The Centrality of Jesus | Matthew 12:1-21 | Pastor Neil McClendon

And he said to the man, Stretch out your hand.

And the man stretched it out, and it was restored.

Healthy like the other.

I just wonder what would get healed in you if you started obeying Jesus.

You say, What do you mean?

Jesus did not touch him.

He said, Stretch out your hand.

The guy had a withered hand, and hand wouldn't work.

You imagine.

Stretch out your hand.

It's real funny, Jesus.

You're just making fun of me?

No.

Stretch out your hand.

And so, what am I saying?

I'm saying that the guy obeyed and he was healed.

If he didn't obey, he wouldn't have been healed.

Some of you don't have a disease, you have a consequence.

And you got to ask yourself, what would happen if I just started obeying everything Jesus says?

This podcast is brought to you by Grand Parkway Baptist Church, helping people to know, enjoy, and glorify God.

For more information about Grand Parkway, visit our website at grandparkway.org.

Amen.

Amen.

Let's pray together, church.

Lord, we just confess what is true about you, that you're always on time.

And the reason you're always on time is because for you, time never runs out.

It fills up.

It runs out for us.

That's why we're all sped up on the inside and frantic on the outside.

But for you, you're never, nowhere in the Bible do you say to anybody, hurry up, because you're always on time.

And so, whatever we're waiting for, it's not that you're disappointing us.

You're teaching us to wait as an act of worship because you're always on time.

Holy Spirit, remind us from your word and by the Spirit today that you are always on time.

You're always going to be on time.

And so teach us something today that reminds us to and enables us to trust you more tomorrow.

This is our prayer, God, make it our experience.

We ask in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

Amen.

You can have a seat.

If you've got a Bible, I invite you to take it over up to Matthew chapter 12.

Matthew 12 · chapter mention

If you're our guest today, we're preaching to the book of Matthew.

We're up to chapter 12.

We ended off last week where in chapter 11, where Jesus describes Christianity in two words.

If you've been taught or told anything else about Christianity, you were lied to.

Because Jesus says, Take my yoke upon you, which is his teaching.

It's not a burden, it's a blessing.

He says, Take my yoke upon you and learn of me.

And then he says, This for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

And so there's two words that describe biblical Christianity, easy and light.

If you've been told anything besides that, you've been people put religion on you, but not relationship, okay?

So that's where we end it off.

And today we'll pick up in chapter 12, verse 1.

I want to talk to you about the centrality of Jesus.

The centrality of Jesus.

And you say, What do you mean?

We've been taught, I fear in America, and preachers have done it, uh, that everything in the Bible is somehow about us.

And so what happens is you start reading the Bible like your high school yearbook.

You open it up and you wonder what page is my picture on?

Uh, and but if you really start reading the Bible, you'll see that Jesus is central to everything in it.

And one of the reasons, well, mainly because he's God, but I digress.

Uh, but one thing that made Jesus so consequential and compelling is that when he talked, it was unlike anything people had ever heard before.

I mean, they're used to like getting religious lectures from Charlie Brown's teacher.

Whoa, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah.

And Jesus comes along and it is out of this world different.

It's hard for us to step back in to the first century and capture what that was like.

But I brought an audio clip today to give you a little reminder.

This is what Jesus' teaching sounded like, and this is what it made people feel on the inside.

Just give it a listen and see if you remember this song.

Some of you are already there.

You're in the skating ring.

Oh yeah, you skate backwards.

Hey, look at me, girls.

Some of you are lost right now.

Just keep listening.

Oh yeah.

Even the white people got this.

You've been to the club getting the white man overbike.

Oh yeah.

Some of you are like, I have no idea what this is.

Listen.

Don't stop.

You white people can't handle anymore.

Now, here's my question to you today, okay?

If you recognize that song, I want you to stand up.

Look at all the old people standing up now.

I wish your kids were in here.

Your kids would be like, ah, don't sit down.

Stay up.

Stay up.

Now, here's the thing.

If you had to explain that to somebody who's sitting down, how would you explain it to them?

You just couldn't.

You just like you had to be there.

1979.

The name of the song was Rapper's Delight.

And the name of the group was Sugar Hill Gang.

There you go, Chris Camardo.

How old are you, Chris?

Oh, that wasn't you know, that was you.

There you go.

I'm younger.

You're younger than him.

How old are you?

58.

That's right.

1979.

Remember that?

