This recording is from Willow Creek Church in Winter Springs, Florida, where Dr. Pete Owlinson is our senior pastor. Today's sermon is part three in a series called The Hard Sayings of Jesus. This message is taken from Mark 2, verses 23-28, and is titled Controlling the Controllers, the Grace of the Law. And now here's Pete with today's message. It is a God of mercy and love for us, amidst of all of the crazy things that happened in this world. He is. And today as we look into his word, we want to see a little bit more about God's love and mercy, even in his law, even in his law, and in his laws. I'm so glad you're here, and we're in the fourth or third of an installment in a series we're doing called The Hard Sayings of Jesus. And Jesus said many hard things, there are many difficult tough statements in the Bible. And we're looking at those tough statements of Jesus, but in them we will see God's grace, we'll see his mercy, we'll see that he is a God of love incredibly. And we think of these tough statements of Jesus, we can understand that there are verbal sledgehammers that he uses to get our attention, and all of us need that from time to time. We need somebody to get attention, and Jesus always spoke to people directly, and usually almost all the time, he spoke right to those who needed to hear the hard sayings. Jesus was, whoever he was, he had integrity and he said the straight truth to those who needed to hear it. I remember when I was getting together with Steve Brown, my mentor one day for dinner, I think I told some of you about this before I lived in Orlando, and I was taking him back to the airport, and I took him to dinner, I'll never forget we were at the Perkins down on 436 way down to the airport, and so I confessed a sin to him, and I was a little shocked that I'm not going to tell you what it is. But I confessed a sin, and I said I can't believe I did that, and he said you wouldn't be so shocked at your own sin if you didn't have such a high opinion of yourself. I said would you say that one more time? He said it, and I said I thought you said that, and I have obviously never forgotten it. It was a hard saying. I needed it. I needed it at that time, and it burned it into me. Man, I didn't grace like anybody else all the time. And that's just the way it is, it was a hard saying. I was talking to a man months ago now, and he was telling me that when he first began to Christian, arrogance was the first, the biggest sin in his life, and the more we talked, the more real life. What I wanted to say was, listen buddy, arrogance is not past tense in your life. I wanted to give him that hard saying. I didn't, I went out. Jesus never did. He never said, he never passed by saying what need he said. He gave the hard sayings, because they're good for us. We need to hear him. Pat Adams, my friend, gave me the story of a, it's apparently a true story of the US Navy admiral attending a naval conference, and I don't know where it was, but other admirals from the Canadian, the Australian, and French navies and the British Navy were there. So all these admirals are getting together, they're a cocktail party, and they're talking, and of course they're talking in English, and the French admiral finally says, why? Why do we always talk in English all the time? I mean, the European, he was criticizing Americans for only knowing English and not any other language. The European countries know other languages too, and he said, why is it that we always have to speak English in these conferences rather than speaking French? Without hesitating, the American admiral said, maybe it's because the British, Canadian, Aussies, and Americans arrange it, so you wouldn't have to speak German. Yo. Now, that's a hard saying, if you're French. Now, some of you are saying, I don't believe I would have said that, in church, I asked my staff if I should say it, they said no, until I followed my mentor who said, if you think you shouldn't say it, you probably should. See, here's the reality, is that if you can't handle what I just said, it's your political underpinnings that help you say what I said is wrong. Those of you who liked what I say liked it because your politics are in line with that admiral said, and it's very true with all of the hard sayings of Jesus. If you have a trouble with what Jesus says, it's because your heart is in a different place than where Jesus is. If your heart accepts the hard sayings of Jesus, it shows that your heart isn't a place to receive that. See, the condition of our heart dictates how we hear what Jesus says. So today, we want to look at a hard saying that he says to the Pharisees, in particular, the Pharisees. So let's take a look, Matthew 2, 23 through 28, and we'll see where their hearts are. This is God's Word. One Sabbath, Jesus was going through the grain fields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain, the Pharisees said to them, look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath? He answered, have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? In the days of Abbiathar, the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priest-y, and he also gave some to his companions. Then he said to them, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even over the Sabbath. And some of you are sitting there saying, okay, where's the hard saying? What's the big deal? That's because we're here. Now at this point in history, and some of you read this before, and you don't find anything bad, or that you like, but this is a hard, three hard sayings for the Pharisees in here. And they're just kind of going, whoa, they want to string Jesus up. Let's talk about how Jesus is attacked by the legalist and verses 23 through 24. We see that he's just walking through the grain fields with his disciples. It doesn't say they're just snacking on granola. They're just eating raw grain. And the Pharisees dogged Jesus. They're kind of like a moral mafia that just followed Jesus around. And notice when the disciples do this, they speak up, they say something. And that's who they were and that's what they did. They hated Jesus because Jesus was dangerous. Jesus taught grace. They taught law. Their religion was obey God by keeping the rules. Jesus taught grace. Jesus said, you can't keep the rules. And so they found that Jesus was opposed to them. And the more Jesus taught, the