You know, I just. I feel. I feel the faith that's welling up
in this room. Some of you in hardship and difficulty are going,
God, I'm trusting you. I don't. I don't. I can't prove it
in a court of law that you're going to come through. I just know
you're going to come through because you've done it in the past.
I believe you're going to do it again in the future. I trust you.
I believe there are some of you that you're going. I'm wanting
to believe it. Reggie, challenge me. I'm wanting to believe
it. I'm not quite there yet. My prayer for you is that the faith
in this room would allow you to see Jesus is worth trusting. But
in saying that, I also want to say there are some of you and you're
trying to pick and choose where you're going to trust the Lord.
I'll trust you in this area, but not in that area. I'll trust
you with what's going on in South Texas, but not going to trust
you with my job, with my marriage, or I'll trust you in this
relationship, but not my finances. God, I mean, that's mine.
I. That you don't get to pick and choose. You trust him with everything
or you don't trust him at all. Every Sunday, we remind you guys
about the offering. This is not about filling coffers. This is
not about making budget. This is about obedience to a God worth
trusting in. And if you sing I trust in God and then say, but I'm
not going to give to God, I want you to know you're not trusting
in God. By the grace of God, we were able to send all these campers
off to camp and to see the move of God. Not a single one of
them who couldn't afford it was kept from going because we had
scholarship money given by the generosity of this church to make
sure every student who wanted to go was able to go to camp. Praise
God. That happens because there's a church filled with people
who say, God, I trust you. I know I could use that money to pay
this down or to buy this or do that. But, God, I'm trusting you
and I'm giving to you what belongs to you. That's what the offering
moment is about. So I'm going to pray in just a moment. We're going
to get into the Word, but I want to encourage you while I move
into the message. If you haven't yet started to be faithful
in your giving Trust him if you don't know how. Just in every
once in a while, in the seat back, there's a connect code you
can scan with your phone or you can go to filler.org give. And
once you go there, you just. That's. It's simple. Follow the process,
set it up, and then you trust in God and watch him do so much more
than you could ever imagine. Now, I'm going to pray for this,
and then you can be seated and we'll move on with the message. Let's
pray. God, we're telling you right now, we trust you in every
moment, in the highs and the lows, when we have plenty, when we
have little, when we. When things seem to go our way, when everything
seems to be falling apart. God, we trust you. God, help us in
the areas where we lack faith to look up to you and see that you
are worth trusting in our giving, in our obedience, in the
pain and suffering, in the joy and victory. We lift it all to you
and we trust you. In Jesus holy name, we pray. Amen. Amen. You
guys can grab a seat. Well, this morning we're going to continue
on in our sermon series where we are going through the Gospel of
Matthew, chapter by chapter, verse by verse. We're going to be
in Matthew 12. So you want to grab your Bible and head over to
Matthew 12 while you're finding Matthew 12. I'm going to
tell you that I've had a ton of people come up to me and tell
me, hey, I've been praying for you. If you haven't noticed, I've
been gone for a couple of weeks. Hurts my heart that you haven't
noticed I've been gone, but I have been. I've been in Africa. I
was in Tanzania. Thank you. Somebody over here noticed. I'm so
grateful for that. And I got to visit some Compassion sites with
Compassion International and see some of the work they're doing
there. And then my eldest daughter Abby, and I did something
crazy. We attempted to climb Kilimanjaro, the tallest mountain
in Africa. And I gotta be honest with you, I had no idea how
stinking hard it was gonna be. It just seemed like a really long
walk uphill. And I saw the billefelds over here. Sharon, Wendell,
they climbed it a number of years ago. And I went to ask them
about it. I had heard they'd climbed it, and I was, like, super
excited to talk to them. And they weren't super excited back for
me. And I was curious why, but they didn't tell me that much about
it other than drink your water, take your altitude sickness
medicine, and good luck. And when I did it, I went up there. And
by the way, by the grace of God, we made it to the top. It was
hard, but we made it. In fact, we have a picture we're gonna show
my daughter Abby and I there at the highest point of Africa. I
want you to know we're smiling. It looks easy. This is what
it looked like. We looked like this. And then we went. I mean, I
recorded a video and I sound delirious. Like, I'm talking. My
speech is the third. And we made it to the top of the summit,
right? I mean, it was just. My mind was gone. It was. The altitude
sickness was so intense for everybody. We both felt like death.
