Matthew chapters 12: 1-8 (continued)

At that time Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath. And His disciples were hungry and began to pluck the heads of grain and to eat. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to Him, ‘Look, Your disciples are doing that which is not lawful to do on the Sabbath!’ But He said to them, “Have you not read what David and those who were with him did when he was hungry,  how he entered the house of God and ate the ritual bread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for those who were with him, but only for the priests?

Or have you not read in the law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, but are blameless? I say to you, in this place there is One who is greater than the temple. If you had known what this meant, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent. For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” When He had departed from there, He went into their synagogue.

And there was a man whose hand had withered. They asked Him, ‘Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?’ that they might accuse Him. He said to them, ‘What man is there among you who has one sheep, and if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not lay hold of it and lift it out? Then how much better is a man than a sheep? Therefore, it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.’ Then He said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ And he stretched it out, and it was restored whole like the other. Then the Pharisees went out and took counsel against Him, how they might kill Him.”

We ended our talk last week with a discussion about rest and the Sabbath.  God established the Sabbath as a holy day of rest both for man and beast. It is very important to set aside time for rest and restoration.  Our bodies, minds and souls need to rest. This may mean sleeping, it could simply mean relaxing, it could mean doing something else to take our mind off of the normal work we do or it could mean doing less of what we do.

The idea is that rest should be an essential and scheduled part of our lives. We suffer when we don’t rest, our families suffer and our work suffers. The other more serious end of the ‘no resting’ lifestyle is that you are not truly depending on God for your needs; you are depending on you and your efforts. There is nothing wrong with hard work, in fact God encourages it but God expects hard rest as well.

Every 7th year in Israel the land had to lie fallow, it grew on its own untilled and untended.  God was responsible for the people; He made the crops of the 6th year enough to feed them for the 6th, 7th and then the 1st year of the next set of Sabbaths so that the people would not forget that it was God who provided and not man’s effort. We see this in Leviticus 25:3-7:

“Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its crop, but during the seventh year the land shall have a Sabbath rest, a Sabbath to the LORD; you shall not sow your field nor prune your vineyard. ‘Your harvest’s after growth you shall not reap, and your grapes of untrimmed vines you shall not gather; the land shall have a sabbatical year. All of you shall have the Sabbath products of the land for food; yourself, and your male and female slaves, and your hired man and your foreign resident, those who live as aliens with you. Even your cattle and the animals that are in your land shall have all its crops to eat.’”

God took the idea of the Sabbath very seriously and we should, too. Today we will explore    how mankind corrupts the law of God.  I think we have established that God wants us to rest.    Sadly, mankind takes all of God’s laws and adds his interpretations or adds his rules to God’s law so as to make them more of a burden than God intended.

Man wants to have some degree of control over people and I find that the more “religious” a person is the more rules they like to have for themselves and especially others.  If I recall my studies correctly there are 613 laws in the Old Testament, for mankind to add more rules to that to define and explain God’s rules usually makes life even more difficult.

In our text today Jesus will offer some godly insights into the Sabbath that we need to consider.  We will also ask ourselves about how we execute the other laws of God? And do we use the Laws of God as a battering ram to condemn or as a tool to win others. God`s laws were designed to help us see our need for Him not to push us away and turn into un-redeemable reprobates.

Judging the Judge, Verses 1-6

Self-righteous people are prone to judge everyone, even God.  This, I am sure is moderately amusing to God but probably more irritating.  What pride you must have to tell God how to execute His laws; to interpret His laws for Him so that He gets a better understanding of what  He said.

As usual man had taken the idea of not working to the extreme.  These religious leaders were upset that the Lord`s disciples has taken a few heads of grain and eaten them.  This in no way took away from the Sabbath.  They were hungry so they ate.  The Law did not forbid one from eating.  What it did forbid is servile work.

Today of course we here the stories of people being in Israel and observing the Sabbath, the elevators run by themselves, devout Jews don’t turn on the TV, but if a Gentile come over and turns it on that is okay and on and on we can go.  This is not the spirit of the Law about the Sabbath, in fact the servants were not allowed to work either, not just the Jews. We see this in Exodus 20:10:

“…but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. You must not do any work–you, your son or daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the foreigner who is within your gates.”

This seemed to cover all the people, even the Gentiles. So you can see how man takes the Law of God and modifies it to meet his needs and wants. Well the religious leaders had modified the Law of the Sabbath so much that people were wearier of man than God.  Jesus used an example of man being the ruler of the Sabbath or the holy things of God from the life of David.

In 1 Samuel 21, we find David running for his life from Saul. He and his troop of men come to the city of Nob and ask the high priest for food, bread in particular. There was no bread there except for the Holy bread to the Lord. The High Priest gave David the bread that was intended for the priests only.

