The lesson this morning is found
in Matthew chapter 12. Matthew chapter 12. We'll read together the first
eight verses of this chapter. And then I want you to, as we
read these things, to think about this, what's being said and done
in these verses. is the result of what he said
in the last three verses of chapter 11, where he tells them that
all those that were laboring and heavy laden, he said, come
unto me. Take my yoke upon you and learn
of me. Those who are weary from burdens
of false religion weighted down. Some of you came out of that
type of religion and you know what I'm saying. Weighted down
by legalistic religion. They heap burdens on you. That's
what the Lord said. You heap things on them that
you can't do. They can't do them and you can't
do them who heaped it on them. He said those of you who are
weary and heavy laden, that's what He was talking about. Heavy
laden from those pharisaical ceremonialism and legalism. He
said, anybody here weary and heavy laden, burdened down by
those things that's demanded of you that you can't do? He
said, come unto Me. Come to Me. Come to Him, put His yoke on,
and find rest for their weary souls. Now let's read here beginning
in verse 1 of Matthew chapter 12. At that time, Jesus went
on the Sabbath day through the corn. And His disciples were
hungered and began to pluck the ears of corn and to eat. But
when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto Him, Behold, thy disciples
do that which is not lawful to do upon the Sabbath day. But
he said unto them, have you not read what David did when he was
unhungered and they that were with him? How he entered into
the house of God and did eat the shew bread which was not
lawful for him to eat, neither for them which were with him,
but only for the priests? Or have you not read in the law
how that on the Sabbath days the priests in the temple profane
the Sabbath and are blameless. Now that profaning the Sabbath
that he is talking about there is according to their doctrine.
According to that strict abstinence that they burden the people with. And he said, don't you know that
your own priests in the preparation of the sacrifices and all that
stuff they do, that they profane the temple. But I say unto you that in this
place is one greater than the temple. But if you had known
what this meaneth, I will have mercy and not sacrifice, you
would not have condemned the guiltless." These men who went
with their master and picked corn as they ate on the Sabbath
day, he said, were guiltless. Perfect. Perfect and holy in
the eyes of God. No condemnation in them, but
guiltless. He said if you knew what that
meant, you wouldn't condemn them. For the Son of Man is Lord even
of the Sabbath day. Now there are two kinds of religion
in this world, works and grace. I don't care what you're talking
about. If you're talking about the Christian, so-called Christian
denominations, Catholicism, if you're talking about Buddhism,
Mohammedism, whatever it is you're talking about, there are just
two kinds of religion in this world, works and grace. And works religion is any kind
of religion that believes that fallen, depraved men and women
can win back the favor of God. by something they do. That works. I don't care what form it takes.
It takes all kinds of forms. Paul said, if you so much as
be circumcised, that's all those Jewish legalists, they would
receive everything but that. And they said, now, just in case. We're still going to have our
male children circumcised. Paul said, if you so much as
be circumcised, he said, You've just put to naught everything
that Christ did. You've just taken away everything
that He did. What are these works that men
talk about? Well, they talk about deciding
to turn their life around. Quitting old habits and adopting
new ones. learning the new creed. Your
only problem is you messed up on your doctrine. I've had men
and women tell me that. That's the only problem they've
got is they're a little messed up on their doctrine. So if you
could just teach them the creed, if you could just convince them
of the creed, they'd be OK. No. No. No, they wouldn't. Men teach works by decisions
and commitments. They teach works by moral reform. They teach works by keeping the
law of God. Anything stated in this book
can become a work, even faith. Even faith can become a work. It is a work among the Southern
Baptists of our day. It's a work. It's a work performed
by men. Anything in this book, repentance
can be a work. Our Lord talked about, through
His disciples, He talked about a repentance that needed to be
repented of. A repentance that needed to be
repented of. Why? Because they turned it into
a work. I know of nothing more poisonous
to your souls than legalism. You might as well get a jar of
arsenic and drink it. It's poison. And all false religion
is works religion, even the idolatrous worship of pagan gods. And the other religion in this
world is the religion of grace. What's that mean? What's that
mean? Somebody said, what do you mean? when you put grace on your sign.
