Inside Out Kingdom
- David Fairchild
- Nov 9, 2008
- Series: Encountering Jesus
Inside-Out Kingdom
Luke 11:37-54
David Fairchild
November 9, 2008
TEXT
Luke 11:37-54: "While Jesus was speaking, a Pharisee asked him to dine with him, so he went in and reclined at table. 38 The Pharisee was astonished to see that he did not first wash before dinner. 39 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. 40 You fools! Did not he who made the outside make the inside also? 41 But give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you. 42 But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and every herb, and neglect justice and the love of God. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. 43 Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the best seat in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces. 44 Woe to you! For you are like unmarked graves, and people walk over them without knowing it.' 45 One of the lawyers answered him, ‘Teacher, in saying these things you insult us also.' 46 And he said, ‘Woe to you lawyers also! For you load people with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers. 47 Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets whom your fathers killed. 48 So you are witnesses and you consent to the deeds of your fathers, for they killed them, and you build their tombs. 49 Therefore also the Wisdom of God said, "I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute," 50 so that the blood of all the prophets, shed from the foundation of the world, may be charged against this generation, 51 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. 52 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.' 53 As he went away from there, the scribes and the Pharisees began to press him hard and to provoke him to speak about many things, 54 lying in wait for him, to catch him in something he might say."
INTRODUCTION
The last few weeks we've been looking with astonishment at the meal scenes of Jesus. Jesus has eaten with two groups with radically different responses-the religious (Pharisees and Scribes) and the broken (tax-collectors and sinners). Jesus has eaten with Levi the tax collector, or in other words the traitor to God's people, who gave up everything and invited Jesus home with him. He threw a lavish party and invited all his sinful friends who welcomed Jesus with Joy-all of this to the disgust and dismay of the religious leaders of His day. He did this to demonstrate the power of His Kingdom to welcome in traitors and sinners to His party.
Jesus ate with Simon the Pharisee and with his religious friends at an incredible meal that all were enjoying until a sinful woman of the city, probably a prostitute, crashed their party. She fell at Jesus' feet with tears of conviction and repentance as she washed His feet with her hair, and Jesus welcomed her into His life by grace-again, much to the disgust of the religious elite at this meal. He did this to demonstrate the scandalous grace of the Kingdom to all who are broken by sin.
Jesus acted as a host to all of the Galilean countryside in Bethsaida as He fed upwards of 15,000-20,000 people with five loves of bread and two fish. He did this to demonstrate the nature of the Kingdom as a revolution that topples the world's powers and brings flourishing to all who enter the Kingdom.
Each of these stories shows us that the Kingdom of God is a power to be unleashed in our lives and through us, the people of God, throughout the world. The joy and fellowship of God throughout this world that was lost in the Garden, and the promise of a coming King to right all wrongs was being rewoven together by Jesus, the fulfillment of that promise.
These meal narratives give us glimpses of the power of God's Kingdom and nature of the King. They introduce us to the welcoming grace of the True Host, Jesus, who calls us to come and dine with Him. They show us that the promise of the great wedding banquet to come where we'll all dine with our King, is being enjoyed and tasted even now.
This is good news for the world. We not only have a counselor to comfort us, we have a King who has the power over all things to fix this world. God is giving us glimpses of the kind of Kingdom that Jesus is ushering in. This is the point of the passage this morning.
What kind of Kingdom is Jesus ushering in? Jesus' Kingdom is...
STUDY
I. An Inside-Out Kingdom
Verses 37-41: "While Jesus was speaking, a Pharisee asked him to dine with him, so he went in and reclined at table. The Pharisee was astonished to see that he did not first wash before dinner. 39 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. 40 You fools! Did not he who made the outside make the inside also? 41 But give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you.'"
Jesus is invited to another Pharisee's home, showing that they were curious about this man. They were expecting an interesting and entertaining evening with someone who seemed like He was bucking the religious system. Perhaps they were hoping for an intellectual sparring session where they could have give-and-take with this man named Jesus.
