All right, God's chosen servant.
Look at verse nine, Matthew chapter 12. It says, when he was departed
then, so this is after he healed this man and the Pharisees challenged
him on the Sabbath. And of course, he made it very,
very clear that they were perverting the Sabbath. The Pharisees, the
Sadducees, their followers who were the vast majority of the
people, they had perverted everything. in the Old Covenant, the Word
of God, and they perverted the Sabbath, which is so important.
The Sabbath rest was such a beautiful picture of Christ and the believer's
rest in his finished work that he accomplished on Calvary, and
they took it and turned it into a legal system of works, salvation,
trying to establish their own righteousness. And that is the
ultimate insult to the glory of God. And I always think about
that in Isaiah chapter one, where Isaiah, preaching in Jerusalem
now, in his day, which was probably around 700 years before Christ
actually came. And God, through Isaiah, told
the people of Israel, he said, I'm tired of your Sabbaths. I'm
tired of your new moons, which means their feast days. I'm tired
of your religious service, because their religious service didn't
glorify God. So whatever we do, in what we
call Sabbath, in what we call service, in what we call obedience,
or works, good works, if it doesn't glorify God, it's an abomination
to Him. We have to understand that. And
if we think that any of these things that we do would make
up any part of the righteousness that God requires outside of Christ, it's an abomination
to God. God hates it. And he uses various
language to show that. He said, I'll spew it out of
my mouth. You know what that means? It means I'll vomit you
up. You make him sick to his stomach. That's the symbolic
language that God uses. So just like our meeting here
today. Our meeting here today is not
so that we can earn points from God. Our meeting here today is
to glorify Him. And I always think about Matthew
5, 16 too, you know, let your light so shine before men that
they may see your good works and glorify your Father which
is in heaven. So whatever men and women say
about us as to our testimony, we've got to make sure that they
understand, hey, this is for God's glory and my only righteousness
and holiness and goodness and power before God is Christ. his glorious person, his finished
work. So he taught them about the Sabbath,
he corrected them, and of course, the Bible says that that caused
them to despise him. And they turned their eyes toward
destroying him. That's how much they loved themselves.
That's what happens. You know, when we challenge people
on their hope, what is your hope of salvation? Is it keeping the
Sabbath? Is it your works, your baptism,
your experiences? What is your hope? And when we
tell them that that is a bad hope, that's an evil hope, what
happens when they turn against us? The natural man, you know
what the Bible says. Well, here he was going to go
to the synagogue. The synagogue was the place of
public worship for the Jews. The synagogue, it means a gathering.
Now it wasn't for social purpose, it was for public worship. And
I think we need to make a statement here about the importance of
public worship. Public worship is a big part
of our identification with Christ and his people and his truth.
That's what this is about. We're here to worship God, we're
here to express our love to God in Christ, we're here to express
our love to our brethren. to encourage one another that
we might be knit together in the truth by the grace of God
and that we might grow in grace and knowledge. The Bible says
in John chapter 4, I've got this listed in your lesson, verses
23 and 24, that God desires a people to worship Him in spirit and
in truth. Now, a lot of times I think about
Philippians 3, 3 where it says, we are the circumcision which
worship God in spirit. Some people say, well, that's
talking about our own spirit. And that's true. When the Holy
Spirit gives us life from the dead, he puts within us a spirit,
a life that desires to honor God. that really loves God, not
perfectly yet because of the flesh now, but because we want
God to be glorified. I don't want a preacher up here
or a teacher that stands up here bragging on you or bragging on
himself. Let's brag on Christ. And so
worship in spirit. Now some translations will capitalize
that word spirit, meaning the Holy Spirit. And that's true
too. So if you interpret it that way,
that's all right. The Holy Spirit inspires us to worship God as
God reveals himself in this book. So whatever this book says about
God, that's the way we worship God. We don't deny that. You
know, the doctrines of grace. We talk about total depravity. That's what the Bible says about
us. And it's true. And we worship God as totally
depraved sinners who have been saved by grace, who have no goodness
or righteousness of our own. And we love that, not the fact
that we're sinners, we're to grow in hatred of that, but the
fact that this is the kind of people that God saves. I'm only
a sinner saved by grace. This is my story. To God be the
glory. Unconditional election that God
chose the people before the foundation of the world. Where the religious
world says unfair, unjust, we deserve better. That's what they're
saying. You understand that. It's not that God didn't choose
everybody. It's just, I deserve to be chosen. Well, I don't deserve
to be chosen. Neither do you. We haven't earned
or deserved any of the blessings of God. But this is what the
Bible says about God, and we say amen. And we're gonna worship
him that way. Christ died for his sheep, and
he saves every one of them. None of them will perish. Don't
you love that? That's the way I worship God.
