Turn with me to Luke chapter
6. Luke chapter 6. And there's also a corresponding
text in Matthew chapter 12 if you want to put a marker over
there. These are the same account by
two men. But the one adds a little, as
it does as many times as it's recorded, each one adds a little
light and from a different perspective to whatever's being recorded.
It's way over my head how the Lord can inspire every word that's
written and yet incorporate a man's personality into it. And if you
read and study the scriptures very long, you'll be able to
tell when you're reading, if you're reading Luke or Matthew
or John or Mark or Paul. People debate back and forth
about Paul's writings all the time, but I can tell you right
now, if you read the book of Hebrews, it reads just like his
other epistles. His personality's in it. So let's read Luke's account
together. Luke chapter six, beginning with verse one. And it came to pass on the second
Sabbath after the first that he went through the cornfields
and his disciples plucked the ears of corn and did eat, rubbing
them in their hands. And certain of the Pharisees
said unto them, why do you that which is not lawful to do on
the Sabbath day? And Jesus answering them said,
have you not read so much as this, what David did when himself
were hungered, and they which were with him? How that he went
into the house of God, into that tabernacle, and did take and
eat the shewbread, and gave also to them that were with him, which
is not lawful to eat, but for the priest alone. And he said
unto them that the Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath. I titled the lesson this morning,
The Second Sabbath. In last week's lesson, I showed
you that Christ is the garment and Christ, the God-man, is the
bottle. He's the bottle. God's not gonna
pour, listen to the scriptures. In him dwelleth all the fullness
of the Godhead bodily and you're complete in him. Now I know that
we're born of God and we're enabled to believe, but that faith which
we receive is faith in a person. We receive him. And these Pharisees
thought that salvation was of themselves and according to the
law. And he's telling them in that
study that we had, he's not going to put his wine, he's not going
to put his garment, you're not going to take a piece of his
garment and patch up your old garment. That's not what salvation
is. He's not going to take his wine
and pour it in that old bottle. That bottle is history. That bottle's been falling for
thousands of years. That bottle's corrupt. He's not
going to pour that wine in that bottle. Old busted bottles. But he's gonna put his wine in
a new bottle. And that new bottle is Jesus
Christ. God put in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead
bodily. Everything God has for sinners
is in him. And by faith, we receive him. When we receive him, we receive
his garments. Here's what the Lord said. He
didn't say, pack up your garment. He said, put ye on the Lord Jesus
Christ. He's the garment, and he's the
wine, and he's the bottle, and Christ in you. That's the hope
of glory. This morning I want us to see
that Christ is the second Sabbath after the first. And this is
the heart of this teaching, but there's some other things preserved
for our learning that I want to show you first. And the first
thing that gets my attention is a bad attitude. Here's these
Pharisees. I can almost picture them, because
I've seen them too often in assemblies. This is the way they sit, and
they look. Why is he doing that? Why is
she dressed like that? Why does he talk like that? Look
at his hair. Pharisees. Pharisees. It's a bad attitude. The Pharisees
always spoke from a self-righteous attitude and spirit. Our Lord
gave an example. He said there was two men went
into the temple to pray. The first was a Gentile. And
he walked in there, a Republican, and he bowed his head. He couldn't
so much as look up into heaven. and in humility bowed his head
and said, Lord, have mercy on me, the sinner. The other was
a Pharisee. He went in and looked right straight
up into heaven. He said, God, I thank you. I
am not like him. I'm not like other men. You're
not? No, you're worse. You're worse. I tell you, it's an awful thing.
I was talking to my neighbor, and I told him, I said, it's
an awful thing. He was telling me how. what awful
things are being taught and being manifest in this world today,
things which are shocking to him and I that grew up in a whole
different kind of world. Back in the 50s, you didn't see
all this stuff that you're seeing today, and even in the 60s to
some degree. But we're seeing things that
we wouldn't even have spoke of. It was bad to even speak of those
things. Homosexuality, you didn't even
talk about that back in the 50s. And we're just flipping as it
can be today. They don't try to hide anything.
