Father Stephen De Young: We’ll be picking up in Luke 11, verse 5, just to real quickly get us caught up to where we are right now. We talked about how the Gospel of Luke has sort of pivoted. The first part of it was about Jesus’s ministry in Galilee as he traveled there and preached. And then we’ve moved to Christ making his journey from Galilee down to Judea, specifically heading to Jerusalem. He’s now getting close to Jerusalem, he’s in Judea and we saw him staying with Mary and Martha last time, which means he’s sort of in the outlying regions near Jerusalem on his journey. He’s continuing to preach and teach and heal as he travels.

And so, where we left off last time, as I just mentioned, as disciples had come to Him and asked him to teach them to pray how they ought to pray, and he gave them the Lord’s Prayer. And then that’s where we’re picking up immediately after he finishes praying the Lord’s Prayer for them for the first time. That’s where we’re picking up in verse 5. So unless anybody had any questions or comments or rumors or innuendos or allegations, we’ll go ahead and start here in chapter 11, verse 5.

And He said to them, “Which of you shall have a friend, and go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has come to me on his journey, and I have nothing to set before him’;  and he will answer from within and say, ‘Do not trouble me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give to you’?”

Now, he prays the prayer he wants them to pray, but now he launches into something else. And as usual Jesus uses a story to explain what it means. So let’s imagine you have a friend. Literally in the Greek it says someone has a friend. So, you have a friend. Your friend comes in the middle of the night, bangs on your door. He says, “I just had some people traveling, they just got here, it’s late, they haven’t had anything to eat. I’ve got no food in the house. Can you lend me some bread so I have something to give to them? I’ll give back to you.” He says, who, if that happened to you, if your friend came by and asked you that, you’d say, hey, buzz off, right? Door is locked, I’m in bed, kids are in bed, leave me alone. So he says:

“I say to you, though he will not rise and give to him because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will rise and give him as many as he needs.”

So even if this guy is not that great of a friend, even if this guy has done this eight or nine times in the past and you’re sick of it, eventually if the guy keeps banging on your door, you’ll get up and give us a bread just to get rid of him. Just to get rid of him at that point.

“So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.”

So we’ll pause right there. So in context, Jesus is talking about prayer, right? Sometimes this verse we just read is sort of taken out of context. You just say, “Well, see, God will give you whatever you ask for, right? God will give you whatever you’re looking for.” But that’s leaving out the context. What’s the context? Persistence. The context is persistence. The context is even somebody who doesn’t really care about you, in an awkward situation, if you’re persistent enough, will ultimately give you what you’re looking for. And so what it’s saying is, if that’s true of your average person with a quote-unquote “friend”, how much more true is that of God who loves you and cares for you?

So what Jesus is saying here is that when you pray to be persistent, he’s saying the opposite of “If you just pray, God will do whatever you want.” He’s saying, you’re going to pray, and right off the bat, you’re not going to get what you want. You’re not going to get what you’re looking for. And so you need to be persistent. Why? Is God just grumpy? Just wants to make you jump through hoops? Wants to make you work for it?

This goes back to what we were talking about before with prayer, the way prayer worked at the pagan world versus the way prayer works in Christianity. The pagan world, prayer was pretty similar to magic, right? It was doing some kind of ritual or saying the right words to get the gods to do what you want them to do. That’s not what prayer is in the Christian context. It’s not trying to say the right words or say them enough times to get God to do what you want them to do. Prayer isn’t about changing God. Prayer is about changing us. And the process of persistence, the process of working through these things in prayer, sometimes we realize that the thing we thought we wanted isn’t really what we want or need. Sometimes we realize we could get along fine without whatever it is we think we need. Sometimes we just need to grow. So it’s not saying that God will eventually give you everything you ask Him for, everything you want, saying God will give you what you need. And the process of prayer, persistence in prayer and spending time in prayer leads you to understand what that is and understand that God is giving you what you actually need. He’s giving you what you actually need. Persistence develops patience in us, it develops wisdom in us and that’s the purpose of prayer, not getting God to give us candy.

So Jesus continues with another example:

If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish? Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?

So your son comes to you and says, “Hey dad, can I have some bread to eat?” You give him a rock, right? He comes to you and he says, “Can I have some fish to eat?” You give him a snake, or, “Can I have an egg to eat?” You give him a scorpion. No, nobody’s going to do that. Nobody is going to do that.

