Luke 11:37-54 | Legalism never saves

[clears throat]

Morning. Reading on from Luke. We're in

11:es

37

to 54.

[clears throat]

That's Luke 11 3754.

When Jesus had finished speaking, a

Pharisee invited him to eat with him. So

he went in and reclined at the table.

But the Pharisee was surprised when he

noticed that Jesus did not first wash

before he ate before he before the meal.

Then the Lord said to him, "Now then,

you Pharisees clean the outside of the

cup and dish, but inside you are full of

greed and wickedness,

you foolish people. Did not the one who

made the outside make the inside also?"

But now, as for what is inside you, be

generous to the poor, and everything

will be clean for you.

Woe to you Pharisees

because you give God a tenth of your

mint, rue, and all kinds of garden

herbs,

but you neglect justice and the love of

God.

You should have practiced the latter

while leaving the former undone.

Woe to you Pharisees

because you love the most important

seats in the synagogues and respectful

greetings in the marketplaces.

Woe to you

because you are like unmarked graves

which people walk over without knowing

it.

One of the experts of the law answered

him, "Teacher,

when you say these things, you insult us

also."

Jesus replied, "And you experts in the

law. Woe to you

because you lower the people down with

burdens they can hardly carry and you

yourselves will not lift one finger to

help them. Woe to you

because you build the tomb. You build

tombs for the prophets

and it was your ancestors who killed

them.

So you testify that you approve of what

the your ancestors did. They killed the

prophets and you build their tombs.

Because of this, God in his wisdom said,

"I will send them prophets and apostles

and some of some of whom they will kill

and others they will persecute.

Therefore, this generation will be held

responsible for the blood of all the

prophets that has been shed since the

beginning of the world. From the blood

of Abel to the blood of Zachchariah,

who was killed between the altar and the

sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, this

generation

will be held responsible for it all.

Woe to you experts in the law

because you have taken away the key to

knowledge.

You yourselves

have not entered

and you have hindered those who were

entering.

When Jesus went outside, the Pharisees

and the teachers of the law began to

oppose him fiercely and to besiege him

with questions,

waiting to catch him in something he

might say. Amen.

[clears throat]

Good morning, church.

It is a joy to be with you.

Yet, it's a rather heavy subject we're

going to talk about today, which is

legalism and false teaching.

So, um I have to say that these cooler

evenings have been beautiful. uh we can

actually sleep at night and it made me

think about when we come together in

worship like this it's like we get the

cold evening air helping to fill us with

joy, encouragement and peace.

So before we look at this very

challenging topic today um let's pray

and ask God for his help.

Father God, your word is

inspired, inherent, infallible

and uh your word challenges us greatly.

So please Lord would we hear clearly

what you spirit wants to convict our

hearts and help us see the glory and

love that is in Jesus. We ask this in

his name. Amen. Amen.

In life, have you ever felt like you've

felt out of balance?

I'm not saying that you've just been on

one of those really innocent looking

teacups at a fairground that ultimately

is absolutely vicious and when you get

off it, it feels like the moon is now

what we're rotating around.

Um, what I'm asking is in your life or

in your walk with God, has it felt like

things have been out of balance?

I can say with certainty for myself that

many times, even daily, it feels like

things are out of balance and I might

need to try and get myself back into

balance.

Every day news throws something at us.

Changes with work, church, finances, or

even health. Relationships change.

Marriage, mother and father, children,

our parents.

In this everchanging life, we are always

required to balance our inner pride and

self-righteousness

and our resulting inner thoughts and

decisions with our actual external

responses, including our words and

actions.

We are constantly in a place of

balancing our inner desire with our

outer response.

You might remember some of the old

Charlie Chaplan movies when he would be

walking on a tight rope with one of

these balance bars or maybe one of these

crazy people that try and cross the

Grand Canyon across a tight rope. It

always makes me freak out when I watch

it on the TV.

Today you are trying to cross the gap of

Dunlow, walking right across such a

tight rope

and you're suspended up in the air using

nothing but a balance bar.