Actually being trying to sell us on this thing of this is just
another lifestyle and that it's okay. It ain't okay. It's contrary to God. But these
Pharisees always spoke from a self-righteous attitude and spirit. Turn with
me over to Matthew chapter 12. I wanna show you this in Matthew's
account. Matthew chapter 12 and verse
seven. This is the same thing going
on, same people, same everything. And our Lord's talking to them,
and here's what he tells them in verse seven. But if you had
known what this meaneth, I will have mercy and not sacrifice.
you would not have condemned the guiltless. The most deadly of all sins is
the sin of self-righteousness. Self-righteousness. Did you know in the scripture
the sin of self-righteousness is compared to things that will
almost turn your stomach? It's compared to a menstrual
cloth. It's compared to The lepers,
old rag that he covered his pus-covered face with, he said, we are all together as an unclean
thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. Self-righteousness
is a filthy rag. Self-righteousness is anything
done by man to make himself appear to be acceptable to God. And
that's what they want to do. That's why they prayed in public.
That's what our Lord said. They pray in the marketplaces
to be seen to men. They want men to think that they've
been approved of God. As if man's approval would make
you approved of God. What is this self-righteousness?
Well, it can be as simple as living a clean moral life. It
can be that simple. It can be as simple as living
a clean moral life or as complex as being a priest. But it's all
self-righteousness. And with most of us, it's just
a few things that we do and find hope in or that we don't do and
find hope in. They're both self-righteous.
Church membership and attendance. You'd be surprised when you talk
to somebody and you're trying to get them to come to church
with you and hear the gospel, you'd be surprised how many seconds
it takes for them to tell you that they're a member of a church.
Well, when's the last time you went? Well, it's been a while,
you know, four or five years. But I belong to that church.
I was baptized in that church. I made a profession of faith
in that church. That's self-righteous. That's not going to make you
approved of God, because you belong to a church, because you
got your name on the roll. Praying, tithing. Bible studies and reading. My
dad read through the scriptures. He read through them twice on
his knees. Now why would you read through
the Bible on your knees? Huh? It's an act of self-righteousness. That's exactly what it is. Did you know that Martin Luther
crawled on his knees up and down steps? He's trying to gain that
favor with God. as an old Catholic priest and
he's crawling on broken glass up and down steps trying to get
God's approval. It can be anything that you do. It can be witnessing and passing
out tracts. It can be anything that you do.
Anything that you do hoping to gain favor with God is self-righteousness. And then, here's a lot of things
that you don't do. And people find, one old fellow's
out mowing the grass down at Kitchens Creek Baptist Church
years ago down in Ball, Louisiana, and I went out to offer him a
glass of water and ask him if he went to church anywhere. Well
now, he said, I ain't always doing the right thing, he said,
preacher, he said, I'll tell you that. But he said, one thing
I can say, alcohol never touched his lips. And I was thinking
to myself, maybe you ought to have a drink there. You might
ought to have one. Self-righteousness. Things that
we don't do. I don't go to the bars. I don't
break the law. I keep the speed limit. And the
list is endless. It's just endless. But with the
Pharisees, it was the law of God and the tradition of the
elders. and especially of the ceremonial
law. In describing his past hope as
a Pharisee in Philippians 3, Paul said, as touching the law,
now listen, I was a Pharisee. I was a Pharisee. This is who
the Lord's dressing down, Pharisees. We're warned in the scriptures,
beware the leaven of the Pharisees, this self-righteous hypocrisy. Paul poured out his heart to
God for his kinsmen according to the flesh. And this, he said,
was their crime, being ignorant of the righteousness of God and
going about to establish their own righteousness. They have
not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God. For Christ
is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believes. Be careful how you look on others
and make judgments. I'm not confessing my sins to
you, but I find a real problem in myself with this. I'm too
quick to judge people. And I need to stop it. I need
to stop it. We're sinners, aren't we? If you're not self-righteous,
you're a sinner. But you can take hope because
Christ came into this world to save sinners. That's why we're
gathered in here this morning, to hear about this. God saved
sinners. It's a faithful saying, Paul
said, and worthy of all acceptation, Christ Jesus came into the world
to save sinners, of whom I am chief. We're sinners being saved by
grace. And a judgmental spirit is a
sure sign of ignorance and certainly not the attitude to copy. God help us and deliver us from
such a spirit. And then secondly, I see here
a serious indictment. These men These men weren't just
saying he needs a haircut or maybe we ought to buy him some
clothes. He's not dressed really for the occasion to be here to
worship God. That wasn't the indictment. The
indictment was that they broke the Sabbath day. Now I challenge
you, you go back and look at the commandments. The punishment
for defiling the Sabbath day is death. It's death. And they were willing, hoping
that they could catch him here in a transgression of defiling
the Sabbath day, both him and his disciples, and they'd put
them all to death, and every one of them would have stood
there just like Paul did when they stoned Stephen and gave
his assent to it, thinking that they were doing God a service.