Oh yeah.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Listen, uh, Rapper's Delight by the Sugar Hill Gang.

Here's why it was so revolutionary.

It was the first rap song that got widespread play on radio.

You have a seat.

And it revolutionized rap.

It put rap music on the map and made it mainstream, not something that was hidden.

Now, why do I tell you that?

Look at me.

Shh, y'all are like texting your friends, my pastor just played Rapper's Delight.

So Sue me, you ain't gonna get anything.

Uh look at me.

When Jesus talked, look at listen, it was the first time people heard the truth on mainstream radio.

And it was like, oh my gosh.

And so not only was Jesus central to what God was doing, people made Jesus central to what they were doing.

And what I want you to understand today is it's one thing is just, I don't want you to sit out there and just apply and go, that's great.

Jesus is central to what God's doing.

Jesus did all that so he could be central to what you and I are doing, okay?

Let's read together uh Matthew chapter 12, verse 1.

Matthew 12:1

At that time Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath.

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.

He said to them, Have you not read where David did what David did when he was hungry and those who were with him, how he entered the house of God and he ate the bread of the presence, which is it was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priest?

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

He went on from there, and he 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?

He said to them, Which 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?

Or how much more value is a man than a sheep?

So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.

And then he said to the man, Stretch out your hand.

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

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

Verse 15 Jesus, aware of this, withdrew from there.

And many followed him, and he healed them all, and he ordered them not to make him known.

This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah.

Behold, my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved with whom my soul is well pleased, I will put my spirit upon him, and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles.

He will not quarrel or cry aloud, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets.

A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not quench, until he brings justice to victory, and in his name the Gentiles will hope.

He's like, Whoa, that was a lot, preacher.

Give me a break, okay?

Yes, somebody, I got here this morning for 8 o'clock service, and someone said, Hey, I read the passage.

There's a lot in there.

Yes, it's three pericopes, which is the big seminary word for three sections of scripture that they all flow together.

He says this, then he demonstrates this, and then this right here explains all of it, okay?

And so there's three things I want you to see in the text today.

Number one, in Jesus we find what we never find in rules.

In Jesus we find what we never find in rules.

That's the first eight verses.

Now, again, remember how last weekended, Jesus said, My yoke is easy and my burden is light, and this drove the Pharisees crazy because this appeals to something fundamental in people, and it offends something fundamental in the fun police.

Hey, rest for your souls.

The Pharisees were like, we can't have any of this.

We gotta we gotta get in here and put some rules on these people.

So, like, for example, the Old Testament says about the Sabbath, it was to be holy, and it was a it was to be a day of rest from work.

The Sabbath is holy because God made it holy.

We'll get to that in just a little bit.

And what you're supposed to do on the Sabbath is just rest from work.

Well, the Pharisees came along, these are like the religious preachers of the day.

They experts on the truth, but dropouts on the way.

They came along and said, you know what?

We can't trust these people to know what work is.

They came up with 39 different definitions of what work could not be done on the Sabbath.

Like you could only walk, they called it a Sabbath day's journey.

It's about 2,000 yards.

You could do this, but you couldn't do that.

Meticulous, binding, overwhelming, depressing law.

So when Jesus and his disciples are walking through a grain field, okay, on the Sabbath.

Now, by the way, they're walking through a field of grain, okay?

Best we could tell it might have been corn.

Here's my question.

What are the Pharisees doing out there dogging Jesus' spoke in the middle of a grain field?

Here's why.

They so hated Jesus that they had to catch him doing something wrong because they wanted him to be punished.

Now, we can laugh at that, but do you realize this?

That some of you in this room, you have people in your life that you so hate them, all you want to do is catch them doing wrong.

Yes.

Yes.

Our world is fueled by this.

For some people, it's Donald Trump.

Yeah, I gotta catch them doing wrong.

Watch the news.

It all leads with this is what Donald Trump did wrong today.

Yes.

And we can laugh at that, but some of us that way.

We're always looking because we want our experience to back up our opinions.

You start with your opinion and you look for an experience to violate your opinion.

What you should do is have experiences and then derive your opinion from that experience.

Does that make sense?

Say amen.

And so in Jesus, what we find we we find what we never find in the rules.

What does that mean?

The Pharisees come up and they were like, hey, we got you on four violations, okay?

You were plucking the grain, that's reaping.

You were rubbing it to separate the grain from the husk, that's threshing.

You were blowing the husk away, okay, that's winnowing.