And it was one of the most anticlimactic things ever, because
we've been hiking four and a half days straight up to get all
the way up to 19,000ft. And you're there at the summit. And I
thought I was gonna be like a. Whoo. I made it. And I was just like,
get me down from this mountain right now. I mean, it was. It was
incredibly painful to make it up to the top. And I went back to
Wendell and Sherry. I saw them at prayer on Wednesday, and I said,
why didn't you tell me? It was so hard. We didn't wanna discourage
you. Wendell said after, or Sherry said after, when they had
talked to me before I left, that she went to her husband and
said, he has no idea what he's about to do. And you were right.
I had no idea how painful it was gonna be. But by the grace of
God, we made it. Learned. I learned so many things. You're gonna
be so sick of me talking about stories of the things that I learned
on that mountain. But today, you're not going to hear a single
story from it, because that's all. The stories are about work and
about how God comes to you when you're working. But actually,
the passage today is all about rest. It's about the Sabbath. So
I'm going to have to save my Kilimanjaro stories for later. And
we're just going to dig into Matthew 12 and learn what Jesus has
to teach us about what it means to rest. Now, while you're
finding Matthew 12, I want you to know it builds on what we finished
with last week. So last week, it finished with some of the most
beautiful words of Jesus when he says at the end of chapter 11,
come to me, all of you who are weary. And burdened. And I'll give
you rest. Take my yoke upon you, because my yoke is easy and
my burden is light. So he's talking about the yoke of Jesus.
Now in chapter 12, he's going to compare a different yoke, a yoke
of the Pharisees, a yoke of religiosity, a yoke of slavery that
is burdensome and cruel and life shattering. And he's saying
there's two yokes, my yoke or religion's yoke. You choose. That's
what he's getting to. In chapter 12, he's showing us the other
yoke. So we begin in verse one. First couple of verses will
set the stage. Here's what it says, Matthew 12:1. At that time,
Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath and his disciples
were hungry. And they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat.
But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, look, your disciples
are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath. Get out. I'm
going to pause a little bit of history lesson for you. You won't
understand what's going on unless you understand why the Pharisees
are so ruffled by what Jesus disciples are doing. So it says,
your disciples are not doing what's lawful on the Sabbath. Now,
if you've been at this church for any length of time, you know
all about the Sabbath, because we talk about it all the time. But
there may be some of you, you're joining us or worshipping
with us online, you haven't heard much about the Sabbath. The
Sabbath is the day of rest, comes from the creation account.
Six days God created the world. On the seventh day, he ceased
from his work and rested. By the way, the word Shabbat, which
is where we get Sabbath from, the Hebrew word means to cease, means
to stop your work. Now, the Jewish people, especially the nation
of Israel, was defined by this seventh day of rest. It showed them
that they had been freed from their slavery to become the people
of God. If you know the story of Exodus, then the Israelites, you
know, were slaves in the land of Egypt. And they, as slaves, were
forced to work seven days a week. Their only value was found
in how many bricks they could make for Pharaoh. In fact, when they
tried to take a few days of rest to go worship God, Pharaoh came
down on them and said, you're just lazy now. You don't even get
straw. Go make more bricks. Make more bricks, because your only
value is how many bricks you produce. But when God freed them
through the ten plagues and the death of the firstborn, and they're
set free, and they pass through the Red Sea and they get
into the wilderness. God says, I'm going to give you ten commandments.
And one of those, the fourth commandment, is that you rest. And
here's why. To remind you and the world around you, you are no
longer slaves to Egypt. Pharaoh doesn't own you. I own you.
And the whole idea of the Sabbath is you can stop doing any
work and still have value, because your value is based on my
work for you, not your work for me. That's why the Sabbath was
so incredibly important to the Jewish people. But there was one
problem about the Sabbath in the Old Testament, in the law of
Moses, is that God didn't give a whole lot of instructions on exactly
what it means to work and not work. So, like, how do you know whether
you're breaking the Sabbath or not? So over the centuries, there
developed among the nation of Israel and the Jewish people, what's
called the oral tradition, mostly known as the Mishnah. Now,
the Mishnah is not the law of God. It's the law of men. Trying
to interpret the law of God, that's a really important distinction.
