What is the Sabbath? CEASE / REST
You Need to Choose: Legalism or Jesus?
- Choose your BELIEFS: Legalism or the BIBLE . (Mk 2:23-28)
- Choose your PRIORITY: Legalism or LOVE . (Mk 3:1-5)
- Choose what to KILL: Legalism or JESUS . (Mk 3:6)
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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00:01-00:04
Some of you are rules people and some of you are not.
00:06-00:16
What I mean is some of you, if you see a sign posted somewhere with a rule on it, it has to be done.
00:18-00:22
And others of you say, heck with the sign.
00:23-00:24
You know what I'm talking about?
00:25-00:27
How many of you are rules people?
00:30-00:32
A lot more than I was expecting.
00:34-00:37
How many of you, excuse me, are like rules schmools?
00:42-00:44
This is going to be a very interesting message today.
00:46-00:47
Because we're like half and half.
00:48-00:50
It's like our marriage.
00:51-00:52
We're half and half.
00:53-00:54
Erin is a rules person.
00:57-00:58
I am not.
01:00-01:11
For example, I remember when the kids were really young, like stroller age, being in Boscov's, and they had an escalator.
01:13-01:17
And taking the stroller to the escalator, there's a sign that says what?
01:18-01:19
You know what it says, Mike.
01:19-01:21
No strollers on the escalator.
01:21-01:23
So we're going there and Erin's like, "Stop!
01:26-01:31
No strollers on the escalator!" And do you remember what I said, Erin?
01:32-01:47
I said, "Are the stroller police going to arrest me?" I said, "That sign is for people that are incapable of taking their strollers up the escalator, unlike me.
01:49-01:50
I'm capable.
01:51-01:52
That sign is for other people.
01:54-01:54
Rules.
01:56-02:01
At a previous ministry I handed up a preschool actually and I was like the principal, right?
02:01-02:02
Not a rules person.
02:04-02:05
I don't know how I got that job.
02:05-02:06
I have no idea.
02:06-02:12
But there was another guy serving with me on the board, a dear brother in the Lord.
02:12-02:13
I love this guy to death, still do.
02:14-02:15
But he was a rules guy.
02:16-02:18
And like we would have these meetings, right?
02:18-02:46
And he'd be like, this guy was like, "We need to establish a protocol from taking the tuition that gets dropped off in the lockbox in the preschool to bring it over to the church office to be locked here." He wrote up like a three or four page typed protocol sheet of the way the offering for the preschool tuition moves from one building of the church to the other.
02:47-03:00
He's like, "Jeff, what do you think about that?" I'm like, "I think the teacher should just like unlock the box and bring it over." He's like, "No, no, no, we need a procedure." I'm like, "We're trusting this lady with our kids and we're not going to trust her with a couple hundred dollars?
03:02-03:07
Really?" I'm a treat to work with.
03:10-03:10
Right Deb?
03:12-03:15
Look, I'm just not a rule person.
03:15-03:16
I'm not talking...
03:16-03:19
I'm not talking about being a criminal, okay?
03:20-03:21
Like shoplifters will be persecuted.
03:22-03:22
I'm like, "Bah!
03:23-03:25
That's how it's run with people." I'm not talking about that.
03:27-03:28
I'm talking about dumb rules.
03:33-03:38
Like at the Bible college I went to, the student handbook was full of dumb rules.
03:38-03:40
Taylor, do you have like a book of dumb rules at seminary?
03:41-03:41
You do?
03:42-03:44
Okay, well, here are some of mine.
03:44-03:44
We need to swap stories.
03:45-03:49
some of mine. There were things like, you know, you couldn't go to movies and you couldn't this and you couldn't that.
03:52-04:20
The thing that really cracked me up, they had like this whole section devoted to your hair. Your hair can't cover your collar. Your hair can't cover your ears. Your hair can't this. Your hair, they had all these rules about your hair, but then they had this this rule about your beard And it was something along the lines of like the type of facial hair that you have coming into the semester must be the type of facial hair that you maintain.
04:21-04:24
Meaning you come in with a mustache, that's it.
04:25-04:27
You've committed to the mustache all semester.
04:30-04:36
You've come in with a goatee, leave the goatee, but don't be growing other stuff, okay?
04:39-04:40
You've gone crazy on us here.
04:46-04:48
I got letters from the dean.
04:51-04:52
They weren't thank you cards.
04:55-05:00
Look, especially kids, I'm not saying disobey the rules.
05:01-05:02
I'm saying that I hate dumb rules.
05:03-05:04
That's all I'm saying.
05:07-05:10
We've been talking the last couple of weeks about legalism.
05:12-05:13
And what is legalism?
05:14-05:18
Well, legalism is this mindset, you know, we bring these dumb rules into the church, right?
05:18-05:23
And legalism is this mindset that keeping the rules makes me righteous.
