Jesus pronounces woes on the Pharisees and lawyers for their hypocrisy and legalistic tendencies, exposing their neglect of justice and love of God. Luke 11 provides a profound exploration of spiritual life and practices, offering insights on prayer, conflict with spiritual forces, signs of the times, and the perils of religious hypocrisy. How the Pharisees could change. Jesus addresses the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law, offering both rebuke and guidance. That they were fake on the inside and put on a show on the outside. They had no love for God. One example: Say a stepchild loved their mommy but not their stepdaddy. But when mommy was around, they faked loving their stepdad all the while treating their stepdad disrespectfully when mommy wasn’t around. This is like the Pharisees did. Jesus was not afraid to tell it like He saw it! Just saying! Order and Safety, Consistency Ethics and Morality, Social Contracts of grace, love, and righteousness. Legal Framework: Legal rules protect individual rights, resolve disputes, and maintain justice. Jesus was warning that: The Pharisees and Scribes had a tendency to add much detail and man-made commands to the commands of God, and then they elevated these traditions and man-made commands to a very high level of authority – even higher (in their eyes and practices) than the level of authority that the Word of God held. Be wise giving and love like Jesus.
It reads in Luke 11:37-54 Easy English Bible> While Jesus was speaking, a Pharisee asked him to eat a meal with him. So Jesus went to the Pharisee’s house and he sat down at the table. Jesus did not wash his hands before he ate the meal. This surprised the Pharisees. So the Lord Jesus said to him, ‘You Pharisees are like someone who only cleans the outside of his cup and his plate. You only clean the part that people can see. But inside, your mind is full of bad thoughts. You like to take things from other people. What fools you are! God made the inside of you as well as the outside. He knows all about you. So be ready to give things to poor people. Then you will be really clean, on the inside as well as the outside. It will be very bad for you Pharisees! When you grow spices to cook with food, you give a tenth part of these small things to God. You are right to obey this rule. But you do not do the most important things. You do not help people in a good way. You do not really love God. You should have done the important things as well as the other little things. Yes, it will be very bad for you Pharisees! You like to sit in the best seats in the meeting place. And you like people to praise you in the marketplace. It will be very bad for you. You want to seem good to other people, but you are bad on the inside. You are like a grave that has nothing to show that it is there. People walk on that place because they do not know that there is a dead person there.’ Then a teacher of God’s Law spoke out. ‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘when you say these things, you are also saying bad things about us.’Jesus replied, ‘It will be very bad for you as well, teachers of God’s Law. You give rules to people to obey. Those rules are like things that are too heavy for people to carry. You do not even help people to carry them. Not even with one finger do you help them! Yes, it will be very bad for you! A long time ago, your ancestors killed God’s prophets. Now, you build up beautiful stones to show the place where they buried them. You know that your ancestors killed the prophets. Now you build up the places where they buried them. So you show that you agree with your ancestors. You agree with what they did. God is wise. Because you do not obey what is true, he said, “I will send my prophets and apostles to go to them. But they will kill some of my servants. They will hurt others of them.” Since the beginning of the world, people have killed God’s prophets. But God will punish the people who are alive today for all those murders. Abel was the first to die like this and Zechariah was the last. They even killed Zechariah in the yard of the temple, near the altar. Yes, God will punish the people who are alive today for all those murders. It will be very bad for you teachers of God’s Law! You have studied God’s message. But you do not then accept it. You have also stopped people who really wanted to know God’s message. Then they could not go on to accept it and go into God’s kingdom.’ Then Jesus left that place. The Pharisees and the teachers of God’s Law were angry against Jesus. They were asking him many difficult questions. They wanted to make him say something wrong. Then they could take hold of him.