Woes! W -O -E -S! That is the title of my sermon
today, so I want to have a little fun with this.
When... Do we either hear or when you hear that
word woe, when do you use that maybe in your
life? Maybe you don't use it a whole lot. Maybe
you use it more in the W -O -A -H in your life.
Woe that way. So let's have a little bit of a
back and forth. So when do we use this woe or
woes or woe? It all depends on your inflection.
When do we use this kind of phrasing in our life?
Woe is me. Absolutely, right? When we're feeling
maybe down about ourself or a sad clown, you
know, those kind of things, woe is me. Absolutely.
When else? Yeah. When Larry gets too close to
another car. All right. Well, that took a turn.
No pun intended. All right. Yep. And he's not
even here to defend himself. All right. Fair
enough. Yeah. All right. When else? In the back.
Oh, okay. So that's what I hear like with kids,
right? Siblings, right? All of a sudden someone
does something, the other sibling goes, oh, you're
in trouble. And they say it gleefully, which
I think is very much Satan incarnate. Others.
How many of you go straight to Uncle Jesse from
Full House? That's where I go, right? I go to,
whoa, right? Absolutely. Thank you, Lisa. Yep,
at least one of you. Or maybe like, whoa, tomorrow
I turn 40. You know, stuff like that. Those kind
of woes. Where else? What? A big fish taking
your drag. Okay, I don't even know what that
means. But, yeah. A fish in a drag. Great. Taking
it. Maybe that's a smoking thing. I have no idea.
But fish taking a drag. Went out. I can envision
myself in two years in the church parking lot
with Joey learning to drive using this word a
lot. Right? Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Don't worry
about the graveyard. They're already dead. But
understand that woe can be used for many different
things. Jesus is going to use this very specifically.
Because this pressure that he's going to bring,
the woe is more of a warning. But these are warnings
that are not new to the people of Israel. Because
woes were used a ton in the Old Testament. This
was one of the main jobs of the prophets, major
and minor, right? That was one of their jobs,
were to bring the woes. Which was God's like,
be careful. You're about to do this or woe when
you do this. God being all knowing, right? God
seeing that, knowing what they are going to do.
He warns them and he does the same thing today.
And the pressure, this kind of particular pressure
comes from, that we're going to talk about today,
comes kind of something we bring upon ourselves.
Because one of the woes we saw in the minor prophets.
We saw that before Lent in that sermon series.
We see now is when faith becomes a performance.
That is what Jesus is going to call out today
in a very specific way. We talked about that
in one of the Minor Prophets, that when our faith
becomes performative, when we feel like we're
doing it for an audience or we're kind of getting
into our faith character, or that alter ego where
we have Monday through Saturday gym, but then
Sunday gym is very different. When faith becomes
a performance, this... brings a pressure. The
pressure to look like everything is fine, okay,
just right, whatever. Just enough for people
to look for someone else to have an issue. The
pressure to appear spiritual. High, lofty, that
piety, false sense of piety. A pressure to maintain
an image that we have it all together. The pressure
for our online self and our real self to not
be the same always. Right? We have that pressure.
Sometimes the hardest place to be honest is the
very place where honesty needs to be. That honesty
in those moments should really be the first thing
we walk through. And this is the tension that
Jesus walks in in a very lengthy, there's a lot
of scripture here this morning, in Luke chapter
11. You see, a Pharisee invites Jesus to dinner.
Now. I have a sermon series set for, I believe,
fall of 28 called Dinner with Jesus that I'm
really excited about. I may bring it in to even
maybe this year, if not beginning of next year,
where we're going to look at all the dinner passages
that Jesus gets brought into because they're
fascinating. On the surface, this seems like
a polite conversation, though it's a weird ask,
but Jesus goes. But under the surface, there's
a pressure to this dinner. This is a pressure
cooker. Because the Pharisees had mastered the
art of religious appearance. Everything looks
great. Right? We get the china out just for when
the queen comes over. Said nobody ever. But we
do it for appearances. There's no way they're
going to eat on the paper plates when Jesus is
around. They knew the rituals. The Pharisees
knew the language. They could speak the Christianese
or the Templeese. They knew how to look faithful.
