‘And the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things; and they scoffed at him.'
The Pharisees scoffed at His ideas (literally ‘turned up their noses at Him'). When Luke says that it was because they were ‘lovers of money' he does not necessarily mean that they were greedy, although no doubt some of them were. He means more that their view of money was very different from that of Jesus. They honoured and revered it. It was true that they did consider that wealth was one test of a man's righteousness, but for the opposite reason to Jesus. In their case it was because they saw its possession in abundance as being a measure of God's approval. Taking the opposite view to Jesus they saw prosperity as the reward for godliness. They thus gave possession of it a high place in their thinking, not recognising the harm that it did men. They would certainly have approved of charitable giving, but what they did not approve of was Jesus' idea that money should be held on to lightly and not seen as good for its own sake. That was why they mocked. Jesus' view went against all that men believed.
They would certainly have theoretically agreed that God was more important than money, but they fell into the trap of not recognising (as most people fail to recognise) that they actually allowed it to influence them more than they allowed God to do. They were not true ‘lovers of God', they were ‘lovers of money'. In their practical lives they actually loved Mammon more than they loved God. They exemplified all the wrong aspects of Luke 16:13.
That this is true comes out in their history. Alexander Jannaeus in the previous century had warned his wife against the greediness and wickedness of men who ‘pretended to be Pharisees' (i.e. were hypocritical Pharisees), and there is other evidence that proves that they were on occasions open to accepting bribes. While Jesus Himself spoke of the Scribes as ‘devouring widow's houses' (Luke 20:47), which probably refers to a tendency to sponge on them. So their reputation from this angle was certainly not blameless.
Jesus' point is that what we love is demonstrated by how we behave. Those who truly love God hold lightly to the things of this world. But the very theology of the Pharisees made them take up the opposite viewpoint and see possession of wealth as highly desirable. And the result was that it then became loved for its own sake. They became lovers of Mammon even while they thought that they were lovers of God (see Luke 16:13).