Kingdom Come - Religion isn't Relationship - Jason Paredes

You know, I just. I feel. I feel the faith that's welling up

in this room. Some of you in hardship and difficulty are going,

God, I'm trusting you. I don't. I don't. I can't prove it

in a court of law that you're going to come through. I just know

you're going to come through because you've done it in the past.

I believe you're going to do it again in the future. I trust you.

I believe there are some of you that you're going. I'm wanting

to believe it. Reggie, challenge me. I'm wanting to believe

it. I'm not quite there yet. My prayer for you is that the faith

in this room would allow you to see Jesus is worth trusting. But

in saying that, I also want to say there are some of you and you're

trying to pick and choose where you're going to trust the Lord.

I'll trust you in this area, but not in that area. I'll trust

you with what's going on in South Texas, but not going to trust

you with my job, with my marriage, or I'll trust you in this

relationship, but not my finances. God, I mean, that's mine.

I. That you don't get to pick and choose. You trust him with everything

or you don't trust him at all. Every Sunday, we remind you guys

about the offering. This is not about filling coffers. This is

not about making budget. This is about obedience to a God worth

trusting in. And if you sing I trust in God and then say, but I'm

not going to give to God, I want you to know you're not trusting

in God. By the grace of God, we were able to send all these campers

off to camp and to see the move of God. Not a single one of

them who couldn't afford it was kept from going because we had

scholarship money given by the generosity of this church to make

sure every student who wanted to go was able to go to camp. Praise

God. That happens because there's a church filled with people

who say, God, I trust you. I know I could use that money to pay

this down or to buy this or do that. But, God, I'm trusting you

and I'm giving to you what belongs to you. That's what the offering

moment is about. So I'm going to pray in just a moment. We're going

to get into the Word, but I want to encourage you while I move

into the message. If you haven't yet started to be faithful

in your giving Trust him if you don't know how. Just in every

once in a while, in the seat back, there's a connect code you

can scan with your phone or you can go to filler.org give. And

once you go there, you just. That's. It's simple. Follow the process,

set it up, and then you trust in God and watch him do so much more

than you could ever imagine. Now, I'm going to pray for this,

and then you can be seated and we'll move on with the message. Let's

pray. God, we're telling you right now, we trust you in every

moment, in the highs and the lows, when we have plenty, when we

have little, when we. When things seem to go our way, when everything

seems to be falling apart. God, we trust you. God, help us in

the areas where we lack faith to look up to you and see that you

are worth trusting in our giving, in our obedience, in the

pain and suffering, in the joy and victory. We lift it all to you

and we trust you. In Jesus holy name, we pray. Amen. Amen. You

guys can grab a seat. Well, this morning we're going to continue

on in our sermon series where we are going through the Gospel of

Matthew, chapter by chapter, verse by verse. We're going to be

in Matthew 12. So you want to grab your Bible and head over to

Matthew 12 while you're finding Matthew 12. I'm going to

tell you that I've had a ton of people come up to me and tell

me, hey, I've been praying for you. If you haven't noticed, I've

been gone for a couple of weeks. Hurts my heart that you haven't

noticed I've been gone, but I have been. I've been in Africa. I

was in Tanzania. Thank you. Somebody over here noticed. I'm so

grateful for that. And I got to visit some Compassion sites with

Compassion International and see some of the work they're doing

there. And then my eldest daughter Abby, and I did something

crazy. We attempted to climb Kilimanjaro, the tallest mountain

in Africa. And I gotta be honest with you, I had no idea how

stinking hard it was gonna be. It just seemed like a really long

walk uphill. And I saw the billefelds over here. Sharon, Wendell,

they climbed it a number of years ago. And I went to ask them

about it. I had heard they'd climbed it, and I was, like, super

excited to talk to them. And they weren't super excited back for

me. And I was curious why, but they didn't tell me that much about

it other than drink your water, take your altitude sickness

medicine, and good luck. And when I did it, I went up there. And

by the way, by the grace of God, we made it to the top. It was

hard, but we made it. In fact, we have a picture we're gonna show

my daughter Abby and I there at the highest point of Africa. I

want you to know we're smiling. It looks easy. This is what

it looked like. We looked like this. And then we went. I mean, I

recorded a video and I sound delirious. Like, I'm talking. My

speech is the third. And we made it to the top of the summit,

right? I mean, it was just. My mind was gone. It was. The altitude

sickness was so intense for everybody. We both felt like death.

