Luke 16:14-18

Transcript

00:00:00:19 – 00:00:27:33
Clint Loveall
Hey, everybody. Thanks for starting the week out with us. Thanks for joining us again as we continue through the gospel of Luke, in some ways, a continuation of where we’ve been at least related to where we’ve been, we find ourselves in the 16th chapter moving into the 14th verse. This is on the heels of a short teaching section by Jesus that ends with a warning against wealth.

00:00:27:34 – 00:00:53:12
Clint Loveall
You cannot serve God and wealth. That’s where Jesus left us. And now we pick up in verse 14 with the next part, the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all this and they ridiculed him. So he said to them, You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others, but God knows your heart for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God.

00:00:53:16 – 00:01:18:38
Clint Loveall
The law and the prophets were in effect until John came. Since then, the good news of the Kingdom of God is proclaimed and everyone tries to enter it by force. But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one stroke of the letter of the law to be dropped. Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and whoever marries a woman divorced from her husband commit adultery.

00:01:18:43 – 00:01:53:44
Clint Loveall
So we move here, continuing the theme of money Jesus has. Jesus has left us there with the last study. And we enter into this study and Luke tips his hand here, the Pharisees who were lovers of money. It’s not necessarily this represents two problematic groups, or maybe the combination of two problematic groups. For Luke, the Pharisees are problematic because they are jealous of Jesus and they are missing what Jesus says.

00:01:53:49 – 00:02:24:49
Clint Loveall
And then secondly, the lovers of money are very suspect in the Gospel of Luke, because Luke is very passionate about wealth and its its danger to believers. So Luke now combines those two things telling us that the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard this and ridiculed him. Obviously, if you are a person who is highly religious and in an inner circle of of a major faith and you love money, you’re going to defend those two things.

00:02:24:54 – 00:02:48:10
Clint Loveall
You’re not going to like the idea that you can’t serve God and wealth. You’re going to push back on that. So Jesus then says to them, You justify yourself in the side of others, but God knows the hearts. And then Luke gives us, I think, a pretty good summary. You maybe see this more clearly and in a gospel like John, but it is written into all the gospels.

00:02:48:10 – 00:03:28:45
Clint Loveall
I think what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God. And we there are a lot of ways you could go with that and we could probably overdo that. But abomination is a strong, strong word. And this is a nice reminder. I think, Michael, that there is a fundamental disconnect in the gospel between what is prized in faith and what is prized outside of faith or what the gospel often calls the world and what gets lifted up in the world as success does not look at all like success through the eyes of faith.

00:03:28:49 – 00:04:01:02
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, and this is where the Pharisees become maybe the perfect exemplar of that intersection between power and influence and resource, and even really the keepers of the faith tradition. And this is the thing that Christians have historically struggled to hold on to it. So I want to pause, make sure that we all understand this, that the Pharisees were in Jesus’s day, generally looked up to as real people of faith.

00:04:01:03 – 00:04:31:40
Michael Gewecke
I mean, ultimately they were people who took the law very seriously. They studied very vigorously. They cared about what the law said. They were really in many ways trying to be reformers of the face in their own time and place. And they were generally well liked, especially in rural areas, because they were conceiving and thinking and and living out the faith and in the place where the people actually lived, not just in Jerusalem at the temple.

00:04:31:40 – 00:05:14:36
Michael Gewecke
And so there was really generally a pretty positive attitude towards these Pharisees. And Christians tend to have a much more negative view of the Pharisees, because of course, Jesus often has debates with them, or he’s even in some cases insulting them, or he’s teaching things that cut against them. And, you know, I had one Professor Clinton, who made the point of saying that we should understand and Jesus is arguing with the Pharisees, like the arguing you do at the family Thanksgiving table, that, yes, you’re getting into fights over real substance, that these things really matter, but that you’re doing it within context of relationship, that these that Jesus would have understood the Pharisees, he would

00:05:14:36 – 00:05:42:25
Michael Gewecke
have understood their position. He understood it because he grew up with them and around them. And so his critiques are critiques of those who he knows well. They’re not critiques of the enemy and why that matters. Sorry, that’s a long setup. But why that matters is simply to say when Jesus then turns to what we have here today and says that you justify yourself in the sight of others, God knows your hearts for what’s prized by human beings is an abomination to God.