05:23-05:24
That's legalism.
05:24-05:26
Like, there's a list of things that we don't do.
05:26-05:34
We don't play cards and we, you know, women have to wear denim dresses down to the floor and their hair in a bun and that's the rule.
05:34-05:37
If I see you looking any differently, you're sinning.
05:42-05:44
And you know, we don't dance.
05:46-05:49
We don't eat at a restaurant that might sell beer.
05:52-05:57
And you keep the rules thinking that they make you righteous.
05:58-06:00
But legalism also has another problem.
06:00-06:03
It's when you enforce your personal convictions on others.
06:04-06:07
Listen, there's nothing wrong with having personal convictions, okay?
06:08-06:09
There's nothing wrong with that.
06:09-06:12
You have personal convictions in your home, in your family, that's fine.
06:12-06:23
It turns into legalism when you enforce your convictions, your unbiblical personal family convictions when you enforce them on someone else.
06:23-06:25
That's legalism, okay?
06:25-06:26
These are my rules.
06:27-06:31
So you should keep your rules in your house the same rules that I have.
06:31-06:33
That's legalism and it's wrong.
06:36-06:40
The problem is we exalt these rules above God and above man.
06:41-06:49
And as we've seen in Mark and as we're going to see today, legalism also puts you in direct opposition to Jesus Christ.
06:50-06:51
Not a small issue.
06:52-06:58
That's why Mark has spent so much time recounting these stories about Jesus encountering legalists.
06:58-07:01
If you've been with us, remember some of the things that we've seen already.
07:01-07:04
These, really it's all been a bunch of why questions, right?
07:05-07:07
It's been a bunch of why questions.
07:07-07:09
They come to Jesus and they're like, "Why do you blaspheme?
07:09-07:11
Only God can forgive sins.
07:11-07:17
Why are you saying that?" And then we saw, "Why does he eat with sinners?
07:19-07:20
Jesus should be with holy people.
07:20-07:23
Why is he eating with tax collectors and prostitutes?
07:23-07:25
Why does he eat with sinners?
07:28-07:29
Last week, remember the "why" question?
07:30-07:32
Why don't your disciples fast?
07:32-07:32
We fast.
07:32-07:34
We fast twice a week, Monday and Thursday.
07:34-07:35
We never miss it.
07:35-07:36
We fast.
07:36-07:38
Why don't your disciples fast?
07:39-07:43
Our preferences being enforced, our preferences must be your preferences.
07:44-07:46
Our religious works must be yours.
07:46-07:46
It's legalism.
07:51-07:53
Today we're looking at the granddaddy of them all.
07:54-07:59
These things obviously, if you've been with us as we've been going through this study, big issues.
08:00-08:02
This one we're looking at today is the granddaddy of them all.
08:03-08:04
Look at your Bible, Mark 2 23.
08:09-08:10
It says one Sabbath.
08:11-08:12
Alright, let's stop right there.
08:13-08:14
What is the Sabbath?
08:14-08:16
You ready to jot some notes down?
08:17-08:47
important because you're going to see this was the biggest issue that people had against Jesus Christ and I want to give you a little teaching about the Sabbath lest you miss what's happening in this passage okay but the word Sabbath literally means cease or rest it just it means stop okay it means to And we typically associate it with the fourth commandment.
08:47-08:53
Remember in the book of Exodus in chapter 20, God gave Moses the ten commandments.
08:54-08:59
And the fourth commandment was to remember the Sabbath day and to keep it holy.
08:59-09:00
And when is the Sabbath?
09:02-09:03
When is the Sabbath?
09:03-09:04
Friday at seven.
09:05-09:05
Yes.
09:06-09:09
Sabbath actually starts Friday night and it ends Saturday night.
09:09-09:12
Friday at sundown to Saturday at sundown.
09:12-09:12
Right?
09:13-09:14
How many people knew that?
09:15-09:15
Okay.
09:17-09:25
A lot of us are like, "Well, isn't the Sabbath Sunday?" Do you know the Bible never calls Sunday the Sabbath?
09:25-09:25
Did you know that?
09:27-09:32
The Bible never, at any point, says that Sunday is the Sabbath.
09:32-09:35
The Sabbath was always the last day of the week.
09:36-09:36
Why?
09:37-09:41
Well, the reason that God instituted the Sabbath was, remember the creation week?
09:42-10:06
God said, "I worked for six days, and then I rested on the seventh day." And God said, "Israel, I want you to work for six days, and I want you to rest on the seventh day just like I did." That was why the commandment was given, and that's why the Sabbath is on Saturday, Friday night to Saturday night.
10:10-10:13
Here's something else about the Sabbath that you might not have known.
10:14-10:16
Jot this reference down, Exodus 31, 16.
10:24-10:28
The Sabbath was only for Jewish people.
10:28-10:29
Did you know that?