And it was one of the most anticlimactic things ever, because

we've been hiking four and a half days straight up to get all

the way up to 19,000ft. And you're there at the summit. And I

thought I was gonna be like a. Whoo. I made it. And I was just like,

get me down from this mountain right now. I mean, it was. It was

incredibly painful to make it up to the top. And I went back to

Wendell and Sherry. I saw them at prayer on Wednesday, and I said,

why didn't you tell me? It was so hard. We didn't wanna discourage

you. Wendell said after, or Sherry said after, when they had

talked to me before I left, that she went to her husband and

said, he has no idea what he's about to do. And you were right.

I had no idea how painful it was gonna be. But by the grace of

God, we made it. Learned. I learned so many things. You're gonna

be so sick of me talking about stories of the things that I learned

on that mountain. But today, you're not going to hear a single

story from it, because that's all. The stories are about work and

about how God comes to you when you're working. But actually,

the passage today is all about rest. It's about the Sabbath. So

I'm going to have to save my Kilimanjaro stories for later. And

we're just going to dig into Matthew 12 and learn what Jesus has

to teach us about what it means to rest. Now, while you're

finding Matthew 12, I want you to know it builds on what we finished

with last week. So last week, it finished with some of the most

beautiful words of Jesus when he says at the end of chapter 11,

come to me, all of you who are weary. And burdened. And I'll give

you rest. Take my yoke upon you, because my yoke is easy and

my burden is light. So he's talking about the yoke of Jesus.

Now in chapter 12, he's going to compare a different yoke, a yoke

of the Pharisees, a yoke of religiosity, a yoke of slavery that

is burdensome and cruel and life shattering. And he's saying

there's two yokes, my yoke or religion's yoke. You choose. That's

what he's getting to. In chapter 12, he's showing us the other

yoke. So we begin in verse one. First couple of verses will

set the stage. Here's what it says, Matthew 12:1. At that time,

Matthew 12:1

Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath and his disciples

were hungry. And they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat.

But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, look, your disciples

are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath. Get out. I'm

going to pause a little bit of history lesson for you. You won't

understand what's going on unless you understand why the Pharisees

are so ruffled by what Jesus disciples are doing. So it says,

your disciples are not doing what's lawful on the Sabbath. Now,

if you've been at this church for any length of time, you know

all about the Sabbath, because we talk about it all the time. But

there may be some of you, you're joining us or worshipping

with us online, you haven't heard much about the Sabbath. The

Sabbath is the day of rest, comes from the creation account.

Six days God created the world. On the seventh day, he ceased

from his work and rested. By the way, the word Shabbat, which

is where we get Sabbath from, the Hebrew word means to cease, means

to stop your work. Now, the Jewish people, especially the nation

of Israel, was defined by this seventh day of rest. It showed them

that they had been freed from their slavery to become the people

of God. If you know the story of Exodus, then the Israelites, you

know, were slaves in the land of Egypt. And they, as slaves, were

forced to work seven days a week. Their only value was found

in how many bricks they could make for Pharaoh. In fact, when they

tried to take a few days of rest to go worship God, Pharaoh came

down on them and said, you're just lazy now. You don't even get

straw. Go make more bricks. Make more bricks, because your only

value is how many bricks you produce. But when God freed them

through the ten plagues and the death of the firstborn, and they're

set free, and they pass through the Red Sea and they get

into the wilderness. God says, I'm going to give you ten commandments.

And one of those, the fourth commandment, is that you rest. And

here's why. To remind you and the world around you, you are no

longer slaves to Egypt. Pharaoh doesn't own you. I own you.

