Pre Sermon Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-JYhOpfXDk
Immanuel Sermon Audio
Luke 5:33-6:11
So most of us, when you think about a Pharisee, you don't think about somebody that you respect. You don't think about somebody that you admire. You don't think about somebody that you look up to and aspire to be like. And let's be honest, we don't think any of those things because the Pharisees earned the reputation they have in a video like the one that we just watched. They had some serious issues that Jesus exposed and His confrontation with them that gave them and that earned them this reputation as snarky, judgmental, hypercritical, mean people. But I want you to understand that that's not all there is to the Pharisees when you read about them in the Bible. And it's certainly not what most people thought about when they interacted with or when they talked to the Pharisees that we meet in Scripture. So on Sunday mornings, we've been studying the gospel of Luke. And last week, we met the Pharisees for the very first time. Here's what Luke told us. Luke 517, the Pharisees came from all over to listen to Jesus. Luke 521, they heard Jesus forgive sins. You remember the man dropped down into the house? Jesus forgave his sins. They heard that, they saw it and they immediately began in their minds and their hearts to accuse Jesus of blasphemy. Only God can forgive sins. Who do you think you are to forgive sins? And then Luke 530, they grumble when Jesus hangs out with Levi, we know as Matthew and his tax collector buddies. They grumble about that, they complain about that. And so we met them last week. But in our passage this morning, Luke 533 to 611, this interaction with the Pharisees gets ratcheted up to a new level. And the Pharisees move from being just observers, coming to check Jesus out. And they're not really sure about Jesus to being opponents of Jesus. And at the end of this passage, I mean, we're still way early in the Gospel of Luke. At the end of this passage, the Pharisees have made the decision, we have got to do something about that man. We have got to do something to stop him. So the question is, who were they? The simplest answer is, in Jesus's day, they were some of the most respected members of the community. They were the pillars of the community. They were people that you looked up to and that you admired and that you did want to try to be like these folks. They were people who understood that many years ago, Israel had been taken into exile because of its sin and because of its ignoring of God's law. And the Pharisees came around and they said, "Look, nobody wants another exile. "We've got to be completely devoted to God's word. "We've got to be completely committed, "completely sold out to obeying God's law "because we don't want to go into exile again." And so, who were the Pharisees? They were patriots. They cared about their country. They hated the Romans and they hated the fact that the Romans had their thumb on Israel and they hated anyone, tax collectors, anybody who collaborated with the Romans. They were patriots. They loved God's word. We don't think of that when you hear the name Pharisee, but they loved God's word. They wanted people to obey God's word. They wanted their families to live their lives by God's word. Here's where they went wrong. Instead of just focusing on God's word, and this is how they described it, they built a hedge around God's word. And so, they were so afraid of breaking the actual commandments of God that they put new commandments outside of God's word that were intended to keep you from ever getting close to a situation where you could actually break one of God's commandments. And so, God gave commandments about using his name with respect. Do not use his name in vain. And they added all kinds of rules and regulations about what you could or could not say to try to keep you away from that danger. We're gonna talk about the Sabbath this morning. The Sabbath was a simple idea. God commanded it to his people and gave it to his people as a blessing. And they were so afraid of breaking those Sabbath rules that they added all sorts of stuff on top of it to keep people from breaking the actual law itself. And as they did this, as they built this hedge around the law, they started to be more worried about their own laws than God's laws. And that's where the Pharisees come in like we saw in the video. Into judgmental, hypercritical, mean, rule-oriented, grouchy people. And this is sort of the reputation they've earned in their interaction with Jesus. And so, follow along in your Bible, we're gonna read Luke 5, 33, down to chapter six, verse 11. The word of God says this. They said to him, "The disciples of John fast often and offer prayers and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink." And Jesus said to them, "Can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them and then they will fast in those days." He also told them a parable. No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. If he does, he will tear the new and the piece from the new will not match the old. And no one put new wine into old wine skins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wine skins. And no one after drinking old wine desires the new for he says the old is good. On a Sabbath, while he was going through the grain fields, his disciples plucked and ate some heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands. But some of the Pharisees said, "Why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath?" And Jesus answered