I invite you to open the Bible and turn with me to the Gospel of Mark, chapter 2, verse 18. And it is great to see you all here today, some of you sitting in your regularly scheduled seats. I see it's good to have you here. I also met some people who are here for the first time. Can we give them a warm welcome here? Welcome even people watching online. We want to welcome you in, and I hope you will look at Mark 2:18 with me, and we're going to answer the question, why is Jesus so controversial? And the answer is, because he doesn't fit into any religious system. He defies all works that you can do to get right with God. Jesus, he himself is the WAY, is the truth, is the life. There's no other way anybody's getting to God except through Jesus. And that's really going to bother these Pharisees, and there's going to be a lot of controversy, and so we're going to get to study it together. So, we're going to start in Mark 2:18, we're going to go all the way to chapter 3, verse 6. And out of respect for God's Word, I ask that everyone would stand for the public reading of Scripture. I encourage you to give this your full and undivided attention, because there might be some ways that we start to think our works can make us righteous. There might be ways that we turn our church into a religious system, and we don't want to be any Pharisees. So, let's make sure we learn what Jesus has to say here today. Please follow along as I read Mark 2, verse 18.
Now John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And people came and said to him, “Why do John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.” One Sabbath he was going through the grainfields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. And the Pharisees were saying to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did, when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God, in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?” And he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.” Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand. And they watched Jesus, to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him. And he said to the man with the withered hand, “Come here.” And he said to them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.
That's the reading of God's Word. Please go ahead and have your seat. And in your bulletin, there is a handout, if you want to take some notes on this text. You might notice we had to make it a smaller font to fit the text on this particular handout this week. But what is the key word of the gospel of Mark, everybody? What is it” Immediately. And it's right there in the last verse. It's the Pharisees response. Jesus heals a man with a withered hand in the synagogue, but because he does it on the Sabbath, immediately, they want to destroy him, and they're ready to form an unholy alliance with the evil Herodians, just as long as they can kill Jesus.
So, this controversy has been going all the way from the beginning of chapter 2, all the way through here to chapter 3, verse 6. In fact, I wish the first six verses were still in chapter 2, because that has been the chapter of controversy here. Now we saw it begin with the scribes and when Jesus said, “The Son of Man has authority to forgive sins.” And since you're questioning me, I'll prove to you, when this man rises up, takes his bed and walks out of here; when the paralyzed man walks out of here, you'll know I can forgive sins. Then he went and called Levi the tax collector, who was known as a sinner, and he called him to be one of his disciples. And so, the controversy has been increasing, and now we're going to pick it up here in chapter 2, verse 18, where we have this question about fasting. And the question about fasting here is, hey, where John's disciples were fasting. We look at the Pharisees, their disciples, they are fasting. Jesus, we notice your disciples are not fasting. Why don't your disciples fast?
Okay, so this is the kind of question that we have to be very careful about when we go through these accounts. I don't want to happen to you what happened to me when I was growing up going to church. I had this basic assumption that the Pharisees actually knew what they were talking about. Okay, so what I thought is, if there was a question about fasting, then there must be some kind of statement in the Scripture about fasting that they're talking about, or when we get to the Sabbath, hey, it's unlawful. Your disciples, they're plucking the heads of grain on the Sabbath. Why are they breaking the law by doing that, Jesus? I, naively it turns out, assumed, growing up going to church, that there must actually be a law where you can't do something like that on the Sabbath. Well, guess what? There is no law about that. These are laws that the Pharisees have made up. This question that gets asked first, not super controversial, just a question. It's a question of comparison. Hey, they're fasting. They're fasting. Why aren't you fasting? There's no command where you actually need to be fasting. But I see them fasting, so why aren't you doing it? This is a common way that people who go to church think. They don't actually think, what does the Bible say church should do? They say, well, how come this church doesn't do what that church does? Or, how come that church doesn't do what this church does? A lot of times, people are like, man, I left that church. It was terrible. But why aren't you guys more like that church? What's you guys’ problem here? That's a regular thing you hear at church. There's all this comparison and, people, I think I'm spiritual because I'm like this person, or I think I'm spiritual because I'm not like this person. So, this comparison starts coming to Jesus. Why aren't you fasting? That's what the other people who have disciples are doing. Why aren't you doing that with your disciples?
So, we want to make sure. Point number one, if you are taking notes, let's get this down: “Don't see like a Pharisee.” That's our goal here today. I don't want you to get sucked into what I was getting sucked into, which is to think that the Pharisees knew what they were talking about, and then you actually start to see the whole situation through the eyes of the Pharisees, and then you're really looking at it the wrong way. The Pharisees thought that they could do things to get right with God, and so they took the law of Moses, and they added on even more rules and regulations, more traditions, more ways that they thought everybody should be. They added on even more things to what God said in his Word.
