Now the Pharisees here again take a shot at the Lord's disciples. We saw this in chapter 12 when the disciples, it says they plucked corn and did eat on the Sabbath day. And if you'll recall, the Savior shamed them in not knowing the scriptures. He asked them, do you not know the scriptures? Have you not read?

And refuted them by the word of God. And here again, he shames them by revealing their ignorance in replacing the word of God with their traditions. And they didn't even bother to hide it, did they? They said that your disciples are transgressing our traditions, as though the traditions of men meant anything, as though anything that man comes up with should be taken as gospel or as something to obey. And so before he revealed their ignorance of scripture, and then he reveals here how they had no regard or respect for the word of God. but preferred their own traditions, and that's just religion to a T. You can listen to them and see that they don't know the scriptures to this day.

They'll misquote them, they'll take them out of context, they'll use them, they'll pervert them, and then also they replace what God said with the Baptist way, or the Catholic way, or the Methodist way of doing things. And we won't go down the laundry list again. I know I repeat that often, but you know what all it is. You won't find any of the traditions of the Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, any church So-called denomination or whatever you won't find any of the stuff they do in the Bible You're not gonna find any of it it's just not there and so they've replaced the scriptures with what they feel like is the is gonna get people to do what they want them to do and Manipulate people to their own will and their own prosperity and so And notice, they just couldn't let it go.

In religion, the Lord called them on it. He said, you circle the whole earth. You compass land and sea to make a proselyt. They'll beg for money, money, money, so we can save the world, so we can go here and there to all the darkest areas of the world and do this and that.

They're not content. to pervert the scripture and be ignorant of scripture and lie on God and get on with their lives. They want the whole world to be infected with it. And that's how they were here. They weren't just, they weren't happy just going on about their religious business.

You know, that's the Lord, what the Lord told us to do with regard to them, just leave them alone, you know, let them do what they do. And we'll worship the Lord. We'll honor him. We'll, we'll find everything that we hope in and desire to obey and trust in his word rather than it's just the way we've always done things and let them do it. He said, leave them alone, but they won't leave you alone.

I guarantee you that if they can, uh, if they can figure out a way. to convert you to heresy, that's what they'll do. And you'd think the Pharisees would have learned something the first time when the Lord rebuked them so hard with regard to them eating corn on the Sabbath day. If nothing else, you'd think they might've learned not to come to the Lord with criticism of his sheep. And I love how quick the Lord was to defend them whenever that did happen. And, you know, we might learn that too, not to be so critical of one another, of the Lord's sheep. Scripture says they'll stand or fall to their own master. And it ain't you. It ain't you. It's not me either. Religious, self-righteous people are never satisfied with just minding their own business and worshiping their own little God and rejoicing in what they do.

But also, our flesh rises up, doesn't it? People who claim to know the scriptures, the true word of God, and believe in the sovereign God, and come to true places of worship. Our self-righteousness, if we're not careful, will rise up. And it's between them and the Lord whether they're true sheep or not, but I've seen them in just about every place of worship I've ever had anything to do with.

There's always gonna be turmoil, criticism, conflict, unrest. The Lord calls us to unity. We have, as believers, everything that matters in common. Everything. But here's the problem. If all of us were a bunch of nobodies, then we wouldn't have any trouble with anybody else. But it's when you become somebody that you're gonna have problems with other people. The Pharisees were somebodies. Well, I don't know, I haven't seen it in a long time, but I have actually seen the slogan, in this church, everybody's somebody. And I always thought it'd be interesting to put on our church sign, in this church, everybody's a nobody.

See if that would impress anybody. We just, I mean, I love what Spurgeon said. He said it just as plain as he could, didn't he? He said, be content to be nothing because that's what you are. Might as well be content with it. But. Let's look at this for a minute and think about this because this is what we're dealing with.

You say, well, you know, if we know the Lord, we don't want to be, you know, talk about these negative things. What about your loved ones? What about people that you do anything for? Do you want to know what you're up against? Do you want to know what they're up against so that we'll run to the Savior instead of trying to argue with them? This is what we're up against. The Lord here, he doesn't refer to their ignorance of scripture, but he condemns their perversion of scripture. God has commanded in his law, and here's what he specifically used against them.

