Luke 6:1–11

0:00 Raise your hand real quick if you have ever read Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. Raise your hand. Okay, good. Me either. However, I do know, because Google has told me so, that in the middle of Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, there is a story that's told by one of The Brothers Karamazov to the other brother Karamazov that has become so famous that it's gotten its own name.

0:35 It's a story within the story but it's gotten its own title through the 150 years that the book has existed. It's known as the Grand Inquisitor. One of the brothers Karamazov tells a story of how back in 16th century Spain in the middle of the Spanish Inquisition And Jesus, the Christ, comes back to earth. He shows up in the midst of the Spanish Inquisition. And he starts marching through the city of Sevilla, Spain.

1:06 And he's doing all the things that you see Jesus doing in the Gospels. He's talking to people and teaching people. And he's healing people. There's even a person that's coming out of a church at the end of a funeral. And she says to him, Jesus, I know who you are. Would you please just bring my daughter back to life? And so Jesus does. The crowd's pressing around him because they recognize him, they know who he is, they want to follow him, and he makes his way to the cathedral in Sevilla. The great doors of the cathedral open up and out steps the 90-year-old, wrinkled, wizened Grand Inquisitor, the leader of the Spanish Inquisition.

1:50 Immediately, the grand inquisitor has Jesus arrested, tells him that he's going to have him executed. A little bit later, the grand inquisitor takes a lantern, he goes down the steps into the prison cell where Jesus is being kept, and he tells Jesus, you've made a mistake in coming back because we, the church, have it all under control now. You have no right to come back now and hinder us in our work.

2:26 In fact, he tells him at one point, we, the church, have corrected Jesus, what you got wrong. Now, in the end, the Inquisitor decides not to have Jesus executed. But opens the prison door, points to Jesus to leave, and says to him, go and return no more do not come again never never you see the point of what he's saying there jesus we've built a religion now and we don't need you here to mess it up it's a powerful story isn't it it's exactly what we're going to be talking about today as we continue our study through the book of luke if you remember I know it's been a few weeks, but if you can kind of remember back to last century or whenever it was last that we were in Luke, in the last few chapters of the book, Luke has been determined basically at every turn through every story that he's been telling about Luke. He's been determined

3:29 to put Jesus in front of us, his readers, and confront us with the fact that this guy, Jesus, is the Christ. He's the long-awaited Messiah. He's the one that the Old Testament had promised from the very beginning he's the great king of Israel the suffering servant who's going to stand in his people's place win their forgiveness through his suffering and ultimately he is none other this is going to become more clear as the story goes on he is in fact none other than the God of Israel himself who alone can forgive sins so that's been the main storyline just one revelation of another about after another of Jesus's identity but underneath that main storyline especially over the last chapter maybe chapter and a half there's been another storyline building as well and that's the rising opposition of Jewish leaders to Jesus so if you look back in chapter 5 for instance we saw how that opposition of the Jewish leaders took the form of the Pharisees first of all being astonished that Jesus would presume to forgive the paralytic's sin and then that astonishment

4:32 at that fact quickly curdled into an accusation up in 521. This guy is blaspheming. Who can forgive sins but God alone? And of course the subtext of that charge was nobody can forgive sins but God alone and therefore this charlatan, Jesus of Nazareth, certainly can't forgive sins because he is not God. We saw in that story how that worked out for them. Jesus not only forgave the guy's sins. He also told him to get up off his mat and walk again, thereby proving that he had authority to do both, heal the guy physically and heal him spiritually. Well, in our text today, the Pharisees' opposition to Jesus becomes way more overt. It's not just reactive anymore.

5:15 It's not just watching what Jesus does and then complaining about it. The people that Jesus clashes with here, the Pharisees, are not asking their questions out of a good heart. They're not trying to understand him they're not just trying to engage in conversation they're attacking him they are dead set opposed to him they're threatened by him and so what you're going to see over the next few chapters is that over and over and over again they're going to try to trap him they're going to try to get him to do something or say something that's going to give them a pretense to condemn him and ultimately execute him and that's what ultimately leads us to Jerusalem and the cross. In fact, as we're going to see today, over and over again, they even try to manufacture situations where Jesus is going to be trapped. And that's what we see today. We just see the Pharisees dogging Jesus at every turn, trying to catch him in his actions or words so they can condemn him. So turn over with me if you have a Bible to Luke chapter 6. That's where we're going to be today. Luke chapter 6, and I'm going to read starting in verse 1. On a Sabbath, while he was

6:24 going through the grain fields, his disciples plucked and ate some heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands. But some of the Pharisees said, why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath? And Jesus answered them, have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him? How he entered the house of God and took and ate the bread of the presence, which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those with him? And he said to them, The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. On another Sabbath he entered the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was withered.

