The Gospel of Luke 11:45-54 Woe to you lawyers
Luke 11:45-54 · Vern Peterman · Nov 22, 2015
Gospel of Luke, No. 48
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926521457750

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Good morning. We're going to be moving into this passage, a rather amazing passage, in that Jesus doesn't seem to be focusing on being tactful and gentle with his words, instead speaking quite boldly. I have a feeling that his words rather disrupted the start of the meal.

At any rate, but before we go into it, Nancy and I are celebrating 42 years of marriage this weekend. And it's been neat to see how the Lord has worked over those years and been gracious. And all through those 42 years, Nancy has cut my hair. And occasionally I have to ask her to cut the other one. So, into this passage here. This is an uh-oh situation as we step into this.

In Luke 11, 15, 17-26, some were saying that Jesus cast out demons by Beelzebul, the Lord of the Flies, or a few other choice translations. And then in Luke 11, 16, some asked for a sign, but in Luke 11, 29-36, Jesus says to them, you're not getting any sign at all except the sign of Jonah. And then he says, an evil generation asks for signs.

So that's a nice response here. Following that, as you recall last week in Luke 11, 37-44, Jesus really let the Pharisees have it. You can imagine This Pharisee had invited Jesus to sit down for a meal with these guys, and he's got Pharisees and their associated lawyers or scribes sitting around. And so Jesus just lets the Pharisees have it.

And we're going to see in today's passage, Randy just read for us, Luke 11, 45 through 54, these lawyers, also known as scribes. He calls them lawyers early on in the passage and then scribes at the end. They were experts in the Law of Moses, and that's because a good portion of their job was making copies of the Law of Moses and also other what we call Old Testament books. That's not what they called them.

So they take offense at what Jesus says, and say, hey, you're implying insult to us too. And Jesus says, oh yeah? No more implication here. So he lets them have it directly. And also, with all these different groups, we have a supplement available to you, Jewish groups at the time of Jesus. There's a four-page supplement.

It covers the Pharisees, who were not very fair, and the Sadducees, who were sad, you see, and the Essenes, who couldn't be seen because they were reclusive, and the Herodians, the zealots, and by the way, Jesus had invited one of his disciples, who was a zealot, Simon. was part of the zealots. It was a high priest, chief priest, priests, and the Levites. Those different names. And then finally the scribes, or as they're called at the beginning of this passage, the lawyers. So those different groups are addressed, and I think you might find that helpful.

So, Luke 11.45 goes like this. One of the lawyers said to him in reply, Teacher, when you say this, you insult us too. And yes.

So these lawyers, who are also called scribes, it's at the end of this passage and elsewhere, and in fact you'll even see the scribes and Pharisees, those words put together, and you'll also see the scribes of the Pharisees, is another term that puts them together. They tended to be in association with one another, the Pharisees being the most popular religious party, and when I say religious that's also somewhat political, And as was usually the case, once in a while you would have scribes for the Sadducees, but the Pharisee scribes were far more common.

So these two are associated. They often would hang out together. As a matter of fact, you see it in this very meal where there are Pharisees there at the meal and also their scribes or lawyers. So they're hanging out together and including having lunch together.

And so in Matthew 23, Jesus pronounced woes to both the lawyers and the Pharisees at the same time. Woe unto you, and he called out both groups. That Matthew 23 event is in the week right before Christ is crucified, just a few days before. What we're talking about here, this passage, is about six months before Christ is crucified. So they say, you insult us too. So the lawyers were often hanging out with these Pharisees, in part because the Pharisees had much more work for them to do. Why did the Pharisees have much more work for the scribes to do than the Sadducees?

Reason. How many books did the Sadducees believe were a part of the Old Testament? Five. The first five books, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers and Deuteronomy. That's it. So the Sadducees only had those books, all the rest of the 39 books of the Old Testament, as we call it.