And the whole thing was preparing food.

So we got you on four infractions, Jesus.

Let me just see your license and registration, please.

And Jesus is like, hey, bro, these guys are hungry.

Okay?

And then Jesus appeals to some things that I have to explain.

It starts right there in verse 3.

Jesus says, Have you not read what David did when he was hungry and those who are with him?

How he entered the house of God and he ate the bread of the presence, which was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priest.

What is he talking about?

And see, you should find a church that takes the time to pump the brakes and not just use the Bible to as a platform for the preacher's ideas, but you should find a church that has a preacher that actually tells you what the Bible means when it says these things, like it talks about right here, and he ate the bread of the presence.

What in the world is the bread of the presence?

Uh here's what they're referring to.

Uh, in the Old Testament, there's a tabernacle, like a portable, like a big tent, and it symbolizes this is where God lived.

They had the Ark of the Covenant that Indiana Jones got back from the Germans.

Remember that?

Yeah.

They got that the presence of God, and there was a big thick curtain.

That was the Holy of Holies.

Only the priest went there once a year, and that was off limits.

And right outside of that was a table.

It was covered in gold, okay?

And on that was twelve loaves of bread.

Six in this stack, six in this stack.

And it symbolized, represented the twelve tribes of Israel, but it also what it said, it represented that, but what it symbolized was the presence and the provision of God.

The presence and the provision of God.

In other words, God's going to provide.

And every Sabbath they changed them out.

They took the old 12 loaves and the priest ate that, okay?

And they get the and only the priests couldn't could eat it.

It was sacred, it was just for them.

Now, David and his men are fleeing from Saul.

If you want to read this historical context, it's in 1 Kings 21, I believe, in the Old Testament, or 1 Samuel, excuse me.

David's on the run from Saul and they don't have any food.

And he says, Oh, it's a Sabbath.

He goes to the tabernacle and says, Hey, walks in there and grabs some of the bread off the table and gives it to his men.

Now, some people would lose their mind if you're like a filchy, moralizing rule keeper.

But here's the thing: God, yes, God does have rules, but God does not mind it when people are practical and meet human need.

Like we have a benevolence policy here at our church, and it's pretty stringent because we don't want to be taken advantage of.

But somebody showed up a while back, a lady, and she's crying, and just because you cry, I'm I sound cold-hearted.

Crying doesn't mean because people can cry on demand.

But the lady was crying, and I said, Ma'am, what's going on?

She goes, I just need food to feed my kids.

And I said, How many kids you go?

She goes, I got two kids.

I said, Where are they?

They're out in my car.

And so I went out in the car and I said, Hey guys, how are we doing?

And a little boy from the backseat said, We're hungry.

I was like, All right.

And so if I could have found some pastors on staff here, I'd have gone in there and take up an offer and said, Get out your bill for give me some money right now.

Uh but because King Rat's always got some cheese, I said, Hold on just a second.

I went back in my coming here.

You want a bottle of water?

Bring your kids in there, kids are like candy.

Just grabbing handfuls.

Uh and I said, Listen, we don't give out cash.

And she goes, Why not?

I said, Because we're not stupid.

And then we had that awkward eye contact where she's looking at me and I'm looking at her, and I said, You feel me?

And she goes, I feel you.

I'm sorry, I'm I sound like I'm trying to get cash.

I'm not.

I just want food for my kids.

And I said, I got a couple Kroger gift cards.

She said, Okay, anything will do.

I said, I got 50, I got a hundred, and I got two hundred.

Which one would you like?

And she said, I'll take the 50.

And I said, How about the 200?

Why?

Because I love spending your money.

That's why, church people.

No, here's why.

Because a car notice would have said, give me the 200.

A hungry mom says, I'll just take the 50.

I gotta get some food for my kids.

And I said, I mean, she goes, Oh, sir, I can't promise you I'll come to your church on Sunday.

I said, I don't give you, I don't do something for you, so you come to my church.

Okay?

I do something for you because I think it's the right thing to do.

Well, I know churches have a policy.

We do have a policy.

You gotta fill out a form, seven-page application, and then you gotta meet with Wade Burgess.

I've just spared your life.

Yes, yeah.

Now, what what what am I trying to do?

They ate the bread of the presence, okay?

Because, hey, yeah, this is off limits.

This is owing to the priest, but David and his men were starving, and they're like, hey man, here you go.

God's not bothered by that, okay?