6:58 And the scribes and the Pharisees watched him to see whether he would heal on the Sabbath, so that they might find a reason to accuse him. But he knew their thoughts, and he said to the man with a withered hand, Come and stand here. And he rose and stood there. And Jesus said to them, I ask you, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it? And after looking around at them all, he said to him, stretch out your hand. And he did so, and his hand was restored. But they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus.

7:38 Okay, so what are we dealing with here? Well, obviously, in terms of the structure of it, you've got these two stories, both of them, if you look at the beginning of verse 1 and the beginning of verse 6, you can see both of these stories happen on the Jewish Sabbath, which is supposed to be the day of rest, and therefore, the arena in which this whole challenge is happening, this whole conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees, the arena of that conflict is, of all things, the Sabbath laws, what you can and can't do on the Jewish Sabbath.

8:09 So that becomes pretty clear because Luke starts both the stories with on a certain Sabbath and then the whole story of the conflict becomes what is Jesus going to do or not do on the Sabbath? I mean, even in the second story, if you look at it, I know it gets preached like this a lot of times, but the main point of that story of the man stretching out his withered hand and being healed, the main point is not for you as a reader of the Bible to just be astonished that Jesus can heal a guy with a withered hand, right? That's not the point. We have known for quite some time now that Jesus can heal people.

8:42 That's not a surprise to us. And so there's not another story that is simply making the point that Jesus can cause a withered hand to begin to work again. That's not the point. No, the point is that Jesus is willing to do things on the Sabbath that the Jewish leaders did not want him to do. It's not a conflict about his power to heal. It's a conflict about his authority to do what he wants to do on the Sabbath. Okay, now I get it. I get it entirely.

9:14 My guess is that getting into the intricacies of Jewish debates about the Sabbath probably doesn't sound super exciting to you. You're probably just like, if that's what we're going to do today, then I'll just take the stick in my eye, thank you. And then maybe they'll have to take me to the hospital and I can get out of here a little bit faster. I'll take the stick. But hang on for a minute. don't glaze your eyes over just yet, because what you're going to see in these stories, I think, as we go through them, is that Jesus is just about as interested in Jewish Sabbath law debates as you are. He's not interested in them at all. And one of the things you're going to notice is that when the Pharisees come with their, you know, learned arguments about the Sabbath, is Jesus just doesn't engage them. He doesn't argue with them. He doesn't talk to them about that. He doesn't say, yes, but.

10:01 there's none of that it's just bam he knocks it out of the way and says the reason that i am doing what i'm doing is because i am who i am that's the way he engages them not with argument but with a sheer declaration of his identity and authority in fact what he does basically is launch a full frontal assault against the whole legalistic self-righteous worldview of these Pharisees who were challenging them. In other words, this is a full frontal assault against religion. It's a full frontal assault against religion. Now that hits a little bit closer to home, doesn't it? If all we're doing here today is talking about Sabbath laws, blah, blah, blah, well, your eyes can glaze over. But if Jesus is launching a full frontal assault against religion that's closer to our hearts and it's close to us because most of us either see religion as a good thing and we want to be known as religious people in one way or another

11:04 or for a lot of us we've just rejected religion entirely and anything that smells like religion we don't want to have anything to do with it including Jesus well either way whether you're a person who wants to be religious or a person who wants to have nothing to do with religion. What Jesus says here is in fact a full in the face challenge to you. Because I think the main idea of this text is this. Be careful. Be careful. Because religion can kill your spiritual life dead. Be careful because religion can kill your spiritual life dead. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, what I mean is that spiritual life comes not from religion, but from Jesus. And those two things are not the same.