more people followed them, him, and not the Pharisees. And so they had a vested interest in getting Jesus out of the way. But I got to say this, the Pharisees were a lot like us. They were the theological conservatives of the Jews of the first century. They were Bible believers. They took the Bible so seriously. They believed it was the absolute truth of God. Do you believe the Bible is the absolute truth of God? Yeah, most of you would say that. Are you an evangelical, Bible, fumping believer? Yeah, you are. That's what this church is. We actually believe the Bible in what it says. The question is, how do you believe an absolute truth and be kind about holding it? How do you do that? How do you believe absolute truth and be kind in holding absolute truth? Because you're going to run into people who break the truth all the time. God loved the Pharisees. They just didn't understand God very much. And what were they upset about on the Sabbath? They were upset about this that Jesus disciples broke the Sabbath. The Sabbath is which commandment in the Ten Commandments? Anybody know? I'm surprised you don't know. It really hurts. Where is your memorization of the Ten Commandments? If you were really spiritual, you would know that the Sabbath is on the fourth commandment. There it is. Kind of discussed me. Exodus 20 verses 8 through 11. Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you nor your son or daughter, nor your man servant, or mate servant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them. But he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. And Jesus the disciples were breaking the Sabbath. Why? Because when they picked the grain, they were reaping, and when they were rubbing it together to get the husk off, they were grinding. Two of the almost 100 laws that the Pharisees said you couldn't do on the Sabbath. Man, they had it so regulated that if you had to get some place in an emergency, you had to walk backwards. So it wasn't perceived that you were traveling on the Sabbath. And these guys were neurotic. Now the external reason is that they were opposed to Jesus because they thought his disciples were breaking the law. The internal reason is that they wanted to get rid of him because he was taking their turf. They were into legalism heavy and they were legalists. Ever heard of that term before? Legalism and legalists? Don't raise your hand on this. Have you ever met a legalist? Do you know any legalists? I see a lot of smiles. Well let me give you a definition of legalism and then legalists. And that will help us understand the Pharisees. Legalism, I've got this in your program there and your outline but it's the belief that if I keep biblical teachings or laws that I will accrue merit and righteousness and God will accept me forever because of my actions. It is a religion of rule keeping. Number two, legalism is the belief that if I don't break biblical teaching rules or laws that I will accrue merit, righteousness with God. And he will accept me forever because of my actions rule. It's religion by not breaking the law. Number three, legalism is the belief that if I keep the rules of a particular subgroup that I will be more acceptable to God loved by him and accepted and thus escape hell and receive heaven.
Almost all of us have come from some sort of background that had legalistic rules laid out there that outlined how we could be right with God beyond Jesus. Legalism is salvation by rule keeping. It's self-salvation because once you keep the standard, you earn the right to go to heaven. You earn the right God has to accept you. It's self-justification of our own sins by keeping the laws of God. That's what it is and legalists are those people who live under that themselves try to keep the laws to be right with God and the hammer everybody else to keep the laws too. I love the story of the guy who went over to his friend's house and he saw his friend playing chess with his dog. And he just stood there and watched and he said this is the most amazing dog I have ever seen. His friend said no, he's not that smart. I've beat him three out of five games. A legalist you simply cannot admit. Nobody else is good because they don't keep the laws. They hammer themselves and they hammer other people. Those were the Pharisees. Those were the Pharisees. They were into self-justification. Let me show you how to pick out a legalist in the crowd by the way. You might need to do this after the service this morning. This will help you to a guide to finding and burning legalists. Number one, legalists warp the word of God. Like the Pharisees, they miss the spirit of the law. And we're going to talk about that in a minute. Number two, they creatively exude a critical spirit. Legalists creatively exude a critical spirit. They're critical about everybody. But they do it so nice. Now they didn't with Jesus. But the legalists that I've met in the Christian church are just so nice about it and the way they criticize you. I mean, it's 10 minutes after they've left and you realize, man, you know what they just did? They just cut off my left arm and they did it so nice because they're judgmental. And they made you feel like a spiritual pygmy. I mean, you feel just like you were so unspiritual because of the position that you hold. Legalists always have to take pot shots at other people because that's just the way they're wired because they're self-righteous. They're self-righteous. That's the third thing. They're self-righteous. They exude a pride about what they know or about who they are, about their standard. They uphold. And I got to confess I'm a recovering Pharisee. Many of us in this room are recovering Pharisees. You know, we came to faith in Christ. We knew salvation by grace through faith alone. It was all something he did. And then we started getting better. And then we started getting proud. You know, I've been very proud about my theological education. I'm very proud about what I knew about church growth books. I have 20 or 30 of them on my shelves. I confess that. I'm recovering in this area. It's so easy to become self-righteous. Well, since I'm confessed, let me confess for you. Some of you are self-righteous about your view of worship. It's the only right way. And we're not doing it. And if we did, God would bless us more. And God would love me more if we did your kind of worship.