But they're literally trying to pull one over
on the Son of Man. Something we learned about
two weeks ago. At the dinner table, Jesus is
going to do something shocking. He is going to
warn them with woes. W -O -E -S. Not something
that usually is done at a dinner table. They're
not curses. They're warnings. Grieving warnings
spoken to people whose religion had become an
empty practice. What does that mean today? When
you go to church, yet there is nothing changing
in your life. You're just going to stay status
quo. You're going to come. You're going to serve.
You're going to worship. You're going to do the
nursery. You're going to do whatever. Nothing
is making a difference because faith has become
empty. Under this pressure, Jesus exposes. The
most uncomfortable thing we can walk in in our
lives. Hypocrisy. That hypocrisy plagues the
church. Then, it plagues the church. Now, and
what we know from our study in Revelation a couple
years ago, it will plague the church in the future.
So let's dive in. Luke 11. Again, there's going
to be a lot of scripture here. A lot of slides.
We're going to start with verse 37 of Luke chapter
11. 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 an 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.
That's second. For you love the best seat in
the synagogues and greetings in the marketplace.
Woe to you, for you are like unmarked graves
and people walk over them without knowing it.
One of the lawyers answered him, Teacher, in
saying these things you insult us also. So he
continues, he said, Woe to you lawyers also,
sorry Garrett, for you load people with burdens
hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch
the burdens with one of your fingers. Woe to
you, for you have built tombs of the prophets
whom your fathers killed. You are witnesses,
and you consent to deeds of your fathers, for
they killed them, and you build their tombs.
Therefore also the wisdom of God said, I will
send them prophets and apostles, some of whom
they will kill and persecute, so that the blood
of all the prophets shed from the foundation
of the world may be charged against this generation,
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. Woe to you, lawyers, for you have
taken away the key of knowledge. You did not
enter yourselves, and you hinder those who are
entering. 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, lying
in wait for him to catch him saying something
he might say. In the meantime, when so many thousands
of people had gathered together that they were
trampling one another, he began to say to his
disciples first, Beware of the leaven of the
Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. Nothing is covered
up that will not be revealed, or hidden that
will not be known. Therefore, whatever you have
said in the dark shall be heard in the light,
and whatever you have whispered in private rooms
shall be proclaimed on the housetops. There's
a lot there. A lot to that conversation. The
first pressure point that Jesus enters right
away and calls out is that external religion
can hide an unchanged heart. Six, seven different
woes in just that dinner conversation. That brings
a lot more pressure than the Thanksgiving dinner
that may turn political or when all of a sudden
the black sheep of the family shows up and no
one thought they were. There's tension to all
of those conversations. Jesus is bringing it,
it seems, upon himself. But Luke tells us that
Jesus reclined at the Pharisees' table without
performing the ceremonial washing expected before
the meal. There's immediate tension. The Pharisees
are shocked. Probably not really. Not because
Jesus was unclean, but because Jesus ignored
their tradition. And Jesus responds directly
to it. He knows their hearts, right? Calls him
by name. We sang it, but he knows their hearts.
You Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup
and the dish, but inside you are full of greed
and wickedness. In other words, the outside looks
clean, but Pharisees, Munster Church, Pastor
Jim, the inside is not. Jesus is not condemning
cleanliness, my friends. He is exposing the danger
of external religion without internal. That's
the first pressure. He is exposing. And none
of us should be comfortable with that. We hide
these sins, right? We keep them to ourselves.
We hide them locked in some room in our soul.
And what Jesus does, because he can, he exposes
them. This is the pressure of appearances. We
struggle with this in the church. We've struggled
with this for centuries in the church. We learn
how to say the right things. We learn how to
act the right way. But our hearts remain untouched.
You know what I'm talking about. It's that group
of boxes we check. Went to church, check. In
our youth ministry, went to catechism, check.
