You are listening to the sermon podcast from Rocky Creek Church. Find more resources online at Rocky Creek dot church. If you have a Bible, go ahead and grab it and turn with me to Luke chapter 5. We'll move on right into the next story in our series through Luke.
My name is Josh. I am on staff here at Rocky Creek if you don't know me. It's a plant Gateway City Church this year in Greer. We've been building up to this moment that's coming very soon for us and God has been opening some doors recently and He's leading us in what we think is the direction that we need to go in terms of where we're going to meet and very close to zeroing in on that.
I just want to mention a couple of quick things for you. People have asked what the timetable is for our launch. We're doing this in two stages. We're going to do a soft launch and a hard launch.
A soft launch by that, our core team that's been meeting every other Sunday night in Greer. We're going to shift over to Sunday morning starting on Easter Sunday. We'll miss being able to be here at Rocky Creek and worshiping together with you. We'll be worshiping together as a team there in Greer starting on Easter Sunday.
We're not technically really open for business at that moment. We're still going to be building and putting things in place and getting things together as we lead up to what we're calling our hard launch. If you're using business terms or something, that would be like your grand opening. We're shooting for our hard launch to come in August or early September.
That's what we're looking at right now. We're going to be meeting starting Easter Sunday every single Sunday together. We're going to be worshiping. Tyler Finley is coming with us.
He's going to be our worship pastor. So soak him up over these next couple of weeks and then he's going to be coming along with us. We're just thrilled to have the Finleys on the team and just looking forward to worshiping together with him and with our team starting on Easter Sunday. Please continue to pray for us in that.
God again, as I've said, he's been opening doors but he's been providing for needs that we had to share one quick story about that. When you started church plan, I've said this numerous times in front of you even. The question you ask is what do you need and the answer to that is everything. When you're looking at that, some of the things that you don't necessarily think about that go into starting a church or a place where you can gather.
One of those things are chairs. You can have a wonderful space but if you don't have any chairs to sit in, then it's going to be tough. It's going to be tough. We're not used to in America standing up all through church.
We need chairs and right now our court team has been meeting in Greer at Dovelight studios there. We just have this mishmash group of chairs. We got tailgate chairs, people take to the football game. We got a couple of love seats in there.
We got some stools to sit on. We got a couple of folding chairs. It's just this mishmash sort of mixture of chairs that we're sitting in. I was having a conversation with someone a couple of weeks ago who's not on our team.
They're from Spartanburg, someone that I go a number of years back on. During the conversation, they said, we want to help you. What are your biggest needs? The first thing I said was chairs.
They said, just stop right there. We want to buy your chairs for you. It's like, okay, so this past week, you don't have a clue what chairs cost until you start researching it. We found the chairs that were recommended to us by another church plant that were comfortable and portable and sturdy and all those good things.
I received the quote by email and it was $16,000 for 150 chairs. Can you believe that? That's crazy. I'm like, wait, he didn't give me a budget.
He didn't tell me how much. I took the quote. I sent it to him. I was like, hey, man, you didn't tell me how much you were going to do.
This is the quote. It's a lot. I had no idea chairs costed this much. If this is too much, if you were thinking something else, come back to me.
Not a problem. We'll find something else. He called me within a minute. He goes, hey, don't worry about it.
We got it. I was like, did you actually read the quote? He goes, no, I hadn't read it, but I don't care. It's fine.
We got it. I said, okay, $16,000, something bucks. He said, that's fine. If you need anything else, let me know.
That's the way that God has provided for us. It's just such a praise to us that we're going to, it is. It's beautiful. We watched that just unfold over this past number of months.
Going on a year since this really became solidified as a plan in my heart. And just watching each and every step of the way God provided at the right time, the right place, never before, always on time, just in the right timing. And man, that is such an encouragement. And what encourages me, I hope will encourage you because there's nothing special about me.
There's nothing special. I love our team. We've got a couple of them here today. We're not special.