What's grace? What is that? What's that talking
about? That means that salvation is the free and sovereign gift
of God to chosen sinners. That's what that grace means.
It doesn't have anything to do with it. This thing was decided
long before they were born, long before man fell. It was decided. That's sovereign grace. Grace in the hands of a sovereign.
2 Timothy 1, verse 9 says, God hath saved us. God did. We didn't
save ourselves. He didn't take the first step
and we took the rest. He didn't make the damn payment
and we paid the rest. That's not what these apostles
preached. Paul said, God hath saved us. And God hath called
us. We didn't call ourselves. We
didn't make decisions to turn our life around. God called us. In His own time, in His own sovereign
time, God called us. And He called us with a holy
calling, not according to our works, but according to His own
purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before the
world began. That's grace. Sovereign grace. In Romans chapter
11, the Apostle Paul talks about an election of grace. And he
said if there wasn't an election of grace, we'd be just like Sodom
and Gomorrah. We'd be in ashes. We'd be in
ashes. And this election, he tells us
in chapter 9, was established in the choosing of one of two
twins before either one were born or either one had done any
good or evil. Why did he do it? He said that
the purpose of God, according to election, might stand. God's
sovereign election. And then he defines that grace
here in chapter 11 as not of works. Otherwise, he said, grace is
no more grace. Now, they're just two kinds of
religion. If you're here this morning and you're religious,
you fit in one of these two groups. One of these two. Now I said
all that to say this. These unbelieving Jews in the
days of Christ had adopted a system of work. They had taken the glorious
gospel of Christ, which was set forth in the types and symbols
and ceremonies of the Old Testament, and they mixed it with their
own ignorance and their own ideas and this world's concepts. They'd
mixed it with ideas of other nations and the idolatrous ways
of other nations down through the years. They had changed these
things. They had adopted, they had made
these things into a system of works. They wrested, Christ said,
the scriptures to their own destruction. They'd mix their traditional
ideas and concepts and come up with a legalistic religion that
left them in worse shape than the Gentile reprobates in Sodom. What happened? The God of this
world blinded their minds. That's what happened. The God
of this world. How does he do that? He does
that through religion. He always has. He always will. Now, there's two things taught
in our lesson this morning. Truth and error. That's when the Lord taught.
When He set things before the people, He taught them, first
He exposed the error. He said, here's the error. People
tell me all the time, well, why has He got to get up there and
talk about religion? I'll tell you why, because it's
error. That's why. It's wrong. Poisonous. Dangerous. He said, the poison
of ash is under their lips. He called them venomous snakes.
That's what the Lord called them. He warned people. He set forth
the error. He said, this is error. And then
He said, here's the truth. That's what He does in these
verses. Now let's look first at the error.
At the very heart of Jewish legalism was the keeping of the Sabbath.
Someone said in one section of the Jewish Talmud, that's their
bylaws or articles of faith or whatever you want to call them,
all their rules and regulations in the Talmud, is 24 chapters. Think about that. 24 chapters
of sabbatical laws, laws concerning the Sabbath. Turn over a few pages with me
to Matthew chapter 15. The error in their teaching was
the traditional ideas and concepts of their fathers. That they'd
passed down to them and they loved their fathers. Well, who
don't? I mean, I know there's some reprobate men who are not
fathers to their children at all. They'd been better off not
to have one than to have the one that they had. But for the
most part, men and women, they love their father and their mothers,
their sisters, their brothers, their family, their blood, their
kin, whatever you want to call them. There's a love and a communication
there with them, and you love them. And these men and women
that they love, passed down through ignorance, through the blinding
of the God of this world. They passed down error from generation
to generation. And over time, it becomes worse
and worse and worse. Actually, when you go through
the New Testament, when Christ is walking on the earth, you
don't even hear anything there about a sacrifice being offered
at all. I don't read anything in there.