10:30-10:32
The Sabbath was for Israel.
10:36-10:40
The Gentiles were never commanded to keep the Sabbath.
10:42-10:44
Now for some of us that might sound like a shock.
10:44-10:45
Like whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second.
10:47-10:51
At our house growing up, we didn't do anything on Sunday because mom said keep the Sabbath.
10:51-10:53
And you know, that's not how I was raised.
10:53-11:01
Look, I don't want to intentionally offend anybody how they were raised, okay, or personal convictions in the house.
11:02-11:04
My job is to tell you what the Bible says.
11:04-11:08
And the Bible never commands Gentiles to keep the Sabbath.
11:09-11:15
In fact, when you get to your New Testament, how many commandments and teachings are there regarding the Sabbath?
11:15-11:16
How many?
11:18-11:20
The answer is kind of one.
11:21-11:26
And that's in Colossians chapter 2, that we don't judge each other in regards to a Sabbath.
11:28-11:30
Now let me tell you, I think the Sabbath is a wonderful principle.
11:30-11:31
I do.
11:32-11:32
Why?
11:33-11:49
Because if we didn't take a day deliberately to just focus on our walk with the Lord, focus on our family, focus on worship, focus on...if we didn't do those things, we'd just work seven days a week and neglect what's really important, right?
11:49-11:57
So I think Sabbath is a wonderful principle, but please understand, church, we're not commanded to keep a Sabbath in our day.
12:00-12:04
in the New Testament, no commandments about the Sabbath in the New Testament.
12:05-12:07
In fact, I've got this reference down as well.
12:07-12:08
I'm giving you some homework here.
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Hebrews chapter 3 and 4 says that Jesus Christ is our rest.
12:21-12:23
And that's a really radical concept.
12:25-12:38
If I would ask you, "When's the most optimal time for you to worship?" If you lived under the Old Testament economy, you would say, "Well, Sabbath is the most optimal time to worship.
12:38-12:44
That's when we take a break." But according to Hebrews 3 and 4, Jesus Christ is our rest.
12:45-12:46
So church, when's the best time to worship?
12:47-12:49
The answer is, we never stop.
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We are complete.
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We are resting in.
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We are alive in Jesus Christ.
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We live in the Sabbath.
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Do a study of Hebrews 3 and 4.
12:58-13:00
The Sabbath is every day for us.
13:01-13:05
And some of you are like, "Woohoo, never have to go to work." Every day is the Sabbath.
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That's not what that means.
13:06-13:11
Everybody say, "That's not what that means." I'll say it again with conviction.
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Jesus Christ is our rest.
13:17-13:19
So here's a question.
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When did the Sabbath shift from Saturday to Sunday?
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Well, first of all, the Christians worshipped on Sunday because it was the day that Jesus rose from the dead.
13:32-13:34
That's why worship happens on Sunday.
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That's why we meet Sunday morning.
13:36-13:37
Did you know that?
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Because that's when Jesus rose from the dead.
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It was on a Sunday morning.
13:44-13:48
But the Bible does not say that the Sabbath switched days.
13:49-13:55
But by the end of the first century, Christians started considering Sabbath to be on Sunday.
13:57-14:04
I would say wrongly, but many Christians decided Sabbath was going to move from Saturday to Sunday.
14:06-14:15
One of the reasons for that, not only because Jesus rose from the dead on Sunday, but there were some Christians that were trying to separate the Christian faith from its Jewish roots.
14:16-14:26
So they're like, "We're just going to move the Sabbath away from Saturday." The Sabbath is not on Sunday.
14:27-14:28
The Sabbath was always Saturday.
14:31-14:32
But you have to understand this.
14:33-14:42
When the Lord gave the commandment to Moses, originally the Sabbath was to be viewed as a positive thing.
14:45-14:52
The people by their very nature, by our very nature, tend to focus on the negative instead of the positive.
14:52-14:53
True or false?
14:54-14:54
False.
14:55-15:13
For example, you come to church today and you've had your yogurt, you've had your donuts, you've had your coffee, you've listened to some great worship, and it's going to be easier for you to go home and think about one thing that happened today that you didn't like, as opposed to maybe the 40 things that happened that you did like.
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True or false?
15:15-15:17
We watch our favorite TV shows or movies.
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A lot of great things that happen in them.
15:19-15:21
And we might, what do we talk about afterwards?
15:22-15:23
I didn't like that one scene.
15:24-15:29
We tend to dwell, it's how we are, right?
15:32-15:34
And that's exactly how Satan wants you to think, by the way.
15:34-15:35
Remember the Garden of Eden?
15:35-15:42
God says, "You can eat off all these trees except this one." And Satan shows up and he's like, "Man, God is so restrictive, isn't He?
15:43-15:51
Because He won't let you eat off that one tree, right?" And Adam and Eve started thinking that way, like, "Yeah, why is God so restrictive?