He could have pointed out a thousand different examples of them doing this, but he dealt with this one about honoring their father and mother, your father and mother. The Pharisees had invented a loophole to that. Honor your father and mother. They took care of you for, you know, a couple of decades. And God's way is you take care of them when they need it. You take care of them. And honor your father and mother. But they'd invented a loophole. And they said it is a gift. Whenever their parents would need something, They would say, oh, this is already designated.

I've already designated what little I have to something else, to religious matters, and so I don't have anything for you. And that was just one example of their selfishness. False religion is selfish. It's all about what's in it for me. What am I going to get in heaven when I die? What's in it for me?

He's commanded to honor your father and mother. And this is just one point of the law. Remember, he confronted the rich young ruler with a different point of the law. But if you're guilty of one part of the law, you're guilty of the whole law. You're either holy or you're not holy. There's no gray area. There's no mostly holy. But they had said, you know. We're dedicated to religion and honoring God with this, and so we can't really honor you with it. And they didn't do that. They didn't give it to the Lord or whatever. They kept it for themselves. They just didn't want to help their mom and dad. And the Lord saw, of course.

But this is important now. You might be thinking here, what difference does it make if they pervert the law, if the law is not your hope anyway? You know, if they, you know, shirk the law, you can't keep it fully anyway, right? That's not our hope anyway. So what difference does it make?

Well, it makes a big difference because the law is our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. We're not saved by the law, but the law will bring you to Christ. We don't dare teach contrary to the schoolmaster. The schoolmaster, the law, the reason that God, the law shuts men up to Christ. It shuts us up.

If the Lord saved one of these Pharisees, he would show him, like when he dealt with the woman at the well, where's your husband? You're gonna have to deal with your sin. You have to understand what sin is before you're going to run to the Savior. But if the Lord was going to save one of these Pharisees like he did Nicodemus, then they would have realized, I'm guilty.

I'm guilty. I haven't honored my father and mother. I'm selfish. I'm a failure. And that law, that aspect of the law, along with all the other aspects of the law, would have driven them to cry. I can't keep that. I haven't done. And I'm not going to. I'm a failure. I'm undone. I'm hopeless. I can't even do that simple thing to honor my father and mother.

When they've taken care of me. And that's true in all aspects of the law. We have to come to the place where we see, like it says in Romans chapter 3, all men are to become guilty before God by the scrutiny of the law. And if you pervert the law and make it something that you could, you know, they could say they kept it and not, and they completely defiled it.

But they said, well, this is our tradition and we're doing it that way. So we're doing the right thing. No, you're not. You're, you're in disobedience to God's law. And we have to come to that place where we realized that we're, we're in disobedience to all of God's law.

He, he, he, Again, he would call the Pharisees on that just plain and simple. He said, you clean the outside of the cup. To other men you look holy, but to God you're full of corruption, full of corruption. You look religious and all that. You do the outward things. But the law, you say, well, I've never committed adultery. If you've ever looked at a woman to lust after her, you've committed adultery. He preached the spirit of the law. If you ever hated your brother. Without a cause, you've killed him in your heart, you murdered him. And when God brings that home, And it's by the law that he brings that home.

So if you pervert the law, you can say, well, it doesn't matter if we twist the law. That's not our hope anyway. Yeah, but it's going to bring you to him who is your hope if you understand the law when God reveals it in its spiritual truth and nature. So we can't pervert the law. When the law comes in its in its power of condemnation against us. What the law could not do because of the weakness of your flesh, Christ did.

And we have to see that. So what the Pharisees had done, instead of being confronted by the law, when they were confronted with the law, instead of despairing of self and confessing, the law says what it does, that every mouth may be stopped and all the world become guilty. But instead of that, they changed the law. They perverted, they twisted the law into something that they could at least fool themselves into keeping, into thinking that they'd kept.

And religion is fraught with that. It's absolutely fraught with that. Well, you know, when the Lord said, you come get saved, make a decision for Jesus, and then you got to live the Christian life. What is that? Does that mean you don't sin anymore? You've got to do something? You've got to please God now? That is a perversion of the law. Paul didn't live the Christian life. He said, all of my Christian life, I renounce. And I'm fleeing to Christ. Now, when you're running to Christ, that's going to change how you live.