And so that's what that means.

And then in verse 5, he says this, which a man asked me about this one time, but which I thought was great.

But look at verse five.

He says, Or have you not read in the law on how the Sabbath, the priests of the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless?

I vacated me one time and he said, Hey, listen, I mean, even the priests don't keep the rules.

Why do you guys expect us to keep the rules?

And I'm like, what are you talking about?

And he points to this verse.

I'm like, oh man, come on.

That's not at all what that means.

What that means is what Jesus is saying is, hey, the priests even have to work on the Sabbath.

They have to do the morning sacrifice and the evening sacrifice.

And so if you apply the law literally, even the priest, but see, Jesus is saying, hey, listen, we're gonna meet human need.

We're not just gonna lay the law down and say, I'm sorry, we can't do anything about this, okay?

So this is what he's talking about.

Instead of saying everyone's a hypocrite, he's saying, hey, the priest had a job to do.

They did their job on the Sabbath in the morning and the evening sacrifice.

Third thing I want you to understand is in verse 6, the next verse, Jesus says, I tell you, something greater than the temple is here.

I tell you, something, not somebody, something better greater than the temple is here.

Now the temple is where God dwelt.

So remember that?

Because here it goes like this tabernacle, remember the portable tent?

Temple, permanent structure to body.

God dwelled in the tent in tabernacle, he just presence was in the temple, and now as a Christian, God comes to dwell in your body.

This is why the New Testament says, Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?

See, to be a Christian means that God's God's spirit lives inside of me.

It's not like I have an external list of rules and regulations I'm trying to live up to.

I have this internal reality that I'm trying to let out on the culture around me.

And so when I walked a lady out and I said, Hey, would you like some couple of suckers for your kids and some bottle of water?

She goes, Absolutely.

Thank you so much.

So this is the fifth church I've been to.

I said, Don't tell me what happened to the other ones because I want to go burn them down.

And she goes, I know you're kidding.

I said, No, I'm really not.

I'm really not.

And she goes, I just hit a run of bad luck and I'm trying to get back on my feet.

I said, I get it.

Drive off before I cry, lady, leave now.

Go, go, go.

Uh but Jesus says, something greater than the temple was here.

The temple represented, remember, this is where God dwells.

God dwells in the tabernacle, God dwells in the temple, his presence.

What Jesus is saying is that I am the manifestation of the presence of God.

I represent God's presence.

This is why in John chapter 1, it says this of Jesus.

John 1 · chapter mention

It says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, the Word was God, and the Word became flesh, and look at me, and tabernacled among us.

He pitched his tent and said, I want you to see what God's really like.

This is why Jesus said, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father.

He's here to represent and to embody the presence of God.

That's why he says something.

This is a reality, and you got to ask yourself, okay, what is this reality and how would you describe it to people?

It's like trying to describe rappers delight.

I don't know.

I was a skating rink, I came on, the disco ball was spinning, I got lost in the moment, man.

Yeah.

The same thing happened with people.

It's like, oh my gosh.

Here's the last thing I want to explain in this little section is verse 8.

He says, For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.

For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.

Translation, Jesus said, Because I started the Sabbath, I'll be in charge of what it looks like to keep the Sabbath.

You say, No, what do you mean you started the Sabbath?

If I ask you where the Sabbath came from, I'd get two answers.

Number one, most of you would say the Ten Commandments.

Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.

And it's one of the Ten Commandments.

It's so important it made the top ten list, David Letterman.

But here's where the Sabbath started.

It started actually back in creation.

Genesis chapter 2.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

If you looked in the first three verses, Genesis chapter 2, verses 1 to 3, you would see that after the six days, God created, and then after that on the seventh day, the Bible says that God rested.

Genesis 2:1–3

He rested.

He took a Sabbath.

He said, I'm so satisfied with what I've done, I'm going to do nothing.

One of the things that distinguishes us as Christians is that we take a day out of the weekend, we don't do anything to the glory of God.

Except watch football.

Which is in the Bible somewhere, I'm sure.

Especially if you're an Aggie fan.

But anyway, whoops, I did it again.

Brittany, is that you?

Hey, listen, will y'all play LSU next week?

One of y'all is gonna be out of the playoffs.

I'm just saying.

Playoffs.

Play.

For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.

Hey, look at me.

Uh back in Genesis chapter 2.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

Uh, that wasn't just God and Jesus pops up in the New Testament.