They didn't call it that, by the way. All the rest of the 39 books, the Sadducees didn't want to hear about it. They didn't believe in them. They didn't believe that those books were inspired. They didn't believe in the content that was in them. They didn't believe in miracles, angels, or the Messiah, or a resurrection. They believed that once you died here on this planet, you're done. That's it. That's all they believed.

And so all the rest of the books, starting with Joshua on into Malachi, all those books, only the scribes of the Pharisees would copy. But they would copy all those books instead of, as with the Sadducees, now we don't care for them and we don't want copies of them, we don't want you copying them. So obviously then that would draw the scribes, whose job it was, to, among other things, copy these books, draw the scribes toward the Pharisees, just in terms of having a larger amount of work for them to do.

It would take, let's say, let's pick a book like Isaiah. The Dead Sea Scrolls have several copies of Isaiah, some of them in very good condition and some of them in crumbles. But the Dead Sea Scrolls have what we have now as 66 chapters in this long book of Isaiah. That was quite a deal, and to have that copied on animal skins, which was typically what was used for a scroll like that, would be quite a project. And so you can imagine, here would be the scribes copying the entire book of Isaiah into one large scroll. And it's not thin paper, it's animal skin, so this makes for quite a scroll. That would be something that the Pharisees would have the scribes do, but the Sadducees would not be the least bit interested.

Just for example this little kit here you see in the bottom kind of with the lower center. That is a Jewish scribes kit for copying from 400 BC. Okay, so interesting. So they carry around a couple of little quills in there. They would have a place for the the ink and Which in this case is all dried up and gone, but they have a place for the ink and So they would carry that about so that they would be ready to do their writing But so the view of the law of Moses and all the little variations they would put on it and the additions and the exceptions that the Pharisees had Were also held by the lawyers who tended to hang out with them and side with them, okay? and most lawyers did side with the Pharisees and Now, something that we talked about last week is that there's this strange anomaly.

We tend to think of the Pharisees as these bad guys. The general culture thought of them as good guys. They were the culture's heroes. But here's another little interesting piece of news. The Pharisees and the lawyers were not all one united group. We oftentimes think of, oh, there's the Pharisees and they all agree. No, no. No, no. The Pharisees and scribes were not all one united group. The only way they united is against Jesus, right?

But otherwise, they were sharply and deeply divided. By the time of Christ, The Pharisees were deeply divided in various ways, but one of those was those who followed Shammai, Rabbi Shammai, and those who followed Rabbi Hillel. Rabbi Hillel was the grandfather of Gamaliel, who is quoted once in Acts chapter 5 and referred to as Paul's rabbi in Acts 22. And so you had those two, and the general tendency was for Shammai to take a more restrictive, conservative position, and for Hillel to take a more liberal, tolerant position.

Now, this is really going to be surprising. There were at least, so far as we know, 316 different areas of disagreement among them. And the disagreement sometimes got to the point of bloodshed. There were even some who died fighting over these doctrinal points. And they were in lots of different areas. They had two different court systems, one for the school of Shammai and one for the school of Hillel, and you could get married and divorced and remarried, picking which court you were going to go to.

For example, Joseph determined when Mary was pregnant. Before it was revealed to him that she was pregnant as a work of the Holy Spirit, Joseph was figuring on going to the court of Hillel. which had no fault, no questions asked, divorce. You want a divorce? Here it is. Shammai had questions and you could only have one of four reasons for getting a divorce.

So Joseph determined to go to the court of Hillel where they didn't ask questions and Mary wouldn't be embarrassed. Fortunately that never happened because the Lord revealed to Joseph that Mary was pregnant as a work of the Holy Spirit, not because she was fooling around. But here's an example of some of the areas they disagreed.

Shammai said that the Hanukkah candles should all be lit and diminished by one every day. So start with eight and then back off and then finally down to none. So that's the way you're supposed to do it according to Shammai. Hillel said it was supposed to be the opposite. No, no, no, no, no, no. No, you light them one at a time, and so you end with eight.

