today of the Cove. So we are so fortunate and blessed by God to have an environment like this where we can come and we've sat here for a year under some great teaching. We want to be aware of Mark Strauss's wonderful teaching over the last year and several of the other staff members who have been down here to teach. But we're going to have a little celebration at the end. So in this environment when we get to the question and answer after Mark has given us yet another great teaching session, stick around. We're going to have some cake. You're going to have an opportunity to speak to the group if you want. And we'll do all of that at the end so we can concentrate on the Bible study up to that point. So get prepared for that. Think about what you'd like to express about what this has meant to you over the last year and then we'll have a little celebration at the end. Okay, great. There's a cake, in fact, a special cake. All right, let's have a prayer and we'll get our hearts and minds ready for the teaching. Okay, Gracious Lord, thank you once again. We cannot pray over this environment too much and we know that you are with us, that you are here today to enhance our understanding, to encourage and energize our teacher. We thank you so much for Mark as he's here each week to open the book to us and so that we can see you a little bit better every week, Lord. We just thank you for that opportunity. We thank you for Luke who wrote this great book for us to read his closeness to you that made all of this possible, Lord, that you speak through him to us today. Thank you now for our church, for the way that they've made this possible, for our gifts to have come full circle here, Lord, to blessing our lives each week. We thank you now for the people who are here today, for the folks who are working in positions around the room today and for each person who has an open mind to you this morning. In Jesus name, Amen. Amen.
Thanks, Dennis. Good morning. Wow, great group today and how exciting. A year I can't believe we've been doing this for a year. I so appreciate the church at Rancho Bernardo that has provided this opportunity. Can't hear me? Louder? That's them. And I appreciate Pastor Harry, who's here I think to today and just the opportunity to do this and to share God's word and I appreciate you so much coming out and just the encouragement and strong support for just the detailed study of God's words. So this is an exciting time for me and we're back in, guess where we're studying? Luke's gospel and we will be till next February, I think, as we hear God speak to us through his Holy Spirit. I don't know if you're a baseball fan but there was a fascinating moment in baseball, a several moments this week. There was a game earlier this week that tigers, the tigers against the Cleveland Indians and Armando Galaraga was on pitching and he was having an amazing game, an amazing game. You might know if you know baseball you know that there's several levels of perfection that a pitcher can achieve. There's a shut out where you basically don't allow the other team to score any runs. Then there's a no hitter where you would pitch an entire nine innings and not let the team get any hits whatsoever but sometimes they get walks when they do that. Then there's what we call a perfect game and a perfect game is when a pitcher pitches for nine innings and not a single batter gets on base, nobody gets on base, a perfect game, everybody gets out. 27 straight batters get out. Well, Armando Galaraga was pitching a perfect game. It was the ninth inning. It was the two outs in the ninth inning. The Detroit Tigers were ahead. He pitched a pitch and a ground ball came to the second baseman. Galaraga sprinted over to first base. The second baseman picked it up and tossed it to him. The runner was clearly out. He had achieved the perfect game and the umpire called the runner safe. Jim Joyce was the umpire 21-year veteran and everyone in the stadium, it was a shock. It was amazing. This kind of thing could ruin an umpire's career, not only that, his life. This has happened before in World Series and things where umpires have had to move out of towns because of so much harassment and so forth. So everyone, it was just awful and would the commissioner change the call and all these things. And then an amazing thing took place. Joyce, the umpire, watched the replay after the game and he expressed incredible contrition about it. And he actually met with Armando Galaraga and it carefully acknowledged that he was wrong and apologized for that. It was just amazing because umpires just don't apologize. There's all this combative focus between the umpires and the players and the teams. But the next day was amazing because they played again and everyone expected when the umpires to come onto the field for the crowd to boo you know and to just just shout them off the field. But in fact there was, there were a few booze I got in it, but there was mostly cheering for the integrity of this guy. And then they gave Galaraga the scorecard, the line up to come out and give to the umpires. So there was this moment out there where there was this moment of reconciliation. You could see that Jim Joyce always had tears in his eyes. And I just thought, this is amazing in baseball. You've got this repentance, right? And then you've got this moment of reconciliation. You probably didn't hurt that the Tigers gave Galaraga a brand new Red Corvette for the perfect game as well. That was probably, but there was this wonderful moment of redemption. And in our passage today that we're looking at in Luke's gospel, we have a true moment of redemption. And then we have an opportunity, an opportunity for repentance and reconciliation. And the question is, will that moment be taken advantage of or not? Jesus has been proclaiming the kingdom of God. You know the story well and has gathered disciples around him as proclaiming the message. He's been healing the sick. And he's been calling Israel's religious leaders to repentance, to accept the kingdom of God, to get on board of what God is doing. We get another incident where we see an opportunity to do that today. It raises an issue that we've actually seen before in Luke's gospel. It's the issue of the Sabbath. This is another one of the Sabbath controversies. And so we're going to call this message the essence of the Sabbath rest moving beyond externals to the true heart of God. And once again, Jesus does something that the religious leaders consider to be breaking of their law, of their traditions, of their rules. And that is breaking of the Sabbath commandment. And the question, does Jesus actually break the commandment or does he get to the essence of the true meaning of the commandment? Now you have to understand in Judaism the Sabbath commandment was critically important. In fact, the Sabbath commandment was one of the 10 commandments. Here's the fourth commandment. It said remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath to the Lord your God. In six days