And suddenly a bird comes and lands on

one side. And that bird is called pride.

And you start feeling, oh, I'm about to

fall. But luckily bird

falls uh flies away.

And just as you're getting back up and

running again. Then another bird lands

on the other side. That bird is called

self-righteousness.

And you really start falling like you're

about to lose balance and fall.

The message for today is a lesson, a

powerful lesson from Jesus. How to

maintain a balance in life that is not

set on ourselves

or worldly things, but is all on Jesus.

Regardless whether you have a burge

landing on your so-called balance beam

called pride, self-righteousness, anger,

lust, coveting, legalism, or even false

teaching

that through Jesus you can remain

standing.

The first perspective we will look at is

the unbalanced legalism of the

Pharisees.

The second perspective we will look at

is the unclean legalism of the

Pharisees.

And the final perspective we will look

at is the unthinkable

teaching of the lawyers.

My prayer for you in preparing this

message has been that this lesson given

to us from Jesus will make you deeply

grateful for the church of DBC right

here.

As a member of this church, it has made

me deeply grateful. A church centered on

Christ, his gospel, his word before

anything else. led by our elders that

subject themselves to Christ's authority

first and foremost and not themselves

and lead us as shepherds, not as wolves.

Excuse me.

This is when you should listen to your

wife and bring up the paper copy.

Um,

and as a church family that seeks

together to grow in our worship for God,

love for one another

in wisdom and obedience, walking with

God through rightly applying the word of

God to our lives.

So let us continue to learn from Jesus

today how to reject legalism and false

teaching and how to embrace the sheer

beauty

of the scriptures unlimited power of

grace and love.

Legalism in the dictionary is defined as

a strict literal or excessive conformity

to law. By its very nature, legalism is

therefore subjective

and it can cause a great unbalance in

all aspects of life and it has caused

hurt to many.

To be very very very clear, legalism is

never a good thing.

When something is out of balance, it

always causes problem. When we spend

more money than we earn, we gain debt.

When we eat more food than we need, we

accumulate a waistline. When we listen

to social media more than a university

professor, our perspectives become

warped like an old wooden deck.

Therefore, we need to think carefully in

discerning what is legalism and what is

not.

For one, Christianity for sorry, excuse

me, for one Christian, what seems like

legal legalism may be the norm to

another. let's say to drink alcohol.

This might be considered normal for

someone to have a glass of wine for

dinner, but for someone else, it's

necessary not to.

For someone outside the church looking

at Christians, encouraging men and women

to see sex as a precious gift from God

exclusively for marriage and to abstain

from sex until they're married can seem

like legalism.

These Pharisees, which were a Jewish

religious sect, were pursuing God

fervently.

Unlike most of our society today, the

Pharisees were not indifferent of God.

Quite the opposite, they cared greatly

about God, but their worship of God was

completely out of balance.

The Pharisees were around from about 150

years before Christ to about 70 years

after Christ.

And they were typically lay people

um in contrast to the very wealthy

Sadducees.

And the Pharisees practiced an extreme

adherence to the Old Testament

cleanliness laws, purity laws, all of

those things because that's how they

claimed you gain holiness.

And I think it is remarkable

as we look at the gospels to see how

many interactions there are between

Jesus and the Pharisees.

It seemed like the Pharisees were never

very far away from Jesus.

They did not want their legalism

rejected,

which ironically condemns them even more

because they had seen what Jesus did

during his ministry.

In some ways, it is like Jesus is using

these Pharisees, these deeply devoted

seekers of God that on the outside

appeared holy through their own pride

and self-righteousness

saw themselves as most holy

to show the very fact and the very

opposite.

If you would please look with me at

verse 37 and 38.

When Jesus had finished speaking, a

Pharisee invited him to eat with him. So

he went in and reclined at the table.

But the Pharisee was surprised when he

noticed that Jesus did not first wash

before the meal.

The Pharisee was not wanting a friendly

chat. They were trying to shut Jesus

down by this stage.

This was not a friendly dinner invite

with friends.

