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The Key of Knowledge
Stand with us, if you would, to honor the reading of God's word.
In the book of Hebrews as well, chapter 12, verse 28, the scripture states, Therefore let us be grateful
for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken.
And thus let us offer to God acceptable worship with reverence and with awe,
for our God is a consuming fire.
Luke 11, 52, these are the words of the living God.
Christ said, Woe to you lawyers, for you have taken away the key of knowledge.
You did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were
entering.
May the Lord add his blessings to his holy word, if you would be seated this morning.
I know it seems strange beginning with just one verse, when it's been a month since we've been here
in Luke's gospel, but we'll do a bit of recap here.
But it's very, very important that we don't run ahead of ourselves, or run ahead of the scripture, so
to speak.
That we take each and every word as it is, inspired, inerrant, infallible, authoritative.
Good morning, y 'all.
Inspired, inerrant, authoritative, sufficient.
And what we are going to be looking at, if you're making notes today, taking notes, if you want to put at the top of your
page, the key of knowledge, really that's what we're going to be focusing on, what Christ was talking about,
when he rebukes the scribes, Pharisees, and the lawyers for taking away the key of knowledge.
But I'm reminded, again, as we begin to enter in upon this text, what we learned
already this morning in the catechism.
As we sing these songs, we know the hymns, we know the songs like, Turn Your Eyes Upon
Jesus.
But how I was reminded through the catechism this morning, the question
38 and 39, can anyone go to heaven with his sinful nature?
What is the answer, if you remember catechism from this morning?
No, our hearts must be changed before we can be fit for heaven.
And what is this change of heart called?
It is called regeneration.
It is the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of individuals.
So today, as we enter in upon the text, let's kind of remember where we've been.
Christ is in the midst of, here in chapter 11, we have the model and the pattern
for prayer given in the first portion of chapter 11.
In verse 14, we see Jesus casting out the devil and being accused by
the scribes and Pharisees of casting out devils by the power of the devil.
And from there, just to put it plainly, Jesus lights into him
with a rebuke that cannot be refuted, that cannot be ignored.
And he begins in verse 37 to call the woes, here in Luke's account,
woes to the Pharisees and to the lawyers, because he had been asked to come
to a lawyer or a Pharisee's house and eat with him.
And they began by then the Pharisees rebuking Christ
himself for not washing his hands before he ate.
And so Christ begins to answer them by rebuking them.
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, for you tithe all manner of mint and rue, and you
neglect the weightier matters of God's law, which are justice and the love of God.
Jesus reminds them, you ought to have done these, but you ought not to have left the other undone.
And then he says again, woe to you, Pharisees.
You love the best seats in the synagogues and you love greetings in the marketplaces.
Woe to you, for you are like unmarked graves and people walk over them without knowing it.
And then one of the lawyers answered him, saying this, Teacher, in saying these things, you insult us
also.
As he said, and he said, woe to you lawyers also, for you load people with
burdens that are hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers.
Woe to you, for you build the tombs of the prophets whom your fathers killed.
So Christ said to them, you are witnesses, and you consent to the deeds of your fathers, for
they killed the prophets and you build their tombs.
In verse 49, therefore also the wisdom of God said, I will send them prophets and
apostles, some of them whom they will kill and persecute, so that the blood of all the
prophets shed from the foundation of the world may be charged against this generation,
from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary.
Yes, I tell you, it will be required of this generation.
We see this time indicator here.
Christ is letting them know that judgment is coming.
Woe to you lawyers.
And he says this, for you have taken away the key of knowledge.
And that's our text this morning.
He said, you did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were
entering in.
So in our text today, we will see the emphasis that Jesus himself puts
on the doctrine of biblical inspiration.
By the way, biblical inspiration is an important theological statement that
every Christian needs to be aware of.
This doctrine of biblical inspiration and the matter of the sufficiency and the authority of
scripture has been challenged perpetually throughout the ages.
Since the beginning of time, we go back to the Genesis account, the authority of God's word
has been challenged.
It was challenged by the serpent when he spoke to Eve, and it has been challenged
every year since that time.
But I say this today because it is important for us to remember that Jesus has been
calling the Pharisees and the lawyers out on their making the commandments of men
to be on the same level as the commandments of God.
This is very, very important.
Remember, we mentioned this before, but I'm going to mention this again.
In the other gospel accounts, we hear Jesus referring to the tradition of the elders.
That is a reference to the oral law that was passed down from generation
to generation.
And that is in opposition to the written word of God.
During the times of the Reformation, this was the kind of the uniter point for the Reformation,
that the word of God be brought back into the church, that men, women, boys and girls who are saved by God's
grace would have the word of God, the written word of God.