Now, in the Mishnah, there were 39 things that you were not
allowed to do on the Sabbath because they were considered work.
Now, you go back to the story of the disciples. They're walking
through the grain fields and they're plucking off heads of grain,
and they're eating it. Now, according to the Mishnah, not according
to the law of Moses, but according to the Mishnah, they had
broken four commandments by what they were doing. First of all,
they had plucked heads of grain off the wheat. They were walking
right next to a wheat field. They would pluck it off. Now, according
to the Mishnah, that was considered harvesting, and that was
forbidden on the Sabbath. So they had broken one law already.
The second thing they would do, though, is once you plucked the
head of grain, you had to rub it in your fingers to separate the
husk or the chaff from the seed. Well, that was considered threshing,
and you were now working against. Threshing was forbidden
on the Sabbath. So now you've broken two commandments. Well, then
what you would do is you would. You would blow on it, so the
husk would fly away. So you only had the seed. Well, that was
considered winnowing, which was forbidden on the Sabbath. So
now you've broken three commandments. Then when they got
the Seed. And they put it in their mouth. That was considered
preparing a meal for yourself, which was forbidden on the Sabbath.
You could only do that the day before the Sabbath. So now they take
it, they separate it, they blow it, they eat it. They have broken
four commandments of the Mishnah, the law around the law.
And the Pharisees are all bent out of shape. How dare they do that?
They know the law. I love Jesus response to this. This is one
of the things I most appreciate about Jesus. He is real
quick to break the laws of men if it doesn't align with the law
of God. He loves breaking the rules of men. This is exactly why
he's allowing this to take place, because he's going to make
a point. And so he comes back in and he tries to show them, guys,
you are barking up the wrong tree. That's a yoke of slavery. That's
not the yoke that I want to give you. That's the letter of the
law, but it's missing the heart of the law. And that's why
in verses 3 through 8, he tells them what God's heart actually
is. He's trying to help them break free from the wrong yoke to
have the right yoke. So let's keep on reading. Picking up. In verse
three, it says, he said to them, have you not read what David
did when he was hungry and those who were with him, how he entered
the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence which it was
not lawful for him to eat, nor those who were with him, but only
for the priests. Or have you not read in the law how on the Sabbath
the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless?
I tell you something greater than the temple is here. And if you
had known what this means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice, you
would not have condemned the guiltless, for the Son of Man is
the Lord of the Sabbath. So what Jesus is doing right here is
he's redefining for them what is and isn't permissible on the Sabbath.
He's saying, I'm the Lord of the Sabbath, I get to decide. And
he's saying, guys, you've missed the complete heart of God.
He says, if you had only understood this, I desire mercy,
sacrifice, you wouldn't have condemned my innocent disciples.
That phrase, I desire mercy and not sacrifice is so beautifully
important because that's the comparison of the two yokes. When
it says sacrifice, it's not talking about giving up something
on behalf of God for your love of God. It's talking about the sacrificial
system. It's talking about the rules and regulations. He's saying,
I don't desire you to obey all the rules and regulations as the
highest thing, as if the law is the most important thing. I desire
mercy. Now, that's taken from Hosea6.6. And if you were to read
it in the Hebrew, it has one of the most beautiful Hebrew words
written right there for mercy. It's the Hebrew word chesed. You
got to say it all guttural like, like you're choking a chesed.
That's the word, and it literally means loving kindness.
Chesed. That's what I desire, loving kindness. That you exercise,
kindness toward God and others because you've experienced my love
for you. That's what. Not a sacrificial system, but loving kindness.