We're just regular people and God has just provided for us. And so just such a beautiful thing. But thank you so much for the way that Rocky Creek has supported us in this journey. This is coming out of you.
This is from you. This is God leading you to do this. And so we just are so thankful for any support that you guys provide for us and to actually continue to pray all throughout the process as our time leaks up. But I'm so excited this morning to be able to preach the word to you.
It's probably going to be the last time I get to do that before our soft launch. And so in these last moments, I'm just very excited about what God has allowed me to have this morning as we go into his words. I want to start, man. I have a gym and I talk about my gym pretty frequently.
We have people that's a big part of my life. But I have a gym that I go to and the gym that I go to is just this little hole in the wall, just concrete block box building. So I work out. It's not big.
It's pretty small. It's not fancy. It's not even what you might call nice to be quite honest with. There's nothing really nice about it.
It's just this little hole in the wall box. But I like the owner. He's a really nice guy. I like the people that I work out with.
A lot of good guys that work out in there. And I like the price. It's very reasonable. It's close to home.
And it has everything really that I need in order to do the things that I want to do. But the only drawback for me is because of the size of the gym, because of how few things I actually need, I mean, that place is absolutely crammed with all of the stuff that I never use. Not because it's bad. I'm sure it's perfectly good.
I'm sure it has a nice purpose for you. I just don't use it. And one of the reasons I don't use it because I don't even really know what half of it is. I look at it.
I'm like, I don't know what that machine does. I don't know what people are using it for. It doesn't really suit my knees all that much. He could probably take out about 95% of the stuff in that gym.
And it would not affect me at all. But because of how crammed it is, every single time I go in there, I wind up running into stuff. Right? Every time.
And I run into stuff in general. I'm pretty gangly guy. I'm a tall guy. Got a big head.
If there's something I can hit my head on, I'm going to hit my head on it. I don't care how crammed it is. But in this place, every step I take you have to be careful because I'm going to nail my shins, nail my knees, nail my shoulder, nail my head, nail my back, nail my stomach. I'm going to run into something there in that gym.
And so what I'm trying to tell you is all those things that are in there that I don't really use all that much, they do have a purpose. But really what they do is rather than helping me meet my goals in there, they just get in the way. They're just in the way. And that's what I want to talk about today.
We're going to be talking this morning about when religion gets in the way, when religion gets in the way. And so the first thing I want you to understand is I'm not preaching a sermon to bash religion. That was very popular for a time, even among Christians to talk about how Christianity is not really a religion. It's a relationship when we read our sermon round table talking about this text.
I ask the question, is Christianity a religion? Are the pastors in the room said absolutely? And I agree with that. This is not a religion bashing sermon.
Religion is not inherently bad. I think God made people to be religious because God created us to worship. Worship is at the core of who we are. If you go anywhere in the world to any culture in the world, I don't care where it is, I don't care who they are.
Everyone is going to be worshiping something or someone and religion grows out of that because religion is just an expression at its core, at its most simple. Religion is just an expression of our worship to God. And that can be bad or it can be good depending on who you're worshiping. But if our worship is pointed in the right direction, if it's pointed towards the right object, the right person, then our religion is going to be pointed in the right direction too.
And that is not a bad thing. But it doesn't mean there's not a danger. There's a danger. And the danger is that what starts out as an expression of worship to the one true God gets inverted and turned back around on itself.
Instead of, instead of our religion leading us to God, our religion becomes pointed at the religion instead of God. And so instead of leading us to worship God, we worship the religion. Instead of religion leading us to serve God, we serve religion. Instead of leading people to follow and obey God, we lead people to follow and obey the religion.
So in a sense, religion replaces God as the object of worship. It becomes our God. And when that happens, the very thing that was designed to facilitate worship and obedience to the one true God actually gets in the way of what it was designed to do. Instead of opening up this way to God, it actually blocks it, it stands in the way.
And so when Jesus comes on the scene, he is not trying to demolish religion. But what he is trying to do is to demolish that inverted religion of these religious leaders so that what has been standing in the way of people coming to God and finding real life is not in the way anymore. That's what he's doing. Not demolishing religion, demolishing that inverted religion of these religious leaders so that nothing would stand the way of people coming to God anymore and finding life.
