"When Men Play God" - Mark 7:1-13

Let me just first say, I know I said before, it's good to be with you.

I know it's a weird thing. If you've been here from the beginning,

you know that if we ever would have had a Sunday a year and a half ago or two years ago with 10,

to 15 people out, we would have just called it because it would have just me

preaching to Kareth and the boys.

So it's a fun thing just to watch what God has done.

It's a fun thing and a joyous thing for me just to watch how God's blessed Trinity.

And I think it's, I don't know, I'm excited for what is to come.

I just wanted to say that I was thinking that as we were singing,

just thanking God for what he's done here. So, again, if you've got about where

you need Mark 7, and I want to ask you a question.

Is it more wrong to allow what God prohibits or to prohibit what God allows?

Read that again. Is it more wrong to allow what God prohibits or to prohibit what God allows?

I think the first one is easier for us. When I say, is it wrong to allow what God prohibits?

I think most of us in the room hear that and we go like, well,

that's obviously very wrong.

If God has said to do something and we don't do that thing, we're wrong.

We would call that theological liberalism, where they read the Bible or someone

reads the Bible and they kind of look at them as suggestions and not laws,

or they find ways around them.

Well, you know, that was written a long time ago and that was written to a different

people. And, you know, if God was writing a Bible today, he wouldn't say those things.

It just so happens that they're the ones that know exactly what God would say

if he was writing a Bible today, which is always convenient.

But I think we're pretty good on that one in here. I don't think many of us

have a problem with theological liberalism. However, this second one,

to prohibit what God allows, is a lot more difficult.

It's a lot more difficult because all of us have things. We all have a spiritual report card.

All right, we all have things and when we walk in a room or when we meet somebody,

we're kind of seeing which boxes they check.

We always joke about it, but there's theological buzzwords that I listen for.

Like when I'm listening to a guy preach, I'm listening for certain things and

he'll say certain words that I'll kind of go, I think I like this guy, right?

Like, oh, he's talking or he quotes certain people. Oh, he quoted John Owen plus, right?

Oh, he quoted that guy. It's questionable.

I'm watching someone live their

life and they're maybe doing some things differently than I would do them.

And it's everything in me not to go, you know, if they were just a little smarter,

if they knew what I knew, if they were as enlightened as I was,

if they had read John Owen, they would know that that's not how you should live.

And somebody goes, well, what's wrong with it? And it's often not,

let me take you to the scriptures and show you what it is.

Often what's wrong with it is I don't like it.

I wouldn't do it that way, right? I have come to a different conclusion.

And that is just as sinful as me allowing something that God permits.

Sorry, allowing something that God prohibits. Why? Because in both cases,

I'm making myself God, right?

I'm making myself God. If I allow what God prohibits, if I let sin reign in

my life or my family's life, or if I don't speak out against it and I'm allowing

what God says shouldn't be allowed, I'm in sin.

Because what I'm saying is, I know better than God does.

I'm smarter than God is. But if I prohibit what God allows, I'm saying the same thing.

I just look a lot more holy doing it.

If someone's doing something that I don't think they should be doing.

But God hasn't told them that it's wrong to do, then I'm, again,

putting myself in God's place and saying, hey, I know God didn't tell you not

to do that, but I'm telling you not to do that.

In this case, I'm the Lord, and I get to tell you how to live your life,

and I get to tell you what you should and shouldn't do. And they're going,

well, the Bible doesn't say anything about that. And I'm going,

yeah, but I am. It's like, okay.

That's what we're going to see this morning. Again, Jesus to this point hasn't

really dealt with a lot of theological liberalism. He hasn't dealt with a lot

of things like that just yet. He will.

But the first thing that Jesus begins to attack as we kind of make a tone shift

in Mark is he goes after the Pharisees and specifically he goes after what we

would call legalism, where these guys are prohibiting what God allows.

They've added things to God's law to make themselves more holy,

to make themselves above others so they can tell others what to do.

And Jesus is going to attack this pretty head-on.

As we get deeper into the Gospels, and honestly, I think Jesus just knows when he's supposed to die.

And as he gets closer to the date that he knows he's going to die,

that he knows they're going to rest in, he gets more and more aggressive.

This is actually a pretty light treatment of the Pharisees. It gets much worse.

But we've had a few parables in chapters three and four to this point,

but we haven't seen a lot of like Jesus is teaching. A lot of miracles.