Because loving kindness is a yoke that is easy and light. But
sacrificial system and rules and regulations, that's the yoke
that kills. He says, you're looking at the wrong thing. You haven't
even found out what pleases God. And he gives two stories to
explain how they've missed the mark. The first one was about David,
and the second was about priests. So you look back at verse
three. He tells a story about David. Now, this comes from 1 Samuel,
chapter 21, a little background of that story. David has
been anointed by Samuel to be the next king, but Saul is still
king, and Saul is trying to kill David. David is on the run with
a few people who've come with him, and they are famished and exhausted,
and he's just trying to survive. And he goes up to the tabernacle,
and there in the tabernacle is the high priest, Ahimelech. And he
comes up to Ahimelech and he says, would you give us the bread
of the Presence so that we can eat and survive? Now, here's what
you need to know if you were here. Last summer, we did the whole
Exodus series about the tabernacle. We talked about the Bread
of the Presence. That was the table of showbread. It was right
next to the Holy of Holies, inside the holy place in the tabernacle.
And only the high priest and his family were allowed to eat that
bread. David was not a high priest, and the people with him were
not of that family. And so Ahimelech, according to the law,
should not have given David that bread. But he does, because
he sees the anointed who is going to die if he doesn't eat. And
he gives him the bread and his men. And God nowhere punishes David
or his men or Ahimelech for what he's done. Why? Because he showed
chesed. He showed lovingkindness. And that was more
important than rote obedience to the rules and regulations. I desire
chesed and not sacrifice. He's saying, it's all over the Bible.
You've just missed it. And then he goes to a second story about
the priests. And he says, have you not read. He's referring to numbers,
chapter 28, how the priests on the Sabbath have to break the Sabbath
by offering the sacrifices in the morning and at night they don't
get to stop. The priests have to do the work on the Sabbath, and
they do it because it shows chesed back to God, loving kindness
back to God. I offer these sacrifices because I love you, God.
And he's saying, if you're willing to do that for the temple,
can't you see that my disciples should be willing to do
that for me? And then he explains why. Because something greater
than the temple is here among you. Now, I want you to know that
statement went poof right over the heads of the Pharisees. They
had no idea what Jesus was talking about. But Jesus was trying
to help them understand that the temple as beautiful and the tabernacle
along with it, as beautiful as it was, was always just a shadow
of what was to come. But Christ is what it was pointing to.
Those of you who were here last summer, we talked about the
tabernacle. I showed you element after element of how it all
pointed to Jesus. And it was intended to be a picture of God's
divine power and God's divine presence coming to earth. Even the
way the inside of the tabernacle was made, with the curtains
that had cherubim that looked like the angels of heaven and the
colors that look like the tabernacle twilight of the sky, all
of it was designed to make you feel when you walked into the holy
place, like you were stepping up into the heavens in the presence
of God. And it was intended to be a picture that heaven has come
down to earth, the tabernacle and then the temple. But Jesus says
all that which is to help you understand God himself was gonna
take on flesh and come to earth. John, chapter 1, verse 14
says, and Jesus, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
That word is and tabernacled among us. Jesus was always a true
tabernacle. God's presence among us. He is greater than the
temple. And he says, just like priests can serve the temple because
it's God's presence. My disciples can serve me because I
am God among you. He says, I'm the Lord of the Sabbath. And you've
missed it because you made it about a bunch of rules and regulations
and you missed that it's really about me. Can I be really
honest with you? It's so easy for us to get our rocks and throw
them at the Pharisees. Like those guys, man, they just missed
everything. And we do the exact same thing. We don't even realize
it. We turn Christianity into a bunch of do's and don'ts, into
this religious thing that we've got to do to try to please
God. I mean, if we go to church enough, if we give enough
money, if we serve, if we go on a mission trip, if we adopt children,
if we help the poor, if we do all these things, then maybe, just
maybe, Jesus will accept us and we'll make it into heaven. And
that is not the message of the Bible. That's the law of slavery
that leads to death. It's the wrong yoke. When I was hiking this
past week, I met a guy from England, and really, really nice
guy, but he's not a believer. And he was with us on our trip and
we were talking about. He's asking questions about how do you
believe? And why would you believe in Jesus? And we got to the
question about religions of the world and just asking, like,
you know, we were literally at a time of climbing a mountain, and
there were a number of different pathways to get to the
top. And he's going like, isn't it kind of like that? I mean,
God's at the top and we're all just trying to find different ways
to make it to the top to get to him. Isn't that all religion is?