And the whole idea of the Sabbath is you can stop doing any

work and still have value, because your value is based on my

work for you, not your work for me. That's why the Sabbath was

so incredibly important to the Jewish people. But there was one

problem about the Sabbath in the Old Testament, in the law of

Moses, is that God didn't give a whole lot of instructions on exactly

what it means to work and not work. So, like, how do you know whether

you're breaking the Sabbath or not? So over the centuries, there

developed among the nation of Israel and the Jewish people, what's

called the oral tradition, mostly known as the Mishnah. Now,

the Mishnah is not the law of God. It's the law of men. Trying

to interpret the law of God, that's a really important distinction.

Now, in the Mishnah, there were 39 things that you were not

allowed to do on the Sabbath because they were considered work.

Now, you go back to the story of the disciples. They're walking

through the grain fields and they're plucking off heads of grain,

and they're eating it. Now, according to the Mishnah, not according

to the law of Moses, but according to the Mishnah, they had

broken four commandments by what they were doing. First of all,

they had plucked heads of grain off the wheat. They were walking

right next to a wheat field. They would pluck it off. Now, according

to the Mishnah, that was considered harvesting, and that was

forbidden on the Sabbath. So they had broken one law already.

The second thing they would do, though, is once you plucked the

head of grain, you had to rub it in your fingers to separate the

husk or the chaff from the seed. Well, that was considered threshing,

and you were now working against. Threshing was forbidden

on the Sabbath. So now you've broken two commandments. Well, then

what you would do is you would. You would blow on it, so the

husk would fly away. So you only had the seed. Well, that was

considered winnowing, which was forbidden on the Sabbath. So

now you've broken three commandments. Then when they got

the Seed. And they put it in their mouth. That was considered

preparing a meal for yourself, which was forbidden on the Sabbath.

You could only do that the day before the Sabbath. So now they take

it, they separate it, they blow it, they eat it. They have broken

four commandments of the Mishnah, the law around the law.

And the Pharisees are all bent out of shape. How dare they do that?

They know the law. I love Jesus response to this. This is one

of the things I most appreciate about Jesus. He is real

quick to break the laws of men if it doesn't align with the law

of God. He loves breaking the rules of men. This is exactly why

he's allowing this to take place, because he's going to make

a point. And so he comes back in and he tries to show them, guys,

you are barking up the wrong tree. That's a yoke of slavery. That's

not the yoke that I want to give you. That's the letter of the

law, but it's missing the heart of the law. And that's why

in verses 3 through 8, he tells them what God's heart actually

is. He's trying to help them break free from the wrong yoke to

have the right yoke. So let's keep on reading. Picking up. In verse

three, it says, he said to them, have you not read what David

did when he was hungry and those who were with him, how he entered

the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence which it was

not lawful for him to eat, nor those who were with him, but only

for the priests. Or have you not read in the law how on the Sabbath

the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless?

I tell you something greater than the temple is here. And if you

had known what this means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice, you

would not have condemned the guiltless, for the Son of Man is

the Lord of the Sabbath. So what Jesus is doing right here is

he's redefining for them what is and isn't permissible on the Sabbath.

He's saying, I'm the Lord of the Sabbath, I get to decide. And

he's saying, guys, you've missed the complete heart of God.

He says, if you had only understood this, I desire mercy,

sacrifice, you wouldn't have condemned my innocent disciples.

That phrase, I desire mercy and not sacrifice is so beautifully

important because that's the comparison of the two yokes. When

it says sacrifice, it's not talking about giving up something

on behalf of God for your love of God. It's talking about the sacrificial

system. It's talking about the rules and regulations. He's saying,

I don't desire you to obey all the rules and regulations as the

highest thing, as if the law is the most important thing. I desire

mercy. Now, that's taken from Hosea6.6. And if you were to read

it in the Hebrew, it has one of the most beautiful Hebrew words

written right there for mercy. It's the Hebrew word chesed. You

got to say it all guttural like, like you're choking a chesed.

That's the word, and it literally means loving kindness.

Chesed. That's what I desire, loving kindness. That you exercise,

kindness toward God and others because you've experienced my love

for you. That's what. Not a sacrificial system, but loving kindness.