And so they would argue and argue and argue at that point, and no way to solve it. You know what finally solved it? The Romans attacked. That was what solved it. But that disagreement went on and on and on and on, and there's one reason why the Roman attack solved the problem.

Shammai actually supported the Jews' rebelling. So the more and more fervor and intensity there was, the more Shammai became popular among the Jews that wanted to rebel. But those that rebelled were killed off and driven off and captured. Therefore, who was left?

The supporters of Hillel. So today, you won't find people talking about Shammai that much, but you'll talk find them talking about Hillel because those are the ones who survived okay so Luke 11 46 so he said woe to you lawyers as well which they love to hear they're just really excited about that for you weigh men down with burdens hard to bear while you yourselves will not even touch the burdens with one of your fingers so three woes again three woes for the Pharisees and we're getting at the start of three woes here for these lawyers or scribes. So just as Jesus had pronounced the three woes against the Pharisees in the passage we read last Sunday, He's going to pronounce three woes against these lawyers as well. He's got to be fair, you know. Alright. It would not do to have these lawyers only implied as also being guilty, as these Pharisees were, but they were to also receive condemnation because of their own hypocrisy and corruption.

Okay, here's all 613 laws of the Law of Moses on one slide. That's it. All of them are there. And by the way, those are real. Those are not made up or fake or anything. All 613 laws, they're all there. Even the Ten. Even the Ten Commandments, they're in there too. And just so you know that they're really real, as we've shown this before, number 144 is not to eat a worm found in fruit.

That's Leviticus 11.41. Not even a little tiny baby worm. Not even a tiny baby worm. Not allowed. So it's against the law of Moses there to eat a piece of fruit that has a worm in it.

Jesus tells these scribes, okay, you weigh men down with burdens hard to bear, okay? You give them all these different rules because here's the problem with the scribes They would copy the scripture and by the way, they did very good at that They did a good job copying the scripture.

So so they would go in and As they would copy, they developed traditions. And one of those traditions was you wash your hands before and after copying the scripture every time. So they washed their hands very carefully. They had rules about counting how many words were in a book and what was the middle word. So they had various rules that they developed in order to make sure that they'd copied everything correctly.

And if something was wrong, you threw the whole thing away. You got rid of it. Yeah, so you had to do it just right That's one of the reasons why we know the Old Testament scriptures as we have them now very well reflect the original and also we have a thousand-year point of comparison and that's the Dead Sea Scrolls right discovered in Israel along the caves and along the Dead Sea from the late 40s into the 1950s and So they did a really good job of copying the scriptures, and that was reliable. But then when they were asked to explain it, they started spewing all the stuff that the Pharisees gave them.

Example, here's this one law out of the ten. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Oh, so you're not supposed to work, right? So now you have 39 different considerations as to what is work. plus a list of exceptions. So if Jesus healed on the Sabbath, that didn't match their 39 considerations as to what was work, and it wasn't on the list of exceptions. So Jesus was not supposed to heal on the Sabbath, right? So what did Jesus do? He made sure He healed on the Sabbath, a lot.

But you weigh men now with burdens hard to bear, in addition to the conflicts that we talked about. Imagine you're like, imagine Joseph. He's just a carpenter, right? And he wants to do the right thing. But now you got these rabbis that are arguing with each other and they're completely opposite viewpoints. If you're celebrating a Hanukkah, what do you do? Well, you could choose to say, well, I'll have one candle and do it according to one set of candles and do it according to Shammai. And I'll have another set of candles and I'll do it according to Hillel.

And that way they'll both be happy. Right. So you could do that. But it was difficult. In some cases, you couldn't just double up on something and do it two different ways. You had to pick one. So it's very confusing for people. And these lawyers, instead of saying, here's what the word of God says, and then leave it at that, had to come up, oh, but this rabbi says this, and this rabbi says that, and on and on and on. You weigh men down with burdens hard to bear. The problem with these guys is not only would they weigh men down with burdens, but they wouldn't help one bit. They would tell them, here's what the scripture says, here's what the rabbis say, and good luck with that.