So, when it comes to fasting, the only kind of command that I could find about fasting in the Law of Moses is in Leviticus 16, if you want to write this down next to where it talks about fasting on the Day of Atonement, this special day, one day out of the year, Yom Kippur. Maybe you've heard of it, where the high priest goes into the Holy of Holies and he offers an atoning sacrifice for the sins of the nation of Israel. Well, on that day you should afflict yourself. On that day, you should fast as you consider God forgiving the sins of his people, as the high priest goes into the presence of God. That was a day where there was called to be some kind of fast, because we're considering the weight of our sin before a holy God, and how there needs to be a sacrifice for God to forgive us for our sins. Other than that, there's nothing about this fasting that they're talking about. What we did see, though, was write this down. Luke 18:11-12. That was a verse where we saw some fasting.
If you were here last week, you might remember there was a comparison between the tax collectors, known to be sinners, and the Pharisees who think that they are righteous. And then Jesus told this story where a tax collector prays, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.” God actually forgives him for his sin. God declares him righteous. He goes home justified. But the Pharisee is over here praying. And God, “I thank you. I'm not like other people, like this tax collector.” The Pharisee, who thinks that he's righteous, is not seen as righteous by God. In fact, one of the things that the Pharisee says is, “I fast twice a week,” and so because I do these spiritual religious activities, I think, therefore I'm righteous with God. And so, that kind of works we can get right with God based on what we do mentality; it's creeping now towards Jesus and his disciples, and they're being compared to other disciples. So, look at how Jesus answers this here. He gives us kind of three pictures, starting in verse 19. He says, hey, let me put one more letter in your fast. Let's talk about the wedding feast. Surely at a wedding, we don't fast, we're celebrating, and right now, I'm like the bridegroom, and I'm here with my disciples. This isn't a time for fasting. This is a time for teaching. This is a time for me to teach them the Way. Someday when I'm taken away, and that might even be a little foreshadowing there, because who's ultimately going to take Jesus away from his disciples? It will end up being the religious leaders of the Jews, like the Pharisees. Someday when I'm taken away from them, maybe there'll be time for fasting then. But right now, I'm spending this quality time, and I'm here to train up and lead my disciples in my Way.
In fact, he gives them two pictures here. In verse 21 he talks about the patch on an old garment. You can't put a new material on an old rip. You can't just patch what Jesus is doing onto the old garment, and you can't pour the new wine into the old wine skins, because they'll burst. No, Jesus is saying, hey, you can't just patch me onto your old system. You can't just pour me into what all you're already doing if you're going to follow me. It's a whole new way that I'm going to teach you. I don't fit with anybody else. Jesus defies all manmade religion, all system of works. Jesus himself is the WAY, the only way that any of us will be righteous. So, you guys, you're thinking about me all wrong. I'm not a patch on some old, broken-down system, and you can't just pour me into what you're already doing. I'm a whole new way, and I'm teaching my disciples that new way to live.
So, we have that first account, but then go with me in verse 23 where we get into now a clear accusation, because they're going through the grain fields. And the next two accounts happen on the Sabbath? Okay, so we have the fasting question. Now we've got the Sabbath issue here, and they're plucking the heads of grain on the Sabbath. And that's our picture. As you can see here, we actually got this picture from the Pharisee surveillance system. Okay? Because how did they know they were out there plucking the heads of grain on the Sabbath? Have you ever wondered about that they were lurking in the tall grass? That's what they were doing. They're stalking them. Look, look what they're doing. How do they know? Because they're looking for it.
Okay, so at this point the controversy is peaking to the point where they have a critical spirit. They're not listening to what Jesus is teaching. They're not open to the ways of Christ. They are already looking for what the problem is going to be with Jesus. So, we can get rid of this guy, and we can't even find a problem with him. But why don't your disciples fast and on the Sabbath? Why are your disciples eating the heads of grain? That is against the law? Now this is where I thought, oh, I guess they were breaking the Sabbath law. That's what I thought when I was growing up. And I thought, there must be a bunch of laws about the Sabbath. Well, guess what? You can go read Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, and there's not a bunch of laws about the Sabbath. In fact, the Sabbath is supposed to be a day of what, everybody? A day of rest. It's not supposed to be a day of rules. It's a day of rest. And on the day of rest, here's the one thing you're supposed to do is remember God. That's where you find rest for your soul. Remember how God created you. Remember how God redeemed you, how he brought you out of Egypt was the command to Israel. Hey, remember, God has set this day apart, and you should set it apart, and God is holy, and you should think about God is holy, and you should find rest for your souls. Well, it turns out, no, we're going to say you can't do this, you can't do this, you can't do this. But here's what's crazy. Is this thing that they're doing, going through the fields, taking some of the heads of grain and eating them. This is something you're allowed to do. It actually says in Deuteronomy 23:25, if you want to write that reference down, Deuteronomy 23:25 says, “If you go into your neighbor's standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor's standing grain.” Yeah, in fact, right before that, it says, if you're going through a vineyard, take some of the grapes, eat some of the grapes. Don't start collecting the grapes. Don't start like getting it for yourself. But if you're just walking through, have a few grapes. That's the idea.
