The Doctor, The Groom, The Lord

The Doctor, The Groom, and the Lord

If you have your Bible going, grab it and open it to the Book of Mark. The Book of Mark.

Two weeks ago, we looked at how Jesus forgave his sins and told him to get up, grab his mat, and walk. And as Jesus interacted with the scribes, you see the difference between what the scribes taught and what Jesus taught. Now, as we read from Chapter 2, verse 13, into Chapter 3, we're going to see Jesus interact with a new set of teachers. Not just the scribes, but now the Pharisees.

So, we'll be reading from Chapter 2, verse 13 to Chapter 3, verse 6. And I'll be reading out of the Christian Standard Bible, which shouldn't be too different from yours. If you're visiting us this morning, and this is the first time you've used the Bible, big numbers are the chapter numbers, little numbers are the verse numbers. We'll be looking at Chapter 2, verse 13 to Chapter 3, verse 6.

And it says this:

Jesus went out again beside the sea. The whole crowd was coming to him, and he was teaching them. Then, passing by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax office, and he said to him, “Follow me,” and he got up and followed him. While he was reclining at the table in Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who were following him. When the scribes who were Pharisees saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” When Jesus heard this, he told them, “It is not those who are well who need a doctor, but those who are sick. I didn’t come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. People came and asked him, “Why do John’s disciples and the Pharisees’ disciples fast, but your disciples do not fast?” Jesus said to them, “The wedding guests cannot fast while the groom is with them, can they? As long as they have the groom with them, they cannot fast. But the time will come when the groom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day. No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the new patch pulls away from the old cloth, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost as well as the skins. No, new wine is put into fresh wineskins.” On the Sabbath he was going through the grainfields, and his disciples began to make their way, picking some heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” He said to them, “Have you never read what David and those who were with him did when he was in need and hungry — how he entered the house of God in the time of Abiathar the high priest and ate the bread of the Presence —which is not lawful for anyone to eat except the priests —and also gave some to his companions?” Then he told them, “The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. So then, the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” Jesus entered the synagogue again, and a man was there who had a shriveled hand. In order to accuse him, they were watching him closely to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath. He told the man with the shriveled hand, “Stand before us.” Then he said to them, “Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. After looking around at them with anger, he was grieved at the hardness of their hearts and told the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out, and his hand was restored. Immediately the Pharisees went out and started plotting with the Herodians against him, how they might kill him.

— Mark 2:13-3:6 (CSB)

Let's pray.

Father, as we think this morning about who you are, we pray, Lord, that your Spirit would help us. Open our eyes to see your glory. Help us to understand your word, to heed it, and to recognize Jesus for who he truly is. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

Who would you say that Jesus is?

Some people respect Jesus as a thinker and philosopher who helps us with intriguing parables or stories about his life. Others may think of Jesus as some glorified mythical Santa Claus who's here to fulfill our wildest dreams and help us in our daily problems, or a genie who takes our requests.

Whoever you think Jesus is will affect how you understand what Jesus does for you. Understanding what someone's role is affects the way that you interact with them. You don't go asking for health advice from a twelve-year-old.

In the same way, this morning, we see a couple stories of Jesus interacting with the Pharisees where the Pharisees do not understand who Jesus is. So, who is Jesus? Three things: number one, Jesus is the doctor. Number two, Jesus is the groom. And number three, Jesus is the Lord. He's the doctor, he's the groom, and he's the Lord.

Jesus the Doctor

Let's look at number one: he is the doctor. Read with me from verse 13 of Chapter 2.

"Jesus went out again beside the sea. The whole crowd was coming to him and he was teaching them. Then passing by, he saw Levi, the son of Alphaeus, sitting at the tax office. He said to him, 'Follow me.' And he got up and followed him."

Jesus goes out to the sea next to Capernaum. At this point, he's performed many miracles, and he is the talk of the town, so they all come out to listen to him teach by the Sea of Galilee. And after finishing teaching, he passes by a tollbooth. You and I, I'm sure we've all paid tolls, mostly accidentally, getting on the freeway, whether it's the fast track lane or the 241, we've all paid money in order to get to where we want to go. And while tolls can be annoying, in this case, the tollbooth that Jesus passes by is less like paying your own taxes and more like supporting the mafia.