them, "Have you not read what David did when he was hungry? He and those who were with him." How he, David, entered the house of God and took and ate the bread of the presents, which is not lawful for any but the priest to eat. And also gave it to those who were with him. And he said to them, "The son of man is Lord of the Sabbath." On another Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and was teaching. And a man was there whose right hand was withered. And the scribes and the Pharisees watched him to see whether he would heal on the Sabbath so that they might find a reason to accuse him. But he, Jesus, knew there the Pharisees' thoughts. And he said to the man with the withered hand come and stand here and he rose and stood there. And Jesus said to them, "I ask you, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it?" And after looking around at them all, he said to them, "Stretch out your hand." And he did so and his hand was restored. But they were filled with fury and they discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus. Let's pray. Father, we're grateful for your word. Your word has called us to worship today. And Father, we see truth about Jesus in this passage. And our prayer is simply that your spirit would make it plain to us, that you would apply it to our minds and to our hearts and that we would come away worshiping Jesus Christ. We pray in his name, amen. Our goal this morning is really, really simple. This is not the easiest passage to make sense of because of all of the cultural references and some of the moving parts in this passage. So we wanna try to make sense of the passage. We wanna try to apply it to our lives and we wanna come away with a greater love for Christ worshiping Jesus. And so first of all, let's talk about the controversies in this passage. There are two main controversies that you need to really understand and understand what the argument or the disagreement or the rub is really about. So the first controversy is this. Jesus' disciples did not practice fasting, period. They didn't do it. They did not practice fasting. Apparently, the disciples of John the Baptist did practice fasting because some of these guys come and they say, "Hey, look, John the Baptist, "the guy who baptized you, your cousin, "the guys who follow him, they fast. "Why don't you do it?" And we know from this passage and from history that the Pharisees fasted. In fact, they fasted two days out of every week and they made sure that everyone knew about it because on those two days they walked around mopey, acting pitiful, wanting everyone to feel sorry for them. So they wanted everyone to know two days out of every week, two out of seven, I'm not gonna eat anything while the sun is up. And so they come and they say to Jesus, "Look, you guys don't fast. "Why not?" The disciples of John the Baptist do it and the disciples of the Pharisees do it. Why don't your disciples fast? They're coming with a question and I hope you understand it's not really a question. The question that they're asking is really a statement. What they're saying is you guys are second-class spiritually because you don't fast. Married men, raise your hand. You guys know how this works. Sometimes your wife will ask you a question and it is not really a question. You know what I'm talking about? She looks at you in the morning when you're getting ready to leave the house and she sort of gives you the head to toe and says, "Are you really leaving the house with that on?" That's not a question, is it? That means turn around and try again. That's not good enough. That's not a question. If your wife looks at you and says, "Are you listening to me?" You know, that's really not a question. That's my wife stating a fact that if you don't start listening to me, I will slap you. Well, sometimes we ask a question and you're really not asking a question and these guys come to Jesus and they say, "Hey, we're just curious. Why don't you guys fast?" It's not a question. They're not waiting on the edge of their seat for an answer. What they are doing is politely and passive aggressively saying to Jesus, "You guys need to get your act together spiritually because you're not doing what the rest of us are doing. You guys don't fast." Now, you need to know something. In the Old Testament, in God's law, there is only one commanded fast, only one. You can read through the Old Testament, lots of examples of people fasting, voluntarily, spontaneously, individuals, nations, families, lots of examples of that, but only one fast commanded. On the day of atonement, once a year, you people fast. And so they're not saying, "Jesus, why don't you fast on the day of atonement?" They're saying, "Jesus, Mondays and Thursdays, why don't you fast like we do?" Jesus, you're clearly not as spiritually with it as we are because you and your disciples are not fasting. So they bring this question that is really not a question and the controversy is that Jesus and his buddies are not fasting. Here's a second controversy. Jesus ignored the Sabbath traditions. He did not ignore the Sabbath laws, but he did ignore the Sabbath traditions. This hedge that the Pharisees had built around the Sabbath, Jesus had absolutely no use for it. He pretended like it didn't even exist. He was not interested in what they had added to God's word and he completely and totally ignored it. Now, you need to understand in the Old Testament, the Sabbath is really a very simple idea. It is not complicated like the Pharisees wanted people to believe. In the beginning, God