But never do we say I've got to live the really you're in big trouble, then if you've got to do anything. You're in big trouble. And look, they perverted. They can't keep the law, so they change the law, right? Into something that they can't keep. They can sit there and spit in their mom and dad's face and say, well, you know, we're we're dedicated. We're you know, we're believers. We're religious. And so we've got to do this. And so they cheat the law and all the while they think, well, we're keeping the law. No, you're keeping your traditions, which are opposite from the law, the Lord said. which defile the law.

But also in the matter of salvation, what do they do? They're not going to bow to God. They're not going to, as Paul said in Romans 10, submit to Christ as their righteousness. They're not going to bow before a sovereign God and say, Lord, if you will. So what do they do?

They change that. All you got to do is come down here. Well, I did that, I'm saved. No, you're not. You destroyed God's Word with your traditions. That's what you did. So in order to make it, to convince themselves that they were keeping the law, The demands of righteousness now are strict and inflexible, but in order to make it seem like they were keeping them, they made those demands a little bit less demanding. They still weren't keeping even their traditions, much less God's law.

Our Lord gave that specific example in our text. Look at verses four through six. God commanded saying, honor thy father and mother and he that curseth father and mother, let him die the death. But you say, whosoever shall say to his father and mother, as long as you can make a good excuse for it, you don't need to honor them. As long as you can come up with a good excuse, then you're free from that. And thus, verse six, you honor not your father and mother, you honor your tradition though, but not your father and mother.

And you say I'm free and thus, thus, have you made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition. And again, the commandment of God is bow, believe, Abandon all hope in self, renounce your works and look to Christ as your righteousness. Realize the depth and depravity of your evil and look to Christ and his precious blood as your sin offering and cleansing from your sin. They're not gonna do that, so what are they gonna do? Thus have you made the commandment of God of none effect by your owl walking, you're repeating this prayer that didn't even come from your heart. I'll make it up for you. I'll do it for you. You just have to say it.

That's not what God says is how he saves a sinner. You have made the commandment of God of none effect. It is a gift. In other words, that they were required by law to take care of their parents. They were they said, well, we've already vowed to use that some other way. You know, we can't help you. It's designated as a gift, but not for you. And it ended up being a gift to themselves. And so they circumvented God's Word. Is that not religion?

That's what I want us to understand. Let's just be honest about it. Religion has circumvented the Word of God and made up all these different... This is how a sinner is saved by going down the Roman road. This is how a sinner is saved by doing what we tell them to do, even though you're not going to find it in the Bible.

They pervert the law because they hate the law, but they want to be able to say, I've kept the law from my youth up. And so they change, they pervert it. And you know what? People hate worse than, harder than the law, more than the law, grace. And so they pervert that too. They pervert that too.

Grace doesn't come by the will of God. It's not up to God. That's not fair. He can't pass by a thousand and save one as he pleases. The spirit can't go where it listeth. That's not fair. So what does happen? You decide. Of course, you're in the driver's seat.

So they pervert the gospel as well as the law. If they didn't pervert the law and the Lord revealed to them the law and the commandment came in its condemning power, then they wouldn't pervert the gospel. But they pervert both because they want to be God. They pervert the gospel of free distinguishing grace by adding their traditions. Of course it's grace, but you have to do this. Of course it's grace. We'll name our church grace something or other, but you have to do that.

The way actually God saves a sinner is by taking that law, that strict and flexible standard of righteousness that reveals his character. The law doesn't reveal God's bad side, it reveals all of who he is. He's holy, he's strictly righteous, and he demands obedience. That's why we need a Savior. And it tells us not only to perfectly honor our father and mother, but to perfectly honor, love, obey, and serve God.

It commands you to do everything that you're utterly incapable of doing. God has never told you to do anything yet that you're able to do. Man will. Man, I say walking out, okay, here I come. I wanna go to heaven when I die. But God will never command you to do something that you're able to do.

All of the law is beyond us. All of the law, we are defiled. The law's purpose was not to make us moral. It was to make us guilty, that every mouth may be stopped. What the law saith, it saith to them that are under the law, and that's you and that's me, that all of us will shut up and cry guilty before God.