Back in Genesis 1, when God said this, he said, Come let us make man in our image.

Those are plural.

Come let us.

That's the Trinity, the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit make man in our image.

Jesus was present and was the agent of creation.

And so he's like, hey, listen, I'm not gonna let a bunch of religious monkeys tell me how to how to how to live out the Sabbath.

Are you kidding me?

I am the Lord of the Sabbath.

That's a job description nobody else has, by the way.

Nobody does.

Why?

Because we find in Jesus what we never find in the rules.

Okay?

Now he sets this aside and he said, here's why Jesus gets so direct with them, because they're misusing something that he created.

Now it's easy to point the finger at them and feel self-righteous.

We should all ask ourselves, is there anything that God created that you are misusing?

Is there anything that God created that you are currently misusing?

Here's the second thing we see in the text that Jesus put people over policy.

Jesus put people over policy.

It's verses 9 to 14.

What do you mean?

He says he went on from there and he entered their synagogue.

It's like their church.

It was a center of communal life.

It was a hub of humanity and activity.

And a man was there with a withered hand.

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

So that they might accuse him.

And 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?

Hear this next sentence.

Don't tell Peter, Jesus said this, of how much more value is a man than a sheep?

This is so controversial nowadays because every we we believe in like creational socialism.

We're all the same.

We have no more right to life than a sheep.

No, yes, we do.

Here's why people are more valuable than sheep.

Number one, you're created in the image of God.

Number two, you have the Spirit of God inside of you.

And number three, you have moral agency.

You can choose between right and wrong.

I have a dog at home.

He can't choose right.

I can beat him every day of the week, he can't choose right.

Right now, he is laying on some surface in my house he's not supposed to be on.

And I've got a 15 year old cat that it's old and it's losing control of its bodily functions, if you know what I mean.

And I'm like, I Absolutely not.

And my wife is like, your girls love that cat.

My girls don't live here.

Yes.

Yes.

Now, am I nice to my animals?

I'm married.

I have to be.

But don't get it twisted.

There's nothing that's on the same level with man.

Because you're the only thing created in God's image.

And that doesn't mean we mistreat animals.

Look at me.

But it also doesn't mean that we misrepresent ourselves.

Oh, well, who am I to think I'm better than a sheep?

I'm much better than a sheep.

Because Jesus says so right here.

Oh, how much more value is a man than a sheep?

Jesus puts people over policy.

So because he believes this, he says this, so it's lawful to do good on the Sabbath.

And now I will do some good.

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

The man stretched it out and restored it healthy, just like the other one.

And the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him.

And then when it says destroy, that's Bible talk for killing.

They're like, we have got to kill this guy because he's making us look like a bunch of narrow-minded, moralizing just oh.

And meanwhile, everyone's flocking to Jesus because he puts people over policy.

And let me listen, let me say this, listen carefully.

I don't want you to think that every rule is relative and there's an exception to everything the Bible says.

Because if you do that, then pretty soon everything is a situational ethic.

It sounds like this.

Well, we love each other and we're going to get married one day.

See how common it is?

So I'm not saying there's some absolutes in the Bible.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Here's what Jesus is trying to get at.

They use rules to make the Sabbath what it was never intended to be.

The Sabbath is about God's sufficiency.

They made it about their ability.

The Sabbath is about God is sufficient.

God's done enough so we can just chill on one day of the week and rest and restore our margins and deeper and more fully appreciate all that God's done and is going to do.

The Pharisees come along and just piled up 39 laws and a bunch of interpretations of those laws.

It went into the thousands.

And so nobody enjoyed a Sabbath.

It wasn't restful.

They were neurotically breaking down because deep inside they sensed we're screwing up somewhere.

The rules were so exacting that, like if you could heal somebody on the Sabbath if their situation, their illness was life-threatening.

But if it was just a withered hand, that could wait till Monday.

And Jesus is like, Are you kidding me?

I just told you all I desire mercy and not sacrifice.

Remember he said that in the first section?

Remember that?

He said, if you guys understood what this meant, okay, that I desire, what I mean when I say, I desire mercy and not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the guiltless.

Jesus comes along right here and he just he demonstrates what he means when he says, I desire mercy and not sacrifice.

So it behooves us to understand what he means when he explains what, because he explains what he does here.

When he says, I desire mercy, not sacrifice, that is a direct quote from the Old Testament book of Hosea, chapter 6, verse 6.