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You have a whole orchard here you can eat from, just not that one.
15:55-16:02
Oh, man, God is so hard on us." Well, it's like that with the Sabbath.
16:02-16:05
The Sabbath was originally intended to be a positive thing.
16:06-16:09
When God gave the Sabbath to Israel, it was this.
16:11-16:12
Take a break, man.
16:12-16:12
Take a break.
16:13-16:14
Don't work seven days a week.
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You don't need to be killing yourself working.
16:16-16:18
Work six days and then take a day off.
16:19-16:20
Enjoy worship.
16:21-16:22
Enjoy life.
16:22-16:23
Enjoy your family.
16:23-16:27
Take a day off and just rest from working.
16:31-16:54
But the emphasis changed from focusing on God to, "Here's how to be good and not break the law." So what the Pharisees did was they, instead of looking at the positive aspects of the Sabbath, they wrote a whole bunch of rules on how not to break the Sabbath.
16:54-16:55
Are you with me?
16:56-16:57
This is what the Pharisees did.
16:57-17:03
Instead of, "Oh, thank you God for a rest." Here's a list of things that you're not allowed to do on the Sabbath.
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If you were with us a couple of weeks ago, I talked about some of those.
17:06-17:11
Hundreds and hundreds of laws that assist you in keeping God's law.
17:12-17:19
I told you about no spitting on the Sabbath because if your spit hits dirt, that's considered plowing and you've broken the Sabbath.
17:19-17:19
Don't look in a mirror.
17:19-17:23
If you see a gray hair, you might pluck it and that's working, you've broken the Sabbath.
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If you have a louse land on you, Now smash it, because that's work.
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You have to take it off and pluck all its legs off.
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I know, sounds like more work.
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I wish I was making these up.
17:37-17:38
The truth is stranger than fiction.
17:38-17:39
You wanna hear some more?
17:40-17:42
You wanna hear some more Pharisees' laws for the Sabbath?
17:43-17:46
They only get crazier, okay?
17:47-17:55
According to the Pharisees' law, the rabbinical law and how to keep the Sabbath, You couldn't walk 2 ,000 steps.
17:56-17:58
You can only walk 1,999.
18:00-18:02
Go ahead, ask the obvious question.
18:03-18:04
Who's counting, right?
18:05-18:06
Who's counting?
18:08-18:10
How do you even enforce that?
18:11-18:13
Buffy, we need to talk.
18:14-18:16
It looks like you're getting awfully high in your step count.
18:19-18:29
You couldn't carry a burden heavier than a fig or carry a half of a fig times two carries.
18:30-18:31
You with me on that?
18:31-18:38
The heaviest thing you could carry was a fig or you could carry half of a fig twice.
18:40-18:55
If you stick an olive in your mouth and it tastes bad, You can't spit it out and put another whole olive in your mouth because your palate already tasted a whole olive.
18:59-19:04
Apparently, tasting a whole olive twice on the Sabbath was breaking the Sabbath.
19:06-19:07
I'm not making these up.
19:09-19:10
Here's another Sabbath rule.
19:11-19:15
You couldn't throw something in the air and catch it with the other hand.
19:16-19:17
That was work.
19:17-19:22
If you threw something in the air, you had to catch it with the same hand.
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That's okay.
19:24-19:29
But if you throw it, that's work.
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And you violated the Sabbath.
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Sinner!
19:38-19:43
A tailor, not brown like the person that sews.
19:43-19:45
A tailor couldn't carry a needle.
19:47-19:49
A scribe was not allowed to carry his pen.
19:50-19:51
A student was not allowed to carry a book.
19:51-19:53
I guess that weighs more than a fig.
19:54-19:55
You weren't allowed to buy anything.
19:55-19:56
You weren't allowed to sell anything.
19:57-20:01
You weren't allowed to wash anything, including yourself.
20:02-20:02
Why?
20:04-20:10
Because if you're taking a bath and some of the water runs off of you and hits the floor, guess what you've just done?
20:11-20:15
You washed the floor and you violated the Sabbath.
20:17-20:17
True.
20:19-20:22
You weren't allowed to light a candle and you couldn't put a candle out either.
20:23-20:24
Both were considered work.
20:25-20:28
You weren't allowed to leave a radish laying in salt because it might pickle.
20:29-20:30
And that's work.
20:31-20:35
You were only allowed to use enough ink for two letters.
20:36-20:40
And when I say two letters, I don't mean like, you know, dear Uncle Darren, how are you kind of letters.
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is like A, B, you're done.
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Two characters.
20:50-20:52
That was all the ink you were allowed to use.
20:54-20:56
I'm going to stop because there were hundreds of these.
20:58-21:02
This is what you do in order to obey the fourth commandment.
