When Obedience is Useless

And we're going to go through when theologian called the Word of God, God's hammer, because it's able to break down the walls and barriers that we build up in our hearts, that we might know him better. Let's apply ourselves now to the Word of God to know him better. At that time Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, look, your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath. He answered, haven't you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread, which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests. Or haven't you read in the law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple desecrate the day and yet are innocent? I tell you that one greater than the temple is here. If you had known words mean, I desire mercy, not sacrifice. You would not have condemned the innocent. For the Son of man is Lord of the Sabbath going on from that place. He went into their synagogue and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Looking for a reason to accuse Jesus they asked him, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? He said to them, if any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and list it out? How much more valuable is a man than a sheep? Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath. Then he said to the man, stretch out your hand so he stretched it out and it was completely restored, but the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus. The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our God stands forever. Continuing with me to Matthew, chapter 11, as we continue our study in the Gospel according to Matthew this morning, it will be a help to you if you don't have your Bible to open a pew Bible. Matthew is not hard to find, it's there, it's on page 850 and the Bible is you found in the pew. To open your pew Bible, it will help, especially in this passage to have it before you. You're turning to that passage and before we pray, I need to make several very important announcements. Most of you are about half of you. Every Sunday morning, miss a very important part of the life of independent. We make announcements about six or seven of eleven that have to do with the announcements that have to do with the church life or the family life of this church. Some of you never hear those announcements. I wouldn't say anything about you not being here on time, but that's a nice way. Come on, guys. You know this morning, everyone was so serious day 30, you all got to loosen up a little bit. I don't know what it is. We went out from Christmas or whatever, but I didn't make those announcements this morning because I want all of you to hear these. They're really, really important. Number one is that we usually have an evening worship on Sunday at six o'clock. We will not have that worship today, but afternoon, you need into the early evening, a day of prayer. Last year and again this year, the session set aside the last two days of the year, the 30th and the 31st, as days of prayer, calling our church family and saying, drop by the chapel with your family, with your children, drop by by yourself, whatever, drop by the chapel and take some time to be alone and to pray. Look back on 95 and consider all that God has done for you and to pray in thanksgiving about 95 and then to look forward to 96. What a wonderful way I've had person after person come up to me in the last year. We started that last year and in this last year I've had so many people come up to me and say, what a great thing. I hope we do that again this year. Lots of people came back yesterday. This is a reminder. You haven't been by the chapel to pray from this worship on through to 7 o'clock to chapel. It's on my right, it's on the west church. That door will be open. There will be some sheets on a table that will help you as a scripture and prayer guide, drop by. We love to do that as a family. If you came by yesterday and want to come again today, it's a good way to spend some time alone in prayer or spend some time as a family, just in prayer. That's a reminder. Secondly, if you've ever moved, you know that things do not go according to schedule. Usually, if you make it by Christmas, our contractor has been wonderful and he's ahead of time. We actually thought that maybe we might get in early enough to have our Wednesday evening supper in Bible study on January 3rd, this Wednesday. We cannot do that. That will not be ready. We will not be ready. We're in the midst of moving. So it's not this Wednesday. Will it be the next Wednesday? Will we do it on the 10th? Stay tuned. I don't know. The last announcement is that we are definitely not happening today. It doesn't happen in a week and it takes months and months. And we're moving all of our offices, all of the Sunday school rooms, all these things must be moved over to this new building. If you came into the reception office this morning, you saw that all those desks have already been removed. For some reason, I'm the only person, folks, they haven't made. I'm still in mind. I think there's a message here for me. Everyone else is already over there. Be patient with us. If you call the church office this week and can't get who you want or there's a phone that makes up, forgive us if you come by, spend some extra time to find your way around. Be patient. We're moving and it's going to take time. Now having said all of that, let's pray and ask Lord Jesus to teach us as we look at what He said here in chapter 12. Our Father in heaven, Jesus was there in that grain field that day and that same Jesus is here this morning and we pray that in these next few minutes we would hear from Him. Our Father, I can't teach so that this passage would make any difference in our lives, but Jesus is able to teach that way. We've heard Him teach before. We know His voice. He's made a difference in our lives. Our Father, there's people here right now in this room that are raising