If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!î

Now notice a couple of things that happened here. If you know how to give good gifts to your children, he doesn’t say how much more will your Heavenly Father give you good gifts, right? How much more will he give you that Caddie you’ve always wanted, right? That’s not what he says. He’ll give His Holy Spirit, we’ll give you what you actually need. What are the fruits of the Spirit? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness. These are the things God will give you. When we persist in prayer, not material things. Notice also, “if you then, being evil,” Jesus sort of doesn’t mince words here, right? He’s talking to sinners. Who’s he talking to?

Interlocutor: All of us.

Fr. Stephen: Well, yeah, he’s talking to all of us ultimately. But God originally, this is his disciples who came and asked him how they should pray. He tells them they’re evil. Why would he make such a point of that here at this point? Well, it was a couple of chapters ago, which means it was three or four weeks ago. But remember these are the disciples who are arguing which of them was going to be the greatest in the kingdom. These are the disciples who came up to Jesus and said, “Hey, we saw some people casting out demons in your neighborhood. We told them to stop because they’re not part of our group,” right? So, lest they think like the Pharisees, right? The Pharisees, there were “Us, we are the righteous and then there are those sinners out there,” right? Lest the disciples take the same attitude, “We are the righteous, we’re here with the Messiah, those people are no good sinners,” Jesus points out the reason they’re with him is that they’re evil, that they’re the sinners, that’s why they need him. He’s reminding them again of what he was teaching them the last time he spoke to them, lest we forget.

First of all, this is kind of shaky logic in general. But this isn’t the first time Jesus has cast out a lot of demons already in the Gospel according to St. Luke, this particular one, the demon was possessing this man and caused the man to be unable to speak, probably amongst other things. But as soon as the demon was cast out, the man began speaking. And so that was kind of an obvious sign to everyone that the demon was in fact gone. So everyone marveled at this. Now remember, he’s got a different audience now. We saw this crowd following him, but he’s now gone from Galilee where he had done all these miracles and healings and where he had been preaching. He’s now down in Judea. This is a different group of people, this is a different audience. So some of them are marveling at this, but others say, “Well, this guy is actually… The reason he’s able to do this is he’s actually in league with demons. He’s playing on their team and so that’s why he could tell them what to do, essentially.”

And when they says he cast out demons by Beelzebub, what they’re ultimately saying was that Jesus himself was demon possessed, by just a more powerful demon. That’s why he could tell demons what to do.

Because as we mentioned, as we mentioned, it’s not that there weren’t people who did exorcisms before Jesus, but the people who did exorcisms before Jesus, like the people who performed healings before Jesus, prayed and asked God to expel the demon or heal the person or wherever it was. Whereas as we’ve seen Gospel according to St. Luke, Jesus isn’t standing there and praying that God will do this. Jesus is just sort of pointing and saying “demon come out of him! Pointing at the paralyzed man and say, get up and walk. He’s just doing it with his speech.

Okay, so while their logic is shaky, at least they’re understanding that there is something profoundly different going on with Jesus. They’re coming to the absolute wrong conclusion. But they understand that Jesus is not like these other people who have come around healing people, these other people who come around… right? And while they’re not ready to go the correct way that this is a sign that Jesus is God and that’s why he can, he can command the creation and command demons. They could tell that there’s something different here and so they go to the opposite wrong conclusion.

And I think we talked about it when we were going through the Gospel of Mark, but the name Beelzebub, you’re not going to find anywhere in the Old Testament, but what it is, is remember the Psalms said twice that all the gods of the nations are demons, right? So the understanding at this time and before it by Jewish people, is not that they didn’t believe, as we believe, that there’s only one god that exists. Technically speaking, they were not monotheists. They were what’s called monolatrists. They only worshiped one god. There’s only one god they believed should be worshiped. They correctly called a god. But they didn’t believe that these other gods didn’t exist. They just believed they were demons. They were evil spirits, they were unclean spirits. They were lesser than God and shouldn’t be called God in comparison, but they believe that they were real.