So, not only is it not against the law to do this, there's actually a law. It doesn't say anything about the Sabbath, but it does say you are allowed to do this, but now they're saying you've broken the law. And so, what that led me to believe was the Law of Moses must have been a system of works like the Pharisees thought. But guess what? That's not ever what the Law was. That's just how the Pharisees viewed it. And so, I ended up seeing the law the same way the Pharisees did, and I don't want that to be the case for you.
Let's get this down for our first dash, under point number one: “You might see like a Pharisee if you think the law actually taught works righteousness.” That's the Pharisees interpretation of the Law. That's not what God actually revealed about himself through Moses. In fact, when Moses is writing the Law, he writes about father Abraham of the Jews, the father of our faith. “And Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as” what? “righteousness”. from the Law and the Prophets and the Writings, there is a very clear theme that just those that God declares righteous, they shall live by what,” everybody? “faith”. It is not a works-based system. That's what the Pharisees turned it into. That's what many of the Jews viewed it as; that's not how God ever said it. In fact, God says things like in Leviticus 18:5. God says, “If you keep my commands, you will live like God who created life, God who's the designer of each one of us.” God says, here's the best possible way for human flourishing. Here's something for your good. Do this if you want to live, if you want to be blessed, meditate on the law of the Lord day and night. Do what God says, and you will find yourself living a blessed way.
So, God's commands are there to show us the way to go. God knew his people wouldn't keep his commands. He knew. That's why there are all these pictures of Jesus, all these sacrifices, the Passover lamb, all these priests who have to intercede with God and the people, because there was always going to be a need for a Savior. And all these things were pointing ultimately to Jesus, but the Pharisees they act like, if you do everything the law says you can be righteous. And I ended up actually thinking bad thoughts about the Law, because that's what the Pharisees thought about it, not for what the Law actually was. In fact, when they come and accuse Jesus of doing something unlawful, or not even him, his disciples doing something unlawful by plucking the heads of grain, look at how Jesus replies to them. See if this sounds familiar. This is verse 25, Mark 3:25. He said to them, have you never read what David did? Have you ever heard Jesus say something like that before? Do you not know? Have you not read? Like Jesus is expecting and he's regularly quoting the Law of Moses, the Prophets of Israel, the Writings, like the Psalms. Jesus is saying, hey, don't you guys already know this? Aren't you the teacher of Israel? Aren't you supposed to be teaching other people these things? Haven't you guys already read this? Jesus isn't acting like the Law of Moses is the old wine skins we don't need anymore, which I've heard people say before, like, let's just throw out the Old Testament. We’ve got the new now. That's not what he's saying. No, he's quoting the Hebrew Scriptures. Jesus did not come to abolish the law, but to what? to fulfill the law. He is fulfilling the law. He's not doing something unlawful. He's showing us what the Sabbath was really all about.
And so, if you've gotten this bad view on the Old Testament, what we call it today, the Scriptures that were written in Hebrew to the Jews, it wasn't just old and new. Like, if you go into Jerusalem and you say, give me a copy of the Old Testament, they'll look at you like, what are you talking about? You say, give me the Tanakh. The Tanakh is the Torah, and then it's the Prophet. The Torah is the Law, the Prophets, and then it's the Writings, the literature of the Hebrew Scripture. And then Jesus is quoting that he's come to fulfill that. So, make sure that you don't think like a Pharisee and have this like, oh, that was all legalism in the Law of Moses. No, the Law of Moses was God's Word. The Pharisees made it a system of legalism. Don't see the Law through the eyes of the Pharisees.
Now look what keeps happening here, though, because after he tells them this story, we'll get to in a minute about David from 1 Samuel 21, then look what he says in verse 27, you guys want to talk to me about the Sabbath? You guys don't even know the Sabbath. The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So, the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath. Wow. Did you know Jesus said that? Jesus loves to refer to himself in the Gospel of Mark as the Son of Man. He said in chapter 2, verse 10 that “The Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” Well, now he says, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” Have you ever thought of Jesus as the Lord of the Sabbath? Because a lot of people today, they think that the way God was in the Old Testament and the way Jesus in the New Testament are different, and that's a Pharisee way of looking at it. The Pharisees acknowledge God of the Old Testament, but they reject Jesus as the Son of God. A lot of people today think differently. They think God's a big meanie in the Old Testament, but Jesus, he's chill, I’ll roll with him in the New Testament, and they like his positive vibes of love. They think that somehow Jesus has changed the game from Yahweh in the Hebrew scriptures, that Jesus is now different. When Jesus just said that he is the Lord of the Sabbath, he's not claiming to be someone different. He's claiming to be God.
So, let's get that down for our second dash, under point number one: “You might see like a Pharisee if you think God changed from the Old to New Testament.” If you think there's a difference between the Father and the Son, no. Yahweh is a God who is merciful. He's a God who is gracious. When he introduces himself to Moses in Exodus 34:6-7, God says that he is “slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” God is too ready to forgive thousands who come to him, but he will, by no means clear the guilty. And when God introduces himself like that in Exodus 34, when Jesus is introduced in John 1:14 it says, “We beheld the glory of the Father, the glory that put on flesh, the glory that is full of grace and truth.”
