Two Journeys

Andy Davis unfolds Revelation 10, pointing to the reality of God’s glory in both the physical and spiritual realms. Guest preacher at SEBTS on 3/16/22

The post A Mighty Angel and a Little Scroll appeared first on Two Journeys.

Peter preaches a powerful sermon giving all glory to God and to Christ for the prior healing, calling upon the listeners to repent of their sins and to believe the gospel.

The post Acts Episode 8: Peter’s Sermon in the Temple appeared first on Two Journeys.

Pastor Andy Davis preaches on Mark 2:23-3:6, explaining that Jesus was sent to proclaim liberty for the captives, and he did it by claiming full authority as Lord of the sabbath.

Turn in your Bibles  as we continue to work our way today through Mark's gospel, Mark 2:23 to Mark 3:6. Six centuries before Jesus was born, the prophet Isaiah predicted the nature of his ministry speaking for him in prophetic voice in Isaiah 61:1-2, "The spirit of the sovereign Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

Hear again those words, Jesus came to proclaim freedom for the captors, freedom from slavery. Jesus taught us all sinners are slaves to sin, therefore, slaves to Satan, the invisible slave master. Satan has many different patterns of slavery however, with many different foreman on his plantations of sin, many different task masters lashed the slaves. One of the most powerful in Jesus' day was religious legalism, a harsh bondage of relentless religious obligations and duties to fulfill a pattern of works righteousness gained by the law. And the religious leaders of the day, especially the Scribes and Pharisees loaded up the people with guilt and lashed their own people relentlessly with unbending laws. Jesus came to set all people free from slavery, from bondage. Recently, I looked up a photo I thought of before and then tracked it down. It was of a slave labor camp during World War II that the Nazis were running in a place in Austria called Mauthausen. It was a terrible death camp there. The death camp held a third of a million people of which only 80,000 survived to the end of the war. There was something called the stairs of death. They led out from a quarry in which granite was carved to build the GRA architectural vision of the third right. The stairway itself led up out of the quarry to a rim above it. The guards forced the prisoners to pick up blocks of granite weighing over 100 pounds and forced them to put them in wooden backpacks and lift them up and then carry them up 186 steps to the top of the quarry. The slave labor walked five abreast as they walked up these 186 steps. Frequently, some of them, in weakness, would topple over backwards and take out people behind them, even to their death. This  pictures somewhat the bondage that Israel experienced in Egypt as they built for the store cities for Pharaoh; they were worked seven days a week, it was relentless labor. “The Lord looked down on their condition," it says, "and was concerned about them and delivered them."

In Jesus' day, there were different kinds of slave drivers over the Jewish people. As I said, there were spiritual task masters, the Scribes and Pharisees who made these relentless spiritual laws by which they bound the consciences of the people and forced them to work in a certain pattern for their own salvation. Jesus talked about them in Matthew 23:4. He said, "The Scribes and Pharisees tie up heavy loads and put them on men's shoulders but they themselves will not lift a finger to move them." Central to this spiritual slavery was the concept of God himself as a harsh taskmaster and  salvation, being something earned by external obedience of the people to these manmade laws. Salvation by works with no mercy, only the strongest survive. Like a slave labor camp with God, the one holding the lash. One of the greatest of these forms of bondage were the Sabbath regulations. The Scribes and Pharisees felt they owned that day and they multiplied the traditions of the rabbis to plant the entire day thick with laws and regulations and prohibitions that were never written in the law of Moses. With these relentless Sabbath laws, they made the day a form of bondage, a crushing burden really to the people.  Almighty God sent his only begotten son, Jesus, to set them free from all this. Hallelujah! Jesus sets us free. We've already celebrated. Jesus didn't come to put burdens on us. He came to take the burdens off us. "Come in to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest. Take my yolk upon you and learn from me for you will find my yolk is easy, my burden is light for I am gentle and humble in heart." That's who Jesus is. I have no idea what's going on in your lives, but as a pastor, I can't help but think that some of you must have walked in here today with crushing burdens. Burdens that cannot be seen, especially the burden of guilt. How can a sinner like me be righteous in the sight of a Holy God? How can a sinner like me actually survive judgment day and spend eternity in heaven and not in hell? Jesus came to take that burden off you. To put it on himself and to die in your place under the wrath of God that you might be set free. That's what I see in today's text when Jesus calls himself the Lord of the Sabbath. 

Let's see if we can walk through that and understand it. We begin by contemplating the Sabbath legalism into which Jesus ministered. The origin of the Sabbath and Scripture is in Genesis 1 and 2. In Genesis 1, God created heaven and earth in six days. Then in Genesis 2:2-3 it says, "By the seventh day, God had finished the work he had been doing. So on the seventh day, he rested from all his work and God blessed the seventh day and made it holy. Because on it, he rested from all the work of creating that he had done." That's the origin of it, the theological basis of the Sabbath. Then in terms of the Jewish people and their laws, at Mount Sinai, God included a Sabbath observance as part of the 10 commandments. Exodus 20:8-11, "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Do all your work in six days and rest on the seventh. The seventh day is a Sabbath for the Lord your God. On it, you shall not do any work. …  For in six days, the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy." Later in the book of Exodus, He gives further clarification. In Exodus 31:17, a key verse for me today, we're going to see it three times in my sermon.  Exodus 31:17 says, "The Sabbath is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days, the Lord made heaven and earth and on the seventh day, he rested and was refreshed."

The basic command is do not work, nothing more. But behind it, of course is a sense of spiritual refreshment, of focusing on the Lord the creator of all things and being refreshed in him. As Isaiah the prophet said, we are to call the Sabbath a delight, meaning through focusing on the Lord together with the people of God, drinking in the ministry of the word in corporate worship as well, we are spiritually refreshed, we're renewed. But the Jewish leaders couldn't leave it at that. They began at a certain point in Jewish history, a long history of legalism concerning the Sabbath.  The Jewish rabbis over the centuries began adding additional commands to protect the law, fence upon fence, upon fence to protect the law. These additional commands are found nowhere in scripture. They became as binding on the consciences of the people as any command found in scripture. That's how their legalism worked. These extra rabbinic traditional laws were codified in a big book called The Talmud and it had 24 chapters of Sabbath regulations. One rabbi actually spent two and a half years of study on just one of those 24 chapters. Friends, at that rate, it would take 60 years to get through The Talmud's regulations on the Sabbath. They added dimensions and definitions and a long heritage of rabbinic interpretation on what it means to keep the Sabbath day holy and what it means not to work. For example, they had limits on how far you could walk on a Sabbath day. You could not walk 2,000 paces. 1,999 was fine, but 2000 was too many. This is before the electronic devices that helpfully count your steps for you. I'm not sure who it was that was counting the steps. Anything that might be contrived as work was forbidden on a Sabbath. For example, Scribes could not carry pens. Carpenters could not touch a hammer or saw. Tailors could not have on their person, a needle. All of that might tempt them to work, just to have the tools of the trade near you. No one was permitted to pick up anything heavier than a fig. If you tossed an object in the air with one hand, you had to catch it with the same hand. If you caught it with the other hand, it was considered work. Insects could not be killed. No candle could be either lit or extinguished. No bathing was allowed because some water might slosh out of the tub and accidentally clean the floor. All farm work was illegal, especially plowing, sewing and harvesting, which will be relevant for our text today. A woman could not look in a mirror because it's possible she might see a gray hair and be tempted to pluck it out and that would be work. This is coming from The Talmud.

 Especially relevant for Jesus' healings, sick people were only allowed enough treatment to keep them alive on the Sabbath day. So if a condition were literally life threatening, like someone bleeding out or drowning, they could be saved, but anything not life threatening should wait until after the Sabbath was over. That would include a man with a shriveled hand. We'll get to that. If someone put cotton in their ear before the Sabbath began, they could leave it there. But if it should fall out, you couldn't put it back in. Along with all of this, the Jews found clever ways of circumventing these rabbinic requirements. For example, as I said, you can't travel more than 1,999 paces from your home. Yes, but what constitutes your home? Now, that's an interesting question. Wherever your food is, would be defined as your home. So if before the Sabbath began, you stored some food in some place, 1,998 paces from your front door. That could be constituted your home as well so you could actually double the length. You could go on the Sabbath day, see how all that works? They could carry certain household items like keys and medicines, all that kind of thing. If you connected two buildings with a string or a piece of wood, that would be considered one building. So if you had a bunch of Jewish people living in an urban setting, a ghetto, or something like that, if you connected all the buildings, you could move freely in that city block on a Sabbath, no problem. You would see Jewish communities even across streets with strings or pieces of wood connecting so that it would expand the area that you could walk on the Sabbath day. You can see how ridiculous all this could become. Once you begin that journey of legalism, it never stops.

So the problem is the Scribes and Pharisees had a sense of overt ownership of this whole process. They had set themself up in Moses seat, felt they were interpreters of Mosaic law, and they had authority over all of these matters. Anyone who questioned them or challenged them was considered a spiritual outlaw or a blasphemer. That's why Jesus so enraged them. He didn't follow any of their additions, their manmade additions. He showed no fear of them at all, and especially when it came to healings, He did not hold back at all as we'll see even today. Behind all of this is the real issue of salvation, how our sins are forgiven before God and the concept of legalism that's so devastating. The Scribes and Pharisees preached and sought to live out a salvation by works of the law. They believe that they kept the minutia of the law, they would be right before God, that was their righteousness. Along with this legalism comes the problem of religious hypocrisy.

The Scribes and Pharisees meticulously kept a manmade standard of rules and regulations, but their hearts where every bit as foul and corrupt as any pagan's ever was. Their hearts were characterized by pride, greed, lust, blasphemy within rage. All of these things were a raging fire of wickedness within them while they're externally keeping all these laws. Jesus says in Matthew 23 in his seven woes, He says, "Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites, you are like whitewash tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. In the same way on the outside, you appear to people as righteous, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.” These external regulations do not save the soul, they do not transform the corrupt wicked human heart.