How often do you think about the Roman Empire? It was a dominant force in the world, and it used its taxes to fund its army as it conquered lands. And if you were conquered, what you would have to do in order to live peacefully in this society was pay taxes. Now, I'm sure a lot of us already hate taxes by default. This is more than just taxation without representation. These taxes that you pay to the Roman government are the exact funds that were used to conquer your own land, and be used to conquer other lands.

Not only that, those who collected taxes make the IRS today look like a non-profit. What they would do is they would require you to pay more than what you were actually required to pay. So, the tax collectors could charge you as much as they wanted, and you had to pay all of it. And the tax collectors would give to the Roman government what they had to, and keep the rest. If you were a tax collector, you were more than just an annoying government employee, you were a sellout to the most dominant government and empire in the entire world. You were looking at your own heritage and spitting in its face.

And so, if you owed Uncle Caesar anything, they would charge as much as they'd like, and keep whatever was left over. And that's exactly who Levi was. Levi is another name for Matthew, and he's sitting in this tollbooth, and Jesus walks up to this traitor. The scandal is thick. I mean, I think that there's actually a particular reason why Mark calls Matthew by a different name. See, Levi should call to mind the tribe of Israel that functions as Israel's priests, the ones that would live in every single area throughout the entire nation, that would stand before God in the temple, making sacrifices for God, interceding between God and man for the forgiveness of sins.

And here, rather than standing in the temple, mediating between God and man, you see a man named Levi sitting in a tollbooth, mediating between Israelites and Caesar. Levi is an antipriest. He's doing the exact opposite of what an Israelite should be doing. He is an anti-Hebrew. He is the utter scum of the earth. And Jesus goes to him, and rather than condemning him, rather than rejecting him or cursing him, Jesus calls him, "Follow me." And Levi hears that call, drops everything, and follows Jesus.

And this scandalous invitation isn't just some unusual exception for Jesus, it turns out to be central to his very mission. You can see that in verse 15, read with me.

"While he was reclining at the table in Levi's house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who were following him."

Dinner tables back then don't look the same as they do today in America. Actually, there's a Yemeni restaurant called House of Mandi in Anaheim that I ate with a Pakistani friend where you can eat at one of these kinds of tables. See, the table will be low to the ground, it'd be surrounded by cushions on the entire floor, and what you would do isn't just sit crisscross as you ate, you would literally lay down. You would recline at the table, and the food is right there at your chest level; you just grab the food and eat and laugh for hours as you spend time together. And so, Jesus comes to the house of Levi and kicks back with tax collectors and sinners. He doesn't just invite Levi to follow him, Jesus takes a step into Levi's world. He's relaxed, he's not defensive, he's not angsty about the scandalous nature of who he's around, he's not afraid of their grime getting onto his body, rather, he's warm with them, he enjoys the company of the wicked.

And the Pharisees are utterly scandalized by this. You can see that in verse 16. It says, "When the scribes who were Pharisees saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples, 'Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?'"

The Pharisees were a group of scholars that are known for having this reputation of being squeaky clean. They claimed to have a really high view of God, and as a result, they held themselves up to an extremely high standard. You know, every single Jew had the law of Moses that they had to obey, right? What we would understand to be the first five books of the Bible. The Pharisees, in order to make sure that they wouldn't even come close to breaking any of those laws, tacked onto it a whole other set of laws. It's called the oral law, and it served as kind of a hedge of protection around Scripture. That way there wouldn't be any possibility of sin, so their motto was essentially: see no evil, hear no evil, touch no evil, and you won't be evil.

And so, their shock and disdain for Jesus is so severe that they won't even come up to the table to talk to Jesus himself. Instead, avoiding him like a ten-foot pole, they go to Jesus's disciples and ask them why he's eating with tax collectors and sinners. But Jesus can hear their gossip, and he answers them in verse 17. It says, "When Jesus heard this, he told them, 'It is not those who are well who need a doctor, but those who are sick. I didn't come to call the righteous, but sinners.'"

Jesus isn't a hypocrite for sitting with these tax collectors and sinners, rather, he's a doctor. And knowing Jesus's vocation and job clarifies his work. Jesus spending time with sinners doesn't make him a sinner, but allows him to perform his spiritual operation. Blaming Jesus for being with sinners is as absurd as blaming doctors for being with the sick. See, Jesus doesn't come here to Earth to reward healthy people for avoiding contamination, rather, he comes to heal the contaminated.