A lot of Mark telling us what he's doing, where he's going and how he's going

about things. and Mark's going to make a little bit of a shift here and we're

going to get into more teaching.

What is Jesus saying when he goes to these places? Let me just start.

We'll work our way through this today. I won't read the whole thing at one time.

Let me just start by reading chapter seven, verse one.

It says, now when the Pharisees gathered to him with some of the scribes who

had come from Jerusalem, pause right there, Jerusalem to Capernaum is about

90 miles, 80 to 100, depending on where you are in those places.

So what's happened is the Pharisees and some of the scribes from Jerusalem, right?

The home base have begun to hear more and more about this Jesus guy,

right? They've already come down a few times. They've already talked to him.

They've let some of the local guys take their shot at him. Now the word is getting out.

If you feed thousands of people, word gets out.

I don't know if you've ever given away free food, but the second you are giving

away free food, everybody knows.

Everybody knows where to find free food.

I was telling the story this morning when we did our first like chunk or treat

thing with the Rays and they were here and he decided to do hot dogs.

Once people knew we had hot dogs, there were people showing up that I didn't know existed.

They're like, we heard y'all are giving out hot dogs. And of course, it's like, yeah, we are.

Everyone knows where you are at that point. When you give out free food,

people are going to know.

More importantly than that, he's challenging the Pharisees teaching.

He doesn't teach like them.

He doesn't talk like them. He doesn't give the same reasoning they do.

He doesn't really care a whole lot about what's been said or traditions or what

somebody said 200 years ago. Jesus is God. He's teaching God's word.

And he's encouraging people to listen to him and therefore encroaching on the

Pharisees' area of influence.

The Pharisees like the control they have and Jesus is taking that away.

People are becoming more and more enamored with this Jesus guy and by extension,

the teaching of the Pharisees are becoming less and less important and isn't this always the case?

If Jesus is going to become bigger and bigger in your life, if his voice is

going to become louder and louder, then all the things that once had your ear,

will rush, will rush to you and try and convince you that you shouldn't listen.

Now, this can be as practical as friends, family members, as you get more and more into Jesus.

Again, as his voice grows in your life, friends and family members that once

had your ear that once were the ones dictating your life to you will start running

up to you and trying to convince you, hey, why are you listening to this guy?

Like, hey, Jesus is cool, but you don't really live your whole life based on

what he says. Like, don't you think you're taking this a little far?

But it's just as true of hobbies, right?

The things we like to do, the way we spend our time. As Jesus takes up more

and more of those things, all of those things that once had our hearts and once

had our minds are going to try to do everything they can to keep control of you.

And that's what's going on. The Pharisees and these scribes travel 90 miles, 90 miles.

That's a lot when you don't have a car, right?

90 miles to come and confront Jesus. We're going to get a picture of another

showdown between these two groups. So let's continue to read verse two.

He says, they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is unwashed.

For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly,

holding to the tradition of the elders.

When they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash.

There are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups

and pots, copper vessels, and dining couches.

Now, I don't think that the Pharisees are really concerned about the disciples' hygiene.

They're not being good parents and being like, hey, I saw where your hands were.

I saw what you were doing outside. And it's probably best that before you grab

a handful of something to eat, that you wash your hands.

I saw you using the plate as a dirt scoop earlier. Let's wash that off before we eat off of that.

The Pharisees are not concerned with their physical cleanliness.

This is a holiness issue for them.

We see, too, that their question is not directed at the disciples.

It's directed at Jesus, right? They recognize that Jesus is the one that is in charge here.

And so what are they quoting? What are they getting at? Well,

historically speaking, the Jews or the Hebrews at the time had something called the Halakha.

Sounds Hawaiian almost. I think that's because I've watched Haka dances.

But the Halakha, and I'm probably saying that wrong. My Hebrew is very rough, right?

But that word translated literally means law but the original meaning of that word was to walk,

the idea was that you had the word of god and then they had this oral tradition

called the halakha and that was how you walked so here's the law of god here's

what you're supposed to do and the scribes at the time there weren't pharisees

when this really took hold

but the the scribes,

had this oral tradition passed down from place to place.

And they would say, the law says this, but the halakha says this.

And they used it as a fence, right? So people would know the law of God and

they would go, well, how exactly do I keep that? And the scribes and the rabbis

were all too happy to tell them how to live their lives.

Well, if you really want to follow that law, you need to do this,

this, this, this, and this.

