Matthew 12:9-14 | "Precarious Mercy"

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Take your Bibles with me to the Gospel of Matthew this morning.

Gospel of Matthew.

I have had the privilege of soaking in this passage now for almost three weeks.

And that combined with probably not enough coffee this morning, you just need to be forewarned.

I don't know what that means.

I don't know what that means for us.

I do know this, that somebody after first service told me, well, you skewered everybody's sacred cow.

So that's a good start, I think.

We begin in Matthew 12 a few weeks ago, where we saw Jesus' disciples eating some grain that they had picked from the field as they were walking on a path, on a Sabbath day.

We saw that the Pharisees viewed that as work, as labor that violated the command of God to honor the Sabbath day and to keep it holy.

And in response to that, Jesus identified the true understanding, the real meaning of the day of rest and what it meant and what it was intended for.

He clarified that law of God while introducing himself as the one who made that law.

The one who is the actual ruler of the day of rest.

He is Emmanuel, he is God with us.

But that is all somewhat overshadowed because the passage before us this morning portrays a wretched tragedy.

A wretched tragedy.

The shock of this text is not that the Pharisees refused to accept Jesus' interpretation of the law.

That was common.

There were many understandings of the law of Moses, even in the time of Christ.

So it wasn't, it wasn't that Jesus held a differing view from the Pharisees that was so troubling.

What is so troubling is that they refused to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Lord of the Sabbath.

And I'd like you to pick up with me then in Matthew's record, in Matthew chapter 12, beginning in verse 9 through verse 14.

Matthew 12 · chapter mention

If you have a Bible or a device, I encourage you to follow along.

He, that is Jesus, went on from there, that is from the fields, and entered their synagogue.

And a man was there with a withered hand.

And they asked Jesus, Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?

So that they might accuse him.

He said to them, Which one of you who has a sheep, if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not take hold of it and lift it out?

Of how much more value is is this man, is any person than a sheep?

So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.

Then he said to the man, stretch out your hand.

The man stretched it out, and it was restored, healthy like the other hand.

But the Pharisees went out and conspired against Jesus how to destroy him.

Amen.

As we saw in the previous section, verses one through eight of this chapter, the Pharisees placed more value, greater weight, greater importance on their own traditions than they did on showing mercy.

We saw that before in the disciples eating grain on the Sabbath morning.

And I compared that to parents not feeding their children before putting them in the car and taking them to church on Sunday morning.

They're hungry.

They're probably crabby.

Maybe they didn't get enough sleep, and now their stomachs are growling, and they they take their first opportunity to have a snack.

Instead of showing mercy to hungry individuals, they condemn them.

Similarly, there's a man with a withered hand.

Will they show mercy to him?

This kind of attitude drove the Pharisees and their resentment of Jesus, leading to what appears to be a trap set specifically for Jesus.

Verse 9 seems simple enough, I think.

Jesus went from the fields where he was walking with his disciples, where they'd had this previous confrontation.

He enters a small Jewish community and he goes right to the synagogue of that community on the Sabbath day, very normal, very understandable, and he enters into it to join with them in worship and understanding and prayer of God's word.

And the local synagogue here would function much like a community center today.

It wasn't just a place to gather on Sunday morning.

This was a community place.

So there would be religious instruction all throughout the week.

There would be worship, there would be fellowship, there would be gatherings day in and day out.

But what is of interest here for us is that Jesus entered the same synagogue where the Pharisees who accused his disciples taught and worshiped.

Look at what Matthew says.

He entered their synagogue.

Who's there?

These same Pharisees.

This is their synagogue.

This is the Pharisees' home territory.

They are in control.

They are the ones in authority in this synagogue.

So on the one hand, this appears to be exactly what Jesus intended.

He goes from leading his disciples in the field, he goes into the community, he goes to the synagogue on a Sabbath day.

Great, everything's normal.

This is his plan, this is his purpose.

But then there is a change of direction in the plot.

There's a word here that some of our English translations do not include.