It is perfect, it is pure, it is inspired, inerrant, infallible, authoritative and,
might I add, sufficient.
Now the Apostle Peter warned about false teachers and their actions.
The Apostle Peter wrote in the book of 2 Peter, 2 Peter 2, beginning in
verse 1.
Peter states this,.
False prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers
among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even
denying the master who bought them, and bringing upon themselves swift
destruction.
In verse 2 there,.
And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed.
And in their greed, and this is what was happening here with Jesus and these Pharisees, and it
is the same thing that happened until judgment came on Jerusalem, in their greed they will
exploit you with false words.
This is what you hear when you hear false teachers teach.
Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.
If we go down to 2 Peter 2, verse 14, and we read through verse 22, the word of God
states this concerning false teachers.
They have eyes full of adultery.
They are insatiable for sin.
They entice unsteady souls.
They have hearts trained in greed.
They are cursed children.
Forsaking the right way, they have gone astray.
They have followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved gain from wrongdoing.
But he was rebuked for his own transgression.
A donkey spoke with human voice and restrained the prophet's madness.
Peter goes on to state these false teachers are waterless springs, and they are
mists driven by a storm.
For them the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved.
What a condemnation this is to false teachers.
For speaking loud boasts of folly, they entice by sensual passions of the flesh
those who barely escape from those who live in error.
They promise them freedom.
The Pharisees in Jesus' day were not necessarily promising the people freedom,
but to them it seemed to be a freedom.
And my friend, again, when you try to live the whole law, it doesn't mean that we attempt to or
strive to live holy lives, but when you bank on your goodness and your ability
to keep the law of God, you will always find yourself coming up short.
Because we all sin, the scriptures tell us, and we all come short of the glory of God.
And that ultimately becomes a bondage.
So they promise freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption.
These Pharisees were men who were themselves slaves of their own corruption.
For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved.
And he said in verse 20 there of 2 Peter 2,.
For if after they escape the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and
Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become
worse for them than the first.
Now this is the apostle Peter writing after Christ has come,
risen, ascended to the Father.
But notice that terminology that he uses here, the last state of the man is worse than the first.
This is exactly part of the rebuke that Jesus gave to the Pharisees and to the lawyers
before when he described to them the man who had had seven demons and supposedly, quote
unquote, had them cast out, but Jesus told them the latter state of that man will be worse than the
first state.
Because they were not regenerated in heart and in mind, they were simply keepers of the law.
Law keeping will not save you.
Law keeping does not make any of us righteous before a holy God.
It is Christ's keeping of the law that makes us holy before God.
It is Christ's holiness accounted to our account on the behalf of
Jesus Christ that we can be considered holy, but we have no holiness of
ourselves.
Peter goes on, it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after
knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment that had been delivered to them.
What the true proverb says has happened to them, the apostle Peter writes, the dog returns to its own
vomit and the sow after washing herself returns to wallow in the mire.
Now, in this, the year 2022, the word of God still
stands as the authoritative truth despite the fact that humanity
wants to test the Bible by means of human reasoning.
This is not anything new.
In 1918, amid the liberal insurgence of his day, Reuben Archer Torrey, R
.A. Torrey wrote these words concerning biblical inspiration.
He said this, he said,.
We see in this folly, the folly of the liberal world, we see in this folly, a folly so common
in our day of seeking to test the statements of scripture by the conclusions of human
reasoning or by the institutions of the Christian consciousness.
The revelation of God transcends human reasoning and therefore human reasoning cannot be
its test.
If our consciousness differs from the statements of the Bible, it is not yet as fully a
Christian consciousness.
And the thing for us to do is to not try to pull up God's, pull God's revelation down to the
level of our consciousness, but to tone our consciousness up to the level of
God's word.
That was written in 1918, still true today.
Now, from the commentary in the Reformation Study Bible on 1152 there, they
wrote this, through their traditional interpretation of the law, the lawyers had made it
impossible for ordinary people to understand the true meaning of the law.
The Pharisees and the lawyers themselves also used their traditions to evade the
demands of the law.
Now, we find this in the gospel accounts when Jesus begins to address these
Pharisees and these scribes and these lawyers and he says, you say,
but the word of God says this, identifying their error
and identifying their sin by adding their traditions and their ideas to the written
word of God.
And again, you may be wondering, what does this have to do with the key of knowledge?
Because the key of knowledge that Jesus is speaking about here is the written word of God.
He is speaking about the law and the prophets.
This is why it's such a strong rebuke.
Ralph Robinson, one of the Puritans, wrote this.