Now, this was all compiled in the third century into what you may have heard

of, which is the Mishnah.

Now you've definitely heard of this. This is comprised much of the Jewish Talmud that they have today.

That's how they got what they got. These are oral teachings written down now

in the Talmud. This is how people live. And Jesus makes this distinction.

You hear it most clearly in the Sermon on the Mount.

So if you go read Matthew 5 through 7, you'll hear Jesus say this,

you have heard it said, and then he rebuffs that by saying, but I say.

Another word of thinking this is, you have heard it said, the Mishnah that you

have says this, but God says this.

God says this, Jesus never takes issue with God's law. That's never Jesus' problem.

He follows it perfectly. In fact, I think often when we talk about legalism,

what we can sometimes fall into is when we say, well, that person's just a legalist.

What we're really saying is, that person takes God more seriously than me,

and that really doesn't make me feel good about my own law. I don't know if

you've ever felt that before.

I get around certain people that they're not being legalists.

They're just trying to follow God's word. They're a little more disciplined than me.

They pray, they pray, actually set aside time to do that, or they read their

Bible the way they're supposed to, or they love people the way they're supposed to.

And I just, I know I'm not doing that. And so when I see that,

I go, well, that's just a legalist, right? They're just working for God's love.

No, they're just following the Lord more faithfully than you.

And you don't like that. And I'm super guilty of that.

That's not what Jesus is attacking. What Jesus, again, is attacking is this

oral teaching that's been passed down.

Now, what happens to something when it's passed down from generation to generation?

Does it stay the same? No, never.

It grows. It gets bigger and bigger and bigger because every generation wants

to put their imprint on it.

This is like family lore that gets passed down. Like the actual story may be

that, you know, your great, great grandpa went in the woods and he shot a bear.

By the time it gets to you, it's my great, great grandpa was holding hands with

Abraham Lincoln and they went into the woods and they fought a bear with their

bare hands and they almost lost. But then he stabbed him in the throat the last

second. He saved Abraham Lincoln's life. And that's why America is what it is.

That's not the story. But after years and years and years, people add on their

own things. This is much the same.

I honestly think that when they first started doing this, I bet they had great

intentions that people would come to them and say, I'm trying to keep the law,

but I've got some questions. I'm a little confused as to how I should do that.

They said, well, maybe you should try this. Maybe you should try that.

Maybe you should fence yourself in this way just to make sure you're following it.

And over time, it has become this tradition of the elders, as Mark would call

it, that has not helped people keep the law, but has taken the place of it.

This whole hand washing thing stems from a commandment in the Old Testament,

where God has told the priests that before they go in to do a sacrifice or to

go into the temple or to the tabernacle, that they should wash their hands and

feet. That's what they're supposed to do.

Never says anything about eating a meal or doing this or doing that,

but because Pharisees are legalists and they want control over people,

right? They want to be God. What do they do?

They walk 90 miles to tell Jesus' disciples, hey, you need to wash your hands. You're not holy.

I don't know if you've ever experienced this in your life.

My bet is you have been the Pharisee and you have experienced the Pharisee,

right? Nobody wants to do that. Whenever we read about the Pharisees,

we immediately have this pushback to say, I would never do that.

But we're all guilty of this in some way, shape, or form.

But we've all probably experienced this in some way, shape, or form when you

go, somebody tells you, you have to do that. And you go, well,

why? And they go, well, that's because the way we've always done it.

That's how we do things.

That's what we're supposed to do. We never leave any room for our consciences.

We never leave any room for God to work.

The greatest command is what? Love the Lord your God with all your heart,

soul, mind, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.

And our immediate sinful reaction to that is to say, I need to put some rules on that.

I need to tell people how they love their neighbor well. I need to tell people

how they love God well. I need to give them instructions.

And the whole time God's going, if I wanted more, if I wanted to give them more

instruction, I would have. I would have.

Again, the Pharisees are not quoting God's law. He quotes here as we continue

to read in chapter 7, verse 5.

So the Pharisees and the scribes ask him, why do your disciples not walk according

to the tradition of the elders, but eat with the filed hands?

And Jesus says to them, and here he's going to quote Isaiah 29, 13.

Well, did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written,

this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.

In vain, they do worship me.

Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.

You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of man,

right? This is the core of Jesus's issue.

What the Pharisees are concerned about is their own traditions,

their own way of living, their own way of doing things, and even more so,

they impose that on other people.

They impose that on other people.