But Jesus is itching for a fight. This is an incredibly provocative act. He wants to provoke them and it seems as if from the start Jesus is already angry. You know when someone enters a room and you can tell they are already wound up. You can see it on their face; it's intense, they're ready for any comment to set them off. This may be Jesus' disposition, but with a holy anger, a righteous indignation at what Jesus senses and sees. And it's not a bad day that Jesus brings into this meal to blame on His hosts. It's His hosts that have made Him angry.
We're not used to seeing Jesus like this. We prefer Jesus to be sweet, meek and mild. But I want you to imagine some great injustice that causes your blood to boil in righteous anger and multiply that feeling to an infinite degree. Jesus' sensitivity to the injustice of this world and the mockery that religious people have made of God's Word and will is causing Jesus to speak with cutting truth.
Jesus has enjoyed eating with the outcasts of this world. He not only welcomes them to Himself, He makes them His friends. Immoral women, traitors, drunks, gluttons, and notorious sinners all love to be around Jesus and experience liberation by His words. But with religious types, Jesus seems focused on upsetting their comfortable little life and upending their view of the God they claim to serve.
Jesus comes into this dinner party and refuses to wash. This is like putting your dirty feet on the table, except worse! It was a religious act so it was like blaspheming while you lean back in your chair with your feet up. Not only that, when they ask you why you're doing what you're doing you call them fools and a bunch of hypocrites!
Jesus has accepted the scum of this world with open arms and loving embrace, yet suddenly this group of people causes Him to be outrageously rude. What gives? Why is Jesus so incredibly rude to them?
Jesus sees the inside of their hearts and is angry with what He finds. These men were so concerned with keeping themselves outwardly clean that they became inwardly defiled. They were soiled and foul inside but kept up the appearance of purity before God. As they were disgusted at Jesus' lack of religious respect, Jesus was all the more disgusted at their perversion of religion and picks this fight to show them.
The Pharisees were very concerned with being clean. They kept all the ceremonial rules of purity and then added some to be safe. They created a system of clean laws that made them utterly disgusted at anything that might defile them, even if God doesn't say it would.
Now listen, this desire for being clean isn't a bad thing, but it's the way they went about cleaning themselves that was all wrong. They were going after an outside-in purity. They believed that the more they washed, the more they scrubbed, the more they removed themselves from anything or anyone that is or may be defiled, they would be clean before God. They had a sense of being dirty but thought the way to be clean was through external, outward effort.
We're all trying to deal with this sense of uncleanness. We're all trying to make ourselves clean through our efforts in one way or another. Every other religion teaches us to work from the outside-in. We picture the problem to be "out there" and so we try to keep ourselves from what we see outside ourselves.
Jesus is showing us that religion doesn't work. Religion is just another way we can control our lives and remain our own lords and saviors. We remain lords by determining what is and isn't clean. We remain our own saviors by keeping ourselves from outward sin and assume through our own efforts that we'll be saved.
This is why the Pharisees have kept these laws so fastidiously. They want to remain pure and undefiled. But Jesus shows them that God's Kingdom is nothing like their view of it.
Jesus ushers in a Kingdom that is inside-out, not outside-in.
The Pharisees put all their effort on external purity rather than a changed heart. Traditional religion teaches us that if we do good deeds or follow moral rules in our outward behavior, God will come into our hearts and bless us and grant us life. In other words, if I obey, God will love me and accept me.
But the gospel reverses this. The gospel teaches us that if I know that God accepts me and loves me because of what Jesus has done FOR me purely by grace, then I can begin to obey Him out of sheer joy and gratitude. We see ourselves as beautiful, loved and accepted before God, a treasure and joy to Him, regardless of what we see outwardly. And bit by bit, as this truth becomes more and more real to our hearts, we see ourselves changing outwardly. We begin to want to obey Him out of love not duty. It utterly changes us from the inside-out. It changes how we relate to God, to one another, and to neighbors and strangers.
