Take your Bibles with me and turn to Luke 11. Luke 11. We are going to be examining verses 37-44 today.

Mary Mallon came to the United States from Ireland as a fifteen year old girl. For her whole life, she worked as a cook for affluent families.

But something interesting happened to all the people Mary was in contact with. Many of them got sick. It wasn't her cooking. She must have been good at that because she never lacked for a job.

But still, everywhere she went, people got sick. Worse than that, some people died.

It turns out that Mary was a carrier of Typhoid. She herself never got sick from it. But she silently and asymptomatically carried the disease around with her, and passed it on to others. It's estimated that she made hundreds of people sick in her lifetime and killed around 50 people.

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None of this was on purpose. She didn't know she was doing it and refused to believe she was doing it. But Typhoid Mary was one of the biggest killers who ever lived.

Think about that. John Wayne Gacy, Jeffery Dahmer, Jack the Ripper and just about every other serial killer you've ever heard of didn't kill as many people on purpose as Typhoid Mary may have killed accidentally, while trying to fix them food.

And that begs the question - what if people who seem harmless are actually quite dangerous? What if someone who looks really good, is really, really bad.

If you think about poison, poison isn't really dangerous when it is in a bottle like you see in the cartoons with a big skull and crossbones on it. Poison becomes dangerous when it is invisible, when it looks like good food.

What if there are religious people who seem to be squeaky clean but they are actually making everyone filthy?

And what if, like Typhoid Mary, they don't even realize they are doing it? What if they think they are helping?

That's actually exactly what Jesus accuses a group of people of doing today, and it is an important warning to all of us who look and act like religious people.

Let's read our text.

[!bible] Luke 11:37-44 - KJV 37. And as he spake, a certain Pharisee besought him to dine with him: and he went in, and sat down to meat. 38. And when the Pharisee saw it, he marvelled that he had not first washed before dinner. 39. And the Lord said unto him, Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness. 40. Ye fools, did not he that made that which is without make that which is within also? 41. But rather give alms of such things as ye have; and, behold, all things are clean unto you. 42. But woe unto you, Pharisees! for ye tithe mint and rue and all manner of herbs, and pass over judgment and the love of God: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. 43. Woe unto you, Pharisees! for ye love the uppermost seats in the synagogues, and greetings in the markets. 44. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are as graves which appear not, and the men that walk over them are not aware of them.

Remember, Jesus has just healed a man of demon possession who was an impossible case - and the Pharisees in the crowd had accused Jesus of doing it by working with Beelzebub.

So it's kind of weird that one of these Pharisees would invite Jesus over for lunch, but that is exactly what happened. We can safely assume that this Pharisee wasn't having Jesus over because he was a fan, and that he had ulterior motives.

Jesus decided to make a point of NOT going through the Pharisee's ceremonial hand washing.

You might read that and think "Ok, this guy was just really big on washing hands before you eat, I know a lot of moms like that."

But no, it was way bigger than that. The Pharisees had all kinds of writing and traditions about washing their hands. Some Pharisees considered eating without washing your hands to be just as bad as committing fornication. Some of them didn't just wash their hands before eating, but they washed their hand between courses. Rabbis could be kicked out of the Synagogue if they were caught not washing their hands. One Rabbi even got put in prison and almost died of thirst because he used his water ration to wash his hands instead of drinking it.

So when we say these guys were dead serious about washing hands - that's not hyperbole. This was a matter of life and death to them. It was a matter of heaven and hell.

And yet, if you read the whole Old Testament, you won't find any rules about washing your hands before you eat. They aren't in there. This is completely a man-made tradition and so Jesus decided this was where He was going to draw His battle line.

Now, here is the thing about the Pharisees we need to constantly remind ourselves of as we read the gospels. The Pharisees were us.

The Pharisees were the religious right of their day. They were middle class, Bible loving people who took holiness seriously. They were the fundamental independent baptists of Judaism.

And so much of what they did was commendable. They took some real stands for what was right, even in their history being persecuted for those stands.

But notice what Jesus said to them at the end of our text. Look at verse 44 again:

[!bible] Luke 11:44 - KJV 44. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are as graves which appear not, and the men that walk over them are not aware of them.

