A New Devotion - A Warning

Here's a new devotion that I wrote. It's based on the passage below. You can find a recording of this devotion at the bottom of the page.

Luke 11:37-52 [Contemporary English Version]

When Jesus finished speaking, a Pharisee invited him home for a meal. Jesus went and sat down to eat. The Pharisee was surprised that he did not wash his hands before eating. So the Lord said to him:

You Pharisees clean the outside of cups and dishes, but on the inside you are greedy and evil. You fools! Didn't God make both the outside and the inside? If you would only give what you have to the poor, everything you do would please God.

You Pharisees are in for trouble! You give God a tenth of the spices from your gardens, such as mint and rue. But you cheat people, and you don't love God. You should be fair and kind to others and still give a tenth to God.

You Pharisees are in for trouble! You love the front seats in the synagogues, and you like to be greeted with honor in the market. But you are in for trouble! You are like unmarked graves that people walk on without even knowing it.

A teacher of the Law of Moses spoke up, “Teacher, you said cruel things about us.”

Jesus replied:

You teachers are also in for trouble! You load people down with heavy burdens, but you won't lift a finger to help them carry the loads. Yes, you are really in for trouble. You build monuments to honor the prophets your own people murdered long ago. You must think that was the right thing for your people to do, or else you would not have built monuments for the prophets they murdered.

Because of your evil deeds, the Wisdom of God said, “I will send prophets and apostles to you. But you will murder some and mistreat others.” You people living today will be punished for all the prophets who have been murdered since the beginning of the world. This includes every prophet from the time of Abel to the time of Zechariah, who was murdered between the altar and the temple. You people will certainly be punished for all of this.

You teachers of the Law of Moses are really in for trouble! You carry the keys to the door of knowledge about God. But you never go in, and you keep others from going in.

A Warning

In this particular passage, when Jesus criticized the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law, he wasn’t focusing on their hypocrisy. Although that was certainly the case in other confrontations, the problem here wasn’t their hypocrisy. Instead it involved their priorities. You see, they focused their attention on random rules while missing the spirit that lay behind those commands. They followed very specific regulations involving what they should give God while at the same time callously disregarding the needs of those God expected them to love. And they enjoyed publicly announcing the kind of dedication that obeying minutia enables them to do and basking in the adoration of those who are impressed with this kind of devotion as they totally forgot that God had called them to show compassion and generosity to others. In other words, these Pharisees and teachers of the Law had set priorities that sounded spiritual but which actually moved them away from God’s will. And for that reason, Jesus said that they were in trouble.

And for us, as we cherry-pick scripture so that we can condemn those we don’t like while excusing those whom we do and as we hide behind manipulated rules so that we can avoid actually doing what God has called us to do and as we confuse ostentatious and pretentious displays of devotion with a humble willingness to follow Jesus Christ and to serve others, maybe we’d be wise to view this passage as a warning.