Lawyer Woe #2

 See Luke 11:47-51. In a couple of weeks I plan to stand before the graves of my father and mother in a small cemetery in Dasher, GA. I hope to honor them by taking the time to go there and spend a few minutes. Last week I said a prayer before the mobile Vietnam memorial and thought of the 58,000 men and women listed there. Here is the crux of Jesus' woe. There is something wrong with outwardly honoring the dead, holding them up as worthy of honor for how they lived and died, and then not following the principles by which they lived and died. The lawyers decorated the tombs of the prophets, making a great show of their devotion to what these prophets stood for and what they preached, while all the while not living their lives according to what the prophets said. (It would  be worth your while to read a sermon by John Nelson Murdock delivered on the 4th of July, 1858 entitled "Building the Tombs of the Prophets.")

These lawyers venerated the old Elijah but would not listen to the new Elijah, John the Baptist. They venerated the prophet Moses but would not listen to the one like Moses, even the Messiah Jesus (See Deut.18). Many love dead prophets but show little respect for live ones who tell them things they do not want to hear. Dead prophets can be tamed and entombed. Dead prophets can be quoted. Live ones are hard to tame and should be followed. Before we say that we would not do what they did, how would we treat the likes of John the Baptist if he came to preach at our church next Sunday? It is one thing to set him on a flannel graph board; it is still another to put him in the pulpit. The message of dead prophets can be reshaped. They can be kept in a book on a shelf, tucked away, ignored, neglected, and made irrelevant. Martin Luther King, Jr. was hated while alive, and today we have a national holiday in his honor. When we celebrate the Lord's Supper are we merely decorating His tomb, or are we listening and responding to the living Savior.

It is curious that Jesus says "For this reason the wisdom of God says..." (11:49) Not just "God said" but the "wisdom of God says." It reminds me of Luke 7:35 in a similar context. "Wisdom is proven right by her children." God was prophetically silent for 400 years, and then in the new age he began to send prophets and apostles to that generation. Why? One reason is so that He could hold them responsible for the blood of all the prophets. Their blood was going to come upon Jesus' generation, and within 40 years it did at the destruction of Jerusalem. From one end of the Jewish Bible to the other, from Abel to Zechariah (Gen.4:8 to 2 Chron.24:20,21) the indictments of all the murders of all the prophets, including the greatest Prophet, Jesus Himself was going to be brought to court with God Himself as the judge. The blood of these prophets cry out from the ground against them.

So how do we avoid such a woe? We must stop giving lip-service to those who have gone before, our parents and grandparents, our great moral and spiritual leaders, our heroes who died sacrificially, and our constitutional forefathers and begin to live out the truths and principles which guided their lives. More than this, we must not honor Jesus with our lips and our hearts be far from Him. We must not speak of how great He was. We must speak of how great He still is and how He is the most profound influence in our lives, the one we listen to each day for our faith and direction. Two children before the Lincoln memorial on a field trip; or two children who carry in their hearts the passion and character of Lincoln?