Most of them do not, just only a handful do.

It's a word of exclamation that is intended to highlight something.

We might put it in bold, we might put it in italics to show that there's some emphasis here.

And it's the word behold, exclamation point.

If you're using the English Standard Version, which I'm using, it does not include it there.

It belongs at the beginning of verse 10.

Now, behold, a man was there with a withered hand.

Matthew wants us to notice that this is something intriguing.

Maybe even duplicitous.

This man was either planted there by the Pharisees, or he's a known individual in their community and conveniently used in the moment.

Whatever the situation, the Pharisees take advantage of it and they use it to their advantage.

In essence, they use this one man as a pawn to destroy Jesus.

All that mattered to these religious leaders was catching Jesus in some sinful action on the Sabbath day.

And Matthew wants us to notice it.

Whether it was an intentional entrapment by the Pharisees or if they were merely taking advantage of the circumstances, Matthew wants us to be a witness to this apparent ambush.

Notice the next words.

So that they might accuse him.

Those are insightful words.

They tell us why all of this is happening.

These Pharisees have it in for Jesus.

Their expressed purpose, their intention, their goal is to accuse Jesus.

And those are words that highlight for us the heart of the Pharisees.

They don't care much about the man's hand.

They don't think about the difficulties a disability might bring to this man and his family.

They don't care about his hardships.

They don't care about his pain.

All they desire is to catch Jesus in the act of what they would consider sinning.

And here was their perfect opportunity.

Just like with the disciples, they don't care about showing mercy to hungry disciples.

They don't care about showing mercy to a man in need of care.

They didn't care that this sheep was caught in a trap on the Sabbath day.

You'll see more of this as we go on.

I think Jesus uses this picture of a sheep falling into a pit in more than one way.

He's referring to a literal sheep who falls into a pit and needs to get out.

But in the story, the man with the withered hand is the sheep.

They aren't going to help this sheep get out.

So they they orchestrate a situation in which Jesus has no other way out.

And how do they do it?

They use the man as bait for their trap.

They ask Jesus, is it lawful, is it right, is it, is it appropriate, is it biblical to heal on the day of rest?

Now, just a short while before this, maybe within hours, maybe less than an hour, we don't know the distance between verse 8 and verse 9.

Could be within the same hour that they have accused the disciples of working on the Sabbath day.

And when we understand that, we can then bring some clarity to this question.

This question can be understood as: is healing considered work?

If you heal somebody, if you do good to somebody in a way that you exert effort, you exert labor, is that work?

Because if it is, then you are not keeping the commandment to honor the Sabbath day.

The Pharisees quite obviously considered it work.

In their minds, the man could easily wait one more day to be healed.

Because we must keep the Sabbath day.

Keeping the Sabbath day is a higher priority than showing mercy.

See, that's the result of their superficial reading of Scripture.

So in verse 11, as we move on in our plot, the focus shifts to the trapped sheep.

Jesus responds to being forced into this argument by asking them a question.

Which one of you?

Who has a sheep?

Most of them would.

That sheep falls into a pit on the Sabbath, they won't go and rescue him.

Have any of you seen that meme floating around the internet about that sheep getting pulled out of a crevice and running off and jumping and landing right back, smack dabbing in the same place?

You get the idea then.

Now all the rest of you are going to be looking on your phones.

Wait until after church.

Most everyone would be familiar with this illustration.

And in fact, most everyone had probably done this.

Because sheep are exceptionally inept creatures.

If they get turned over onto their backs with their feet in the air, my dad would call it casters up.

Some of you are still throwing up, well, it's okay.

Look it up after church.

If sheep have their feet in the air, they can't right themselves.

They need help getting back on their feet.

They can die with their feet in the air.

They need a shepherd to rescue them.

And in the same way, if a lamb or a sheep falls into a hole in the ground, they can't get themselves out.

They're stuck, maybe with a broken leg, maybe with an internal injury, maybe with a bruised body that could in time kill them.