00:05:42:39 – 00:06:06:31
Michael Gewecke
That word abomination is known by every one of those Pharisees. They regularly talk about the law in which it’s dates very clearly what things do and don’t separate you from God, what are abominations to God. And here Jesus is saying your expertise, your mastery, your looked up to work, to lead the people back to the law and to faith.

00:06:06:36 – 00:06:33:52
Michael Gewecke
It has fallen short because why you’re justifying yourselves in the sight of others and we of course, think of the thousands of other examples Jesus calling the Pharisees whitewashed tombs of the the parables of, you know, you are the fasting to the other people can see you, you praying in public. Jesus very clearly making the point here that you’re more focused on the optics than you are on your heart.

00:06:34:04 – 00:06:45:40
Michael Gewecke
And at the end of the day, the only thing God cares about is the heart. And so Jesus cuts to the very center of this debate, and he makes it very clear that the Pharisees stand judged in that view.

00:06:45:45 – 00:07:22:28
Clint Loveall
Yeah. And, you know, there there are some helpful verses and references, Old Testament, you know, your sacrifices are an abomination. There is a long track record scripturally of saying what looks like religion, but doesn’t look like faith is an abomination to God. In other words, the trappings of worship without the heart that goes with it, the the judgment against others, without a judgment of self, that these things are offensive to God.

00:07:22:28 – 00:07:49:10
Clint Loveall
The hypocrisy of it offends God. And to your point, Michael, that this is a conversation among the family or among insiders. Verse 18 here seems completely dropped in to the conversation. Right? We start with this reference to money. Then we kind of have this verse, this verse or two that has to do with law. And then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, anyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery.

00:07:49:10 – 00:08:22:54
Clint Loveall
Whoever marries a woman divorced from her husband also commits adultery. The only perhaps sense we can make that Luke may not have a great place for that, but that presumes forms of familiarity with the conversation. Jesus isn’t teaching about marriage here. Jesus isn’t talking about relationships. Nobody’s asked him a question, which is what occasions these kind of verses in other places Jesus is making, He’s proving a point.

00:08:22:58 – 00:08:54:03
Clint Loveall
He’s letting the Pharisees know where he staying and in the broader conversation of what is the law and how do we follow it. He he’s identifying himself as someone who takes the law very seriously, perhaps literally in this individual case. And he’s looking himself as opposed to the Pharisees or in opposition to the Pharisees along the spectrum of what is law.

00:08:54:14 – 00:09:23:01
Clint Loveall
So that follow up question, you know, what the letter of the law is not to be dropped. And then he states the most conservative reading of a particular law that Pharisees and Jewish people would have been discussing on a regular basis. Can we get divorced? Can we not get divorced in other places? Jesus expands that into a teaching about Moses gave you this because your hearts are hard.

00:09:23:06 – 00:09:47:30
Clint Loveall
It’s sort of typical of Luke. This is a blunt object and it’s just dropped into the conversation with some kind of force. That leaves us a little bit rattled, except I think it helps us, Michael, if we understand that the reason Jesus can do that is exactly as you said, because everybody knows what it means to weigh in on those questions.

00:09:47:34 – 00:10:17:58
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, this is the interesting component of studying the Bible is that the people who receive these books first understood them to mean something because they lived in the time and place in which it was written. And Luke understood those concerns and wrote towards them. And maybe the best example, you know, I know you like Saturday Night Live and any of those kinds of late night shows or comedy shows, entertainment shows, you know, you’ll you’ll watch it when it comes out and it’s hilarious.

00:10:17:58 – 00:10:38:54
Michael Gewecke
And then ten years later, you stumble back upon an episode or you come back in and you think, Wow, that’s dated, or I can’t relate to that. And when you come to Scripture, you’re talking about multiple thousands of years between you and the original writing and receiving you. You’ve got to think there’s a lot that’s going to land differently today than what it was.