I've known people that know a lot of verses in the Bible more than I know. And they're quite proud about that. They're quite proud about their view of discipleship or spiritual formation or counselies. And if you don't use their language and if you don't use their terminology, well, you're not quite as good as they are. Pharisees, you can be a Pharisee in their Christian too. You can forget. Let's look back into that. But we can become quite self-righteous. They minimize people and maximize rules. And then they diminish Jesus. The Pharisees diminished Jesus simply because they weren't really into somebody who was talking about salvation by grace. They're not into that because they were all about salvation by what I do. See, Pharisees minimize Jesus because and you find this even in a church, they're not all that interested in Jesus. Jesus is good, but they're more interested in what they're doing for Jesus. It's not the cross of Jesus. It's what they've done for Jesus. And so those were the ones that were attacking Jesus. I love this story. It's a hard one to hear. Philip Yancey's book, What's So Amazing About Grace, as he talks about a friend who who was a counselor who wrote this story of a prostitute who came to her in really a difficult situation. She was homeless, unable to buy food for her two-year-old daughter. And through tears, the counselor said, she told me she had been renting out her two-year-old to men. She was renting out her daughter for an hour and she earned more for doing that than she could earn in a night. She had to do it. She said to support her drug habit. I could hardly bear hearing her sorted story. For one thing, it made me legally liable. I'm required to report cases of child abuse. I had no idea what to say to this woman. At last, I asked if she ever thought of going to a church for help. I'll never forget the look of pure naive shock that crossed her face. Church, why would I ever go there? I was already feeling terrible about myself. They just make me feel worse.
Well, when you were around a Pharisee, you always felt worse because they knew everything about laws but not about grace. That's why they attacked Jesus. And so Jesus attacks back. Now, in all fairness, I got to say that today, if I were to have my bulletin, my sermon outline submitted for printing, I probably wouldn't say Jesus is attacking back. Because, you know, what's amazing here is if Jesus didn't love them, he wouldn't spend any time with these legalists. The Pharisees were not beyond help. Even the worst self-righteous person has the opportunity to come to the understanding of grace, the heal of his self-righteousness. And once he finds the gospel, and so Jesus is attacking the legalist, but he's trying to draw them in, trying to help them understand the truth. So this is how he deals with them. By trying to help them understand God in a deeper way, he says, you criticize it in me, but have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need and the days of Abbiath are the high priests. He entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to companions, his companions. Then he said to them, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath. You see, what he's trying to do, they're three hard statements there, and we're going to look at them. But what Jesus has to do is help these people understand God in a deeper way and how he does it, first of all, by teaching the Spirit of the Law in verses 25 through 26. What he's teaching, it goes back to this Old Testament passage in Samuel. Some of you probably haven't read Samuel in a very long time. If you were open it up, moths would fly out of that part of your Bible. I'm a little ashamed of you this morning that you probably haven't read Samuel in a long time. I have self-righteousness. This is kind of fun sometimes. Back in 1 Samuel 21, David, the time when David actually goes to the temple and his companions are starving and he wants the bread on the golden table before the Holy of Holies. You say, what was that table all about? There were 12 loaves of bread on there. It was called the bread of the Presence. And this was a ceremonial law that God commanded the Israel. You know, there was a law for every detail of how the temple and the tabernacle was to be set up, down to them, the positioning of every table and on that table, the table of Presence would be 12 loaves of bread. Representing what? 12 tribes of Israel. Exactly. One loaf for each tribe. Now, they didn't have preservatives back then. So at the end of the week, the high priest and the priest's only could eat that bread that had been set apart for God. One of the loaves represent. They represented God's people in fellowship with the Holy God of the universe. Those loaves represented that they were called by God. They could sit at God's table. They were his people who God fed and took care of in the wilderness by giving the mana. And so that's ceremony. God wanted that ceremonial law to be kept through all the generations that when they went into the temple, they would remember that they had fellowship with the living God. What a cool thing. And yet David comes, he starving and Abbey authority of the priest says, give me that bread over there. And Abbey authority of the priest wasn't going to say, no, because David had a sword and he didn't. He gave him the bread and ate it. And Jesus said, it's okay because we have to understand that with every law of God, human need takes precedence over ceremonial laws. See, that's the spirit of the law. With every law, there is a spirit to that law. And we've got to be careful as we look at the laws of God that he himself instituted that we don't take them so far that we rule out helping people. And we and we in the church have got to