made everything. The Bible tells us, he created the heavens, the earth, the animals, the plants, the stars, the sun, the moon, and at the end of it, he rested. He stopped working. He wasn't tired. He didn't need a break, but he stopped working. And he said to Adam and Eve, made in his image, "You guys do what I do. "I worked and then I stopped working for a day. "And you need to do that. "You need to work hard and then you need to rest. "You need to work hard and then you need to rest." And so originally, God is saying to his people, "You need a day of rest. "Don't work every day of the week. "You need to take a day to rest." When you go further in the Old Testament, you see worship becomes part of the Sabbath, officially in the 10 commandments. And you're gonna read the 10 commandments in two places, Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. In Exodus 20, God says to his people, "You will keep the Sabbath and on that day, "you remember that I made you. "I'm your creator. "And so you're worshiping me on this day of rest "because I made you." The only command that changes from Exodus 20 to Deuteronomy 5 is the Sabbath. And in Deuteronomy 5, God says something different to his people through Moses. And he says, "When you rest on this day, "you rest and you worship because I brought you out of Egypt. "I saved you." So you're resting? Why? I made that. When I made the heavens and the earth. You're worshiping, why? Because I'm your creator, Exodus 20. And also because I'm your savior, Deuteronomy 5. And then the people of Israel end up in the wilderness. And they're wandering around the wilderness. And God connects a new idea with the Sabbath and that new idea is trust. He wants his people to believe that if they don't work every day of the week, tooth and nail, that they will still survive. And how does God reinforce that lesson to them in the wilderness? You remember, he's feeding them with manna, he's feeding them with quail. And what happens on the sixth day? You're gonna get enough for the Sabbath. I don't want you to go out on the Sabbath and gather it. Don't do that. It's a day of rest. You can kick back a little bit one day a week and you will live. We lose this in Western cultures because, let's be honest, we take two days off every week and we still manage to make ends meet. Our culture is very, very different. But if you look at an ancient culture or you travel with Christa Kenya and you go to a third world culture or third world country, you see people who sometimes feel like I need to work every day to feed my family. We don't have to do that. Millions of people on planet earth feel like they need to. And God is saying to Israel, listen, listen, listen. You need a day of rest. On that day of rest, you need to worship because I made you and I saved you. And you need to trust me to provide for you. You need to stop thinking that it's you pulling yourselves up by your bootstraps that's really making ends meet ends meet and understand that I am the one providing for you. So that's the Sabbath in a nutshell, very, very simple. You rest, you worship and you trust God to provide. That's not complicated. You're explaining it to a five year old Sunday school class. What does the fourth commandment mean? How do you keep the Sabbath? You say, well, you need to rest one day a week. You need to worship because God made you and He saved you and you need to trust God to provide for your needs. That's very, very basic. And the Pharisees came along and built a giant hedge around that and they were so afraid of God's people for getting the Sabbath that they added all sorts of stupid rules to the Sabbath. Here's just a couple that they added. You could not light a fire on the Sabbath, which may not seem like that big of a deal, but you also couldn't put one out. Somebody needs to think twice about that rule. You can't light a fire, you can't put a fire out. You can't carry anything heavier than a dried fig. Nothing heavier than a dried fig. Anybody off the top of your head know how much that weighs? I have no clue, but I'm guessing it's not much. Nothing heavier than a dried fig. And if there was something lighter than a dried fig that you wanted to carry, if it related to your job, you weren't allowed to do it. So if you were a tailor or a seamstress, you could not carry a needle on the Sabbath because that might be work. 'Cause you do that for work, you might accidentally work if you're not careful with that. If you're a scribe or a student, you could not carry a pin on the Sabbath because that's what you do for work and you might accidentally work if you're carrying it. So nothing heavier than a dried fig, nothing related to your profession. This is a good one. You're thinking ancient societies, their homes are not like our homes. It was common for them when they wake up in the morning and they're gonna put on a new cloak or whatever they wear to shake it out. Let's make sure nothing crawled into it during the night. You couldn't do that on the Sabbath. You know why? Killing bugs was work. And if you fling a bug out of your cloak and it smashes against the wall, you just worked. So on the Sabbath, you just had to roll the dice, get your cloak out, put it on and just wait. Is anything crawling on me? Anything moving up my back? You couldn't shake it out. You couldn't heat water on the Sabbath. Could not heat water. You could pour cold water into warm water but you were not allowed to pour warm water into cool water because that counted as heating the water. So you couldn't do that. Here's