Jesus leveled the whole system.  Jesus' first challenge to corrupt Sabbath legalism happened before the account we're reading today in  Jesus' ministry. Jesus did not accidentally heal on the Sabbath. Not like He forgot that it was the Sabbath. It's not like that at all. He is actively doing the work of the Father and the Father wanted him to heal on the Sabbath. He was sent to liberate the captives.

In John 5, Jesus healed a man that had been paralyzed for 39 years.  He told him to pick up his mat and go home. But then the Sabbath police found him and didn't see an incredible signal miracle of God's grace, they saw him as a mat-carrying Sabbath breaker. That guy I think was in an unconverted state and this act  turned Jesus in to the Sabbath police. He had a debate with them right there and then about the Sabbath and in John 5:16-18, it says, "So because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath that Jews persecuted him.” Jesus said to them, 'My father is always at his work to this very day and I too am working.'" Wow! What an answer. Then it says, "For this reason, the Jews tried all the harder to kill him. Not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own father, making himself equal with God." What they didn’t understand was that Jesus personally instituted the Sabbath itself. If you understand who Jesus, the Son of God is, and you understand the significance of John 1:3, "Through him, all things were made. And without him, nothing was made that has been made.” What that means is the one who rested after the creation of every thing was Jesus, along with his Father. Jesus, the creator of all things instituted the Sabbath rest to begin with.

 Let's look at our text, the first case study, which is picking heads of grain. Let's look at what happened.  Mark 2:23, "One Sabbath, Jesus was going through the grains field and as the disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain." First of all, this gives us an insight into just how poor these apostles were and Jesus was. Jesus had said to someone who wanted to follow him as a disciple, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head." Luke tells us that some wealthy women were supporting Jesus out of their means, their financial means. Jesus didn't have any money and his followers had very little. It was a hard life. So the disciples moving through the grain fields on the Sabbath, then plucking heads of grain and rubbing them in their hands and eating them shows that they're poor. This was a Jewish form of welfare where owners of fields are told not to harvest everything or not to go right to the edge of the field, but leave some for the poor. By the apostles doing this, it shows they were included in the poor. It also shows how heartless the Pharisees were. They didn't care less that these poor people were moving through the grain fields and filling their empty stomachs with a few heads of grain. What they saw was a violation of the law against harvesting. This was not a matter of thievery on their part. Not at all. They were free to do it the other six days. It was a problem of Sabbath regulation. They challenged Jesus. Verse 24, "The Pharisees said to him, 'Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?'"

Jesus then gives a complex defense of the action, a complex defense, not easy to fully understand. In verse 25- 26, He answered, "Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? In the days of Abiathar, the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he gave some also to his companions." Jesus cited scriptural precedent, a well known story of David who was the true anointed king of Israel, had been anointed by Samuel, but  was made to flee for his life because the increasingly insane King Saul did not recognize him and would not embrace him as his son-in-law, so he had to flee for his life. David and his men in fleeing were in great physical distress, had nothing to eat, they were extremely hungry. David goes to the tabernacle. There was no temple in the days, but it was a tent where the Ark of the Covenant was, and the priests were carrying on the ministry there. The priest in those days greeted him in fear. David asked if he had anything to eat because he and his men were hungry. Hamelech said, "There's nothing there but the bread of the presence," which was the consecrated or holy bread put out each Sabbath by the priest as specified in Leviticus 24. The priest realized that David wasn't just any person, but was the king's son-in-law, he was a significant individual in Israel. The priest also more importantly recognized that no ceremony or ritual law should be greater than someone's  physical survival. The laws have to fit into a hierarchy. This religious requirement was not more important than feeding starving people. All of this constitutes what we would call a “how much more” argument. If David, the King's son-in-law merited special consideration and if a bending of a ceremonial law for a higher purpose, namely to feed the hungry was acceptable, how much more Jesus, the son of God, the Son of Man. We'll talk about that in a moment. Jesus’ disciples should be free to break man-made regulations that were never in God's word. I don't know about you, but I'm convinced. If David could do that to an actual legal requirement in the law of Moses, how much more should Jesus and his disciples be free to pick heads of grain on the Sabbath and eat them. 

But He's not done. He then goes on to teach about the Sabbath and makes this amazing assertion. Then He said to them, verse 27, "The Sabbath was made for man not man for the Sabbath." At the heart of this was the failure of the Pharisees to understand the whole point of the Sabbath to begin with. What was it for? It was to bless man, to refresh him, to strengthen him, to free him for one day from the burdens of work and to allow him to refocus his mind on God and on his throne. God ceased work on the seventh day and sat down on his throne to rule the universe. The Sabbath was made for man to refresh himself in the Lord. Now I'm going to go back to that great verse, Exodus 31: 17. I have to tell you, this is a new insight for me. I didn't notice this until about a week and a half ago, Exodus 31:17. It's really interesting. There again, speaking of the Sabbath, God says, "The Sabbath is assigned forever between me and the people of Israel, that in six days, the Lord made heaven and earth. And on the seventh day, he rested and was refreshed." That Hebrew word “refreshed”, literally is tied to breath and it could be translated that He caught his breath. That's fascinating. Six days making heaven and earth. And then on the seventh, He caught his breath. I hope you find this amazing. If not, let me help you find it more amazing. Isaiah, 40:28, "Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary." What do you get out of that? God's omnipotent. Does He need to catch his breath? Never. This is what theologians call an anthropomorphism, where God is portrayed like us. Like the hand of the Lord, the mouth of the Lord, the eye of the Lord, this kind of thing. But God doesn't have a hand, He doesn't have an eye or a mouth, but it's so that we can understand some aspects of God and how He relates to things. God didn't need to be refreshed, but we do. The work that God did in making heaven and earth did not tire him out. The Sabbath was instituted for us because we do get weary, and we do get worn out in our labors, and we do need to be renewed and refreshed, especially spiritually. As it says in Psalm 23:2-3, "He makes me lie down in green pastors, he leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul." God intended the Sabbath to restore your soul. God never intended the Sabbath to become the most oppressive, burdensome, shackled, crushing, soul-deflating day of the week, but that's what the Pharisees had made it to become. Man's welfare is above Sabbath regulations, not a slave to it.

 Then comes Jesus' stunning claim.  Verse 28. I spent a long time pondering this, every word. "Therefore, the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath." What is the logical connection between verse 27 and 28? “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Therefore, the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” In order to understand the logical connection, you have to understand the significance of the title, Son of Man. What does that mean that Jesus is the Son of Man?  It comes directly from the vision and the Prophet Daniel in Daniel 7. There is this awesome vision of God up on a throne of fire, a river of fire flowing from the throne of almighty God, ruling over all the beasts of the empires of the earth." Here's sovereign God ruling over tyrants and beasts and a river of fire and a 100 million angels are on him, the ancient of days, Almighty God. Then suddenly, into the presence of Almighty God, the Ancient of Days, comes one like a Son of Man.  Listen to Daniel 7:13-14, "In my vision at night, I looked and there before me was one like a Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven. And he approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence and he was given authority, glory and sovereign power. All people's nations and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will never pass away. And his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed." That's who the Son of Man is, that's who Jesus is. He is human, Son of Man, but He is God, He's riding on the clouds and He's given glory and people worship him.

The number one question I would ask a biblically literate Jewish unbeliever is “Who is the Son of Man in Daniel 7?” I would spend all my time on that. Who is he? Jesus  called himself Son of Man, over and over. As Jesus would say at the end of his ministry, "All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me because I am the Son of Man." That's why all authority in heaven and earth have been given to me because I am the Son of Man. So if they, the Scribes and Pharisees, knew who He was, they would not be asking questions of him or questioning him at all. The logical link, because Jesus is Son of Man, what that means is everything pertaining to the human race is given to him. He's in charge of everything relevant to us. That's his prerogative as the Son of Man. That includes, for example, being judge of all human beings.  John 5:27 says, "God has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man.” That's the same logic. Because He is the Son of Man, He gets to judge us all. He's the judge of all the earth, of all humans. Therefore because He is the Son of Man, He gets to decide what we get to do or don't do on the Sabbath.  It's up to him what we do on the Sabbath. Therefore, the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath. This is a stunning bombshell. This is a claim to nothing less than full deity. Can you imagine anyone else in biblical history making such a claim? Can you imagine Moses calling himself, "Lord of the Sabbath.” He would never have said that. He's a servant in God's house. Can you imagine David saying, "I'm Lord of the Sabbath”?  Or any of the prophets? Can you imagine Elijah claiming to be Lord of the Sabbath? No one would make such a claim, except Jesus. Jesus, himself together with his father instituted the Sabbath rest. As Lord of the Sabbath, He has the right to say what is permissible on the Sabbath. It's a matter of kingly authority. He's the king of all the earth and He gets to decide what we do and don't do on the Sabbath.

 Jesus is God.  Jesus is worthy of our worship. Therefore, Jesus is the focus of our time on the Sabbath. He's the focus of that worship because He is Almighty God in the flesh. The Sabbath itself is in some sense a shadow whose reality is Christ and is now fulfilled and in some sense has become obsolete. Jesus fulfilled the Sabbath. By his death and by his resurrection, Jesus invites all who believe in him to enter into his rest and to finish from all works of righteousness, and rest finally and completely in his finished work on the cross. The author to Hebrews makes this plain in Hebrews 4:3, "Now we, who have believed," [that is in Jesus] "have entered into that rest." Again, the author says a few verses later, in Hebrews 4:9-10, "There remains then a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his own work just as God did from his." We who have believed have entered that Sabbath rest and there still remains a Sabbath rest. It's an already not yet thing. When you come to faith in Christ, you have rested from all of your works, you are righteous in God's sight because of the finished work of Christ on the cross, you have entered your Sabbath rest, but there still remains a Sabbath rest for you and that's heaven. Therefore, the mosaic regulation of the Sabbath was a shadow. Jesus is the reality. Colossians 2:16-17, "Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with your regard to a religious festival, a new moon celebration or a Sabbath day." Let me just keep it simple for our purposes right now. Do not let anyone judge you by what you do with the Sabbath day. Verse 17, "These are a  shadow of the things that were to come.” The reality, however, is found in Christ." So the old covenant Sabbath was a shadow, Jesus is the reality. That shadow-reality language is used in the book of Hebrews for the ceremonial laws that are fulfilled in Christ. The Sabbath as the Jews observed in the old covenant is obsolete. Jesus has made a new Sabbath. So from the beginning of the New Testament era on, we ceased gathering to worship on the seventh day and it was moved over to the first day.  I think this symbolism is vital. The old covenant Jews looked backward to the old creation, the six days in which the physical universe was made and celebrated that. We look ahead to the new creation that Jesus has won by his resurrection from the dead. We're looking ahead to a new heaven and a new earth by meeting on the first day of the week and calling it the Lord's day, so we assemble the worship on the first day, not the seventh.