And so, we see Jesus claim to be Lord of the Sabbath in our text today, we're going to see Jesus get angry with these Pharisees and grieved at their hardness of heart. And so, we're going to see that Jesus is not changing our idea of who God is. Jesus is clarifying. He's revealing who God is, and the son is one with the Father. And so, Jesus says a lot of statements like this that really make the Pharisees mad, claiming to be the Lord of the Sabbath. The Pharisees think they have the Sabbath figured out, and Jesus is saying that he's the Lord of the Sabbath. Okay, so you got to see that. I want to be so clear about this, because I actually gave the Pharisees way more credit than I should have, because when they make these accusations and they ask these questions, I assumed there must be something in the Law of Moses that makes it all about works. There must be something that they know about God and Jesus is different. Please don't assume those things. Don't look at it through the eyes of the Pharisees. Let's make sure we see it as Jesus sees it, not as these guys who got caught up in their own religious system, see it. So, with that thought, now go back to what Jesus said in verse 25, let's dive into this a little deeper, right? It's not lawful on the Sabbath. Now, Jesus could have said, how do you even know what we're doing on the Sabbath? Okay? One of the rules that the Pharisees made up, I don't know what you've heard about the Sabbath, but one of the rules that got made up, and it's not in the Scripture, is that you could only walk a certain distance on the Sabbath. In fact, some sources, it was 1999 steps. So, for some of you, it would be hard for you to get your steps in on the Sabbath, because once you do 2000 steps, that's messed up. You can't do that. It's only 1999. So, if Jesus and his disciples are out walking here in the fields, it's quite possible that the Pharisees just broke their own rules by walking over 2000 steps to come and see what Jesus and his disciples are doing out there in the fields, and then they accuse them that you're breaking the Law, when there's actually no law prohibiting what they're doing.
So, Jesus could have exposed their hypocrisy. He could have said you don't know what you're talking about. But I want you to see how Jesus reacts to this controversy, because Jesus does not back. Down from the controversy. Jesus does not withdraw. Jesus does not try to make everything nice. Jesus steps right up to the controversy, and he says, “Have you never read about David?” And he tells this story from 1 Samuel 21 verses 1 to 6, where David and his men who are fleeing for their lives because King Saul wants to kill David, because David's now going to be the king. And King Saul has been rejected as the king, and so he wants to kill David so he can stay the king, if you know the story. And so David and his men are fleeing for their lives. They go to the tabernacle, and they go to the priests, and they say, Do you have any bread? The only bread he has is the bread of the presence, which there are laws about that there are laws about what you do with the bread of the presence, and never once does it say you give it to David and his crew because they're hungry. That's not what you do with the bread of the presence, but that's what they did, and nobody thought it was a problem. Why? Because it's David and so Jesus could expose their hypocrisy. He could say, you don't know what you're talking about from the Law, but what Jesus actually wants to do is he wants to say, how come you don't have a problem when King David does something, but you have a problem with when I do something, because he's trying to say, someone greater than David is here, and if you're going to give David a pass, now you're going to come after me for something like this, when what we're doing is actually in the law, and what David did was actually against the law. But nobody thinks David's wrong because he's David, but you're going to come after me now? It's fascinating, because if you look, he says “in The time of Abiathar, the high priest,” which is really interesting, because if you go back to 1 Samuel 21 and you read the whole story there, Ahimelech, the father of Abiathar, is actually the priest. So, a lot of people, if you look this up online, people have debates about, why does Jesus say Abiathar is the priest? When you go to 1 Samuel 21, you read it's Ahimelech, the priest. Well, Ahimelech is Abiathar’s dad. And Ahimelech, he cares about David. He's happy to give David the bread. But there's this guy there, Doeg the Edomite. And guess what he does? He goes and tells King Saul what Ahimelech did and how he helped David. And so, then Saul confronts Ahimelech and the other priests, why are you guys helping David? And then Doeg, the Edomite, kills Ahimelech and many of the other priests, and Abiathar, Ahimelech’s son, flees for his life, finds where David is. And David says, thereafter, they want to kill me. They want to kill you. Stay with me. I'll keep you safe. And Abiathar becomes the priest along with David. And so there could even be by Jesus putting Abiathar in there. Is he already foreshadowing that he knows they're going to try to kill him, is that what he's already getting at here? I find it to be very interesting that Jesus decides to use this story in answer to their accusation, quoting Scripture and comparing himself to King David, and even putting in there how they killed the priests who helped King David, like, are you guys going to come after me too? So, then he says this about the Sabbath. So, this in verse 27 and 28 has got to be some of the least quoted lines from Jesus in all of the Scripture, because a lot of people I heard at church say the Sabbath, that's old. They got thrown out with the rest of the old like, we just threw the baby out with the bath water in the with the Old Testament, like we don't need all that stuff anymore. It's a whole new way. Well, somebody should have told that to Jesus, because he's got his whole thoughts about the Sabbath here. And he says, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” He confronts them the way you are doing. The Sabbath is wrong. The Sabbath was not meant to be some kind of law that men had to try to live up to, the standard of the Sabbath. No, the Sabbath was for human flourishing. The Sabbath was for good that everybody could have a day to rest, that everybody could have a day to remember God, that everybody could begin the new week feeling refreshed in their body and in their soul because they have a good father in heaven. That was the point of the Sabbath. And now you've made it this whole system that man has to try to live up to. You guys have got this all wrong. The Sabbath wasn't some law for man to keep. The Sabbath was a blessing for man's good. And Jesus then says, I would know about this, since the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. Yeah, I'm actually the one behind the Sabbath, over the Sabbath. I am actually the one who did the original Sabbath. What an amazing statement for Jesus to make to the experts on Sabbath. He now says he's the Lord of the Sabbath, and they are doing it wrong. Wow. That's inflammatory for Jesus to confront them like that.
