A sermon preached at Covenant Presbyterian Church of Fort Smith, Arkansas on October 5, 2025.
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. 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. “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. Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the best seat in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces. Woe to you! For you are like unmarked graves, and people walk over them without knowing it.” (Luke 11:37–44).[1]
Jesus was an equal opportunity eater: He ate with sinners and saints alike, and in this case a Pharisee. The Pharisees were, as one commentator explains, “morally straight, keeping God’s law. . . . theologically conservative, defending the faith. . . . [and] generally considered to be the holiest people in Israel, with the most obvious concern for personal godliness.”[2] They also enjoyed an excellent reputation, and so it was an honor to be invited to dine, to recline at table, as they did.
We do not know the Pharisee’s motive in inviting Jesus. Was he honestly curious, like Nicodemus?[3] Or, like others after him, would he seek to catch Jesus in something he might say.[4] We don’t know. What we do know is before anything was said, the Pharisee “was astonished to see that [Jesus] did not first wash before dinner” (Luke 11:38).
In our culture, where handwashing is part of personal hygiene (except for pubescent boys!), we may wonder if the offense was merely a matter of manners. Didn’t Jesus know “Cleanliness is next to godliness”? But the verb Luke uses, translated “wash,” is baptizo, typically translated “baptize,” used not only to refer to baptism but also cleansing by the pouring or sprinkling of water. This is our first hint that it wasn’t merely a matter of washing up but being ritually clean, as the Jewish Mishnah explains:
The hands are susceptible to uncleanness, and they are rendered clean up to the wrist. Thus if a man had poured the first water up to the wrist and the second water beyond the wrist, and the water flowed back to the hand, the hand becomes clean; but if he poured both the first water and the second beyond the wrist, and the water flowed back to the hand, the hand remains unclean. If he poured the first water over the one hand alone and then bethought himself and poured the second water over the one hand, his one hand is clean. If he had poured the water over the one hand and rubbed it on the other, it becomes unclean; but if he rubbed it on his head or on the wall it remains clean.[5]
Did you get all that? Even if you didn’t, we may deduce that the Pharisee was not astonished as a matter of good manners before eating but Jesus’ disregard for their religious guidelines. Jesus had broken the Pharisaical law, most likely intentionally, right before this Pharisees eyes.
When Clean Is Clean
From the little bit we know, let’s assume the Pharisee’s dinner (and digestion) was a disaster. Let’s also assume that Jesus never got an invitation back. What we need not assume is that Jesus was only getting started. Because, without a word spoken, and knowing what the Pharisee was thinking, Jesus said, “Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness.” Drawing metaphors from the dining table before them, Jesus alludes to how unclean the cups and dishes would be if the insides were never cleaned. They might sparkle on the outside but be filthy on the inside. And Jesus said to the Pharisee, that’s you: “you are full of greed and wickedness,” and that’s nasty anywhere.
There is a reason our vocabulary uses the term “pharisaical” as synonymous with hypocritical. Merriam-Webster defines “pharisaical” as “marked by hypocritical censorious self-righteousness.”[6] And that’s what Jesus was confronting, not only in their man-made rules for washing hands (and wrists!) but their hypocritical hearts. Though they stood for conservative and religious faithfulness, inside they were as wicked as hell. And that’s far worse than unclean.
We may note that Jesus never called the Pharisees brothers or friends, but he did call them “fools” (and blind guides, offspring snakes, and children of hell). But he uses the term “fools” here not as an insult but to confront the foolish disparity between their outside and inside lives. Thinking only the outside mattered, they denied that all of life is lived coram Deo, before the face of God. And “the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7). It was their orthopraxy, not their orthodoxy, that rendered them fools.
This is not to say that washing our hands before meals is wrong. This is not to say that living an outwardly godly life is hypocritical. The point is: It starts with the heart. As the sage says, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (Prov. 4:23). To which we might add: And keeping your heart starts with having a new one. For this reason Jesus said to Nicodemus, the curious Pharisee, “unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). The new birth is necessary because of spiritual death within, and while the Pharisees got the outside right, inside they were dead. J.C. Ryle says, “The idea that men can be devout before they are converted, is a grand delusion of the devil, and one against which we all need to be on our guard. . . . There is a question which we should always ask ourselves in drawing near to God, whether in public or private. We should say to ourselves, ‘Where is my heart?’”[7]
When Giving Is Giving
To make his point of the necessity of inward purity, Jesus uses this idiom: “But give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you,” meaning godliness starts from the heart. But why the word “alms,” gifts given to the needy? Because, as Dave Ramsey puts it, “When you look at your budget and your bank statement, you can see where your heart is.”[8] Or as Jesus said, “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt. 6:21).Giving then serves as a gauge of where our heart is, and a powerful point of self-examination.