And so one of those, obviously, sort of the main opponent, the main spiritual opponent of God, as we saw when we went through the Old Testament, was Baal. And Baal just means “lord” or “master”. He was one of the gods of the Canaanite pantheon. He was a storm god. And we don’t make this association quite the same way, when we think of storm gods, we think of lightning and thunder and that kind of thing. And there was that element, but also there’s the rain element. So there was a fertility element. That’s why he was so popular among the Canaanites there, was because they needed the rain for their crops. It was an agrarian culture. So they thought that by going and doing certain rituals, mostly sexual in nature, that they could bring about crop fertility by worshipping Baal.

This is why it was such a struggle in Israel, because the prophets were coming to them and saying, “You need to trust Yahweh. He’s going to take care of you. He’s going to make sure you have food to eat, he’s going to make sure the crops grow.” And there’s always this temptation where the people are like, “Well, shouldn’t I cover all my bases? Can’t hurt, just in case.” And the prophets said, “No, not just in case.” Okay, well, one of Baal’s titles was Baal Zebul. And the “Zebul” on the end there is the same root as Baal, and it meant something like “High Lord Baal” or “Great Lord Baal”.

Well, the Hebrews used to mock the pagan gods that they didn’t believe in. We talked about this back in Judges for Samuel, where the name that’s given in the Old Testament for one of the gods of the Philistines is Dagon. Well, Dagon means “little fish”. That’s probably not what they called him, right? We’re pretty sure that’s not what they called him, that he was some kind of sea god, but they called him “little fish” to make fun of him. Well, they did the same thing with Baal. So instead of Baal Zebul, they called him Beelzebub, which means Lord of the Flies. And the idea was, again, we’re in an agrarian economy. They’re farmers where on a farm do you see large, conglomerations gatherings of flies, garbage, dung?

Dung. Animal dung. So they’re basically calling Baal, “animal dung” by that title. So that’s why they use that title instead. Because it wasn’t a title of praise, it was a title of mockery. But since he was such a major opponent to Yahweh in the Old Testament, they concluded, well, this guy must be a pretty high-level demon. He must be one of the more powerful ones. And so that’s why they talk about here the Beelzebub, the Prince of Demons. It’s not that Jesus did something particularly related to that particular demon. It’s just they thought that was the chief one. And they said, “Well, if he’s able to order these other demons around, right, it must be one of the high-ranking ones.” Must be like the army, right? You have tiers, you have ranks.

So this is what they accuse Jesus of.

Others, testing Him, sought from Him a sign from heaven.

Well, how’s that related? Well, again, they’ve seen Jesus do this. They’ve never seen anybody else do this quite this way, right? So there’s something special about Jesus. So what this is telling us is some of them marvel. Those ones who are marveling would be ones who say, “Well, this must be the Messiah or some kind of great prophet or something.” They probably didn’t go all the way to this is God in the flesh, but they went that way. Some of them said, “Well, no, this guy must be Beelzebub.” And then there’s these other ones who are sort of in the middle. They’re sort of unsure. They’re like, “Okay, one of these two is true. So they come to Jesus and they say, well, show us a sign from heaven. Show us some kind of sign to prove that you’re on the good guy team rather than the bad guy team.” They’re on the fence.

If you remember way back many years ago when we were at First Kings and we were talking about Elijah on Mount Carmel when he had the priest of Baal there, he said to Israel, “How long will you hover between two opinions? Right? If Yahweh is God, worship him. If Baal is God, worship him.” These people are sort of hovering between two opinions. They’re not committal yet. “Give us some kind of further clue here, Jesus.”

“But He, knowing their thoughts,” I’ll pause. I can say this is something we’ve seen a lot in the Gospel according to St. Luke. Jesus doesn’t sort of wait for them to say these things, right? He knows where people stand already.

But He, knowing their thoughts, said to them: “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and a house divided against a house falls.  If Satan also is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand? Because you say I cast out demons by Beelzebub.”

So he says, “First of all, you’re operating under some faulty logic here, because if I was demon possessed and I was part of Satan’s kingdom, why would I be casting demons out of people? Wouldn’t I be putting demons in people?” Satan’s not fighting Satan. Demons all have one common goal, that’s the destruction of God’s creation, especially human beings. “So if I’m on that team, why would I be running the ball in the opposite direction? Your logic makes no sense.”

And further:

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“And if I cast out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your sons cast them out?”

Their sons, He doesn’t mean literally, their progeny, but he means the sons of Israel, right? Because there were other exorcists that prayed to God to cast demons out of people. He says, “Well if I’m doing it, if that’s how I do it, well then how do you guys do it? Are you all demon possessed too?”