And to say that the Pharisee was

surprised is not quite enough. The word

here in Greek is actually more like

utterly amazed. He was astonished that

Jesus did not first in the right order

wash. And the word for wash here is

baptiso, which in a Baptist church we

would recognize is not just cleaning mud

off our hands, but it's a ceremonial

cleaning.

But Jesus seeing his expression

or even by knowing his thoughts just

like Jesus knows your thoughts and mine

right now.

He begins his full-on offensive on

rejecting legalism.

Look with me at verse 39.

Then the Lord said to him, "Now then,

you Pharisees, clean the outside of the

cup and dish, but inside you are full of

greed and wickedness."

This quickly went from a breakfast to a

brawl.

Just imagine someone sitting down at

your kitchen table looking into your

eyes telling you, "You might look good

on the outside, but inside you are full

of greed." like you want to rob and

plunder those around you.

You are full of wickedness,

malice, wanting to cause others pain.

I don't think that would go down very

well, would it? But this is exactly what

Jesus did. Jesus was going after the

heart of the Pharisee behind the

behavior. A heart that was rejecting

him.

Jesus continues his offensive and now it

feels like an army of a 100,000 bearing

down on a few men. Look with me at verse

40.

You foolish people,

did not the one who made the outside

make the inside also?

But now ask for what is inside you. Be

generous to the poor and everything will

be clean to you.

Again, we need to remember that Jesus is

speaking to Pharisees, men that were

eagerly seeking God, that knew the

scriptures, that were out of balance in

their worship of God because of their

complete imbalance between law and love.

Jesus is not speaking to the average guy

on the girl on the street who says,

"God, who?"

So Jesus goes directly to the heart of

the issue. You fools,

why are you ignoring who made you and in

whose image are you made?

Remember the words of Genesis 1:27. So

Genesis 1:27

God created man in his own image. In the

image of God, he created him. Male and

female he created them. The Pharisees

would have known this scripture.

And the Pharisees would have known Psalm

Psalms 139:13–14

139:13-14.

For you created my inmost being. You

knit me together in my mother's womb. I

praise you because I am fearfully and

wonderfully made. Your works are

wonderful. I know that full well.

How quickly

pride made these Pharisees forget that

they were made in the image of God?

Not for themselves, but so that they can

worship God.

How about you? Do you ever forget that

you are made in the image of God so that

you can worship him and give him all the

praise?

Jesus now goes on to tell the Pharisees

to be kind to the poor. So what does he

mean with that? In other words, to give

of themselves instead of taking of

others for their own gain. to put law

and sacrifice before sorry love and law

before love and sacrifice before law.

So how do we use this to reject

unbalanced legalism?

First, as you look at your own responses

to other people's actions, are you being

like the Pharisee reacting over the

wrong things?

When I think often at our dinner table,

the amount of times that I have reacted

like the Pharisee when my children did

one thing or the other.

I have been convicted by working on this

passage

that I am not balancing law and love or

reaction and love when love should

always precede our thoughts.

to balance responses to outward behavior

with careful consideration of the heart

behind behav behavior.

This does not just apply to our

children. It applies to every human

interaction we face.

So will you consider carefully your own

heart behind your responses to other

people.

Second, and this is hard to say, but the

word of God asks us this question.

Is there greed or malice in your heart

that needs to be cut out with a surgical

scalpel of confession and repentance?

And third,

I mentioned it earlier, but it is so

important.

Will you give God praise

and thank Jesus that you are made in his

image?

Can there be anything more special?

You are special.

Now let us move to the next section, the

impact of unclean legalism and see our

first three woes. If you would look

again with me at verse 42,

woe to you Pharisees because you give

God a tenth of your mint, rue, and all

other kinds of garden herbs, but you

neglect justice and the love of God. You

should have practiced the latter without

leaving the former undone. The word woe

is not just, oh, what a shame or that's

unfortunate.

The woe has a great severity attached to

it. It's like calling judgment upon

someone. It's like calling a

catastrophic event upon them.