And guess what? The religious leaders hated Jesus for it. You begin to see it very early on. They hated Jesus, they hated what he was doing there.
And that continued all the way to the end of Jesus' earthly life, right? And by the way, that's one way you know that for these religious leaders, that's one way you can know that their religion had taken the place of God because when God actually stands in front of them in person and confronts them about the wrong practice of their religion, rather than correcting their religion, they killed their God. So what are we looking at today? We're looking at when religion gets in the way.
What question do I want to answer today? I want to answer the question then when does religion get in the way? When does religion get in the way? I want to answer that three ways out of the text this morning.
Number one, religion gets in the way when ritual replaces relationship. Religion gets in the way when ritual replaces relationship. If you have your Bible open, just go ahead and look at verse 33. We'll just start there.
The Bible says, and they said to him, the disciples of John fast off and then offer prayers. And so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink. Now, I think that's a question in the form of a statement, right? I don't think they're just making the statement.
I think they're actually asking a question here. Now, we don't know who they are. It just says they, right? I don't think this is the religious leaders.
I think these are just people who sincerely want to learn something from Jesus that they don't understand. Something that seems a little bit out of place to them, which is this. How come, Jesus? How come your disciples, they're always feasting while the other disciples of these other leaders are fasting frequently.
If you remember last week, even Jesus was having dinner parties with the tax collectors, right? That was what he was known for, for eating and drinking with people, sharing meals together with other people. And so these people come along, they say, the Pharisees disciples trying to have disciples. They're fasting all the time.
How come yours are feasting all the time and not fasting? Now, I don't want to make this all about fasting this morning because I don't think fasting itself is the main point, but I do think you need to know a little something about fasting to kind of understand the deeper point that's being illustrated here. So real quick, fasting was the practice, and you know this, but fasting, religious fasting was the practice of going without food or drink for a specified period of time for some spiritual purpose. That's a lot of words, even coming out of my mouth, that sounded like a lot of words, but it's the practice of going without food or drink for a specified period of time for some spiritual purpose.
So you know that our bodily appetites come with these very powerful urges, don't they? Our bodily appetites are very powerful urges, and sometimes they can get in the way of our spiritual appetites. Like when I'm hungry, my body is telling me all the time it starts talking to me. My body's talking to me right now.
It's happened to me Friday. I'm sitting in a quiet room at a college listening to a professor talk about my daughter's possible admission into the school and all this kind of stuff. As I'm sitting there trying to listen to this guy, my stomach starts talking to me. It's like I just didn't even breakfast an hour and a half before that.
And my body is immediately going, hey, you're hungry, you feel that, you hear that, it's time to eat, you're not going to be satisfied, so you put some food in that stomach, it's time to eat, it's time to eat, it's time to eat, it's powerful urge. My body's always telling me that. And just like with every, pretty much every single bodily appetite, the more I indulge it, the more my appetite actually grows and the more that I want to indulge it. Have you ever noticed that?
The more I indulge my appetite, the more that I want to indulge it. And so fasting is my way of telling my bodily appetite to be quiet because I'm trying to listen to God. That's essentially it. I want to hear from Him.
And so I'm going to tell my body to be quiet. And so in the Old Testament law, there was one prescribed fast, that's it. Throughout the whole law, there was only one required fast. Once a year on the day of atonement, God's people were told to fast and to humble themselves and seek the Lord, right?
There were other Old Testament fast that you're going to find if you read through the Old Testament, but none of those were required. They were all voluntary. They were all things that you could do, but not that you had to do. But what happened with the Pharisees is really what always happens with the Pharisees.
And that is that they took it way beyond what was prescribed by law. And so rather than fasting that one time or some special fast that had some special specific meaning to it, they just started fasting twice a week every week, whether they needed to or not, they would fast two times every single week, right? Along with the prescribed fast of the law, along with special fast that they would do during the year. So they're fasting frequently.