11:59 And maybe you've been laboring under the idea for a while that religion and Jesus are the same thing. Religion is Jesus. Jesus is religion. Jesus is a subset of religions. It's not the case. Jesus and religion are two utterly different things. Now, let me be clear. When we talk about the word religion we got to be careful with it because a lot of the stuff that we do gathering together for church and singing songs and doing the Lord's Supper that that gets sort of lumped in under the broad umbrella term of religion and and that's fine if you want to call all the things we do as a church religion if you want to say that that just encompasses the means of grace that point us to know Jesus that's fine I don't have any quarrel with that but it's possible friend to do all that stuff to do all the religious stuff and yet miss Jesus entirely and that's what the Pharisees did they cared so much for their man-made religion that they missed Jesus entirely so what we're going to do is talk about this this text in two

13:02 points it's got two sections to it right two different stories so we got two points to the sermon today, both of them an exhortation to us as Christians and as human beings. Number one, don't let religion blind you to Jesus. Don't let religion blind you to Jesus. And second, don't let religion blind you to people. Those two points. Don't let religion blind you to Jesus and don't let religion blind you to people. All right, point number one, don't let religion blind you to Jesus. So especially for the last chapter or so, back through chapter 5, on back a little bit into chapter 4, we've seen this rising tension begin to develop in the story of Jesus's life. And that's because as he reveals himself in all of these different ways to be all these incredible things, he's the Christ, he's the Son of God, he's Yahweh himself, he has the authority to forgive sins. As he reveals himself to be all of these things, the rulers of the people have started to take notice and get their hackles up about it because if Jesus is claiming to be the king if he's claiming to be

14:06 the great messiah well then if the people recognize that about Jesus and install him as king then the current rulers of the people are going to lose their position and they don't want that to happen so their opposition begins to rise they charge him with blasphemy when he forgives the paralytic's sins they question why he's hanging out with sinners and tax collectors back in chapter 5. They set themselves up as more pious than him and his disciples with their fasting at the end of chapter 5. So you can see the kind of reactive things that they're doing. Basically they're following Jesus around, right? They're following him around and they're watching what he does and then they're saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, but we're better than that. I don't care that you just made that guy get up and walk when he's been paralyzed his entire life. It's blasphemy. We're more pious than you because we fast and your disciples don't fast they're reacting none of that worked though the crowds that were following Jesus listening to him the crowds that were coming to understand a

15:08 little bit about who he was were getting bigger and bigger and so the pharisees basically decide it's time to start to stop trying all these reactive ploys and just go at him head on we just need to go after him so in the two stories we have here at the beginning of chapter six they pretty much just manufacture a couple of controversies to try to prove that Jesus is a lawbreaker and if they can show that he's a lawbreaker their hope is that they'll be able to discredit him in the eyes of the people well that plot doesn't work out at all like they hoped because not only does Jesus expose their religious laws as entirely man-made he also shows that they just never understood the law of God in the first place and then to top it all off he even asserts his own authority as the Lord of the Sabbath which is really to say the Lord of the law itself

16:09 so let's see how it plays out in these stories the first of them starts in chapter 6 verse 1 there where Jesus and his disciples are walking through a grain field. We don't know anything about the setting or the location, nothing like that. It's a grain field. So it's outside of the city. It's, you know, outside of the main part of town, probably out in the countryside somewhere. And they're walking along probably the edge of a field where a road would have gone next to it. And they're walking through it. And his disciples decide to reach over and pick some grain and eat it.

16:40 So they reach out and they grab it and they rub it between their fingers and then they, you know, take the husk and blow the husk away and the kernel is left and they pop it in their mouth and they eat it. It's not like they're stealing bushels of grain or anything like that. It's just a little grain here or there, right? You know, like you would do if you, some of you do that through the grocery store, right? You see a grape and you're just like, you know. But that's the idea. They're just sort of having some popcorn as they're walking through the field. They're probably not even that hungry. They're just snacking.

17:12 And the Pharisees see it. Now let's just pause right there. How on earth did they see this? I mean, Jesus and his disciples are like walking along a field. At most, they're on a public road. And these Pharisees, who are supposed to be ruling the people in the center of the city, are somehow seeing it. They're eating the grain. How do they see that? It's because they walked out there and followed Jesus to see if they could catch him in something. They didn't just happen across it. They went out to catch him. They see all of this, and they're incensed.