Right? Because I got my own laws to keep. By the way, the men had a prayer that they said every day. It says, thank you God that I was born a man and not a woman. Because there are more laws that apply to men. So the lawyers would tell the people what the Law of Moses said and then repeat all of the conflicted and burdensome additional points of the deeply divided Pharisees. Oh, there's this teaching and that teaching and one Pharisee says this and another one says that. Good luck with that. Keep track of all that. Make a decision. Pick one.

That's why in the Sermon on the Mount, contained in Matthew 5, 6 and 7, in Matthew 5.20, Jesus says, For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Which tells you, are the scribes and the Pharisees entering the kingdom of heaven? No. It doesn't get you there.

And that's where people were probably at first stunned because they're thinking, Those guys are the best. How can I have better righteousness than those guys? But he told me, you guys are no help at all. You load people up with all kinds of conflicted and heavy restrictions and constraints. Things you're supposed to do. Things you're not supposed to do. Things you have to make sure you do. Things you have to make sure you don't do.

Even in the punishments, in 40 lashes, Gave 40 lashes. They always gave up to 39 because you might miscount by one, right? The lawyers had their own burden of the Law of Moses to keep and that was massive. After all, they had traditions about copying. They had traditions about writing that they had to follow in addition to what everybody else had, right? And it was massive because they had to follow that on top of everything else. So they're certainly not going to go and step out of their way to help somebody else carry their burden that they laid on top of them. The scribes, the lawyers, were no help at all.

So here's Luke 11, 47. Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets, and it was your fathers who killed them. About this time the scribes are wondering whether to eat the meal or Jesus, right? Okay. You build the tombs of the prophets, it was your fathers who killed them. Which, of course, they'd love hearing that. Now, so they made tombs into tombs, okay?

It was common in the time of Christ for observant Jews to build up and enlarge and enhance tombs of the prophets and other Old Testament characters, prophets and kings and whatnot. And we'll talk about that in a minute. So this was a common thing, and we have record that it was done commonly during the time of Christ. So the lawyers, that is the scribes, would be the ones to read and write those names. Now they themselves weren't the ones working on upgrading these tombs, but they would help fund those upgrades and be significant contributors and supporters of that tomb building and tomb enhancing that would go on there.

So in the Bible, unless one's a literal child or son of the father, to be called a son of or child of something or someone, meant to be like in character and close in relationship. Got that? Like in character, close in relationship. So, for example, if there's an exhortation for us to be living as children of God, that means it's an exhortation to be like in character and having a close relationship, right?

So this is a similar saying. You're fathers, you're the sons of them, right? It was your fathers who killed them. You are alike in character and close in relationship to those who killed them. As a matter of fact, you're going to be held responsible for them. So Luke 11, 48, so you are witnesses and approve the deeds of your fathers because it was they who killed them and you build their tombs. Whoa! They enhance the tombs, they add to them, they decorate them and show them honor. Essentially what Jesus was saying is building the tombs is celebrating their death. Building the tombs is celebrating the death of the prophets.

So these lawyers would copy the words of the prophets with great care again and again, and for that they can be commended. But they wouldn't heed the words of the prophets whose words they were copying. They wouldn't heed the words in their own hearts, in their own minds, and in their own lives. They would not listen to it, they would just copy it well, but set it aside.

So Jesus pictures the building up of the tombs of the prophets not as honoring them, but celebrating and approving the prophets' deaths. That's what you guys are doing when you're building up these tombs. It's real popular among you guys, but it's not good. Jesus also knew that these scribes, these lawyers, would participate in his own death about six months later. They would be among the ones.