Every one of them. You know what Stephen's last
prayer was? Now these men weren't throwing
paper. They didn't go out here and get a handful of those little
washed tea gravel and throw them in. They were throwing stones
this big around. When you stone a man, you're
stoning him to death. You're trying to kill him. You
ain't trying to hurt him. You're trying to kill him. And
they had these big old stones, and they were hurling them at
Stephen. And you know what his last prayer
was for those bunch of hypocrites? He said, Lord, don't hold them
to this charge. Don't charge them. And he closed
his eyes and went to sleep. Went to be with the Lord. And
try to vision, if you can, a multitude standing around here, and here's
our Lord. And he's nailed to a cross. I
mean big. I picture something like a railroad
spike or a big 40 penny barn nail or something. They've driven
it into his hands and his feet and he's hanging up there on
a cross in pain and they've already lashed him and smacked him and
done things to his appearance he wasn't even recognizable.
There's dried blood all over his face and he's hanging up
here in this hot sun. He's been up there now for a
while and here's all these people down here and they're gambling
over his clothes and mocking him and sneering at him and poking
fun at him. Thou be the Christ come down
from the cross. Won't you ask your father? He'll
send somebody to deliver you. Mocking him, mocking him, laughing
at him while he died. You know what our Lord said.
Don't hold this to their charge. Man, oh man, oh man. We are what we are by the grace
of God. Now you think on that for a while.
You are what you are by the grace of God. If not for the grace
of God, there's not one whit difference between you and the
chief of the Pharisees. We're not in any way deserving
of the simplest blessing. Being saved from ourselves and
from this world and from that evil one, shall we now look on
other sinners and accuse them before God? Or should we pray for him? Should we pray for him? Lord
have mercy on him. He had mercy on you. We shouldn't
despair of him having mercy on anybody after he's had mercy
on us. And then here's the third thing I want us to see. I want
us to see this divine counselor. These men are, just try to picture
what's going on here. They were hungry. They'd been
traveling. They hadn't eaten. And the Lord
let them go into this cornfield and they was plucking off some
ears of corn, just a few. They didn't go in there and pick
a bushel. They just got a few ears of corn, and they were rubbing
the silk off in their hands. Just rubbing it off. They were
going to eat it raw. They weren't going to cook it.