00:10:38:54 – 00:11:00:28
Michael Gewecke
And and sometimes we just struggled to make sense of what that means. And I want to give you an example of that here that comes from the text, actually, because when you read verse 16, it just it doesn’t read very cleanly. It doesn’t make a whole lot sense. The good news of the Kingdom of God is proclaimed and everyone tries to enter it by force.

00:11:00:28 – 00:11:25:19
Michael Gewecke
And this is a really sort of interesting way to look at the scripture. I’m going to pull out my study Bible comment notes here just so we can see this at the top of the screen. Small for you. Sorry about that. But it says very simply, this difficult phrase should probably be translated with emphasis on the passive force of the verb, and everyone is constrained by God to enter or forced or compelled.

00:11:25:19 – 00:11:48:18
Michael Gewecke
So. So you might literally read this that everyone is forced by God to enter, which is a very odd kind of telling. But I think it’s interesting if we’re willing to think about that for a second, that you have Jesus critiquing the Pharisees, saying that you’re so focused on the letter of the law that you are even taking seriously.

00:11:48:18 – 00:12:12:43
Michael Gewecke
Klint To your point, the marriage conversation, right? Jesus goes right to marriage, divorce, adultery, says, you know, you want to talk about the very nitty gritty of the law, what is enfold and what isn’t. And then Jesus makes it very clear there’s one person doing the compelling and it’s God. There’s something on the other side of this. There’s really only one person who needs to be and I use, quote, scare quotes here, impressed.

00:12:12:43 – 00:12:44:06
Michael Gewecke
There’s only one person who you need to be living up to. That’s God, and that’s not the other site of other people. The danger of reading a text like this is it doesn’t read very cleanly or easily. Our minds cloud over a little bit. We just kind of push on through. And then you have thrown in this marriage adultery type sentence and you think, wow, I look, I don’t know what’s going on there, but I think there is in this client an opportunity, an invitation certainly connecting it to that critique of those who love wealth, those who love power, those who want to be lifted up.

00:12:44:11 – 00:13:13:30
Michael Gewecke
There’s an opportunity in here to see that, that when the religious tradition leads us to focus more on our self and how we appear then to focus on God and how we actually are our real character and our real internal faith, that that is where religion has led us astray. And therefore we will find ourselves in the crosshairs of Jesus and to whatever extent we find ourselves on the other side of that, we’re living in that path of discipleship, as Jesus calls his own disciples, too.

00:13:13:37 – 00:13:38:15
Clint Loveall
I think one of the practices that can be helpful, Michael, when you find yourself sort of floating with a text that doesn’t make a lot of sense is to just look for the major things. What are the lifelines here? What what can we grab and hold on to? So the Pharisees love money, so right away there’s a warning they justify themselves.

00:13:38:20 – 00:14:06:47
Clint Loveall
So right away there’s another warning. And the third warning then is, but God knows the heart. And then we have this idea that we are we’re trying. The gospel has come and the law and the prophets remain in effect. But now there is this idea of trying to get into the kingdom of of looking to enter the kingdom, but that that doesn’t negate the law.

00:14:06:52 – 00:14:35:22
Clint Loveall
And what’s interesting about that is Jesus is not defending himself in this instance. There are times where Jesus is very conservative and tends to stick very closely to the letter of the law. And then there are at least as many times, maybe far more actually, where Jesus reinterprets redefines or outright changes what they thought they knew about the law.

00:14:35:22 – 00:15:00:58
Clint Loveall
And so the relationship of Jesus with the letter of the law is is fascinating. And I don’t I don’t think you could get there based on this text. You would have that would be a much deeper examination of scripture as a whole. And so my counsel would be, if you find yourself struggling with this passage or passages like it, look for the mountaintops.

00:15:01:03 – 00:15:23:53
Clint Loveall
What are the takeaways? If you want to then dive back in 201301 and take the more advanced readings, get in with commentaries and language and tear into it, by all means, do that. But to start with, look for the peaks. And I think we see some clear that are are pretty helpful here.