Religion looks impressive, but it has no power and doesn't work!
Religion causes us to feel proud and distance ourselves from others who aren't like us.
Q-What are some ways we do this with outsiders?
Q-What are some good things that we've made religious rules that cause us to keep our distance from others?
Q-How do you feel when someone is around you who is dirty and smells bad? What do you want to do?
Q-Do you desire that more and more people who are marginalized and rejected will come to Kaleo? Why?
Verse 41: "But give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you."
Jesus is saying that we should put our inner self in to the business of helping the poor and everything will be clean for us. Jesus isn't suggesting that this will make one clean, He's saying that by helping the poor we're expressing to others what we understand what God has done for us. It is a way of knowing whether or not we've really been cleansed by grace. A heart that is cold to the poor and broken is a heart that is cold to Christ, who poured himself out for them.
This is only possible because Jesus took our place FOR us, and gives us His life freely as a gift of grace. Jesus can call us into an inside-out religion because He was the One who was able to secure for us the approval and acceptability we need.
Jesus is teaching us that outside-in religion makes us fools!
Jesus' Kingdom is not only an inside-out Kingdom, it's an upside-down Kingdom.
II. An Upside-Down Kingdom
Verses 42-44: "But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and every herb, and neglect justice and the love of God. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. 43 Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the best seat in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces. 44 Woe to you! For you are like unmarked graves, and people walk over them without knowing it."
Jesus now begins to call "woes" upon the Pharisees and Lawyers. These woes were essentially emotional statements of doom upon those to whom they were addressed. It was an exclamation of grief.
Jesus is showing us the complete reversal of values in His Kingdom. The poor, the sorrowful, the persecuted, the broken, the sinful, and marginalized are above the rich, the recognized, and the satisfied.
The Pharisees wanted to be noticed, they wanted to have power and be respected. Their god was respect and approval from men. They lived for it. They wanted to be seen as the best of the best.
Jesus calls woes on them. They are so concerned with proving their righteousness by how much they gave and what others thought that they forgot what was most important: to love God and not to neglect justice for those being treated unjustly.
They love to show how much they've given, but they have no love for God and their neighbors. They love the best seats, but refuse to give their seats to one who is laboring and needs rest.
Jesus says they are like unmarked graves. This means that by their actions they are causing others to become defiled. Like a person who would cover a gravestone so that another would become ceremonially defiled by walking on the grave, they are causing others to become spiritually defiled by their deadly religion.
This is only possible because Jesus emptied Himself of His glory. Though He was rich, He became poor. Though He was a King, He served. Though He was the greatest, He made himself a servant of all. He triumphed over sin not by taking up power but by sacrificially giving up His power for us. He won our victory by losing everything.
This is totally foreign to a world that teaches us to get power, recognition, status, wealth, and beauty to prove ourselves. The gospel creates a totally different servant-community in which the community lives out an alternate way of being human.
Superiority, racism, classism, power and yearning for respect, popularity and recognition, are all marks of living in the world with the values of the world. But the gospel calls to us live in the Kingdom of His beloved Son and take on the opposite mindset of the world.
III. A Forward-Back Kingdom
Verses 45-52: "One of the lawyers answered him, ‘Teacher, in saying these things you insult us also.' 46 And he said, ‘Woe to you lawyers also! For you load people with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers. 47 Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets whom your fathers killed. 48 So you are witnesses and you consent to the deeds of your fathers, for they killed them, and you build their tombs. 49 Therefore also the Wisdom of God said, "I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute," 50 so that the blood of all the prophets, shed from the foundation of the world, may be charged against this generation, 51 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. 52 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.'"
Finally someone can't take anymore and tells Jesus that He's insulting them too. The lawyers felt the sting of what Jesus was saying because many of the law experts were part of the Pharisee party, too. Surely Jesus would respect them!