Our best but insufficient English

translation would be how dreadful.

This is the first out of six woes. Three

woes to the Pharisees and later we'll

see three woes to the lawyers following

the pattern of how the prophets in the

Old Testament would pronounce judgment.

In the first row, Jesus tells them that

tithing is right. But to do it to the

point of garden herbs, so i.e. something

very invaluable and yeah, not valuable

is ridiculous when neglecting justice,

being fair to others, considerate of

others, and showing a genuine love to

God.

Here

we see Jesus stating very plainly

that love and law always needs to be in

balance.

Jesus rejects the Pharisees imbalance of

their apparent external law obedience.

Everything on the outside looks cool

with their complete internal

disobedience against God.

This raises the question to you and me

of our hearts versus our responses.

And taking as an example that Jesus is

here, for example, our giving, does our

giving match our hearts?

However, giving or means of giving is a

way to be recognized or even to make you

feel more righteous on the inside rather

than giving out of the love for God.

Paul tells us very plainly for this

specific topic in 2 Corinthians 9:7.

2 Corinthians 9:7

Each one must give as he has decided in

his heart, not reluctantly or under

commulsion, for God loves a cheerful

giver.

Please look with me now at the next woe

at verse 43. Woe to you Pharisees

because you love the most important

seats in the synagogues and you resp and

respectful greetings in the

marketplaces.

Here at DBC, uh the best seats appears

to be at the back and closest to the

door. I I don't know why that is.

The reality is it doesn't matter where

you sit as long as you're here with a

heart eager to worship God together with

your brothers and sisters.

Jesus pronounces woe on the Pharisees

here. That is all about them. Me, me,

me, me, me.

They want to be recognized as special.

They're trying to live up to their name.

Pharisee actually means separate ones.

and they want to be acknowledged openly

by others. They wanted the best seats in

church. It's all about them.

It's like Bryce

walking down duns and wanting everyone

to go, "Hello, Bryce."

It's absolutely ridiculous, right? And

especially if you know Bryce, that is

absolutely ridiculous.

But this is how pompous the Pharisees

were because of their unbalanced pride

and worship.

Yet, as we consider many religions and

their religious practices and leaders

today,

is it God first or do we have modern-day

Pharisees?

It really pains me to say that even here

in our beloved country of Ireland

that worshiping religious practices

is more important than worshiping the

creator.

So let me ask you to consider do you

seek recognition by others to affirm

your faith or to affirm you personally?

This is a really tough one because I

think to some extent we all do this or

at least are tempted to do it

and often we can fall into bad cycles

and grade our holiness from one day or

the other um by the response or comments

of others.

Jesus completely rejects us. Our

relationship with God is through a

personal relationship with Jesus. When

we will one day stand before Jesus,

which we all will, he will be the only

judge and is only him to give favor to

for what we have done.

He will judge us what we have done with

the gift of salvation and reward us

accordingly.

If you have rejected Jesus

like these Pharisees,

then he will not judge you to determine

a reward,

but he will condemn you.

It is Jesus alone who will judge and

give reward.

So we need to fight the temptation to

seek recognition and award from others.

So let us look at the final woe to the

Pharisees.

Verse 44.

Woe to you because you are like unmarked

graves with people which people walk

over without knowing it. [clears throat]

Jesus now changes up the focus of his

advancement.

If you notice, until now Jesus has been

challenging the Pharisees over their own

hearts and behaviors. Now he switches to

challenging them on the impact they have

on other people.

Jesus tells the Pharisees that people

simply by being around them become

unclean.

what Jesus is saying that these

Pharisees that thought that they were

the cleanest the cleanest ever

um that were very likely looked favor

favorably upon and there were probably

people trying to copy these Pharisees

because they thought this was a picture

of holiness.

Instead, those people were being taught

false practices

and the Pharisees were making them

unclean, leading them away from God.

This asks more questions of us and this

is going to be some difficult questions

but bear with me.

Do your actions and behaviors

inadvertently lead other people away

from God without even realizing it like

the Pharisees.