Hosea 6:6

You don't have to turn there because what's happening is that God is trying to explain to Israel, hey, you guys, you your love for me is kind of flighty.

Matter of fact, he says literally in Hosea 6, it's like the morning dew.

It's here, and then all of a sudden it's gone very quickly, okay?

It doesn't last that long.

You're always apologizing, you're always making sacrifices, and he says, What I prefer instead of all that is steadfast loyal love instead of all these sacrifices.

The Hebrew word for this kind of love is Hesed.

Hasid.

It's a rough guttural in the Hebrew.

It's H-E-S-E-D.

Hasid.

Like in the Bible, if you see the big word loving kindness, that's in the Hebrew, that's the word Hasid.

And what it's saying is, hey, you you you love these people in the way you don't love anything else.

Like this, this was demonstrated in my house yesterday.

My wife loves me.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining.

I have nothing to complain about.

But my wife has a level of love for our daughters that sometimes I don't think she has for me.

Like yesterday, the baby girl was coming home from Baylor from graduate school, and she's coming in, she has a deadline point on tomorrow morning, and she says, I'm gonna come in Saturday because I want to go to church.

So she's coming in and she texted us and says, I'm leaving Waco now.

And I see my wife, and Mark, with military precision, she has it timed out.

And about, I don't know, 10 minutes before she's supposed to show up, my wife, now first of all, she's cleaning everything.

She lights a candle.

I'm like, what do we, what do we, what why does it smell like women in here?

What are we doing?

Well, it's always coming home.

And then I look up, I'm not make, I'm not making this up.

She's got a can of glass cleaner.

She opened, now, because she does it.

She opens the front door and leaves the front door open.

We have a storm door.

So, a glass door.

So she wants to see them coming in the driveway.

And I'm like, they have a key.

They can use the doorbell.

They know we're here, but I want them to know that the door's always welcome.

They're always welcome.

I don't think they're questioning that.

And then she goes, after a few minutes, looking out the door, and seeing the dog's nose smudge all over.

She gets a glass, a can of glass cleaner and cleans the glass inside and out.

And I'm sitting there going, You never do that for me.

Last night, about 9:30, when LSU is choking, because their quarterback can't hit a guy wide open in the end zone, but I digress.

I'm enjoying it a little bit too much because Lane Kevin's losing, and I'm like, what's that smell?

That smells incredible.

And about that time, my baby girl comes walking out of the back of the house and goes, Do I smell sausage balls?

And my wife has made sausage balls at 9:30 at night.

And I'm losing my Jesus at this point.

I'm like, and I just gave her the stink eye from the living room.

And she said, Well, Sophie loves these.

And I made enough for her to take home.

Did you make enough for me to have one or two?

And then out of her crooked wife's mouth, she said, Well, not too many.

And I just thought, I just sat back down.

Just turned up the volume on the game.

And I'm sitting there just stewing in my own juices, and the Holy Spirit's like, hey, your wife has said love for your kids.

She's got it for you, but she sees you all the time.

They don't come home that much anymore, so when they come home, it's a big deal.

And by the way, God said, I'm this way with my kids who've been gone.

Come back home to me.

Okay.

All right.

I don't need sausage balls.

You can take them all, Sophie.

Share them with your classmates.

I don't care.

Now you say, What does that look like?

I told you it comes from Hosea chapter 6, verse 6, where God says, I desire, hey, I don't need you making sacrifices.

Hosea 6:6

I need you to have this Hesed love for me.

I desire mercy, not sacrifice.

You go back three chapters earlier, Hosea chapter three, you read this.

Now, the book of Hosea, if you're like, I don't know what that's about.

It's a he was a prophet in the Old Testament, and he got married to a lady named Gomer.

Have you noticed your wife has no friends named Gomer men?

You ain't got a pet named Gomer.

You don't know anybody named Gomer.

Here's why.

Hosea married this woman Gomer.

They had three kids.

Everything was good.

After that third kid, she got a little off the reservation, started having affairs, had so many affairs, she enjoyed it, she became a prostitute.

She got passed around like a bong at a foghead concert, and then nobody wanted her.

And then one day she's just washed up, mused up, and God comes to Hosea and says, Hey, bro, your wife, who you're still married to, by the way, is being sold at the slave auction because nobody wants to sleep with her anymore.

Somebody's gonna buy her like chattel and make her clean their house or something.

And Hosea's like, Well, hey, you get what you deserve.

You know what they say about karma, right?