They weren't going to do anything. They were just going to get a few. And
that's legal according to the law. You could go into a neighbor's
field if it were just for something to eat. You couldn't just go
in there and start picking corn. But you could pick an ear or
two to eat. Even a stranger could do it. Even a stranger. And these Pharisees began to
accuse them of breaking the Sabbath day. And our Lord stepped in
in their defense. I think they could have given
an answer, but our Lord didn't let them give an answer. He answered
for them. He answered for them. In Isaiah
9, it says, his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor. Now, I don't know, I'm no language
expert by any means, but I read men who are supposed to be, and
they tell me in the original this says, wonderful counselor. But whether it does or not, he
is a wonderful counselor. The Pharisees with all their
diplomas and certifications and recommendations, They could have
easily condemned the disciples. But our counselor wouldn't have
it. He stepped in and he came to their defense. And he said, I believe you've
overlooked some things. You experts on the scriptures,
you can tell me wherever comma goes, you can tell me wherever
period goes and every question mark, but I think you've looked
over something. David, who's now dead, they hated
him when he lived, but now he's dead, and now he's Saint David,
the prophet David. And they fall right in line with
him now, and highly favored of him. They talk about David and
David's writings. He said, David and his followers
walked right into the house of God, and there was showbread
sitting in there on a table. sitting in there on the table,
representative, it was a picture of the gospel being set before
me and Christ being manifest in the house of God. We come
here this morning, that's what I'm trying to do, manifest Christ
to you. And he walked in there and David believed that. He understood
what that bread stood for. And he was a spiritual priest.
He understood that and he and his men went in there and took
that shelled bread. Wasn't lawful for him to eat
it. He wasn't a priest. He was of the tribe of Judah.
He wasn't no priest, but he was a spiritual priest. And he understood
it, and by faith he took that bread and he ate it, and he gave
it to all of his men and they ate it, and nothing happened.
God approved it. Let it go. He said, you overlooked
that, didn't you? In Matthew's account, he goes
even further and he says the priests actually break the law
of the Sabbath when they butcher up that animal to be sacrificed
on the Sabbath. They're not supposed to be doing
that. Not supposed to be doing that. And you overlooked that. Now he said, here's what you
need to understand. I'm Lord of the Sabbath. The Sabbath was made for me. It's typical of me. The Sabbath
talks about my rest. And the Sabbath to you is set
before you as your rest. Not your arrest, your rest. These men were gonna condemn
men for breaking the Sabbath. Well, that Sabbath was for sinners.
That's why he made it. And we enter into his rest. Typical of those who said his
gospel before you, is this bread. And those priests
were never charged with the crime. They never were. We have a counselor,
one that was alone worthy to take all the eternal counsels
of God and take them from his hand and unloose the seals. He's
worthy, he's the counselor. He's the Living Word, the Eternal
Word, the Word made flesh who dwelt among us. And His teaching
alone is truth. I am the truth, that's what He
told His disciples. It's not what seems right and
logical to men, He is the truth. And His teaching is the truth,
not what seems right to us. Listen to this and take some
comfort in it, in Revelation 12.10. John said, I heard a loud voice
saying in heaven, now is come salvation and strength and the
kingdom of our God and the power of his Christ for or because
the accuser of our brethren is cast down. This one which accused them before
God day and night And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony. Now we have no possibility to
withstand Satan. No possibility at all. He takes
men captive at his will. You gonna stand one-on-one with
him? The archangel wouldn't stand one-on-one with Satan. He wouldn't
even accuse him. Read the book of Jude. He said
the Lord rebuked thee. You're not going to stand one-on-one
with him and come out victorious. But we have a divine, incorruptible
counselor. And thank God he's always there
to defend his people. He ever liveth to make intercession
for them. And I don't know if you noticed,
but they didn't even ask him to. He just did. He just did. And then lastly, I want us to
see the true Sabbath. Now turn with me to Colossians
chapter two. There are two things that modern
religion carry over from the Old Testament. Now there's many
things that they carry over, but two are preeminent, almost
across the board in all religions. Two things. And they carry these
things over because they don't understand what they are and
why they were given and how they were fulfilled. And there's a
lot of other things that they carry over like the priest robes
and all of these things. That's all carry over from the
Old Testament. But these two things are prominent,
tithing and the Sabbath day. They were both given under the
law and they were both strictly enforced. Tithing was instituted
for the care of the Levitical priesthood. Their duties was
to the tabernacle and the temple had to do with the sacrifices.
And I tell you, if you'll just take some time and read and study
the Old Testament, you'll find out that them men worked all
the time. All the time. Over a million people in Israel.