This happens all kinds of different ways. And I think it depends on the generation you lived in.

Like when my parents grew up and some of you guys in the room,

if somebody were to bring up drinking in a church, they would have looked at

you like you brought a serpent in that was going to kill everybody,

right? Like you brought a tank into the room and we're about to blow everyone away.

Even now, when I say drinking, there's some uncomfortability in the room.

Everybody take a breath.

Okay. We're just all going to drink this together. No, I'm kidding.

Why would I bring it up here? There's a whole bar in the back.

Um, that would make no sense. We're all going to make our way to the back and

we're all going to make a lesson here.

But it's funny, as generations have changed, like my generation,

most people do not have a huge issue with it.

Most people don't. I'm really good friends with someone that works at a church in Tyler who I love.

He works at, I'll tell you, they don't care. He works at the Living Acts Church.

He doesn't really work there, but he volunteers there. He's part of a staff meeting, part of it.

And they do their staff meetings at the brewery across the street from them.

And he told me that. And I was like, I don't know about that.

Like, that seems like a slippery slope.

Again, even now, some of you are doing the math. Well, I don't know about that.

I see it here. I just put that there.

But the truth is, who am I to say?

Right? It's a matter of your conscience. Now, does the Bible say a lot of things

about drinking and what it is and what it isn't, what you should do,

what you shouldn't do? Absolutely, it does.

You know what it never says in bold letters? Don't do it. It never says that.

Now, there's a lot of wisdom around not doing it, maybe. There's a lot of wisdom

about how you do it, a lot of wisdom about where you do it, all of those things.

But it doesn't say, don't do it.

And you can pick anything. I picked that one because it seems to be the hot button issue.

I can still remember to this day going to a church in Chicago when I was probably 17 or 18.

And it's Chicago, right? We're about two blocks from Wrigley Field.

We're doing homeless mission stuff there. And we get to the end of the service that Sunday morning.

The pastor gets up and says, hey, somebody in the church has donated a bunch

of, I think it's the Blackhawks. Is that Chicago's hockey team?

Okay, we're not hockey people. Okay.

Good. I could have said anything, right? The Chicago Blue Jays.

And you'd have been like, yeah, cool, hockey.

Is it raining again? Man, every week.

So he gets up to the end. He goes, so we've got this block of tickets.

If you'd like one, come get one. We have this number.

We would love for you to come out to the game with us, enjoy the game, have a beer and hang out.

And all of us, all 20 students in a row looking like this.

Like, is this guy Satan? Like, what is this guy? Can you say that?

Now, why did we think that? Well, it's because that's what we thought. That's how we thought.

Let me be very clear. If you don't drink and that's a matter of your conscience for you, amen to that.

Amen to that, right? Don't do it. If you feel not allowed to do it, don't do it.

The point is we can't hold people to a tradition or a standard that the Bible

hasn't explicitly told us. And you can pick anything you want.

Pick whatever tradition you like. the way you dress, the way you talk,

the way you handle your business, where your kids go to school.

Everybody has an opinion on certain things, but the truth is we just can't open

our Bible and say, this is what you should wear.

The Bible says that JCPenney is the only place you can sell for clothes.

We're all approved at JCPenney.

I went to Dillard's. Well, then you're too fancy for us and you need to leave,

right? We don't have these things.

I'll give you one more example. If someone were to give you $5,000 tomorrow,

just cash, let's double it. Let's say $10,000 cash, whatever's a lot of money to you, okay?

But they gave it to you in cash. how would you spend that money?

How would you spend that money? Would you give some of it to the church?

Would you find someone who needs it? Do you need it?

Does your family need it? Would

you take your spouse out for a nice dinner or would that be wasteful?

What would you do with that money? Now, all of us, if we wrote down our plan,

it would look different.

Some of us would give more of it away than others. I hope all of us would give

some of it to a good cause. Okay, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt.

Now, we would all say that like going to the gas station and buying $10,000

in scratch-offs, probably not wise, right?

But at the same time, we could say giving $10,000 of it just straight away may

not be wise either. Does your family have things to be taken care of?

Again, can you honor your spouse?

Is there something you can do to bless your family? Is there something you need

to bless somebody else's family?

Point being, we would all spin that a little differently. But unless we went

out and did something illegal, unless we went out and did something explicitly

sinful, it would be wrong for any of us to look at someone and go, you are wrong.

You are sinning. You shouldn't be doing that.