17:44 And you can see what they say there in verse 2. Some of the Pharisees said, Why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath? Now, that in your Bibles is in the form of a question. Why are you doing what is unlawful to do on the Sabbath? But you know as well as I know that that is not a question. That is an accusation masquerading as a question. You know what those are, right? You're doing something and somebody walks into the room and they say, what are you doing?

18:21 That is not a question. They know exactly what you're doing. It's an accusation. You should not be doing that. My children, when I would tell them no when they were small, would go, but dad, why? And I would often tell them, you don't want to know why. You just don't like the decision. It's an accusation. It's not a question. And that's exactly what this is. They're accusing Jesus and his disciples of doing something wrong by walking along and eating the little bits of grain.

18:55 Now, there's an important question to ask here. Was it actually wrong for the disciples to be doing this? Was it stealing or was it somehow a violation of Sabbath laws? was it wrong for them to be eating that little grain even according to Jewish law and the answer is no no it was not wrong for them to be eating the grain nowhere in the old testament nowhere in scripture is a person prohibited from picking grain and eating it even on the sabbath and in fact it's specifically said that as you're walking along the edge of a field you can in fact eat little bits of grain off the stalks. It's specifically allowed even on the Sabbath.

19:34 So where did the Pharisees get this idea? And if the law of God doesn't say it's wrong, where did they get the idea that it is wrong? Well, what the law said was that it was unlawful to work on the Sabbath. That's the law. Six days shall you work and then on the seventh day you take your rest and you don't work. And the idea was that it would teach the people to be dependent on God. So you give away to the Lord one-seventh of your productivity so that you can recognize that he gives you all of your productivity. But the Pharisees had taken that law, you shall not work on the Sabbath. And they had come up with what were called two score minus one. So two score would be 40 minus one, 39. 39 categories of things that constituted work. And each one of those 39 categories had several sub categories and in one of those they declared that picking a piece of grain was the same thing as harvesting the grain rubbing it between your fingers was the same thing as threshing the grain which you do at scale if you're a farmer right you got to thresh the grain

20:38 and then and then if you if you so if you rub it it's threshing and then blowing on it in your hand is is the great big process of winnowing the grain to separate the husks from the from the kernels. So they declared that even that little bit of, you know, movement is harvesting and threshing and winnowing. And they declared that therefore, because that is work, it's unlawful on the Sabbath. So their challenge to Jesus and his disciples wasn't really from the scriptures at all. It was from their own 39 categories of made-up stuff. Now, this is an important thing to think about. Because the Pharisees basically take their man-made religion, and what do they do with it? They cause a fight. They take their man-made religion, they take their made-up rules that aren't in the Word of God at all, and they cause a fight. Now, why does that happen? Because that's what always happens with man-made religion. Man-made religion is always going to cause

21:42 fights. It will cause fights out in the world, and it will cause fights right here at Third Avenue Baptist Church. Why? Because man-made religion, by very definition, insists always on getting its own way. It insists on getting its own way. I mean, just think about it for half a second, and you can see why. The Pharisees said, eating the grain is unlawful. But that was their own law. That was not God's law. Do you see what they did? They took their own law and accused somebody else of breaking it. Now, you know, let's give them the benefit of the doubt for a second. Why did they create those 39 categories of work? Well, it's because they knew that, you know, there's this prohibition of the law. We should not work on the Sabbath. And so basically what they did with their own man-made regulations is that they said, look, we don't want to violate that law. That would be a bad thing for us to violate that law. So let's build city walls around the law. And if we're careful enough and we don't break through the city walls, there's no way we're ever going to

22:44 violate the commandment at the center. And so that's what all those 39 categories were. They were ever-increasing city walls that were meant to protect the command in the middle. If you don't break this, then you won't break the thing at the center. Now here's the deal. That is not always a terrible idea. Oh, now some of you are surprised because I'm supposed to say never build city walls around the law. That is not always, though, a terrible idea. It is not necessarily wrong or bad for you to do that in your own life.