God created the heavens and the earth. He rested on the seventh. And so God mandated for his people Israel that the seventh day, which would be saturday. The last day was a day of rest. And there were strong consequences for those who violated the Sabbath command. This is Exodus 31 verse 14. Observe the Sabbath because it is holy to you. Anyone who desecrates it must be put to death. That's pretty severe. You can see if we were still under the Sabbath commandment and you got caught cutting your grass on the Saturday, you'd be a deep, deep trouble. Supposed to be put to death. But that raise is a very difficult question. And that question is what constitutes work? Now we don't really even think about this because though we hold a Sabbath principle as Christians, we don't celebrate the Sabbath as the seventh day in the same way that the Jews did. But they wrestled enormously with this issue as to what actually constituted work. And they would have to examine every kind of possible situation to determine if it was work. Actually got into this week. I'm going to apologize to you for getting so much into the mission. We're going to get into Jewish tradition for a few minutes right here. But they would debate things like, is tying a knot work? Can you tie your shoelace, for example, or not? Is that work or is it not work? And so the rabbis talked about that. And some rabbis said, if you need to use two hands to tie the knot, that's work. But if you can tie the knot with one hand, it's not work. So they sort of solve that problem. Can you lead an animal to water? Can you lead an animal to water on the Sabbath? Can you, here's one, one of my favorites, can you eat an egg laid by a chicken on the Sabbath? Okay, the chicken work. So by eating the egg, are you participating in the work of the chicken? Here's a fascinating question. This is from the mission now, that the mission is the code of Jewish law written down about 8200, but the traditions from Jesus' day and even from before that. And I just want to show you some of the things that they were wrestling with. Here's a fascinating question. Can you, can you let work finish itself that starts, that you start before the Sabbath? Okay, that's the fundamental question. They really wrestle with this. And now there's, there's two schools of rabbinic tradition. And what I mean by that, there's two rabbis who had a lot of followers. One was a more conservative school. One was a more liberal, we might say school. And they wrestled it back and forth against these. The House of Shamai, you might say the school of Shamai, the followers of Shamai are the more strict ones. They're the more conservative. The House of Hillow is the more liberal. And you'll see that as these come out. So here's, here's the mission of Shabbat. This is a whole tractate, a whole essay, collection of essays on how to keep the Sabbath. The House of Shamai declares it unlawful to soak the materials for making ink or drugs for dying or cattle feed on the Sabbath, unless there be time sufficient to soak it through during the day before the Sabbath comes in. Okay, so do you see, if can you soak, start something soaking before the Sabbath. It's going to be working. It's going to keep on soaking after the Sabbath. Tough question. I know you wrestle with that almost every day. Here's another one. The House of Shamai declares it unlawful to bundles a flax into the oven on the Sabbath eve, unless there be time sufficient to dry them during the day, in order to put wool into the die cattle. They're dying wool from sheep, unless there be time sufficient for the wool to imbibe the die. It's soaking up the die. That's work, right? You started that work and now it's being finished. Before Sabbath comes in, all of which the House of Hillow permits, the liberals they don't care. You know, it's okay. You can, you can let that go in. The House of Shamai declares it unlawful to spread nets for game, foul, or fish on the Sabbath eve, unless there be time sufficient for it to be caught. They're enduring the day before the Sabbath comes in, but the House of Hillow, once again, permit that. So can you put your fishing pole out? You see, if it's going to catch fish while you're not, while you're not there. So you can see this is a tough issue because you don't want to violate the Sabbath observance. So here's one of the most difficult ones. Oh, can you give medical help on the Sabbath? Can you give medical help? Generally, when the rabbi discussed this, generally, they decided that if the person's life was in danger, then you could give medical help. Here's once again, from this tractate Shabbat, a man must not deliver an animal that calves on the festival, but he may otherwise assist it. Okay? In other words, you can't pull the thing out. You can't pull the thing out, but you can pet it while it's trying to, you know, you can assist the animal, but you can't actually deliver the baby. Women, fortunately, get better treatment. If a woman is to be delivered on the Sabbath, the middle wife must be called into her from one place to another. The Sabbath may be violated for her sake. The naval string is to be tied. Okay? You can tie off the umbilical cord. Rabbi Jose Sayif, it may also be cut. He's very progressive. You don't just tie it off. You can also cut the umbilical cord. Whatever is necessary for circumcision may be done on the Sabbath. It's very interesting. Circumcision could always be done on the Sabbath, because although it was work, it was holy work. It was sacred work. So the circumcision of a child would be done on the Sabbath. What about giving medicine to someone? I told you I got carried away, didn't I? Sorry about that. Rabbi Mathias Ben Harash said, if a person has a sore throat, it is permitted to put drugs into his mouth on the Sabbath because the disease may endanger his life. And whatsoever threatens to endanger life supersedes the Sabbath. So you can see there was this debate, but most rabbis would say if there is a dangerous situation, if a person could possibly die, then you can actually administer medicine on the Sabbath. So let's turn to our passage now. Luke chapter 13, Jesus is teaching in the synagogue on, as he often did, verse 10, on a Sabbath, Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues. And a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for 18 years. She was bent over and could not straighten up. Okay, so what do we have? Jesus is teaching in the synagogue. This was his typical pattern. If you recall, Jesus was Jewish. He was a Jewish leader of his day. He was viewed as a rabbi and a teacher. And so he would regularly teach in weekly Shabbat services. Friday evening the Shabbat service would be right after sundown there. And a woman is present as so often was the case when people would come to Jesus to be healed. It says she was crippled by a spirit. Literally the Greek says something like she had a spirit of weakness, a weakness often referring to some kind of disease. Now I looked it up. This is not because I'm a