“Therefore they will be your judges.”

They, meaning their own exorcists, look at them and say, “No, demons don’t cast out other demons, right? Only the power of God can cast out a demon.” He’s saying ask any exorcist, go ask any of the priests at the temple who has the power to cast out demons. They’ll tell you God, and that’s it.

“But if I cast out demons with the finger of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you.”

So if we establish that, if we establish that only God can cast out demons and I’m casting out demons, who does that make Jesus? That means the kingdom of God’s here. So there’s only one conclusion. There should not be these three groups. There’s only one logical conclusion from what Jesus has done. He’s trying to sort of coach them there, get the pieces to fall together.

Interlocutor: I’m confused, Father, you are saying Jesus is the only one who can cast out demons, because he is God?

Fr. Stephen: God is the only one who can cast out demons.

Interlocutor: So we’ve had people, historically cast out demons through prayer, before Jesus came?

Fr. Stephen: Right, they pray to God to cast out the demon. And so the fact that Jesus can do it shows that he’s God is what I’m saying, that he can just do it. Jesus is God, so that means he can do it. He doesn’t have to pray to God to do it, because he is God.

When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace, his goods are in peace. But when a stronger than he comes upon him and overcomes him, he takes from him all his armor in which he trusted, and divides his spoils.

So Jesus is here expanding by what he means when he says, the kingdom of God has come upon me, what does it mean that the kingdom of God has now arrived on earth? I mean, as he said, kingdom of God has now arrived on earth. Okay, so what does that mean?

So, who’s the strong man here? Strong man’s Satan, right? If you have a strong person and he’s at home, right? He’s a powerful person, right. Then his stuff is pretty safe. Nobody’s going to come and break into his house while he’s there, guarding his stuff.

What is it that Satan is guarding here?

Interlocutor: His kingdom.

Fr. Stephen: His kingdom. Which is what, as we saw when Jesus was tempted by the devil, the kingdoms of the world at this point, remember? Satan offered to Him, he said, “Worship me, I’ll give you all the kingdoms of this world.” He had that on offer, right? So who’s behind the Roman Empire? Who’s behind the empire in China that they don’t really know about? Satan. Satan is behind all of that. He’s taking control. How?

We’ll see who was paying attention this morning. God gave his creation to human beings. And who did human beings give it to? In Genesis 3? They gave it over to Satan. That’s why Satan has it and that’s why Satan has possession of these people who are demon possessed.

So when someone’s stronger than he… this is Jesus. If Jesus is stronger than Satan, who is he? Who’s stronger than Satan? Someone stronger than he comes, he takes from him all his armor in which he trusted. Which would be what? What is it that gives Satan his power? Sin, evil of human beings, that gets taken away from him and divides his spoils, meaning takes for himself, right. What Satan had previously possessed.

So Jesus here is breaking down what he’s about to do. He’s already predicted his death. But here Jesus is explaining through this sort of metaphor what it is he’s doing with his death. He’s binding Satan, stripping away what gave him his power and then taking those things that he had claimed for himself.

And we’re going to see St. Paul when we eventually get into his epistles, develop this more, this idea of death being the last enemy that Christ overcomes, his victory.

Then he says:

“He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters.”

That “gather with me” is another farming metaphor. You go out and gather the crops. If you’re not out there gathering with me, if you’re not doing what I’m doing, if you’re not working with me, you’re scattering.

Now this seems like it’s a direct contradiction to what he told his disciples a couple of chapters ago. Remember when they came to him, as we were just mentioning, they came to him and said, “Hey, we caught these guys casting out demons,” not coincidentally, “in your name. We told him to stop because they’re not from us.” And Jesus says to them, “he who is not against us is on our side.” Now, he says “he who is not with me is against me.”

Well, we have to see what Jesus is talking about. In the context where Jesus was talking to his disciples, he was making the point that they were not special, right? He was telling them, “Don’t think that you are on some lofty perch by virtue of being my disciples.” But what’s he saying here? Well, the second part that he who does not gather with me scatters, sort of gives us the clue, because how many groups of people were there that we were just talking about who saw him casting out demons? There were three.