I wonder if you think of yourself that way. If you stand before God after your life, and God were to ask you why he should let you into the kingdom of heaven, what would you say? Most people will answer that they're generally a good person, that they're better than the average guy, that they try to do the best with what they had. If you stand before God after you die, and you begin this question with "I," any answer that you give will fall short of God's standard. Because those answers do not match the reality of who we really are. We're trying to present ourselves as better than who we actually are. We're sick. We're sinful. We're wicked. And that is precisely why the Gospel is such good news. If you're sick and filthy, if you're dirty and contaminated with your own sin, then you've met the only requirement that Jesus has for saving you. Thomas Goodwin describes God's grace this way, he says that:

"There is comfort concerning such infirmities or sickness, in that your very sins move God to pity more than to anger. For he suffers with us under our sins. Christ takes part with you, and so far from being provoked against you, and all of his anger is turned upon your sin to ruin it. Yes, his pity is increased the more towards you, even as the heart of a father is to a child that has some loathsome disease, or as one is to a member of his body that has leprosy. He hates not the member, for it is his flesh, but the disease."

Jesus hates your sin, which is why he came to love the sinner. If you're sick, you don't wait until you're healthy before you go to a doctor. Jesus isn't repulsed by your sin any more than a doctor is repulsed by your sickness. The truth is, all of us are sick with sin. Romans 3:23 says that all have fallen short of the glory of God. But the good news is that even as wicked and outcast as Levi the antipriest, Jesus will look on you, not with contamination, but with compassion. Good news! There is no greater news for us Christians here this morning, the good news is that you can go to this Jesus, and Jesus can and will heal you, if you turn from your sin and trust in him. If you want to know more about what it looks like to follow Jesus, I'll be standing right at that door after the service. You can also bug a friend that might have brought you; there's nothing else that we'd rather talk about than what it looks like to follow Jesus.

And knowing Jesus's mission helps us to know what we're supposed to do as Christians. Did you know that our job isn't to just avoid sin? Jesus prays as much for us in John 17, he prays:

I am not praying that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.

— John 17:15-17 (CSB)

Jesus doesn't pray that we would bunker down with other holy people. He prays that we be in the world, but not of it. He prays that we wouldn't be contaminated by accepting sin as though it's a good thing, but that we would stay in the darkest recesses of humanity as a lighthouse, shining the light of Christ into darkness. See, holy living isn't absence from evil, but faithfulness in evil. We don't compromise on our convictions, rather, we faithfully love those who are sinners around us. And it shouldn't surprise us when sinners act like sinners.

I hear all the time about Christians complaining about how the world is going to hell in a handbasket. What did you expect? The world is sinful and broken. We shouldn't be surprised when sinners act like sinners. Rather, what we should be is like the Apostle Paul, saying of all sinners, "I'm the chief of them all. I'm the dirtiest, most wretched sinner, most deserving of eternal punishment in hell, but Jesus is a great physician." He can heal the most dark, unrelenting sickness in my soul and bring me to everlasting life.

We want to lead sinners to know the good news of the gospel. One way that we do that, one way we maintain a faithful witness of who Christ is while reaching out to darkness, is actually by being members of a church. What do I mean by that? What being a member of a church does is it makes clear in this room who's part of the church and who isn't part of the church, right? Who is professing to be a Christian and who isn't professing to be a Christian. And when we do that, when we put our flag down in the ground and say, "I am a member of this church, and I am a Christian who's seeking to follow Jesus with my life," is that you get an opportunity to show the world what consistent Christian living looks like. What a consistent confession of following Jesus looks like. And that clear line actually helps us to witness to visitors that come into the church. When there's someone in sin, we can acknowledge, hey, we actually think that the way that they're living is out of step with the faithful Christian life. And when they come into the church, we don't have to fear that they're going to dirty our carpets. We can welcome them as sinners and love them for who they are, while pointing them to a Jesus who can save them, who can make them holy. That's what we try to do. And that clarity actually helps us with our witness in the community.