23:21 So, for example, if there's a temptation that you need to flee in certain ways, it's a particular draw to you, it might actually be a great idea for you to build some personal city walls around that thing. I will not do this and I will not do that even though it's lawful for me to do those things because if I know that those are the things that trigger that thing and if I don't do this thing, maybe I won't trigger that thing. It can be a very good idea to put city walls around things that are a temptation for you. But here's the thing.

23:52 The trouble comes. The trouble comes when you start insisting that your own city walls should be built by everybody and that it's wrong or sinful when they don't build them. That's what causes quarrels and fights. You can read Romans 14. You can read 1 Corinthians 8. You can see a couple of churches that were very nearly split by this sort of thing. Brothers and sisters, you have to be careful. You have to be careful when you're about to say that someone is doing something unlawful or sinful or unchristian. You need to be sure that when you label a certain action or a certain thing unchristian, that it actually is a violation of God's law and not just an implication of an implication of an implication of an implication that you yourself have traced out.

24:58 The question's got to be, really? Really? Am I really sure that this is unchristian? Does the Bible really say that? Or are you just taking what is maybe a perfectly fine city wall for you and turning it into a law for everyone? Be careful about that. It splits churches, it causes conflict, that ruins lives well the next few verses jesus basically comes right back at the pharisees and tells them why they're wrong why his disciples are not guilty of profaning the sabbath so look with me at verse 3 jesus answered them so they asked why is why are you doing what's not lawful to do on the sabbath jesus answered them have you not read what david did when he was hungry he and those who were with him how he entered the house of god and took and ate the bread of the presence which is not lawful for any but the priest to eat and he also gave it to those with him okay now that's an interesting answer and this happens in the gospels a lot where something is said and then

25:59 you get the the introduction and jesus replied and then jesus replies with something that doesn't really answer the question he does this all the time and what you have to do when you run across one of those places in the bible is you have to say okay wait now to me it doesn't seem like jesus is answering that question in the way that he should have answered it or that I, you know, I would have expected him to answer it. So what's going on? What is, what is he doing that is beyond what I would have expected? And this is one of those places. Because, because if you look at it in three and four, Jesus doesn't just make the very good argument against him that would have been, well, it never says that. It literally never says that. And you're just making stuff up.

26:39 That's what we would expect him to say to them, and he doesn't say it. Instead, what he does is that he reminds them of a story from the Old Testament that makes a deeper and at the same time higher point. So let's look at it a little bit. So in 3 and 4, he reminds them of a time in 1 Samuel 21, back in the Old Testament, where David, who is at that point in the story, David is the anointed but still rejected king of Israel.

27:10 Sort of like Jesus, right? The anointed but rejected king. So David, the anointed but still rejected king, he's on this long journey with his men and he goes into the tabernacle in the city of Nob and he eats the holy bread that would have been on the table in front of the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle. It was called the show bread. It was an offering to God. Once a week, it had to be changed out by the priests and nobody could eat that bread according to the law except the priests. Now, it was a big deal that David ate that bread because it wasn't just a kind of pharisaical bureaucratic regulation that nobody can eat that bread except the priests.

27:45 It was scripture. Scripture had laid down the law that only the priests could eat this stuff. You can even see there in verse 4 that Jesus himself says, it was unlawful for him to eat it. And yet, when David eats it, the Scripture doesn't condemn him. Now, why? When David eats the bread, Scripture doesn't condemn him. Why? Well, there are basically two answers that are offered here as to why Scripture doesn't condemn David.

28:26 One of those is that Jesus is saying here, the scripture doesn't condemn him because the law is fungible. It's flexible when it runs into human need. So David and his men were hungry and when people are hungry or needy or sick or whatever, the law doesn't really hold anymore. When the law runs up against human need, the law bends and allows things to happen.

28:59 Human need supersedes it. Now, lots of people have thought that. People have thought that that's what Jesus is teaching here. But I don't think so. And there are a few reasons that I don't think that's the point. First, there are three of them. I'm going to give you three reasons for why that can't be Jesus' argument. First of all, if that's his argument, if it is that the law bends when it runs into human need, then that argument doesn't help his disciples' case at all. His disciples were not in any kind of dire need.