medical expert. Most scholars think that this is something called an chylosing spondylitis. Apologies to the doctors in the house, who I just mispronounced that. It's a chronic arthritic condition that causes a person to be hunched over. She was bent over and could not straighten up. It's arthritic, I guess. It's also auto-immune. But what's interesting about this one is it is caused by a demon. Jesus says he sets her free. When he commands the demon out, he says be free. You can see the next verse. Verse 12. When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, woman, you are set free from your infirmity. Verse 13, then he put his hands on her and immediately he straightened up and praised God. He goes on to say later on, should not this woman who had been bound by Satan for 18 long years have been healed. So there are some kind of satanic or demonic oppression going on here. Now this raises an issue that we've talked about before. I want to briefly cover it again. That is the question of disease in relationship to demonic possession. It's clear from the gospels that at times disease is actually provoked in some sense by a demonic presence or an evil spirit. We get this in the gospels. Here's an example we've already seen in Luke 9 where a boy is exhibiting the conditions of epilepsy and yet we learn that it's actually an evil spirit. Here's another case where a man cannot speak and it's because the demon is keeping that person from speaking. Now some people say, well those ancients, those ancient people, ladies didn't understand medicine. But in fact, remember who's writing this gospel? Luke, right, he's a doctor and Luke clearly points out when there's disease and he frequently refers to disease being healed but on very specific and certain occasions he will say this is a result in some sense of demonic oppression. How can you tell in those kinds of situations? I think here's sort of a general principle I think is important. Christians need to be open. Open to the fact that Satan is alive and well on planet earth and that this does actually happen. But we have to also be extremely cautious because many things can be mental illness. We acknowledge it. Many things can be other kinds of diseases. Most things can be other kinds of diseases. It's interesting. I wasn't expecting this speaking on this passage, but I got a call from a student this week and he said he's an associate pastor at a church and there's a family in his church. The family is five young children ages 11 to five and all the children are at least three of the children have been hearing voices. And one of the children says that Satan has been talking to her, the 11-year-old, the oldest. Satan has been talking to her and telling her that he will give her all kinds of power if she will follow him. Now this is kind of, you know, pastors don't, especially pastors in America probably, I should say, don't encounter this kind of thing all the time. So he calls his New Testament professor, of course, to solve this issue for him. And I said, well, I think you need to pray for them. I think you need to talk to them. And then I called my friend. I have a friend who's written a great deal on spiritual warfare. He's actually a New Testament scholar. So this is, he's not an exorcist or something like this. But because of his scholarship, he's had lots of people come to him and he's had lots and lots of experience. I said, what would you do in this situation? And he described another situation he had been through that was, again, really, really remarkable. There were two little girls in a family, two young girls about the same age as the ones I was talking to. And they kept saying that they were talking to someone. A person was with them in their room. And they would come down and parents would say, what were you doing? They'd say, we were talking to our friend. And they thought it was an imaginary friend. But they'd say, yeah, he's up there right now. So they'd go up and they'd never, they'd never look, they'd never seen anything. But these children were just emphatic that there was someone that they were sitting in the chair in their room actually talking to them. One day, the little girl came down and she said, he told us that someone was going to die in our family tonight. Obviously, shake children up. Children have all kinds of imaginations. The parents just kind of dismissed it. That night, one of their pets died. And the parents kind of freaked at that point. And they came to my friend. And my friend went to their home and prayed and actually rebuked the spirit. I mean, publicly and openly rebuked the spirit and called on the power of Jesus. We don't have to feel like we you know, that this is a great battle that you might lose. We have absolute authority over spirits in the power of Jesus Christ. And so very straightforward, he did that. And he said, never came back. He couldn't say, for sure, what the situation was. But in that context, here was a reason. Here was a real reason to step up and do something. And so he did something. He acknowledged the possibility that this was in fact a demonic presence going on. And so I think we have to acknowledge that there are times that we have to recognize that there may well be something demonic. And we have to call on Jesus' power and Jesus' far too to rebuke that spirit. At the same time, there are not demons under every bush. And I think we have to be very cautious. Some people get very, very wrapped up in this. I think I've told you stories before about some friends of mine who've been just totally obsessed with this. And it really can destroy a light to become obsessed with the spiritual world. Okay. So there's a little sidebar in terms of this strange statement that this paralysis in some sense was caused by demonic presence. So Jesus heals the man, rebukes the demon almost certainly. In this case, frees the woman from the demon and the synagogue ruler then objects. Now this is interesting. Indignant verse 14. Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue leader said to the people, there are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath. Now this is interesting to me for a couple reasons. First of all, notice he's not skeptical. He's not skeptical of the exorcism. He doesn't think there's no demon here. This or the healing, he is rather concerned and angry that the cure has taken place. In other words, he's concerned most of legalism. Now who is this character? He's called him a synagogue ruler. What we need to realize is most synagogues, especially in the Galilee, small village synagogues, would not have a full-time rabbi like a pastor. Instead, what they'd have is they'd one person sort of took care of the synagogue and admitted to the administration. So when you see that term synagogue ruler, it means the synagogue administrator. So this is the guy who's supposed to keep the rules basically. Well Jesus is breaking the rules. He comes here on the Sabbath and he heals someone. He does what he considers to be work. He looks at this woman and says this woman is not in danger of dying and so I don't think it's correct to heal him. Now what's going on here? Essentially he accuses Jesus of breaking the old testament Sabbath law. But what's he missing? I think he's missing the big picture. Maybe, I mean, what is Jesus doing here? Healing people. What's the significance of his healing? He's proclaiming what's his message? The kingdom of God is at hand. And what's the evidence of that kingdom? Healing, right? Everything that Israel has hoped for for centuries and centuries and centuries is now coming to fulfillment. And Jesus is showing those little snapshots of the kingdom. He's healing the sick. He's casting out demons. He does both right here in one action. He heals the sick and he casts out demons. And the guy goes, I really don't think we should be doing this on the Sabbath. I really don't know that this this might constitute work. Let's go back and check with the rabbis and we can argue about this for a while. And yet Jesus is demonstrating the power of the kingdom. Jesus is demonstrating the signs, the snapshots of God's end time salvation. This is the time to rejoice. This is why Jesus so often says, we have to rejoice now. Remember when the disciples of John come to him and say, why don't you fast? Why don't you fast like we fast? And Jesus, when the bridegroom is here, you don't fast. You celebrate. We're going to celebrate today, right? We're going to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the coming. It's a good thing for Christians to celebrate. To celebrate God's, what God is doing. But this is the most amazing thing God has ever done. And Jesus says, now is the time to celebrate. Now is the time to heal people. Here is Isaiah chapter 35 describing God's kingdom, God's salvation. Then the eyes of the blind will be open. The ears of the deaf unstopped, then will the lame leap like a deer. This man, this woman was crippled. And the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. This is a time to rejoice because God's salvation is arriving. Here's our first takeaway. Truly keeping God's commandment. You want to keep the Sabbath. You want to keep the 10 commandments. Don't be distracted by the details of life. And so miss out on God's greater work in the world. We've seen that so much. Don't get distracted with all of the distractions. The things in this light that can cause us to forget about what God is doing. And a good friend who was a youth worker. And he was doing an amazing work. He was really he was really reaching out to gang kids in the neighborhood and bringing them into the church and and sharing Christ with them. And they're actually coming and they're attending the worship service. Some of them and they kind of sit in the back and like this. But but it was amazing. And he was really beginning to break through. After one of the services, though, one of the deacons came up to him. He was just irate. He was so angry. He said, did you see that guy? Did you see that guy? And my friend says, what guy? He says the guy in the back. He said, oh yeah, he's one of these people. I mean, he's he says he had a baseball cap on during worship service. He was just furious. He was thinking that was so incredibly irreverent for him to have a baseball cap on. And he was just that was all he could think about. My friend is thinking, the kingdom of God is here, right? The kingdom of God has been proclaimed in this place. This person could enter into eternal salvation, could be reconciled with God for eternity. If you take that baseball cap off, maybe, maybe, then God would possibly accept him, right? You see, we can we can miss the big picture when we get so distracted by things. It happens in church, right? You don't like the worship. The particular, you know, why do we have to sing that song again? Why do we have this style of worship? Hey, are people, is the word being proclaimed? Are people coming to Christ? It's time to celebrate. It's time to rejoice about that. I think I told you the story of the Billy Graham who stayed in Scotland, where I went to help out to do some counseling with the Billy Graham who stayed. And there were Christian protesters outside saying Billy Graham hangs out with Roman Catholics. They're really, really upset about that. I thought, what a distraction. People hundreds, maybe thousands are going to be saved tonight in this stadium. And they're very upset because, you know, Billy Graham had tea with a local bishop last week or something, something like that. Jesus is a response. Once again, he accuses the religious leaders of hypocrisy. Verse 15, you hypocrites. Doesn't each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan has kept bound for 18 long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her. He accuses them of hypocrisy and of self-interest. Despite the prohibitions on the Sabbath, what is curious is how the rabbis found ways around them, how they found ways to get around those. You couldn't carry clothes, that was work on the Sabbath, but you could wear clothes. So I had to do, if you needed to get clothes from one place together, just pile them on. You know, you could put seven or eight layers of clothing. You couldn't actually lead your animal to water, to the well. So what there's a whole section in the mission of talking about how, what you need to do is you need to build a structure around the well, kind of a shed. And yet has to be large enough that most of the animal can get in the shed while it drinks water. Because then we read this and we go, what in the world? Well, what you're doing is you're creating another home. It's a second house. And though you can't leave the animal out to the well, the animal can drink in the home. And so if you create a home. And so there were all these ways that they were, they wanted to get around these strict prohibitions. And Jesus says, don't you see, you're missing the big picture. It's all about the kingdom of God. The Sabbath was made for people, right? Not people for the Sabbath. We weren't created so we could obey these commands and get slapped on the hand for every time we broke these commands. Here's our second take away. Truly keeping God's law means not placing a higher value on our own interests than the needs of other. The Sabbath was made for people. People weren't made for the Sabbath. The Sabbath was for our benefit. I remember years ago when I was studying in Scotland, I had a good friend and his father was a wonderful man, a godly man. But he had very strict Sabbath observance for Sunday, for him, in this case. And he said, every Sunday, my dad would make a sit in a chair quietly, the entire day, and read. Now there's nothing wrong with sitting in chair quietly reading. But he said, I grew up hating Sundays. Because my friends would be out. They'd be having a good time. We didn't even play games. We couldn't let my brother and I would start to laugh together. My father would say, it's all so angry because we were laughing. It's a time for