Jesus calls them out on it because we know what their motives are. Their actual motives were just to be seen by men. If you read the sermon on the mount, there's this like scathing review of the Pharisees fasting practices. You put it on your face.
When you're fasting, everybody knows it because you look uncomfortable. You look hungry and you're trying to project that into the world, right? That's their motivation right there. But actually what it happened is the point is in a sense they turned fasting into empty ritual.
When I say empty ritual, I mean ritual that has been emptied out of all the real meaning and purpose. Now ritual itself, that's not bad. Is it? All of us have certain rituals that we practice.
They only have to be spiritual rituals. I have bedtime rituals, things that help me get in that space to go to bed. I have morning rituals that I practice every day. And the point of my ritual is, and the point of your ritual really is the point of that ritual is to let myself go on autopilot, right?
It's so that I can automate these practices that I do ritualistically so that I get that routine down. I don't have to think about it anymore. It just becomes rote. I do it because I know to do it.
It's all in my muscle memory. And that is perfectly fine when you're talking about getting up, getting a shower, eating breakfast, brushing your teeth, drinking your coffee, going to work, whatever your ritual looks like. That's perfectly fine for that. But I don't need to invest like special meaning into that ritual.
I don't really need to think too hard about it. But it's not what you want fasting and religious ritual to be, right? You don't want that to be empty routine or rote because when it becomes rote, it becomes empty. It loses its purpose completely.
So what's the purpose then when you're talking about fasting, really boil it down the purposes that I would draw near to God. That's the purpose behind my fast. I want to draw near to God and hear from Him. So in a very real sense, fasting is not meant to be ritual.
It's meant to be relational. And that's how Jesus frames it here. If you look at what he says in 34, here's his response. Jesus said to them, can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is what with them?
The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them and then they will fast in those days. Two little relational clues there. The fast one in the bridegroom is with them. No, you do it when he's away from them.
It's relational language that he's saying. So what Jesus is doing, what he's trying to say is he's comparing himself here in the story to the bridegroom and his disciples, he compares to the wedding guests. And he's going, why in the world with the wedding guests fast at the wedding while the bridegroom is still there. That's not the time for a fast.
Have you ever been to a wedding banquet, right? These wedding were usually week-long affairs. They were full of feasting, full of joy, full of laughter. That's not the place when you're all there sharing together in this joyous occasion.
That's not the place for you to fast. It's the time for you to feast. It's the time for joy. And I think it's subtle, but the point that Jesus is actually making even goes bigger and deeper than this metaphor about the bridegroom.
I want you to see this because this is really, this was cool to me. So if the point of fasting then is to connect relationally to a God, I can't see. I need to tune my spiritual sense of saying because I can't see him. My appetites are getting away.
I can't physically hear him with my ears. I want to do that. Okay. If that's the point, if it's that relational connection with a God, I can't see.
Why would that not be necessary for Jesus followers here? If fasting is to connect me to that God, I can't see. Then why is it not necessary for Jesus followers to fast when they're with him? Because in Jesus, God is physically present with him, right?
Why do they not need to fast? Because God's there. They can see him. They can touch him.
They can listen to him. God is present. That's it. So again, ritual is not bad.
Fast things are not bad. Jesus is going to come a day when he's physically going to be gone for them and then they would fast. But when ritual replaces relationship, then you know that religion has gotten in the way. So I wonder in your life, are there any spiritual practices, any rituals that you practice that don't connect you deeper to Jesus anymore?
Maybe they did it one time, but they don't hold that meaning that they used to hold anymore. They don't fill you with that joy in his presence anymore. You do them, but it's just rote. It's just routine.
It's just mindless. It's just checking a box. It's just like a shower. It's just like brushing your teeth.
I don't know what it might be for you. Maybe it's your Bible reading. When you used to read the Bible, you were well connected. You recognize that in these words, God is speaking to you.
Maybe it's your prayer life, and you're just going through the motions and your prayer life. I'm just praying the blessing or I'm praying. Thank you for this day. Help me go to sleep tonight.