There were the people who were with him. There were the people who were against him. Who said he was demon possessed. And then there was this third group. He wasn’t sure it was wavering between the two. Well, if it’s true that he who isn’t out there gathering with me is scattering, then that means what? There’s no third group. There’s no bystanders. There’s nobody standing there watching me gather and watching them scatter and kind of thinking about it. There’s no neutral team. There’s no Switzerland here. There’s no place in the middle. You have to make up your mind one way or the other. One way or the other. You can’t be neutral on Jesus. You can’t be neutral on Jesus.

And this point, it’s still very important today. You can’t be sort of half a Christian. It doesn’t work. You’re see in one of the letters of the Book of Revelation, “Would that you were hot or cold, but since you’re lukewarm somewhere in between, I’m spitting you out of my mouth.” You can’t sort of pay lip service to being a Christian and go to church once in a while and say, “Yeah, Jesus, he was a good guy and said a lot of good things.” That doesn’t get you anywhere. It doesn’t get you anywhere.

Either Jesus is God, and he rose from the dead, and he’s the way to salvation, right? And the Bible is telling the truth, or he’s not. And if he’s not, then he’s irrelevant.

If that’s not true, if Jesus isn’t really the Messiah, there were dozens of people in the first century who came along claiming to be the Jewish Messiah, and you don’t know the names of any of them except Jesus, right? Jesus, if he isn’t who he says he is, then he’s no more relevant than any of those guys are. Or any of the philosophers in Greece. He’s irrelevant. You have to make up your mind one way or the other.

I’ve often made jokes about certain, I don’t even know if they should be called denominations, but certain religious organizations where I say, if I was an atheist, I would stay home on Sunday morning and watch football in my underwear. I certainly wouldn’t go to church if I didn’t really believe it. Our choir is good, but they’re not that good, where if I didn’t believe in any of it, I’d come to hear them.

This is the point that’s being made here. Nothing is served by sort of going through the motions or some kind of half-hearted deference, “Oh, yeah, I believe in God. I’m spiritual, but I’m not religious.” Nothing is served by that. You have to make up your mind one way or the other. Either Christianity is true, and Christ is who he says or not. And if he’s not, enjoy your football. But if he is, then that means there are things we need to do, and ways our lives need to change, and we have to be serious about it and intentional about it. And that’s what Jesus is saying.

He actually here chastises more, just like with the lukewarm as opposed to hot or cold. He chastises the people on the fence more than he chastises the people who think he’s the devil, right? The people who think they cannot make a decision. He has that in common with Elijah, what Elijah said, “You have to choose today. Either you’re going to serve Yahweh or you’re going to serve Baal. One or the other. You have to make your choice.” Then Jesus continues:

“When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he says, ëI will return to my house from which I came.í And when he comes, he finds it swept and put in order. Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first.”

Why does he throw this in here? Is this just a tip for former demonic “possessees”? No, it’s what? He’s continuing his argument about how you can’t stay neutral. He just cast a demon out of this man. He’s using him as an example. But if this man, who we cast the demon out of, just says “Phew, glad that’s over.” If he just goes about his business, right? He keeps living his life the way he always did, what’s going to end up happening? Not only is that demon going to come back, but seven more besides. He’s going to end up even worse off than he was to start with.

So he’s saying, remember, as we talked about, there’s two contexts here the people Jesus was speaking to originally. Then there’s the fact that St. Luke includes this in his Gospel, which is being written to Christians later, because those Christians are there, they’ve been baptized, they’ve received the Holy Spirit. And so this is saying to them, if you don’t change, you can come and get baptized, you can come and get chrismated, you can come to church every couple of years, but if you don’t change anything, you don’t change your ways, if you don’t start living as someone who believes that this is true, not only is the getting baptized and the showing up to church once in a while not going to do you any good, you’re going to end up worse off, worse off than you were before.

Why? Because you’ve received the truth of God. You’ve received the grace of God, you’ve received everything required for salvation, and you tossed it in the gutter and walked away from it. So, you would have been better off never having received it in the first place then receiving it and ignoring it.

So that’s what he’s aiming at here. “And it happened as He spoke these things.” This is another passage we frequently read because it’s part of the Gospel reading that we have on Feast of the Theotokos. But notice how it starts: “It happened as He spoke these things.” So this is connecting it to what he just said.

And it happened, as He spoke these things, that a certain woman from the crowd raised her voice and said to Him, “Blessed is the womb that bore You, and the breasts which nursed You!”