Here's Luke 9.22, which we looked at some weeks back. The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed and be raised up on the third day. So was it necessary that Christ be crucified? Yes, it was. But the elders and chief priests and scribes would be sinning greatly as they did what was necessary for us to be saved. Here's Luke 20, 46-47, which will be in some chapters ahead of where we are now. Beware of the scribes who like to walk around in long robes and love respectful greetings in the marketplaces, in chief seats in the synagogue, and places of honor at banquets." And oh, I really like this word picture.

"...who devour widows' houses." Can you imagine somebody doing that? What does he mean by that? What he means by that is that these scribes would be in various kinds of positions, legal positions, and even for what they charge for certain certificates and processing and things like that, to essentially take a widow who was one who ought to be cared for and one who was most vulnerable, and essentially take their assets and just eat up their assets. That's what he means by devouring widows' houses, not literally eating them, but essentially taking a widow's assets because they're vulnerable and weak and they can get away with it. Just kind of working the assets over time until the widow has nothing and they've got it all.

And for appearance's sake, offer long prayers. These will receive greater condemnation. greater condemnation so here's Luke 11 49 through 51 three verses together here for this reason also the wisdom of God said I will send to them prophets and apostles and some of them they will kill and some they will persecute So that the blood of all the prophets shed since the foundation of the world may be charged against this generation from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the house of God.

Yes, I tell you, it shall be charged against this generation. Let's talk about a few words and points in here. First of all, this is not a quote from anything that we're aware of. So this is something Jesus is revealing the wisdom of God here, not quoting from some book or something. It says, I will send them prophets and apostles. This is not the twelve apostles as are referred to in the New Testament. The word apostle meaning a special messenger. So God sent prophets and special messengers to carry a message to the Jews.

And some they will kill, which they did, and some they will persecute, which they also did, so that the blood of all the prophets shed, since the foundation of the world may be charged against this generation, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah." So under the law of Moses, God could carry on consequence of sin to subsequent generations in a way similar to human beings being impacted by and responsible for Adam's sin.

Abel was killed by his brother Cain out of jealousy over a sacrifice. You imagine, what was Cain thinking? God is not satisfied with my sacrifice. He likes Abel's better. I will fix it by killing Abel. Hello? You know? Yeah, this is crazy. But nonetheless, that's what he did. It seemed like the right thing to do, right? Now Zachariah was killed by stoning right in the temple area, and this was the temple that was built by Solomon. So Solomon's temple, 2 Chronicles 24, 20-22 records that event, and right about here in that temple built by Solomon.

Now, when the four of us were over in Israel, this kind of lays out the orientation of things. Right about over here was a monument that we saw, several of them in a row. And this is Zechariah's tomb. It was brand new in Jesus' day. So Jesus brought that up, I think, because it was a recent tomb enhancement. He had already been buried there, but they went and made this big monument in the side of the hill. That was revealed about February 2011, so almost five years ago. That was first pulled out. It had been covered by debris. But anyway, that's it.

And the four of us saw that over there. Also right there, so there's a death, Zechariah. Also right over here, which is right nearby, This is the City of David excavations. We weren't able to go in because there was an ongoing archaeological excavation in that area. But we could look over and see it. Right in this area is a place that some archaeologists believe is the pit that Jeremiah was dropped into, Jeremiah chapter 38.

And so that's just like a stone throw from this other monument. But it's an example of the prophets being persecuted. Jeremiah was put down into the cistern as Jeremiah 38 describes and anyway all kinds of archaeological confirmation several Baruch the son of Nariah was the scribe for him two of his his seal imprints have been found and a number of other seal imprints from other people in the book of Jeremiah have been found all in this general location okay really quite amazing in some cases just feet apart and so really astounding but why this generation why this particular one this generation of Jews would have particular guilt This generation had the Son of God speaking to them personally and directly. It wasn't someone sent. It wasn't a prophet. It wasn't a special messenger.