And I had to answer his question, which, by the way, that
may be a question some of you have, maybe some of you are online
watching because you don't know what we teach around here. You
don't know, how is Christianity different than Islam
or Buddhism or Confucianism or Judaism, or, like, what makes it
different? Which, by the way, if you don't have an answer to that,
if your only reason for believing in Jesus because your parents,
your grandparents believed in Jesus and you were born into it,
you're missing it completely. You need to have an answer for that
question. Why believe in Christianity when there are so many
religions of the world? Well, here's the answer I gave to my friend.
I said, listen, Christianity is categorically different than every
other religion of the world. Because every religion is based on
one thought. Every other religion that you obey the rules
of that religion and you please the divine power and you get
the reward from that divine power. Every religion in the world
is based on that. You think about Judaism. If you obey the law
of Moses, this is what the Pharisees were doing. If you obey
all the rules and regulations, then Yahweh will be pleased with
you and you will attain to life, abundant life. You go to Islam.
If I obey the five pillars of Islam and do what I'm supposed to
do, then I can please Allah and then I will attain to paradise.
You go to Buddhism. If I obey the Eightfold pathway that leads
to enlightenment, if I follow it correctly and do it well enough,
then I will please the divine essence in the universe and attain
to nirvana. If I go to Confucianism, if I obey the teachings
of Confucius and walk in his way, I will arrive at intellect and
intelligence and enlightenment. Any religion of the
world is based on that, save one. Christianity at its core is
not about what we do to make ourselves right with God. It's about
what God did to make us right with him. It's not about us building
a tower to make it up to heaven so we can make it up to God.
It's about God saying they're never going to make it so he came
down to earth in flesh to save us. Christianity is about what God
did, not what we do. That's why it's categorically different
than every other religion out there. But we can make it about what
we do. About. If I just obey what Jesus said and fulfill all the
roles and check all the boxes. If the good, and I hear this all,
if the good in my life can outweigh the bad, if maybe I just
get to scale enough, maybe by the hair of my chinny chin chin,
I'll make it into heaven. That's religion. That's the yoke
of slavery. The reason why the yoke of Jesus is light and easy is
because he accomplished it and we just accept it by faith. But sometimes
we put on the wrong yoke and we don't even realize we're doing
it. Telltale signs is that we're always tired, we're always
angry, we're always overwhelmed. We never feel good enough.
Or if we feel like we're obeying the laws, we feel better
than everybody else and look down our noses at people. Those are
the telltale signs that we've got the wrong yoke on. That's exactly
what those Pharisees were doing, looking down their nose at
here's man, Jesus coming to bring life. And they just won't even
see it. They won't even believe it. That's why Jesus has
to show them on the most practical of levels that they're
putting on the wrong yoke. This is exactly what he does in the
next story, because he's going to do something phenomenal on the
Sabbath and the Pharisees are going to hate him for it. Let's keep
on reading, picking it back up. In verse nine, it says, he went
on from there and entered their synagogue, and a man was there
with a withered hand. And they asked him, is it lawful to heal on
the Sabbath so that they might accuse him? So here's what it's saying
they're doing, these Pharisees, they're trying to trap
Jesus. They want to get him because they want to accuse him.
They want to get some dirt on Jesus. Now, in the last story, they
got some dirt on the disciples because they were breaking the Mishnah
by harvesting and threshing and winnowing and preparing a meal
for themselves. But apparently Jesus wasn't eating the grain, so
they didn't have any dirt on Jesus yet, so they want to get some
dirt on him. So they come up with a trick question. They say,
is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? Now here's why this was
a trick question. Because the answer was both yes and no, and they
knew it. You see, there was this little caveat in the Mishnah
that if somebody was deathly ill, it was lawful to heal on the
Sabbath. But if they were not at the point of death, then you had
to wait until the next day to do healing. It was not allowed. And
they knew Jesus loved to heal on the Sabbath and he couldn't pass
up a guy with a withered hand. And they were gonna catch Jesus saying,
yes, it's lawful. And they were gonna go, aha, you're wrong.