their eyebrows and thinking, what in the world is He talking about? Our Father, we learned a long time ago that whatever is said behind this desk cannot be the wisdom of men because the wisdom of men or the wisdom of one man will not change your heart from the enticcest. But Jesus is able to teach like that and He's here and we have sung our hymns to Him. We've said our prayers to Him. We brought Him His ties and our offerings and now we wait before Him. We wait to hear Him, Father, thank You for all the times in this past year that we've heard His voice and for all the differences that He's made in our lives. Our greatest desires we look ahead is that that will continue. We pray that Father, the greatest change that we'll ever see in our lives or that we've seen to this point in our lives will be the change that Jesus Christ makes in our lives in the next year. When we pray in His name, amen. When obedience is useless, these Pharisees in Matthew chapter 12, these Pharisees, they said Jesus, your disciples shouldn't be doing that, they shouldn't be picking grain on the Sabbath. They weren't the liberties, they weren't the licentious, they weren't the wild livers. These were the religious folk. These were the conservatives and the evangelicals. These were not the people of the church that were moving away from the Cardinal doctrines of Scripture, those folks were the Sadducees and that's another message. Now, these were the Pharisees, these were those, and it's you, didn't you really don't understand it? If you read this more passage this morning and didn't think much about it, if it doesn't point you, if it doesn't upset you and Father you, you have no idea what this passage says, I'll tell you, this passage every time I've dealt with it has really disturbed me and calls me to look at my life in a way that I hadn't looked at it or don't frequently look at it. Think about these Pharisees. These people obeyed, they were zealous about obedience. These people went to church and I don't mean they went on Christmas and Easter or just when it was convenient. These people were equivalent to the folks in our day that guy, Sunday morning, Sunday evening and Wednesday evening, that go every time the church doors were open. The Pharisees went to church religiously, they never missed, they obeyed but they were lost. These Pharisees had small group Bible studies, in fact a delight of theirs was to sit in small groups and talk about scripture and talk about, talk about the Bible, they did this religiously, they obeyed but they were lost, these Pharisees, they prayed, they probably prayed more than anyone in this, more than any single individual in this church, prays, they prayed, they were obedient, but they were so careful at the end of the year they had their CPA go over their records one more time, not to make sure they got their taxes right but to make sure they got their time right, they obeyed but they were lost, turn with me to Matthew chapter 23. Matthew chapter 23, Jesus delivered a scathing message about these religious zealots. Look at verse 13, woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites, you shut up the kingdom of heaven and men's faces, you yourselves do not enter. Now these people had gone to church all of their lives, they had studied the Bible all of their lives, they had prayed all of their lives, they had tied all of their lives, Jesus said about them, they were lost, over and over and over again, he says that in Matthew chapter 23. Now does that cause you to wonder, we go to church, we pray, we have our Bible studies and we tie, is our obedience useless, do you understand that the Pharisees spent their entire lives in exacting obedience and they got to the end and they were lost, that doesn't bother you. When obedience is useless, I want us to look this morning at four occasions when obedience is useless, their obedience was absolutely useless, their whole lives were wasted, all their obedience was wasted, wouldn't it be a pitiful, dreadful thing to get to the end and find out that all of our obedience was wasted? This morning we're going to look at four occasions when obedience is useless, they're really five, we'll look at the next one, the last one, the fifth one, next week it will be communion Sunday and most appropriate, but this morning let's look at four. When obedience is useless, it's useless first when obedience is irrelevant to God's law, look at verses one and two, at that time Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath, His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain to eat them. When the Pharisees saw this they said to Him, you're just doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath. Now read commentaries, now listen with messages, now with surprise because some of the writers and some of the speakers said, hey the disciples were being disobedient, no they weren't, no they weren't, I had to differ, I searched the scriptures, you may search the scriptures, and you cannot find a law against what the disciples were doing, now next is 34, God forbids Israel to harvest on the Sabbath day, can't harvest. You read Deuteronomy 23 and there that on the Sabbath day if these people are walking through a grain field and they pick a few kernels of grain and they eat them, that's fine, that's not harvesting and they are free to do that. It's not only that this was not forbidden, God expressly said in His word that this was a doable thing, it was a good thing, it was all right. In fact if you look down at verse 7 in chapter 12 he said that you would not have condemned the innocent, he's saying my disciples were innocent and we're guilty of breaking any law. So why did the Pharisees call this unlawful? The meticulous man-made laws of the Talmud forbids from the Sabbath, now we've talked about all of the laws that the Pharisees added to the law of God. That was done in the Talmud, you had scripture, you had the Old Testament and that