Whatever it might be, just some routine regular, wrote mindless kinds of prayers. Maybe it's the Lord's Supper. You take it just because that's what everybody else is doing. It's just a ritual.
It has no meaning to you anymore. Maybe it's your church attendance. It's just a box you check, but it doesn't connect you deeper to Jesus anymore. Listen, Jesus is not telling you to scrap all of these practices, but what he's doing is telling you to recover that relational connection that those things are there to serve.
Number one, religion gets in the way when ritual replaces relationship. Number two, religion gets in the way when tradition replaces transformation. When tradition replaces transformation, look at verse 36. These are two stories that illustrate Jesus' point.
He also told them a parable. No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. If he does, he will tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wine skins.
If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wine skins. And no one after drinking old wine desires new for he says, the old is good enough when religion gets inverted, when it gets turned back around, away from God and back on to itself. Then one of the first things you're going to see is that it starts to get very defensive of itself.
It's very defensive of itself. And it becomes all about perpetrating and sustaining the system that it's contained in. You can say it builds walls around itself. It builds walls around that religious system.
And that anywhere that happens, you're going to find people fighting hard for that system. They're fighting for that religion. Fighting to keep anything from cracking those walls they build around it and infiltrating in and really bottom line, keeping anybody from changing things. You know, you still see this, right?
You see this all the time. You see it in churches. Even today, how many times have you seen, how many times have you heard stories of churches dividing over traditions? Defining over traditions.
How many times some new ideas, some new meant something new tried to come in. How many times has that new thing been defeated by some form of the phrase? That's not how we do it here. That's not the way we do things.
We do it this way. That phrase kills me. I cannot stand that phrase in regards to the work of God, the church, the kingdom. Even though I understand it, I can't stand it because that when you make that statement, you are not defending truth.
You are defending tradition. That's all you're doing. You're just defending tradition. And again, listen, just like ritual, there's nothing wrong with tradition in and of itself.
I love tradition. I have a sentimental space in my heart for doing the same things the same way at the same time. Like at Christmas, everybody's got Christmas, traditions they practice at Christmas. We have our traditions.
We decorate our tree at about the same time every single year. And when we're doing that, we listen to the very same music while we decorate the tree. And if you come in and you try to start changing things, guess what I'm going to do? I'm going to resist that change because here's the truth.
If you try to bring something new into my tradition, it's not adding to my tradition anymore. It's changing it. It's not just adding something to it. It's changing the tradition.
Then it's no longer my tradition anymore. It's something completely different. And guess what? That bothers me.
Does it bother you? Would somebody try to do that? It bothers me. It's like, I want the old thing.
I don't want to listen to your new song. I want that old thing. Because that's what my father made us listen to when we were kids. That's probably what his dad made him listen to.
So when you attack my tradition, you're not just attacking such tradition. It feels personal to me. It feels like you're attacking my family. You're attacking my father who gave me that tradition.
You're attacking my memories. You're attacking my nostalgia. That's what it feels like. I don't like that.
So I don't want that new song. If you try to come in and play some new song at Christmas, while I'm decorating the tree, I'm going to be like, what are you doing? No, put on that Tennessee or any Ford album. Put on that bean Crosby.
Put on that Nat King Cole. Put on that stuff we listen to every single year while we're decorating the tree. Don't get in my way on that. Nothing can be better than those things.
And that is verse 39. That's essentially verse 39. See if this sounds familiar to you. He said, no one after drinking old wine, listen it to the old music, doing it the old way.
No one after drinking old wine desires new. Why? For he says, the old is good enough. It's good enough.
That is it right there. And why would I change the old's good enough? And so what Jesus is saying here, he's coming in. He's saying, your traditions are getting in the way of you experiencing the new thing Jesus is bringing into the world.
This new kingdom that is coming with him, this new covenant that he's inaugurated, this new life that he is giving to us. And each of these two sayings has the same point. The point is the new thing Jesus is bringing does not go together with that old system. And if you try to mix them together, the new thing, Jesus is bringing the old thing.