soberness. It's a time for sadness. And to me that just misses the Sabbath spirit. What's the Sabbath spirit? It's one of joy. Notice the Sabbath commandment is against work. It's not against celebration. It's not against play. Exactly. And worship of God and join his presence is the absolute of play. The results. Notice the results of this. When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated. Now in Greek rhetoric, if you defeated someone logically, they were humiliated. And this was to be shamed was a terrible thing in that culture. So for us, it doesn't seem too much. But essentially, Luke is saying, Jesus won this one. And not only did he win, everyone knew that he won. Look at the next line. But the people were delighted. We're delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing. Why were they delighted? Because they recognized that these things were just holding them in. We're suppressing. They weren't giving them the experience of demonstrating God's joy. We have a God of joy. We have a God of love who wants us to rejoice, who wants us to be happy and joyful and content in him. We're just there's another episode. I'm just going to take two minutes, three minutes to mention it. And we're not going to hit it later on, because it hits the same episode, the same situation as today. Turn over a chapter to chapter 14. Let me just read this passage and make a few comments about it here. 14, 1 through 6, 1 Sabbath, 14, 1 through 6, 1 Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the home of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched. There in front of him was a man suffering from my Texas abnormal swelling of the body. Yours might say dropsy. That's the term, the traditional term is dropsy, which is abnormal swelling of the body. Jesus asked the Pharisees and experts in the law, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not? But they remain silent. So taking hold of the man, he healed them and sent him on his way. Then he asked them, if one of you has a child or an ox and falls into a well on the Sabbath, they will not immediately pull it out. And they had nothing to say. I want you to see this. Jesus heals the man, but first before doing that, he raises the question. Do you see that? This is the second chance. This is Jim Joyce's moment. He raises the question, okay, we've been through this before. We could go back to Luke chapter 6. There's two other Sabbath controversies. We've been through. Jesus has been teaching through his actions. Now he says, okay, here we go again. Here we go again. You ready? You know, this is your fourth try at the test. Never going to the DMV four times. You know, you keep failing that thing or whatever. He says, this is it. Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? And they say, no, Jesus, we've learned from you. No, yes, it is. You can heal on the Sabbath because it's a time for, for, for, for joy. Yes, Jesus, we've learned so much from you. Is that what it says? No, they remain silent. They refuse to give in. Here's our third takeaway. Truly keeping God's law means not hardening our hearts to God's prompting in our lives. So often, we fall into the same patterns again and again, right? Or we hear God calling us in some way. Maybe the need to reconcile. I think this is the hardest one for us as human beings. There's so much pride in our lives. And, you know, that, that conflict with that person was really their fault, their fault. And there's something, you just feel it. There's something wrong. You know, when you're not reconciled with someone, it just keeps coming back at you. You know what that is? That's the Holy Spirit. That's the Holy Spirit telling you, you need to be reconciled to that person. You need to get that right. And God has prompting us. And we have a God of second chances. Aren't you glad that we have a God of second chances? That when we fail the first, Jim Joyce is glad. That baseball is a team of second chances. We have a chance. We have a chance. It's going to come up again. The situation is going to come again. Are we going to trust in God's power? Maybe it's meeting the needs of someone around you. There's that person who just needs some extra time. That person needs to be visited or that person that you need to share Christ with. And you just, you feel that prompting. You feel the Holy Spirit calling you. Are you going to respond? The religious leaders have another chance. One more chance to rejoice with Jesus at what God is doing, to accept and enter the kingdom of God, to get on board with God's great salvation plan. How they going to respond? They respond in silence. The very last phrase is probably the saddest, the saddest one of all. And they had nothing to say. They had nothing to say. When we stand before God, when we stand before God, on judgment day. And he says, you're a sinner. And we say, Jesus Christ suffered and died for my sins. He paid the price for my sins. And he says, enter into my presence forever. And then he turns to someone and says, what do you say for yourself? Nothing to say. Because we bring nothing, none of our own righteousness to God. It's only the eternal gift of salvation from Jesus Christ that brings us salvation, that brings us deliverance, that brings us rescue. So powerful teaching from our Lord, a challenge once again, not just to the religious leaders of Jesus's day, but to us as well. We're going to end our time early today because we have to celebrate. We want to celebrate, right? And we want to share some of the things. I'm going to take a few questions first. If you have any questions related to this passage or anything, just a couple minutes of questions. And then we're going to turn to this time of testimony where if you would like to share something that God has done for you through the cove or in another area, that's great. Questions first of all, yes, question. No, I would say it's not divinely inspired. Any more than say some good Christian writings are. No, the mission was, Jesus sometimes refers to the traditions of the elders. The question, I'm sorry, I should have repeated the question for the tape, that the question is, is the mission a from God essentially? Is it inspired by God? Just like maybe Christian writings are, it might be good truth, good teaching, but they're not inspired by God. It would be the same kind of thing. This was the traditions of the elders. Jesus refers to, you hold the traditions of elders, he says, but sometimes you ignore God's word. And this is what he's referring to. Because as they're now, now they're trying to do good thing. They're trying to, they're trying to define how to keep the law, but at times they get involved in extreme legalism. Roger? This is in harmony with what's in the Bible. Then there's a good chance that, I mean, if it's in harmony, God is involved in both. Well, yeah, I would say it's true certainly. And so God maybe has led them to that conclusion. And so anything that coincides with God's word is true, absolutely. Yeah. Any others? Yes.