rabbi, scholars and the teachers came along and said now we must interpret these laws for the people and so as they began to interpret the law they began to add all of these laws. There's one section of the Talmud that has 24 chapters listing the laws governing the Sabbath. These rabbis determined in the Talmud that you could travel a distance of 3,000 feet from your house on the Sabbath, only 3,000, you got beyond 3,000 feet, you were in trouble. Now you could, today before the Sabbath, go out 3,000 feet and set up some food and on the Sabbath day you could walk that 3,000 feet and eat that food and then you could go another 3,000 feet because the food was an extension of your house. Now wouldn't that make you feel free? Wouldn't it have to be careful what it picked up? Anything over the weight of a dried fig could not be picked up because that would be work, it would be a burden. This is in the Talmud, if you pick up something that was a burden and that was work. But if it only weighed half of what a dried fig weighed, you could carry it twice, of course wise you couldn't clean, you couldn't even wipe a counter on the Sabbath. In fact, bands could not be taken, one could not take a bath on the Sabbath because some water might just spill on the floor and wash it and clean it. Laws by the thousands that were not found in Scripture and so when these Pharisees took a law out of Talmud and said, your disciples can't do that Jesus says, wrong, that's not right. Eurobedience is useless because you're not obeying laws of Scripture, you're just obeying laws that man has made up and attributed to God. Now we smile and we raise our debt, but folks we dare not do that because in our day we have angelicals and we're conservatives and we're evangelicals and we're not guilt, we're not in danger of being Sadducees, the Libertines, we're in danger of being the Pharisees that added laws to the law of God. Christians don't dance, Christians don't go to movies, Christians don't wear makeup, Christians don't wear bathing suits, then it was, Christians don't wear bathing suits that show their thighs and then it was, Christians don't wear two piece bathing suits, Christians don't drink, Christians don't kiss before they're married. Christians only eat vegetable, fruit, grain, fish, and chicken, for front, we're head, chin, husband and wife must have more than one child. Christian men wear short hair, Christians don't obtain divorces even if a husband or wife is continually unfaithful. Christians are opposed to nuclear power, Christians are four nuclear power, Christians can't eat or dance in the church. I have not made up one of those rules, they all came from Christians living in the twentieth century. I've read them, written and explained and defined seriously by serious minded Christians in our day. I read about a youth director a few years ago that he decided that he would show a movie about Christ to the youth in his church and I knew that the church had a policy again. He danced, attending the movies at the theater but he said this is in the churches, a movie about Christ certainly would be all right, but he did that and the elders of the church became very angry and they were upset and they invited him in to explain what he was doing and he said this and he said don't you know that we have a law that we forbid our children from saying these moving pictures and he said I thought this because it was about Christ and because it was in the church and he said after all we do show film strips about Christ. He said what's the difference between the film strip about Christ and the movie? In one of the elders seriously in town, young man, I will tell you the difference. The difference is when those pictures start moving, when those pictures start moving, that's when it becomes wicked. The difference is useless, whenever you or obey has nothing to do with God. Now let me explain something for all the libertines here, for all of you that are saying I love this message, all of my wife, all of my husband's been writing me about I'm going to just throw it out the window when I go home, I can live like hell, that's not what it says. You know why people add scripture to the law of God so they have a list that they can keep and make them feel good? Well when you throw away the list you can face to face with the 10 commandments, you can face to face with the real absolute law of God to the unsigned. When we add to that list and this is so people this is so close to my soul because the church in my day lied to me and my soul wasn't endangered by the liberalism of the university, my soul was endangered because of the people and we're serious about the faith lied to me about the law of God and it's something you better never do and it's something independent praise between church better never do you don't lie to the next generation about the law of God just because you want your children to keep the same customs that you kept. It's useless obedience when it's not really found in the law of God. I made a side that I will not eat pretzels, that's fine, there's nothing wrong with that decision. However if I say people in obedience to God I'm not going to eat pretzels, I've added to God's law and there's no virtue, there's no holiness in my addoness from pretzels, something I'm free to stay in front of a room, I've got a lot, I don't eat liver and I think people are going to hell that he liver. You see I've just added to the law of God and I read of two soldiers who were decorated for great bravery, it was peacetime maneuvers and even though it was peacetime and just maneuvers these soldiers had gone far beyond the call of duty, they had stayed, they had stayed on duty guarding a bridge, two soldiers guarding a bridge for five days, through severe cold, they suffered frostbite, about halfway through they ran out of food and there they were without food, cold frostbite, but they guarded that bridge. They had a ceremony and