Now, could we give someone wisdom and say, I wouldn't do that.

I would invest it that way. I would spend it that way. Yeah,

of course we can. But if they choose not to do that, it's not our place to go, you're wrong.

Even worse, to not say anything and to walk back to our houses all smug and

thinking, what a big idiot.

Right? Because a lot of times we don't say it out loud. We just look at people

and go like, man, can you believe this dummy?

Right? This is for lunch. This is the lunch conversation in the Mexican food

restaurant where you saw something or you experienced something and you go home

and you go, man, we need to talk about how dumb that person.

Why would they do that? Why would they say that? How could they experience that?

God says this in Ezekiel 33, verse 31. And they come to you as people come.

Ezekiel 33:31

And they sit before you as my people. And they hear what you say, but they will not do it.

For with lustful talk in their mouths, they act, their heart is set on their

game. That's the real issue.

That's the real issue with legalism. The real issue with legalism is,

again, it is just like liberalism.

Why do people not do what God asked them to do? Why do you not do what God asked

you to do sometimes? Because it's for your personal gain.

It allows you to get away with things that you shouldn't be able to get away with.

Why do legalists hold people to a standard that God doesn't hold them to?

It's for their personal gain.

In one sense, legalism allows you to experience pleasures that you think you're missing out on.

Legalism allows you to experience authority that you wouldn't have otherwise.

Right. It allows you to have a sense of accomplishment that you wouldn't have

otherwise because we look at other people and what do we do?

We go, I'm better than them.

I'm better than they are. And by extension, we think that God should accept

us based on how much better we are than other people.

This is the Pharisees' issue, and it's not new.

The way that they're thinking is not new. This has existed since the very beginning

of human history, right? Genesis 3, 1 through 3.

What does Eve do? The serpent comes to Eve.

She says, did God really say that you can't eat from that tree? And what does she say?

Oh, yeah. God said we can't eat from it. We can't even what?

Touch it. We can't even touch it. What is Eve doing?

Eve's being a Pharisee. She's being a legalist, right? The root of her sin was

the legalism that was darkening her understanding.

Darkening her understanding of what? It's dulling her senses and destroying

her affection for her heavenly father.

She is now like a pouting child of the most generous father.

She acts as though she wanted to say to God, you never give me anything.

You insist on me earning everything I'm ever going to have.

That's what Pharisees do, is they look at God, and instead of seeing a gracious

Heavenly Father who has given them a law to follow, they go,

you want me to earn everything, and I'm going to make a way for me to do it.

I'm going to set up laws. I'm going to set up rules for myself.

I'm going to do things that make it easier for me to impress you.

They don't love God. They love themselves. And they think that God should love

them because of what they do, not because of the grace he has shown them.

God had given Eve everything good, and all she could do was focus on what he

withheld from her as if it was better.

So she creates a command he didn't give her to justify her sinful actions.

So it was with her. So it was with them and Mark.

And so it is with us if we are not careful. If we are not careful.

Pharisees have created laws that God did not make.

And in so doing, they created a God to worship that does not exist.

All right. You ever fallen into that? That's a dangerous place to be.

Remember, these are the same guys that Jesus is going to say are whitewashed

tombs that are sons of their father, the devil.

Why are they like that? Because they're acting the exact same way the devil

wants them to act. They're doing the exact same thing the devil did.

They're saying, God is not good enough.

I can make him better. I have a better way.

I think a simple thing you can do to check yourself on this is to simply ask

yourself this question. Do you try and impress God?

Do you try and impress God? Right now, again, the flip side of this,

sorry, not legalism, liberalism would say, I don't care what God thinks of me.

I'm going to do whatever I'm going to do. And he says, he loves me.

I'm going to live my life however I want.

He says to go to church, I'll make it if I can. He says to be committed to people,

I'll do it if I can. He says to love people, I'll do it if I can.

He says that marriage looks this way and manhood looks this way.

Womenhood looks this way.

I will do whatever I want and God will have to deal with it. That is liberalism.

Legalism says, I will do more than what God asks me so that he'll be impressed

with me, so that he'll love me, so that I'll earn his affection.

I love this quote. You've heard me say it before by Gehardus Voss.

He says, legalism lacks the supreme sense of worship.

It obeys, but it does not adore.

Legalism lacks the supreme sense of worship. it obeys, but it does not adore.

This is the Pharisees. They're obeying.

They're obeying tenfold.

And Jesus's critique of them is not that they're not obeying.