So she really likes this sermon, apparently, right? And so this is basically a blessing. “Blessed is the woman, blessed is your mother to raise such a wonderful son, your mother must be so proud of you.”

But He said, “More than that, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it!”

So Jesus, rather than saying, “Oh, thank you, this is my mother right over here,” he takes this opportunity to make his point again. Who is the person who is really blessed? Who is the person who is really blessed? The person who’s really blessed is the one who hears the word and keeps it. Not just hears it, but does it, puts it into practice, changes. Because hearing it and not doing that, as we just saw is worse than not hearing it at all.

I always hesitate to say that because I think people stop showing up for Bible study, and say “It’s better to not hear it.”

It continues:

And while the crowds were thickly gathered together, He began to say, “This is an evil generation. It seeks a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah the prophet.”

What is he talking about, seeking a sign? Well, this is continuing with what we just read. Remember those ones who are on the fence, were asking for a sign. And we’ve talked before about the word here, that’s translated “generation.” We tend to think generation is in a group of people who are born during a certain time period, right? So, baby boomers or generation X or millennials or the greatest generation or what have you, are people who were born in this usually around 40-year time span. The word here, that translated “generation”, is actually genos, as we said before, and it’s actually a word that’s used more for a people group. It’s closer to our modern not identical, but closer to our modern idea of ethnicity.

So, he’s not just saying, “You first century people, man, you’re a mess.” Right? That’s not what this is aimed at. This is an evil people… he’s talking about the people of God; he’s talking about Israel. He’s talking about Israel. And this is why he refers back to Jonah, one of the prophets sent to this people.

So he’s making the point, and we saw a lot of this through the prophets, God pointing out how evil Israel was. So lest do you think that since they got back from the exile, they cleaned up their act and are doing better now… No, this is continued. The patterns we saw in the Old Testament have continued.

So he says, “You’re not going to get any sign. You people who want a sign, the only sign you’re going to receive is the sign of Jonah.” Then he explains what that means.

For as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so also the Son of Man will be to this generation.

So, Jonah wasn’t just sent to Israel, remember in Second Kings, it’s mentioned that Jonah was a prophet in Israel. He was something of a national hero, but he was also sent to the Ninevites, right? Remember, Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian empire. The Assyrian empire probably takes the cake for the most bloodthirsty, violent empire in world history. Nazis had nothing on the Assyrians, nothing, when you read their own records, right? Completely bloodthirsty, completely murderous, creative in how they tortured and murdered people en masse when they conquered territory. They’re completely wicked people. And remember, Jonah is sent to their capital city to tell them what?

Interlocutor: Repent.

Fr. Stephen: No, he didn’t. He said, “God’s going to destroy the city.” That’s all he said, right? That’s all he said. Because remember, he didn’t want them to repent. As it turned out, he just said, “God’s going to destroy this city” and the people repented. Nineveh, by the way, was where Mosul is now. So with ISIS there, not a lot has changed. But that’s helpful in terms of teaching Jonah. If you want to know why Jonah wouldn’t want to go to Nineveh, well, if God told you to go to Mosul and tell him God was going to destroy the city, would you want to do it today? It’s not going to go well.

So by comparing himself, because the Son of man is who? It’s Jesus, right? That’s how he refers to himself. By comparing himself to Jonah, who is he comparing the people of Judea to? The Ninevites. So the capital of Judea is now like the capital of the Assyrians. So he wasn’t kidding when he said they were an evil people. He’s comparing them to the Assyrians.

This would be the equivalent of, in today’s parlance, when, although it happens so much now in politics, it’s kind of losing its resonance. Comparing somebody to the Nazis. They’re like the Nazis, right? They’re like the Nazis. That used to happen a lot before we went into Iraq. The first time, Saddam Hussein was just like Hitler. You compare somebody to the Nazis, you’re saying this is the worst you can get. So Jesus is now comparing them to the Assyrians, comparing them to the Ninevites, these wicked pagans.

The queen of the South will rise up in the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and indeed a greater than Solomon is here. 

So remember the Queen of Sheba, right? We talked about that; she was the queen of the Sabeans. The Sabean kingdom covered Ethiopia and then went across and what’s now Yemen, the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula, was all the Sabean Kingdom. That’s why she’s referred to as the Queen of the south, because she controlled what was south of Israel at the time. She came this great distance just to hear what Solomon had to say. Jesus is saying, “I’m here in the middle of… you don’t even have to go anywhere. I came to you. I came to your village preaching something far greater than anything Solomon had to preach, and you’re not interested, Or you’re sitting back and going, ‘I don’t know, show us some kind of sign so I know whether to believe you or not.’”