We want visitors that come into First Baptist to see a life and love amongst Christians that they can't see in the world. We want them to see a true, glorious community. So, we want unbelievers to come as they are, and as they see what true Christian living looks like, as they hear the good news of the gospel, they can be transformed and then join us as well. That's what we want. Membership allows us to be extremely clear about what we believe, while interacting with people who disagree with us. We don't need to worry that they're going to contaminate our witness because we protect our witness by making clear who's part of the church and who isn't.

And as we witness to them, what we get to do is we get to bring them to this same doctor, the great physician. And when Christ heals us, what happens is he forgives us of our sin, but he also turns our heart towards him. He lets us see his glory, and when we do, it gives us reason to rejoice. What Christians do with the doctor is we go to him to get healed. And after that, we get to rejoice with the groom. That's point number two: the groom.

Jesus the Groom

Read with me from verse 18:

"Now John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting, people came and asked them, 'Why do John's disciples and the Pharisees' disciples fast, but your disciples do not fast?' Jesus said to them, 'The wedding guests cannot fast while the groom is with them, can they? As long as they have the groom with them, they cannot fast. But the time will come when the groom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day.'"

They play a comparison game between these different groups and the way that they act. So, they ask, "Why do the Pharisees' disciples and John the Baptist's disciples fast, while Jesus's disciples continue to eat?" Fasting at the time was an annual thing, something that was scheduled in the Jewish calendar. But the Pharisees wanted to do more. As a way of showing their holiness and dedication to God, they would fast more often as a way of appealing to God, longing for God to come and save Israel and forgive them for their sins. And the tone behind fasting is a somber, serious occasion.

But Jesus and his disciples are feeling a different vibe. See, Jesus identifies himself as the groom that Israel is waiting for. And when the groom comes to the wedding, that isn't a time to starve, but a time to celebrate. You don't fast in the middle of a wedding reception. You eat. You celebrate because the groom is here. You don't drag down a party with your own kind of holy asceticism.

And what Jesus does here is he's making a distinction between the tone of the Pharisees and the tone of his own ministry. When Jesus comes, you receive life and joy. And what he does next is he drives a deeper wedge between what he does and what the Pharisees do. You can see that in verse 21:

"No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, otherwise, the new patch pulls away from the old cloth, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine in old wineskins, otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost as well as the skins. No, new wine is put into fresh wineskins."

If you look at old leather sofas, you know that as leather gets old, it gets softer, able to hold you and hold your weight as you watch television. But old leather also dries up and cracks. It breaks. So, you can imagine with wineskins, if you put new wine into old, dry, craggily wineskins, you would crack it, and it would leak out. And the purpose of both of these illustrations is that Jesus isn't just trying to add on to old things, rather, Jesus is bringing something completely new. You can't just sew Jesus onto the outfit that you're wearing right now; you need a new wardrobe. And the new covenant teaching gives us reason to act differently.

Sometimes we talk about Jesus as though Jesus is just an accessory to what we want. So, we encourage people to pray. But the way that we encourage people to pray is to point out all the benefits and the peace of mind that it could bring in times of stress. We can talk about how Jesus applies to the areas of our interest, how Jesus helps our politics or our health or our success. I mean, I remember sitting through sermons where I heard a pastor encourage fasting because of the weight that he had lost over the course of 40 days. That's not a fast, that's a diet.

And those adjustments are not what make someone a Christian. When Jesus comes into the life of a Christian, he doesn't add a new thing, he completely transforms everything. He makes us new. In fact, to try to add Jesus without a right understanding of who he is can result in a life that's utterly exhausting. Church becomes a burden. Holiness is a nuisance. Or, worse, you try to figure out what the minimum requirements are to hit a holiness quota to be able to make it into heaven, so that you have hellfire insurance.

Jesus, on the other hand, doesn't come to give us new methods, he came to give us a new man. He's saying, "I am the groom. The thing that you've been most longing for in your whole life is here, and the time for celebration has come." We can celebrate the work that Christ has done. Christians celebrate the groom because when the groom comes, there's nothing else for us to do. The anticipated moment has arrived. Christians ought to be the happiest, most celebratory people on the Earth.

That doesn't mean that we're not sober-minded. That doesn't mean that we don't take time to recognize the true difficulties and sorrows of the world, but we don't grieve as those without hope. Rather, we know that Christ is coming and he'll make everything new. We need to be party people.

I hope that as we look ahead towards the 75th-anniversary celebration that we get to rejoice in the work that God has done in the life of this church. The work that he has done for centuries, and the work that he'll continue to do, Lord willing, in the witness of this church in decades to come.