29:33 They weren't starving. They weren't falling down out of thirst or hunger and about to die. There's nothing like that. They were snacking on popcorn as they walked. That's what they were doing. There's no hunger there. There's boredom. It's like you, late at night, when you just walk into the kitchen. You're not hungry. You're just grazing because you don't have anything better to do. That's what they were doing. I mean, I do that. Just walk into the kitchen, right? Oh, look, there's a cookie or there's a handful of cinnamon toast crunch or, you know, whatever.

30:06 Maybe that's just me, but I doubt it. So that can't be the argument because it doesn't do his disciples any good. Second, if the law, if that's the argument, that the law gives way every time it runs into human need, If that's the deal, if the law gives way every time a person just wants a snack, then what does it mean for there to be a law at all? Everything that you can imagine becomes an exception. I'm a little bit hungry. I want a snack.

30:37 I'm bored. I want to do this, etc., etc., etc. Everything becomes an exception and the law becomes nothing. It can't be that. Third, the importance of human need just isn't where the story lands. It's just not where it ends. It's not the point that's made from the story. Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the synoptic gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the gospels. Three of them, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are called the synoptic gospels because they look at the same things. Synoptic means look with.

31:10 And so they're looking at the same things, and they tell the same stories. So this story is told in all three of those gospels. and all three of them end the story at the same place they all end with what's said in verse 5 the son of man is lord of the sabbath now you see what i'm getting at there if the point of this was to make the you know make the point that human needs supersedes law if that's what i'm supposed to be preaching to you then that story would have ended with jesus saying something like so human need supersedes law that's how it would have ended but it doesn't it ends on something else entirely and what's that what does it end on it ends on the authority of the king the messiah the son of man in fact that's what the whole david thing is about too it's not that david and his guys were hungry that's not the reason that they weren't condemned it's that David is the king and therefore he's got the authority to judge how the law is to be

32:13 applied in that moment so what Jesus is saying is look if David and that priest in Nop could act with that kind of interpretive authority about the law how much more can the son of man the final king the lord of the sabbath act with an even greater authority to say what the law means Do you see his point? The Pharisees are basically following him around. And at this point, they're wanting to put Jesus under the Sabbath. In fact, they're wanting to put Jesus underneath their own rules about the Sabbath.

32:48 But Jesus just nukes them. He doesn't try to argue himself out from under the Sabbath. He just nukes them. He looks them in the eye and he says, you don't own the Sabbath. I do. I'm the Lord of the Sabbath. That's the point of verse five. You don't get a principle of human need here. You get a declaration of Jesus's own sheer authority.

33:19 And basically what he's doing is handing down a verdict on the Pharisees about their own understanding of the law. He's saying, you guys are wrong about the law. You're wrong in your understanding of it. You're wrong in its application. And why does he have the authority to hand down that kind of verdict? Because the Son of Man has come, and he has every right in the universe to say with absolute authority what the Sabbath laws that he wrote mean. And therefore to judge who is innocent and who is guilty. So by the end of the story, the king has spoken and the discussion is over, and he has every right to do it because he's the Lord of the Sabbath.

33:58 Now, back out of the Jewish law details for a second. Because I want you to see what this means for you. These Pharisees, at the end of the day, had been completely blinded by their religion. They were so blinded, in fact, that they couldn't even see the true king standing right in front of them. I wonder if that's happened to you. You know, that kind of thing can happen even to Christians. You can become so blinded by your religion.

34:30 You can become so focused on the things you need to do in service to the church. You can become so blinded by your own spiritual disciplines or what other people are doing right or wrong that you can string months together of going to church and singing the songs and evaluating the sermons and never once have your mind and heart actually focus on Jesus. Your religion can blind you to the king. Be careful, brothers and sisters, that you guard against that with everything you've got.

35:07 Don't let religion blind you to Jesus. And number two, don't let religion blind you to people. Don't let religion blind you to people. So the whole controversy here continues with this next story in verses 6-11, which functions as proof that what Jesus said and did in the story right above was actually legitimate. It basically proves that. It proves he is the Lord of the Sabbath and therefore he does have the right to say what the law means and pass judgments about it. And what happens in this next story provides the proof of that. So the Pharisees' challenge again in this second story about the man with the withered hand, I think reveals a lot about their hearts. It tells us a lot about where they are. So earlier, their challenge to him about the grain stuff had revealed this just massive self-righteousness, massive self-confidence. Here, I think it reveals the cold deadness that this self-righteous religion had brought to their hearts. It had basically killed their hearts and killed their compassion for other people. In other words, their religion now has not