Because loving kindness is a yoke that is easy and light. But

sacrificial system and rules and regulations, that's the yoke

that kills. He says, you're looking at the wrong thing. You haven't

even found out what pleases God. And he gives two stories to

explain how they've missed the mark. The first one was about David,

and the second was about priests. So you look back at verse

three. He tells a story about David. Now, this comes from 1 Samuel,

1 Samuel 21 · chapter mention

chapter 21, a little background of that story. David has

been anointed by Samuel to be the next king, but Saul is still

king, and Saul is trying to kill David. David is on the run with

a few people who've come with him, and they are famished and exhausted,

and he's just trying to survive. And he goes up to the tabernacle,

and there in the tabernacle is the high priest, Ahimelech. And he

comes up to Ahimelech and he says, would you give us the bread

of the Presence so that we can eat and survive? Now, here's what

you need to know if you were here. Last summer, we did the whole

Exodus series about the tabernacle. We talked about the Bread

of the Presence. That was the table of showbread. It was right

next to the Holy of Holies, inside the holy place in the tabernacle.

And only the high priest and his family were allowed to eat that

bread. David was not a high priest, and the people with him were

not of that family. And so Ahimelech, according to the law,

should not have given David that bread. But he does, because

he sees the anointed who is going to die if he doesn't eat. And

he gives him the bread and his men. And God nowhere punishes David

or his men or Ahimelech for what he's done. Why? Because he showed

chesed. He showed lovingkindness. And that was more

important than rote obedience to the rules and regulations. I desire

chesed and not sacrifice. He's saying, it's all over the Bible.

You've just missed it. And then he goes to a second story about

the priests. And he says, have you not read. He's referring to numbers,

Numbers 28 · chapter mention

chapter 28, how the priests on the Sabbath have to break the Sabbath

by offering the sacrifices in the morning and at night they don't

get to stop. The priests have to do the work on the Sabbath, and

they do it because it shows chesed back to God, loving kindness

back to God. I offer these sacrifices because I love you, God.

And he's saying, if you're willing to do that for the temple,

can't you see that my disciples should be willing to do

that for me? And then he explains why. Because something greater

than the temple is here among you. Now, I want you to know that

statement went poof right over the heads of the Pharisees. They

had no idea what Jesus was talking about. But Jesus was trying

to help them understand that the temple as beautiful and the tabernacle

along with it, as beautiful as it was, was always just a shadow

of what was to come. But Christ is what it was pointing to.

Those of you who were here last summer, we talked about the

tabernacle. I showed you element after element of how it all

pointed to Jesus. And it was intended to be a picture of God's

divine power and God's divine presence coming to earth. Even the

way the inside of the tabernacle was made, with the curtains

that had cherubim that looked like the angels of heaven and the

colors that look like the tabernacle twilight of the sky, all

of it was designed to make you feel when you walked into the holy

place, like you were stepping up into the heavens in the presence

of God. And it was intended to be a picture that heaven has come

down to earth, the tabernacle and then the temple. But Jesus says

all that which is to help you understand God himself was gonna

take on flesh and come to earth. John, chapter 1, verse 14

John 1:14

says, and Jesus, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

That word is and tabernacled among us. Jesus was always a true

tabernacle. God's presence among us. He is greater than the

temple. And he says, just like priests can serve the temple because

it's God's presence. My disciples can serve me because I

am God among you. He says, I'm the Lord of the Sabbath. And you've

missed it because you made it about a bunch of rules and regulations

and you missed that it's really about me. Can I be really

honest with you? It's so easy for us to get our rocks and throw

them at the Pharisees. Like those guys, man, they just missed

everything. And we do the exact same thing. We don't even realize

it. We turn Christianity into a bunch of do's and don'ts, into

this religious thing that we've got to do to try to please

God. I mean, if we go to church enough, if we give enough

money, if we serve, if we go on a mission trip, if we adopt children,

if we help the poor, if we do all these things, then maybe, just

maybe, Jesus will accept us and we'll make it into heaven. And

that is not the message of the Bible. That's the law of slavery

that leads to death. It's the wrong yoke. When I was hiking this

past week, I met a guy from England, and really, really nice

guy, but he's not a believer. And he was with us on our trip and

we were talking about. He's asking questions about how do you

believe? And why would you believe in Jesus? And we got to the

question about religions of the world and just asking, like,

you know, we were literally at a time of climbing a mountain, and

there were a number of different pathways to get to the

top. And he's going like, isn't it kind of like that? I mean,

God's at the top and we're all just trying to find different ways

to make it to the top to get to him. Isn't that all religion is?