Along with this comes a second case study, the man with a shriveled hand. Look at the verse, Mark 3:1-6, "Another time, he went into the synagogue and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath. Jesus said to the man with a shriveled hand, 'Stand up in front of everyone.' Then Jesus asked them, 'Which is lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil? To save life or to kill?' But they remained silent. He looked around at them and anger and deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, 'Stretch out your hand. He stretched it out and his hand was completely restored.' Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus." In all the gospels in which these accounts occur, these are back to back, the grain fields and the shriveled hand, back to back. These probably are consecutive Sabbaths. I think they're meant to be taken together. Jesus is going around, village to village in Galilee, preaching and proclaiming and working and going on the Sabbath to reach scripture and to teach. Jesus' enemies, at this point, are starting to follow him around, to dog his steps. They want to make trouble for him, they want him to fail. They want to hang him with his own words and works. They really are after him at this point. Why?  The Sabbath is one of the number one reasons. Jesus in John 9 heals a man born blind. He's hauled up in front of the religious police and the council. It says in John 9:16, some of the Pharisees said, "This man is not from God for he does not keep the Sabbath." Simplistic mathematics. It's like, "He's not from God. He doesn't keep our Sabbath regulations."  He doesn't keep the Sabbath, he's not from God.” But then the next phrase in John 9:16 says, "But others ask, 'How could this sinner do such miraculous signs?'" They have a problem. They don't get it. How could anyone do that if God were not with them? It's impossible. They don't know what to do. The crowning argument of Jesus' enemies against him is He doesn't keep the Sabbath. They are like prowling predators. They're lying in the tall grass waiting to pounce for Jesus, they're watching him. Jesus, the most courageous man in history, attacks them head on. Mark 3:3, “Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, "Stand up in front of everyone." I think not only was Jesus courageous, I think the man with the shriveled hand was somewhat courageous. He knew this was heading for nothing but trouble, but he had this shriveled hand, the Greek word implies, withered.  It says it'd be very hard for him to work. This is a clear test case, for the man's medical condition is not life threatening. So you're going to say, "Look, six days you can do all your healing. Come back after the Sabbath is over." We've already seen that in Mark's Gospel while people waited for the Sabbath to end to come get healed. No, Jesus is not going to wait. He wants this man healed right now because He's not only after the man with the shriveled hand and showing compassion to him. He is after that, but He wants to blow up this yolk of legalism right now. He wants to set the people free from that legalism. He puts them in a logical trap.  Look at Verse 4,  “Jesus asked them, ‘Which is lawful on the Sabbath? To do good or to do evil? To save life or to kill?’” Jesus is saying, “So go ahead, let's answer. Let's talk about which of these two is lawful on the Sabbath”.  They remain silent, He's seeking to expose their corrupt hearts.

In Matthew's gospel, He sites another one of their faulty patterns. There's nothing wrong with the pattern, but there's something wrong with how they were dealing with humans. He said, "If any of you has a sheep that falls in the pit on the Sabbath, you'll do whatever you can to get the sheep out. But you care more about your own livestock than you do other human beings. What's wrong with you?" The question he asked here goes deeper to their evil intentions. What are they going to do after this whole thing's done? They're going to go out and on the Sabbath, they're going to work really hard. It's going to be intellectual work. They're going to do the work of plotting his murder. Sometimes He called them out straight out, "You're trying to kill me." He openly said that to them sometimes. He knew what they were doing. He says, "All right, each of us is going to be working on the Sabbath. I'm working to heal this man, to bring life to him. You are working to kill me. Which of those two do you think is lawful?" He traps them, but they didn't answer. I think this happens a lot.  Jesus will trap some group of evil people and they will not answer his question. 

 Jesus has a passionate response, look at verse 5, “He looked around at them in anger and deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts." He's very angry at them. He is an emotional man. Jesus had emotions, but unlike us, his emotions are always perfect. Jesus looked them right in the eyes, exposed their evil corruptions and then He's truly angry at them with a clean, pure fire of holy wrath. Their hypocrisy toward God, their lack of love for other people was pure evil, and it made Jesus angry. This is the only verse in the entire new Testament that overtly says that Jesus was angry. I think He was angry at other times like when He made the whip and drove out all of the corrupt merchants in the temple area. I think He was filled with a holy anger then but it doesn't say so. I think once He was indignant with his own disciples for not letting the children come, but it doesn't say He was angry. This says, “He's angry at them”. 

Secondly, it says He was grieved. He was grieved at their stubbornness or their hardness of heart. The hard heart will not yield and ultimately Jesus knows where that hardheartedness will lead. It will lead to the point where He will say to them while sitting on a throne of glory, "Depart from me, you who are cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." That's where their legalism will lead. "Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and teaches of the law, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven." He knows they're heading toward hell and He's grieved over them. He turns to the man and  says, "Stretch out your hand." The man stretches out his hand, and it's instantly restored. I don't know what happened. I think hands are amazing. I was a mechanical engineer for 10 years. When you think about all the tendons and capillaries and all of the stuff. Anyway, there it is, all of its articulations and its movements and they're instantly restored, effortless, perfect healing by Jesus.

That's Jesus passionate, compassionate powerful response. What about his enemies? They're pretty passionate too. You don't have it in Mark's gospel. In Luke 6:11, it says they were furious. Don't you see something wrong with that? A guy has just been healed and they're furious. In verse 6 of our text, the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus. Jesus threatened their power.  The Herodians and Pharisees are usually enemies. The Herodians are secularists, they're Hellenists, they're Greek-speaking worldly people who linked up with Herod the Great and then his four successors to get worldly power and do well in life, a little bit like tax collectors in that regard. True patriotic Jews would usually see  the Herodians as sellouts. But there's an old saying, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."  Jesus made enemies come together and fight. 

What lessons can we take from this text? The central lesson of the entire gospel of Mark, indeed, all four gospels—the infinite majesty and glory of Jesus. Jesus is Lord of the Savage. Jesus, the Lord of all. Jesus is God. He is majestic. Every single one of us right now is underestimating Jesus. In him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, the infinite majesty and glory of God in bodily form, that's Jesus. Lord of the Sabbath. Secondly, the true Sabbath rest is salvation through faith in Christ. The reality of the Sabbath is found in Christ. We who have believed enter that rest. I said, some of you may have walked in here with terrible spiritual burdens, maybe you're not sure that you're a Christian. You're not sure that your sins are forgiven. You don't need to do any works. Lay down those works. Give up those works. He who has entered into the rest of God, has ceased from those works. Find perfect forgiveness in Jesus' finished work on the cross. Hear  simply what Jesus said to the thief on the cross. "Today, you'll be with me in paradise." What works did that man do? None. But simple faith in Christ led him to forgiveness of sins. So lay aside your burdens, give them to Jesus, all your guilt, give it to Christ.

Thirdly, let all of us watch out for this persistent danger of religious legalism. It's still with us today. Basically, there are two religions in the world, salvation by works through religious efforts and all of that and salvation by grace, through faith in Christ. That's it. There's a lot of different versions of that first type, but religious legalism is still with us and it dogs our step as Christians. We think that whenever we feel guilty and sinful and our conscience rises up against us, we need to go do a bunch of religious works. Kill it, flee to the cross. That's the only righteousness that will survive judgment day. Let's get rid of any religious legalism and hypocrisy.

Fourth, a lasting question. What is the best way to spend the Lord's Day? "Pastor, are you going to do this? You've been preaching already a good long while. Are we going to actually get into all the ways that Christians should and shouldn't use the Sabbath.”  This is probably the seventh sermon I've preached on the topic of the Sabbath. I would suggest you go to TwoJourneys.org and look at my sermons in Hebrews 4, Romans 14, Colossians 2. I’ve covered all that. Isaiah says, "Call the Sabbath the delight." I walk through lots of particularities on how Christians should spend their day. I think the key is in Exodus 31:17, "Whatever you do, catch your breath spiritually. Be refreshed spiritually in Christ." It's not legalistic to say you should come to public worship every week when you're physically able, that is vital. It's not legalism to say that you should be here and drink in God's word and worship with the people of God. That's a given. But what else? Am I going to start talking about sports like the Super Bowl or like the tournament, or should we be allowed to watch sports and all that?" No, I'm not. Except I just kind of did. Anyway, the idea is you have to judge yourself. It's not for the elders to judge you and what you do on the Sabbath day, but I think you should evaluate yourself. Your Sunday patterns, do they refresh your soul in the Lord or not?   

Finally, heaven is the ultimate Sabbath rest. Let me close with a question that popped in my mind and I'm not going to solve it for you, but I think it's pretty cool.  How do the glorified saints in heaven both rest from all their works and engage in the energetic labor that their resurrection bodies will be doing? How do they do both? I think they will be doing both an eternal rest in the Lord and energetic, creative labor in the new heaven and new earth. I think that's pretty exciting, don't you? 

Close with me in prayer. Father, thank you for this passage. Thank you for the complexity of the topic of the Sabbath. Thank you for the simplicity of the gospel that Jesus is everything. Jesus is God, Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath. Father, I pray that you would enable us to flee to him and find in Christ everything we need for the salvation of our souls. That we would realize that Jesus came to take burdens off us, not to crush us with legalistic burdens. Help us to understand that and then help us to make wise choices on the Lord's day. Wise choices that our souls would be refreshed, that we would spiritually catch our breath through a renewed vision and love of Jesus Christ. In his name we pray, Amen.