Went to Sunday school, check. Served on this
committee, check. Had been an elder, check. Deacon,
check. Did all the things, check, check, check.
Jesus doesn't care about the checks. Jesus cares
about your heart. The Heidelberg Catechism reminds
us in Lord's Day 2, from where do we know our
sin and our misery? From the law. From God's
word. God's law does not merely examine behavior.
It examines the heart. And when the heart is
examined, appearances can no longer hide the
truth. Now, if you're uncomfortable, I get it.
I'm uncomfortable. Because when we talk about
exposing things, especially in 2026, it is gotcha
journalism all over the place. Everybody wants
to, everyone wants to gotcha, wants that gotcha
moment, right? Whether it's someone running for
office or someone getting popular online, everybody
wants to expose something they do just to knock
them down in a place that absolutely none of
us should take. We talk about it a lot in seminary
that when you become a pastor, right, you live
in a glass house. What does that mean? That means,
well, you're in a job that for the most part
is on 24 -7, 365, right? I know a lot of you
think it's one day a week. That's fine. It's
not. But understand that everything really can
be exposed or seen for the most part. I don't
fully agree with that because it's, you know,
I don't know how many of you drive by our house
just for the heck of it. You wouldn't raise your
hand even if you wanted to. Thank you, Eli. That's
weird. And so understand that, you know, it's
not just pastors. It should be every believer,
right? Every believer lives in glass houses,
and when we want to stand in judgment and throw
those stones out of our glass house, what we
fail to realize is our windows break first. You
go to the woman caught in the act of adultery.
Though without sin, cast the first stone. Jesus
is not calling it out to the regular people today,
though he is for the sermon. He is calling out
the religious ones. This was the religious elite,
quote unquote, but he's really calling out the
church. Pressure point two, religion without
mercy becomes oppression. Then Jesus goes on
this dialogue, this monologue, if you will, of
woes. Woe to you Pharisees. So let's break down
this word woe. Woe, though we had a lot of fun
with it in the beginning of the sermon, it's
not simply anger, but there's grief to it. This
is an emotive word. It is a cry of someone who
sees destruction coming. Right? There's so many
uses that we see in this word, but biblically
what Jesus is talking about is he is seeing their
destruction coming, and he's verbalizing it.
Now, that's met with a mix of emotions. That
could be met with, praise the Lord, I'm so glad.
I needed that stop sign in my life. I needed
that yield sign in my life. I needed that do
not pass go, do not collect $200 in my life.
But for some of us, we get angry. How dare you
tell me what the future is going to hold? How
dare you try to navigate my path? Though I pray
to you for doing that, I don't really want you
to because I want to guide my own path. I want
to draw that own path for myself. Jesus points
out the Pharisees' meticulous attention to the
tiny little details. They tithe their herbs,
their mint, but they neglect justice or the love
of God. In other words, they observe the minor
rules while ignoring the heart of God's law.
And Jesus then addresses it in front of them.
He addresses it to the lawyers, the experts of
the law, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the scribes.
You load people with burdens hard to bear. The
religion becomes too heavy. It gets corrupted.
Instead of helping people walk with God, the
leaders had created a system that actually crushes
them. The Heidelberg Catechism reminds us in
Lord's Day 44 that the law ultimately exposes
our inability to keep it perfectly and should
drive us to Christ. But what does Satan do? Satan
uses that guilt to try to drive you away from
Christ. And there's the tension. You see, the
Pharisees have reversed the purpose. Hear this
point. Instead of leading people to grace, they
buried people under the rules. They couldn't
receive it or keep it, so they sure were going
to make other people not be able to receive it
or follow it. And that is the hypocrisy, and
that's our third point. Hypocrisy resists the
truth. Jesus continues his warnings by pointing
out Israel's history. The prophets were rejected
again and again. We know this. We've talked about
this, Munster Church. And now the same pattern
is happening. He sees it in the temple. The religious
leaders claim to honor the prophets, but their
batting average is very poor. The past does not
support their present claims. They are plotting
against the very one the prophets talked about.