It was Jesus Christ, the Son of God Himself, speaking right before them. And they would first plot to try to catch Him, and eventually plot to kill Him. That's why this generation is particularly guilty and things of previous generations would be given to them. People would come and say, thus says the Lord. The prophets of old would say that frequently. Thus says the Lord. But Jesus would speak directly as God himself in human flesh and they would reject him.

No longer a messenger, I'm the one. As a matter of fact, you can put it this way, I'm the one that sent those guys that you killed, and that your fathers killed. And now that I am here, Jesus would say, now that I am here, the one who sent all those that your fathers killed, you're rejecting me.

Here's Luke 11, 52, Woe to you, lawyers, for you have taken away the key of knowledge, and you yourselves did not enter, and you hindered those who were entering." Oh boy, okay? Taking away the key of knowledge, you didn't enter, and you hindered those who were. Wow.

These lawyers, also known as scribes, would spend a great deal of time copying the inspired Word of God very, very carefully. Then they would turn right around, instead of clearly explaining the Word of God, and just saying, this is what the Word of God says, they would offer all the Pharisees corruption, including all the conflicts. Including all the fights and battles and tug of wars and arguing that went back and forth. So people would be confused and conflicted about the content of God's Word, rather than coming to know God Himself. Let me see, what's more important? What sequence do I light the Hanukkah candles in for knowing God? Hmm. That's a tough one, right? That's a tough one.

And, if there were points of tension and conflicted opinions among the scribes and Pharisees, the scribes would go ahead and teach the conflicted opinions. This rabbi says this, and this rabbi says that. And so just so you know, we got hundreds of those, right? This rabbi says this, this rabbi says that. Different opinions.

Jesus being the Son of God knew exactly what everything in the Word of God meant. Imagine, here's Jesus, he says, wait a minute, I was involved in the writing of this, right? He knows, is there any passage that Jesus looked at in the Old Testament and was puzzled as to what it meant? Absolutely not. None. None whatsoever. He had total and complete knowledge of what every single verse in the Old Testament meant. He also knew that the books after the first five were inspired.

Here is the Mount of Beatitudes. This is looking down from the Mount of Beatitudes towards the Sea of Galilee. And so this is where the Sermon on the Mount was given. This is contained in Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7. And at the end of that sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 7, 28, and 29, it says this, When Jesus had finished these words, the crowds were amazed at his teaching.

They didn't say, hey, that was pretty good. They were amazed at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one having authority and not as their scribes. Because the scribes would say, this rabbi says this, this rabbi says that, good luck with that. Try doing everything. All the corruption and all the confusion and all the conflict was gone in Jesus' teaching. Because he could tell them, the Bible says this.

Nothing else. Nothing else. You can imagine these lawyers just totally stunned. I thought we were going to sit down to a meal. He let them have it. The Pharisees and now the lawyers. And I'm not sure they're even in a condition to eat a meal after this. So here's what it says. It says, when he left there, I don't know if he even ate. When he left there, the scribes and the Pharisees began to be very hostile.

Now notice that, very hostile, not just kind of slightly, you know, digging, not just a little bit sharp, but very hostile, and to question him closely on many subjects, plotting against him to catch him in something he might say. So instead of thinking, oh, this guy might be right about what he's saying, so I'd better ponder it and take it to heart.

Nah. Weren't very many that did that. A few. Nicodemus. Joseph of Arimathea. So not many. There were a few. Instead they all decided to begin a war of words with Jesus it listening carefully to what he was saying But as they did so it wasn't with the intent of saying boy. I want to make sure I understand what he's saying real clearly So that I can ponder it and consider it no it was listening very carefully and all of their attention on him was now towards directed towards asking questions to catch Jesus in some supposed error and Something that they could say, Aha!