Sacrifices had to be continually taken in and brought before these
priests. Their work was daylight till
dark all the time. And tithing was instituted for
the care of the Levitical priesthood. You didn't do anything without
a priest. You couldn't run into the tabernacle
and offer up that blood. The priest had to do that. And tithing means a tenth, one-tenth
of everything they owned was to be given for the care of the
Levitical priesthood. Given in regard to the priesthood
and the tabernacle, and we're plainly told in Hebrews 7 and
11 that the old priesthood and the law are done away with as a new priest, a new priest,
and a new priesthood has been manifested. Tithing had to do
with the old priesthood and was enforced by the threatening of
punishment. You just didn't bow up and say,
well, I'm not gonna tithe. They come to your house. A lot
of the religion I was raised in had come to your house. You
signed a card, and they come and done you for your tithing. The new priesthood, that old
priesthood, it was enforced by threatening of punishment. Had
teeth in the law. And what good is the law without
teeth? The men had no love. They don't keep it. They have
to be threatened to keep it. The new priesthood is constrained
by love and gratitude, not threatening. And then the second thing men
love to carry over is the Sabbath. Now look here at Colossians 2
verse 14. He's just told us that we're
complete in Christ. We're complete in Him. We don't
need anything else. We don't need a priesthood. We
don't need any of those things. We're complete in Christ. And
He tells us that through the sacrifice of Christ, blotting
out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was
contrary to us, and He took it out of the way, nailing it to
His cross. Well, what's all that mean? All
right, here's what it means, verse 16. Let no man therefore
judge you in meat or drink. If I wanna have a pork chop on
Good Friday, I'm gonna have a pork chop. You wanna eat fish, that's
your business. But you're not gonna hold me
in judgment over it. Isn't that what he's saying here? Don't
you let anybody judge you according to your, there was a lot of meat
forbidden under the law. but it's not forbidden anymore.
You remember that sheet the Lord dropped down before Peter and
the Lord told him to eat? He said, I ain't eating that.
That's all unclean. He said, don't you call unclean
what I cleansed. Huh? Let no man therefore judge you
in meat or drink or in respect of a holy day or of new moons,
or of Sabbath days. These things are a shadow of
things to come, but the body is Christ. That which makes the
shadow is Christ. These things are but a shadow.
Christ is our Sabbath, he's our rest. We find rest in him who
fulfilled the law in every jot and tittle. He exalted the law by his obedience
and made it honorable, the scripture said. He's our Sabbath. And the
old Sabbath was Saturday. Wasn't Sunday, it was Saturday. And there is no Christian Sabbath. Christ is our Sabbath. He's our
Sabbath on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday,
Tuesday. He's our Sabbath. Sunday's the
first day of the week and the day of his resurrection. All
right, so Preacher, what's all this mean? Does that mean we
shouldn't give? Actually, it means you should
give more. You should give more. You see,
love holds nothing back. Luke, when you married your wife,
did you know that the law commands you to take care of her? You've
sworn off to do it. You have to be sure she's clothed,
be sure she's fed, be sure she has a roof over her head. Is
that all you do? No. Why? Because you love her. Do you
see what I'm getting at? The law commanded one-tenth to
be given and one day to be set apart. What does love do? Huh? Love has to do with every day.
Love has to do with all that you have. There's no constraint,
there's no holding back. Well, don't you think there ought
to be a percentage? Do you need one for your wife?
No. No, you don't need a percentage. Why? Because you have love. That's
why love is so important. So important in the belief to
love. Love is without limit. Husbands, love your wives. Now
listen, as Christ loved the church, and how much did he give? A tenth
of his time? He gave himself for it. All of himself. All of himself. We give And that's what I tell
you every time we get on the subject. What you give is according
to your love for Christ. That's what it is. And he's our
Sabbath. We don't keep a day. And those
who do, oh listen, you're gonna keep this Sabbath. Because this
Sabbath is Christ. And you don't keep that Sabbath,
you're gonna die eternal death. Eternal death. We keep him. He's
our rest. He's our Sabbath. And we love
him. We respect him. And we don't
do any work in him. He did it all. He did it all. We just rest. All right, thank
you.