And that's what Paul, you remember, I think he stood before King
Agrippa, he said, after the way they call heresy, that's the
way I worship God. Well, here they come to the synagogue. Just as they had perverted the
Sabbath, they had perverted worship too. It's sad, I've got here
in your list, and it's sad that the synagogues of the Jews generally
had been turned into, and I'm not exaggerating here, places
of idolatry. Now if you walked into a synagogue,
a true synagogue, you would see Jewish men and women there, and
you'd see whatever scroll of the scriptures they had. Now,
they didn't have all the scriptures. Obviously, they didn't have the
New Testament, because it hadn't been written yet. But they had
some of the Old Testament. Many of them had the first five
books of Moses. They called the Pentateuch, or
the Torah, they call it. And then they had some of the
Psalms. They had some of the prophets. You remember when Christ
went into his hometown synagogue in Nazareth, he read from Isaiah
53. So they had that and they had
scrolls. They didn't have wooden or marble idols up there, but
yet they had the word of God up there. And a rabbi would stand
up and he would read from that word, and then many times he
would give the sense of it. Now, did he tell the truth? Well,
most of them didn't. They're like people today who
have Bibles. Preacher gets up, he reads the Bible, and he tells
a story, and he keeps them entertained, but he doesn't preach the gospel.
And that's what we need. We need the gospel. We need the
word of God. We need the truth. So many churches,
but not much truth. And of course, that's all predicted
in the book of Revelation. We're going to read about it
today in Revelation 11. But they turned the synagogues
into places of idolatry as they failed to worship the true and
living God according to his word. Because if they worshiped the
true and living God according to his word, their minds, their
hearts would be focused on the Messiah, the Lord, our righteousness,
as he's identified and distinguished in this book, even the Old Testament.
There's enough gospel in the Old Testament Because that's
what the Old Testament is about. And the law that was given was
to expose their sinfulness and the impossibility of being saved
by their works. Drive them to Christ and all
those pictures and times when they opened the Bible in the
book of Leviticus and they read about the priesthood and the
sacrifices. What was that all about? is all
about our great high priest, Jesus Christ, and the sacrifice
of himself as the Lamb of God to put away our sins and establish
righteousness. And it says, in the book of Luke,
I believe it is, it says that Christ, when he returned to Galilee,
he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all. Now,
does that mean they all believed on him? Well, some of them did.
God's elect are gonna believe in Christ. We know when he went
to his hometown, they didn't believe on him, because they
wanted to throw him over a cliff. In fact, I've got that list in
Luke chapter four. It says, and all they in the
synagogue, when they heard these things, what things? Well, he
read from Isaiah 53, and he looked at him, he said, today, this
passage is fulfilled before your very eyes. What was he saying
there? He said, Isaiah's talking about me. I'm that lamb, I'm
that sacrifice, I'm that suffering servant, I'm the Messiah. And
it says they were filled with wrath, they got angry. And all
in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with
wrath, they rose up, thrust him out of the city. Can you see
this mob taking the Lord of glory? And he allowed them to do it.
"'cause we know he coulda stopped them at any time. "'And they
led him unto the brow of the hill "'whereon their city was
built, "'that they might cast him down headlong.'" We're gonna
throw you over a cliff. Think about that. But he walked
through them unharmed. That wasn't the way he was supposed
to die, and it wasn't his time to die. He knew how and when
he was supposed to die. So the Lord told his disciples
that later on, he says, when you go out to preach the gospel,
and you go into their synagogues, they'll throw you out. They'll
throw you out of their church services, thinking they're doing
God a service. And they'll do it because of
two things. They neither know God, the Father, and they neither
know Christ, the Son. You remember that in John chapter
16? They'll throw you out. They'll even kill you thinking
they're doing God's service. That kind of mindset, you know,
I know that we're all by nature just like them, all of us by
nature. But still, you know, you look
back on it from our perspective now, seeing that Christ is all
our salvation, all our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification,
and redemption, you think, my goodness, what a testimony of
depravity is what that is. Well, look at verse 10. It says,
and behold, there was a man which had a hand withered, like a paralyzed
hand, and drawn up. And they ask him, saying, is
it lawful? Now, the Pharisees, now what they're going to do,
they're going to try to trap him now. and here's this man with
a paralyzed, withered hand, and they ask him, is it lawful to
heal on the Sabbath day that they might accuse him? Their
motive was not good. We wanna trap him. We wanna catch
him in a lie and prove that he's a lawbreaker, a Sabbath breaker,
so we can stone him. That's what they wanted. And
it says in verse 11, he said unto them, Then what man shall
there be among you that shall have one sheep, and if it fall
into a pit on the Sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it and
lift it out? If a sheep falls into a pit and
he lays hold on it, and that work? Well, yeah. And then he
says in verse 12, how much then is a man better than a sheep?