one of my favorites. Somebody came up with the law and said, "Well, what if you need to travel on the Sabbath? "How far can you go?" And these guys put their heads together and they said, "3,000 feet. "You can go 3,000 feet from your home." That's it. Don't go any further. If you go further than that, you've just done work. You've not kept the Sabbath. So they tried that and it didn't work out very well 'cause lots of people needed to go further than 3,000 feet. So somebody really smart said, "Well, you know, if the day before the Sabbath, "if you were to take a dinner roll "and go 2,999 feet "and leave it on the side of the road." And then tomorrow on the Sabbath, when you travel this far, because that's your role, that's pretty much like your meal and you eat meals in your home. So that's pretty much like your home. So if you leave something by the side of the road, 2,999 feet from your home, then from that spot you get another 3,000 feet. If you leave a piece of wood on the side of the road, that becomes a new threshold for your house. So you're walking down the road on the Sabbath and there's all this junk on the side of the road. And it's 'cause Christian Aikens needs to go 9,000 feet on the Sabbath. So he leaves a dinner roll here and he leaves a little piece of wood here and he goes 9,000 feet and it's all good. No worries. Here's some others. Could not bathe on the Sabbath. No bathing. You know why? If you splash the water out of the tub, it might get on the floor and that would clean the floor. You can't work, you can't clean. And if you splash some soapy clean water out, that might clean it so no bathing just to be careful. You could not move a chair on the Sabbath because if you weren't careful and you drug that chair, one of the legs of the chair might make a furrow in the ground and that would pretty much be the same as plowing. Honest to goodness, do not move a chair. You better get it where you want it on Friday night 'cause it's not moving on Saturday. (congregation laughing) And tragically, no medical care on the Sabbath. Unless someone was being born or someone was dying. Are you being born? Are you about to die? Tough love for kids playing outside on the Sabbath, scraping a knee, eh? Talk to me tomorrow. If it was not life threatening or life beginning, you could not give medical care to somebody who needed it. In walks Jesus into all that nonsense. And Jesus says, you gotta be kidding me. Are you serious? That's not what we talked about in the Old Testament. The Old Testament is rest and worship and trust. That's it. It's not all this insanity that you guys have added to it. And so Jesus refuses to play by their rules. He absolutely refuses. He's walking with his disciples through the field and they're hungry. So they pluck grain, i.e. the Pharisees who are watching say you just harvested. They rub it between their hands. The Pharisees say you are threshing. They toss the husks away. The Pharisees say you are winnowing and you pop it in your mouth. The Pharisees say if you ate it, you prepared a meal. You're not allowed to do that either. And the Pharisees say, why are you doing that on the Sabbath? Why are you breaking Prince's hour rules? And Jesus refuses to play along. And then he's in the synagogue with a man whose hand is withered, he has a crippled hand. He's gonna make it through the night. His life is not in danger. Nobody thinks this is his last day on earth. It is not a medical emergency in any way, shape or form. The implication is he's lived with this for some time and the Pharisees say, hey, you can't do anything about that today. Don't you know the rules? Don't you know the hedge? And Jesus says, whoa, whoa, whoa, I don't do the tradition stuff and Jesus heals him and he heals him on the Sabbath in front of everyone for all to see and Luke says they are furious. We'll come back to that in a minute. Let's talk about the response of Jesus. Those are the controversies. How does Jesus respond to them? First response is this. Jesus says it is not the right time to fast. You wanna know why I don't fast? You're asking this question. It's really not a question. Listen, it is not the right time for me and my friends to fast. Now, I want you to really think with me here for a second because if you look at Luke 5, 33 down to 39, Jesus uses a lot of parables, a lot of illustrations, a lot of word pictures and you can find similar illustrations elsewhere in the gospel. But I want you to remember that everything in Luke 5, 33 to 39 comes in response to their question about fasting. Okay, the issue is fasting and everything Jesus says here at the end of chapter five is in response to this question or really this criticism about fasting. And so you may think, wait, that's not what that means. And what you may be thinking of is another place in the gospels where Jesus used a similar illustration in a different context. Do you understand he did that? He was an itinerant preacher, he went around, he shared similar stories to different people in different contexts with different applications. Just remember, in Luke 5, the application is all relating to why don't you fast? And so Jesus says this, he says, think about a wedding. You don't go to a wedding and act miserable. You go and you have a good time and you celebrate and you enjoy yourself and you eat the food and you visit with people, you don't just go and act like a creep, those two things don't go together. And he talks about new cloth and old cloth and he says, look, if you got an old t-shirt that needs patched, don't