Jesus said many things about himself that led to the Pharisees and other religious leaders of the Jews wanting to kill him. in John, the famous “I am” statements. Right? That one time where they're talking about Abraham, and he says, “Before Abraham was I am,” and they pick up stones to kill him. “I am one with the Father,” and they want to kill him. Then he says to his disciples, “I am the way. I am the truth. I am the Life. Nobody's getting to the Father, except through me.” So these kinds of statements, “the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins,” they're like he's blaspheming. No one can say that, but God alone, “I am the Lord of the Sabbath.” You can tell by the next account where they're ready to destroy him, that they are enraged by him saying these kinds of things. Do you realize what Jesus is claiming to be? The Lord of the Sabbath? He's not just claiming that he gave some kind of command to Moses in the ten Commandments, or there's some kind of command that is specific for the people of Israel as a part of their Law. No, Jesus is actually claiming that he was there on the original Sabbath.
Grab your Bible and turn with me to Genesis, chapter 2, and let's go all the way back to the beginning of the Sabbath. And it's so important that everybody here understands that Jesus is in Genesis. Can I get an amen from anybody on that? Like, if you go back to the beginning and you read about creation, don't read it like Jesus isn't there, because Jesus is there. In fact, the famous statement from Genesis is, “Let us make man in what our image,” right? There's Yahweh God, there's the Spirit hovering over the waters, right? But if you go to John 1, he refers to Genesis “In the beginning,” but he says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and nothing was made that wasn't made by Jesus.” So, John 1, Hebrews 1, Colossians 1, they all make it clear, Jesus is the creator of the universe we live in, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, they are all there together as one, doing this awesome work of creation. And after they create everything in six days, it says this in Genesis, chapter 2, verse 1, “Thus, the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them, and on the seventh day, God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So, God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it, God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.” Jesus just said that he is the Lord of that, that he rested on the seventh day. You guys want to tell me about the Sabbath? You don't understand the Sabbath. You think the Sabbath is some standard people have to live up to, some law that everybody lives under? No, no, no. The Sabbath was made for human flourishing, for the nation of Israel to have days of rest, to remember their God.
So, Jesus makes these kinds of statements, claiming to be God, and that is the reason they want to destroy him. That is the reason they want to kill him. So go back now to Mark chapter 3, and we'll look at the climax of all this controversy. So, there are five different paragraphs here, all about the scribes, the scribes of the Pharisees. And now this is like a tense standoff. Okay, we are only in chapter 3 of Mark, and they want to destroy him by the end of these 6 verses. So, when there's controversy where religious systems and self-righteous works are coming against Jesus, Jesus is stepping right into it, and they cannot handle the truth that Jesus is bringing to them. And so, when he enters the synagogue, it's like there's a man there. And the man, everybody can see this man's hand is like this withered hand. And so, it's like everybody knows Jesus has been healing so many people. Here's a man, and just look at him. He needs to be healed. And so, look at what it says. Verse 2, “They watched Jesus,” and then whenever it uses this word for “watched,” it's like full stalker mode. It's surveillance system of the Pharisees here. It's like, okay, is he going to heal him? If he heals him on the Sabbath, we've got him busted. If he does it on the Sabbath, then we can now notice. Later on, even in the Gospel of Mark, when they come to accuse him, they don't accuse him of doing a good deed to a man with a withered hand. I mean, the thing they ultimately accuse Jesus of is his blasphemy claiming to be God. All they have, besides that, is false accusations of Jesus because he didn't do anything wrong. But see, they're in this critical mindset. I don't know if you've ever been in a critical mindset, or if you've ever seen other people in a critical mindset, but they've lost objectivity, and this happens to a lot of people. They're not really hearing it and taking the information in and discerning what is true and what is error, what is good and what is evil. All they're doing is they're just looking for the problem. They're just looking for the reason they can already write it off. They can already be against it. They already have a bias. They don't care what happens, but they just want to find something that confirms their bias. That's what they're doing. This guy has a withered hand, and they're saying that Jesus has to wait till tomorrow to do a good deed to heal the man's withered hand. And so, look what Jesus says. He tells the man to come here. And this has got to be one of the most tense scenes we've had yet in Mark here. Look what Jesus says. Is it lawful? You guys want to talk about what's lawful on the Sabbath? “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” Are you trying to tell me that there's a law that you can't help a man, you can't do good to a man, you can't heal a man's hand on the Sabbath? So, the first question is, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm? Like, are you saying it's unlawful for me to do good to this man? But then, the second part of the question, to save life or to kill? I don't know that Jesus is going to save the man's life by healing his withered hand, but I do know that immediately after Jesus does heal the man's withered hand, they're going to go and work right away on the Sabbath day on a plot to kill Jesus.