It's that they're requiring of people more than God has required of them.

And in so doing, they do not love God. They do not adore God.

They don't want to worship God. They want people to worship them as God.

Again, I'm sure we've all experienced that. Everybody's been burned by this kind of attitude.

Everybody's been burned by someone who holds them to a standard that God doesn't.

Fail to worship God for who he is and what he has done, we will inevitably turn

from worship to works, right? This is not obedience.

This is defiance. And ultimately this is idolatry of your own self.

I think thankfully, I can honestly say that I don't see this attitude in our church.

I'm happy for that. One of the reasons I think that we are, or have been a little

immune to it at first is when you first get started, like we haven't been around

each other enough to build the report card yet.

When people come in and they're new, we don't really have a set set of standards yet.

If you've gone to a church before that's been there for a long time, you know what I mean.

Like, hey, we kind of have the things that we do here.

We dress a certain way. We act a certain way. We talk a certain way.

Our kids act a certain way. We sing certain songs.

We like certain things. We don't like other things. And when somebody comes

in, that's the way we grade them.

The way we grade them. We get our religious report cards out and we kind of

go, are they going to fit in here? What a terrible question to ask.

Do I think that this person will fit in with the family of God?

That is not a question that I get to answer.

God answers that question. When God saves someone, when he sovereignly draws

someone into the family of God, what he is saying to all the other kids is, this person belongs.

They don't look like me and they don't act like me and they talk a little different.

They seem a little different.

And it's like God looks at his kids and he's like, hey, shut your mouth. You're not me.

Lest I remind you that the only reason you're in the family is because I chose

you when you were a sinner, when you didn't look like us or act like us or think

like us or do the things that you were called to do, right?

All of those were called from that. You say, well, I got saved when I was three.

Great. You were a sinner when you or three.

And God's been working on you ever since. And the only reason you have what

you have and are where you are is because God has so blessed you.

And so when someone else is invited to the family of God, like these disciples

have been by Jesus, and they don't act the way that the Pharisees who think

they've earned their place in the family of God does what they do,

what is the Pharisee's response?

You don't act like me, therefore you don't belong with me, and you shouldn't think that you do.

And Jesus' response is simple. You don't make that call.

You don't get to decide who's in and who's out. You don't get to make the rules.

On in verse 9, he says, and he said to them, you have a fine way of rejecting

the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition.

For Moses said, honor your father and mother.

Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.

But you say, if a man tells his father or his mother, whatever you would have

gained from me is korban,

that is given to God, then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father

or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have

handed down and many such things. So what's going on here?

He says again, but you say, if a man tells his father or his mother,

whatever you have gained from me is Corban. In other words, it's given to God.

Where is it actually given? It's given to the Pharisees. It's given to the priest.

It's given to the temple. It's given to the church.

So instead of somebody honoring their father or mother, the Pharisees have made this out.

And they have said, hey, if you don't want to give it to them,

you know where you can give it? You can give it to us.

And they've really spiritualized it by saying, it's like giving it straight to the Lord.

You hear how this can go? You know, you can convince someone of this.

And I know you should probably, I know God says to honor your father or mother,

and you should really bless them with that. But don't you just want to give it straight to God?

It would be better if you just skipped that part and just gave it straight to

him, wouldn't it? Why don't you just give it to us and we'll take care of that for you.

This sounds like a preacher you've heard on TV at night. That's because that's exactly what they do.

That money that you're going to bless your family with, that money that's going

to pay your bills, that money that's going to do the things that it needs to

do for you, God's given you that money.

You know what would be better if you just gave it straight to me?

I could handle it for you.

It's like giving it straight to God. Thank you.

Is the danger of a Pharisee. This is the danger of your own heart becoming more

like a Pharisee, is that you can convince yourself not only is the sin you're

committing good, but it's actually better than doing what God has asked you to do.

That's an incredible thing. How can someone get to that point?

Listen, again, we're all capable of this.

Again, my prayer for Trinity is that we never get to a place that our first

thing that we do when we think about church, when we think about the Lord,

when you think about people joining our church, is the first thing we go,

well, I wonder if they're going to make it.

I wonder if they know the right words. I wonder if they read the right authors.

I wonder if they dress the right way, if they act the right way,

if they do the right, I hope their kids act the right way.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Who are you? Who am I? What is Trinity?

Trinity doesn't belong to you or me. It's not my church. It's not your church.