21:03-21:07
But when you look at the Bible, there was only one restriction on the Sabbath.
21:07-21:08
Do you know what it was?
21:09-21:53
like don't work that was all he said don't work don't go to work on the Sabbath that's it all this other stuff was introduced by man and keeping the Sabbath rules this was the hill that the Pharisees were going to die on and today's text that we're going to look at forced the Pharisees to make a choice and it's going to challenge us to make a choice as well which do you want do you keep a list of rules thinking it makes God happy? It doesn't. Or are you going to choose Jesus Christ who gives us forgiveness, eternal life, and freedom from the law?
21:57-22:02
Let's look at Mark chapter 2 verse 23. Everybody with me on the Sabbath?
22:06-22:27
Because I can start It says, "One Sabbath, he was going through the grain fields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain.
22:29-22:38
And the Pharisees were saying to him, 'Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?'" What were they doing?
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I didn't even mention this one, but this was one of them.
22:41-22:49
You know, they're just like walking along, and they would just like pluck a head of grain, and they'd rub it in their hand and rub the chaff off and eat the inside.
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And the Pharisees were like, "You know we're not allowed to do that!
22:58-23:03
What you just did was—" Actually, that was considered like harvesting and winnowing.
23:03-23:08
They had a whole list of rules why you couldn't do that little thing that the disciples did.
23:09-23:15
And the Pharisees were like, "You guys know you're not allowed to do that, right?
23:16-23:17
You got the memo, right?
23:17-23:22
You know that you're not allowed to do that." Well, look at Jesus' reply.
23:23-23:28
He said to them, "Have you never read what David did?
23:29-23:42
When he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him, parenthetically, you have to understand what a slam this was because these Pharisees prided themselves.
23:42-23:44
They had the Scriptures memorized.
23:47-24:01
So what a slam it was for Jesus to go up to them and be like, "Have you ever read the Bible?" Imagine, like, going to one of your seminary professors, "Excuse me, have you ever read the Bible because apparently you haven't.
24:02-24:04
Because I'm going to tell you what the Bible actually says.
24:04-24:05
It was a slam.
24:08-24:31
That Jesus said, "Have you never read what David did when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him, how he entered the house of God in the time of Abathor the high priest and ate the bread of presents, which is not lawful for any but the priest to eat and also gave it to those who were with him." I'm going to pause there, like what's that all about?
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We'll jot this reference down.
24:32-24:38
This happened actually in 1 Samuel chapter 21 was this event, the first six verses.
24:39-24:51
Every Sabbath in the Old Testament, they would bring out 12 loaves of hot bread and they would put it on this golden table in the tabernacle.
24:53-25:01
And every Sabbath, they would replace these 12 loaves with 12 fresh ones, and 12 representing what?
25:02-25:03
The tribes of Israel, right?
25:04-25:09
And they would replace them every Sabbath, this bread of presence.
25:09-25:10
And guess what happened with the old bread?
25:12-25:14
Only the priests were allowed to eat that.
25:15-25:20
Okay, that was one of the perks of being a priest, was you can eat the old bread.
25:22-25:24
Alright, so that's what's happening here.
25:26-25:37
But in this account regarding King David, this priest realized that people were more important than ceremony.
25:38-25:40
People were more important than the rules.
25:40-25:53
And Jesus' argument here is if David could be allowed to violate a ceremony by a priest, And the disciples could be allowed by Jesus to violate some unbiblical regulations.
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Look at what Jesus says in verse 27.
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And he said to them, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." Jesus was saying, "Let's think about the original intention of the Sabbath." Okay, so here's how the story went.
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Once upon a time, God was sitting in heaven with His angels, and He said to His angels, "I have this great thing called the Sabbath.
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I have this great thing, it's called the Sabbath, it's this day of rest.
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How can we properly exalt this Sabbath thing that I have?" were like, "I got an idea. Why don't you create a bunch of people that can exalt this Sabbath thing?" And you're like, "Wait a minute. That's not how it went, right?" That was Jesus' point. Man wasn't created for the Sabbath. It wasn't like that was God's intention. Jesus said, on the other hand, "What's the truth?" Sabbath was created for man, right?
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Like this was a gift from God.
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God says work six days, rest on the seventh.
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It's a gift.
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I created the Sabbath for man.
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I didn't create man to exalt the Sabbath.
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And then he goes on, he says in verse 28, "So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath." You can understand what a thing that must have been in the Pharisees' ears to hear that.
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Because who created the Sabbath again?
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God.
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And Jesus stands up and he says, "I'm the Lord of the Sabbath." So what was Jesus saying?
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He's saying, "I'm God." I determine the purpose of the Sabbath, and by the way, it was a gift for man.
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wasn't made for the Sabbath. Now some of what I shared today concerning the Sabbath may have been different from what you have heard, believed, or been raised with, but I want you to see in this passage what Jesus did. He took people back to the Scriptures when he said, "Have you never read?" So let me ask I ask you, what do you do when your beliefs contradict the Bible?