The Pharisees, however, are cranky, crusty wineskins. And as they see Jesus's work, they begin to leak frustration and anger, especially because of what Jesus is about to do next. Point number three: the Lord.

Jesus the Lord of the Sabbath

Let's read from verse 23:

"On the Sabbath, he was going through the grain fields, and his disciples began to make their way, picking some heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, 'Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?'"

It's the Sabbath, or Shabbat—the end of the week when God's people are called to refrain from work. And in Jewish culture, that would often be taken to extreme lengths. You might see some Orthodox Jews practicing this on Saturday, you might see them walking down the street. Often their own parking lots to their synagogues would have automatic doors that open and close so that they wouldn't even work to get in. They would leave the lights on in their homes during Shabbat so they don't have to flip a light switch.

And in light of that type of Sabbath practice, Jesus's disciples are walking through a field and snacking on heads of grain. For the Pharisees, that type of picking at the heads of grain in the field constitutes as work, and therefore violates God's commands. Jesus, however, is not having it. And he responds to them in verse 25, he says this. He said to them:

"Have you never read what David and those who were with him did when he was in need and hungry, how he entered the house of God in the time of Abiathar, the high priest, and ate the bread of the presence, which is not lawful for anyone to eat except the priest, and also gave some to his companions? And then he told them, 'The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So then, the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.'"

This is a story that you see in 1 Samuel. David is running for his life away from Saul, and he and his men walk into a temple and they have no food to eat. So, they ask Abiathar to feed them, and because they had no food, they get permission to take the bread that was actually in the temple—that was sacred, that was consecrated for God—and use it to feed himself and his men. And Jesus's point with that story isn't to get caught up in the functions of the temple, but rather to point out that if you're hungry, you need to eat. At the end of the day, the law, even though it exists, exists for a greater good. When God commanded us to obey the Sabbath, it was made to serve man, not for man to serve the Sabbath.

And the Sabbath wasn't just some kind of idea that was concocted that people had to observe as some kind of arbitrary idea. It actually precedes Moses and the Ten Commandments. You see it in Genesis:

So the heavens and the earth and everything in them were completed. On the seventh day God had completed his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, for on it he rested from all his work of creation.

— Genesis 2:1-3 (CSB)

So, when the fourth commandment that Moses gives in the Ten Commandments tells us to keep the Sabbath holy, it was intended to reflect this good creation order. If God takes the seventh day and takes time to rest and enjoy his creation, so should we.

The problem is, once the Pharisees start adding artificial rules to the nooks and crannies of the way that the Sabbath needed to be kept, suddenly you're walking a tightrope on the Sabbath instead of actually relaxing. You take one of God's gifts and you turn it into a straitjacket on your heart.

All of us should be careful not to add man's rules to God's law. I want to say it again: all of us should be careful not to add man's rules onto God's law. Sometimes it's little things: "Take your hat off, we're in the house of God." Sometimes they can be bigger things, in terms of your understanding of how you think that the Christian life should be lived. And oftentimes, good wisdom can be helpful, but once you start elevating advice to the place of God's law, we unwittingly become legalists. One theologian wrote that:

"An evil that comes out of pride is when every man would willingly compel the whole world to follow his example, to copy his example of anything pleases us, we immediately desire to make it a law that others may live according to our pleasure."

Sometimes our zeal for holy living is actually just a desire for other people to be just like us. It's a dangerous thing to make our own preferences into rules. That doesn't mean that we don't disciple each other, or help each other follow Jesus faithfully. Paul himself encourages Timothy to follow him as he follows Christ. But what we need to do is be careful not to promote our counsel into commands. We don't do that as Christians. What we focus on is what God commands of us, and we leave space for Christian freedom, and Christian consciences to be able to follow the Lord as they understand it.

The problem with the Pharisees isn't that they have advice on how life should be lived. The issue with the Pharisees is that they treat their own rules and God's rules with an equal amount of seriousness. Jesus, however, is making a clear hierarchy of importance. The law exists to serve man, and therefore man is over the Sabbath. And the Son of Man, which we learned two weeks ago is a title that Jesus has referring to him as the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords—if he is the King of humanity, then that means that the Son of Man is over man. And if man is over the Sabbath, then that means that the Son of Man is over the Sabbath. He's Lord even of the Sabbath. And, likewise, we saw two weeks ago, Jesus is going to take his own claim here of being the Lord, and prove it with what he does.