Amen, God.

And God says, I tell you what I say about Hesed.

I want people, my people to know how I feel about them.

So I want you to go down there and bite her back.

And Hosea wasn't like, What?

The Bible says it like this Hosea chapter 3, verse 1.

Hosea 3:1

And the Lord said to me, Go again.

Hello, again, go back to this woman you've known before, who's known a bunch of other men, and love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress.

There's no hiding what this is about.

Even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, that's what God's demonstrating.

Though they turn to other gods and they love cakes of raisins.

What's with the cakes of raisins?

They were an aphrodisiac.

These people were always in the mood to sin.

And then, by the way, if you're looking for a new tattoo, it's right here.

Look at these next four words.

So I bought her.

God's response to all your waywardness is that He goes down and buys you off the slave market.

So I bought her for 15 shekels of silver and a Homer and a lethic of barley.

And I said to her, You must dwell as mine for many days.

You shall not play the whore or belong to another man.

So will I also be to you.

Yeah.

So when the Bible says, when Jesus says, I desire mercy, not sacrifice, there's so much wrapped up in that word mercy, you have to understand it today to appreciate it, much less experience it.

I can tell you a lot of things about Hesed, but I'll just give you a definition of it from Michael Card.

He's a Christian singer and writer and thinker.

He said, Hesed is what happens when the person from whom I have the right to expect nothing gives me everything.

Hear it again.

Hesed is what happens when the person from whom I have the right to expect nothing gives me everything.

And this was Gomorrah's experience that day at the slave auction.

And look at me.

If you're a Christian, that was your experience on the day of your conversion.

Now, by the way, I just point at this.

I ain't got time to go into it, but look at verse 13.

And he said to the man, stretch out your hand, and the man stretched it out, and it was restored, healthy like the other.

I just wonder what would get healed in you if you started obeying Jesus.

You say, What do you mean?

Jesus did not touch him.

He said, Stretch out your hand.

The guy had a withered hand, the hand wouldn't work.

You imagine?

Stretch out your hand.

It's real funny, Jesus.

You're just making fun of me?

No.

Stretch out your hand.

And so, what am I saying?

I'm saying that the guy obeyed and he was healed.

If he didn't obey, he wouldn't have been healed.

Some of you don't have a disease, you have a consequence.

And you got to ask yourself, what would happen if I just started obeying everything Jesus says?

Here's the last thing I want you to see in the text.

Jesus is the fulfillment of God's plan.

That's verses 15 to 21.

He's the fulfillment of God's plan.

I got a text this week from a young man in our church that's in the military, and he goes, Hey, I got a guy, he's kind of different.

He thinks the Old Testament's corrupt.

He just reads the words of Jesus.

Oh, yeah.

It's called a red letter Christian.

My favorite kind of internet theologian.

I'm just reading the red letters, and everything else is just man, and it's corrupted.

You can't be trusted.

And here's the problem: if you're a red letter Christian, you miss the cohesive nature of the Bible.

You miss how it's just one story that God's been telling over 66 books, over 1,500 years with one central character.

You say, Well, what do you mean it's cohesive?

Look right there, verse 18 to 20.

There are eight consecutive future tense verbs that show where all the prophecies from Isaiah were going to be fulfilled in Jesus.

I'll just read them to you.

Behold, my servant whom I have chosen.

Now, by the way, the book of Isaiah was written 700 years before Jesus was born.

So remember earlier when we sang he's always, always, always on time.

Remember that, boys and girls?

700 years does not alter the veracity of God's word.

Because God prophesied back in Isaiah.

He said, I'm gonna send my servant, and this is what he will do.

He says, Behold, my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved with whom my soul is well pleased, I will put my spirit upon him, and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles.

He will not quarrel or cry aloud, nor will anyone hear his voice in the street.

A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not quench, until it brings justice, until he brings justice to victory, and in his name the Gentiles will hope.

Now look at me.

I know it's hard, you're like, oh, that's a lot.

So I kind of broke it down and kind of worded it the way we would say it nowadays.

Here's the here's the uh seven or eight things that that that the Isaiah said Jesus, the servant of God will do, and it's what Jesus came and did.

Like Jesus shows up and says, Hey, you were told I the servant of God will do this.

I am doing this because I am that servant.

I am the fulfillment of God's plan.

Here are those things.

Number one, Jesus is the servant of God.

Translation, he is God's solution to man's problem.