They have been practicing. When you try to bring those two things together, it doesn't just shift their traditions. It essentially destroys their traditions. Why?
Because those old things that used to facilitate and help people to worship God and to light in God, they're not doing that anymore. They got old, they got hardened, they got brittle, like old wineskins. But it's not because they were necessarily bad. They served the purpose at a specific time, but they stopped serving that purpose.
Listen, as soon as it became about maintaining their traditions. And that's when it gets static. When I say static, I just mean unchanging. But that new, it's not static.
What Jesus is bringing, it's not static. It's dynamic. It's full of life. That's the wine.
That new wine. That new wine is not static. It's constantly changing. That's why it won't fit in those old wineskins because it's gassing up.
It's fermenting. It's changing. It's becoming something different than what it started out being. That is what God is trying to do in our lives.
But we cannot experience that. We cannot embrace that if we are holding on to that old system, those old traditions that serve the purpose at a time. And so if you want to experience the real life transformation, Jesus is bringing. If you want to experience this new wine that it came to bring, then you're probably going to have to let go of some tradition that may be in the way.
And so I wonder about you this morning. Have you found yourself guarding some tradition at the cost of your transformation? Has your walk with God gotten static? It's not dynamic anymore.
The relationships are dynamic. The change God's doing in your life is dynamic. Our lives are meant to be dynamic. Have you gotten brittle?
Have you gotten old and stale in your walk with the Lord? Maybe you've been holding way too tight onto some things that used to serve a purpose, but they're getting in the way. I wonder is God trying to bring some metaphorical new music into your life right now, but you ain't going to sing it because you're stuck on being crossby. So when religion, when tradition replaces transformation, the religion's in the way.
Number three, and we'll finish with this. Religion gets in the way when rules replace restoration. When rules replace restoration, look at verse one of chapter six. The Bible says on a Sabbath, while he was going through the grain fields, his disciples plucked and ate some ears of corn, rubbing them in their hands.
But some of the Pharisees said, why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath? I want to know how come they're watching them walking through the field. That's so creepy. It's like they're spying on them at all times.
And Jesus answered them, have you not read what David did when he was hungry? He and those who were with him, how he entered the house of God and took and ate the bread of the presence, which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat and also gave it to those with him. And he said to them, the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. On another Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and was teaching.
And a man was there whose right hand was withered and the scribes and the Pharisees look again, watched him to see whether he would heal on the Sabbath so that they might find a reason to accuse him. But he knew their thoughts and he set to the man with a withered hand, come and stand here. And he rose and stood there and Jesus said to them, I ask you, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it? And after looking around at them, all he's said to him, stretch out your hands.
And he did so and his hand was restored. But they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus. So I put two separate little stories, but I put them together under the same point because they both center on following the rules. That's what it's about.
I didn't say the law, I said the rules and there's a difference. And here's the difference. The law was given by God, the rules were made by man in this context. I'm not saying God has no rules, but when you're looking at this context, that's what we're talking about.
The law was given by God, these rules were made up by men. And again, they went beyond what God said. So right here, the issue is the Sabbath. The law said, God's people cannot work on the Sabbath.
So here's the question, what qualifies as work? And I think that's a genuinely pretty decent question to ask, I think. All right, what qualifies? I want to make sure I do it right.
What qualifies this work? We honor God by taking his law seriously. And guess that's where the rules come in. That's where the rules would come in.
The rules were seen, they looked at it this way, same language. They looked at the rules as this hedge around the law that kept him from breaking it. All right. So if this is the law, this pulpit, they built a hedge around it so that I would never get close enough to break that law.
And again, that's an honorable idea. But the problem is the rules start piling up. Have you ever seen like a bloated operations manual, just this big fat operations manual? And you look at it and you're like, I don't know how to make heads or tails out of this thing.
I don't know how I'm going to learn how to even use this. You get your instruction manual is 500 pages long, it's about 50 different languages, it's too much. It's bloated, right? It's not practical anymore.