Now, that verse doesn't mean much to us. But do you know what Jesus was doing there? He was calling these people Typhoid Marys.

In Judaism, any contact with a dead body made you ceremonially unclean. Because of that - they made the graves super obvious. Graves had big whitewashed stones marking them. That way you could avoid them and not be defiled.

But Jesus said that the Pharisees were like unmarked graves, that means they looked alright. No one could tell they were bad. But when you came into contact with them, they defiled you.

And here is the point I believe Jesus was making here:

Very religious people run the risk of defiling others.

There are people who are very religious, who have all of the outward signs of being a Christian and being a believer and loving the word of God - who are poison, who are typhoid Marys. There are people who seem godly but they are actually making people sick and making them dirty.

How do you know if you are one of these people? I believe Jesus gives us two symptoms of dangerous religion here.

And that is my sermon - the two ways you as a religious person can know if you are silently and unconsciously poisoning people and defiling people and sickening people you may be trying to help.

Let's pray and I'll give you those two points.

Pray

The first point I want you to write down today about how religious people can unknowingly infect others is this...

1. You are in danger of religiously poisoning people when you emphasize the external more than the internal.

Remember Jesus is eating with this Pharisee. He is upset because Jesus isn't washing his hands. So Jesus says this:

[!bible] Luke 11:39 - KJV 39. And the Lord said unto him, Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness.

Imagine I have a stainless steel mixing bowl. I've just used it to make meatloaf (which by the way, is lunch today.) So this bowl has had raw eggs and milk and raw meat in it.

Now, imagine I take the bowl and I clean the outside of it really well, I polish it. I get it to have a mirror shine. But on the inside, its still dirty from that raw meatloaf. Then I put it away.

Not only is that pointless. It's also dangerous. Someone is going to pick up that bowl, think it is clean, and maybe start using it and make themselves sick.

That's what Jesus said about these Pharisees - they were cleaning the outside of the bowl, but the inside was full of ravening and wickedness.

By the way, I looked up that word "ravening". I thought it meant anger - but it actually means greed.

So Jesus was saying that these men looked real good on the outside, but on the inside they were wicked, on the inside they were greedy. They were real careful to clean the outside, but they never cleaned the inside.

And as a example of that, Jesus went to another area where the Pharisees placed a lot of emphasis. The Pharisees were huge on tithing. Tithing was one of those areas where they patted themselves on the back and said "we are better than all you other people, look at how we tithe."

The Pharisees took tithing so far they even tithed on their herbs. They made sure God got 10% of their basil and rosemary. They were extreme about it. But that didn't mean they had generous hearts.

Here is what the Pharisees always did: they always emphasized things on the outside, but ignored things on the inside.

Tithing could be measured. Clothing could be measured. Washing your hands could be measured. Sabbath rules could be measured. But your heart - no one can see that. No one can see your greed or your jealousy or your lust.

And so there is this great danger that we as religious people have of making a big deal about things others can see - external things like clothes and giving and church attendance - and ignoring the internal things.

Now, I want to be clear -

• I believe Christians should tithe. The Bible teaches that. Jesus even said here to these Pharisees they were right to tithe.
• I believe Christians should dress modestly.
• I believe Christians should be careful how they talk.
• I believe Christians should make church attendance a priority.

All of these things are good and right. But those things have to flow out of our heart. If we clean up the outside of our life and we don't have heart transformation - we are like the mixing bowl with the mirror shine but is filthy in the important part.

When you trust Christ as your Savior, He transforms you from the inside out. You become the salt and light. You become holy and sanctified. From the inside out.

When we place too much emphasis on the outward things, the visible things and not enough emphasis on what is going on in our hearts - then we run the risk of becoming like the Pharisees and we run the risk of making those around us spiritually sick.

I wish I could say this is just theory - but unfortunately, I've seen this. I know lots of people who grew up in church who want nothing to do with Christianity because the version of Christianity they were exposed to was a shiny mixing bowl on the outside and filthy rot on the inside.

Yes, walking with God should change our outward behavior. But outward behavior is a tiny percentage of what the New Testament talks about. Most of the time it talks about sin, it is sin of the heart:

• greed
• lust
• envy
• jealousy
• anger
• hatred
• rebellion
• faithlessness

And the New Testament talks about these things because God is looking at our heart. God sees who we really are.