Cause this guy's life wasn't threatened and they were gonna have
him trapped. The guy had a withered hand. It doesn't say exactly
what that means. But likely he was paralyzed and turned in. And
he had probably been that way his whole life, decades. This was
not life threatening. He could have waited till the next day to
heal him. But Jesus doesn't fall into their trap. He sets the
trap. He springs it because he wants to show them just how off they
are. And I love how he steps right into it and says, guys, let
me teach you something. Listen to his response, Pick it back up.
In verse 11, he said to them, which one of you who has a sheep,
if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not take hold of it
and lift it out of how much more value is a man than a sheep?
So is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath? So it is lawful to do
good on the Sabbath. Then he said to the man, stretch out your
hand. And the man stretched it out, and he was restored, healthy
like the other. But the Pharisees went out and conspired
against him. How to destroy him. Isn't that sad? These Pharisees
had just seen a real miracle of Almighty God. And the only way
they can respond is by saying, we gotta kill this guy. I'm curious.
Any of you in here have watched the Chosen at all? Raise
your hand if you. Okay, good. A lot of you, if you haven't, I strongly
encourage you to go. It's just vibrant the way it brings to life
the stories of the Bible. But there's this story is done in video
fashion in the Chosen, and it's phenomenal to watch that juxtaposition
of a man whose hand is withered and watch it be healed,
and then to watch these Pharisees, instead of rejoicing in
it, wanting to kill him. Your mind is blowing, going, how could
they respond that way? But here's how they could respond that
way. They had already determined Jesus was evil and he
needed to go down because he was a threat to their way of life.
So no matter what happened, they were going to take him down.
And it was time for Jesus to call out their hypocrisy. That's
why he says, which one of you who has a sheep that's fallen into
a pit won't take it out on the Sabbath? Now, here's what's interesting.
I don't know if you know this or not, but there is nowhere in the
law of Moses or the Mishnah or any oral tradition that allows a
Jew to pull an animal out of a ditch. It is forbidden everywhere.
In fact, in the oral tradition all over the place, it says, if an
animal falls into a ditch, you may not rescue it until the next
day. It says it very clearly. There is no allowance for you to
pull an animal out of a ditch when it falls into it. And he says,
which one of you, if your animal falls into a ditch, won't
pull it out, saying, every single one of you will. And you want
to know why you'll do it? Jesus tells them, because that animal
matters to you. And you'll break the law to do what matters
to you. By the way, I don't know if you know this or not. You
do the exact same thing. The other day, I got a call from my daughter
who was out walking, and she was probably like 3 miles away from
the house, but she called frantically because a couple of dogs
had gotten loose, and they were pit bulls. And she was scared.
A friend of ours recently got bitten by a dog being out for a walk.
And she was understandably terrified that there were these two
pit bulls following her on her walk. And so she calls me, frantic,
saying, daddy, help. And you want to know what I did? I ran out
to my garage, got in my car, and I sped off and I broke every
single law of this land to get my daughter. There was a stop sign.
You think I stopped? No, man, I didn't even do California stop.
I just around the corner, it said 40 miles. You think I was going
40? I don't know how fast I was going, but I promise you it was
not 40. I was going way, because I'm going to get. If a police
car got behind me, I'm like, come on, brother, we're going to
go save my daughter. We ain't stopping till we get here. You want
to know why? Because this is my daughter, and I love her. And
I'll break whatever law I have to to save my daughter. By the way,
so will you. And if you wouldn't, I slap you in the face
for not being willing to break a law to save your daughter. When
something matters to us, we're gonna break every single law in order
to make sure that that thing is protected. Jesus knew that about
these Pharisees, and that's why he says, you do it for a sheep,
but you won't do it for this man. He's pointing out the hypocrisy,
the deadness of the yoke of slavery to laws. You think it's sacrifice,
but it's chesed loving kindness. Here's a man with a withered
hand. What would be lovingly kind of me, it would be to heal him.
And that's why he says, all y' all, watch this. Stick out your hand,
and immediately the man is healed. That's what the Sabbath is
for, he's saying. And these Pharisees had completely missed it.