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For example, there are people that say things like, "You know, when we die, we become angels." We don't.
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I don't know how else to roll this out, but we don't.
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You do not become an angel when you die.
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Angels are different created beings.
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You're like, "Where did you get that?" The Bible.
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Have you read the Bible?
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If you do, you're not going to come away with this conclusion that we turn into angels when we die.
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That's sort of one of those unbiblical beliefs that have crept into the church.
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The other one is the age of the earth.
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There are even some Christians that want to buy into this evolutionary mindset that the earth is 4.5 billions of years old.
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I believe the Bible is somewhere between 6 and 10,000 years old.
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I believe we have a very young earth and I believe the science and the fossil record all of that support that, but ultimately science isn't really the reason that I believe that.
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You're like, "Well, why do you believe it?" Because of the Bible.
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The evolutionary model, you know, the millions and billions of years of changes and evolving and changing, that's not what the Bible says.
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The Bible says that God created things to reproduce after their own kind.
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When God created things, he created them to be what they are.
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So that's why I don't believe in macroevolution.
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I don't believe it because that's not what the Bible says.
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Yet there are some Christians that want to sort of compromise on that.
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Some Christians say, "Well, I believe that you have to go to a priest to confess your sins." It's not in the Bible.
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It's just not.
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The Bible actually says there's one mediator between God and man.
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And who is that mediator?
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Jesus Christ.
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You don't need to go to another person to confess your sins to receive forgiveness.
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Now is there benefit in confessing your sins to one another?
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Sure, that's what we do in our small group.
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That's what James tells us to do, but it's not like, you know, "Ben, I've sinned this week, will you forgive me?" It's holding each other accountable.
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Ben's like, "Maybe, I'm thinking about it." We confess our sins to one another because sin would want to keep itself hidden, but When I have brothers like Ben that I love and I trust that I can go to and say, "Man, here's where I'm struggling.
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Let's pray about this." That's the value, but he doesn't grant or withhold forgiveness.
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Do you, Father Ben?
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It's just not biblical.
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But some of these things creep into the church.
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Here's another one.
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I believe baptizing babies puts them on the right track.
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having a baptism service on Tuesday and I was baptized as a baby.
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It did not put me on the right track.
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I was baptized again when I was 12.
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Still not on the right track.
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It wasn't until I came to Christ when I was 20.
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You see, baptism is, every time you see baptism in the Bible, it is because someone believed the message of the gospel, received Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, and is publicly identifying with his death, burial, and resurrection.
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That's what baptism is.
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Babies are unable to do that.
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You won't see children in baptism, you won't even see those same two words in the same paragraph in the Bible.
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And that's one of those things that crept into the church, baptizing babies.
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It's just not in the Bible.
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Here's one.
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I hear even some Christians say, you understand I'm not trying to offend you, I'm trying to get you to think biblically.
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But I hear Christians say things like this, "You know, I pray to my grandfather because I know He's looking out for me.
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He's not.
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Look, I've lost loved ones too.
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I'm not being callous.
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I've lost people I've loved and cared about.
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Nowhere does the Bible say that we can pray to deceased loved ones.
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Jesus, when He taught about prayer, He always and only ever said that you pray to one person.
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Who?
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Your Father in Heaven.
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Okay?
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I got grandparents in Heaven.
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I miss them.
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I'm looking forward to that reunion day.
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But there is no profit in praying to grandpa right now or thinking that he's looking out for me.
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My grandpa was great, but he wasn't God, right?
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Right?
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Okay.
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Just double checking.
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He wasn't God.
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And here's what I'm trying to say, church.
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You need to base your beliefs and your convictions on the Bible.
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That's all I'm saying.
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Anything that I share with you, anything that you hear on the radio, anything that you, any Christian authors that you read, anything that you, when somebody says this is what the Lord says, you need to hold it up with the Bible and say is that what the Bible says?
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Your beliefs need to be based on the Bible.
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And this was the whole problem with the Pharisees.
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All this extra stuff wasn't from the law and the prophets.
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But they held it up even above that.
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So number one, choose your beliefs, legalism or the Bible, because what you're going to find, the two do not coexist.
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You can either hold on to your rules or you can embrace what the Bible says, you need to pick one.
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Secondly, choose your priority.
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Choose your priority, legalism or love?
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your priority. Look at the first couple of verses here in chapter 3. It says, "Again, he entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand. And they watched Jesus to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath so that they might accuse him.
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I think what's happening here, the Pharisees might have been wondering if Jesus might have been a little gun-shy after the last encounter.
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Like, we just nailed him on a Sabbath thing, so surely he's not going to do it again.
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Probably Jesus is going to back off on the Sabbath thing because I think we've made our point clear.