36:09 only blinded them to the king, it's also blinded them to people. I mean, think about what's going on here? You've got a teaching thing going on. Jesus goes into the synagogue. There's a crowd in there, all the rest. And there's this man with a withered hand. Now Luke even tells us that it's his right hand, which makes the situation even worse because basically everybody was right-handed in those days. Even if you were left-handed, you forced yourself to be right-handed because the left was evil and the right is good, right? So everyone's right-handed. So when Luke says that, he's saying this guy can't provide for himself. He's wholly incapable of working, of holding a hammer of doing anything. It may even be referring to his entire arm that's withered. So he can't do anything. This guy, he's in a tough spot. And yet you can see that the Pharisees have no compassion on the guy whatsoever. We look at verse 6. On another Sabbath, Jesus entered the synagogue and was teaching. And a man was there whose right hand or arm was withered. And the scribes and the pharisees watched him to see whether he would heal the guy on the sabbath so that they might find a

37:16 reason to accuse him you had a guy here whose whole life is ruined by this ailment whatever it was and their interest in the guy was to use him as a tool to try to trap jesus oh guys look look the dude with the withered hand is here. That's awesome. And what goes into their mind is not, how about we go give him some alms? How about we go give him some help? How about we go give him some of our massive wealth to help him out? It's not that it's, no, let's watch and see if we can get Jesus. I wonder if Jesus will heal the guy, which kind of makes it even worse, right? Because why are they wondering if Jesus will heal the guy? Because they already know him to be a man of compassion. They know him to be a guy that sort of runs to the person with the withered hand and fixes things they know he's got compassion and they're going to use his compassion for people to try to trap him everybody around them everybody around them is just a tool to them it's just the whole thing is just oily it's corrupt

38:22 well again jesus gives them a couple of answers first in verse 9 he launches a just devastating shot at their heartless hypocrisy. It's a question again, but it's an accusation. Every single one of you knows that it's lawful on the Sabbath to do good for another human being, to save him from suffering, to save him from death. That's what the Sabbath in fact is for, Jesus is saying. It's meant to remind you of the most important things, not just the mindless act of raking wealth to yourself that you do on the other six days.

38:59 This day is meant to remind you of more important things, but your hearts are so hard that you want to use my compassion for this man to say that I am unrighteous. That's what he does to them. It's a verdict, again, that the king is handing down. You see that, right? He's not arguing with them about what the law says. It's not, oh, but guys, in Leviticus 17, whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Some rabbis say this, and other rabbis say that, but I think it's...

39:31 He didn't do that. The meaning of the law is not up for grabs. Jesus is not interested in having that argument. He's just declaring what the law means as its author and its interpreter. But he doesn't even stop there. So his declaration of what the law means is backed up entirely by what happens in verse 5. He actually heals the guy. it's verse 10 he heals the guy I mean it's it's it works like the story uh earlier in chapter 5 when he heals the paralytic so his physical healing of the guy which is something spectacular and visible it catches your attention and you can't do it right his physical healing of the guy proves that he has authority to say what he's saying healing the paralytic proved that he had authority to forgive sins healing the man with the withered hand proves that he has the right to interpret the law that he's written.

40:26 The point is Jesus' identity and authority. Now, if you don't get anything else from the sermon, you need to understand that's a critical point. Jesus is not, in these stories, just telling us that we need to have more compassion for hungry people and sick people. This is not what he's doing. And anytime you hear a sermon that says, what Jesus is teaching you here is to have compassion on hungry people and sick people, even if you have to set your own religious laws aside.

40:57 That's not the point. It's just not. The point in every one of these stories is that Jesus is asserting a kingly identity and authority. And that's the only way verse 11 makes sense, right? I mean, you wouldn't have Jews killing each other very often over just a theological dispute about what Leviticus says. Now, the reason they want to kill Jesus, The reason they want to, it's very vague in Luke, the reason they want to do something to him, they mean kill him.

41:27 The reason they want to do that is because they understand what he's claiming here. They recognize that he's claiming to be the king and the author and the interpreter of their law. And if that's true, then they're out of a job. So what can we learn here? Well, let me give you a few things. A few just kind of applications of this. Number one, man-made religion is fundamentally self-righteous and therefore it is without grace.