All the prophets were pointing to Jesus. And
as we see, they were plotting to kill him. Because
friends, the truth is hypocrisy will always resist
truth. It feeds itself on lies. It feeds itself
on the fake. That's how hypocrisy works. Truth
exposes the heart. Luke tells us that from this
moment forward, the leaders begin pressing Jesus
hard. There's a turn in the narrative. It wasn't
just, okay, let's see if this guy's going to
be consistent in his answers. It's going to be,
now we're going to put the pressure on to snuff
him out. Right? The hits just keep on coming
for Jesus. The pressure around Jesus intensifies,
and the reason here is simple. Jesus' truth is
threatening their way of life. So we can talk
about the Pharisees and the pastors and all the
religious elite, but let's talk about all of
us now in 2026 who claim Jesus. The same holds
true. I could be a great Christian for about
95 minutes on a Sunday. But every other day,
people wouldn't even know. Friend, that's hypocrisy.
When we try to hide, that is showing what we
actually believe about God. And at the end of
the day, it's that he's not God. If we try to
hide, if you try to play hide and seek with someone
that's omniscient and omnipresent, it's not God
who's the fool. It's us. And that's the fourth
point, that nothing stays hidden forever. Jesus
then turns to his disciples and says, Beware
of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.
Leaven spreads quietly. It starts small, but
eventually takes over. How do I know? I have
a very good friend who loves to bake, and I've
learned so much from her outright anger about
baking, right? I think she is at 74, right? 74,
what are those called? Spatulas. She is broken
because baking gets her. It's not Bethany. I
won't tell you who it is. It's Cheyenne. But
understand that she is such an intense baker.
It is like spiritual for her, and I love watching
it, right? Because A, the product is really tasty,
right? It's really, really good. But there is
a thing you have to kind of beat into submission
when it comes to baking. My wife does it as well.
My sons are learning it. Way not from me. Mine
is called DoorDash. And so understand that there's
an art to it, but leaven, if you don't handle
it the right way, much like yeast, it takes over.
It starts small. Just like hypocrisy. Hypocrisy
doesn't necessarily start in the grandstand.
It starts with that still small lie. That little
rumor. That misdirection. And it grows. Jesus
warns that one day everything hidden will be
revealed. Nothing is covered up that will not
be revealed. Every mask eventually falls. Every
hidden motive is exposed. The reality really
should humble us, should terrify us, should make
us cling to God more. Because, let's be honest,
none of us are immune to hypocrisy. So if you're
feeling that binding, if you're thinking, how
in the world did Jim know my week? I don't, but
I know mine, and I'm saying it to me first. I
think it's a lot easier to live with the mask
off, right? I say that knowing I don't always
believe that. But when the mask falls off, something
happens. There is good news in the woes. Yeah,
the Pharisees we know won't get it, except for
one, right? We get one in Nicodemus. He does
get it. That's another rhyme for another time.
But because if everything hidden will eventually
be revealed, it could be terrifying. If there
wasn't something, in good Reformed theology,
we cling to this word. Does anyone know what
it is? We sing about it. It's really amazing.
Grace. Everything hidden will eventually be revealed,
and it could be terrifying if there wasn't grace.
And that is where the gospel enters. Lord's Day
23. God grants and credits to me the perfect
satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of
Christ. In other words, the gospel does not depend
on our ability to maintain a perfect image. It
depends on Christ's perfect righteousness. The
gospel has never been about me. It has never
been about you. It's never been about Munster
Church. It should define who we are. Jesus exposes
hypocrisy not to destroy sinners. And friends,
let's be honest, he could. He could have left
that, much like some movie I'm sure is out there.
