Greetings, friends. I will attach a link to my sermon I preached yesterday at our home church, Littlerock Community Fellowship, based on Luke 11:37-54 as we continue our series through the Gospel of Luke. This was a challenging section of Scripture because of the negative nature of all the text as Jesus strongly rebukes (i.e. condemns) the Pharisees and lawyers of his day for their sin. At the same time, it is so very important and relevant for us today as there is much of this same problematic attitude in all religions and cults and even in many churches today. The main point is: Jesus exposes and condemns hypocrisy and legalism in religious frauds.

It is important for us to remember 2 Timothy 3:16-17: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” Two out of the four ways Paul describes the profitability and usefulness of Scripture are rather unpleasant: “reproof” and “correction.” This is like opening flesh to remove the tumor of sin before sewing it back up for healing – painful but necessary. But the end result is that the man/woman of God “may be complete, equipped for every good work.”  

After defining key terms of hypocrisy, legalism, and religious fraud, we walked verse by verse through the text to make clear the four rebukes Jesus gave to Pharisees and three rebukes He gave to the teachers of the law (i.e. scribes, lawyers).

1. Jesus condemns religious hypocrisy which contaminates God’s people.(39-44)

2. Jesus condemns burdensome legalism which obstructs God’s truth. (46-52)

I ended by sharing some application for how all of this relates to us today, how to spot and ways we can guard against self-righteous hypocrisy and oppressive legalism in us and our churches and leaders, and the importance of humbly trusting in Christ and His Gospel for salvation rather than any external works we might do. We have a Savior who forgives all sin, including hypocrisy and legalism. Every day of our lives may we live in light of the grace and forgiveness we have been shown through Christ. May our church be a place where we are real with each other, not looking down on others or where others look down on us, but where we all look up to Christ, where we are united in Christ. May we celebrate our Savior whose body was broken and blood was shed so we can be His redeemed, forgiven people.

For some reason the first few minutes of the sermon are missing, reading the passage from Luke 11, and some introductory remarks. Sorry about that.