they received their medals and no one happened to mention in the awards ceremony as they pinned the medals on them, no one mentioned that they spent those five days guarding the wrong bridge, a lot of church members are doing to death. We're guarding the wrong bridge, so many church members pending their lives and I'm obeying, I'm obeying, I'm obeying, ardently keeping the law and it has nothing to do with true holiness because the laws that they're keeping has nothing to do with the actual law of God. Obedience is useless when obedience is irrelevant to God's law, secondly obedience is useless when obedience seeks to find fault, obedience is useless when obedience seeks to find fault. Look at verses one and two again, if they do, if we're indexing heads of grain to eat them, when the Pharisees saw this they said to them, look your disciples are doing was unlawful on the Sabbath. Now I want to ask a question, you heard me say from the government a minute ago that these guys were supposed to be within 3,000 feet of their house, do you think all of them lived within 3,000 feet of that grain field? This is on a road, they were going somewhere, why are those Pharisees there? They were there because they knew Jesus was coming that way and they were watching His disciples and they were there to find fault. They were there to say, you are wrong in what you're doing. You look down at verse 10 in the same thing in the synagogue, they were there and they had this man with a scribbled hand and they had the man there on purpose looking, they were going to, they were just there in Jesus, they this is man of crippled hand, they look at Jesus and they say, Jesus is right to heal on the Sabbath. We dare you. And we don't have time to turn to it but if you turned over to Matthew chapter 7 you would read this passage about judge not that you be not judge and we have to be discerning but what he's saying in that passage and read it this afternoon, Matthew 7 verses 1, 3, 5, the principle in that passage is, here's what, the principle is that obedience, obedience when it lives to find fault with others or obedience when it constantly finds fault with others is use us obedience. It's not only wrong to criticize, it makes your obedience wrong when this happens. This happens with every child I think at every table coming up through families and it happened to me when I was an eighth grade and my little sister was in the third grade. We were at supper, 515 Carter Street, Bristol, Virginia. My dad was praying as just as soon as he said amen. My little blonde headed tattletail sister pointed her, look at me and said, daddy John had his eyes open and of course I had done the same thing to my older brother. And there was a silence at the table, we all knew what was coming and I was glad she was going to get it and my father looked at her and said, young lady, how did you know your brother's eyes were open during the prayer? You see if there were a law that said eyes had to be closed during prayer then if Susan closed her eyes and prayed and loved God she would be obedient but because she closed her eyes and took one little millisecond of a peak to see what I was doing, it ruined her obedience. Her obedience was useless. I tell you, when you find critical people inside the church, when a person is known as a criticizing person, a correcting person, a person that talks about other people and what bad things they did, the odds are that that person is a Pharisee, the odds are that that person is obedient but the obedience is useless because it lives to find fault. Listen to me husband, listen to me wife, men and women listen to me. If you're known as a person with an acid tongue, it's a good possibility you're going to get to the end and all the obedience, what is this? It's love less, look at verse 10 and a man with a scribbled hand was there looking for reason to excuse Jesus, they asking, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, that's the 10th verse, we go to verse 11, he said to them, if any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath will you not take hold of it and lay it and lift it out, how much more valuable is a man than a sheep, therefore it's lawful to do good things on the Sabbath. Read the passage, they didn't care that disciples were hungry, this poor man with the paralyzed scribbled up hand, they didn't care a thing, there was no feeling at all, toward him, there was no love, there was unbuttoned, but if you had said, are you obedient, yes, we're obedient. Now this is a passage you have to turn to with me. It's in Matthew, it's Matthew chapter 22, passage you well know but I want you to turn to it with me, Matthew chapter 22 verse 36, Jesus is asked this question, teacher, what is the greatest commandment of the law, what's the greatest commandment we can obey, Jesus replied in verse 37 of Matthew 22, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your man, this is the first and greatest commandment and the second is like it, love your neighbors yourself and all the law and the prophets hang on these two commands, did you get it? God says you wonder what all the laws are about, all the laws are about two things, loving God and loving people, he just didn't try a bunch of arbitrary laws out there and said now keep these laws, he said every law is linked with a direct change of loving God or loving people, on these two commandments, love God first, love your neighbors yourself on these two commandments, that's not about loving God and loving people. You know some of the meanest, most unkind and hardhearted people I've ever known have been conservative or fundamentalist Christians, you know that something is wrong when you see a Christian that seems to make much out of obedience but is mean-spirited, when seemingly obedient people, when the general trend of their lives is being mean-spirited, then their obedience is useless, why? Because it's not loving God and it's not loving