For Dennis, wait for Dennis to get over there. Yeah. When he loses about a pound and a half every Sunday when he's running around from prison. Was the mission around prior to Jesus' time or is that something? That's a great, that's a great question. Was the mission around prior to Jesus' time? I don't need to repeat it. They heard you. The mission was written down in about 80 200, significantly, but these rabbis, Hillel and Chema were Jesus' contemporaries, basically. So these were, so the traditions come from long before, probably from 80 200 BC to 80 200. So that's whole period was, but they were oral. In Judaism, most teaching was oral as in many cultures. It was spoken and passed down orally. In Jesus' day, it was oral tradition. It was not actually written down to about 80 200. So most of those traditions, many of these traditions come from Jesus' day, but we have to be careful. Some of them might be later and may not actually apply to Jesus' day. Normally, if it coincides with something Jesus says, we are in the context of the gospels, then we know that it's true. It was something from that time. One more. Yes. Don't you realize, though, that many times in more modern days, a lot of traditions have become the same type of thing. In my day, my mother said, you were not allowed to sew or knit on Sunday. We had friends pretty recently that said, they would not go to any moving. Yeah, no movies. They would see slides, but they would not see movies. Yeah, never, never, not every day. Well, you know, it's sinful for women to wear pants instead of dresses to church. That's, of course, I said, yeah, yeah, right? My mother couldn't go to movies, but she would sneak out to see surely temple movies. That was a scandal. That was a true scandal. Yeah, it's like those Jews, they had all those traditions because we don't have any traditions, right? We don't, or we're never legalistic in that way. I just, well, we lived in Texas for a while and we used to legislate it. We went to the store on Sunday and we needed a lunchpale. You couldn't buy a lunchpale on Sunday because it related to work. And then we decided we'd fly a kite and you could buy the kite, but you could not buy the string, because string was related to work. And they actually would put covers over anything, you know, nails and stuff like that. They would cover them so that you couldn't buy them. That's a modern mission. Yeah, the code of Texas law. Yeah. Yeah, blue laws certainly. Yeah, yeah, I was raised in Alabama, so we had blue laws in Alabama as well. Okay. Well, I'm sure glad I brought up the mission. All the questions are related to Jewish. It's fascinating because we as Christians, we've lost our Jewish heritage in a lot of ways. And that's a very sad thing because of course, Christianity is just completed Judaism. It's just fulfilled, fulfilled Judaism. Okay. Any other questions? Yes, here's the question over here. We'll get to the celebration here in a minute.
How do you think Jesus intends us or wants us to live this Sabbath day now? Yeah, yeah, we didn't. I actually was going to talk about that in our shortness of time. I decided we've covered it in other times, but the question is how do we keep the Sabbath? And there are very different perspectives. I'll start off by saying that. I sometimes point out to you, this is this is my particular perspective, but there are different perspectives. The ten commandments as the whole Old Testament law was given to Israel. That is Israel's command. We are not under the law, the mosaic law. Jesus says he came to fulfill the law. And Paul specifically says in Romans 14, he says, one person keeps one day, one person keeps another, one person keeps every day alike, he says. In other words, their Sabbaths are maybe scattered throughout the week. And so Paul seems to make it clear, we are not under the Sabbath commandment, per se, because we live under the law of Christ. The laws no longer written on stone, the laws written on our hearts. And so the spirit guides us into truth. That doesn't mean the ten commandments don't apply, because they're based on God's nature and God's truth, but we're not specifically under the law of Moses. But I would say we are under the principle of Sabbath, particularly since the principle of Sabbath goes before the law of Moses. If you look at right after the flood, Noah is command, they said, God sanctified and made holy that seventh day. I mean right after the creation account, excuse me, right after the creation account, God sanctified the seventh day and made it holy. And so we need to recognize that that's a principle we need to keep, but we don't need to legalistically keep it. Sunday is not, in my opinion, Sunday is not the only day we should gather in corporate worship, because the Sabbath was Saturday, the Christians moved at the Sunday because of the resurrection, and that's great. I want to worship on Resurrection Day, but we can equally worship on any day of the week, but keeping the Sabbath principle, I think, is important, because it's based on the nature of God, His creation and His nature. So that means setting aside time to be quiet, to be reflective, to celebrate and to worship God. That's how I would understand it. Okay. Okay, great. Thank you. Terrific teaching. As we said at the beginning, this is the one-year anniversary. We're very fortunate to have Pastor Harry with us today. I'd like to ask him to come forward and make a couple of comments and then lead us on a prayer, a re-dedication prayer, of both a facility and our hearts and our people and whatever else he's got, and it's my Pastor Harry. Thank you. Wasn't that rich? I'd like for us to express our gratitude to our teacher one more time.