Secondly, God approves of and is pleased with Jesus.

He says here back in Isaiah, what he said is baptism.

This is my beloved son with whom I'm well pleased.

Thirdly, Jesus comes with an anointing on him.

It's this the Holy Spirit.

That's why it is temptation.

It says Jesus was full of the Spirit, he was led by the Spirit, and after the temptation, he comes out of the wilderness in the power of the Spirit.

Okay?

Fourthly, Jesus came to declare justice to the nations.

Nobody gets away with anything.

You don't have to be paying people back and keeping score.

Everyone's gonna get what they've got coming to them.

That's why in Romans 12 he says, hey, leave room for the wrath of God.

It's mine to repay.

Vengeance is mine.

I will repay, says the Lord.

Here's a fifth one.

He's comfortable with people not knowing.

He said, What do you mean?

He will not quarrel or cry aloud, nor will anyone hear his voice in the street.

He's comfortable with people not knowing.

Translation, he's not at a pool party with Hassan Piker because he wants to get the 18 to 35 vote.

He's not some pandering politician hack who's worried about the midterms.

He's come, matter of fact, he heals all these people in verse 15, okay?

And many followed him and he healed them all and ordered them not to make him known.

It's called the messianic secret.

He's like, hey, I don't want a following, I want an understanding.

I don't want fanboys.

I want people that understand who I really am.

Here's another one.

He's Jesus is gracious to people who are struggling.

A bruised reed, he will not break, and a smoldering wick, he will not quench.

You may be here today, like, oh man, my my my little candle's about to go out.

Jesus won't come long.

Okay, there you go.

You're more smoke than light.

You're just polluting the environment.

No.

He's like, hey, let's let's get this thing back to where it should be.

He establishes God's way on the earth through merciful persistence.

Translation, justice wins until he brings justice to victory.

And then finally, Jesus becomes the hope of the nations.

What do you mean?

What Jesus will do changes what you and I will do.

Let me say it again.

I'll show it to you in the Bible and we'll be done.

You down for that?

Say amen.

What Jesus will do, this is 700 years before he comes.

The Bible says this is what he will do.

And now Jesus has come and done it.

He did that.

Look at me to change what you and I will do.

Hear it again, starting in verse 18.

Behold, my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved with whom my soul is well pleased, I will put my spirit upon him, and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles.

He will not quarrel or cry aloud, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets.

A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not quench until he brings justice to victory.

And because of all these things that he will do, guess what?

And in his name the Gentiles will hope.

Jesus has done everything that Isaiah prophesied he will do.

And here's why to change what you and I will do.

And so what you have to ask yourself today is that what you will do, has that ever been changed?

Do you ever find yourself in situations where you experience the capacity of the gospel where you're like, you know what?

If it wasn't for God, I will do, I would do this, but now I can't do that anymore.

Like sometimes you should have thoughts like, you know what I want to do?

But I can't.

And I'm not mad about it.

I'm actually glad.

Why?

Because of the fact that what Jesus did, He all the He fulfilled all the things that God said He will do.

And the reason He did that, look at me, we're done.

The reason He did that is to alter in effect what you will do.

That's not behavior modification, that's life change.

That's understanding.

That's why this is not a mirror where we go to see ourselves.

This is a microscope that magnifies the centrality of Jesus.

Let's pray together.

If you're a guest, just relax.

We like to teach the Bible, then we'll give you some space to think about it.

And this is that time.

So questions come on the screen.

We'll talk about these tonight in our community group.

But right now, let's just be still for like maybe a minute and just ask the Lord, hey, what have my name on it today?

What'd you say to me today?

I want to think about that before I get out of here.

Think about it right now.

God, religious people always make it about their ability.

Christians make it about our responsibility, which is rooted in your sufficiency.

And that's what the Sabbath is about.

It's about your sufficient.

You're so good, you're so faithful.

We're hopeful today because we've we look back and see what you've done, and we know that you're gonna keep doing it.

It's gonna get even better.

That's not pie in the sky, sweep by and by.

That's take on the plate right now.

We sink our teeth into that and are nourished by it.

And so, Holy Spirit, lead us into the truth that makes us the freest cat in the room.

We don't worry, we don't fret.

We know God and we trust God because you've done everything that they prophesied that you will do.

And you did that, Jesus, to change what we will do.

So let what we do change to your glory and our good.

We pray this in Christ's name, and everyone said.

Thank you for listening to this message.

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