.

And he says, these will receive greater condemnation. And now we have the story of the widow's two mites.

Now I have a question. Have you ever heard a sermon or a

Sunday school lesson about the widow's two mites and the moral of the story was,

God loves a cheerful giver? Never hear one of those?

That is not what this passage is about. Jesus just said, they devour widows' houses.

Who? The ones who worshipped the temple. Not at the temple.

They worshipped the temple. This was a temple -driven religion.

Temple was everything to them. And he says a little bit earlier, you've made my father's house a den of thieves.

Now you're devouring widows' houses. And look at this. He looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury.

And he saw also a certain poor widow putting in two mites. And kind of the equivalent of our two pennies.

They used to say that a mite was kind of like a half penny compared to our financial system.

But actually now the mite's worth a whole lot more than our pennies. So it doesn't work anymore.

So the poor widow put in two mites and he said, truly I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all.

For all these out of their abundance have put in offerings for God, but she out of her poverty put in all the livelihood that she had.

Now why would she do that? Why would she do that? Because of the so -called shepherds who were devouring her livelihood.

They didn't care if she went without. They were trying to get everything they could for the temple. They were in the middle of a multi -decade beautifying of the temple, something that was begun by Herod the

Great. I won't go into any more detail, I promise. I'll save that for the glass.

I won't talk any more about Herod the Great and what he... But anyway, they got the thing started and they've been beautifying the temple.

And they wanted people to give and to give and to give because they needed to beautify and beautify and beautify.

It's interesting in a parable passage to this in Matthew, Jesus is rebuking the scribes and Pharisees and calling them hypocrites over and over again saying woe to them.

And he points out one of their very foolish hypocritical maneuvers is that they would instruct people that if you swore by the temple, made an oath,

I swear by the temple that I will do such and such, it wasn't no big deal if you broke your promise.

But if you swore by the gold of the temple, well then you were bound to keep your promise.

How strange is that? You see where their values were. They would say the same thing about the altar and the offering.

They would say if you swore by the altar, you could break your promise, but if you swore by the offering on the altar, boy, you had to stick with it then.

What foolishness in a legalistic religious system. Well, he points out this widow and clarifies that she gave all that she had.

Now, this is what happens in between these two passages that sandwich it.

On the first end, we see, beware of the scribes. They devour a widow's houses.

Then we have a widow who gives up everything that she has and now what's she going to do? Okay, we do not encourage our widows to give their last two mites in the offering plate.

Please don't. Widows, if you're down to your last two mites, contact the deacons. Now, on the other side of this passage about the widow, verse five, then as some spoke of the temple, notice we're still looking at that, then as some spoke of the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and donations.

He said, these things which you see, the days will come in which not one stone shall be left upon another that shall not be thrown down.

And so he, he talks about the temple as something that was temporary.

And in fact, something that was going to be destroyed. And he clarifies that it's going to be fairly soon.

This must have been very disheartening. For those who have been involved in the reconstruction process, they have gold everywhere in this building.

There is even records of Romans donating to the beautification of the temple, and Jews going on donation trips and trying to raise up donations for the beautifying of the temple.

And it was, it was, it was incredible. They were trying to rival

Solomon's temple with the amount of gold and decoration. And of course, the size was immense. But he says, not one stone here shall be left upon another that shall not be thrown down.

Which is saying something. Some of the stones there, we don't have modern equipment they can lift, but they had done it.

And the stones were all taken apart and completely destroyed.

So Jesus is indicating what is lasting and what is not.

And he's showing that this kind of religion, where you use it as a covering to make yourself look good, isn't good.

And it doesn't last. And their whole system of trying to focus on the outward appearance.

This is kind of an ironic thing. They would swear by the temple and break their promises. But if they swore by the gold of the temple, then they couldn't break their promise.

The gold simply overlaid. That was the external appearance. Everything about the scribes and Pharisees was about the external appearance.

Whitewashed tombs. They washed the outside of the cup. They wanted the praise of men for the way that they looked.

And this was the kind of religion that Jesus hammered against time and time again. Not only because it was vain.

Not only because it was dangerous to their own souls. Because they were depending on the appearances and the approval of others.

But also it was destructive to others. What about these poor widows?

So this is not a neutral thing. This is not a neutral thing. So he's going to talk more about the destruction of the temple.

And this will be a familiar passage for those of us who've been through that study on Sunday nights.

Any questions or thoughts about what we've looked at here in this text? Okay, well, who can we pray for tonight?