52 “Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering.” 53 When Jesus went outside, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law began to oppose him fiercely and to besiege him with questions, 54 waiting to catch him in something he might say. ~ Luke 11:52-54
We rejoin the continuing conversation between the Lord Jesus and the religious leaders of Israel. It is obvious that these "leaders" did not know God, they knew religion which is man's best attempt to please God. For them, this obviously was impossible, therefore they could not lead the people into a personal relationship with God. They were the blind leading the blind.
In today's text, the Lord Himself confronts these false leaders. These, who are the architects and purveyors of apostate Judaism, hear the word “Woe” from the Lord Jesus. "Woe" is a word that means "cursed to punishment." These people had taken religion to its absolute radical extreme. The more religious they became, the further they went away from God, and the more they obstructed the advancement of His kingdom in their lives and the lives of their followers.
At this point, the Lord Jesus had perfect opportunity to go to lunch with this Pharisee. His goal was to expose them for what they were: hypocrites. In v.37-44 of this same chapter the Lord Jesus had defined them as being clean on the outside and quite dirty on the inside. And in response, one of the experts in the law, in v.45, says, "Teacher, when You say this You insult us."
Now, religion will never be the answer because it is man's ineffective reach to God. It lacks the spiritual power to accomplish the eternal. The religious leaders had developed a system, as all religions do, of complex, demanding, and impossible rules to follow. And there was no power because there was no presence of God in their lives. God had been locked out of mankind's life when the original couple rebelled in the Garden. Therefore, these religious leaders had perpetuated their rebellion without a change in their hearts. There was no Holy Spirit in their hearts, and God was not involved in their lives.
This is the problem with false religion. It cannot be righteous because the heart of man is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. And it cannot mortify sin, so all their religion was absolutely useless, it just created a complex system that frustrated the people, and when we get behind the surface of it all, we find sin all over the place. The leaders then became master hypocrites, and those who are the best at hypocrisy are those who are the leaders in such a system. If you can make people think you're holy, righteous and virtuous and somehow you're above it all, you're just the most adept at it.
In v.52 we read, "Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering." At the bottom of every false system is the absence of truth. “You have taken away the key of knowledge.” The knowledge of truth is in the Scripture. These religious leaders had taken away the key that unlocks the truth and therefore unlocks the message of salvation and so they didn't enter in to a personal relationship with God, and those who were entering in, they hindered.
The key is the accurate interpretation of the Scripture under the illuminating direction of the Holy Spirit. And, an accurate interpretation of the Scripture leads us to the Lord Jesus who is THE key in understanding the Scripture. These religious leader's hearts were evil and unchanged and blind and dead. They had turned the Old Testament into a collection of riddles, allegories, secret meanings, obscure interpretations that did nothing but create fanciful nonsense and support their false system of self-righteous works. They discarded the true key to the knowledge of Scripture and that is an accurate interpretation.
The Lord Jesus, earlier in His ministry, said, "Search the Scriptures. They are they which speak of me." If we do not receive the Lord Jesus as our savior, we will not understand the Old Testament. In the Lord Jesus are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. “Christ is made unto us wisdom and understanding.” Due to the fact that these "leaders" had rejected the Lord Jesus, they couldn't lead anybody else to the truth because they didn't know the truth for themselves.
The response of the false teachers to the truth is found in v.53-54 which reads, "When Jesus went outside, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law began to oppose him fiercely and to besiege him with questions, 54 waiting to catch him in something he might say."
These religious leaders had come to a boiling point. Since the Lord Jesus had become so popular, in their rage, they had to expose Him as a fraud. So, from now on, in public, these religious leaders are going to question Him closely on all kinds of subjects trying to make Him look bad. Their plan was to use His own words against Him.
Hypocrites do not want their sins exposed; it hurts their reputa- tion. Instead of opposing the Lord, these men should have been seeking His mercy. These religious leaders rejected God, and now, they are the supposed arbiters of truth. The answer is to embrace our brokenness through the fact that we were conceived as sinners, and through that brokenness embrace the One who died to embrace us.