take your best suit and cut a piece of it off to patch your old t-shirt. How stupid would that be? You ruin the nice suit and it's not even gonna match on the old shirt, the old and the new, they don't fit together, they don't go together. And then he talks to him about wine skins, I have a picture, this will be the best picture you see all week. That is what you think it is. It's a goat, used to be a goat. And this is what they would put their wine in. So they kill the goat, skin the goat, take 'em up, tie the legs up, tie the neck up, tie the back up, fill it with wine, hang that thing up and you just let it sit there for a while while it ferments. Now when we ferment things today, we have little pressure reliefs and valves and things that let the gas off. There's no valve in the goat. (audience laughs) He's all sewed up, but there's gas being made in there and there's reactions taking place. And so you take a new stretchy goat skin with new fermenting wine and as it lets that gas off, the skin will stretch. But once it's stretched, it's stretched. And if you tried to put more new wine to ferment in an old goat skin, there's no more give to it. And when that gas starts building up, it's goodbye Mr. Goat and goodbye wine. And everybody knew this. This was common knowledge. I know that we don't do this. I doubt any of you have one of these hanging in your living room. (audience laughs) But everyone knew what Jesus was talking about and they understood Jesus is saying, "Look, you just don't put old wine in new skins "and new wine in old skins. "You just don't do it that way. "Why don't you fast? "It's not the right time." And what Jesus is saying to the Pharisees is this, God has been promising for millennia to sin the Messiah. Promise after promise after promise after promise. I'm here, this is not the time to be grouchy, and to fast, and to worry about no meat Monday. Take a time out and realize that fasting and me being here in fulfillment of God's promises do not go together. It's as stupid as somebody going to a wedding and being a grouch. It's as stupid as you ruining a new piece of clothing to fix an old piece of clothing. It doesn't go together any more than new wine and old skins and vice versa. These things just don't go together. Now is not the time. So that's his first response. Here's his second response. Jesus looks at him and he's saying to his critics, "You do not understand the scriptures." And this gets technical. I had to wade through this and think through this this week. So I want you to stick with me. He doesn't argue with him about the Sabbath itself. He just says to them, "You don't get the scriptures. "You don't understand it." You just take a time out for a second because Jesus looks at these guys and look what he says in Luke 6-3. You remember how they asked Jesus a question that really wasn't a question? Now it's Jesus' turn. He's gonna ask them a question that is really not a question. He says, "Luke 6-3, have you not read this story?" Had they read it? Absolutely they'd read it. They could roll the scroll out and show you exactly where it was and they could tell you the characters they knew everything about the story. What a stupid question. Listen, it's not a question. He's not saying, "Have you read it yes or no." He's saying, "You've read it and you completely missed it." You didn't get it. And here's where we just take a time out and look at our own lives and say, "Do you understand that there are people "who have read this book and who know "facts about this book, who don't get it?" You realize there are people who can quote this book who really don't get it. They can answer all the Bible trivia questions you can throw at them. They will win in Sunday school Bible jeopardy every time and they don't get it. And they don't get it because they have come to this book looking for validation of what they already believe instead of coming to this book to find out what they need to believe. And there's a world of difference. How do you come to this book? Do you come to the Bible looking to validate your beliefs? Or do you come to Scripture openly to find your beliefs? And the Pharisees knew it, but they really didn't get it. And so Jesus says, "Well, okay." You've got questions about the Sabbath. How about the story from 1 Samuel 21? How about the story about David eating the bread? Yeah, yeah, we know the story. We've read it, have you read it? Yeah, we've read it. We don't know the story because we don't really teach this one in Sunday school. Here's how it goes. David has been anointed king over Israel. Samuel has anointed him as the king. Saul is still on the throne. So David is not acting as the king. He's been anointed, but he is not on the throne. And Saul is angry at David. Saul is hunting David. And David is on the run with a ragtag bunch of guys running for his life from the pretend king all the while when he is the true king and they come to the tabernacle. And they walk into the tabernacle and they talk to the priest and they say, "Man, we are starving to death." And the priest says, "Man, bad news. The only thing here is the bread of the presence, the bread that sits in the holy place. We change it once a week, but Leviticus 24 says, "Only the sons of Aaron can eat it." And David, you're from the tribe of Judah, not Levi. David, you and your guys can't eat the bread because the Bible says you can't eat it. And David and the priest talk it out and here's the end of the story. They eat the bread. David and all his buddies. And Jesus says, "Have you guys read