Passion Week 3: Clean The Inside Of The Cup

Jesus spent Tuesday and Wednesday of Passion week in the temple teaching and answering the Pharisees’ and Sadducees’ “gotcha questions”. Finally, Jesus had a question of His own.

“What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?" They said to him, "The son of David." He said to them, "How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying, "'The Lord said to my Lord, "Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet"'? If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?" And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions. - Matthew 22:42-46 

Upon silencing their kangaroo court, Jesus had His own thoughts on the exclusive religious system they had built. The Scribes and Pharisees had taken the Law and used it to weigh people down with undue burdens and reinforce their positions of power and influence. They weaponized the Law to keep the poor, weak, and downtrodden from coming to God, heaping up rules and regulations that no one could keep and that, in turn, they saw themselves as exceptions to.

Jesus has something to say about this.

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, "The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat, ... They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others. - Matthew 23:1-2, 4-7

"But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. - Matthew 23:13

A day before, Jesus had turned over the tables in the court of the gentiles, now He was turning over the entire system from the top down. Their obsession with the interpretation of small details of the Law had caused them to miss the whole point. It was righteous by religious works not by faith.

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. - Matthew 23:23

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean. ... So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. - Matthew 23:25-26, 28

I am afraid that so many believers have been lured into performing their righteous for others to see. They are looking to prove their devotion by spiritual acts, performing their Christianity for the respect and admiration of others. They are living from a righteousness rooted in their do’s and don’ts and in the finished work of the cross. So many are taking their stand on a moral high ground, ready to condemn anyone who can’t live up to their own standards. We are showing off our polished outside while inwardly raging against our brothers and sisters, full of jealousy, bitterness, and anger.

That kind of religion doesn’t produce followers of Jesus, it produces fake Christians…Pharisees.

Let’s get real.

In this season of repentance leading up to Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday, Jesus is drawing us out of religious mindsets that are unknowingly working in our lives. You are the real you when the door is closed and no one is watching. The Father is pursuing the real you, not the play-actors that we’ve become for others.

The gospel is not primarily about behavioral modification. The gospel is about a new creation, producing a heart transformation that overflows into good works. Let the Holy Spirit come and clean the inside of the cup and change you from the inside out. There is so much grace.