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Summary:

Hypocrisy has long been the bane of the Church. Yet, its hardly a new condition. In Jesus day it was obvious to most folk as they interacted with the religious leaders of their day: the Scribes and Pharisees. Jesus had a lot to say about this. Hypocrites who lead religious folk are nothing new.

Excerpt:

Jesus actually calls out the hypocrisy of the leaders. Luke (hopefully you notice) puts these two passages of these religious leaders right next to this poor widow. And I think what he's teaching us is that he wants our hearts completely and He wants our lives completely.

But look at just the first verse here, okay, in Luke chapter 20, verse 45, it says this: "And in the hearing of all the people, he said to his disciples." Here's the thing, okay. This morning is, this little passage right here, is the last passage in the Gospel of Luke, where Jesus addresses the religious leaders here. It says the scribes--what we know, from, actually, even just this chapter, there's also the chief priests and the Sadducees, at least their representatives, and the Pharisees. And they're all there in the temple courts, and Jesus sort of has one last thing to say to them. And you might remember that, of course, during this Lenten season, we've seen a lot of conflict between his religious leaders, and Jesus. I mean, just last week, we recited the scribes and the chief priests, it said, they sent spies to Jesus, and they were saying things like this, like, "Oh, you clearly talk from God. And so we must hear from you should we give taxes to Caesar." But we know they were trying to catch him. And then we saw, of course, in the next paragraph, the Sadducees coming up, and, "oh, we're gonna ask him the trickiest question possible about the resurrection. And maybe this way, we'll catch him." So we know there's all this tension that's going on. And the tension here is at a peak. And what Luke sort of wonderfully makes clear is that though Jesus is talking to his disciples, how he begins the paragraph is by saying, "and then the hearing of all of the people." So Jesus is actually just confronting this hypocrisy, not just sort of in the vague, but with the people right there in front of him who he's talking about. Which is to say, again, what you need to hear first this morning is that Jesus sees it, and he hates it just as much as you do. And he calls it out.

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