It commands you to do what you're incapable of doing, and it forbids you from doing what you cannot help doing. And grace takes that law and burdens you with it. God will burden you with it, burden you beyond your ability to bear. Grace reveals that law as it is and shows you your utter incapability of ever even knowing what it means to measure up to it, much less to actually measure up to it. Remember what Paul said in Romans 7, 13. Listen to this confession. Is this us? Is this you? Is this me? He's talking about God dealing with his soul now.

And he said, sin, that it might appear sin. You see, sin before was just something that I, you know, I just did my best and everything was fine. sin that it might appear sin worked death in me by that which is good the law the law is good you're not though and so it works death in you and this working of death is not talking about how it pronounces death on you and it'll execute death on you if it's not put away but this is talking about it working death in you in such a way that you actually die unto sin. You die to self. You die to the you that trusts your own works of righteous, so-called righteousness before God. It worked death in me by that, which is good, that sin by the commandment, by realizing, not by looking at myself and saying, well, you know, I haven't done, I'm not as bad as old Todd here.

Not looking at self, but look, the commandment, sin by the commandment, by looking at the example, by looking at the holy, by looking to Christ, in other words, might become exceeding sinful. And when I look and see the Holy One, I see myself to be exceeding wretched and vile, like Job did when he said, behold, I'm vile. So the perversion of the law, no, no, the law's got to come in its reality.

In the gospel of free grace in Christ, Listen, I want to give one more example before we turn to Exodus chapter five. We mentioned this, but we never look at the scripture, and I want to look at it because this is our subject this morning. Exodus 519, or we'll look at it a little before that, but listen. The gospel of God's grace in Christ will put you in the place of these Hebrews in Egypt.

They're trying to make bricks without any straw, and listen, they're crying out. They're begging. They're realizing this is bad, but they don't know just how bad yet. Look at, let's see, where do we wanna start? Exodus 5, 10, I believe, let's see. Let's do 15. Verse 15, then the officers of the children of Israel came and cried unto Pharaoh. Pharaoh represents the law here in this passage. Now he's saying, do this, do this commandment. You're under bondage. You're going to do what I say or die. That's the law. We're under the bondage of the law by nature.

It's later. that by the blood of the Lamb, the only thing that can take you from that place, and let's look at it, is the blood of the Lamb, the blood of the Lamb, when God says, I see the blood, then you're not going to die when I see the blood. Judgment will not come to your house when I see the blood.

The officers of the children of Israel came and cried unto Pharaoh, saying, Wherefore dealest thou thus with thy servants? There is no straw given unto thy servants, and they say to us, Make brick. And behold, thy servants are beaten, but the fault is in thine own people.

But he said, You're idle, you're idle. Therefore you say, let us go and do sacrifice to the Lord. He said, when they wanted to observe the sacrifices, he said, you just want to take some time off. This is the law now. Go therefore now and work. Go therefore and work, for there shall no straw be given you, yet shall you deliver the tail of bricks." And look what they said. The officers of the Children of Israel did see that they were in evil case. We're done for. We're done for. We can't do what's required of us. Without the sacrifice, there's no hope for us. There's no in the law. There's no there's no atonement. There's no redemption in the law.

The law demands that you produce. And you're an evil case because you don't have anything to work with. You don't have a heart that loves God. The culmination of the law is that you love the Lord, that guy with all that heart, mind, soul and strength. You don't have that heart. The law of God is that your works must be perfect, this do and live. And you don't have any straw to make that brick with. We're an evil case. We can't produce what we're required to produce and we're beaten for not producing it. We cannot escape our bondage. Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? Paul said in Romans 7, I'm an evil case.

And after a time of revelation, teaching, types, and pictures, and just undeniable display of God's power, God said, when I see the blood, I'll pass over you. and that lamb's blood is the breaking of your chains. They walked out free and rich, liberated, and God drowned their enemies in the bottom of the Red Sea, and they sang a song of praise unto the Lord. There's got to be bondage in there first. The law is gonna teach you. You're an evil case by nature. But there's a lamb, there's a lamb, the lamb that was slain. It's freedom, liberty, stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free.