be careful that we don't develop ceremonies that rule out helping people. Churches, we've got to be careful because we can organize things and set up institutions and things that are very good for God and yet we say we can't ever change them. They become ceremonial laws that can sometimes outlive their usefulness. Not many of you men have ties and coats on today and I'm a little disappointed in you. I wish you were more spiritual because the truly spiritual ones who wanted to honor God would dress up today. Obviously you don't blame nothing personal. I'm your pastor, I'm just telling you the truth. It's a hard saying. I grew up that way, man. I had to go to church with a little, come, my my abuelita had to make me coats. She made me coats because she was a seamstress. My dad made me wear those suckers. They were made of pure wool in Southern California. And that was the day and age when they took wool and they wove it together with little pins and needles and stuck it into the fabric. You remember those days? I don't know what they've done to wool but they've taken the pins out of them but I had to wear them. I think they developed that kind of material just for little boys to torment them and church. It is a modern miracle that I go to church at all today what I had to endure. Sometimes we develop, I don't have to wear a tie up here. I do it to honor the word of God because I'm the Bible teacher. That's why I do it. But what we need to understand is that behind the set in some of you do it that way too. And for that reason, that's good. That's all right. So those of you who are tie wears and those of you who are non-tie wears, there is no room for self-righteousness in here. Yeah, free. Because Jesus always taught the spirit of the law and he tried to get through to the Pharisees in this whole thing. And then he tries to get them to understand who God is by teaching them the grace of the law. In verse 27, so the first hard saying to them was was listening to you guys, David ate the bread and it's okay because of the spirit of the law.
And then he says, listen, you don't understand the grace of the law, verse 27. The Sabbath was made for man. Not man for the Sabbath. You guys thought God was all about rules. You don't know him at all. You don't understand that he made the Sabbath for us. Now in the institution of the Sabbath, which is the what commandment again? Fourth, good. You're getting better. I'm liking you more. Genesis 2, verse 2, by the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing. So on the seventh day he rested from his work and God blessed the Sabbath day and made it wholly because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done. Shabbat, Sabbath means rest. Did God need to rest? Can we talk? The Supreme King of heaven and earth. Did he lose power when he created the world? No. It comes out of him. He doesn't lose anything. He's never diminished by anything he does. Did he need to rest? Absolutely. Not. He set apart the seventh day, though. And for a very important reason, us, sent it apart for you. It was a law. They were commanded to keep it, but he sent it apart for you. Deuteronomy 5, 12 through 15 is a very important restatement of the importance of the law. But then he says this, remember, you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath. He had to command the people to rest, to take that day and make it wholly. To remember that he was a creator of heaven and earth, but not only that he created the world like that, but that he still provides for us. And not only that he still provides for us, but that he rescued the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt. He said, I command you to stop and remember that I saved you by grace. I command you to stop all your work because you need to remember that there was something I did for you that you couldn't do for yourself. I made the Sabbath for you to sit back and relax to worship me at church and to remember that I saved you from bondage and the applications, by the way, are still for us today. Why do we worship? One in seven, the principle is here. One in seven, we do it on Sunday as Christians because we factor into that the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. And so that's what the early church did around the second century. They said let's meet on Sunday, on Sunday, the day of the resurrection. To remember that God created the world that he still provides for us that we have been rescued out of darkness to sin and bondage by grace that we didn't do anything for this thing that Jesus did it. And we have to be commanded to rest. And it's Sunday, the Sabbath is not just about taking a holy nap, it's about worship and rest, resting from our labors. It's about football and basketball. But it's about worship. Hey, some of you guys need to exercise because you never get a chance to exercise. And the old Westminster Confession of Faith, which I've taken a vow to uphold, says you can't do any of that. And when I took my vow, I said no, there's some of our people that need to, maybe to exercise, last last thing they need is more sitting around. They get out and run. But it's for us. The Sabbath is for us. It's to worship and to remember. Because we tend to abuse work. We tend to use it to get more. I got to work because I need more. I want more. And God says no. Take a break. God says you don't, but you don't, we say but you don't know how the economy is. You don't know what happened. I got to keep working. God says trust me. And remember why do you come here once a week? It's not to get abused by a legalist like me on Sunday morning. It's because you need to remember that you've been miraculously saved by grace. And the rest, the ultimate rest, Hebrews tells us, Hebrews 4 is a rest