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It says that there was a man there with a withered hand.
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You're like, "Well, why was his hand withered?" I don't know.
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Was it like some sort of a severe arthritis?
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Was it a birth defect?
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The Bible doesn't say.
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The Greek word for withered literally means atrophied or like a dead plant.
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Okay, so they're in the synagogue.
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We're going to get this scene down.
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They're at the synagogue, and Jesus was famous for healing people, and they knew Mr.
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Witherhan was going to be at the synagogue.
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At least that's what I call him.
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Bill Withers.
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Bill, his name was Bill, Derek informs me. He was there.
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All right, if I'm leaving any details out, I'm sure you'll set me straight, Mr. Eyewitness.
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Okay, so they're watching Jesus to see, surely not.
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Surely he's not going to heal this guy on the Sabbath.
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All right, we need a volunteer to be Bill.
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I'm just going to ask Bob since you're sitting up front.
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This is a non-speaking role, okay?
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Why?
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Because the guy, easy, the guy doesn't say anything in the text, okay?
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Verse 3 says, "And he said to the man with the withered hand, 'Come here.'" Okay, so Bob, you be Mr. Withered Hand.
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Let me see your withered hand.
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Come on, we need it to be a little more withered than that.
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Okay, that's better.
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Okay, so...ish.
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Here's the scene.
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Okay, so we're gonna let like, these people over here are like the Pharisees, right?
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We're just gonna let you know, you guys are all gonna be the Pharisees and they're like, "God, the Withered Hand's over there." Okay, and like the rest of you are like just people like worshiping at the synagogue and you're watching them watching Mr. Withered Hand.
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We know they have a problem with Jesus. They're gonna see what Jesus is gonna do. So like It's like this big showdown Everybody's looking around Do you think Jesus knew? Do you think Jesus knew they were watching him and they were watching them watching him? Do you think Jesus knew?
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Notice Mr. Witherhan doesn't say anything. He's just like sitting there.
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So this scene's going on and Jesus says, "Come here." So Mr. Witherhan gets up and he comes here. Yeah, I want you to do that.
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We're recreating the scene. Mr. Witherhan comes. Jesus says, "Come here." Do you feel the tension now?
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Like, what's going to happen?
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Look what Jesus says.
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"And he said to them, 'Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?' But they were silent." Who do you think Jesus was talking to here?
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The Pharisees, right?
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So, Mr. Withered, Jesus, come here. He comes up.
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What's appropriate on the Sabbath? Not just what's appropriate, what's biblical?
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What's lawful? What's really lawful on the Sabbath?
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To heal, to save, or to kill.
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And Jesus was throwing the gauntlet out there.
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What's just the right thing to do for this man?
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But I want you to see the next verse.
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It says, "And he looked around at them with anger." This is the only place in the Bible that explicitly says that Jesus was angry.
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Do I believe Jesus was angry at other times? I do.
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But this is the only place in the Bible that explicitly says Jesus was angry.
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He actually stopped and looked at the people.
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How intense was this scene?
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On a scale of 1 to 10, when Jesus is looking at you with anger, how intense do you think that is?
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Scale of 1 to 10?
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10, right?
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I think we don't go with 10.
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Can you see this scene?
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Come here.
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The guy comes up.
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Jesus is just...
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The word anger means he was passionately indignant.
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I mean this wasn't just like, "Oh you guys, oh you Sabbath people." Jesus was angry and he looked at them.
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You could have heard a hair drop, I imagine, in that room as Jesus is looking at the people.
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It says they were silent at what Jesus asked them, staring them down.
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So it says, "He looked around at them with anger." Then look at the next phrase, "grieved at their hardness of heart." Grieved at their hardness of heart.
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You know that's how God views sin, right?
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Anger and grief at the same time.
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And what was Jesus so fired up about?
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It's interesting, you read your Gospels, you don't see, Jesus looked at the tax collector and was angry. Or Jesus looked at the prostitute who was coming in repentance and was angry at her sin. What was Jesus angry about? Hardness of heart. Grieved at their hardness of heart.
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That's what angered and grieved him at the same time. People holding rules, self-righteousness above God. So you have this scene down.
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Looks at them with anger, feeling the grief in his heart at the same time, and then the Bible says he turns to the man and says, "Stretch out your hand." And the guy stretches out his hand and boom, you can have a seat. Everybody give Bob a big hand.
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(applause)
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Stretch out your hand.
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He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.
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That, my friends, was Jesus throwing down the gauntlet, like I said.
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That was Jesus in no uncertain terms expressing how he felt about their legalism.
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So let me ask you, church, do you care more about keeping your traditions or people?
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Because if you elevate rules above compassion, you don't have the heart of God.
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I've been kicked out of a lot of places.
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You want to know one place in particular I was kicked out of?
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I was kicked out of a church camp.