There was no law broken here, these men were hungry and needed food, the only food around was the Temple bread so that is what they ate.  God is a Holy God but He is also a practical God.  There is a Holy balance between God`s grace and His holiness.  We tend to have one or the other; we seem incapable of finding that balance.

Another example that I would offer is the battle against Jericho; the armies of Israel were instructed to march 7 straight days around the walls of Jericho, see Joshua 6:1-5:

“The Lord said to Joshua, ‘See, I have given Jericho, its king, and mighty men of valor into your hand. All the men of fighting age shall march around the city. Circle the city once. Do this for six days. Seven priests shall carry seven ram’s horn trumpets before the ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, with the priests blowing the trumpets. When they blow a long blast on the ram’s horn and when you hear the trumpet sound, all the people shall shout a loud battle cry. The walls of the city will fall down, and the people will go up, every man straight ahead.’”

In this case God actually tells the Jews to violate the Sabbath, they not only worked but they went to war, this was strenuous work.  Jesus made it clear that He was and is the Lord of the Sabbath. You see if the disciples had been doing something wrong He would have told them.   He was not afraid to set them straight.

But He did not condemn them so neither should have the religious leaders.  Now, this is where the issue comes to a head.  When we add man-made rules to the Laws of God we begin to bring guilt where there is not supposed to be guilt, and we actually make it easier to break God`s law. Let us look at the first ever example of this in Genesis 3:2-3:

“And the woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit from the trees of the garden; 3 but from the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You will not eat of it, nor will you touch it, or else you will die.’”

God had said not to eat of the fruit. One could touch it or any array of actions with it just don`t eat it.  As such by adding the man-made clause what was to create more security actually opened the door to more sin. Once the manmade law had been broken the God made law was easier to break.

We see this today in so many of the Lord’s churches, they have this list of man-made rules that define that church`s version of Christianity and they often have an array of Scriptures to back it up, but nonetheless the rules are not the rules of God. The natural fruit of this is that people begin to obey the laws of mankind and not of God.

Jesus pointed this out in Mark 7:13:

“You revoke God’s word by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many other similar things.”

Soon we begin to judge people’s Christian walk by the Laws of men and forget the laws of God.  People can be ruthless, unforgiving, loveless, have no compassion and no mercy as long as they don’t go to movies, don’t drink, don’t smoke and wear a nice suit to church.

We, too, have usurped the Laws of God with a man-made righteousness that has nothing to do with Christianity.  Far too many of us are way more religious that we are Christian.

Loving Kind and Humble Service Is Never Out of Place, Verses 7-14

Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath. Yes, Jesus commanded a man to be healed on the Sabbath. In one case he asked a man to take up his bed and walk (John 5:8)—this was work. Jesus set an example that it is always right to do good to our brothers, sister sand enemies no matter what day it is.

Imagine a doctor refusing to help you because it is the Sabbath, or a soldier refusing to defend his position because it is the Sabbath or a man leaving an animal in a ditch to suffer because it is the Sabbath? Yet these religious leaders would rather that Jesus put off healing a man on the Sabbath.  “Come back tomorrow Jesus, heal him on the Sunday, what could one more day as a cripple do to him?”

Yet, Jesus points out that these same men would gladly break the law of God for a sheep BUT not for a precious brother. They would have more compassion on an animal than on their own countrymen. Oh, how we have perverted the laws of God! The Law was never designed to make us righteous; it was designed to show us how sinful we actually are. We see this in Romans 3:20:

“For no one will be justified in His sight by the works of the law, because the knowledge of sin comes through the law.”

This is where modern Christianity has fallen into the same trap. We have made these rules to make us more ‘Christian’, when in fact the rules actually make us more sinful.  When one is truly saved the Holy Spirit along with the power of the written Word will move you to change. That change is MOST often from the inside out.  The way you think will change before you change the way you act, see Romans 12:1-2:

“I urge you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service of worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”

As we present our bodies to Christ we must also have a renewing of the mind or we end up just like these religious bigots who confronted Jesus, questioning God and condemning our brothers and sisters for nothing. Nothing does more damage to the cause of Christ than religious people.  People who exteriors have been regenerated by man’s laws but their hearts have never been transformed by God.  Oh how we do a disservice to God when we live like religious people rather than the regenerated people Jesus actually died for.

Yes, we have standards, yes we have “dos and don’ts” but before all of that we must have the LOVE of God in us through His Holy Spirit so that our behavior is tempered with His love, compassion, mercy and forgiveness anything less is religious not Christian. Live for Christ,  serve your fellow man.

“Mankind, He has told you what is good and what it is the LORD requires of you: to act justly, to love faithfulness, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).

Missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca

www.mississaugamissionarybc.com

Matthew chapter 11:25-30 (continued)

“At that time Jesus said, ‘I thank You, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to infants. Even so, Father, for it seemed good in Your sight. All things are delivered to Me by My Father, and no one knows the Son, except the Father.

And no one knows the Father, except the Son and he to whom the Son will reveal Him. Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest.  Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me. For I am meek and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.’”

Last time we ended talking about God’s sovereign grace. Everyone will come face to face with the wonder grace of our Lord at some point in their lives. God loves us all. He is so patient and kind even in His holiness and hatred for sin. His love and grace towards the sinner is unmatched ever in history.

This morning as I was reading in 1 Kings 21:7-29 and I saw that God was gracious to Ahab, the most evil king that ever-ruled Israel. When Ahab genuinely repented God was gracious; what a mighty God we serve!

Today we will look at one of the most important benefits of salvation; rest. God established rest as an essential part of the creation experience. We often say that God created the heavens and earth in six days and technically He did, BUT His account of creation included the day of rest. Does God need rest?  No! That is the most obvious answer you will ever have on a test. Yet God established an essential principle to mankind, even before the fall of man, we need rest.

There are many kinds of rest.  Physical rest of course in the form of sleep is essential.  As much as we boast of how little sleep we need to function, the truth is we need to sleep about 8 hours per night. Jesus needed sleep as a man, yes God slept. In Mark 4:38 and Matthew 8:24 we find accounts of Jesus sleeping so soundly that a storm could not wake him.

Jesus often went off by himself and we find Him reclining in many places. Jesus took the principle of rest very seriously. There is also mental rest; the rest from worrying. This kind of rest is the one that most of us get the least of.  We worry and worry about everything.  I am guilty of this. I read today where worrying is like sitting in a rocking chair, there is a lot of movement, but you don’t get anywhere, how true.

We Are to Be Like Infants, Verse 25-26

We have three children—Ocean, North and Saturn. We love them dearly. Ocean and North are in their teens and they are beginning to understand money and both the power and restrictions it can bring. Saturn is about to turn 3 and she has no idea of what money is except that mommy gives it to her on Sundays to put in the offering. She offers to give the lady money at the grocery store and she is constantly asking for things, as do the teenagers.

Saturn does not worry about stuff. If she goes to the fridge and there are no grapes, she takes strawberries. She expects that when she wants or needs something it will be there. She is into pull-ups now and she just goes and gets them and puts them on. She knows where they are and she just gets them and puts them on when she needs one. She does not worry about pull-ups, food or anything else.

God wants us to be like infants—worry free. But one other thing that Jesus says here that we often miss is that it is to us—the infants, that God has revealed His secrets. Even some of the most revered men in the Old Testament did not understand God as we understand Him. They saw God once; in King David’s case He saw Him a few times and in Solomon’s case he saw God twice.

Yet God reveals Himself to us daily in and through His Holy Spirit. He lives in us and has written a canon of 66 books with which to teach us and make His mysteries known. You and I know more about the end than Daniel did. We know more about Jesus that Isaiah did. Isaiah saw Him in His glory, we see Him as a man.

We hear his speech, feel His touch and love His grace. We are loved and cared for like Saturn is loved and cared for, His loving grace is so open to us and yet we are often thankless and selfish.  We forget that God and Jesus love infants, they love their unfailing faith and love.  We are called to be infants in Jesus. We have the bodies of men, but the loving, unfailing faith of infants in that grown body. See Mathew 19:14:

“Then Jesus said, ‘Leave the children alone, and don’t try to keep them from coming to Me, because the kingdom of heaven is made up of people like this.’”

Jesus Reveals God to Us, Verse 27

Jesus is the revelation of God to us.  John 1:1 tells us that Jesus is God.  John 10:30 tells us that Jesus and God are the same. John 14:19 says, if you have seen me you have seen the Father.  I can go on and on, but you get the picture.  Jesus is God and it is to us that this wonderful truth has been revealed.  One of the ways to find out if you are talking to a true believer is to ask them who Jesus is.

Many will say He is a good man, a good teacher, a historical figure and some will even deny His existence, but these are a few.  But when someone says He is God and then you know that you are speaking to a believer and this fact is revealed by Jesus through the Holy Spirit to us. 1 John 2:23 goes one step further and tells us that whoever denies the Son does NOT have the Father.  This is a serious statement, but it is one which weeds out true Christians from the pretenders.

I once had two Jehovah Witness fellows come to my home and argue that Jesus is the Son of God and as such could not be God since they are two people. We know that Jesus is the Son of God and sadly they forget that God is all powerful and able to do mysterious things, like come in the form of a man and yet still be the Omnipresent God. But just so that they could understand that Jesus by claiming to be the Son of God was actually claiming to be equal with God I shared with them this verses from John 5:17-18:

“But He answered them, ‘My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.’ For        this reason therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with  God.”