He said, it's impossible that a man may outwardly reform some things and yet be in a very
sick condition still.
A man may be better than he was and yet far short of a good condition.
A man may be less wicked than he was and yet not at all truly good in the sight of
God.
Self -reform will take you to hell.
Regeneration, being born again, will make you a citizen of the kingdom of God.
So here in verse 22, we see quite the rebuke from Jesus to the
Pharisees and to the lawyers.
Jesus said to them, you have taken away the key of knowledge.
So three questions we're going to ask ourselves today and answer.
Number one, what is this key of knowledge?
What is this key of knowledge that Jesus is talking about here?
What is this key of knowledge that Jesus is talking about?
Number two, why would they not use the key?
Think about it.
Why would they not use the key?
And number three, why would they hinder others from entering in as
Jesus states about them?
We are not going out on a limb with these questions.
These are questions that are found just in a simple reading of this text
in this one verse.
So what is this key of knowledge?
And why would they hinder others from entering in as Jesus states?
So just for the purposes of illustration, just
imagine you possess a key.
This key will open the door to the knowledge of God.
And with this key comes the ability to know definitively what is right and what is wrong.
With it comes the ability to know what pleases the Lord and what displeases the Lord.
Hence, this knowledge either leads to eternal salvation or to
eternal damnation.
This is the key of knowledge that he's speaking about.
Now, what Jesus said in very certain terms here, nothing vague, nothing
unclear, nothing cloudy, what Jesus said in very certain terms is that they had this key
and yet they were not only not
going to get into heaven themselves but that they were preventing everyone else from
getting there as well.
That is a heavy weight to bear.
That is a strong statement that Jesus is making to them.
How stupid were these Pharisees and lawyers?
R .C. Sproul wrote this, Of all the generations of human beings that have ever lived,
this was one generation that had the unbelievable privilege of being
eyewitnesses to the incarnate Son of God.
It's easy for us to say, Well, if we'd have been there, we'd have done this.
We'd have been just as stupid as they were.
Let me speak proper English.
Sproul goes on to say this,.
In John's gospel, he writes concerning Jesus, he came to his own and his own people
did not receive him.
Every generation of human beings has been rebellious, but none had seen such a
visible manifestation of the glory of God on earth as that generation.
That's why Christ said,.
This generation is the generation that judgment will come.
No generation has ever seen the visible manifestation of the glory of God on earth as that generation saw
when Jesus was working through his earthly ministry.
So the answer to question one is this.
The key of knowledge was a reference to the law and to the prophets.
The key of knowledge was not the tradition of the elders.
The key of knowledge was the law and the prophets.
It was the written word of God.
They had the written word of God at this time in Greek.
The Hebrew Old Testament originally was written in Hebrew.
I'm sorry.
The Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew, but there were translations made in Greek so that the common
man, those all around the land would be able to read and understand what God had said
in the law and in the prophets.
John Gill in his commentary said this, when Jesus said, Woe unto you lawyers, who
are particularly addressed, again, in distinction from the Pharisees, though much of the same things are said to
them,.
Both in Matthew 23,.
For you have taken away the key of knowledge of the scripture, of the law,
and the prophets, and the true interpretation of them.
This is what John Gill states, and especially of such places as refer to the Messiah
and of the gospel dispensation called the kingdom of heaven, which began when
Christ came.
That when the king came, the kingdom came.
Amen?
Does that make sense?
The kingdom come.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
They had not only, Gill goes on to say this, they had not only arrogated the knowledge of these to themselves, setting
up for the only, interpreters of the sacred writings,
but they had took away from the people the true knowledge and the sense of them by their false
glosses upon them, so that they were destroyed for lack of knowledge.
Now, where do we see this?
Throughout church history, we see this in the Roman Catholic church in keeping the word of God chained to the pulpit where
the common man couldn't read it.
We see this in the Catholic church where the Catholic church wanted to keep it in Latin so that the common man could not
understand, and the only interpretation of the scripture could come from the priest who stood behind
that desk with the Bible chained to it.
We see this now in our day and our time when churches across our land here
in the United States of America are standing and they're telling their people, just take my
word for what I'm telling you.
May it be that you never hear such words come out of my mouth, out of sir's mouth, out of
kidney's mouth, that you must test everything that you hear according to the word of the
living God.
And if it's true, say amen.
If it's not, then give us a hearty rebuke.
We see this throughout history, and this is what these lawyers, these Pharisees, and these scribes were doing.
They were setting themselves up as the interpreters of the law when God's law is plain and God's law
is clear.
So, John Gill went on to say this.
The Jews sometimes speak of the keys of the law.