I can't follow this. So that's what it became like. All these rules become like this bloated operations manual for how to follow the law. Things like, I can walk this many steps, but I can't walk this many.
I'll take 50 steps, but if I take 51, I'm working. I can cook this food, but or I can eat this food, but I can't prepare it. I can't cook it because I can't go to fire on the Sabbath because that's work. I can do this, I can't do that.
It just gets absurd. And so what happened was instead of the rules helping me keep the law, the rules became the law. That's essentially what happened. So you got rules to help me keep the law.
They just became the law itself. They were the equivalent of the law. And so right here, you see two ways. Jesus disciples broke the rules in this story.
So the first story, I don't think the real issue is that they're walking through the field, glaining grain and eating it. That was permitted. It was even permitted, I think, on the Sabbath to do that, as long as they didn't walk too far, that's probably why the Pharisees are watching too. They're counting their steps like, that's 101 steps.
That's where, but the issue wasn't eating the grain on the Sabbath. You got to eat. I think the issue is just this little detail loop puts in verse one that you notice. It just seems little and out of place, but it says that they in verse one, it says they pick the grain and they rubbed it between their fingers.
Why did he put that detail in there? I think that's the work, right? That's them preparing it. They could eat it, but they can't prepare it, but I can't eat it unless I prepare it.
And I'm hungry and I need to eat. That's Jesus' story about David. They were hungry. I know what the rules said, but God broke the rules because they were hungry and they needed to eat.
So that's what they're doing. They're going, that's the problem. That's where you can't do that. You can eat it, but you can't prepare it.
Now, was that the law? Was that the law? No, that was the rule. But when the law, it was the rules.
Where did the rule come from? Did that come from God or man? It came from man. God created the law, he should not work on the Sabbath.
They created the rule to help them follow that law. So that came from man. Second story, the problem, this one's even bigger. The second story, the problem is that Jesus healed this man on the Sabbath.
The problem is what Jesus healed the man from. That was the issue, that withered hand that that man had, his hand droned up like that. That was the problem. He lived with that a long time.
That was not life threatening. It wasn't getting any worse that day. It could wait until Sunday. It could wait until Monday.
It could wait until any other day. It wasn't going to kill him that day. And so the rule that they had was you cannot heal on the Sabbath unless it was life threatening and could not wait. Again, I'm going to ask you, was that the law?
Was that a rule? That was a rule. Where did that rule come from? Did that come from God or from man?
It came from man. That was man's law. Man's rule. And so the religious leaders are furious because Jesus and his disciples are not following the rules.
And so what is Jesus then actually confronting here? Is he attacking the law here? Is he bashing the law here? Is he going, hey, that law, that's old, that's out of date.
You don't need to worry about that stuff anymore. I got something new. Is that what Jesus is doing here? No, he's not doing that.
He's not attacking the law. He's confronting the man made rules. And he does that in two ways in the story. In the first story, he does it by his authority.
He said in verse five, the son of man. Remember Travis told us a few weeks ago that phrase here in Luke means the Messiah. It's a messianic term. So he said, the son of man, the Messiah is Lord of the Sabbath.
And so what he is doing here is he is challenging the authority of the religious leaders on the basis of his authority as the Messiah and ultimately as God himself. He's going, are you really trying to tell the Messiah? Are you really trying to tell the Lord of the Sabbath how to interpret the law? Imagine the arrogance it takes to argue with God about God's own law.
Like God, now we think it needs to be this way. Such an arrogance in that, but that's what they're doing. So he confronts them first with his authority, saying, you don't have the authority to interpret the law. I do.
I'm going to tell you how to interpret the law, me, the Messiah. Second story, he confronts them with the power that backs up his authority. This is just like the healing story in chapter five. We looked at a few weeks ago where the friends bring the guy, drop him through the roof.
They need, he needs healed. And the first thing Jesus does is your sins are forgiven. Right. So it's this theological statement about Jesus' authority to forgive sins.