The Jews understood that by claiming to be God’s Son Jesus was claiming to be equal with God.  This is very important that we understand this; Jesus claimed that He was equal with God. The men of that day understood his claim and sought to stone him to death.

Death is the rightful punishment for blasphemy, claiming to be god when you are just a man.  This is the same reaction the High Priest had when they questioned Jesus during His trial (see Mark 14:62-64).

“And Jesus said, ‘I am; and you shall see THE SON OF MAN SITTING AT THE RIGHT HAND OF POWER, and COMING WITH THE CLOUDS OF HEAVEN.’ Tearing his clothes, the high priest said, ‘What further need do we have of witnesses? You have heard the blasphemy; how does it seem to you? And they all condemned Him to be deserving of death.”

They understood that He was saying that He was and is the great I AM, God Himself. This is the proverbial line in the sand that one must cross to be a Christian.  One must accept that Jesus is God and not just a man. One must accept that God came to us when it was impossible for us to go to Him and that He saves those that are humble and call out to Him for forgiveness.

Have you done this?  Have you humbled yourself and called out to God, He is still waiting, He is still saving and He is still God.

Rest for Your Souls, Verses 29-30

Rest! This is almost a lost action in our world.  Even more so in the world of the NT church.  We treasure action, activity and work ethic.  God treasures rest.  God did not make the work week holy unto Him, but the Sabbath He made holy.  Israel was not supposed to forsake resting.

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you” (Exodus 20:8-10).

It is amazing to me that God counted not resting as much a sin as adultery, lying and murder.  Did you get that? Now let us take this a step further, the Ten Commandments are divided into two sections, commandments 1-4 deal with our relationship to God and 5-10 deal with our relationship to our fellow man beginning with our parents.  Jesus said that the Law and the Prophets are summed up in two commandments in Luke 10:27:

“And he answered, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND; AND YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.”

To love God with all your heart includes a time of rest and restoration. Make no mistake, Jesus rested on every Sabbath that He walked on the earth. Yes, He healed the sick and He allowed His followers to pick and eat grain but He rested. His longest journey would have been about 2000 yards—a Sabbath day’s journey. He would have observed the Sabbath because He is Holy and could not sin even for millisecond.

Working ourselves to the bone is not a part of the faith that we have in Jesus.  And the work that Jesus does call us to do is not about us and our human efforts. Yes we have to go, yes we have to sow the seed BUT it is Jesus who does the real work.  His Holy Spirit does the convicting, His Word is the power and His blood saves sinners. We just tell them what He did and who He is.

The results are up to Jesus. I saw a wonderful post on Facebook just the other day a young lady mentioned that Hitler had millions of followers and Jesus had just 12.  The amount of followers is not a true reflection of success. Obedience to God is the only measure of success and in that obedience is the call to rest. In fact Jesus tells us that beyond physical rest that we all need; we will actually find the real rest that we crave, rest for our souls. Our minds will be at ease.

I fail in this matter so often. I worry that my failures are so great that God’s grace will run out.  Yet I see God’s grace in the life of Ahab an evil king and it humbles me to realize that His grace is eternally more than sufficient to cover, forgive and forget my sins. I fail in this matter as the financial storms of life never seem to go away; it appears that it is hurricane season in my wallet all the time.  But God offers me rest for my soul in that He has promised to supply ALL MY NEEDS.

The hardest thing to do for most of us is to let go and let God do His thing. This is what the Sabbath is really all about; it is about accepting that all that we have is from God. Not by working extra hard or working ourselves to the bone as they say, but it is God who supplies and when we have a proper relationship with Him we find time to rest; we rest our bodies in Holy worship to Him, and in turn He gives us rest for our souls. We have not truly rested until we have rested our souls in Jesus and He gives us the rest for our souls.

Have you rested in Jesus?

I asked Jesus to save me when I was 14 years old, about 35 years ago. But the older I get I find that resting in Him is harder and harder as the responsibilities and expectations of life mount. As we get closer to the judgment I am afraid to be found resting, when that is probably more holy that all the human effort that I can exhort.

I continue to try and solve all of our financial issues rather than trusting God. I run into a brick wall after brick wall and find myself exhausted and unraveled. I am not resting, thus I am sinning and making myself into an idol. Forgive me Lord.

I invite you to rest in Jesus. It is the only rest that you will ever have for real and it will last for an eternity. Stop trying to earn God’s favor, if you are lost you need to be saved and if you are saved God has already accepted you in Jesus. Stop trying to get what you already have. I leave you with this:

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want  He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul; He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for You are with me Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; my cup runs over.  Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever” (Psalm 23:1-6).

Missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca

www.mississaugamissionarybc.com