And if we're not careful, so do we. It's so easy to turn Christianity
into rules. Do this, don't do that. Be a good little boy. Don't
make that mistake. As long as you don't sleep around, as long as
you don't get drunk, as long as you don't take drugs, as long
as you don't steal from, as long as you don't do the big sins,
you're gonna be okay. As if it's rules and regulations and we
miss the whole heart of God. When he says no, it's about you recognizing
I've loved you and you love me back and the people around you. That's
what the heart of Christianity is about. And one of the telltale
signs of whether you believe in that heart or not is what you
do on the Sabbath. That's why Jesus went right to the Sabbath as
he's comparing the two yokes. My yoke is easy and light. The yoke
of the Pharisees of slavery to religion is crushing. And one of
the ways you can see it is how you take the Sabbath. You see, these
Pharisees had begun to believe that the Sabbath was the highest
value and that you had to obey all the rules and regulations to
honor the Sabbath. This is why in Mark, chapter 2, verse 27, Jesus
says the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. In
other words, the Sabbath was meant to be a gift of life and joy
for us, not a burden that crushes us. But that's where it gets
distorted. And even some of you, when it comes to the Sabbath,
the Lord's day for the Jew, it was on Saturday. That was the seventh
day for them for rest. But since the early church, they moved
it to Sunday because we wanna worship on the day Jesus was resurrected
on Sunday. So the Christian church has been gathering to worship
and Sabbathing on Sunday since early times. And we can turn it into
rules and regulations that become burdensome. Well, you know,
you can't do homework on Sunday. You can't do laundry, can't
do yard work, can't do this and this and this. And we feel like
Sabbath is me just sitting at home, bored of tears. I guess I gotta
be a good little Christian if I want to please God and make it
into heaven. That's the yoke of slavery, of religion. It was always
meant to be a light and easy yoke. Sabbath was meant to be a day
of delight, A day where you don't have to work and you still
have value because it's what God has done for you, not what you
have done for God. You're not defined by how you get ahead at work
or how nice your yard looks or. Or how much laundry you get done
or how put together you are as you step into the office on Monday.
None of that matters. You let go of all of it and you have value
because of what God has done for you. It's a day for you delight.
Eat rich foods, join time with family and friends, resting and enjoying
all the things God has given you. It's meant to be a delight.
And we turn it into a burden. Cause we put on the yoke of slavery
to rules and regulations. And we think that's what Christianity
is. Jesus is saying, my Sabbath, that's my time of healing.
If there's anything I do on the Sabbath, it's healing. Because
my yoke is light and my burden is easy. I want to remind you something.
Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever. He does not change.
And just like in these days, he healed on the Sabbath. I think
Jesus still delights on healing in the Sabbath. Today we're
going to have a moment where we're going to have some prayer in
this Sabbath day. This Christian Sabbath day may be a time
for you to come forward and to let Jesus do what he delights in
doing, to bring healing to you on the Sabbath. Maybe for some of
you, you've got some physical ailment, something that you need.
I had a gentleman come up to me this morning in the other service
saying that he struggled severely with diabetes. And I anointed
him with oil and I prayed over him. And he came up to me saying,
my numbers have never been better. My doctor was overwhelmed.
And even his doctor said it was the power of prayer that did
that for him. I want you to know I got no power to do anything
other than to ask God. And God has the power because he loves to
heal on the Sabbath. Jesus showed us that there are some of
you who are here and you need physical healing. We have elders
of our church. According to James 5, we have little vials of
olive oil that will anoint you with in obedience to the Scriptures
and pray for healing, believing that Jesus loves to heal
on the Sabbath. Listen, he doesn't just do physical healing.
Some of you need healing in your marriage. Some of you need healing
in your finances. Some of you need healing in some kind of relationship
or in your job or healing from an addiction or whatever. You need
healing in your mind and heart. With anxiety and depression
overwhelming, you need healing in your inner being. Jesus loves
to heal on the Sabbath. And he's inviting you to come. In a moment,
you can come and you can ask Jesus to do what he loves to do.
It just requires faith. Before I do that, though, one last thing
I want to say he wants to give us the greatest kind of healing of
all. And that's not physical healing. It's not financial healing.