this story?" He didn't just pick any old story. He picked that story for a reason. He's trying to make light bulbs go off in their minds. He's trying to say, "Listen, I'm the true David. I'm the true king. Nobody recognizes me as king right now, but I'm the true king. And I'm on the run for my life. You should have been there in Nazareth when they took me to the edge of town and they were gonna throw me off the cliff. And I know what you guys are plotting right now. David's life was at risk and my life is at risk. And David was running around with a ragtag bunch of guys who didn't look all that impressive. Well, look at the guys with me, bunch of fishermen. There's one detail in this amazing story that doesn't line up perfectly with Jesus and his life and David and his life and that detail is the Sabbath. And that ought to strike you as odd 'cause that's what the whole debate's about here. They're mad at Jesus that he won't obey the Sabbath so he talks to them about this story from David's life and it lines up with Jesus' life and there's parallels and you can see the fulfillment. But there's nothing in the story about David there that talks about the Sabbath. And so some of the Pharisees are probably scratching their heads because they have read the story and they're thinking, how dumb is this Jesus guy? He's talking about a story that isn't even about the Sabbath. And Jesus is looking at them saying, that's the point. I'm making a bigger point than the Sabbath here. You're worried about the Sabbath when the fulfillment is right in front of you. The scriptures are pointing to me, the true David, the true king and you've missed it. And Jesus is saying to these guys, look, I know you've read all about the Sabbath and I know you've read all about David and I know you've read all about all these things. The Messiah, you missed it. You know the facts, but you don't really get it because I'm standing right in front of you and all you wanna argue about is your hedge around the law. So he says, you completely, completely have misunderstood the scriptures. Now, let's think about application. How do we apply this to our life? Three thoughts, number one. Jesus has authority to interpret the law in the prophets. The Pharisees were not willing to listen to that, they were not willing to accept that, but Jesus has the authority to tell us what the law and the prophets mean and don't mean. He gets to interpret it. And consistently in this passage and many times outside this passage, Jesus told people the law and the prophets can be summed up like this. Love God more than anything else and love other people. Love God number one, supreme above everything else. Be faithful to him and be obedient to him. Love God first and then work for the best in other people. And so I don't care if you're like the Pharisees and you have your theological system all worked out. I don't care how impressive your philosophy is. I don't care how accurate your Bible knowledge is. If your biblical framework does not drive you to love God number one and people number two, I'm not buying what you're selling because Jesus has the authority to interpret the law in the prophets. And this is how he says it moves us. This is what it drives us to loving God and loving other people. Anything outside of that, any teaching outside of that, any church outside of that, any doctrine outside of that does not put God one and then people second is off base. Jesus has authority to interpret the law in the prophets. Number two, Jesus came to fulfill the law in the prophets. And this is a big one. You see this in the question of fasting. Pharisees are worried about why Jesus and his disciples eat and drink and won't fast. And Jesus responds to them basically saying the fulfillment of the law and the prophets have come. I am Lord of the Sabbath. The law in the prophets point to me and you are worried about eating and drinking. You're so focused on your law and your prophets and your hedge that you have missed what it's all leading up to. You ought to be celebrating and rejoicing that I'm here and instead you're worrying about how much food I ingested on Monday. You've missed it. Let me tell you what this would be like. Imagine tomorrow you are fortunate enough to make a road trip to Arlington, Texas and you go to AT&T Stadium, Monday night football. Dallas Cowboys are gonna tear the Redskins apart. It's gonna be rated not appropriate for kids. It's gonna be so bad. And you're going and you're excited. You're gonna be pulling for the Cowboys. They're on a roll. They're great. You've never been to the stadium. You walk in the front door. Little gal hands you a program. You start flipping through the program. You go to your seat in the stadium and the whole time you only look at the program. You don't look at the game. You don't look at the big jumbotron. You're just flipping through the program. That's pretty interesting. It's good stuff. You say you missed it. The program points you to the game. The program helps you enjoy the game. The program is about the game. It's not about the program. It's about the game. You've completely missed it. I'll give you another example. Jeremy Allen, who led worship for us this morning is gonna do a couple more songs in a minute. We've become pretty good buds over the last couple of months since I've lived here. And we pick goofy restaurants to go eat at and Jeremy knows a lot of sketchy restaurants in town that he takes me to. And so we go to these restaurants and he's been telling me about this restaurant in Midland. And