Jesus claims full authority as Lord of the Sabbath and combats the self-righteous legalism the Jewish leaders assigned to it.

The post Lord of the Sabbath (Mark Sermon 11) appeared first on Two Journeys.

God gave Peter and John an opportunity to advance the Kingdom of Christ by healing the beggar sitting at the temple gate by the power of the Name of Jesus Christ.

The post Acts Episode 7: Peter and John Heal a Famous Beggar appeared first on Two Journeys.

 Pastor Andy Davis preaches on Mark 2:19-22 about the NEW and POWERFUL gospel that saved many from an eternity in hell and placed them in eternal heavenly glory.

Take your Bibles and turn to Mark 2.  Today's text, I think, is all about power, the surging energy to make change, to make things new. That's what power is. Power in this world is manifested in two ways, constructive and destructive power. The greatest constructive power ever in this physical universe has been at creation, when God said, "Let there be," and there was. The world that God made was beautiful and orderly and very good, but then came the destructive power of evil. Sin entered the world through one man and death through sin. And in this way, death came to all, because all sinned, and this beautiful world was cursed by the power of death. With this cursed world, lesser power has charted the subsequent course of history, both constructive and destructive power. 

Humanity builds, but then death destroys. Nature destroys. Things rise up, they reach their peak, and then they fall back down to the earth. Empires rise, and then they fall back into the dust from which they came. Trees grow up from acorns, and they get massive and majestic, but eventually, they are toppled and they fall to the ground, and they rot and they're gone. Everything humanity puts its hand to eventually becomes dust. Constructive power in this world is overtaken by destructive power. This is our life in this cursed world. But God, in His goodness, interjected a power for eternal good, the power to make change, to make things new, to build a kingdom that will last forever and ever. This power to make all things new is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is infinitely powerful. It rises and surges and moves and acts and builds, and what it builds will last for all eternity, the power to make a new world. This new power of the Gospel cannot fit in to the old husks of manmade religion. That's what this passage really addresses, old and new. Look at verse 21, you've got new cloth and an old garment, and then verse 22, you've got new wine and old wineskins. You've got the dynamic of new and olds, and how they don't fit together. The new is dynamic, it’s powerful. It's ready to change every person from the inside out, and make everything new, to transform by the renewing of the mind, and ultimately, to change the entire universe, to bring in a new heaven and a new earth, where everything is new. The old religion, old patterns, indeed, even the Old Covenant itself could not bring this about.  

When this all starts, this whole thing starts with a question about fasting.  What is fasting? For the individual that came to Jesus, it's an effort to address the destructive power of sin by religion, to harness the body of all of its wicked rambunctious ways, to tame it like a wild stallion that needed constantly to be broke to the saddle. Fasting, in this case, was invented by man to make a way to God. Look at verse 18, John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting, and some people came and asked Jesus, "How is it that John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees are fasting, but yours are not?" Legalistic religion is here to hunt Jesus down and trap him based on His own behavior. Here we see fundamental, false religion coming, the effort to mortify the deeds of the flesh, yourself, on your own. John Owen, talking about mortification in this sense, said "Mortification, putting sin to death, from self-strength, carried on by ways of self-invention, unto the end of self-righteousness, is the soul and substance of all false religion in the world." To put it in simple terms, holding back or harnessing sin from your own strength, in a pattern that you invented yourself, so that you can be self-righteous and feel like you defeated sin by yourself, that's the essence of all false religion in the world. That's what came to Jesus that day. 

Now Jesus has already exposed this again and again. He's going keep battling this. In the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 6, He exposes three patterns of piety. Conspicuous piety was being done by the religionists of Jesus' day. Conspicuous giving to the poor and needy, that's announced with trumpets, so everyone sees it done. And conspicuous praying, that's done on the street corner, so everybody can see how pious you are. And conspicuous fasting, which is done in this way, Matthew 6:16, "When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others that they're fasting." I don't know if I want to make a horrible face right now in front of you, but it's something like, "Oh." "How are you doing today?" "It's a hard day." "Really? What's going on?" "Well, I'm not eating today. I'm fasting today, et cetera." "Don't do that," Jesus said. "When you fast, put oil on your head. Wash your face, so it will not be obvious to others you are fasting, but only to your Father who sees what has done unseen, and your Father sees what has done unseen will reward you." 

Now, fasting was actually established in the law of Moses once a year, connected with the day of atonement, a day to afflict yourself, the text says in Leviticus 16:29. So it was in there, once a year. And, from time to time, the nation would be called on by spiritual leaders to fast, as a time of national mourning over sin, as in Nehemiah 9:1, when the Jews were intermarrying with pagan women again, and there was a time to fast and grieve before God over this wickedness. Or sometimes, an individual would fast over his own sins, like David did, after he sinned with Bathsheba. Sometimes, an individual like Ezra would fast before a dangerous journey, and ask God's help and protection. So that fasting would be individual to something you would do from time to time. 

But the Pharisees, the pictures of legalistic religion of self-effort, went far beyond this. They established a pattern of fasting twice a week.  Jesus talks about it in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. The Pharisee goes up and Jesus says the Pharisee’s praise was about himself," "I thank you, God, that I'm not like others. I'm not like robbers and evil doers and adulterers, or even like this tax collector over here. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all that I own." There's that pattern, that twice a week fast. They establish this rhythm of legalistic fasting in their religion, and then they spread it to burden the conscience of people around them saying, "Effectively, you're substandard Jews, if you didn't join us in these fasts." Substandard Jewish people, and people bought into it. They were afraid of them. They didn't want to be seen that way, substandard, so they gave in to these twice a week fast. It was a time of mourning, a time of disfiguring your faces to show others that you're fasting, you're on board. You're doing the fast that everyone else is doing. The poison in all of us is thinking that, by these means, you can pay for your sins. God's going to be pleased with this, and basically, blackmailed into welcoming you and accepting you, because of your harsh treatment of the body. These fasts, therefore, are symbolic of self-styled religion, self-efforts at paying for sins and blackmailing God.  

 John the Baptist's disciples, some of them were wrapped up in it. John's movement was massive.  Tens and tens of thousands of people went out to him and heard him preach, and were baptized by him in the Jordan River. It's a big movement. They confessed their sins, and they received John's water baptism, but then what?  What do we do now? John had called them to produce fruit in keeping with repentance. What did that look like? They were a bit adrift. John was just going to keep doing his baptismal ministry there, so a lot of these folks attached themselves to the Pharisees and fit into this pattern of legalistic piety. They're doing this. Infinitely worse though, these John's disciples didn't hear his central message about Jesus, the one who was coming after him whose sandals he was not worthy to stoop down on and tie, who would be the Lamb of God who would take away the sins of the worlds, who even greater than that was the Son of God. They hadn't heard that, so they came with disrespect and judgmentalism to Jesus, questioning Him. 

So what's the context? The feast at Levi's house that we studied last week. Levi is Matthew, and Levi was a tax collector. Jesus called on him to follow. Levi left behind that old life and became a disciple, a follower of Jesus, and they had a big feast at Levi's house, and many of his friends came. They were tax collectors and so-called sinners were all there. It was a big feast, and an amazing work of God had happened. Many of those people repented of their sins and turned away from their wickedness and became followers of Christ. It was an incredible day, a day of feasting and a day of celebration. It was not one of that one day in the year required by the law of Moses in which he would fast. Yes, he would've done that. It wasn't that. So, the Pharisees and John's disciples come up, and they're criticizing Jesus. Jesus does not seem at all concerned with their accusations. Do you get that sense? Not worried about it at all. "Oh, they don't think well of me," not worried about it. He's celebrating the work of grace done in the lives of sinners at Matthew's house, happy with what God had done.  Jesus exposes their ignorance of Him and of the times. Look at verse 19, "Jesus answered, 'How can the guest to the bride groom fast while he is with them? They cannot, so long as they have Him with them. They don't know who He is, and they don't know when it is, what's going on now.'" They're not aware of what's happening. What are the signs of the times? What's going on?  

We have this image of a bridegroom, a marital image, which was common in the Old Testament prophets, a relationship between Yahweh, the God of the Jewish nation, and the people. It was like a marital relationship sometimes, in the prophets. It was foreshadowed also by the apostle Paul, picking up in Ephesians 5, the connection between Jesus and the church being like a marriage, the church seems to be the bride of Christ. Then we get that beautiful picture in Revelation, how the new Jerusalem, the people of God, come down out of heaven prepared as a bride for her husband. This beautiful image of a bridegroom getting together with the bride, a picture of eternal love relationship between God and His people. John the Baptist had used the image actually. John had brought it up. In the Gospel of John, John's disciples were coming and John was losing market share to Jesus. Remember that? Like, "Lots of people are going after Jesus now, John. We got to do something. We got to prop up the numbers. I mean, we're losing popularity here." And said John, "You don't understand what's going on." In the Gospel of John 3:29-30, John said, "The bride belongs to the bride groom. The friend who attends the bride groom waits and listens for him and is full of joy when he hears the bride groom's voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete. He must increase, and I must decrease." 

Let's be honest, who fasts at a wedding?  When a man throws a wedding banquet, his happiest day of his life, he kills the fatted calf and puts out the best foods and the best drink, and he lavishly appoints this feast and invites his friends to come. The he finds one at the banquet who's not eating anything and looks pretty miserable. His face is disfigured. "What's up?" "Oh, I'm fasting today." "Don't do that. Eat my food. Drink my drink. It's a time of celebration.”  This is a time of joy. Jesus says, “My people get to hear my voice. They get to see my face. They get to see my miracles. They get to see my love and my kindness and my personality. They get to understand and drink in my wisdom. They get to sit with me and be with me. And do you understand how many people in the past would've longed to be here during this time?” But they didn't get to do it.  He openly said that in Matthew 13, to His own disciples, "Blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For I tell you, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see and did not see it, and longed to hear what you hear and did not hear." He's talking about the times of the Messiah, to be there when Jesus walked the earth. It was a time of joy, a time of celebration, and the Pharisees and John's disciples come there with their grumbling stomachs. How are you when you fast? Are you happy? Are you good company? I've gone to bed early on fast days, just to get away from people. So imagine some irritable men, who haven't eaten in a while, they are grumpy, hey bring their joyless legalism. They're condemning the guests at the wedding banquet, condemning them because they're celebrating when they should be drinking in and feasting like Jesus' disciples were. They're so messed up. Legalism messes them up. Jesus came to bring joy, not sorrow, the joy of sitting at the table with God. 