It's not relational healing, not even emotional healing. It's
spiritual healing. The most important kind of healing of all
is that he would heal your very soul. That's what the whole
Sabbath is about. It's the whole reason Jesus came to earth
wasn't to make your life easy. It was to save your soul. And the
Sabbath is just a picture of what Christ does. The Sabbath is
a picture of Jesus. This is exactly what it says. I want you
to. We're going to finish in the book of Colossians, chapter 2,
verses 16 and 17. Listen to what Paul the apostle says here,
Colossians 2, 16. Therefore, let no one pass judgment on you in
questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a
new moon, or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come.
But the substance belongs to Christ. Notice what he says. All
these different things, including the Sabbath. The Sabbath
is a shadow. Christ is the substance. That fourth commandment
in the Ten Commandments to honor the Sabbath and to keep it
holy was always designed to point us to Jesus Christ. You go,
well, how does that point to Jesus? Well, remember what the Sabbath
is. I cease from my work and my identity is found in what God
does for me, not what I do for him. Well, that's the whole message
of the Gospel. The message of the Gospel is I cannot build my tower
to heaven. I cannot earn my righteousness. In fact, my own attempts
to be righteous are filthy rags before God. I can never overcome
the mountain of debt I've incurred for offending a holy God
who has been nothing but good to me. And the more I try to do it,
the more I offend the God who sent his Son to save me. So what
do I do? I cease my own efforts to save myself. I Shabbat.
I rest and I trust that what Jesus did was enough. I don't have
to pay back God for the wrong I've done to him. Jesus paid for
it on the cross. I don't have to be righteous. Jesus was righteous
for me, and I receive it. That's why right there on that baptistry,
it says, Jesus in my place. Every person who gets baptized puts
on a shirt that says Jesus in my place. Cristo en mi lugar. Because
it means Jesus did everything for me and I stop trying and I just
receive it. That's what the Sabbath reminds us of. And yet there
are many of you who are here this morning. And when I was talking
earlier about trying so hard to make your life right, you know,
I'm talking to you. You're so deflated, so broken, because you've
tried to change and you keep failing and you feel worthless. You
feel like it's impossible. You feel like you just can't seem to
get it right. You're never going to get it right. Jesus got
it right for you. You have to trust in what he did, not what you
do. I cannot tell you how many people I've talked to, and they tell
me, yeah, I know I need to get baptized. There's a few things in
my life I got to clean up first. I gotta get some things right
first. When I get that, then I'll come. No, no, no, no, no. That's
the law. That's the yoke of slavery to death. The reason why
the yoke of Jesus is light and easy is because it's already finished
on the cross. What did he yell out? It is finished. We don't have
to add to it. We don't clean up to come to him. We come to him
in our crud and our junk and our mess and our brokenness, and
he cleans us up. Some of you, you need to let him clean you up.
Come in your filth. Come in your brokenness. Come in your despair.
Come needy. That's what repentance is. I'm a failure. I can't
change. I can't make it to heaven. So I'm going to trust that
you came down from heaven to me. And I'm gonna let Jesus change
my heart. That's when you find freedom. That's when your soul gets
restored. That's when he reconciles you to God and your life
is made right. I can't make that decision for you, but you can
make it. This morning, I'm gonna invite you to stand to your
feet. Right now, I'm gonna invite the prayer team to come spread
out all over the front. If today you're ready, you're ready
to stop trying to save yourself, stop trying to make yourself
right, stop trying to be good enough and to raise your white flag
and say, I can't do it. But, Jesus, I trust in you, then you can
come down front and let us know that you're ready to trust Jesus
in your place. And maybe today, before the service is over,
you can express your faith in baptism. What will happen is somebody
will meet with you. We'll take you over to the counseling room where
you can talk with somebody about what it means to follow Christ.
And if you're ready, today can be your day. We'll give you shorts
to change into a T shirt that says Jesus in my place. And you can
declare freedom in Christ today. But you gotta come. Also want
to remind you, if you're in need of a miracle, someplace where
he brings healing to your life, whatever that healing is. Jesus
loves to heal on the Sabbath. Come in faith and let him bring healing.
He's got to come forward and let us pray for you. We're ready.
You respond as you need to.