You can see that in Chapter 3:

"Jesus entered the synagogue again, there was a man who had a shriveled hand. In order to accuse him, they were watching him closely to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath. He told the man with the shriveled hand, 'Stand before us.' He said to them, 'Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath, or to do evil? To save life, or to kill?'

But they were silent.

After looking around at them with anger, he was grieved at the hardness of their hearts, and told the man, 'Stretch out your hand.' So, he stretched it out, and his hand was restored. Immediately, the Pharisees went out and started plotting with the Herodians against him, how they might kill him."

The Danger of Legalism

Picture this: the Pharisees looking in anticipation to see whether Jesus would heal this man. But they're looking in anticipation in order to accuse Jesus. What salivates their mouths isn't the thought of Jesus doing wondrous things, but the fact that they can finally levy an accusation against him. They're so preoccupied with their own reputations and rules that they're blinded from the wonder of a man being healed.

That's what legalism does. It removes love, it obsesses over semantics. In the case of the Pharisees, their law leaves a man with a shriveled hand still shriveled. It leaves a person without hope and death without life. But Jesus doesn't then reject the rules, but instead reframes them. He calls the man with the shriveled hand to stand before everybody. There's no secrecy with Jesus. And then he asks, "Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath, or to do evil? To save life, or to kill?" Jesus isn't interested in denying God's law here; he is God made flesh. Rather, he's making the point that he understands God's law better than the teachers of the law do.

He's saying that the point of the Sabbath is to do good, that the Sabbath points not just to God creating things in creation, but to a future day—a day of eternal rest where peace reigns and sickness is no more. And the Lord acting to bring that Sabbath rest to today isn't work at all; it's exactly in line with what God intended to happen. And the Pharisees just don't get it. They're upset, and Jesus looks at them with anger and grief.

Charles Spurgeon talks about this story, he says:

"What a disgrace to our race for human people to be so inhuman as to wish to see a fellow human being remain deformed, and to dare to blame the gentle physician who was about to make him perfectly whole. Humans indeed are at enmity with God when they find an argument for hate in a deed of love."

Jesus sees their resentment, and proves that he's Lord by doing what only God can do. He takes the man, tells him to stretch out his hand, exposes his weakness in front of everyone, and his hand was healed. When Jesus looks at a sinner, he creates healing, instills hope, and gives life. Jesus heals the man and the Pharisees plot on how to kill him.

Submitting to the Lord

What about you? Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath. That means he reigns over all creation. Will you submit to the Lord this morning? If you don't, even his acts of peace are going to feel like acts of aggression. His healing work is going to tear at our pride, and we'll be like Satan, seeing all of his infinite glory and beauty and finding reason for resentment and rebellion.

The truth is we're all default Pharisees. Tim Keller says that we're all born legalists. When Jesus calls us, he isn't just calling us to become better rule followers, he's telling us to submit to his righteous rule. But when we submit to the Lord, when we bow ourselves before this king, when we give up the rat race of being good enough, when we stretch out our hand towards him, we find the Sabbath rest that we've been so desperately searching for.

We can echo the words of Paul, who felt that freedom, he says this in Philippians 3:

although I have reasons for confidence in the flesh. If anyone else thinks he has grounds for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised the eighth day; of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; regarding the law, a Pharisee; regarding zeal, persecuting the church; regarding the righteousness that is in the law, blameless. But everything that was a gain to me, I have considered to be a loss because of Christ. More than that, I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Because of him I have suffered the loss of all things and consider them as dung, so that I may gain Christ

— Philippians 3:4-8 (CSB)

What a happy truth, that whether you're rich in righteousness or poor in righteousness, we give up everything we have for the surpassing value of knowing Jesus Christ, our Lord. True rest doesn't come from independence, but dependence on the Savior.

The Lord—under his rule, you can find healing for all of your sin. And we can celebrate the groom together.

Let's pray.

Lord, we pray this morning that you'll help us to fight against rules or attempts to justify ourselves in our hearts. We pray, Lord, that you would help all of us to submit to your perfect rule, and look to Jesus alone for all the hope that we could look for in this life. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.