Anyone, anyone with any sense of care for their livestock would rescue that animal, even if it was on the day of rest.

They wouldn't leave them there to suffer and perhaps die when it's in their own power to give them aid.

See, animals were money in the bank.

And these leaders would have desired to protect their investment.

But these religious leaders have no investment in a man with a withered hand.

There was no reason to exercise care and mercy, especially if it meant working on the Sabbath day.

And that brings us to Jesus' teaching point in verse 12.

Don't you realize that a human being is of far greater value than a sheep?

Jesus drove to the to the heart of the Pharisees' problem with a straightforward story and one fundamental question.

What's more important?

What's more important?

They gave, these Pharisees gave greater priority, greater attention, greater weight to their preferences, to their convictions, to their standards than they did to the basic needs of human beings.

Of course, we all know that's nothing new.

The same problem gripped the prophet Jonah.

You remember him, right?

The guy whose skin was all etched in stomach acid from a whale.

I just grossed you out, didn't I?

Got your attention, though.

You know that Jonah ran away from God because God called him a Jew to go across the desert to a place called Nineveh to call them to repentance.

The Ninevites were some of the evilest people of that time, maybe the evilest people who've ever lived.

But God wouldn't let Jonah run away.

So Jonah finally goes to Nineveh and he completes his circuit, preaching all throughout the city.

And after finishing his preaching, he has this air of resignation.

Finally, I can be done with this assignment.

I'm done, God.

And so he leaves the city, he goes out of the city, he finds the highest hill on the outskirts of town, and he he sets up camp on this highest hill because he's waiting for sundown when God's fireworks start.

He's expecting a show like Sodom and Gomorrah.

And he can't wait.

Only the fireworks never came because the people repented.

And God relented for a time of the disaster that he was going to bring upon the city.

And of course, that angered Jonah.

God, what right do you have to show mercy to those people?

Sounds like a lot of Christians.

Not only that, but God showed mercy to Jonah.

This is in the Middle East, in the hot Middle Eastern sun outside of the city.

If Jonah's going to be patient and wait for fireworks, he needs some shade.

So God provided a plant, probably something like a fast-growing castor bean plant.

It would grow up very quickly and provide a little bit of shade, just a little bit of relief from the hot desert sun.

And Jonah was thankful in his spirit for that little bit of relief from the intense heat.

But then God prepared a worm to eat away at the plant and to kill it.

That too made Jonah incredibly angry because he lost his shade.

Remember what God said to Jonah?

Listen.

God said, Jonah, you pity.

You have intense compassion for the plant.

You have you have this great feeling of compassion for that plant for which you did not labor.

You didn't make it grow.

You didn't water it, you didn't plant it, you didn't do anything.

It just sprouted and I did it all.

It came into being in a night and it perished in a night.

Now, Jonah, should I not then have the same kind of compassion, the same kind of pity on Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than 120,000 people who do not know their right hand from their left?

Oh, and by the way, a lot of cattle too.

Jonah, you have mixed up priorities.

Jonah cared more for that little plant that lived and died in the matter of a few hours or days, more compassion, more pity for that plant than he did for 120,000 children, not yet old enough to tell the difference between right and left.

As if that weren't enough, he had more pity for the plant than he did for cattle.

Some 750 years later, the religious leaders of the Jewish nation had not yet learned the lesson of Jonah.

They cared more for an animal than a man in need of mercy and grace.

Jesus here is referring back to verse 7, where he's alluding to Hosea 6.

God said, I desire mercy and not sacrifice, because the Pharisees have condemned the guiltless.

See, God's priority is showing mercy to people, and so Jesus says it is therefore lawful to do good on the Sabbath day.

Doing good in this instance is healing the man's hand.

That was not sinful work that God would say broke the commandment to keep the Sabbath day holy.

Not Jesus.

Jesus didn't change the law.

He's not reinventing God's word.

But he does provide the proper understanding, the proper interpretation of that law.

And Jesus says the Pharisees did not correctly understand God's word.