And I had to answer his question, which, by the way, that

may be a question some of you have, maybe some of you are online

watching because you don't know what we teach around here. You

don't know, how is Christianity different than Islam

or Buddhism or Confucianism or Judaism, or, like, what makes it

different? Which, by the way, if you don't have an answer to that,

if your only reason for believing in Jesus because your parents,

your grandparents believed in Jesus and you were born into it,

you're missing it completely. You need to have an answer for that

question. Why believe in Christianity when there are so many

religions of the world? Well, here's the answer I gave to my friend.

I said, listen, Christianity is categorically different than every

other religion of the world. Because every religion is based on

one thought. Every other religion that you obey the rules

of that religion and you please the divine power and you get

the reward from that divine power. Every religion in the world

is based on that. You think about Judaism. If you obey the law

of Moses, this is what the Pharisees were doing. If you obey

all the rules and regulations, then Yahweh will be pleased with

you and you will attain to life, abundant life. You go to Islam.

If I obey the five pillars of Islam and do what I'm supposed to

do, then I can please Allah and then I will attain to paradise.

You go to Buddhism. If I obey the Eightfold pathway that leads

to enlightenment, if I follow it correctly and do it well enough,

then I will please the divine essence in the universe and attain

to nirvana. If I go to Confucianism, if I obey the teachings

of Confucius and walk in his way, I will arrive at intellect and

intelligence and enlightenment. Any religion of the

world is based on that, save one. Christianity at its core is

not about what we do to make ourselves right with God. It's about

what God did to make us right with him. It's not about us building

a tower to make it up to heaven so we can make it up to God.

It's about God saying they're never going to make it so he came

down to earth in flesh to save us. Christianity is about what God

did, not what we do. That's why it's categorically different

than every other religion out there. But we can make it about what

we do. About. If I just obey what Jesus said and fulfill all the

roles and check all the boxes. If the good, and I hear this all,

if the good in my life can outweigh the bad, if maybe I just

get to scale enough, maybe by the hair of my chinny chin chin,

I'll make it into heaven. That's religion. That's the yoke

of slavery. The reason why the yoke of Jesus is light and easy is

because he accomplished it and we just accept it by faith. But sometimes

we put on the wrong yoke and we don't even realize we're doing

it. Telltale signs is that we're always tired, we're always

angry, we're always overwhelmed. We never feel good enough.

Or if we feel like we're obeying the laws, we feel better

than everybody else and look down our noses at people. Those are

the telltale signs that we've got the wrong yoke on. That's exactly

what those Pharisees were doing, looking down their nose at

here's man, Jesus coming to bring life. And they just won't even

see it. They won't even believe it. That's why Jesus has

to show them on the most practical of levels that they're

putting on the wrong yoke. This is exactly what he does in the

next story, because he's going to do something phenomenal on the

Sabbath and the Pharisees are going to hate him for it. Let's keep

on reading, picking it back up. In verse nine, it says, he went

on from there and entered their synagogue, and a man was there

with a withered hand. And they asked him, is it lawful to heal on

the Sabbath so that they might accuse him? So here's what it's saying

they're doing, these Pharisees, they're trying to trap

Jesus. They want to get him because they want to accuse him.

They want to get some dirt on Jesus. Now, in the last story, they

got some dirt on the disciples because they were breaking the Mishnah

by harvesting and threshing and winnowing and preparing a meal

for themselves. But apparently Jesus wasn't eating the grain, so

they didn't have any dirt on Jesus yet, so they want to get some

dirt on him. So they come up with a trick question. They say,

is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? Now here's why this was

a trick question. Because the answer was both yes and no, and they

knew it. You see, there was this little caveat in the Mishnah

that if somebody was deathly ill, it was lawful to heal on the

Sabbath. But if they were not at the point of death, then you had

to wait until the next day to do healing. It was not allowed. And

they knew Jesus loved to heal on the Sabbath and he couldn't pass

up a guy with a withered hand. And they were gonna catch Jesus saying,

yes, it's lawful. And they were gonna go, aha, you're wrong.