So, this is how twisted it gets when you are in this religious mindset, when life is about you proving yourself to be right. You will do crazy things because you think you're doing them for God. You think you're right, your mind can get very warped where it's all about you doing what you think you should do, and you don't really care about anybody else around you. That's where these Pharisees are at. They don't care about helping a man with a withered hand. If Jesus does something on the Sabbath, we got him, and we're going to go and totally break our own rules about the Sabbath and go meet with the Herodians and have this big plot to destroy him. That's where they're at in their minds. And look how Jesus feels about it. Look at verse 5. They don't say anything. They're silent in response to him. And he looked around at them. Can you feel the tension in this synagogue? “He looks around at them.” There's just silence. There's a guy there. Look at his hand. It's messed up. Jesus is going to heal it. But they're like not saying anything, “and he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart,” if somebody ever tries to tell you, Jesus is different from the Father, he doesn't get angry like God did in the Old Testament. Oh no. Have you seen Mark 3:5? “When Jesus saw the hypocrisy of the Pharisees,” when he saw their self-righteousness and how they didn't care about the man with the withered hand, “he was angry at them.” He was sad because he saw that their hearts were like a wall. They were not open; they were not listening. And he's angry and he's sad, and when I see Jesus like this here in this text, man, it really starts getting me to think about all that we've been reading in the prophets. Like some of us, we've been reading Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel. Now we're reading through the book of the twelve, what people call the Minor Prophets. We're reading Amos right now. And man, how many times did we see God get angry with his people? How many times do we see God be so sad because his people won't listen to him, because his people, they don't have a soft heart to hear what he has to say? They don't turn with their hearts to God. No, they harden their hearts, and they keep doing their own thing. He sends prophet after prophet. He sends message after message. God is begging with his people. Why will you die in your sin? Turn to me and you can live. Come to me and I will forgive you. Come now. Let's reason together. You've got this crimson stain. I can wash it white as snow. Come to me and I'll forgive you for your sin. But the people harden their heart. They continue in their sin. They don't listen to God. And what do you see? You see God get angry. You see God be so sad for his people. Here's Jesus doing the same thing towards these Pharisees. Here's Jesus now showing us as the God man, as the Son of man, he's showing us who God is, that God does get angry and that God is sad over our sin.
Go with me to Isaiah 58. Let me show you a couple of passages in Isaiah that describe these same things, fasting and the Sabbath. We'll start with the fasting in Isaiah 58 if everybody can turn there with me, because there's not a lot of dialog in the tension, the Pharisees are silent. They're just waiting for Jesus to heal the man. He does heal the man. Immediately they're out there, figuring out how to destroy him, how to kill him. But here we get exactly what God is thinking. This is Isaiah 58. I need everybody to follow me through these verses. God says here in Isaiah 58, verse 1, “Cry aloud. Do not hold back. Lift up your voice like a trumpet. Declare to my people their transgression, to the house of Jacob, their sin.” So, the house of Jacob, well, Jacob got another name of Israel. So, God's saying somebody with a loud voice, somebody like a trumpet blast, needs to go tell my people that they are in sin. But here's the trick. Verse 2, “yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways as if they were a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the judgment of their God. They ask of me righteous judgments. They delight to draw near to God.” So, these people need to get a loud message of how much in sin they are. And yet, what are the people thinking? The people think they're doing righteous things and they're coming to God. So, see, this is the problem of self-righteous people, religious people, legalistic people, like we're actually people like that, are actually in sin, but yet they think they're right with God.
And so, that's what God's trying to address here. Like somebody needs to wake them up with a trumpet, but they're going to come to me and act like everything's fine, and so look how they come to him. Verse 3, “Why have we fasted? And you see it not. Why have we humbled ourselves? And you take no knowledge of it? Behold, in the day of your fast, you seek your own pleasure. God answers their question. You oppress all your workers, behold you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to hit with the wicked fist, fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard on high. Is that the fast I choose a day for a person to humble himself? Is it to bow down his head like a reed and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast in the day, acceptable to the Lord?” So, those verses right there, they're like, we're fasting. Why aren't you listening to us? Look at how righteous we are, look at our religious works we're doing. Why aren't you answering our prayers? And God's like you think that's what I want, is your fast? You think I want you to look like you're sad and look like you're hungry and look like you're gloomy? You think that's the righteousness that I'm looking for, is you over here fasting and saying, God, look at me. I'm fasting so much for you, I must be right with you. God's like, that's not the kind of fast I'm looking for. That's not what I want you to be doing. No, in fact, he says in verse 6, “Is not this the fast I choose?” Let me tell you what I'm looking for, “to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free and to break every yoke. Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and to bring the homeless poor into your house when you see the naked, to cover him and not to hide yourself from your own flesh, then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily. Your righteousness shall go before you. The glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.”