But then the miracle of healing was Jesus backing up his ability and his authority to forgive by his healing. And it's the same thing here. It's the same idea here. Jesus starts by claiming his divine authority over the law, over the Torah, but then he backs that up by this healing miracle.
And so Jesus, he knows that all the eyes are on him. He knows that they are plotting. He knows they're just waiting for their opportunity to pounce on him. It's a while they're all watching.
He calls this man over to stand in front of the whole assembly and he asks everybody this simple question, verse nine, he says, I ask you, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to harm, to save life or to destroy it? And that question, the way Jesus frames it shows us that these Pharisees have absolutely no understanding of the law at all. Because the right answer to that question is, of course, it's okay. Of course, it's lawful on the Sabbath to do good.
Of course, it's lawful on the Sabbath to save life instead of losing life, whether it breaks your rules or not. But their rules and their rigid adherence to their own rules made them miss the point of the Sabbath all together. What is the Sabbath about? What is it for?
The Sabbath is all about our rest and our restorations. But their rules left people ragged instead of refreshed. They left people hurting instead of healed. It took a blessing and made it a burden.
And so that hedge that they had created around the law to keep people close to God actually turned into a wall that kept people blocked from God. And so again, they're watching it. They're watching it. I guess what?
He's watching them too. Verse 10, he says, he was looking around at them. He's invited this guy up there in front of all of them. And now he's just looking at all of them.
He's just reading their eyes. He's reading their thoughts. He's reading their hearts. I'm picturing it like this Wild West standoff out in the streets like who's going to draw first.
They're looking at him. He's looking at them. And then I don't know where Jesus draws first, sort of. And this is the part that surprises us a little bit because he doesn't heal in the way that we would expect him to be healed.
If you remember the last story, the story of the crippled man lower down, how did Jesus heal him? He told him, rise up and walk. He says it over and over in the gospels. Hey, your faith has healed you or whatever.
But he doesn't do that here. He doesn't lift his hand up. He doesn't speak a word of healing here. He doesn't do anything that might be classified as work.
He just speaks, right? But what he says, he doesn't say be healed. He tells the man who had no ability to stretch out his hand. He just says, stretch out your hand.
And it was in the stretching out, the exercise of faith that that man showed that he was healed. And what blows me away about it is for the sake of the rules, the Pharisees would have seen this man miss the miracle. For the sake of the rules, he would have missed the miracle. Do you realize that every time you try to make other people follow religious rules that God didn't make, you're acting like the Pharisees?
You're acting just like the Pharisees. You are adding to what God has given and you're trying to bind other people's consciences to your own convictions. And that's not a good thing. You don't have the authority to do that.
You may have good intentions, but it's getting in the way. And so as we close this morning, I know that there's a lot we talked about. But if I could just challenge you in one way today, I would challenge you this way. Do not let religion get in the way.
Keep your practice. It's not about religion bad. But keep your practice pointed in the right direction. Really look at the way you practice religion.
Examine it. Look deeply into it. Look deeply into your traditions. Look into your rituals.
Look at the rules that you fight for. Make sure that you are investing those things with their right meaning. Keep it front and center in your mind and in your heart that it's not about the rituals. It's not about the traditions.
It's not about the rules that I have. It's not about those things. It's about God. It's about God desiring to be relationally connected in a deep way with me to experience fullness of joy and life in him.
It's about the transformation that he's bringing into my life as I walk with him and follow him and worship him and obey him. It's about experiencing real life in Christ to his glory. That's what it's about. So look at those things.
Look at the way you do it. Examine what you do. Examine why you do it. And then ask yourself, is this practice?
Is this tradition? Is this rule? Is this connecting me more deeply to God through Jesus? Is this connecting other people, my practice?
Is this connecting other people more deeply to real life found in Jesus? Or have I gotten in the way? Is it getting in the way of me? Am I getting in the way of others through my rote?
Empty practice of religion. Don't block yourself or others through connecting Jesus. Connecting to Jesus. Let's pray.