The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here.

So he says, “Oh, there is one difference between you and the Ninevites, there’s one difference between you and the Assyrians. When Jonah went to the Assyrians, those bloodthirsty, wicked pagans, they actually repented. But I come here to you, and you’re ‘oh I don’t know.’”

Interlocutor: Jonah didn’t heal anybody.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, Jonah didn’t do half what Jesus has done. Solomon didn’t do what Jesus has done. But these pagans, these non-Israelites, were more ready to listen to God, more interested in hearing God’s wisdom, more interested in coming to God than the Israelites of these days.

So, Jesus continues:

“No one, when he has lit a lamp, puts it in a secret place or under a basket, but on a lampstand, that those who come in may see the light.”

So this is another one of those sort of obvious things, especially since oil was an expensive commodity for these peasants, nobody’s going to go and light their lamp and start burning oil and then go put it in the closet, let it just burn in there, put a basket over it.

“The lamp of the body is the eye. Therefore, when your eye is good, your whole body also is full of light. But when your eye is bad, your body also is full of darkness. Therefore take heed that the light which is in you is not darkness.  If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, the whole body will be full of light, as when the bright shining of a lamp gives you light.”

That’s kind of convoluted. But the idea is your eyes, not just your eyes, all of your senses, but your eyes bring things from the outside into you, what you look at, what you listen to, brings into your body, is brought into your body. And so if what you’re looking at is light, it’s going to bring light into your body. If what you’re looking at is darkness, that’s going to bring darkness into your body. And so if all you look at is light, then your body will fill like a lamp. It will be illumined.

This example is continuing what he was saying about hearing the word and doing it, right? You don’t go and light a lamp and then go stick it in the closet, but you’ll hear what I have to say and you’ll say, “That’s nice,” and you’ll file it away somewhere and walk off, rather than giving it a place in your soul where that light can illumine everything. That’s what he’s getting at. You don’t want to see the light that I’m offering you. You want to stick to the darkness where you’ve been living. And because you don’t want to see it, even when I give it to you, even when I show it to you, you take it and put it away somewhere.

And as He spoke, a certain Pharisee asked Him to dine with him.

So most likely we’re getting towards evening, right? Jesus has been speaking for a while now. We’re getting towards evening. So there’s a Pharisee who’s been hanging out there, listening to what Jesus has to say. He says, Would you like to come to my it’s getting late, or do you want to come to my house for dinner?

So He went in and sat down to eat. When the Pharisee saw it, he marveled that He had not first washed before dinner.

So Jesus comes in, he sits down, he’s ready to eat. And the Pharisee goes, “He didn’t wash his hands?! He’s been out there walking on the road. He can wash his feet, right? He’s filthy, right? He’s going to be unclean, he’s going to taint the food, right? What is this? This guy supposed to be this guy is supposed to be a rabbi, this guy’s supposed to be a teacher. This guy is supposed to be maybe even the Messiah. And he’s walking around, not washing his hands.”

Then the Lord said to him,

Notice once again, it doesn’t say he said anything to Jesus. It’s another example, as we’ve talked about before, St Luke doesn’t come out and say, Jesus has two natures, divine and human in one person, right? He doesn’t say that outright. But he shows us, right? He shows us Jesus doing things only God can do, driving out demons and calming storms and forgiving sins and knowing what people are thinking in their hearts. And then on the other side, he shows us Jesus doing human things, like praying, suffering, weeping, things that are human. And so he shows us, rather than telling us, here’s another example. So Jesus knows what he’s thinking.


And he says to him:

“Now you Pharisees make the outside of the cup and dish clean, but your inward part is full of greed and wickedness. Foolish ones! Did not He who made the outside make the inside also? But rather give alms of such things as you have; then indeed all things are clean to you.