Cause this guy's life wasn't threatened and they were gonna have

him trapped. The guy had a withered hand. It doesn't say exactly

what that means. But likely he was paralyzed and turned in. And

he had probably been that way his whole life, decades. This was

not life threatening. He could have waited till the next day to

heal him. But Jesus doesn't fall into their trap. He sets the

trap. He springs it because he wants to show them just how off they

are. And I love how he steps right into it and says, guys, let

me teach you something. Listen to his response, Pick it back up.

In verse 11, 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 a man than a sheep?

So is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath? So it is lawful to do

good on the Sabbath. Then he said to the man, stretch out your

hand. And the man stretched it out, and he was restored, healthy

like the other. But the Pharisees went out and conspired

against him. How to destroy him. Isn't that sad? These Pharisees

had just seen a real miracle of Almighty God. And the only way

they can respond is by saying, we gotta kill this guy. I'm curious.

Any of you in here have watched the Chosen at all? Raise

your hand if you. Okay, good. A lot of you, if you haven't, I strongly

encourage you to go. It's just vibrant the way it brings to life

the stories of the Bible. But there's this story is done in video

fashion in the Chosen, and it's phenomenal to watch that juxtaposition

of a man whose hand is withered and watch it be healed,

and then to watch these Pharisees, instead of rejoicing in

it, wanting to kill him. Your mind is blowing, going, how could

they respond that way? But here's how they could respond that

way. They had already determined Jesus was evil and he

needed to go down because he was a threat to their way of life.

So no matter what happened, they were going to take him down.

And it was time for Jesus to call out their hypocrisy. That's

why he says, which one of you who has a sheep that's fallen into

a pit won't take it out on the Sabbath? Now, here's what's interesting.

I don't know if you know this or not, but there is nowhere in the

law of Moses or the Mishnah or any oral tradition that allows a

Jew to pull an animal out of a ditch. It is forbidden everywhere.

In fact, in the oral tradition all over the place, it says, if an

animal falls into a ditch, you may not rescue it until the next

day. It says it very clearly. There is no allowance for you to

pull an animal out of a ditch when it falls into it. And he says,

which one of you, if your animal falls into a ditch, won't

pull it out, saying, every single one of you will. And you want

to know why you'll do it? Jesus tells them, because that animal

matters to you. And you'll break the law to do what matters

to you. By the way, I don't know if you know this or not. You

do the exact same thing. The other day, I got a call from my daughter

who was out walking, and she was probably like 3 miles away from

the house, but she called frantically because a couple of dogs

had gotten loose, and they were pit bulls. And she was scared.

A friend of ours recently got bitten by a dog being out for a walk.

And she was understandably terrified that there were these two

pit bulls following her on her walk. And so she calls me, frantic,

saying, daddy, help. And you want to know what I did? I ran out

to my garage, got in my car, and I sped off and I broke every

single law of this land to get my daughter. There was a stop sign.

You think I stopped? No, man, I didn't even do California stop.

I just around the corner, it said 40 miles. You think I was going

40? I don't know how fast I was going, but I promise you it was

not 40. I was going way, because I'm going to get. If a police

car got behind me, I'm like, come on, brother, we're going to

go save my daughter. We ain't stopping till we get here. You want

to know why? Because this is my daughter, and I love her. And

I'll break whatever law I have to to save my daughter. By the way,

so will you. And if you wouldn't, I slap you in the face

for not being willing to break a law to save your daughter. When

something matters to us, we're gonna break every single law in order

to make sure that that thing is protected. Jesus knew that about

these Pharisees, and that's why he says, you do it for a sheep,

but you won't do it for this man. He's pointing out the hypocrisy,

the deadness of the yoke of slavery to laws. You think it's sacrifice,

but it's chesed loving kindness. Here's a man with a withered

hand. What would be lovingly kind of me, it would be to heal him.

And that's why he says, all y' all, watch this. Stick out your hand,

and immediately the man is healed. That's what the Sabbath is

for, he's saying. And these Pharisees had completely missed it.