Legalism kills joy. One expression is “buzz kill.”  Others, you've heard “kill joy,” or “wet blanket.” The legalists are buzz kills. In the book of Galatians, when Paul's addressing a legalistic Gospel that's come in under the so-called Judaizers who bring in circumcision as a doorway to an entire legalistic way of life that was not the Gospel, he asked them a simple question. He had led these people to Christ, to the preaching of the Gospel. In Galatians 4:15, he said, "What has happened to all your joy?" Watch out for legalism, First Baptist Church, watch out, it kills joy. Not only that, one chapter later, in Galatians 5:15, he says, "If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out, or you'll be destroyed by each other." Legalism pits faction against faction of self-righteous people, who are vaunting their own righteousness against others, and it divides people and destroys.  

However, the joy that Jesus came to bring at that point was not complete. It's still not complete. The journey isn't over yet. We're not in heaven, sitting at table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. We're not there yet. Look at verse 20, "'The time will come,' He says, 'when the bride groom will be taken from them. And on that day, they will fast.'" That's talking about our earthly lives here before we get to heaven. He's talking, first and foremost, about Jesus' crucifixion. He would be taken away by arrest, and they could not follow Him. He had to be alone.  Jesus said on John 16:20, "I tell you the truth. You will weep and mourn, while the world rejoices. You will grieve. But, your grief will turn to joy." So they were going to have a time of grief and sorrow, but then after the resurrection, Jesus will be taken up to heaven and there would be work to be done. 

That work we've characterized in this church is progress along two journeys, an internal journey of holiness,  and sanctification, an external journey of Gospel advance through evangelism and missions. Fasting will be connected with those two journeys. There'll be times to fast for those.  Christian people do fast from time to time, to grieve over sin, to show seriousness in repentance, as David did. We'll do that. Or sometimes, to be focused in prayer for strategy and wisdom, as in Acts 13, when the church of fasting and praying, and then the Holy Spirit said, "Set apart from me, Barnabas and Saul, for the work to which I've called them."  a time of fasting and focus and all that, there's going to be time for that. But let me tell you something. We're not going to be fasting in heaven. That's a time of heavenly celebration, and the bridegroom will not be taken from us then. It's temporary. 

To illustrate this, Jesus gives us two parables, a twin parables, one parable doubled. Same parable, different aspects, but it's doubled for emphasis. It's very important that we understand it. Parable number one, the unshrunk cloth and the old garment. Verse 21, "No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse." You have the image of an old garment, an old shirt, an old tunic, an old robe, an old cloak, something like that. It's been washed many times. Perhaps it's even a little faded, just old. It's an old garment, and it's got a hole in it. It needs to be repaired. Jesus said, "It would be foolish. No one does this, to take a piece of “unshrunk," it's literally unfolded or unwashed, it's what the Greek is, that hasn't been through the washing process yet.  It's never been through that. “Whenever a cloth like that is washed for first time, it shrinks. It pulls in, changes its dimensions, and if you sew that on an old garment, it's going to tear away from the old garment," Jesus says, "making the tear worse. It'd be foolish to combine them." So that's parable number one. 

Parable number two, the new wine and the old wineskin. Verse 22, "And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, he pours new wine into new wineskins." What's a wineskin? In those days, the actual skin of an animal would be used as a container for wine. They would, I think, generally treat it with certain processes, turn it inside out, sew up certain portions of it, leave another portion open and pour the wine in and then put a stopper in it. That's a wineskin. The new wine in the new wineskin  would begin to ferment and put off gases, and the gases would cause the wineskin to expand like a balloon. It's a new wineskin. It's supple. It's flexible. It can blow up like a balloon.   

But an old wineskin, it's been exposed to the sun. It's been dried out over a long period of time. It's lost its elasticity, it’s inflexible.  If you pour new wine into the old wineskin, eventually the pressure built up from the gases will cause a rupture. The old wineskin will be destroyed, and the new wine is lost, poured out on the ground. Both are ruined, Jesus says. So people knew to pour new wine into new wineskins and both were preserved. That's the second parable. Both of them have to do with a new dynamic that's powerful and moving, and doesn't line up with an old matrix that cannot move. It's inflexible and it's stuck in its ways. That's the same parable twice. Additional detail from Luke, in Luke 5:39 says, "And no one, after drinking the old wine, wants the new, for he says the old is better." He doesn't want the new thing. He's set in his ways, so it's basically a person. The new wine tastes weird to them. They don't want it. 

What do we draw from this twin parable? Lesson number one, the Gospel is new.  A new piece of cloth and the new wine, these represent the newness of the Gospel, the newness of Christ and the work He came to do. Our top priority in life is to understand this new Gospel of Jesus Christ, to wear the new garment made out of these new truths, the whole garment made out of new cloth, and to drink the new wine of this new work Jesus came to do; for us to delight in the newness of Christ and His new work in our lives and in the world. The Gospel is new. I've been doing a lot of study recently in the book of Ecclesiastes. Those close to me are kind of weary of hearing that everything is vanity. Vanity of vanities. Vanity of vanities. "Andy, when are you going to memorize the next book? It's time to move on to a new book." It says in Ecclesiastes 1, "Is there anything new in the sun? There's nothing new under the sun." Yes, there is. The Gospel is new.  The New Covenant is new. This is what new means when it says New Covenant. This is a new thing that Jesus came to do in the world.  

What is the old garment, the old wineskin? These certainly in immediate context represent the legalistic religion of the Pharisees and of John's disciples here. Following that approach to religion, legalism is inflexible, it is not changing. They have traditions they have handed down from one to the other, from generation to generation, that are not changing. This traditionalism is not moving. It is inflexible. Set, like the old garment that's set in its size. It cannot move. Like that old, weathered, hard, bridled, unyielding wineskin, that's what legalism does. That's what traditionalism does. It cannot respond to the newness that Jesus came to bring into this world, and I would just say in general, Jesus will not use them as vehicles to spread the new work He's doing. He will not use that. 

Christianity therefore is new. It is unique. It's unlike anything else on earth. It is fresh, it is alive, living and active, beautiful. It's aromatic and fruitful. That's Christ. Ultimately, newness is all about Christ, isn't it? It's all about Jesus. There's never been anyone like Him in history. There is no one like Jesus. They could not understand Him. He is the bridegroom, come to seek and to save and to draw in His bride. He is the God man, fully God, fully man. Anyone who has seen Him has seen the glory of God himself in human form. He stands alone, and with His advent into the world, history itself was changed. Everything would be impacted. He was new. His life, new. His miracles, new. His teachings, unlike any words that anyone had ever heard. The enemy sent soldiers to arrest Him, and they came back empty-handed and dumbfounded. “No one has ever spoken like this man,” [John 7:46]. They'd never seen anything like His miracles ever. They said this again and again, "We've never seen anything like this." Never. 

Remember when the man born blind was healed by Jesus. You remember how Jesus spit and made mud and put them on the man's eyes? He said, "Wash," and he could see.  This man knew enough to say this, in John 9:32, "Never since the world began has anyone ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind?" This has never happened before. This is new, something entirely new. And it's never been duplicated since. There's not been lots of Jesuses since. There's been no one like Him since. He is unique. He is new. He is the new cloth. He is the new wine. And He is the consummation of human history. Jesus. Who else could say, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. I'm everything. I am the story."? Who else could say, "Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father."? Who else could say, "Before Abraham was born, I am”? This new man, this Jesus, brings a new religion, a whole new way of expressing life and love for God. Christianity could never have fit into the old pattern. The old religion that was established by God in the Old Covenant was now, at the coming of Jesus, obsolete.  It was holy and righteous and good for its time. It had a role, a purpose, to play. But once Jesus came, and especially once He died on the cross, and the curtain in the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, that symbolized the end of the Old Covenant. Done. Obsolete. Finished. In some sense then, the Old Covenant was the old garment and the old wineskin. I've often wondered, what wicked priests sewed up that curtain, so that they could keep doing animal sacrifice for another 30, 40 years? You know in the whole marriage and divorcing, it says what God has joined together, let man not separate? Well, how about the opposite? What God has torn apart, let man not sew back up. 

He made a new and living way for sinners like you and me to come right into the presence of the Holy God. That's the power of the blood of Jesus, and He means for us to draw near. The Old Covenant could never do that. The Old Covenant could not bring in the new heaven and new earth, could not make a new man or new woman out of us. The Old Covenant was weak and powerless and unable. These are adjectives used by the New Testament writers for them, “And what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear,” [Hebrews 8:13]. The religion that Jesus came to work would be entirely new. Animal sacrificial system would be gone. The temple would be gone. The Levitical priesthood would be gone. Ceremonial laws of circumcision, food restrictions will be gone. The Old Covenant's wineskins could not hold this new wine. That was the end. 

Now, if the holy and God-ordained Old Covenant was obsolete, how much more this legalistic manmade thing, that they had concocted out of their own minds? How much more was that manmade, legalistic religion obsolete and gone? God never ordained this twice a week fast. It was something they made up. So see how new this wine is. Jesus came to make you into a new person, to transform you. The first verse I ever memorized, in The Navigator's Topical Memory System, 2 Corinthians 5:17, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creature, new creation. The old has gone. Behold, new things have come." Everything is new when you become a Christian. Jesus said to Nicodemus, "You must be born again. No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again. I can't pour the new wine of my work, cannot pour the new wine of the indwelling Holy Spirit into an old soul, an old person. I've got to make you new. You got to be born again. You got to be made into a new person by the spirit of God, something only God can do."  He said, "You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born again.' The wind blows wherever it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but you cannot tell where it comes from and where it is going." That's what it's like, so it is with everyone born of the spirit. You have to be born of the spirit and the new wine of Christ, and His spirit and His work can be poured into you.’” 