So what’s Jesus saying? “You’re so worried about how things look. You’re so worried about washing the dishes and washing your hands, but it’s like you take a bowl and you wash the outside of it and then you put your food inside of it and eat the food, right? Well, it may look nice, the people watching you eat may not go, eh, like you just did at me for not washing my hands. But you’re eating filth. You’re eating filth. That makes no sense. So he’s saying to the Pharisees, you’re so concerned about being outwardly clean, following all the rules and regulations and only eating the right things and not touching anything unclean, and all the washings and all the tassels on your robe and not being made out of two kinds of fabric. You’re all worried about all that. And you’re not worried at all about what’s going on in your heart and in your soul, because you think nobody knows that, just like you thought I couldn’t tell you were upset about me not washing my hands, but I do, because of course, God knows He said, did not He who made the outside make the inside also. Do you think God cares about you being clean on the outside, and he cares about you following all these rules, but he doesn’t also care about what’s going on in your heart and your soul, He only cares about the external things?

So, you could sit around all day full of lust, full of hate, full of anger, and that’s okay as long as you don’t do anything about it. But of course not, of course not. That’s why he says, give alms, he’s not just saying, well, if I give alms, then okay, everything’s fine. He’s saying, if you clean the inside, you don’t have to worry about the outside. If what you’re doing is good, if what you’re doing is good and from a pure heart, you don’t have to worry about all these little rules. Why? God gave those rules, in the Old Testament, but those rules were means to an end. The reason God had them do the washings was he was trying to make a point about being clean. Not just that your hands need to be clean, but your heart needs to be clean. So, if you don’t get the point, then the ritual by itself has no meaning.

Interlocutor: The reason he gave this particular thought is because he knew what they were thinking, and also because of the rituals that have been established with washing and cleaning and so on. I mean ordinarily you would wash your hands before you eat..

Fr. Stephen: He’s not saying don’t wash your hands before you eat. No, he’s trying to make a point about all of the rituals, you remember in Hosea, and there are a couple of other places too where God talks about the sacrifices that they’re making in the temple. Still at that point, he tells them, stop. He says stop. You’re not following me. You’re not worshipping me. You’re just going through the motions. He says, “I do not delight in the blood of bulls and goats.” I’m not just into slaughtering animals, okay? That’s not my thing. Like, “Oh, he’ll be happy with us now. We poured all the blood in a trough.”

That was supposed to represent something. That ritual had purpose and it had meaning. But if they’re not going to pay attention to the purpose and meaning, then going through the motions has zero value. It’s really continuing sort of the themes he was already talking about. Ritual doesn’t have value in and of itself. It has value when it’s filled with the meaning that God intended for it to have. And if it’s not going to have that meaning, then you shouldn’t do it.

And this is what St. Paul’s going to pick up on when he talks about in First Corinthians, when he talks about the Eucharist. And he says, “If you’re just showing up to eat up to eat, if you’re not aware of what you’re doing…” that’s where he uses the phrase discerning the body and blood of Christ. “If you aren’t aware and intentional about what you’re doing when you receive the Eucharist,” he says, “don’t do it.” He goes so far as to say you doing it wrongly, you showing up and just eating is making some of you sick and some of you have died. You’re worse off than if you hadn’t done it at all, getting back to what Jesus was saying.

These things don’t sort of have value in and of themselves, but them proceeding from a good heart has value. The person who came to God because he was repenting of his sin, because he was aware that he had sinned grievously against God, he had rebelled against God, he had harmed himself, he had harmed others, and was honestly repenting of that sin with tears, had went and found the best sheep in his flock because all he owned, his whole livelihood was this flock of sheep. And he took the best sheep and he went and killed that sheep and offered it to God, that sacrifice was meaningful and represented his real repentance. The guy who did something was going to face consequences for it, and so he went and bought a sheep and went and sacrificed it to get off the hook. That ritual was meaningless. That ritual is meaningless.

So, that’s what Jesus is trying to get across. He probably used the example of almsgiving aimed at this particular Pharisee, because if you’re sitting there full of greed and desire for possessions and that’s the most important thing in the world to you, it doesn’t matter how many times you wash your hands, you’re never going to be clean. That’s what he’s saying. That’s the point he’s making. Not that there’s anything wrong with washing your hands and that you shouldn’t. As He’s going to say elsewhere, he’s going to talk about the Pharisees, how they tithe and fast twice a week… And he doesn’t say you shouldn’t do those things. He says you should do those things, but not neglect the more important things of the passion of worship, of kindness. They have to be joined together by themselves. They don’t mean anything. And so he’s saying cleanliness starts on the inside and comes outward. It doesn’t start on the outside.