Sermon Detail

Warnings for Your Joy The Pharisee: Deluded and Deadening Self-Effort

January 26, 2025 | Buster Brown

"'Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light.' While Jesus was speaking, a Pharisee asked Him to dine with him, so He went in and reclined at the table. The Pharisee was astonished to see that He did not first wash before dinner. And the Lord said to him, 'Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You fools! Did not He who made the outside make the inside also? But give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you.'"   Luke 11:35-41

Jesus has just warned the people to be careful that the light that they receive from Him would not become darkness. And then he gives an illustration, and then we have an encounter where the darkness is clearly seen as Jesus is in the house of a Pharisee. The Pharisees were the purity party in Israel. They observed the law, plus countless man-made regulations that they pursued to show that they had been truly set apart for the purposes of honoring the Lord. But in their pursuit, they became filled with arrogance, pride, and judgment. The Pharisees worked hard to make themselves presentable to God. While in the gospel, mercy, grace, and our standing with Christ where the Lord is made possible only by the grace of the cross.

New City Catechism: Question 6
Q: How can we glorify God?

A: We glorify God by enjoying Him, loving him, trusting Him, and by obeying His will, commands, and law.

“And now, what does it all matter? It matters more than anything else in the world. The whole dance, or drama, or pattern of this three-Personal life is to be played out in each one of us: or (putting it the other way round) each one of us has got to enter that pattern, take his place in that dance. There is no other way to the happiness for which we were made. Good things as well as bad, you know, are caught by a kind of infection. If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prizes which God could, if He chose, just hand them out to anyone. They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very centre of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry. Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever? Once a man is separated from God, what can he do but wither and die?"  C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, p.153