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Not just me, our whole church was kicked out of a church camp.
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Why?
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Because they had this list of rules that the new camp president at the time felt that our church violated.
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I'm not going to get into all the details, but it's as silly as some of these Pharisee things I read earlier.
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But they thought that we allegedly broke one of their rules.
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They kicked our entire church out of the camp.
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Our church held like six or eight weeks of camp.
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Think about that.
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How many students does that represent?
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How many kids came to know Christ, came to grow in the Lord, came to grow in their understanding of the Bible, came to just have fun at camp?
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Gone.
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Why?
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Because the rules were more important than reaching out.
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Showing compassion.
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That's how it goes with legalism.
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My preferences, my rules exalted above people.
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And I'll just say to you, if your convictions keep you from loving people biblically, then you need to stop and reevaluate your convictions.
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So choose your priority, legalism or love.
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Choose what to kill, legalism or Jesus?
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Well, that seems awfully extreme.
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Look at the next verse. Here it is.
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"The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, How to destroy him.
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This was it.
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At this point Jesus went too far.
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Yeah, there was kind of like, "We don't like this.
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We don't agree with this." When Jesus violated the Sabbath and healed this man and stared these people down, they said, "That's it.
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He's gone too far." I think, I think, conspiracy to murder would violate the Sabbath.
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What do I know?
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Apparently it wasn't on the list.
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Because that's exactly what they did.
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In verse 4, Jesus said, "What should you do?
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Good or harm?
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Should you save or kill?" Do you know why Jesus said that?
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Jesus said that because of what happens here.
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Jesus was comparing what he was doing with what they were about to do.
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Jesus says, "Here I am.
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I want to heal somebody on the Sabbath, but what are you going to do on the Sabbath?
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You're going to go out and plot a man's death." Right?
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This is serious business.
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So like, I'm helping people, you're killing people, who's honoring God here?
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Which one do you really think is honoring God?
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You're like, "Oh, question, who are the Herodians?" The Herodians were secular Jews.
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They were a group that attached themselves to Herod the Great's cause, okay?
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They were a political group.
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Surprise, surprise, the Pharisees hated the Herodians, typically.
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But do you know what they say about strange bedfellows, right?
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The Herodians hated Jesus, and the Pharisees hated Jesus, so the Pharisees went with the and they're like, "We gotta do something about this guy." Suggestions?
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Notice it's not, "I think we should tell people "to ignore Jesus," or, "Let's try to discredit Jesus," or, "Let's all get together and rebuke Jesus," or, "Let's expel Jesus from our country," or, "Let's attack Jesus and beat him up real bad.
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"That'll teach him a lesson." None of those are options.
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What does your Bible say they wanted to do?
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What does your Bible say?
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Shout it out.
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Kill.
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Some of you say kill.
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My Bible literally says destroy.
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Killing wasn't even enough for them.
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They're like, we need to find a way not just to kill him, not like quick.
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We want to destroy him.
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Like annihilate off the map ancient history.
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As I close, if the worship team would make their way up, church.
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You might seem that this sounds awfully extreme, but I want to say to you that if you're banking on your works to save you, you too are going to hate Jesus Christ.
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Now you may not say it, but you're going to deeply resent Jesus Christ because when you're trusting in your works to save you, grace seems evil.
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Grace seems wrong.
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It just seems wrong.
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You mean to tell me I'm doing all this stuff to try to make God happy and you're saying just by believing in Jesus Christ God already makes me acceptable?
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That seems wrong to me.
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You're going to resent Jesus because you refuse to embrace the grace that he offers.
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Legalism says, "I'm going to reach God by keeping the rules." Or the gospel says, "God reaches to us through Jesus Christ." So today church, I just want to close by saying this, you can't have both.
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You can't have the law and you can't live in grace at the same time, they cancel each other out.
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You can't live in pride and live in humility at the same time.
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And like the Pharisees in this encounter with Jesus, you can't live self-righteously and trust in the righteousness that comes from Jesus Christ at the same time.
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You're going to have to kill one of them.
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Back in Joshua, Joshua, remember he said to the Israelites, "Choose this day whom you will serve." I would say to you today, church, choose this day whom you will kill.
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Are you going to be with the Pharisees and say, "Grace seems wrong, let's kill Jesus"?
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Or maybe today's the day you're like, "You know what?
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I haven't truly embraced Jesus Christ for all that He is." Maybe today is the day that you need to kill your legalism.
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Stop trying to earn your way and trust in what Christ has already accomplished for you.
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Let's pray.
Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Read Mark 2:23-3:6
Share your ideas about the Sabbath. What was your understanding of the Sabbath when you were raised? Have your ideas changed? If so, how? What do you think is the purpose of the Sabbath?
Complete this sentence: I feel closest to God (and/or most restful) when ...
Breakout Questions:
Pray for one another.