Here's a man who has a need. He's got a withered hand. And
he said, wherefore is it lawful to do well on the Sabbath days?
Now all of that comes after he had already taught them that
acts of mercy, which certainly this would be one, and acts of
necessity, like pulling your ox out of a ditch, pulling your
sheep out of a hole, not letting him die, acts of mercy and acts
of necessity were not breaking the Sabbath. that that was perfectly
allowed under God's law. And remember, he used the example
of the priest, that even on the Sabbath day, they did the duties
of the tabernacle, because that's necessary. Without the duties
of the tabernacle, there's no ceremonial forgiveness or cleansing
back then. Look at Christ. Without his death,
there's no hope. You can keep every Sabbath on
the calendar, but without the blood of Christ, you're not forgiven
of even one sin. And of course, next week, Lord
willing, we'll get into that, what people call the unforgivable
sin, the unpardonable sin. What that's teaching is not that
there's one particular sin that God cannot forgive. When you
say unforgivable, that means that he's not able to forgive
it. God's able to forgive all our sins. But without Christ,
God will forgive none of our sins. That's what that's teaching.
We need the blood of Christ. So what Christ is reminding them
here is what he already said. He said, look, if your ox is
in a ditch, you got to get it out. If you, you know, like for
example, on the Sabbath, you could only travel so many miles.
Well, what happens if you have a heart attack and the hospital
is one mile beyond that? Go. You got no choice. That's not breaking the Sabbath.
And then acts of mercy. So even on the Sabbath, that's
not unlawful to do that. So how much better is a man better
than a sheep, he says. So wherefore is it lawful to
do well on the Sabbath? It is never unlawful to do well
on any day. Now, doing well, we can talk
about that. You know, I always go back to
the law of first mention interpreting the Bible. You remember Cain
and Abel? Cain came to worship God, and
he brought the works of his hands, the fruit of the field. Abel
came to worship God, and he brought the lamb, the blood, which was
commanded of God, set forth in Genesis chapter three and verse
21. Remember when he told Adam and Eve, your fig leaf aprons
will not get it? That's representative of man's
works. An animal had to be killed. And
I believe it was a lamb. Doesn't say specifically there
in Genesis 3, but we know Abel was a shepherd. An animal had
to be killed. Blood had to be shed. Law and
justice had to be satisfied. Righteousness had to be established
through a substitute, a surety. a redeemer. And Cain knew that. And you remember when the Lord
spoke to Cain about his murdering his brother, and I believe that
was Christ, a pre-incarnate visitation, he told Cain this. He said, Cain,
why are you angry? You know if you do well, you'll
be accepted. Well, what is it to do well?
What is it, this well-doing thing? Well, in the eyes of God and
our relationship with God, it's to come before Him presenting
ourselves, our works, our worship, our praise, only as we are accepted
in the glorious person and finished work of Christ, pleading his
blood. How many times? And I hope it's
built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. Dare
not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus' name.
And so verse 13, it says, then saith he to the man, stretch
forth thine hand, and he stretched it forth, and it was restored
whole, like as the other. So he had two good hands. The Lord healed his hand. Well,
look at verse 14. It said, then the Pharisees went
out and held a council, took council against him, how they
might destroy him. Think about that. Think about
how ensconced in false self-righteous religion that we are by nature. Here a man was healed. Isn't
that a glorious thing? A marvelous thing. And we know
that ultimately only God can do that. He gave that power to
the disciples, but that power comes from God and God alone. And all they're thinking about
is how they could destroy him. That's the power of pride and
self-righteousness, and we all have it. We still have it, but
thank God he's overcome it to bring us to faith in Christ and
repent us. He's brought us down. That's
what the Spirit does when he saves us, when he gives us life. He brings us down. I can't remember
which old preacher used to say it. He said, he makes you put
down your shotgun and bow to Christ. Your animosity and your
hatred, your neglect of looking unto Christ, it all changes.