All of their intensity of studying and reading God's word just left them with a superficial understanding.

And as a result, they ended up placing people under additional unnecessary burdens.

That's why we have to understand everything here in context.

Because when we go back to chapter 11, verse 30, Jesus says, Listen, come to me and take my yoke upon me.

Why?

Because my burden is light.

Yes, when you come to Christ, there is a burden.

But it's a light burden because he gives you his spirit to help you endure it.

But what's happened is that in Judaism, the Pharisees have come along and added things.

More burdens.

Heavier and heavier and heavier.

And so, in a fantastic display of kindness, which in effect is an unspoken rebuke of the Pharisees, Jesus heals the man's hand.

He treats this problem, he treats this man with kindness and care.

He says to the man, stretch out your hand.

And the man stretched it out.

What would you do in that situation?

Surely the tension is enough to be cut with a knife, right?

And you're looking back and forth between Jesus and the Pharisees.

And Jesus tells you, Stretch out your hand.

Which hand, Jesus?

Oh, come on, you know which hand.

What would you do?

Man stretches out his hand.

And it was restored.

Healthy like the other.

Now remember, the Pharisees were convinced that healing was work.

It was doing something that required effort and exertion that in some way transgressed.

It crossed over the boundary of God's law that made it okay to do to not okay to do.

And what does Jesus do?

He tells the man to stick out his hand.

Understand that.

What did Jesus say?

Jesus told the man, stick out your hand, stretch out your hand.

I don't know about you, but that doesn't seem like a whole lot of work to me.

Seriously.

Seriously.

In what world does saying one sentence equal work?

And yet it's not the speaking that got Jesus in trouble with the Pharisees.

It's the result of his speaking.

And I'm not talking about the man's obedient response to stretch out his hand.

He does that very thing, and what happens?

He no longer has a withered hand.

Have you heard that before?

Have you heard it before where where someone speaks and something happens?

If you haven't, I encourage you to read the very beginning pages of your Bible.

Genesis chapter 1, it says over and over again, and God said, And it happened.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

And God said, And it came to be.

And God said, and it happened.

So here in Matthew, in a synagogue, in a small Jewish community, Emmanuel says, Stretch out your hand.

And an instantaneous, creative act occurs.

Friends, I want you to see the essence of the gospel here.

This is us.

As human beings who follow in the curse of sin.

In Adam's race, we are sick and diseased.

Dead, Scripture calls us, dead in our sins, enslaved to sin.

And God the Son took on the form of his own creation, and in paying the price for our sin, he then says to us, believe in me.

And we are restored.

A new creation in Christ.

See yourself here if you are a Christian.

If you are not a Christian, hear the command of Jesus.

Stick out your soul.

And believe in me.

That prepares us then for the treacherous horizon that we see in verse 14.

The Pharisees went out and conspired against him.

How to destroy him.

The Pharisees wanted none of this.

They wanted Scripture their way, they wanted instruction their way, they didn't want Jesus teaching, they didn't want his miracles, they didn't want his leadership, they didn't want his care, they didn't want his mercy, they didn't want him.

So they went out and they conspired together in the most dreadful act in human history.

Killing the Lord of the Sabbath.

But you are all here, because in some form or another, you you believe that the giver of life cannot be destroyed.

Herod could not kill him as an infant.

The people could not kill him even when they wanted to throw him off of a cliff.

And the Pharisees would not be able to take his life until the time was right, and he chose to give up his life as a sacrifice for our healing.

And so, as Revelation chapter 7, verses 10 and 12 say, all of us who trust in Christ as our Lord and Savior will one day proclaim salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.

Revelation 7:10

Blessing and glory and honor and praise and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be unto our God forever and ever, and his people will say, Amen.

Amen.

That was the easy part.

Now comes the hard part.

I'm going to do my best to be an equal opportunity condemner.

Because our struggle here is how do we fit this into our time?

How do we go from understanding what Matthew says to our time when we don't all go to a synagogue when we meet on Sunday, first day of the week, not on Saturday?