that says cease from your laborers to earn your salvation and get your resting Christ. That's the ultimate rest. We don't have to impress God because He already loved us and Jesus already paid the price for us sins. There's every law, there's grace. With every law that got teaches it is book. And there's law in the New Testament, too, by the way. Those of you say it's just law in the old. Nah, Paul says do this, this, this, and this. A lot of times. Jesus says do this, not this. There's law in the New Testament, but there's grace to it. This is wise for your good. So with every strong commandment of Jesus or the New Testament, look for the grace. There's a reason. Your father knows why he's telling you what to do. Then finally, Jesus says he tries to show them about God by teaching his superiority. The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. And when he said the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath, who's he talking about? Himself. He takes this phrase, Son of Man, which is a divine phrase from the Old Testament speaking of a divine person. He applies it to himself and he says, I'm bigger than the Sabbath. Guys, these are hard sayings if you're a Pharisee, you're bigger, you're just a rabbi and a toga here. You're bigger than the Sabbath? Yes. He said in other places, I'm bigger than Jonah. I'm bigger, I'm bigger than Solomon. Somebody more important is here. I'm bigger than the Sabbath. And this is a hard saying for many people when we as Christians assert the supremacy of Jesus Christ. For you today, this might be a hard saying. But Jesus says, on Lord of the Sabbath, he's saying, I'm Lord over you. And we're glad if you're here and you don't know Christ. We love to have people who are kicking the tires at Christianity wanting to know what it's all about. We're glad you're here. You might be offended when we say the problem with you is that you're setting up your own law and then you're meeting it and you say, you don't need a savior, but you do. Because there's only one law that matters. You don't feel bad about your sin if you ever read the Bible. Then if you read the Bible, you will see that you have broken laws and you need a savior. And in Galatians, it says, no one ever gets saved by keeping the law. Once you know you're a lawbreaker, you can't get saved by keeping it because no one can. And so the reality is is that we all need to understand that Christ is the way the truthy life to take care of our law-breaking problem. I spoke in New Hampshire this summer. I told some of you about that and I was up in a camp spoffered and talking to some people from Connecticut. I served a church up there for five years, found some Connecticut people and we talked and we were reminiscing. We remembered the Sunday morning when we all woke up and heard in the news that the meannis river bridge, part of it, had collapsed. Only a segment of it, a big segment and cars and trucks went off that bridge and down into the abyss. What a horrible day that was. When you break God's law, you are saying, I don't care what you say, I'm going off this cliff. And Jesus comes into this world and he says, I fulfilled the law for you in my perfect life. And he says, when I went to the cross, I paid for your sin on the cross. So you can be free. Jesus is the champion of freedom. You're freedom, my freedom. And that's why he calls us to himself, not to keep in the rules, but to himself. I am the way and the truth in the life. And so if you don't know him today, I call you to him. Call you to him.
Don't write your own law and then say, you keep it because there's only one law that matters. And there's only one law keeper that matters if your Christians and most of us are. Have you fallen into legalism? It's easy to do. It's easy to fall into our own self-righteousness. Once we know we're saved by grace through faith, it's easy as God brings change in our life to think that we're kind of a cut above. It's hard to hug the prostitutes who sell their kids.
We get blown away when people tell us their sins. I can't be shocked anymore. We shouldn't be. And we should say, God loves you. And so today is a good day for us to let the Lord examine our hearts. And to see if self-righteousness has crept in and on this first day of the week to remember his grace
and to accept it and to rest in it and to realize that you and I get better not by focusing upon the laws but upon his grace. You focus on his grace and he'll make you gracious. He'll change your heart. You're free in him and he did it all on the cross. Take it to heart. Would you stand with me and pray?
Father, as your children, we come to you today grateful for being the kind of father that gives us laws. For being the father who shows us what cliffs were headed off and where we're going to hurt ourselves. Thank you for teaching us what is right and wrong for our good and then thank you for teaching us that we couldn't keep your law by ourselves. And then thank you, Jesus, for fulfilling it. Thank you for the hard saying that we could never fulfill the law. And thank you for the soft saying that teaches us that you did. For yes, give us the ability to rest in you and to show your love to other people this week as we remember your deep love and concern for us in your holy name.
Now may they God of peace. Who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ the great shepherd of the sheep may he equip you. They're everything good for doing his will and working us what is well pleasing in his sight. For Jesus Christ our Lord who will be the glory forever and forever. I'll have to be the same. Philip Creek Church is associated with the Presbyterian Church in America. Our website is www.WillocreekChurch.org and our phone number is 407-699-82-11.