And if we're not careful, so do we. It's so easy to turn Christianity

into rules. Do this, don't do that. Be a good little boy. Don't

make that mistake. As long as you don't sleep around, as long as

you don't get drunk, as long as you don't take drugs, as long

as you don't steal from, as long as you don't do the big sins,

you're gonna be okay. As if it's rules and regulations and we

miss the whole heart of God. When he says no, it's about you recognizing

I've loved you and you love me back and the people around you. That's

what the heart of Christianity is about. And one of the telltale

signs of whether you believe in that heart or not is what you

do on the Sabbath. That's why Jesus went right to the Sabbath as

he's comparing the two yokes. My yoke is easy and light. The yoke

of the Pharisees of slavery to religion is crushing. And one of

the ways you can see it is how you take the Sabbath. You see, these

Pharisees had begun to believe that the Sabbath was the highest

value and that you had to obey all the rules and regulations to

honor the Sabbath. This is why in Mark, chapter 2, verse 27, Jesus

Mark 2:27

says the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. In

other words, the Sabbath was meant to be a gift of life and joy

for us, not a burden that crushes us. But that's where it gets

distorted. And even some of you, when it comes to the Sabbath,

the Lord's day for the Jew, it was on Saturday. That was the seventh

day for them for rest. But since the early church, they moved

it to Sunday because we wanna worship on the day Jesus was resurrected

on Sunday. So the Christian church has been gathering to worship

and Sabbathing on Sunday since early times. And we can turn it into

rules and regulations that become burdensome. Well, you know,

you can't do homework on Sunday. You can't do laundry, can't

do yard work, can't do this and this and this. And we feel like

Sabbath is me just sitting at home, bored of tears. I guess I gotta

be a good little Christian if I want to please God and make it

into heaven. That's the yoke of slavery, of religion. It was always

meant to be a light and easy yoke. Sabbath was meant to be a day

of delight, A day where you don't have to work and you still

have value because it's what God has done for you, not what you

have done for God. You're not defined by how you get ahead at work

or how nice your yard looks or. Or how much laundry you get done

or how put together you are as you step into the office on Monday.

None of that matters. You let go of all of it and you have value

because of what God has done for you. It's a day for you delight.

Eat rich foods, join time with family and friends, resting and enjoying

all the things God has given you. It's meant to be a delight.

And we turn it into a burden. Cause we put on the yoke of slavery

to rules and regulations. And we think that's what Christianity

is. Jesus is saying, my Sabbath, that's my time of healing.

If there's anything I do on the Sabbath, it's healing. Because

my yoke is light and my burden is easy. I want to remind you something.

Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever. He does not change.

And just like in these days, he healed on the Sabbath. I think

Jesus still delights on healing in the Sabbath. Today we're

going to have a moment where we're going to have some prayer in

this Sabbath day. This Christian Sabbath day may be a time

for you to come forward and to let Jesus do what he delights in

doing, to bring healing to you on the Sabbath. Maybe for some of

you, you've got some physical ailment, something that you need.

I had a gentleman come up to me this morning in the other service

saying that he struggled severely with diabetes. And I anointed

him with oil and I prayed over him. And he came up to me saying,

my numbers have never been better. My doctor was overwhelmed.

And even his doctor said it was the power of prayer that did

that for him. I want you to know I got no power to do anything

other than to ask God. And God has the power because he loves to

heal on the Sabbath. Jesus showed us that there are some of

you who are here and you need physical healing. We have elders

of our church. According to James 5, we have little vials of

olive oil that will anoint you with in obedience to the Scriptures

and pray for healing, believing that Jesus loves to heal

on the Sabbath. Listen, he doesn't just do physical healing.

Some of you need healing in your marriage. Some of you need healing

in your finances. Some of you need healing in some kind of relationship

or in your job or healing from an addiction or whatever. You need

healing in your mind and heart. With anxiety and depression

overwhelming, you need healing in your inner being. Jesus loves

to heal on the Sabbath. And he's inviting you to come. In a moment,

you can come and you can ask Jesus to do what he loves to do.

It just requires faith. Before I do that, though, one last thing

I want to say he wants to give us the greatest kind of healing of

all. And that's not physical healing. It's not financial healing.