It's God's church that we're a part of, that we've been brought together to

build this church. But God is the shepherd of this flock and he makes the rules.

And when he brings new sheep in, our job as sheep is to say,

amen, welcome to the family.

And when they do things that we don't like, we do things, even when they do

things that are explicitly simple, our job is not to say, hey, that's gross.

You should get out. Our job is to say, hey, let us help you understand the shepherd better.

Because the more you get to know our shepherd, the more white of a sheep you'll be.

You'll look more like a sheep. You'll act more like a sheep.

But how does that work? It works by us not being legalist.

Not being liberal, but by trusting the word of God, doing what God has asked us to do.

Again, listen to how Jesus finishes this in verse 13.

Because they do this, because they add words to the law, they add laws to the law.

He says that they're making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down.

What kind of people does that create? What kind of person does that create when you add laws?

When you are more strict both on yourself and others than God has asked you.

I love this quote by John Newton, the guy who wrote Amazing Grace.

He says, I endeavored to renounce society that I might avoid temptation.

This is the way a legalist thinks. Whatever society is doing,

I'm doing the opposite. Society is wearing a blue hat, I'm wearing a red hat, baby.

Society likes checkered shirts, I'm wearing striped shirts.

Well, why? Because if society's doing it, then it must be evil,

and I have to be different. This was his thought process.

He says, but it was a poor religion. So far as it prevailed,

it only tended to make me gloomy, stupid, unsociable, and useless.

What is he saying? He's saying, if you were a legalist, if you think like a

legalist, or for John Newton's purposes, when I thought like a legalist,

it made me gloomy, stupid, unsociable, and useless.

I have found that to be true. When I'm the most gloomy, when I make the dumbest

decisions, when I'm unsociable, or really just to say, when I don't care about

anybody else and myself, I become useless.

When those are the things that I can mark in my day or in my week or in my month,

most often the times that that is true, it's because I'm being a Pharisee.

I care so much about myself and I care so much about how awesome I am and how

good I am and all the things that I've accomplished.

And man, if people could just get on, if they could get on my timeline and listen

to what I'm doing and act the way that I want them to act, do the things that

I want them to do, then my life would be good.

It turns out that's a quick way to be gloomy, stupid, unsociable,

and ultimately useless.

I love that quote, by the way. I don't know if you could tell.

I love when people are explicitly honest about their own sin.

All right. In closing, Let me just give you a few things that the Pharisees

do that we need to avoid. Number one, they value their authority over God's authority.

These guys traveled 90 miles. Why?

To tell a group of guys that they shouldn't be doing what they're doing as if God couldn't handle it.

As if the other guys in town didn't know the law. They value their authority

over God's authority. Again, our authority, my authority.

Who asked, how much authority do you have as a pastor? None.

I have none. I have this book. That's what I have.

And if it's not explicitly stated in this book, then most of the advice I give

you is like, hey, I think it would be wise to, this is what I would do.

This may be a good idea, but I don't have any right to come into your life and

tell you how to live, what to do, where to send your kids to school,

who to marry, what job to take.

Now, if one job is I'm going to go work at this factory, the other job is I'm

going to go sell drugs, that's an easy one. I got you there.

But if it's two good options, it's not my job to say, this is what you should do.

I don't have the authority to do that. The authority is God's and ultimately God's word.

So Pharisees value their authority over God's. Number two, they value their

laws over God's law. You could say their word over God's word.

And when God says something, when God commands something, when God asks you

to do something, they take that and go, I can make it better.

God, I know your command is this, but I can make it better. I can make it clearer.

I can really expand on this. I can really help people get it right.

And God's going, I didn't ask for your help.

I don't need your help. I don't want your help.

The commands that God gives are the commands that he gives No less and no more,

And our job is to do everything we can to obey those commands Uh-oh.

Three things. Number one, they value their authority over God's authority.

They value their laws or words over God's laws or words. And number three,

they value themselves more than they value God.

They care more about their reputation. They care more about their standing in

front of people. They care more about their authority over people.

They care more about what people think of them than what people think of God.

This is, again, the Pharisees' issue is they come down and they say,

hey, listen, we're in charge.

And they want everyone to know, right? They show up, they point fingers,

they say, hey, you didn't wash your hands.

And Jesus' response is, they don't have to.

You can kind of see why the Pharisees hated Jesus. It wasn't so much what Jesus

said, it was that Jesus didn't say what they said.

