But woe to you Pharisees! You give a tenth of mint, rue, and every kind of herb, and you bypass justice and love for God. These things you should have done without neglecting the others. Luke 11:42 Here Jesus upholds the tithe, but reminds the Jewish people once again that it is no substitute for…

But give from what is within to the poor, and then everything is clean for you. Luke 11:41 This verse is often missed. Jesus was supplying the Pharisees with a short path to righteousness. They needed only to have a proper understanding of the purpose of the poor. These Jewish elites believed that being rich…

Fools! Didn’t he who made the outside make the inside too? Luke 11:40 To live in honor to God only in the externals of life is to miss at least half of everything. This was the foolish mistake of the Pharisees. They were on the right track in a lot of ways, but their inner…

But the Lord said to him, ‘Now you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and evil.’ Luke 11:39 The Pharisees excelled at keeping up appearances. But, the inner man, where God looks upon the heart, was left to grow in evil. We generally focus on…

When the Pharisee saw this, he was amazed that he did not first perform the ritual washing before dinner. Luke 11:38 This ritual was not the law of God, but a ceremonial law invented by the Jewish elite. The Pharisees though Jesus was trying to outdo them in the eyes of the people. In other…

As he was speaking, a Pharisee asked him to dine with him. So he went in and reclined at the table. Luke 11:37 Jesus seems to have a low opinion of Pharisees. And yet, He did not decline this invitation. Why? Well, His feeling towards Pharisees is actually compassion. Bringing their hypocrisy to light was…

If, therefore, your whole body is full of light, with no part of it in darkness, it will be entirely illuminated, as when a lamp shines its light on you. Luke 11:36 The Holy Spirit of God can, through the power of the Word of God, bring you to a place of complete illumination. Remember,…

Take care, then, that the light in you is not darkness. Luke 11:35 There is no more awful thing than to think oneself enlightened, and yet be completely in the dark. The light of the truth is such a precious thing. And we, by default, feel the need to know what is real and thus,…

Your eye is the lamp of the body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is also full of light. But when it is bad, your body is also full of darkness. Luke 11:34 Jesus is using a simple illustration here. Our eyes are the way that we perceive light. But Jesus is talking…

No one lights a lamp and puts it in the cellar or under a basket, but on a lampstand, so that those who come in may see its light. Luke 11:33 Jesus uses this illustration of a lamp to talk about the spirit of human beings. There are many false paths to spirituality in this…