It's not relational healing, not even emotional healing. It's

spiritual healing. The most important kind of healing of all

is that he would heal your very soul. That's what the whole

Sabbath is about. It's the whole reason Jesus came to earth

wasn't to make your life easy. It was to save your soul. And the

Sabbath is just a picture of what Christ does. The Sabbath is

a picture of Jesus. This is exactly what it says. I want you

to. We're going to finish in the book of Colossians, chapter 2,

Colossians 2:16

verses 16 and 17. Listen to what Paul the apostle says here,

Colossians 2, 16. Therefore, let no one pass judgment on you in

questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a

new moon, or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come.

But the substance belongs to Christ. Notice what he says. All

these different things, including the Sabbath. The Sabbath

is a shadow. Christ is the substance. That fourth commandment

in the Ten Commandments to honor the Sabbath and to keep it

holy was always designed to point us to Jesus Christ. You go,

well, how does that point to Jesus? Well, remember what the Sabbath

is. I cease from my work and my identity is found in what God

does for me, not what I do for him. Well, that's the whole message

of the Gospel. The message of the Gospel is I cannot build my tower

to heaven. I cannot earn my righteousness. In fact, my own attempts

to be righteous are filthy rags before God. I can never overcome

the mountain of debt I've incurred for offending a holy God

who has been nothing but good to me. And the more I try to do it,

the more I offend the God who sent his Son to save me. So what

do I do? I cease my own efforts to save myself. I Shabbat.

I rest and I trust that what Jesus did was enough. I don't have

to pay back God for the wrong I've done to him. Jesus paid for

it on the cross. I don't have to be righteous. Jesus was righteous

for me, and I receive it. That's why right there on that baptistry,

it says, Jesus in my place. Every person who gets baptized puts

on a shirt that says Jesus in my place. Cristo en mi lugar. Because

it means Jesus did everything for me and I stop trying and I just

receive it. That's what the Sabbath reminds us of. And yet there

are many of you who are here this morning. And when I was talking

earlier about trying so hard to make your life right, you know,

I'm talking to you. You're so deflated, so broken, because you've

tried to change and you keep failing and you feel worthless. You

feel like it's impossible. You feel like you just can't seem to

get it right. You're never going to get it right. Jesus got

it right for you. You have to trust in what he did, not what you

do. I cannot tell you how many people I've talked to, and they tell

me, yeah, I know I need to get baptized. There's a few things in

my life I got to clean up first. I gotta get some things right

first. When I get that, then I'll come. No, no, no, no, no. That's

the law. That's the yoke of slavery to death. The reason why

the yoke of Jesus is light and easy is because it's already finished

on the cross. What did he yell out? It is finished. We don't have

to add to it. We don't clean up to come to him. We come to him

in our crud and our junk and our mess and our brokenness, and

he cleans us up. Some of you, you need to let him clean you up.

Come in your filth. Come in your brokenness. Come in your despair.

Come needy. That's what repentance is. I'm a failure. I can't

change. I can't make it to heaven. So I'm going to trust that

you came down from heaven to me. And I'm gonna let Jesus change

my heart. That's when you find freedom. That's when your soul gets

restored. That's when he reconciles you to God and your life

is made right. I can't make that decision for you, but you can

make it. This morning, I'm gonna invite you to stand to your

feet. Right now, I'm gonna invite the prayer team to come spread

out all over the front. If today you're ready, you're ready

to stop trying to save yourself, stop trying to make yourself

right, stop trying to be good enough and to raise your white flag

and say, I can't do it. But, Jesus, I trust in you, then you can

come down front and let us know that you're ready to trust Jesus

in your place. And maybe today, before the service is over,

you can express your faith in baptism. What will happen is somebody

will meet with you. We'll take you over to the counseling room where

you can talk with somebody about what it means to follow Christ.

And if you're ready, today can be your day. We'll give you shorts

to change into a T shirt that says Jesus in my place. And you can

declare freedom in Christ today. But you gotta come. Also want

to remind you, if you're in need of a miracle, someplace where

he brings healing to your life, whatever that healing is. Jesus

loves to heal on the Sabbath. Come in faith and let him bring healing.

He's got to come forward and let us pray for you. We're ready.

You respond as you need to.