When the new wine of the Gospel pours into you, you become changed in every respect. You have a new mind, it’s called the mind of Christ. You now think differently about everything, about God, about humanity, about sin, about your life, your time, your money, your marriage, your parenting, your job. Everything becomes new, and it takes a long time for that newness to set in. But that's what it means to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. That's the privilege I get week after week to preach, the whole counsel of God, to make you entirely new and get you ready for the new world that's coming. Me too. And it's coming, because it says in Revelation 21:5, "He who is seated on the throne said, 'Behold, I am making everything new.'" 

So, I have a new thought project here, from Ecclesiastes. Maybe there really is nothing new under the sun, if new means eternal. Everything you see with your eyes is temporary, friends, everything, but there are eternal things you cannot see. There are souls that are redeemed by the blood of Christ and by the spirit of God, those are new, and they will last for all eternity. Everything else, there's nothing new. But the Lord is going to make a new heavens and a new earth. Everything is going to be made new, transformed by the One seated on the throne. So, lesson number one, the Gospel is new.  

Lesson number two, the Gospel is powerful. The image of both the new cloth and the new wine is power. We're not staying put. The new cloth shrinks powerfully, the new wine expands powerfully. If you can't follow me in my shrinking and my expanding, then you don't understand the power of the Gospel. What do you think should shrink? How about me? “He must increase. I must decrease.” How about that? My sin tumor should shrink.   Patterns in my life that are wicked need to be put to death. And what needs to expand? The work of Christ in my soul needs to expand. My obedience to His beautiful moral law, to love Him and to love my neighbors, myself, that needs to expand. My holiness needs to expand,  the Gospel needs to expand. There's some people in darkness surrounding us that the Gospel needs to move out in to win some of those people. It needs to move out. It needs to expand.  Acts 1:8, "You'll receive power, when the Holy Spirit comes on. You'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the earth.” That's the power that comes on you, and they could not leave the world the same. They weren't going to leave the world the same. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead was at work in them spiritually. It was a powerful thing. I love what happens in Acts 17:6, Paul and Silas come to Thessalonica, and it says, "These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also." Isn't that awesome? Of course, they had it backwards. You mean they set it back upright again. The world is upside down and they made it right. Wouldn't that be great to be said of us? "These men who have turned the world upside down have come here."  

Jesus displayed power everywhere He went. It's a powerful thing. He never left anything the same. He had absolute power over demons, they fled from Him in terror. He had absolute power over disease, there was nothing He could not cure. He had absolute power over death,  He raised Lazarus with a word, "Lazarus, come forth." He had absolute power over sin, He could look at you and say, "Take heart, son, daughter, your sins are forgiven." This is the surging power of Christ and of the Gospel.  He's given that power to us now. And we have some warfare to do. We have some strongholds to demolish, not people, wicked concepts and demonic strongholds.  2 Corinthians 10:3-5 says, "Though we live in the world, we do not wage wars. The world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of this world. On the contrary, they are divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments in every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we're ready to take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ." That's power.  Let's blow up some satanic arguments and concepts and ideas and false religions, and save the people that are enslaved by them.  
 

That's the power of the Gospel. Have you felt that power? Has that power come into your life? Have you felt the transforming power of the Spirit? Have you been made a new person? Have you been born again by the Spirit? Have you been transformed? Have you seen yourself, finally, properly, as a sinner who needed a savior like Jesus? Have you been convicted by the law of God and had your sins exposed, your lusts and your covetousness and your thieving and your lying? Have you had these things exposed and you know that is true of you, and Jesus' blood is the answer to all of it? Have you felt that power? Have you felt the complete forgiveness of that blood, that it's enough for you, you don't need anything more? The thief on the cross, "Today, you'll be with me in paradise." You don't have to do any good works to receive forgiveness of sins. Since that time that you felt that forgiveness, have you seen the power, the transforming power of God's word at work in your life, making you progressively holy and doing good works? If so, I have good news for you. You're going to spend eternity feasting with Jesus. 

 Close with me and prayer. Father, thank you for the time that we've had to study this twin parable today. Thank you for the newness and the power of the Gospel. Thank you for giving it to us, that we might be made new, and that we might be given the power of the spirit in our lives, both for our own personal holiness, putting sin to death and driving out the darkness in our souls, but also winning lost people around us. Lord, give us opportunities, even this week, to speak this good news to them. In Jesus' name. Amen. 

Jesus uses the Parable of the Wineskins to show that the gospel is new and powerful to save His elect from hell and bring them into glory.

The post The Lesson of Wineskins: The Gospel is New and Powerful (Mark Sermon 10) appeared first on Two Journeys.

In this Bible Study podcast, Andy and Wes tackle Acts 2:37-47 and they cover the Pentecost conversions and life in the early church.

The post Acts Episode 6: The First-fruits and the Early Church appeared first on Two Journeys.

Christ alone can cure the sin disease that plagues us all and heal our hearts through the saving grace of the gospel.

The post Christ Alone Can Heal The Soul (Mark Sermon 9) appeared first on Two Journeys.

In this sermon on Mark 2:13-17, Pastor Andy Davis preaches that Christ alone can cure the sin diseases that plagues us all.

Turning your Bibles to the Gospel of Mark, we continue our study here today in the text, Mark 2: 13-17. Since approximately March of 2020, the human race has been experiencing what medical experts call a pandemic. I don't really think I had heard that word before. I had heard the word epidemic many times, and I used it in sentences, but suddenly this word pandemic came on my consciousness. An epidemic occurs when a disease in one geographic locality results in a sudden increase in cases of that disease in that one place. A pandemic occurs when that outbreak spreads widely over a vast geographical region, or even worldwide affecting a sizeable portion of the population.  The word itself, “pandemic”, comes from two Greek words, “pan”, meaning all, and “demos”, meaning people, literally all the people.  I have no problem with the use of the word, but in actuality, when it comes to physical diseases, actual maladies, there has technically never been a pandemic in all of human history. There is no single disease which literally infects or affects all the people of the entire world. Or is there? 

In our text today, Jesus clearly likens sin to a disease and his own ministry, to the healing work of a physician.  Jesus visited the house of Levi, a tax collector, and a huge number of tax collectors and sinners came that night to Levi's house, and Jesus ate with them. The scribes, who were Pharisees, were outraged. They prided themselves in avoiding all contact with such defiled, wicked people. Much of their religion was based on them avoiding the sins of such people. They didn't do this, and they didn't do that, and they stayed far away from people who did such wicked things. They spiritually quarantined themselves from sinners, less they should somehow catch the contagion of their sins.  So when Jesus violated this principle and dove right into the midst of a crowd of tax collectors and sinners, when he ate food with them and drank drink with them, and when he reclined at table with them, and conversed pleasantly with them, these religiously quarantined Pharisees were scandalized, shocked, stunned, enraged. To them it was clear proof, Jesus is not from God, for God is pure and holy, far above all evil. He's close to the pure and upright, people like them. 

 Jesus addressed their accusation with a clear analogy in verse 17, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I've not come to call the righteous, but sinners." So sin is a sickness, and Jesus is the physician.

Let's go back to the way I began my sermon with a meditation on the word “pandemic.” I said, there's never been, historically, a true pandemic in the literal sense of the etymology, a physical disease and actual malady that has swept through the entire population of the world. Perhaps the most famous is the Black Death, the bubonic plague, which ravaged three continents from the year 1346 to 1353. We read of whole towns being wiped off the face of the map by death. Estimates range from 75 to 200 million dead, record keeping just wasn't what it is today, scientific as it is today. The estimated 50 million dead of Europe would've represented maybe as high as 60% of the population of that continent.  That dwarfs any other medical tragedy in all of human history, but it's still not 100%. There really is only one pandemic, and that is sin. The Bible tells us that all people, the entire human race sinned in Adam. Romans 5:12, “Therefore just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin.” And in this way, death came to all men, because all sinned. So we sinned positionally in Adam, the entire human race. All human beings are conceived in sin, born in sin, steeped in sin from infancy. Confirm their sin as soon as they understand right from wrong in the existence of a holy and good God, who demands that they love him and serve him with every fiber of their being, every moment of their lives, and that they love and serve their neighbors as themselves. As soon as every solitary human being understands right from wrong, they begin their evil career. Their career in sin, all of us do. Listen to this universal description of sin in Romans 3:10-12, “There is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God, all have turned away. They have together become worthless. There is no one who does good, not even one.” 

Now dear friends, that is the language of a true pandemic. All the people, every single human being on the face of the earth is infected with this terrible disease of sin. Puritan pastor Ralph Venning, who pastored in London during a later terrible outbreak of the Black Death in 1665, 4 years after that, wrote a treatise on sin called “The Plague of Plagues”. He made it plain that sin is worse than any physical disease could ever be: "Sin is the dare of God's justice, the rape of his mercy, the jeer of his patience, the slight of his power, the contempt of his love. It is the upbringing of his providence, the scoff of his promise, the reproach of his wisdom. Sin seeks to sit in God's place ruling over all God's works. What God has made beautiful, sin universally makes ugly." It is a true pandemic, because there's not a single location on earth where human beings reside that is free from this plague. All over the earth, human beings are born in inequity. They grow up in fanatical and prideful commitment to self-interest. They would seek to rule over their own lives as they see fit, contrary to the word of God. They spread their contagious pride and lust and covetous greed, and murderous anger, and filthy language wherever they go. This is the plague of plagues, and it is the only true pandemic. It is far deadlier than any physical malady has ever been, because it threatens humanity, not only with physical death on earth, but with eternal death in hell. One of the great problems of this pandemic is that it affects the perceptions of the ones that have the disease, so they don't think that they're sick. 