So we have to be careful that we don't emphasize the external things and lose the heart things because if we do, we'll become the kind of religious people who are Typhoid Marys.

But there is a second way Jesus shows us how we as religious people can be poisonous:

2. You are in danger of religiously poisoning people when you seek recognition for man for your religion not recognition from God.

Look at verse 43 again:

[!bible] Luke 11:43 - KJV 43. Woe unto you, Pharisees! for ye love the uppermost seats in the synagogues, and greetings in the markets.

The uppermost seats in the synagogues were the seats in the church that were up on the platform facing the people. We used to have those seats here - they were like little thrones. I never liked those chairs - I felt they sent the wrong message.

Jesus was saying "You guys like to sit on the platform and seem important. You guys love it when you are out at Walmart and someone sees you and says 'Oh, Pastor' or 'Oh, it's the good reverend'."

Jesus knew why they were doing it - they were doing it to be seen of men. They were doing their outward religious acts for reasons of pride.

Spurgeon wrote about preachers like this. Listen to this quote:

I know brethren who, from head to foot, in garb, tone, manner, necktie and boots are so utterly parsonic that no particle of manhood is visible. (Spurgeon)

We forget this, but one of the things people hates Spurgeon for when he first came on the seen was that he dressed like a normal person. He refused to put on airs.

I know Christians who absolutely insist on wearing a suit or a shirt and tie everywhere they go. They have to get their Christian uniform right. There are guys who will literally mow the grass in a shirt and tie.

Why? I think Jesus might say they were doing it to be seen of men.

Do you know what kind of religion matters? It is not the ceremonial. It is not the visible. It is the stuff people don't see. It is the stuff that happens in your prayer closet. It is the giving you do that no one knows about. It is visiting the widows, or giving up your afternoon to help a needy person.

Listen to what Jesus said in Matthew 6:

[!bible] Matthew 6:1-4 - KJV

1. Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.
2. Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
3. But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth:
4. That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.

If you have to blow a trumpet and say "look at me, I'm doing something good" then Jesus would say you are doing it to be seen of men, and not doing it for the Lord and you have your reward already - your reward is your reputation.

When I was a teenager, I was what you would call a good kid. I hung out with the good kids in church. But I was lost as a ball in the high weeds and one of the ways I knew I was lost is that I would go to prayer meetings as long as there were other people to see it, but I would never pray alone. If there weren't people to see it, I wouldn't pray.

Conclusion

Church member, are you a typhoid mary? Are you an unmarked grave. You seem alright on the outside, but actually you are defiling people because it isn't right on the inside.

• Are you someone who puts way more emphasis on the outward acts than on inward righteousness?
• Are you someone who does things to be seen of men? Are you seeking the recognition of men and not of God?

I don't know about you - but I don't want to be the kind of religious person who goes around infecting other people and poisoning their view of God.

But here's the beautiful thing about this passage - Jesus doesn't just diagnose the disease. He offers the cure.

Look back at verse 41: "But rather give alms of such things as ye have; and, behold, all things are clean unto you."

Jesus is saying - give from your heart, from what's within you, and everything becomes clean. But here's the problem: what's within us is greed and wickedness. What's within us is sin.

So how can we give from our hearts when our hearts are dirty?

The answer is the cross.

Jesus didn't just expose the Pharisees' spiritual contamination - He took that contamination upon Himself. At the cross, Jesus became sin for us. He took our dirty hearts, our greed, our pride, our desire for recognition from men. He took it all.

And in exchange, He gave us His clean heart. He gave us His righteousness.

You see, Typhoid Mary was eventually quarantined - isolated on an island because she was too dangerous to be around people. But Jesus wasn't quarantined. He was crucified. He let the disease of sin kill Him so that we could be healed.

When you trust Christ as your Savior, you don't just get cleaned up on the outside - you get a heart transplant. God gives you a new heart that wants to give from love, not greed. A new heart that seeks God's approval, not man's applause.

The Pharisees were unmarked graves, defiling everyone they touched. But because of the cross, we can become fountains of living water, bringing life and healing to everyone around us.

That's the difference between religion and relationship. Religion makes you sick. The cross makes you whole.

Let's pray.