You guys want to know what I'm really looking for is I want you to turn from your wickedness. I want you to repent of your sins. Don't go through religious motions. Don't pray many prayers. Don't act like woe is me thinking that impresses me. Turn from your sins, and here's how I'll know that you're really turning to me with your heart is when you care about other people, when you see the hungry around you, when you see the naked around you, when people have obvious needs, particularly the great need of their soul for the good news of Jesus. When you care about other people, then I'll know something's happening in your heart, but you're just all about yourself appearing righteous before me. In fact, he talks about their wicked fist. He talks about their quarreling. You want to come over here and act like you're better than other people because of the religious things you do? Oh no, you'll really be right with me when you don't think about yourself like that and you care about the other people. I don't care about you being hungry. How about you help the hungry? Here's Jesus with a man with a withered hand like the need is right in front of everybody's face, and the ability to meet the need is right there, and they're just like, do it on the Sabbath, and you're dead, and Jesus is angry, and God is angry. What really makes God angry? What does Jesus get out of whip and chase out of the temple? Religious hypocrisy. People who think that because I do this or because I don't do this, I'm now better than other people. God gets angry at that. It grieves him. No, there are two clear things that God wants you to do. Number one, to love him with all your heart. And you can't say you love God with all your heart when you're still over here in your sin, you have to turn from your sin and give God your heart. That's what he wants. And then what's the second thing God wants you to do? He wants you to love your neighbor as yourself. So, when you see a need that you know you would need to meet that need yourself. Well here someone else has that need. Well now you want to go and meet it for them. And Jesus is going to be accused, and they're making a plot to kill him and destroy him because he healed a man's withered hand. Like that just shows they don't understand what God's saying here in Isaiah 58. They think they're fasting, and their approach to God is making them righteous. We all need to take a moment to look at ourselves and to ask ourselves, do I understand that the only reason I'm righteous is because of Jesus, because I've repented of my sins and I put my faith in Jesus, or do I actually think because of the way I go to church, or the way I do this, or the way I don't do this, that that's what's making me right with God?
Let's get that down for number two, let's ask ourselves this question: “Are you following the Lord Jesus or just following the rules?” Are you following the Lord Jesus or just following the rules? Because you can't just live the Christian way. We don't want to have a Compass Bible Church way. You don't want to have your way. Jesus is the Way, and you're either following him, or you're just becoming like a Pharisee. And so, Jesus, he can't patch Jesus onto your system. Can't pour Jesus into your wine skins. You’ve got to learn the way of Jesus. Go to Isaiah, chapter 1, where God talks about the Sabbath and their sacrifices and how he has had enough. God literally says that he hates it. When God is confronting their sin here in Isaiah, the first five chapters, he pronounces woe upon his people that judgment is coming upon them. God is angry with them. God is grieved at their hardness of heart, and they're over here saying, no, God's okay with us because we keep the Sabbath and we keep the feasts and we do these sacrifices, and so God's got to be okay with us because we're going through these religious motions.
Here's what God actually thinks. Isaiah, chapter 1, verse 11, “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well-fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. When you come to appear before me, who has required of you this trampling of my courts? Bring no more vain offerings; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations— I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly.” Well, I go to church on Sunday, so I must be okay. No, if you're bringing all your sin with you to church on Sunday, God's not impressed that you're here. God's not impressed that you're keeping the Sabbath and you're making sure you don't go 2000 steps. He's not impressed that you're fasting and acting sad about things. No. Where are you sad about your sin? Where are you crying out for forgiveness? Look what God says. “I cannot endure iniquity,” which is sin “and solemn assembly.” Don't mix the worship of me and bring your own sin into it. And look at verse 14, Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates; they have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands, ‘ that's their kind of symbol motion for prayer. That's their motion for prayer. “When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you.” Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen. “ your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do,” what does it say everybody? Learn to do what? “Good”. Isn't that what Jesus just said? Is it not lawful for me to do good? Like, are you going to try to say, I can't even do good on the Sabbath? Isn't that the whole point is to turn from evil and learn how to do good? Here's a great verse for Father's Day, 2025, Isaiah 1:17, “learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression, bring justice to the” who? “the orphan.” This is what God says is pure and undefiled religion, not works that you do. Here's pure and undefiled religion to care for what two people? Widows and orphans, ladies who don't have their husband to care for them, children who don't have their parents to care for them. That's what God wants, not you doing things that make you feel righteous or better about yourself than other people. God wants you to turn from your sin, give him your heart and then actually care about other people.