I'm not saying exactly like the

Pharisees, but inadvertently doing

things that take people's eyes from God.

And I know that you would all instantly

say, "Of course not."

But let me ask you a few questions to

consider and just to think about as you

as you go home.

Have you ever asked someone, "Are you a

Christian?"

without first having made the effort to

get to know them.

Have you ever started to share the

gospel with someone before even knowing

their personal history with faith,

religion, and maybe even possible

hardships in their past?

Personally, since becoming a Christian,

I have failed at all of those.

And it pains me to confess and consider

how deeply inconsiderate I was by not

understanding and seeking to understand

that person before sharing the gospel

with them.

If we are to be the fragrance of Christ

and not the fragrance of death, we need

to invert our perspective. The Pharisees

was all about me, me, me, me, me. We

need to be all about those that we're

starting to share the gospel with.

[clears throat]

a very practical application for this

and in a sense to give you some general

I don't know how many of you do 10pin

bowling but uh when you go with your

kids you put up the gutter bumpers so

that the ball can bounce in between the

gutter bumpers but in a way there is a

gutter bumper piece of scripture for our

Christian testimony

and it's in Romans 14.

Therefore, let us stop passing judgment

on one another. Instead, make up your

mind to not put any stumbling block or

obstacle in the way of a brother or

sister. I am convinced being fully

persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing

is unclean in itself. But if anyone

regards something as unclean, then for

that person it is unclean.

In the world we live in today, many

cultures, many influences, many

opinions,

people are terribly confused of what is

religion, legalism, faith, or even just

knowledge.

So [clears throat] our gutter bumpers to

stop our bowling ball of Christian

testimony going right down into the

gutter

is being considerate of others and not

making others go against their

conscience.

Making someone else go against their

conscience is sin.

We can never sin to win someone to

Christ. But Paul does say to the Jew I

became a Jew and to the Gentile I became

a Gentile.

This is the very opposite to what the

Pharisees did. They cared about no one

else but themselves.

And before we move to the next section

with the lawyers,

I want us to remember

that there is nobody

that is beyond the reach of Jesus.

Not even the worst Pharisee.

One of the first martyrs of the

Christian faith was a man called Steven

who after giving a speech in the

Sanhedrin rejecting some of the very

things that Jesus are rejecting here was

put to death by stoning.

And we can read an account of this in

Acts chapter 7 57-58.

Acts 7 · chapter mention

At this they covered their ears and

yelling at the top of their voices, they

all rushed at him, dragged him out of

the city, and began to stone him.

Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their

coats at the feet of a young man called

Saul.

This young man named Saul was to later

become the Apostle Paul. And he was a

Pharisee,

a Pharisee of Pharisees. He was a brutal

persecutor of the church.

Yet even Saul was not beyond the love of

Jesus. So neither are you.

Let me briefly read some of the accounts

of Paul's salvation in Acts 9 verse 4.

Acts 9:4

He Saul fell to the ground and heard a

voice say to him, "Soul, soul, why do

you persecute me?"

"Who are you, Lord?" Saul asked. "I am

Jesus whom you are persecuting," he

replied.

Going to verse 15. But the Lord said to

Ananas, "Go. This man is my chosen

instrument to proclaim my name to the

Gentiles and their kings and to the

people of Israel."

Moving to verse 17. Then Anias went to

the house and entered it. He was

absolutely terrified. Literally

terrified because he knew what Paul had

done to other people.

Placing his hands on Paul, he said,

"Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who

appeared to you on the road as you were

coming here, he has sent me

so that you may see again and be filled

with the Holy Spirit." Verse

18. Immediately something like scale

scales fell from Saul's eyes and he

could see again. He got up and bapt they

got was baptized and after taking some

food he regained his strength. Spo Saul

spent several days with the disciples in

Damascus.

Verse 20. At once he began to preach in

the synagogues that Jesus is the son of

God.

If you have persecuted Jesus,

if you are rejecting him, will you

instead hear him calling you just like

he called soul?