people, whatever they call obedience, whatever it is, it's not loving God and it's not loving people, several years ago we as a church family helped this family, that was hurting, it lived in another location and we received a thank you letter from them with other ministers, I'm privileged to receive these and it's fine and it's good, I wish we could share them with all the congregation, the letters of people saying thank you to independent for our different ministries. Well this was the strangest thank you letter that I'd ever received, we had sent them some financial help and they were really hurting and needed. In this letter it opened with the husband and father wrote the letter and he spoke about some verses in Deuteronomy where God commanded his people to help the hurting people and he said he went on and preached to us about how we had faithfully done our duty and obeyed in helping them. Hey this was like three or four paragraphs. He said Jim did you know what I mean? He says here I wanted to call this guy and say send us our money back. I wanted to say to him yes the command is there but the reason the command is there is that God tells us that we are to love hurting people it's not just duty, it's not just a obedience. If you look closely, if you want to know if it's obedience, if you look closely to all big ways be love in the background. If there's not love in the background then whatever it is it isn't obedience and these Pharisees work and strive and work and strive and obey and obey and obey and obey but it had nothing to do with love of God and love of people. You would know if obedience is useless and it's saturated with the love of God and with the love of people. Augustin said this he understood this I love this phrase he said Lord and do as you please. Now he wasn't preaching some kind of liberty and not August not Augustin. It would have been better said don't you ever tell him when I try to improve on Augustin but it would have been better said if he said love God love people and do as you please because you love God and you love people you're going to do what he commands. Augustin understood that you want to know if obedience is useless when obedience is irrelevant to God's law when obedience seeks to find fault when obedience is useless when obedience is joyless when it's joyless when there's no joy looking for verse 13 then he said to the man stretch out your hand so he stretched it out and was completely restored just as sound is the other but the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill it there was not a satter more despondent I tell you I wouldn't have wanted to be a Pharisee these guys didn't know how to allow they didn't know how to rejoice look at this passage this man's been healed where's the excitement where's the laughter where's the rejoicing if you this morning had come in here and been paralyzed and suddenly you'd walk down out or walk this we would yes we would walk out of your sandwich got if you got a way to kill start tell we can't have that thing going on where's the laughter now listen to me and we're through obedience and joy are companions all through scripture we've been sold to build a good in our day that said obedience enjoy don't go to that disobey disobedience enjoy that's what goes together disobedience and fun that's what goes together obedience is still starting listen as the psalmist writes in Psalm 19 about the law of God listen to what he says the law of God is perfect what reviving the soul making the soul come alive walkable the precepts of the Lord are right if it's sweeter than honey in the honeycomb we're talking about God's wall what do you say what do you say he say when there's obedience there should be laughter and here I'm preaching to the choir because this church does know how to laugh and you know that obedience is tied to laughter we visit churches I visit churches continually and they're usually conservative in evangelical churches in many times there's no laughter and these people like the Pharisees obedience is such a burden there's no joy in it had a man come to my office last year and he was so happy he said I just had a draw by he didn't make him but said I just had a draw by and see a new Janet was out of town he said would you go to dinner with me I say well what's the occasion where we celebrate if you get a race he said now he said let me tell you say this is so good he said John he said I can't remember where it started but for the last few years he said I have had a feud a real feud a real hate battle going on with another man he said I can't remember whether whether he did something to me or I did something for the life of me I can't remember how it started but he said man I've taken every shot I could at this guy and he said this afternoon he said Sunday after Sunday after Sunday he said been sitting in independent he said there's really bothered me and today he said I left my all was it lumped down this man and I said down with him and he said and he didn't brag on him so he didn't say this but he didn't folks he didn't tell the man he didn't remind the man all that that man had done wrong he didn't say anything about that he just said all that he had done all the gossip and all the slander and everything at him self-adone and he asked the man's forgiveness he obeyed and did it make him cry yeah probably there's a duck thing to do just sit down and do that did it make him cry yes but you know what happened by the time he got to my office he said I haven't felt this good in three years he said I have it laughed like this he went to suffer we ate and we drank and we had a great time what's happened we were laughing we were laughing because obedience and did it like the way I've seen it shut down sorry I thought we had to eat as the obedience and then she adds no desert is so dreary and the noteness and boring as disobedience and evil folks obedience is useless when there's no laughter