And then he says this, “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.” Even though there's all this religious activity and all this thinking that they're righteous and all this hypocrisy because they're still in their sin, even then God says, “Come now.” If you find yourself looking like a Pharisee, if you find yourself being a rule follower rather than a Jesus follower, if there's some ways you're thinking that you can tell are about you and what you're doing, you need to hear God say to you today, come now, let's talk about that. Let's reason together. Let's learn the right way to think. One of the famous lines from the book of Isaiah is that even our righteous works are like filthy rags. See, God's not impressed by any activity that we can do, by anything we can try to achieve. God wants our hearts. He wants us to confess that we're sinners. He wants us to come and ask for forgiveness, and he will wash us as white as snow, and he will give us a heart that loves him and cares for other people. And so, here's Jesus. Let's just picture this. Jesus in the synagogue, and everybody's quiet, and Jesus is saying, Is it lawful for me to do good? And here's a man with a withered hand. Should Jesus help that man? But the religious people are so twisted that they now want to kill Jesus because he helped him on the Sabbath.
I just am praying for all of us that this church won't become a church where we do things a certain way, that you won't become the kind of follower where you make your own way to follow Jesus. No, we don't need to add anything to what Jesus already has commanded us. And I just want to take this moment to say this to all the fathers. Let's throw that verse back up here on the screen. Ephesians, chapter 6, verse 4, “Fathers do not provoke your children to anger.” Fathers do not exasperate your children. And one of the main ways that many fathers have exasperated their kids is they've gone up there and they've said, this is my house. These are my rules, and you're going to do what I have to say. And I just want to say to the dads, you don't need to make up your own rules. We've already got the commands of the Lord Jesus Christ right here. All you need to do is discipline and correct your kids when they disobey what the Lord says. And then you need to instruct them, because you've got the Word on your heart. And you teach your kids, and you show them the way that they should go. You already have the words of eternal life. You already have the commands of the Lord Jesus Christ. But see, a lot of dads, they use this circular reasoning where it's like because scripture says children obey your parents in the Lord, then anything I tell them they have to do, because that's what it tells them to do. No dads, this is what it tells us to do is not exasperate our kids. And so, I just want to even ask the dads to be careful. Are there things that you could be possibly doing at your house where you're adding your own burdens onto your kid, or you're saying, hey, family, these are our rules, our regulations, our traditions? This is the way we're going to do it, and that could actually provoke children to anger and exasperate them, because they can tell that's your way, not the way. If you're a father here today and God's blessed you with kids, you don't need to try to figure out some way to teach your kids. You need to show them the way, the way that's worked for generation upon generation, the ancient paths. That's the way that they need to go, the way of Yahweh, who then gave his one and only Son to come and show us that he is the WAY, the TRUTH and the LIFE.
So, what I love about some of the dads here at this church is they show their kids the way of Jesus Christ. They show it to them in the morning, they show it to them late into the evening, they show it to them day after day. And kids? I have heard kids at this church. I have heard kids who wandered away from the Lord still even say, yeah, one thing I know about my dad is he's not doing it his way. He's doing it the Lord's Way. Man, if we could have a church full of fathers who were showing their children the way of Jesus Christ, rather than making up their own way. No, just bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, the one who has authority to forgive sins, the one who's Lord of the Sabbath, because he's the Lord of all creation. Now we don't need to have our way. Let's teach our kids his way, and if we train our child in that way, they can walk in it all of their days. So, I pray that we will be careful to make sure we don't think like a Pharisee. Let me pray for us right now.
Father in heaven, thank you for everybody here. Thank you for gathering us together on this day that we love to honor our fathers, but Father, we want to take a moment right now to thank you for sending your one and only Son as a dad. I can't even imagine giving one of my kids away, but that's what you did, father and your son, he perfectly reveals you. He shows us who you are. God, I just pray you'll protect everybody here from thinking you had this system of works and then Jesus showed us some different way, or you were big and mean and harsh, and Jesus is nice. No, I pray that we could see that Jesus came to fulfill your law, and Jesus came to reveal your character. So, God, thank you for the gift of your Son, Jesus. And I pray that everybody here, we wouldn't be coming up with our way to be righteous, but that we would see that Jesus is the way to be righteous, and we would put all of our trust in Jesus and none in ourselves and what we do. And so, Father, please, if there's anybody thinking in a works-based way, if there's anybody thinking it's about my activity, I can achieve my own righteousness, please change the way they think today so they won't be like a Pharisee, but that they could follow Jesus. God, we pray that your Word, by the power of your spirit, would do a work to convict all of us who are adding our own works to your Word. And God, humble us. Let us be the people who turn our eyes upon Jesus. Let no one go before you, thinking, I did this or I did that. Let us all go before you now, Father, saying, oh, thank you for what Jesus did for me. Thank you for his righteousness that I've received freely by grace through faith. Thank you, Father, that you gave the gift to save me, not anything I did. Thank you. So, Father, please don't let it be about this church. Don't let it be about a religion. Don't let it be about us and our good works. Let the name of Jesus be lifted high in Huntington Beach today. Let the name of Jesus get all the glory. Turn our eyes away from ourselves and let us look full in his wonderful face. Let us see him the Lord of the Sabbath, the one who will come to heal and care and give even if they're going to kill him for it. Let us follow JESUS, the way, the truth and the life. We pray this in his name. Amen.
Happy Father's Day. Everybody, thanks for being here. Have a Great Day.