 I want to tell you a little parable. Imagine living in a populous and influential town in Europe, in the 14th century, during the height of the Black Death. Imagine that you yourself have the telltale signs of the infection: painfully swollen lymph nodes, you have chills, headache fever. A few hours later, it develops into tissue bleeding and intense abdominal pain. You stagger out into the street and you see every member of your family looking just like you. So, also, all your neighbors. And as you stumble down the street, you see every tradesman and merchant slumped by his shop with the same telltale signs all over their bodies. But suddenly you hear a call summoning all the citizens of the town to assemble. You recognize the voice. You make your way to the town center. And there you see the prince, the son of the king, and he's standing straight and tall, strong, and he's holding a loft in his hand a flask. It's got a liquid in it and he cries aloud, "Hear ye, hear ye, all ye members of this noble town, you are all stricken with a dread disease, and will shortly die if you're not immediately healed. Now, I have come with your cure. If you'll allow me to pour this elixir down your throat, you'll be cured immediately. But this cure is only offered to those who know they are sick." Hope rises in your heart. You look around to your friends and your family member, and you say, "Let's go and be healed." But one by one, they turn their faces away, and they all say, "I'm not sick. I'm fine." You're stunned. But you're determined. You have no other choice. You can't imagine that the prince, a kind and wise man, would be lying to the people. You join in a small group of obviously sick people waiting your turn. One by one, those ahead of you open their mouths and the prince pours of medicine down their throats. And immediately they're visibly improved, strengthened, revived. They jump to their feet. Soon their skin becomes ruddy and obviously healthy again. Now at lasts it's your turn. And you open your mouth and the medicine flows in. You feel a surge of energy within you. And you know, you have been truly healed. You can feel it in your body. The prince then walks through the town, holding the same flask of loft. A small entourage of newly healed people follows in his train. He cries out, "Here's the cure. You need only to come and drink, and you'll be healed." But most of the people in the town turn away saying, "I'm not sick." You speak to your friends, neighbors, even beloved family members, but the disease seems to have affected their minds. They're delusional. They say, "I know. I feel a little weak and I have a few sores on my skin, but everyone has that. I mean, look around. Besides, look, I can stand up. I can walk. I'm not coughing much. I can pick up a pitcher water and lift it high. I'm fine. I don't need that."

Friends, I wonder if this is what the world looks like to the angels who look down on our sin, sick human race, as the gospel makes its way around the world. I especially wonder at some people who think they're good enough people not to need a savior like Jesus. This sermon flows from a text that addresses that very issue. Last time we saw Jesus' amazing authority to forgive sins.

You remember four friends lowered the paralyzed man down through a hole in the roof that they'd made with their own hands. They unroofed the roof, and they lowered the paralyzed man down. It says in Mark 2:5, “When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son your sins are forgiven." And when Jesus' enemies heard him say that they thought in their hearts, “Who is this man, he's blaspheming, who can forgive sins, but God alone?”.  Jesus knew their thoughts, and said to them, "Which is easier to say to the paralytic, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say to the paralytic, 'Get up, take your mat, and go home.’But I want you to know that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins, and he said to the paralytic, ‘Get up, take your mat, and go home.’ He got up in full view of them all picked as mat and walked out.”  Jesus proved his greatest power, the power to forgive sins. In the language of the pandemic I've been describing, Jesus has the cure to the deadliest disease that's ever faced the human race, the disease of sin. He has absolute power of God to forgive of all of our sins for all time.

Now in this text, we're going to see the only people he will forgive. In the language of the pandemic, the only people this great physician will heal are those who know that they are sick with sin.

My first point: the great physician calls a sick sinner. Look at verse was 13 and 14, “Once again, Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him and he began to teach them. As he walked along, he saw Levi, son of Alphaeus, sitting at the tax collector's booth. ‘Follow me,’ Jesus told him. And Levi got up and followed him.” The location of this particular story is out by the seashore, the Sea of Galilee. The huge crowds that followed him were so overwhelming. As we saw last time, this is why they unroofed the roof. So overwhelming that no building is big enough to hold them all.  Jesus is outdoors a lot walking beside the Sea of Galilee, a huge crowd follows. Again, as always, his top priority is teaching, preaching the word. It's the most important thing he does. The primacy of the word. All of Jesus' miracles address temporary issues in the people's lives, temporary problems that they're facing, sickness, pain, hunger, but the ministry of the word addresses the root issue, the state of their souls before all mighty God. Preaching of the word alone addresses the real problem, the root of the issue.

As He's walking along, He meets a man named Levi, the tax collector. Jesus is constantly moving from place to place, constantly walking. This gives me a picture of a spiritual pilgrimage that we're on. We're moving from here on to another place. Jesus said, "You know the way to the place where I'm going." They said, "We don't know where you're going. How can we know the way?" Jesus said, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." There's a sense of Jesus  walking along, and He's calling on us to get up and follow him. We're going somewhere, we’re going to heaven.

On the beach of Normandy, D-Day, June 6th, 1944, that coastline along the north of France, the troops landed in sections of beach that were completely prepared to repel the invasion. Every square inch of the beach had been pre-sighted, was under the constant assault of precision artillery, and machine gun fire. There was not a single safe place on that beach. If they stayed there by the water's edge, they would most certainly die. So it is when it comes to following Jesus, you can't stay where you are. You almost certainly die. So He's walking along, he says, "Follow me." And that's what happened with Levi, son of Alphaeus. He's walking along, He sees Levi sitting at the tax collectors booth, and He calls him, as a master calls a disciple, as a king commands a subject, "Follow me." Instantly Levi gets up and follows him. Now imagine what the crowd must have thought. Tax collectors are among the most despised people in the world. The Roman conquest inevitably led to taxes. It was their spoil, the ongoing plunder and spoil from them conquering that part of the world. The tax money flowed into the Roman coffers and made the Roman emperor's rich, “and enabled them to transform the city of brick into a city of marble," Caesar Augustus boasted. The actual collecting of the taxes was handled locally. Herod Antipas was responsible to Rome for a certain load of taxes every year. Herod then recruited collectors, by selling tax collecting franchises to Jews who were willing to buy them. This was a lucrative business. The tax collectors were protected by the power of Rome, to touch them was to incur a Roman death sentence on your head, so they were inviolate, you couldn't touch them. The tax collectors were required to collect a certain tax quota and anything beyond that amount was theirs to keep. Obviously the system was rife with corruption, and they could get very wealthy, but the social cost was very high. They were seen to be traitors. All over the world, tax collectors are seen to be traitors to their neighbors and their countrymen, but especially among the Jews, because there's a theological side to it. That was the promised land they were living in. The land had been promised to Abraham and to his seed forever. The Romans therefore were seen to be interlopers. Therefore, later in Mark's gospel, some are going to come to Jesus in Mark 12, with this question, "Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Should we pay or shouldn't we?" This is a question. So how much worse were Jewish tax collectors, collaborating with this oppressive Roman regime?  They're all almost despised as much as lepers, maybe in some ways worse than lepers who were declared officially, spiritually unclean. They couldn't come to the temple. If you went to their house, you were unclean. And to make matters worse, tax collectors, being barred from the religious life of the Jews, mostly gave up on being pious at all. They used to live openly, profligate, wicked lives. They lived “high on the hog,” so to speak. They ate whatever they wanted, they drank,  there was sexual immorality. I mean, that was just how they lived. That was the life of a tax collector. Every night they would get together and feast, and  Levi, son of Alphaeus, was a tax collector.

What did this call from Jesus mean? Well, He's calling Levi, who we know is Matthew, that's his Greek name, to follow him as a disciple. So imagine the stunned reaction of the crowd. Everyone undoubtedly knew Levi, and they hated him. More importantly though, Jesus knew Levi, because He knows all people. He knows what's inside someone's heart. He knows that Levi is ready to follow him, ready to be set free from sin. And Levi, undoubtedly, knew who Jesus was. Jesus was known by everyone. He, undoubtedly, would've heard of all of these healings and these amazing teachings.  Jesus was calling on Levi to get up and burn that bridge. He was not going to be able to go back to the tax collecting office. Somebody else would come and take his place. To follow Jesus meant that the world had become dead to him, and he to the world. Now Levi certainly didn't understand all that at that point, but he would. He would learn that “foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, and the son of man has no place to lay his head.” He's burning that bridge. But Levi lost the world and gained his soul. Sins are forgiven. That night he celebrated with all of his friends who happened to be tax collectors and sinners. That's who he knew, and he called them to a big banquet at his house.

Second point: the great physician heals many sick sinners. Look at verse 15, “While Jesus was having dinner at Levi's house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him.” It's well known that the first days of a new convert, that individual has the greatest evangelistic opportunities they'll ever have in their Christian life, because all their friends and probably their whole family are all unbelievers. They have opportunities to have some influence to talk about their new life in Christ. And so, as I said, Matthew's friends are in the tax collection business, and the party that night was at at Levi's house. That's where we're going. In the course of time, the Holy Spirit would choose Levi, (Matthew), to write one of the four accounts of Jesus' life. Levi(Matthew)’s list of converts over 20 centuries will be vast and unmeasurable. But his journey of evangelistic fruitfulness began that night at his house, with all of his sinful friends. Tax collectors and sinners,  most of your English translations have the word “sinners” in quotations,  the way these people were understood back then, that’s who was there. 

Self-righteous people tend to divide the world into two categories, good people and bad people. You got the sinners and the righteous. The good people are moral, law abiding, fine upstanding citizens. They attend religious services. They're probably good looking. They're successful. They're winners. They're not a drain on society. Then you've got the bad people, the sinners. The sinners are people who lived immoral lives. They, in this case, had cast restraint to the wind. They were drunk, thieves, thugs, prostitutes, scoundrels, highway robbers, and fun-loving folk whose slogan would probably be something like “Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.” Those are the sinners. Now, interestingly, both the self-righteous and the sinners, so-called, accepted this basic division. Religion was for the good people. Both the Pharisees and the sinners thought there could be no salvation for the sinners. But that night, revival broke out at Matthew's house, a vast number of tax collectors and sinners are brought to faith in Christ.