This is incredible right here.
They speak of the keys of the law and represent the oral law as the root and
the key of the written law.
Do you see how they've got that backwards?
God's word is the standard.
Not tradition or our ideas, but God's word is the standard.
Everything is to be built and based upon the scriptures as they are.
Not as we wish them to be or that we want them to be, but as they are in
truth.
This was the practice of the Jews at that time.
Some think, Gill says this, some think that here is an allusion to the custom.
Here was the custom that was practiced in these days, in those years where men would come up and
go through the rabbinical schools that when they would graduate, when they would become doctors of
religion, there was literally a kind of a ceremony.
And in this ceremony, they were given a literal key as a
symbol of their knowledge, as a symbol of their awareness
of God's word and of God's law.
So when Jesus tells them, you've taken away the key of knowledge, you got the key.
He is speaking to men who were supposed to be learned in the scriptures, who were supposed to be
given to the scriptures, but who not only did not understand the scriptures themselves, but they refused
to let anyone else be aware of what the scriptures themselves said.
Are you getting why this is such a strong rebuke?
Why this is so very important?
Matter of fact, there was one, Rabbi Shmuel, I can't remember, I think that's the full name,
but Rabbi Shmuel, it was said of one rabbi that they buried his key with him
because nobody else was worthy to carry the key that he had been given.
This is the kind of stuff that we need to be made aware of, church.
This is the kind of stuff that you need to know, that when we are not to withhold the knowledge of the
scriptures from anyone, but we are to proclaim it far and wide.
Question two, to answer question two, why did they not use this key of knowledge that Jesus
spoke of?
The answer is clearly set forth in the scriptures themselves.
We find the answer to this question, why did they not use the key of knowledge themselves?
We find the answer in Mark's gospel, chapter seven.
Mark chapter seven, verses five through nine, the word of God states this, and the
Pharisees and the scribes asked him, why do your disciples not walk according to the
tradition of the elders, but they eat with defiled hands?
And he said to them, well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written,
this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me, and in vain
they do worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.
You leave the commandment of God, what a statement Christ makes here again, Mark's account gives us this, you leave the
commandment of God and you hold to the tradition of men.
He wasn't beating around the bush, he wasn't playing, he doesn't quit school because they had recess, right?
He was not joking around, and he said to them, you have a fine way of
rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your
tradition.
Their own ideas and their own interpretation of God's law took precedence over the
clarity of the written word of God.
So after having read this, we as Christians ought to take this like we would
those big neon signs that are up and down the road that said right
lane closed in 1500 feet.
How many of you ever saw one of those signs?
Right?
And if you're paying attention, what you should do is start to move over into the left
lane, because guess what's happening?
Right lane is closed in 1500 feet.
What we ought to do is take this text as one of those signs to make sure that we stay in
the correct lane, that we stay in the proper lane.
God's word was clear then, and it is clear today.
The law points us to our knowledge of sin, and the prophets point us to
our savior.
As it has been then,.
So it is today.
They took away the key of knowledge.
They took away the law of the knowledge of God, God's law, how a man could know
the standard definitively of what is right and what is wrong, and then they took away
the prophecy concerning the coming of the Messiah who would be the
propitiation for our sin.
They took that away.
John Calvin said Christ reproaches the lawyers with having taken away the key of knowledge,
which means that though they were the guardians of the law of God, they deprived the people of
the true understanding of it.
See, the consistency of this teaching throughout history is there.
Matthew Henry, in his commentary on 1152, states this.
They, being the lawyers, are approved for opposing the gospel of Christ and doing
all they could to obstruct the progress and the success of it.
They had not, according to the duty of their place, faithfully expounded to the people those
scriptures of the Old Testament which pointed at the Messiah, which if they had been led into the
right understanding of it.
By the lawyers,.
They would readily have embraced him and his doctrine.
But instead of that, they had perverted those texts and had cast a mist before the eyes of
the people by the corrupt glosses upon them, and this is called the taking away
of the key of knowledge.
Instead of using that key for the people and helping them to use it aright, they hid it from them.
This is called, in Matthew's account, shutting up the kingdom of heaven
against men.
They possessed the key.
They refused to use the key of knowledge.
Last question.
Why would they do such a thing?
Plain language, I would say this.
Why would they be so stupid?
R .C. Sproul, were he alive at this time, would have asked the lawyers this question.
What's wrong with you people?
That's the truth.
That's the question that we need to be asking men who proclaim to be men of God,
who are standing in pulpits on a daily basis and they possess the key of knowledge in their
hands.
And yet, they themselves are not entering into the kingdom of heaven today.