Paul would go on to write much of the

New Testament and ultimately give his

own life for what he believed.

I would ask that we listen to the words

from Paul in Romans 10:9-10.

Romans 10:9–10

Faith, putting our faith in Jesus is not

complicated.

If you declare with your mouth, Jesus is

Lord, and believe in your heart that God

raised him from the dead, you will be

saved. For it is with your heart that

you believe and are justified, and it is

with your mouth that you profess your

faith and are saved.

No one is beyond the reach of Jesus,

but you have to choose to call him Lord.

So let us now move to the final section

of this text where we move to look at

the interaction now between Jesus and

the lawyer.

And this is a very large piece of text.

So I'm going to abbreviate some parts of

it um to keep us moving. But I'm going

to focus to the three woes.

But one of the experts in the law

answered him verse 45 teacher

when you say these things you insult us

also. It is quite a response isn't it?

In some ways you wonder if the lawyers

actually asking Jesus please apologize

for insulting me. Um yet they call him

teacher.

The lawyers were specialists in the law

and responsible for teaching people how

to obey the laws.

Jesus turns to the lawyers and now

pronounces three woes on them as a

response. Look with me at verse 46,

please.

Jesus replied, "And you experts in the

law law, woe to you because you load

people down with burdens they can hardly

carry and you yourselves will not lift

one finger to help them."

Jesus recognizes that these are experts

in the law.

Jesus is saying that they are loading

people with information the law

without taking one moment and Jesus uses

the illustration of even lifting one

finger to help them understand it.

It is like a teenager going into their

leavingert

a few weeks before their exams. The

teacher dumps all of the leaving search

books on the table and says, "Here you

go."

It's unthinkable,

but it should make us grateful for being

in a church where the word of God is

taught to us through preaching, through

small groups, for even just simply going

and asking our elders to explain

something to us.

And this makes me consider Proverbs

Proverbs 3:27

3:27.

Do not withhold good from those to whom

it is due when it is in your power to

act.

How much these lawyers were rejecting is

blows my mind.

We should never load someone else down

with things that they cannot handle.

And if we do, we need to repent of that.

Instead, we should do everything in our

power to lift others up and to help them

along,

to help carry their burdens, just like

Jesus carries our burdens.

So in verse 47 and 48, let's look at the

second woe. Woe to you because you build

tombs for the prophets and it was your

ancestors who killed them. So you

testify that you approve of what your

ancestors did. They killed the prophets

and you build their tombs.

Jesus is rebuking their hypocrisy that

they teach the law yet ignore the

prophet's message of the Messiah and

even kill them just like their parents.

The point of Abel to Zachchariah is

Genesis to Chronicles and in the Hebrew

arrangement of the Old Testament that's

the first part and the last part. So

they're saying you are being hypocrites

about the entire law that you are meant

to teach.

And even more so

Jesus is saying that they are rejecting

him in rejecting God's final messenger.

Jesus is saying that this generation

that has seen all the miracles that he

did

and we we won't do it now but if you

read ahead the beginning of chapter 12

it is literally saying that there is a

multitude of people coming to see him

in this time there was no mistake of the

various different things and miracles

and powers that Jesus had demonstrated

and Jesus is saying that this generation

is going to have to hold the

responsibility for that in a special

way.

The question that we are faced with is

whether we consider carefully enough the

evidence for Jesus.

These lawyers, experts of the law, were

ignorant and prideful to reject the

evidence that presented for Jesus.

evidence that they were even experts in.

Christianity is the only testable faith

because we have prophecy and we have

fulfillment. And when you layer those on

top of each other together with all the

historical evidence, together with all

the analyzes analysis of scripture, we

have a testable faith.

The prophets like Isaiah, Nehemiah,

Malachi, just to name some, have given

us a deep knowledge of what to expect

when Christ came,

where he would be born, that he would be

born to a virgin, that he would be

crucified to pay for our sins, even at a

time when crucifixion wasn't a thing,

and that he would rise again.

The Bible never contradicts itself. It

is infallible.

