Luke 11:42-54 Woes Against the Pharisees

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.

• Who are the Pharisees of our day?  Two points about the pharisees: 1.  The set of rules they adhered to were designed to make people keep the Jewish law (Torah) as best they could, so that Israel would be holy and thus God would bring in the Kingdom.  2.  They were a pressure group.  Similar to Green Peace or PETA.  Their rules and teachings had political motivations and they would push those rules on people to follow.
• Jesus knew what the pharisees were about and he knew that the people of Israel had a choice to make.  “It wasn’t a matter of petty rules or of a pure, uncluttered religion of love and grace.  It was a matter of an agenda which focused on the law as the charter of Israel’s national life, on the one hand, and an agenda which demanded repentance, turning away from Israel’s headlong flight into national rebellion, politically against Rome and theologically against God.  There could be no compromise.” N.T. Wright
• Jesus could see where the teachings and attitudes of the pharisees would lead.  That is why he pronounces this list of woes.  He knew the hurt and destruction it would cause.
• “Scribes” or “Lawyers” in the first century were trained in writing legal documents.  They, like the pharisees, believed the law of Israel should be applied to every area of life.  They were like a combo religious teacher and legal attorney.  Jesus’ teaching cut to the core of their entire belief system.  It is no wonder why they opposed Jesus so fiercely.  This opposition would carry on all the way to Jerusalem.
• Wright ends this section with this excellent question, “Where does the Gospel of Jesus confront, not just alternative religious or would be Christian views today, but the strongly held agendas out in the wider world?” N.T. Wright