he's even been sending me pictures of the food of this restaurant. And he sent me the Facebook page of this restaurant in Midland. And so I like this Facebook page and now every time I get on Facebook I see this food. It looks amazing. It looks so good. We haven't been there yet. But one of these days we're gonna go eat there and imagine that there's Jeremy and I sitting at the table eating lunch and the waitress comes by and Jeremy orders something and I say, you know, I think I'm just gonna stick with the Facebook app. The pictures look really good. So I'm just gonna kind of scroll through here. Jeremy's gonna eat something. It's gonna be amazing. I'm just gonna scroll through the feed here and look at your pictures. How big of an idiot are you? (audience laughing) You missed it. Those things point you to the meal. And Jesus is saying, look, I am the fulfillment of the law and the prophets and you're worried about all the wrong things. All the things that ought to point you to me, you're not letting that happen. You're worried about the arrows instead of what the arrows are pointing towards. Take it just one step further in application. You look at the Pharisees here and they allow a good thing to keep them from the best thing. I know we make fun of the Pharisees and we give them a hard time. At the base level, these were guys who were concerned about God's law and they did wanna see people obey God's law. So we can give them a hard time and we can see all of their shortcomings and hang ups and faults, but understand at the root of it all, they loved God's word, but they allowed a good thing to keep them from the best thing. I hope you don't do that. I hope you don't allow anything, good, bad, indifferent, sin, not sin, whatever. I hope you don't allow anything to keep you from the best thing, which is Jesus Christ. The last idea is this, application. Jesus came to seek and save the lost. You knew I'd work it in there. Luke 19, 10. Jesus came to seek and save the lost. Please understand that Luke did not include this passage because he wants us to come away thinking what Jesus came to tell us what we could or couldn't do on the Sabbath. That's not the point. Please don't think that Luke put these verses and these stories in so that we come away thinking, well, Jesus tells us how to be good enough to go to heaven someday, not at all the point, not at all the point. The point in this passage is clear. Jesus has come in fulfillment of the law and the prophets to seek you and to save you. It's ironic in this passage that as Jesus is talking with the Pharisees, the word of God in human flesh teaching them about the word of God written, their eyes are not opened at all. Their hearts are hard. And in fact, they walk away from this encounter. Luke says infuriated. He says they were filled with fury. Some of your translations may say that they were filled with rage. I think the King James says that they were filled with madness and that captures part of the idea because the Greek word here means anger that moves you to insanity. That was their response to Jesus. Anger that moved them to insanity. Decent, moral, patriotic, well respected members of the community. Listen to Jesus and their response is anger that moves them to insanity and how does the passage end? Luke 6, 11. They went out and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus. What would they do to him? Crucifying. And understand that Luke is not just trying to sound an ominous note in the storyline. He's not presenting this as a problem that needs to be overcome by the hero of the story. He's showing how it all fits together so that the hero can do what he came to do. The Son of Man, Luke 1910, came to seek and to save the lost. For that to happen, he did not just need to come and talk to us about the Sabbath. He needed to come and he needed to die on the cross for our sins. And you see, way back here in Luke 5 and Luke 6, the wheels begin to move and that plan begins to be put in motion. And as Luke includes these details, he's not ringing his hand saying, oh no, what's Jesus going to do next? He's saying, look, he is in complete control of the whole thing. It's unfolding exactly like he wanted it to. He didn't come here just to talk about the Sabbath and fasting. Yes, he did those things, but he came here to seek you and to save you. And that happened at the cross where he died for you. Don't let anything good, bad, whatever. Don't let anything keep you from the best thing. The fulfillment has come. Jesus came to seek you and to save you. Rest in that today. Let's pray. Father, your word is true. Our prayer this morning has been that your spirit would open our eyes and our hearts. Father, sometimes when we come to your word, we need help understanding. Father, usually we need help applying. And always we need your grace to respond in a way that would honor you. And so very simply this morning, help us to understand, help us to apply, and help us to respond in a way that would honor Jesus Christ. Father, my prayer is that no one here would leave today missing the most important thing, which isn't rules about what to do or not to do or what to eat or not to eat or on certain days or other days. The most important thing is Jesus Christ. And resting in the hope that we have because Jesus came to seek us and to save us. Father, we have great reason to celebrate and to worship. And so we want to do that this morning. Father, be honored as we sing and lift our voices together. We pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.