Gotcha! Right? That's what they wanted. They went from plotting to plotting! So these words were spoken to Jesus about six months before he'd be crucified. The plotting at this point is all verbal, at least at this passage, in an attempt to catch Jesus in some verbal error, something he'd overlooked or something he wasn't quite clear on. Instead of plotting to catch him by supposed words, they would ultimately begin to plot to kill him. That plotting is recorded for us in John 11, 49 through 53. You have it as a slide on page 3.

But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, you know nothing at all, nor do you take into account that it is expedient for you that one man die for the people. And that the whole nation not perish. Now he did not say this on his own initiative, but being a high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but in order that he might also gather together into one the children of God who are scattered abroad. So from that day on they planned together not to catch him in words, but to kill him. They planned together to kill him from that day on. and Caiaphas was completely unaware that he was essentially prophesying that one man died for the people and by the way the people or the nation that's Israel the people's or the nation's that's the Gentiles one man died for the people the people of Israel So here's Caiaphas. It makes note a couple of points. He's being high priest that year. He was high priest from 18 until 36 AD. So his assignment included that.

So why does Jesus waste time with these guys? I put that in quotes, waste time with these guys. Jesus wastes time with these guys because of God's grace. Because of God's grace. He knows which ones out of all of them would come to believe, yet he warns them all. In John 8, 24, he says, unless you believe that I am he, and that's a, unless you believe that I am deity, you will die in your sins. He's telling guys, most of whom, maybe all of whom, will not believe. But he warns them just the same, and just like he does here. of this group that he spoke to here in this passage in Luke 11, we have no knowledge that any of them ever came to believe. He knows which ones out of them would come to believe, yet he dies for the sins of all of them.

He died for the sins of Annas and for Caiaphas, the one who plotted. Do you know he died for the sins of Judas? Rather stunning. You might say, I'll take a pass on that one, right? Think of the worst people you could possibly imagine in the history of the world. He died for their sins too. Really amazing. Really amazing. God's death, the death of Christ for our sins is not efficient at all.

And one reason it doesn't have to be efficient is God doesn't have to be stingy with his grace. He has wealths, that's the way Ephesians 2 puts it, wealths of grace, riches, plural wealths of grace, lots and lots of it. He does not have to be stingy. He does not have to be stingy. There's plenty of it to go around and then some.

It is rather astounding Rather astounding that the Lord would pay the price for all these people, even knowing those who would not believe. That shows the character of His grace. It shows the character of His love. It also shows me there's no sin that I have ever done or ever will do that falls outside of God's grace and God's provision. There's nothing that says, oh, I'm too bad or I messed up too much here. There's nothing of that sort. Paid for every single thing.

There's nothing that Jesus has said to any of these guys that is inconsistent with his love for them. You know, he'd say sharp words like he did to them, woe to you, woe to you, woe to you, to both the Pharisees and the scribes, and then turn around six months later and die for their sins. There is nothing that these guys are going to do or say that will surprise Jesus. And that's what they didn't understand.

They thought, we've got to catch Him in something. Hey, wait a minute. Jesus knew you were going to ask this question before He said, let there be light. Right? Before He said, let there be light. He knew that these questions were going to come up. They could not surprise Him. There's no way. The Son of God knew what they were going to do and say. before he said, let there be light. And yet he still loved them. He still spent time with them, even if they didn't listen. And he still paid the price for their sins, even if they would never believe. And this is really amazing about God's love and about God's grace.

In one sense, I'm not speaking as a universalist here at all, but in one sense, because of this, everybody is savable. Do you see the distinction I'm making? It doesn't mean everybody's going to be saved. I'm not saying that at all. Everybody will not. But everybody is savable because Christ died for the sins of all. Christ died for the sins of all. Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for your indeed amazing grace. We thank you for your immense love. Thank you that you weren't efficient and stingy with your grace and your love. But instead you just poured it out abundantly out of the wealth of love and grace that you have given to us. And we just thank you that you loved and you gave, you loved and you gave. And for the joy set before you, you endured the cross. I thank you in Jesus name. Amen.