Those of you who know me think I'm here because we have cake.
I am here for the same reason you are, to get the spiritual nourishment that comes through teaching in God's Word. You know, Jesus said to Satan that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes through the mouth of God. And we are so privileged to have Dr. Mark Strauss as our teacher here. You know, throughout my years of listening to God's servants open up God's Word and teach it, there are times when I hear a teacher and I'll say, what a great message. Many of you have said that. We've heard a great teaching, but when I hear Dr. Mark teach, oftentimes my response is, what a great God, because he reveals to us through God's Word the person and work of Jesus Christ. And that's the most important good news, life-changing news that you and I can hear. And we've had the privilege of listening to Mark's teaching for one year now. You know, now I tell you the good news in this, is you're only on Luke 13. So we got another 11 chapters yet in Luke. So I don't know. That's got to be at least a good year and a half, don't you think? So we have some exciting Sunday mornings of teaching ahead. But what I'd like to do right now is join with all of you and give God thanks for this venue of teaching that he is provided so that you and I can fall more deeply in love with Jesus Christ. And that happens when you and I grow in the knowledge and understanding of who he is through his Word. So would you bow with me and allow me to lead us in this prayer? Father, it was some time ago when you looked down on the light that's here on this hill called the church at Rancho Bernardo. And you knew that there was a missing piece that there was a fuel that could ignite the light in this place, even brighter and stronger that would attract more and more folks who don't know who you are into this place that they might fall in love with you like we have. And you knew that what was missing was just another venue of teaching that would allow us to go deeper into the knowledge and understanding of this Word that you have given to us called the Bible, which you described as a living and active Word sharper than any two-edged sword that would pierce even to the marrow of our bones that would separate spirit from soul that would allow us to judge the attitudes and actions and behaviors of our lives and set them up against those of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And Lord, you've done that for us in this place called the Cove through our teacher, Dr. Mark, and through the other teachers who have stepped up to open up your Word to us. And for a year now we've been on this journey with you through the teachings of Dr. Luke and the truth is, Lord, that we know you better today than we did a year ago. And we're excited to think that we will know you even better a year from today than we know you this morning. And we thank you, Lord, that you are glorified through this. We thank you, Jesus, that you are lifted up and honored by our desire to know you more. And we thank you, Holy Spirit, that it's you, who every Sunday morning brings to us spiritual nourishment, so that we can grow in body, in mind, and in our soul. And so, Lord, we dedicate with thankful hearts this teaching venue and ask that you would bless it and that it would continue, Lord, to to mature and to grow up men and women into the likeness of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And we pray this all to the glory of your name and the name of Jesus, and everybody said, amen. Thank you very much, Pastor Eric. Before you get a chance to come up also and speak, as I'm going to leave the microphone here, so that you can come and make a comment. Let's just kind of celebrate for a minute. You know, I was here day one. How many people were here, day one? Look at all those great people. I mean, we're all celebrating the fact that we've been here for a year. Now, there's also folks who've just come the last couple of weeks. We want to celebrate with you, a great decision, a great time to be here. We're going to see the rest of the book of Luke, and we're going to celebrate with that too. But we really want to know that we are a community here, of Bible believers, and Bible studyers. And so that's why we're going to have some cake. We're going to thank Kathy for all the great work she's done to organize this place.
You know that there are folks who sit here in the audience week after week, who also work in the kitchen, at the door greeting, and they're just part of the community. It's a self-help kind of community. And so we want to thank all of you who participated in any way over this last year, because we know that you're going to stand in some more as we go along. Thank you. So now, Mark, do you want to have a moment to have any comments before anyone can move? You get to talk a lot. Thank you. I talk too much. We're really thankful. But I'm going to leave this mic up here. If you would care to make a comment about your feelings about the code and what's going on with you in the last year, come on up and make a comment. Thanks. Whoever said the mic would be over here, wait over here.
I'm going to be at first and this comment's going to be directed at Mark.