41:59 Man-made religion is fundamentally self-righteous and therefore it is without grace. And the Pharisees had created these laws. They thought they had God's favor because they kept the laws. They were self-righteous. And therefore there was no thought in their minds of their own sinfulness or their own need for a savior. And therefore, there was no thought in their minds of grace. There was no compassion. There was no love. There was no concern for this guy with the withered hand or even for the disciples eating their popcorn, for that matter. The only thoughts in their mind, because they were people of man-made religion, were accusation and guilt and condemnation.

42:37 So, brothers and sisters, some of you this morning might be, you'll know your own heart, religious, in exactly that way. You think you're doing pretty good. And therefore, you have a heart that is not at home with grace. It's not at home with receiving grace and therefore it's not at home with giving it either.

43:18 Man-made religion is self-righteous and therefore it's without grace. Number two, man-made religion loves to blow its own trumpet. Man-made religion loves to blow its own trumpet. It wants and needs attention. It follows people out to the grain fields where it has no business being just so that it can accuse them.

43:51 It needs to be seen and heard and recognized because man-made religion makes people fundamentally proud. It makes you want other people to see how good you are. Let me ask you a question. What if your goodness, your character, your service, your actions, any of it, what if your goodness were never, not once in your life, ever recognized by anyone?

44:33 what if you went through your entire life never asked to lead a ministry never nominated to be a deacon never nominated to be an elder never given a watch at your retirement never a little plaque to put on your desk nothing what if you went your entire life never getting any of it even privately could you still be content in Christ?

45:10 Could you give up all that recognition that human beings could give to you for the time when Jesus at the end will say, well done, good and faithful servants. Man-made religion loves to blow its own trumpet. Here's the last thing. Man-made religion deceives you about your need for a Savior. It deceives you about your need for a Savior. See, the trouble is religion operates on the idea.

45:42 The whole idea of religion in a bad way is that it operates on the idea that righteousness is fundamentally attainable. It may be hard. There may be a lot that you've got to do, but basically it's attainable. The bar that you've got to clear to get salvation for yourself is sort of just out of reach, right? And so you reach, and you reach, and you reach, and you do mass, and you pray the rosary, and you do this, and you do that, and you have your quiet time, and it's just barely out of reach. Friends, that is spiritually deadly. It's spiritually deadly, because as long as you think the bar is just right there, out of your reach, guess what you're going to do?

46:20 You're going to keep jumping for it again, and again, and again, and again. You're going to rely on yourself. You know what you need to do instead? You know what you need to do instead? You need to pray that God would show you just how far away the bar is. It's the only thing that's going to convince you of your need for a savior. I mean, you realize that, right? I mean, when God takes the bar and moves it out into the cosmos away from you, and when he takes your own understanding of your own sin and drops the doors out from under you into the abyss, And you realize just how far gone you are.

46:57 And the gap between where you are and where that bar is gets infinite. You know what fills in that gap? You know what gets bigger and bigger and bigger as the two get farther apart? The cross. The cross gets bigger to you. If it's just a six inch gap between you and the bar you got to clear, then the cross is about six inches big to you. But if it's light years away, then the cross fills the universe of your mind.

47:32 So that's it. I mean, you see, right, how religion can kill your soul. It did that to the Pharisees. The Pharisees were religious people who missed the Lord of the Sabbath standing right in front of them. Just like the old Grand Inquisitor. They said, we have a religion and we don't need you. brothers and sisters we've got to be careful as individuals and as a church that that doesn't happen to us we've got to be careful that our religion doesn't blind us to Jesus and doesn't blind us to other people be careful when you attend services when you sing when you pray that it's not just religion but true heartfelt worship of your king let's pray our lord we thank you and we honor you as the lord of the sabbath the king of kings and the lord of lords and we pray oh lord that you would not let our hearts become dead and cold and dull

48:37 by the practice of mere religion but lord we pray that the disciplines we do the services we attend the songs we sing all of it we pray that it would be heartfelt worship of you who deserves every bit it. We pray all of that in the name of Jesus, our Lord and our Savior, and always to his honor and glory. Amen.