And how do we fit all of this together?

Well, I want to help us walk through that.

And in the process, none of us is going to leave here unconvicted.

Including me.

First, we need to understand what God and Matthew's primary intention was, what they mean to show us.

The primary intention is to show us Christ.

If you go away from this missing Jesus, you've missed the point.

Jesus is the one who gave the law of the Sabbath.

He's the one who interprets the law, given through Moses.

So as lawgiver and as authoritative interpreter, he is the one who ultimately rules and guides not only how we understand the day of rest, but how we look at the entire law, how we look at all of Scripture, how we interpret and apply Scripture.

We learn from Him.

But even more than that, He's the one who speaks into existence.

He speaks and it is.

So too we are to see Jesus as the God of creation.

This is the one, this God, this Jesus, this Messiah is the one who has come to be merciful to us.

Matthew is calling us to come to Him, to take His yoke upon us and to learn from Him.

Because He is the one who shows mercy.

That's first.

If we don't get that, we miss everything else.

But as we start to think about other potential applications, we we realize that this passage shows us, after seeing Christ, it shows us man-made religion.

Now, if we are to categorize man-made religion very broadly, very broadly, it comes down to basically two different categories.

One is man-made religion that has no sense of understanding or foundation on the scriptures or the true God.

Just a religion of faith made up of somebody's own mind.

But then there are other man-made religions that are similar to the Judaism of the Pharisees, that are religions built in some way on top of a foundation of God's revealed truth.

And then they take that foundation and that truth and they begin to twist it.

Maybe they add on to it, maybe they take away from it, so that it becomes something entirely different than what God intended.

Jesus responds to this challenge from the Pharisees by reminding them, He's the one who gave them the law.

He's the one who correctly interprets it, who replies it.

And it was never intended to starve hungry people.

It was never designed to keep people from doing good.

So we would then do well to ask ourselves: have we ever built man-made elements onto the faithfulness of God and the revelation of his word?

And the answer is yes.

Every single one of us.

At some point in time or another, and we will do it again.

Do we set up standards and expectations that go beyond what Jesus would say is expected for the church?

Yeah, we do it all the time.

Here, too, there are several several potential levels of application, and there's so much, so much here.

This is just intended to get you started on processing this in your own heart and life.

And so, with that end in mind, there is such an abundance of low-hanging fruit.

I'm going to take the easy fruit and leave the hard fruit for you, okay?

Thank you.

Appreciate that.

So this is all, these are all things that uh are evidenced either in our own church, in our own community, or in our own country.

Let's start with politics.

Politics.

I've heard both of these elements stated in our fellowship.

You can't vote Democrat and be a Christian.

You can't vote for Donald Trump and be a Christian.

Now, those might be okay convictions, those might be okay preferences, those might be okay opinions.

You might even be able to delineate several elements of reasoning that support your opinion.

The problem is when you attach the word Christian to the sentence.

Because when you attach the word Christian to the sentence, what you end up doing is saying, everybody who is a Christian thinks this way.

And if you don't think this way, then you can't be a Christian.

You can put cultural demands into the discussion.

If you don't fight for social justice, then you aren't being obedient to Scripture.

If you don't pursue reconciliation and equal standing for all peoples and all genders in the mainstream way, then you aren't following Christ obediently.

You see, when we begin to attach the word Christian or Christ or follower or believer or scripture or the Bible to any of these elements, we begin to move our opinions and our convictions and our preferences into an entirely different realm.

Oh, and don't forget that all Christians should get their news from the right source.

I hope you can see here that I'm providing very opposite extremes.

Doesn't matter which side of the spectrum you land on, we all do it.

And I think we can see as we begin to think about this that preferences and opinions and convictions and expectations that we have or standards that we might have for ourselves or for our families can very easily creep in unnoticed and get added to Scripture.

If you haven't experienced that, praise God.

Amen.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow.