Missionary C.T, Studd, a missionary to China, said that, "Some people want to live within the sound of chapel bell, but I want to run a mission, a yard from the gate of hell." No one did that better than Jesus. That's why He plunges in and immerses himself in this feast with the tax collectors and sinners. That's where the people He wanted to save were. A ray of sunlight is not defiled by a pile of stinking garbage, it remains pure. When Jesus touched the leper, He didn't get leprosy. He poured healing into that man. When He went to that feast, He wasn't defiled by it, He transformed it. I imagine He told some of his parables, his stories. He seized the moment with his teaching, and captivated their hearts. His words were unlike any that anyone had ever seen. And perhaps some of them wept because they realized for the first time they actually could be forgiven. There was an actual possibility of forgiveness for them. They could actually have a relationship with God, because here's the son of God telling them so. Instead of seeing judgment and rage and wrath, they saw compassion and love and forgiveness flowing from him like sunlight, like beautiful, pure water from a crystal mountain spring. That's what they saw in Jesus. They didn't defile him, He saved them. He cleansed them by the preaching of the word. And they followed him too. Look at verse 15, “And there were many who followed him.” They got up, spiritually, from their sinful lives and began following him on a highway of holiness. The great physician was healing their souls, and speaking to them the words they never thought they could ever hear, "Your sins are forgiven. Your sins are forgiven. Your sins are forgiven."

Point three: the great physician was accused by the self-righteous. Verse 16, “When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples, why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” So now here are these people again, aren't you sick of them? I mean, it's like every account, they just show up. They're dogging Jesus' steps, these Scribes and Pharisees, the self-righteous religionists of the day. They believed they were righteous, they believed they were healthy, they believed they were secure. They'd never murdered anyone physically, so they were holy. They'd never committed adultery physically, so they were holy. They followed all the temple rules and the regulation. They made all the religious sacrifices. They attended all the convocations prescribed by the laws of Moses. They were the chosen race, the sons of Abraham, and they were special among them, because they poured over the laws daily. They had, so they believed, never broken a single command of God from their youth. Do you know how many people said that to Jesus? Numbers of them said, "From my youth, I've kept a whole law."

Furthermore, they isolated themselves from people like this. Like I said, they're in a spiritual quarantine. They didn't get involved. They almost certainly didn't go into Matthew's house. No way. They were, so they thought, the healthy spiritually, so they believed. They had no need of a physician from an illness they absolutely did not think they had, so they grumbled against Jesus. In their mind, by Jesus eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners, He was every bit as defiled as they were. Now, just stop for a minute and be amazed at them, at this whole thing. Self-righteous people, who not only hate the sinners who are not leading as moral lives as they are, but they hate the only, truly, morally, perfectly pure man that's ever lived. They hate him too, because he testifies about them that their works are evil. They hated him. because he exposed their hypocrisy. He actually, to some degree, said they had the pandemic worse than anyone else. They would settle into a powerful, durable opposition to Jesus, leading ultimately to his death.

Point four, the great physician declares who He will heal. Look at verse 17, “On hearing this Jesus said to them, ‘It is not healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.’” This is a vital teaching. I believe Jesus, by this one statement, gives us permission to see all of his physical healings, literal physical healings, as pictures of this spiritual healing we all need. You can look at him healing a man born blind and see a spiritual healing from our spiritual blindness. We have the permission to just go from the healings to the spiritual realm, from this one statement. Healing sinners of sin by calling them to repent to their sins and believe the gospel is the true healing He came to do. It's the only one that really mattered, because sin is the ultimate plague of plagues. And Jesus is the only physician with the cure to the true ailment of the human condition, the sickness of sin.

Now this therapeutic, this healing view of salvation is essential to how I understand much of the Christian life in my ministry. It's one of the ways that I've tended to resolve gnarly issues of divine sovereignty and human will, Calvinism, other things like that. You hear sometimes of the doctrine of irresistible grace, others call sovereign grace or effectual calling.  I think if you look at it therapeutically, it all becomes clear. I believe that all conversions are in some sense, a work of healing, of therapy. Let's look at the healing of the man born blind. The eye was crafted by God to see light. It's what it was made to do, to give a true view of the world in its radiant colors to the mind. When someone is blind, it is a clear violation of God's original purpose for that exquisite organ, the eye. When Jesus healed the man born blind, when he healed his eyes, then his sight was restored and he saw as God intended, light flooded in. Jesus told him, "When your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light." Light, it just worked, it flooded in, and he saw beauty in color.

In the same way, our souls, our hearts were meant to appraise things, comprehend them, evaluate them, and then be attracted to the good and repulsed from the evil, like God. That's what we're made for. We were ultimately meant to be attracted to God, himself, to love him above everything else, to be attracted to God. He is the purest light, He’s the most beautiful being in the universe. It is a sick, diseased heart and soul that hates God. So when God takes the heart of stone out and gives you the heart of flesh, that's a work of therapy. That's a healing that He does. He's healing the sick, sin twisted heart to love what is the most perfectly love worthy being in the universe, God, himself. It's like water flowing downhill, it's just going to happen. When the healing happens, the person follows Jesus, the person loves Christ. The heart's going to be drawn in love to Christ, and see his beauty and delight in it and follow him.

And it's also going to flow out horizontally. We're going to start loving our neighbor as ourselves. We're going to see them in the image of God, and we're going to start loving them. It's just the healing that happens. So salvation's a healing of this sin sick human heart.  Now Jesus says here, He did not come to heal the self-righteous. “Healthy people," He says, "have no need of a physician." They don't come to a doctor. Now imagine a person managing to pull some strings and get a consultation with a busy specialist. Maybe let's say the greatest heart doctor in the world. So this heart doctor is a world renowned, extremely difficult specialist. You can't get to this man, but turns out that this person has an influential friend, who can pull the strings and get him a session with the cardiologist. The cardiologist has flown in from some distant city and comes to the clinic in that person's city. They sit down and the cardiologist says, "Okay, tell me what's going on? What are your symptoms? How long have you been experiencing pain in your chest?" The man says, "Oh, I actually don't have any pain in my chest. I don't have any symptoms at all." "What?" "Oh no, I'm in fine condition. I think actually my cardio is the best part of my body." "Well, what do you want me for? What am I here for then? That makes no sense at all. Why did I fly here to talk to you? If you're not sick, you don't need me."  Jesus said that, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor." 

Then look at the second devastating statement He makes here, "I have not come to call the righteous." Jesus came from heaven to earth. He came into the world for a purpose. He came from heaven to earth to do his Father's will. He entered the world of suffering and sin and death, but He did not come because the world was fine as it was before He got here. He did not come for the righteous. He didn't come from heaven to earth to tell you how wonderfully righteous you are. That's not why Jesus came, not at all. He did not come for people who don't think they need a savior. Essential to everyone's salvation by Jesus Christ is this, that they admit that their heart is sin sick and twisted. As Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure, who can understand it.” Christ cannot do anything for these self-righteous scribes and Pharisees who consider themselves healthy, spiritually, pure and free from sin. He didn't come for them. Who did He come to heal? Look at verse 17, “’It’s not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

So what you need to do right now, you need to ask the Lord to show you the depth of your own sinfulness, and the way He does that, that diagnostic of the soul is the law of God. By the law of God, He probes us all. The Ten Commandments are designed to reveal the corruption of the human heart. The 10th commandment, you shall not covet, shows that the desires of the heart matter.

Then Jesus feeds those back into the issues of anger and lust and shows He's not just looking at the outside behavior. He's looking at the attitude and demeanor of the heart. We have all broken the Ten Commandments, and we violated the two Great Commandments. We don't live every moment of our lives in loving service to God or in service to others. We are sin sick. Ask the Lord to show it to you. Cry out against yourself. Declare to Jesus that you are prideful and lustful and covetous and selfish. Acknowledge patterns of anger that would be murderous, if they weren't restrained by human laws. Admit every natural bent of your life is to feed your stomach and your pleasures, and have people honor you and elevate you and have your body pleasured and your ego stroked. Admit that you do not love God with every fiber of your being. And admit with Paul, the depth of the sin problem. Romans 7:15, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate I do.”

We're called to repentance. In Luke, there's an extra little phrase added, Luke 5:31, 32. Jesus answered them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I've not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." To repentance. Sin is willful rebellion against almighty God. Jesus is calling on sinners to repent, to hate the sin, to grieve over the sin, and turn away from it. Jesus is saying He will pay the penalty for our past, present, and future sinfulness by the shedding of his own blood on the cross. To repent then is to cry out against ourselves. To know we don't deserve to lift our eyes to heaven, to beat our breasts and cry out against ourselves, and say, "What a wretched person I am, who will save me from this sin. Be merciful to me, oh God, the sinner." It is to resolve to hate our sins and grieve over our sins, and forsake our sins and fight against our sin for the rest of our lives by the power of the Spirit. This is the person that Jesus heals, and He does heal completely.

With the joy of Levi and his tax collecting friends, we can leap for joy, we can know that the holy judge of all the earth has looked upon us and declared all of our sins forgiven. The Great Physician has looked upon our corrupt sin sick souls, and is determined to heal them. And when He is done saving us, we will be 100% healthy for all eternity, conformed to his heart. The Great Physician is now calling each one of us. Admit that your heart is desperately sick. Get rid of the normative view in the world, “I am basically a good person,” get rid of that. Scripture reveals that you are not basically a good person. See yourself in the text. Say, "I am one of the sinners at that feast." Trust in Christ to heal your soul of sin. Then understand, unlike the physical healings Jesus did, remember the seven elements of the healing. Let me zero in, the healing of our souls is not instantaneous. The forgiveness of our sins is instantaneous, but God wills a long, progressive healing of our souls from sin. Do you remember that healing in Mark 8, He heals a man in stages, remember the blind man? He spits on his eyes and touches him. He says, "What do you see?" He said, "Well, I see people. They look like trees walking around." Then Jesus touched him again, and the scripture says he saw everything clearly. Was Jesus just having a bad day? I mean, what happens?  He intentionally healed him in stages. Do you see everything clearly? Or do you see through a glass darkly? Do you not need an ongoing healing in your soul from sin? I do. Isn't that why you're here today? Jesus has the power to heal your souls completely. It’s progressive. It’s instantaneous forgiveness, progressive healing of the heart, and then instantaneous perfection at the end. I'm looking forward to that final stage. Aren't you? When Jesus finishes his healing in you and me, and we'll be done forever with sin.