I kind of see myself as a teacher. I've had the opportunity to sit under some remarkable Bible scholars. You know some of them, John Frame, for example, and very few of them make God's Word come alive like you do. I've also had the opportunity to get you know you personally in our little John around Europe. And you live out in your life what you teach us up here. And you know that's a real unique quality all the time. So I want to thank you. I've grown immense like by sitting in here for a year more than I would have guessed. And I really thank you for that. And I think that if you are not coming to the code regularly in this class, you're missing out and God would want you here. So thank you Mark. I wish it was an up in front of a group that I was saying all of this. But what I really appreciate about the teaching here at the Cove is the context that you put things in. I've been a Christian since I was seven years old. I don't even know how many times I've read through Luke and the truths and the new things that I've discovered in being in here have been incredible. One of the things I just want to share, well I should have two things. One was a couple weeks ago when you talked about Jesus being a rabbi. And then he went to call the disciples that they just dropped and they went because they had not been qualified to become rabbi. And I never knew that that was kind of the desire of every Jewish boy was to be a rabbi. And I thought that was really interesting. And since then I've heard some teachings on the radio and they're talking about the disciples going. And I just thought they need to say that that was such an honor for them to be called by a rabbi, you know, to go on. And another one that I appreciated was several weeks ago when we were talking about Jesus calling the Jews to love their enemies. And you put into context to their enemies and the oppression that they were under. And that was before Harry did the sermon on love being a verb. And what I really appreciated about that was that they were being called the acts of love toward their enemy. And I appreciated just how you put that into context. That was really great. So thank you so much. I really get a lot out of everything here. Well, I love an ador mark, but I want to talk about the cove itself, the facility, what it's meant for me. I've taught a Bible study here at CRB now for three years. And we started over in the main church on Wednesday morning. And we have 15 women. And when the opportunity came open to be at the cove and teach I thought, well, it's kind of a big facility for 15 women. And I started praying about it and I said, Lord, I really would love to fill this cove and have more women be able to come. Well, they couldn't come where we were. They were just with not enough room. So we came over and we studied Daniel of all things. And we not only doubled, we tripled the number of women we had. We had 45 women. So
we couldn't have done it without this facility. This facility, it's comfortable, it's warm, it itself is welcoming. And the women love it. They come in, they have their coffee, you know, they have a nice place to sit, they visit with each other. That first morning when we met and all those women came in. And I saw them sitting down to little tables. It was such a blessing. So thank you for giving us this cove. As far as what the cove means to me, oftentimes the cove is a highlight of my week. And I think it'd be summed up by the first take away that we have today, not be distracted by the details of life. You know, during the week, no matter how hard I try, stay close to the Lord. I pray and I try to have my daily devotions. Oftentimes the details of life distract me. And Mark's teaching on Sunday the cove brings me back into a closer relationship with the Lord with what he teaches. Good morning. My name's David. I was raised in a conveniently religious family was convenient because we did what was ever what was convenient for us on Sunday or any other time. And you know, my entire life, we had a Bible in the house. And I suspect I never opened it. And this, this facility, this class, Dr. Mark and everybody else has caused me to open the Bible to actually read it and to look at it and it's come to life. And for that, I'm probably going to be forever thankful. And it's changed my life. And I appreciate everything that's gone on here.
Marilyn and I were saved in the area of the Moody Bible Institute and by a pastor who was a graduate of Moody. This was at the tender age of, well, I was 52. She's much younger than I am. But the teaching there was strictly expository type preaching, which is what we're getting here. And it's really, really as meaningful to us and we are enjoying it no end. And we would not, we would be very unhappy for ever ceased. We hope that this will can continue for some time. So we really, we really appreciate and love the teaching of Mark. I gotta say I've been waiting for a place like this to open up and appear for a long, long time. I love getting into God's word and I can't wait for the weekends and to get it back there and be a reader at the door. It's really awesome too because we have a Bible study going on at our house. We have two wonderful couples that just totally want to get into God's word. And we're doing Ephesians very slowly and going through it. And I can't remember how long we've been working, but it's been a while. And they both of those couples are here also at the code. So it's just so awesome because we are all so connected to God's word. And Mark, you are totally awesome. You just make it come alive. And you're not just someone that stands there and just, you know, just tells the word the way it is. You just get into it and that's the way I love it. And I just thank you and appreciate you and for your time. And I know you have your family and everything. And you're just a gift from God. Thank you.
Well, if any of you know me, you know that one of my outstanding characteristics is not humility. But even in all my self-assured arrogance, I can calmly say that the code is so good, even I'm learning stuff. I've been going to this church about 18, 19 years now. And my family, ever since they were born, the church was a little, well, we were back to the thing. They were only half the seats. And when they were born, they would sit in the place I have twins. But first, I'd like to give Harriet a big hand because this church probably wouldn't be this church without, oh, listen to this, raise hands if every message every week wasn't about yourself. I mean, it's like he got, he just seems to get it there. And so going to this church, I always wanted to be smarter because I'm not the smartest cookie in the book or in the box. And so when they said the code was coming, I was just ecstatic about coming. And Mark, you are a great teacher. Harry, you do something that no other person can do. He gets right into your life and says, this is why you need to be a Christian. You don't have to be perfect. You just have to love God. And then Mark, you get up here and teach us each word of the book. And that allows us to grow even stronger, two different people, one great church. Give him both a hand. I'll interrupt this for just one second because most of you probably don't know that Dave and his family are responsible for what you're sitting in here. They, they're the ones who made this room physically, built it. Thank you very much. My brother went to Talbot and got his master's free in philosophy. And coming here to the Cove has given me a small sample of the type of education that he's gotten and all I can say is wow. Well, Pastor Harry says words that are in my heart that I can't express. And Dr. Mark has taken the Bible and opened it up for me. And I, it's not so intimidating anymore. And I too have not read the Bible even though it was in my house for many years. And now I'm ready for this next step. The Bible in 90 days. Yay, God. I'll speak Maryland's comment. Do you have a mic? A separate mic? I'm pretty loud. Oh, there it is. Okay. I'll just echo what Maryland says. She doesn't have to come over here. She says we just want more. I like that. Look, you're ready. I think they're ready to have some cake back there. So we've been very