Today you and I have the entire Bible

that has gone through a level of

scrutiny and analysis more than any

other book on the planet.

Treasure Jesus, treasure his word and

see the glory of a testable and proven

faith that Jesus is the savior of savior

of the world. Yet he will come and save

a 5-year-old child that barely can read.

This is the wonder of Jesus.

This brings us to the third and final

woe to the lawyers and this is a severe

one.

Woe to you experts in the law because

you have taken away the key to

knowledge.

You yourself have not entered and you

have hindered those entering.

The key of knowledge here is the truth

of salvation.

Experts in the law actually had a

specific responsibility to teach people

knowledge about salvation.

But instead of teaching people, they led

them down garden paths or worse just

simply ignore them, not helping them to

see the multitude of riches in the

scriptures.

But instead of teaching people,

they led them astray.

I once heard someone share with me their

journey with religion, and the closest

they got to a Bible was about 15 ft

away.

That should never be.

The price of hindering others from

accessing God and learning about God is

severe. They will not enter the kingdom

of God.

This third and final woe is truly a call

for us to be a church on mission and to

not withhold the key of knowledge for

salvation from those who desperately

need it.

to make the Bible easily accessible,

carefully taught with patience and love,

and demonstrated through us for love and

grace.

There is quite a famous video clip of

the magician Penn from Pen and Teller

after a Gideon businessman had reached

out to him to give him a Bible after one

of his shows.

Penn is a is and was a devout atheist,

but he said something that has always

stuck with me since the first time I

heard it. He said this,

"How much do you have to hate somebody

to believe everlasting life is possible

and not tell them that?"

The lawyers demonstrated that kind of

hatred.

And your charge and mine

is to show people in Cork the love of

Christ and how accessible he is.

And a final lesson from this text.

Just like Jesus and like Paul, when you

push forward for the gospel, we should

be prepared for challenges

that some people do not want to face up

to sin and the exclusive salvation

through Jesus.

The final two verses of this text says,

"When Jesus went outside, the Pharisees

and the teachers of the law began to

oppose him fiercely and to besiege him

with questions, waiting to catch him in

something he might say."

So after this amazing offensive that

Jesus had just delivered, they still

will not give up because of their pride

and arrogance in their hearts. and they

try and see, well, we're going to catch

him out. We're going to prove that he is

wrong. We're going to prove that this

gospel is not true.

And through God's mercy, they fail.

This message began with an illustration

of someone walking a tight rope with

that balance bar with different birds,

pride, righteousness, lust, anger,

whatever it is. Some of them may be like

little sparrows. Some of them like big

hawks

landing on it. You lose balance and you

fall.

But I want you to hear this and this is

for you Christian as well. If your walk

is with Jesus

listening to the Holy Spirit, you no

longer walk on a tight rope. You're

walking on solid ground.

It does not mean that you won't stumble,

but when you fall, you can get back up

again.

To finish, let's just remind ourselves

what Jesus has taught you and me today.

To react rightly to other people from a

right heart.

To cut out greed and malice from our

hearts with a surgical scalpel of

confession and repentance.

To praise God that we are made in his

image. Wow.

To give with a joyful heart.

To seek the approval of Jesus and nobody

else.

To carefully observe your actions so

that you don't inadvertently lead

someone away from God.

to see that no one,

not even the Pharisee of Pharisees, is

beyond the reach of Jesus.

That as a church,

our hearts should burn to make the Bible

accessible to all so that they can see

for themselves

the salvation that is through faith

alone, through Christ alone.

Let us pray.

Father God, we thank you for your word.

We thank you that we believe in a savior

that has such an overwhelming evidence.

That is such truth [snorts] and such

power,

but not through legalism, not through

law, but through love.

Lord, would we feel your love today?

Would brothers and sisters here today be

encouraged

and be spurred on to share the gospel

with others in a loving way. And to

those here that do not know you or who

reject you today, Lord, please would you

plead with them to see that you love

them and that you offer yourself freely

on that cross for them to give them

eternal life. We ask these things in

Jesus name. Amen.