But you can at least see how, if we begin to express these kinds of opinions or convictions strongly enough or often enough, we can make others believe that those are the expectations of someone who follows Christ obediently.

Therefore, if I don't fit that category, then I must not be a Christian.

And if we do that, that puts us directly in the shoes of the Pharisees.

Okay, there's time to step on mortos.

In the last year, from both within the church and outside of the church, we've we've heard the cries that Christians must wear masks, or we're not loving.

Or even the opposite.

We've heard the opposite.

If we wear masks, then we are guilty of not trusting the Lord.

Both extremes have been said by believers in this fellowship of believers.

Now that's shifting.

Shifting, we're hearing the same thing about vaccinations.

These go beyond the explicit instruction of Scripture by placing our personal opinions or our personal convictions or our personal preferences as requirements upon others.

Again, you may have, you may have very, very wise and thought-through bases for those things.

But once you start adding elements of Christianity to them, you start laying groundwork for being a Pharisee.

So we have to understand then that distinction between preference and opinion and conviction versus what God says is law, what God says is command, versus the express statement of Scripture.

We've we've leadership here, elders and pastors have heard we've we've had enough scripture.

No more scripture.

Can we do something beside what teaching the Bible?

The problem with that is that Jesus said it was inherently good.

Inherently good.

He says, man shall not live by bread alone.

You can't survive just by what you put in your mouth.

You have to survive by what comes into your being.

And that requires it to be inherently good.

And so depriving others of what is inherently good is the Pharisees depriving the man of good on the Sabbath day.

We become like Pharisees.

We begin to assign guilt to those who don't live up to our version of obedience.

So their convictions, their opinions, their preferences bore greater weight than God's word.

And I'm so glad that we don't do this.

Yes, we do.

There's not a single one of us that isn't bearing the guilt of this kind of action.

You know, there's very little difference, maybe no difference, between the person who says, condemningly, you don't love me because you won't wear a mask.

Very little difference between that person and the one who says, How in the world can you follow Christ and take in that demonically inspired vaccination?

Yes, I went there.

Right?

They're on opposite sides of the spectrum, but those opinions and those convictions verbally accomplish the same thing.

They set expectations of a particular kind of obedience on God's people that are not articulated in Scripture, but we sure feel strongly about them.

And the more strongly we express that conviction, that opinion, and the more often we do that, it takes on greater weight, it takes on greater authority until other believers start thinking of us, oh, they think that that's what a Christian really does.

Rather than showing mercy, we lay our expectations on others as elements of required obedience.

So, in essence, we say, Yeah, I can't be merciful to you because you won't do what I want you to do.

We don't do that, do we?

Oh, and let's not forget those who criticize others for holding to a different conviction.

Somebody holds an opinion different than we hold.

We will let it come out of us.

I can't believe you would wear a mask.

Really?

Can't believe you would get that vaccination.

I hope you understand.

I'm just using these illustrations, these examples, because they're the really low-hanging fruit.

You don't have to reach very high or very far to get these examples of what we do.

There are others.

See, the end result is that the Pharisees wanted Jesus booted out of his own kingdom simply because he walked obediently to the word of God.

I wonder who we would want kicked out of the word, kingdom of God.

Because they obediently followed the word of God.

I want you to see, though, what's happening here in all of this.

This is evil.

Let's call it what it is.

It is evil.

It is evil and it is generated by Satan himself.

Because Satan wants us all to question whether God's word has gone far enough.

That's what the Pharisees did.

Right?

They said, yes, we recognize God said, honor the Sabbath day and keep it holy.

Don't do any work on it.

But God, you didn't say what work is.

You didn't go far enough.

So we're going to have to add on to your word to define what work is.

Satan wants us to wonder, did God go far enough?

Satan wants us to question, did God go too far?

Yeah, it was a different time, it was a different place.

So you know what?

God, you went too far when you started naming genders.

When you started identifying people as certain sexes at birth, when you started speaking about homosexuality, God, you went too far, so we have to we have to take that out.