00:15:23:58 – 00:15:51:40
Michael Gewecke
I agree completely. And I do think by way of context, again, that I really do think helps us. I want to just point this out before we end our time together. Not only does Jesus give this teaching that you cannot serve God and wealth in verse 13, notice that in verse 14, Luke tells us not only that the Pharisees were lovers of mine, that’s a description of the Pharisees knows what comes next.

00:15:51:45 – 00:16:31:15
Michael Gewecke
They ridiculed him, and you can almost just imagine the source of that ridicule. Oh, look at this backwater traveling preacher telling people that they can’t have good things and be people of faith, because look at us. We are those people. We have that stuff, we have that privilege, we have the money, and we’re holding it together and Jesus, his response to that should be convicting, especially for people who in many places of our lives are also very blessed, who also have a lot of luxury and gift that’s been given to us.

00:16:31:15 – 00:17:02:09
Michael Gewecke
And when we find ourself trying to hold on to things that are probably not the best thing for our soul, you know, the acquisition of things, the showing of things, this should be a place where Christians remain cautious. It’s a temptation of today’s Pharisees who aren’t Jews but are Christians and Christians who are fixated on the what should and shouldn’t be so much to the extent that they’re unable to see what’s true about themselves.

00:17:02:09 – 00:17:07:28
Michael Gewecke
And there’s a beautiful kind of invitation to that, though. I mean, it’s a very challenging one.

00:17:07:28 – 00:17:37:03
Clint Loveall
I think the biggest danger in being obsessed with the law, I think historically speaking in the church is that those who are obsessed with the law most often pointed at others and not at self. And the danger in being legalistic is that you tend to be far more fixated on where other people fall short than examining your own life for the places that it happens to you.

00:17:37:08 – 00:18:08:58
Clint Loveall
And so when we get to a passage like this, when we get to a verse like 18, which has been a point of contention in the church, we we have to do so cautiously and graciously. The church, as has heard many of the sayings of the Bible on a topic like divorce and has said, yes, we honor the spirit of what Jesus is saying, that that commitment, that covenant commitment is binding on people.

00:18:09:03 – 00:18:37:13
Clint Loveall
And yet we’ve also spoken with grace in those moments when human relationships fail and tried to make room for life and growth. On the other side of those things, we’ve tried to allow people to continue to grow in a different relationship in a remarriage situation. So if you come to this and these words have a personal sting, I understand that.

00:18:37:13 – 00:19:03:43
Clint Loveall
And these these this is the harshest version of them that you can find in the scripture. However, it’s not everything the church has said about divorce. And as much as we’ve clearly tried to hear Jesus speak plainly, we’ve also tried to balance that with the other parts of what Jesus says about forgiveness and about growth and about sanctification.

00:19:03:48 – 00:19:28:46
Clint Loveall
And it it is in the eyes of the church historically, not a 1 to 1 correlation. It is slightly more complicated than to pull one verse out and say, This is everything the Bible says about this matter, which which isn’t true in this case. And I can’t think perhaps of a of a better example historically than this one.

00:19:28:51 – 00:19:54:09
Michael Gewecke
Well, Clint, let’s pause and just make sure that we’re all clear while we’re going to jump into tomorrow is just another massive change in tone and in style. We’re going to get this parable a very sort of fleshed out parable, which interestingly, some people have turned to to try to extrapolate great ideas about what hell is like, what the afterlife is like.

00:19:54:09 – 00:20:21:30
Michael Gewecke
And we’re just coming out of this text about marriage and divorce and just before that and can’t serve God and money and just before that you’ve got the lost things. Luke is just iterating really quickly in all of these teachings of Jesus. And clearly we’re going somewhere. But it’s interesting because these things are in many ways kind of, you know, more popcorn type, different topics and subjects all work together in the argument.