Now, ultimately they will kill Jesus because he claims to be God.

That is what gets him in the end.

But in the beginning, their issue with him is, hey, we have these traditions. We have these rules.

Our church was founded in A.D. We've always been doing it this way.

This is what my grandpa and his grandpa and his grandpa and his grandpa did.

We have the old tradition. We have the misna. Why are you telling us we can't

do this? And Jesus' simple answer is, that's not God's word.

That's not what God said.

My encouragement to you is, are you trying to impress God?

Are you trying to impress God? Are you holding people to a standard that God hasn't held them to?

And listen, this is just for your own sake too. And for my own sake,

to my own heart, am I holding myself to a standard that God's not holding me to?

In my quest to impress the people around me, to be the most Christian person around?

Am I holding myself to a standard that God is not holding me to?

And is that causing me grief? Is that keeping me from loving God the way that

I'm supposed to be loving him, keeping me from enjoying him the way that I'm

supposed to be enjoying him?

All because I'm trying to execute laws that he never gave me,

to do things he never asked of me.

This is why David says in the Psalms, your law is like honey on my lips.

How can David say that? Thank you.

You, I've not heard many people say, man, the law is like honey on my lips.

Why does David say that? David says that because he knows the lawgiver.

He knows God. He's a man after God's own heart.

He knows that God has chosen him from the foundation of the world.

He knows that God loves him. He knows that God is for him.

He knows that God has forgiven him. He knows that God is going to redeem him.

That doesn't mean that he doesn't sin. That doesn't mean there's not consequences

for those sins, but that means when David says that, he is saying,

the law of God is like honey on my lips.

Why? Because I know who gave it to me, that these laws, that these way of living

my life, that these are sweet gifts to me, that if I do what God's law asks

of me, that I will be blessed.

That doesn't mean you won't be hated. It doesn't mean you won't be disliked,

it means that you will be blessed by God himself.

How did the psalm start?

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,

nor sits in the seat of scoffers, nor stands in the way of sinners, but his what?

His delight is in the law of the Lord.

He's like a tree planted near a stream who blooms in due season.

That's how the psalms start.

We become Pharisees and look at God's law and go, man, it's not enough.

It's not enough. I can do better. Or lest we look at God's law and go, it's too much.

I don't want to follow that. Man, both of those things are incredibly evil ways

of thinking about God's law because they're incredibly evil ways and lies of

thinking about the law giver.

That's the Pharisees' issue. It's not laws. It's not rules. It's that they don't know God.

In fact, they hate God because they want to be God.

And I think our natural inclination as people who live in East Texas in the

21st century is to look around us and go, look at all those dumb liberals.

Can you believe that they think that way? Can you believe they act that way?

Can you believe they would do that?

In actuality, we're committing the same kind of sin when we sit back and go,

if they were more like us, if they knew what we knew, if they follow the law

like I did, we're just as evil.

What does Jesus say? Love your enemies. Pray for those who curse you.

It's a bad thing to not trust God enough to have some enemies.

It's also a bad thing to have enemies you don't pray for.

You don't look at with compassion and love, knowing that, but for the grace

of God, go I. All right, let's not be legalist. Let's pray.

Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for your word.

Thank you for those of us who were here this morning.

God, I pray that we wouldn't be legalist, that with your help,

with your grace, with your mercy, that you would soften our hearts to those things.

We wouldn't hold people to a different standard than you have held them to.

Ask of people more than you ask of them. God, certainly that we would be bold

in proclaiming your word, proclaiming your law, proclaiming obedience to the

King of kings, Lord of lords, but God, that we wouldn't go further than that.

We would be gracious to one another. We would be kind to one another.

We would give people's consciences room to be influenced by you.

We would love people well when they look a little different or act a little different.

When they don't know what we know, when they don't ascribe to every single tidbit

of theology that we do, that God, we would meet that with grace.

And we would admit, hey, I could be wrong.

I could be wrong.

And as we look at Jesus in the way that he protects his disciples,

God, that we would look and remind ourselves that he does the same thing for

us, that when we are faithful to be obedient to what we've been called to be,

that when someone accuses us of not doing enough, it is your son who intercedes for us

as he sits at your right hand to say, oh, no, no, they are mine.

They belong to me. I am not worried about anybody else, what they say about

them, what they do to them. They belong to me.

God, that that would be something that dwells in our hearts this week that we think about often.

You are with us, you love us, and you care for us. So I pray, amen.