And when we begin to start doing that, wondering, doubting if God has done enough or maybe done too much, we start to build on top of God's revelation.

We believe, we begin to question whether it's really coherent, whether it's really sufficient.

And we start making our own religion and we become Pharisees.

Oh, I've gone this far, so I might as well jump all the way in, right?

This is really hard.

Really hard to manage in the local church.

It's really hard to struggle.

I would almost say it's impossible.

If you look at John's epistles, 1, 2nd, and 3 John, it becomes very clear very soon that the early church, within a few decades of the apostles' leadership, seemed like it was being overrun by false teaching.

And so John made some very clear and hard-lined statements.

You see, there were traveling teachers that went from church to church, from community to community, and John tells us that they were upsetting entire churches by their teaching.

And so John is responding to that, and he's telling the leaders of the churches this is how you're to respond to them.

He says, here's what you do.

You don't even say hi.

That's right, you don't even greet them.

The Lord's church, his bride, is too precious to let them even have a foot in the door.

And that kind of thing can still happen today.

The surprising thing, really, is how much the church has to wrestle with that kind of thing.

I would say on average, it comes out pretty close to weekly for us, if not more.

What is clear is that the Lord Jesus desires to protect his bride, to keep the church pure and to promote unity.

You know, there's a reason that God chose that illustration of a groom, Christ Jesus being the groom and the church being the bride, because a groom will fight for his bride to the death.

To protect her, to keep her pure, to keep her for himself.

But how do we do that in a local church?

What teachers or speakers do we allow?

What strains of thought do we allow in or keep out?

To what extent do we do the job, do the elders do the work of fighting the wolves that God says roam amongst the church and even come from among us?

To put it very plainly, who should we not even say hi to?

Who should we not eat with?

Yeah, that's in your Bible.

I want to try to communicate this in a way that is not grumbly and not complaining.

So if it sounds complaining, please forgive me.

That's not my intention.

My intention is to show you how this affects itself, works itself out in our local church.

In the last few weeks, maybe we could go back to the last month.

I and our church leadership have heard that we are that we are, on the one hand, too narrow, that we are too restrictive and controlling of what we allow in or what we participate in as a church.

And yet I've also been told personally the opposite, that we should not be allowing some of what we do allow.

Hallelujah, we're right in the middle.

Amen.

Sermon done, right?

No.

We're routinely challenged about what we don't participate in.

We're challenged about what we do acknowledge and what we do promote.

We're even judged if the band is too loud on a Sunday morning and criticized if we don't use the organ, even though it's louder.

Now I think most of those situations are just all of us as individual people expressing opinions and desires, not seeking to add those expectations on other believers.

At least I pray that's the case.

I believe that's the vast majority of what's going on when that happens.

My point here is to try to help us all see how easily our personal views, our individual convictions, our own preferences, even good intentions can easily sneak in and become things that are used by our enemy to keep us from clearly seeing the proper understanding of Scripture and even seeing Christ.

If all we see are our desires, our convictions, and we fail to see others in need of grace and mercy and the goodness of God, then we have moved from good intentions to Pharisees.

These Pharisees were critical of others for not upholding the Pharisees' convictions.

They couldn't establish them in Scripture.

They couldn't found them on the clear teaching of Scripture because they had added them.

And along comes Jesus, who says, Yes, observe the day of rest.

Absolutely.

God commanded, I gave it to you, be for your own good.

Observe the day of rest, but also do good and be merciful.

So that guy or that girl or that couple that you think is is way too liberal to be a Christian?

That person that you you question the fervency of their conservatism?

Those individuals that you think are just far too free and lax in their lifestyle or far too restrictive?

How about how about instead of thinking that, how about you take that person out to lunch?

How about you take that husband and wife, that couple out to lunch?

How about while at lunch you you pause and you ask them about what's going on in their life?

You ask them about the joys and the struggles that they have, and you you just take a moment and you pray with them at lunch, and you ask that the Lord would bless them, that He would encourage them.