He could have just lit that match, everyone in
that place dies, and he just goes out to really
cool music. But he doesn't. Jesus exposes it
so we recognize it, so we confess it and be rescued
by him. The same Savior who confronted the Pharisees
will soon carry their sin, our sin, the sins
of the hypocrites, the rebels, and the failures
on the cross. Which means the Christian life
is not about pretending to be righteous. If you're
here today and you love pretending to be righteous,
I'm going to lovingly say, whoa! Stop. Let it
go. Jesus wants you to be real with him. Why
would he not want you to be real with others?
If we can be a church, if we can be a people
that lead with our limp, with where we fall short,
where our need of grace is, I think that's the
right thing. Because then, guess what? We just
get to point to the cross. It's not me who built
this. It's not you who built this. It's not me
that sustains. I am nothing without the grace
of Christ in my life. It's about trusting the
one who is righteousness. Because friend, in
Christ, so many good things come. And it usually
starts with the mask falling off. Because grace
is greater than all of our hidden and public
sin. Right? We sing that great song. Grace, grace.
God's grace. It is so amazing. That's why they
wrote a song about it. So what does that mean
for then and now? Like, what does that mean?
How do we walk in this grace? Well, then the
religious leaders trusted appearances and Jesus
exposed the hearts. Now, we live in a world of
curated images and spiritual performance. We
see it all over the place. My Christianity just
needs to be the 15 seconds on my Instagram or
my TikTok or my social medias. We've learned
how to actually connect with people so I can
try to craft for them what I'm like. And then
never really have anyone get to know me. How
lonely that is. How fake that is. You want people
to fall in love with a mask? Think of the hurt
when the mask falls off. But Christ calls us
to something different. I'm going to give a couple
words. I'm giving to myself first, but I'm giving
them for you as well, for us to walk through
it together. What does he call us to? He calls
us to honesty. He's calling us to repentance.
He's calling us to faith. Really, it's the faith.
Of our understanding of who Jesus is, of what
Jesus has done for us, and how he should be the
center of our lives in everything that we do.
Because if we truly believe that, if we truly
have that faith, Lord's Day 7, right, talks about
this gut, this knowledge, but this conviction
deep down in my gut that this is real. That Jesus
is real and he's doing something about my life.
and the people around me, the gospel should free
us from the art of pretending. Because when your
identity is about pretending, friend, that's
not a real identity. That is a fake identity.
Because our identity is not built on our performance.
Never has been, never will be. Our identity should
and solely be built on Christ's righteousness.
That is how we walk out the life of a believer.
That is how we can follow God's word even in
the uncomfortability. Follow him through the
woes and the stops. Follow him to the well done's.
To the good and faithful servants. Because I'll
close with this. This faith is real. It is. Jesus
does not call us to perfect. appearance. Stop
striving for perfection. That's never been the
call. The call has been always will be holiness
and an understanding of grace. He calls us to
authentic faith. A faith that confesses sin.
A faith that receives grace. A faith that trusts
Christ more than our own reputation. More than
our own successes. more than our own finances,
more than our own potential building projects,
more than all those things that, as he says in
the book of Matthew, moth and rust will destroy.
This faith recognizes we need grace for ourselves
and to give it to others. Because when the pressure
reveals our hearts, when that hypocrisy is exposed,
guess what? Grace is right there to meet it.
And the Savior who sees everything is the Savior
that will forgive you everything. And I don't
know about you, but that's the kind of person
I want to be. I believe that's the kind of person
we want to be. When we come in, we don't have
a list of things you have to look like, smell
like, act like in order to have a seat here.
Because Jesus doesn't do that. Yeah, there's
truth. We need to abide by this truth. I say
it all the time. We can't say, I'm a follower
of Jesus, but I murder a little. Right? It doesn't
work. But church isn't about maintaining a list
of rules. It's about receiving grace upon grace
upon grace upon grace upon grace because I need
it. Because you need it. And when we all can
confess that together, guess what? It's level
at the foot of the cross. And that is where Jesus
really starts to work. So if you have a woe in
your life, stop. Look. Listen. He's telling you
that for a reason. Lean in and find out what
it is. Let's pray.