This "lawyer" or "law expert" was not merely a civil lawyer; he was someone who was a religious scholar. His responsibility was to study, teach and ensure that the 613 laws in the Old Testament were preserved and obeyed. This man had an obvious zeal for God's word because these lawyers would have most of these laws, if not all, committed to memory and could easily teach on any of them. They wrote commentary on the laws and spent their lives rigorously studying them.
This man would have been well-respected and honored by the people. So here's the scene: Jesus is railing against this lawyer's friends and the friends stands up to side with the Pharisees and Jesus calls woes upon him!
The lawyers, in their zeal to pick apart the Law of God, had become so focused on the letter of the Law that they had lost the Spirit of the Law. They were loading the people with burdens hard to bear. There was no grace.
Worse yet, they themselves didn't lift a finger to help others to carry the burden they were laying upon them with religion.
They had the appearance of caring for the prophets by rebuilding the tombs of the prophets, but only did so to be noticed. They were in fact in line with their fathers who killed the prophets of God.
God sent them prophets to turn from their idolatry and self-reliance and self-righteousness.
This is an entire history of blood being shed by their religion, a religion that kills and destroys, a religion that assumes that it will ensure its security and safety by burdening the nation with laws that God did not command and by killing anyone who opposed them.
They have taken away the "key of knowledge" of the Kingdom of God. Jesus has the keys of the Kingdom and they keep others from coming to Him to enter. More than that, they themselves have not entered the Kingdom.
This history of injustice, of oppression, of dismissing the poor and weak, will come to an end. Jesus' Kingdom is a forward-back Kingdom.
Not only are they like their fathers who would have killed the prophets, they will be the same group that will conspire together to Kill Jesus, the true Prophet of God. They will gather together to kill the apostles, the messengers of God.
And this Kingdom, which is growing slowly but sure, comes in two stages. At Jesus' first coming, this King comes to save us from the penalty our sins deserve and upend the powers of the world. We're given the presence of the Holy Spirit to live out our citizenship as Kingdom citizens before the world.
The death of this King is reweaving the entire cosmos, bringing a community together and this community is now living forward-back by looking at what's to come and living in light of that each day.
At the end of time, Jesus the King will come to bring to fullness what He began in His first coming. He will save us from the very presence of sin and evil. He will bring us a new creation, a material world that will be cleansed of all brokenness.
We are to live now in light of that future reality. We are to live in a forward-back Kingdom today. We look forward and it causes us to change how we see this day. We are to lift our fingers to help the poor and labor for justice, because we know that God's future Kingdom will end all oppression. We call each other to integrate our faith in our workplace so we can shape our culture. We work for the common good and flourishing of our neighbors.
We're in between times however and the Kingdom is here but not fully here. This keeps us from being disappointed because we realize that it won't be fully restored until our King returns. But we live and labor under grace because we know what He is bringing.
The Shaping of Kaleo
If we begin to understand and live out of this new Kingdom Jesus is describing to us, things will look different.
A church that lives out of the gospel will be odd and not easily put into a box. Because we're called to live with an ‘inside-out' Gospel, we'll pray and desire to see people coming to Christ and experiencing conversion and grace renewal as they understand the gospel more and more. This makes us seem like a church that is an evangelical church.
Because we're called to live out an ‘upside-down' gospel, that labors to welcome the poor, be generous, and live radically with one another in community as we seek out reconciliation, we'll be looked at as a house-church movement of peace.
Because we're to live out a ‘forward-back' gospel, we'll seek restoration of the city and engage in caring for and loving the city and the neighborhoods we inhabit. We'll be looked at as a social justice church like many of the mainline denominations.
But if we hold all three together and seek to live them out in every way, we'll demonstrate the beauty and power of a gospel that not only saves, but that changes us in all ways. This is the kind of gospel of the Kingdom Jesus has in mind.
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