And maybe you go away and you rack your brain for some way to meet their physical needs.

You see, friends, what often happens in our postmodern social media-driven world is that these man-made regulations become the standard by which Christianity is defined.

So one church becomes known for this, one church becomes understood in this way, one church is accepted because they do this.

All because those those opinions, those convictions, those those additions or subtractions gain greater weight and greater traction than they really should.

You know, there's something that goes on on cycle, probably at least every five years.

And that is, every five years or so you start hearing this question.

Why does a particular category of people walk away from the church?

You know, lately it's been it's been young people, it's been millennials, it's whatever.

Well, why do we see them leaving the church in droves?

Well, we can question whether or not that's really happening.

But there's a very simple answer for that.

It's because most of them that walk away aren't true Christians.

Let that sit in, and I know that's going to bother some of you because for some of you it's your own sons and daughters.

And I'm so sorry for that.

But here's the problem people that walk away from the church have become disciples of the Pharisees.

And at some point, you will become disillusioned if the opinion of the Pharisees becomes your version of Scripture.

Because it can't stand up to scrutiny.

So what are we giving people?

Are we giving them a faith that has our own opinions, our own expectations, our own personal convictions added on to the gospel?

Or are we giving them the plain truth of Christ?

Oh, now understand, Jesus didn't say ignore the clear command of Scripture.

He never said that.

He said, when it comes to applying the scriptures, your personal opinions, your personal preferences, and your convictions should never supersede showing mercy to those in need of compassion and doing good to others.

That's what he said.

Now, since Jesus through Matthew ended with a word of warning, I will too.

The Pharisees repented and believed in Jesus.

What?

No.

The Pharisees went out and they conspired against him.

How to destroy him.

If you imitate Jesus, if you do what the end of chapter 11 says, and you you listen and you hear Jesus and you you come to him and you take his yoke upon you and you become his disciple, learning from him, and you you soak in his gentle and lowly heart and you find rest for your soul and you carry his burden because it's easy and it's light.

If you do that by allowing the clarity of Scripture to be your guide and you show mercy and you do good, if you do all of that, then don't be surprised when those who expect you to uphold their preferences begin to despise you and seek to destroy you.

Because it's the way of the enemy.

Showing mercy and doing good may be precarious if it means not giving in to others, but instead obeying Scripture.

There's a level of us, it may be to varying extents, varying degrees, it may not even be all the time, it may be a time here, a time there.

We all have these elements in our lives.

It's part of what it means to be a human being that's cursed by sin.

But there has to be hope.

So how do Pharisees, then in Jesus' time or now, how how do we how do we get to that place of hope?

Well, it's no different than any other time in history.

The first thing that you must do is confess your own rightness.

We all want to be right.

We all expect that we're right.

We all know we're right.

We must confess our own rightness and let go of it.

Let go of it because there's only one that's right.

We have to let go of our own rightness, our own pride that builds that up.

We have to let go of our own individual sufficiency so that we can see Jesus.

He's the one that's right.

He's the one that's sufficient.

He must be your rightness.

Confess your need to be right and see things your way and ask Christ to let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.

Immerse yourselves in Scripture, not for your own ends, not for your own devices, not for your own conclusions, but to see and hear more of Jesus because his word shows you Jesus.

That's the way to be led over time, gradually, out of Phariseeism to the heart of Christ.

May that be us.

Would you pray with me?

Lord Jesus, we confess our sin to you.

Oh, we all are here in this place, seeing ourselves in your word, which you which you planned.

Don't leave us there.

Enable us to sense that conviction of sin and to repent of it, to lay our demand to be right, to have our way at your feet, so that you might have your way in us.

May you be our treasure, and your word be that which we possess for your glory.

May it fill us and enrich us so that we might be a people after your heart for your glory until you come back.

If it pleases you, come back soon to rescue us from this place, to be with you forever, restored, the fullness of a new creation, your work in us finished and completed.

Until then, make us a people that are merciful and kind and who do good because of who you are.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.