And not only are they not entering in, but they are refusing entrance into the kingdom of heaven
by those that they are speaking to and teaching on a weekly and a daily basis.
And this ought not to be so in the world in which we live.
The long and the short of the answer is this.
The Pharisees and the lawyers had come from a long line compromise when it came to God's written
word.
If history has taught us anything, and by the way, history does teach us much, despite
what the liberals tell us, history has taught us as God's people that a
departure from the word of God whether great or whether small proves to be
a damning sin.
It proves to be a damning sin.
In the Old Testament book of Amos, we see the prophecy concerning the future punishment and the
restoration of the people of God.
More particularly in Amos chapter 8,.
We read these words.
Amos chapter 8, the Old Testament.
This is what the word of God says.
This is what the Lord God showed me, says Amos the prophet.
Behold, a basket of summer fruit.
And he said, Amos, what do you see?
And I said, a basket of summer fruit.
The Lord said to me, the end has come upon my people Israel.
I will never again pass by them.
The Psalms of the temple shall become wailings in that day.
Speaking of the coming judgment of Jerusalem and Israel, declares the Lord God,
so many dead bodies, they are everywhere.
It's silence.
And then the Lord says this, hear this, you who trample on the needy and bring the
poor of the land to an end, saying, when will the new moon be over that we may sell
grain?
And the Sabbath, that we may offer wheat for sale, that we may make the ephah small and the shekel
great and deal bountifully with false balances.
That we may buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals and sell the
chafe of the wheat.
Before I read any further there, keep in mind, this is prophecy concerning the destruction of Jerusalem,
right?
And in the prophetic books, we see the promise of the Messiah as well.
But what we read in just those few verses there is what was taking place in
the midst of Jerusalem at this time.
The poor and the needy were being trampled.
We see this today in our time.
This is a universally applicable.
We see this today, the poor and the needy are being taken advantage of by men and women who say,
give us this and God will bless you.
There is nothing that you will give to God that will be a benefit to God.
He does not need you and he does not need me.
He is self -sufficient.
He, by the way, is the maker of the heaven and the earth.
He goes on in Amos.
And the Lord said, verse seven, and the Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob saying, surely I will
never forget any of their deeds.
Shall not the land tremble on this account and everyone mourn who dwells in it.
And it's like the rise, like the Nile, and it'll be tossed about and it'll sink again,
like the Nile of Egypt, it'll go up and down.
And on that day declares the Lord God, I will make the sun go down at noon and
darken the earth in broad daylight.
When Christ died from the third to the ninth hour of the day.
At high noon, the sun went black.
He said this, I will turn your feast into mourning and all your songs into lamentation.
I will bring sackcloth on every waist.
And sorry about this, sir.
And William, baldness on every head.
I will make it like the morning for an only son.
Morning, not like the morning, the coming of a new day, but sorrow.
Morning for an only son and the end of it, like a bitter day.
And Amos states, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord God.
When I will send a famine on the land.
It's important, the context of Amos.
There was not where they were at there.
It was not a bad place to live.
It was very prosperous.
There was not a famine or a dearth for physical things in the land.
But what Amos states here through the word of God, the days are coming, declares the Lord, that I will send a famine on the
land.
Not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing of the words
of the Lord.
And this is exactly what's taking place in Luke's account here.
When Luke gives us the gospel accounting of Christ rebuking these men
because they possess the key of knowledge and yet refuse to share this knowledge.
They shall wander from sea to sea and from north to east.
They shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.
Which leads us in closing today to our application of the text.
Here's the so what of the sermon.
So what, pastor?
What are we to do with the fact that Jesus rebuked the lawyers for holding the key of knowledge and
essentially hiding it from everyone?
What are we to do with that fact?
Quite simply this, our response should be to treasure God's word.
To hold it in the highest esteem.
Our response should be to recognize that Christ holds us accountable
for the knowledge that we have.
Also that we as Christian people, that we as Christian people have the blessed privilege
today of holding forth the word of life.
And we hold forth this word of life to a world, as the last song stated, to a world that
is lost and to that is dying.
So what must we do?
Stand with us if you would this morning.
What must we do?
Quite simply this, go.
Go and preach the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
We sang it in the song.
We have heard the joyful sound.
Jesus saves.
Bear the news to every land.
Climb the steeps and cross the waves.
Onward, tis our Lord's command.
Sing above the battle strife.
By his death and endless life.
Sing it softly through the gloom.
Where the heart for mercy craves.
Sing in triumph over the tomb.
Let the nations now rejoice.
Why?
Shout salvation full and free.
Highest hills and deepest caves.
This is our song of victory.