00:20:21:30 – 00:20:37:42
Michael Gewecke
I think it’s been easy for the church to, you know, just pull out one section out of its context and then just say, well, here you go. This is obviously it says what it says, it’s what it means. But Luke has included them in this order in a way that’s supposed to be coherent. It’s supposed to lead us in that direction.

00:20:37:42 – 00:21:01:12
Michael Gewecke
And if you just pull things out, you’ll miss that order. And I think where we’re at right now is we have Jesus making it very clear that there are some things that are lost and and in God’s world, in God’s economy, in God’s kingdom, when that when those lost things are found, that causes eternal, joyous celebration. That’s the best news possible.

00:21:01:17 – 00:21:22:48
Michael Gewecke
And the people who have in this world the wealthy stuff, all of the resources to celebrate, they are devoting it. In this case, the Pharisees, towards their own displays of wealth and power and privilege. And they’re uninterested in those who God is seeking to pull out. And we’re going to get fleshed out tomorrow more what that looks like.

00:21:22:48 – 00:21:39:06
Michael Gewecke
But there’s an order to this and the example of like marriage and adultery and divorce and all of these things, it needs to fit within that larger reading or you’re just simply reading yourself into the text. And we need to be mindful of that as interpreters.

00:21:39:10 – 00:22:06:34
Clint Loveall
One of the gifts Luke offers us is not one that we appreciate, but Luke seamlessly transitions back and forth between a Jesus that is very comfortable and compelling to us and a Jesus that is troubling and harsh. And we don’t know exactly what to do with. And Luke doesn’t tell us when he’s he doesn’t say, okay, this chapter’s good, Jesus, this chapter’s.

00:22:06:46 – 00:22:36:43
Clint Loveall
You know, we go from a picture of of Christ as a father who runs to forgive a child and and then 30 verses later, the harshness, the interpretation of a law that existed in his in his circle. And and and Luke does that to us often I’ve come to divide. I’ve come to save. Woe to you. Blessings to you, Luke.

00:22:36:48 – 00:23:03:55
Clint Loveall
Yeah. All gospels, I think do that because Jesus is a complex and multifaceted character and we can’t wrap our minds around all of who Jesus is. But Luke slaps it together way in a way. Michael That I think is it makes it particularly apparent, maybe it makes it particularly troubling. But I think on the whole, if we understand it, it is a good thing about the time we think, Oh, I’m really getting comfortable with this Jesus guy.

00:23:04:08 – 00:23:12:43
Clint Loveall
Luke says, Oh, not so fast, let me tell you this. Yep. And then we’re back to wrestle with who? Who is this? Who is this man?

00:23:12:48 – 00:23:33:20
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, that’s really, really well set. Our only ad, that’s a sort of a rejoinder that I would give when people say, Well, Jesus was a really good teacher. You have to ask, What do you mean? Because many of the things he teaches aren’t incredibly clear, right? Like if you think a good teacher, someone who clearly communicates. This is the thing.

00:23:33:25 – 00:24:00:16
Michael Gewecke
There are many times when Jesus says things that on their surface just look like they’re contradictory. And that happens all the time. But that’s because Jesus isn’t just a walking teaching, exemplifying storytelling person. He’s God who’s broken into the world, which means that he defies the boundaries and the the tribes and the ideas that we’ve constructed. He he can be things that we think are opposites simultaneously.

00:24:00:16 – 00:24:05:34
Michael Gewecke
And that’s the mystery that the gospel writers, they show us if we’re willing to see it.

00:24:05:43 – 00:24:16:07
Clint Loveall
Yeah, if anything, I think you can say, Jesus is compelling, but certainly Jesus is is not easily categorized.

00:24:16:12 – 00:24:31:24
Michael Gewecke
Thanks for being with us today. We went a little long. We appreciate those who stuck with us to the end. We certainly would appreciate you giving this video a like if you found the conversation helpful that helps others as they study the Bible. Find it. Subscribe for our next video tomorrow where we talk about the rich man and Lazarus.

00:24:31:24 – 00:24:33:16
Michael Gewecke
And until then, friends be blessed.

00:24:33:16 – 00:24:33:45
Clint Loveall
Thank you.