That's the new creation. Whereas Christ was nothing to
us before, now he's everything. Everything. And it says in verse
15, it says, But when Jesus knew it, and of
course he knew it, this had been foreordained. If you don't believe
that, read Acts chapter two and Acts chapter four. All of this
was well within God's plan. He wasn't taken by surprise on
this. He didn't look at him and say,
what's wrong with you fellas? He knew what was in the heart of
man. You remember in John chapter two, right before he spoke to
Nicodemus about the new birth, it says, he knew what was in
man. He knew what our capabilities
were in our depravity. But when he knew it, when it
came out in the open, he withdrew himself from thence, and great
multitudes followed him." And listen to this, he healed them
all. Not just a few, he healed them all. I think about that
a lot. Here's the great physician and
his mercy and compassion for the people. And there was no
doubt that the ones he healed were really healed. Wasn't like
these charlatans today. He didn't say, well now, if you
have enough faith, I'll heal you. Now I know there were times
he said, thy faith healed thee. But what they're talking about
is their confidence in him to be their healer. He's not talking
about the value of their believing it. Do you believe that I'm able? You remember he told that to
one of the blind men, maybe that'd been Bartimaeus, I can't remember.
He told him, he said, do you believe that I'm able? I believe
he's able. I think about that old publican
who said, God be merciful to me, the sinner. And I think about
the thief on the cross. Lord, if thou will, if thou will,
today, Lord, and the leper who said, Lord, if thou will, thou
canst make me. I know he's able. I know that the Lord Jesus Christ
of this Bible is able to save anyone and everyone and whoever
he wants to. Paul said that. I know whom I
have believed and I'm persuaded that he's able to keep that which
I've committed. The question is, is he willing
to save me? Is he willing to save you? Well,
he says it. Any sinner who comes to him for
salvation, knowing that he's able to save to the uttermost
them that come unto God by him, he saved them. If you truly believe
in him, he's the one who gave you that desire and that knowledge
to do so. He healed them all, verse 16,
and charged them that they should not make him known, that it might
be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying,
behold, my servant, whom I have chosen, we'll just read the rest
of these, my beloved, that's quoting here from Isaiah 42,
God said, mine elect, talking about Christ, my beloved, in
whom my soul is well pleased, Remember at his baptism and later
on, this is he of whom I'm well pleased, hear ye him? You see
that's, how can God be well pleased with me, a sinner? Only as I stand washed in the
blood and clothed in the righteousness of Christ. I've got a list of
things here, several things about the Messiah that's revealed in
Isaiah 42 and revealed here. In order to save his people,
the Son of God had to become the perfect and obedient servant
of Jehovah, who is able to establish righteousness for his people.
I know he's able to do that. He did do that. That's a done
deal. That's a finished work. And he
says, I will put my spirit, verse 18, upon him and he shall show
judgment to the Gentiles. You know what that means? He's
gonna preach the gospel to the Gentiles. because the gospel
shows God's judgment of his people in Christ. And it also expresses
that God's judgment is against all who do not believe in Christ. If you don't have Christ, judgment
is something you should fear. Isn't that right? There's no hope for you at judgment. Christ is the chosen of God to
be the surety, the substitute and the redeemer of his people.
He's beloved of the Lord. This is my beloved son in whom
I'm well pleased. He's well pleasing to the father
for his righteousness sake. That's in Isaiah 42, 21, but
in other passages. He has the spirit of God without
measure. He came to proclaim the gospel
of righteousness and judgment to the Gentiles. His servitude
was voluntary He wasn't forced into this position. He did it
willingly for the joy, as Hebrews 12 says, the joy that was set
before him, and that's the glory of the Father and the salvation
of his people. His voice would be heard, but
not in contentious, arrogant way. He was gentle, but he spoke
the truth. And people point to the temple
incident where he drove the money changers out where he got angry,
And that's a righteous anger because they had turned that
temple into a house of idolatry, house of merchandise. He would
be compassionate to those who were ignorant and out of the
way, his people, his elect, and he would not fail to accomplish
his mission. Look at verse 19. He says, he shall not strive
nor cry, neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets.
In other words, the only ones who are gonna hear him is his
elect. He's not gonna get it done by shouting. Don't you hear
me? No, he sends the Spirit to give
us ears to hear. Verse 20, a bruised reed shall
he not break and smoking flax shall he not quench till he send
forth judgment unto victory. He's gonna have victory, but
it's not gonna be by wielding a sword and riding in on a white
horse and forcing, no. He's gonna do it by the power
of the Spirit drawing his people with cords of love, and in his
name shall the Gentiles trust. Not just the Jews, but the Gentiles
too. God has a chosen people out of
every tribe, kindred, tongue, and nation.