For example, the apostle Paul instructs the church, “Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Cor. 9:7).God loves it when we give rightly, because it tells of our love for him. Why and how we give then is equally as important as what we give. Giving a tenth or more of your income to the church is a good idea, but not if our heart isn’t right. In the case of the Pharisees, they were faithful givers; giving wasn’t the problem; the heart was.
So, Jesus sadly said to them, “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” (Luke 11:42). They gave to the work and worship of the church and that was good, but their motives were wrong and that was bad, even if their giving was excessive.Consider, for example, the lowly herb garden, from which, Jesus said, they gave a tenth. In addition to sounding weird, it was extreme. (And how exactly do you give a tenth of a mint leaf?)And that’s the point: The Pharisees were faithful givers, but it was camouflage. Their treasure was in the appearance of godliness, not godliness itself. And, as Phil Ryken observes, “Somewhere in all of their obsessive arithmetic, the Pharisees had lost the joy of giving generously to God.”[9]Have you?
They also were missing something more important than tithing: “justice and the love of God.” As God said through the prophet Micah, “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Mic. 6:8). Each of these words (doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly) are expressions of God’s love lived out, descriptions of the love that we are to show to others. Giving barrels of mint and rue, and dollars and cents, may be good, but what about justly, kindly, faithfully loving your neighbor as yourself? Jesus said, “These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others” (Luke 11:42).
When Living Is Living
What informs and motivates how you live? Is it love, or is it recognition? For the Pharisees, Jesus said, “you love the best seat in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces” (Luke 1:43). When they went to church, they wanted to be honored. When they went shopping, they wanted to be noticed. Their public persona was ultimately important: They wanted the recognition they thought they deserved.
Do you? Do you crave for people to recognize your spiritual accomplishments? Do you make sure others know what you are doing for the Lord? Maybe you provide a summary list for anyone who will listen, or maybe you’re frustrated because no one notices. Do you feel it necessary that you finally get the recognition you deserve? In our hearts we may consider such thoughts as innocent frustrations, but the problem is we cannot seek God’s glory and our own at the same time.
Thankfully, the gospel is the remedy for our self-centered hypocrisy. Poor sinners, that we are, have a Savior to be exalted, and so we look to him. “Have this mind among yourselves,” Paul writes, “which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:5-8). This doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for godly recognition, but it often translates into serving quietly and faithfully in the church, pointing to the accomplishments of others, giving in secret, caring not for other’s opinions but only the Lord’s.
But what about what others don’t see? If no one sees our sin, does it really matter? Kent Hughes says, “All of us inevitably communicate what we are. We can externally do all the right religious things, . . . but we will ultimately impart what is within. The people around us will see the artificiality, the affectedness, the elitism, the anger, the hostility, the hatred, the suspicion, the sourness, the inner blasphemies. We leave our fingerprints on each other’s souls, for Christ or for unbelief.”[10] In the case of the Pharisees, Jesus called them, “unmarked graves,” walked over unknowingly by the unsuspecting, rendering them unclean.[11] According to the ceremonial law, death inside the grave could still corrupt outside, just like the spiritually dead lives of the Pharisees, whose place within their culture held sway over the unsuspecting. In first-century Israel, even the definition of holiness was impacted by the graceless rules and regulations of the Pharisees, which Jesus described as “heavy burdens [and] hard to bear” (Matt. 23:4).
In contrast, Jesus said, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:29-30), not because living the Christian life is easy but because we live it under grace not law.[12] The grace of God in Christ Jesus informs the entirety of the Christian life, and only by grace can we get the inside right. True life comes not from moral reform or religious zeal but through the gospel of Jesus Christ. Through faith in Christ, we are justified as righteous and filled with the Holy Spirit, that he may cleanse us from the inside out, that we may shine with the radiance of his righteousness. Amen.
[1] Unless referenced otherwise, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (Wheaton: Crossway Bibles, 2001).
[2] Philip Graham Ryken, Luke, Vol. 1 (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2009), 619.
[3] John 3:1-15
[4] Luke 11:54
[5] Quoted in Philip Graham Ryken, Luke, Vol. 1 (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2009), 620.
[6] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pharisaical
[7] J.C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on Luke, Vol. 2 (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2012), 33.
[8] https://www.facebook.com/daveramsey/videos/we-spend-money-on-things-that-are-important-to-usjesus-said-where-your-treasure-/792808072856898/
[9] Philip Graham Ryken, Luke, Vol. 1 (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2009), 624.
[10] Ibid., 627.
[11] Num. 19:16
[12] Rom. 6:14
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