The lamb had totally disappeared out of their worship. Now watch this over here in Matthew
15 verse 1. Then came to Jesus scribes and
Pharisees which were of Jerusalem. Now this is the Sanhedrin. This is the high council. This
is the high muckety mucks. This is, you know, we belong
to a southern Baptist church or something and we run into
some problems, and the denomination bylaws, they call for us to go
down to the state, go down there to the high council, go down
there to the big wigs, the big committee, find out from them
what we're to do, and then they'll settle the thing and come back
out. That's who this was. The scribes and Pharisees which
were of Jerusalem, And they said, why do your disciples transgress
the tradition of the elders? We penned it out in a book. We
voted on it. This is how this thing is to
be interpreted. You call yourself a Jew and you
call yourself a believer. Why do your disciples transgress
the tradition of the elders? And he answered and said unto
them, verse 3, Why do you also transgress the commandment of
God by your tradition? That's the question. That's the
question. And then he gave several examples
of their perverted interpretation of the law, and then he said
unto them in the latter part of verse 6, he said, Thus have
you made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition. You see what he's what I've been
telling you. It's through this traditional
understanding that they received from their father, a perverted
understanding. They passed it down to their
children, and their children who loved them received it, and
treated it as the Word of God, treated it as the truth. They turned the keeping of the
Sabbath day into a work to win the favor and approval of God.
The Sabbath was never intended to prevent anyone from doing
any necessary thing, or anything concerning divine service, or
anything concerning acts of mercy to the needy. The Sabbath day
was given not to win God's approval, but to declare His approval in
Christ so we might find rest for our souls. That's why it
was given. Secondly, then we've got the
truth. The truth of the matter is that Christ is our Sabbath. And we cannot more fully honor
the Sabbath than to believe on Him and find the promised rest
given to us by God in Christ. That's our Sabbath day. That's
my rest. That's where I rest, right there.
And I can rest there on Monday. I can rest there on Wednesday.
I can rest there on Saturday. I can rest. I can rest. And instead of being a day to
rest, legalism had made the Sabbath day harder to find rest in than
the other six days that they labored. Monday through... I'm telling you now, I've been
in this kind of religion and I know what I'm talking about.
I go out and labor hard, putting on shingles and pouring concrete
in that hot sun. I come home and rest at the end
of the day. But not on the Sabbath day. We'd
go in there on the Sabbath day, what they called the Sabbath,
Sunday. The Christian Sabbath, so-called. And I'm telling you,
I couldn't find any rest. I'd come home upset, tore up,
beaten down. There was no rest on the Sabbath.
I could rest better on the other six days than I could on that
day. In Hebrews chapter 4, Paul tells
us the truth about the Sabbath. The promise of God to Abraham
was for a place of God's free and sovereign grace, a place
of milk and honey, a place of rest and blessing. But when Israel
got to the land, they sent spies out, and they saw what it required
to take the land. The place was occupied by giants. The place was populated by armed
men and walled cities. They saw no rest in the land,
no joy, no peace. They found no happy fulfillment
of God's promised rest. And they had no confidence, no
confidence in God's ability with them to take the land and defeat
the enemy. They just could not vision themselves
being victorious over such a place. They could not. And never found
rest. Now listen as Paul tells us about
this rest. He says in Hebrews chapter 4
verse 1, Let us therefore fear lest a promise being left to
us of entering into His rest, any of you should seem to come
short of it. For unto us was the gospel preached
as well as unto them, but the word preached did not profit
them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. For we
which have believed do enter into rest." We enter into rest. We hear the gospel, we understand
the gospel, we obey the gospel, and we enter into God's rest. That rest is in Christ. We see
that. God forbid these unbelieving
Israelites from entering into His promised rest because they
sought to do it on their own. That's how they evaluated the
situation. By their own works. By their
own works. Then in Hebrews chapter 4, He
moves on and gives us two examples of this Sabbath rest. One is
on the seventh day of creation. On the seventh day of creation,
way back there in Genesis chapter 2, knowing that Satan would enter
into his garden and tempt the woman and cause the man to fall,
knowing that fallen men would only produce more of the same,
that all men by righteous condemnation would be cursed by a holy God,
knowing that depraved men would be easily deceived and led astray,
knowing that not one in a billion, not one in the whole mess, twice
in Hebrews chapter 3, Paul said, no, not one, didn't he? None righteous, no, not one.
None good, no, not one. Not one of them could produce
a righteousness, think a good thought, or live in the fear
of God. God, knowing the fate and the end of His creation,
rested on the seventh day. How did He rest? He first trusted
in Christ. That's what it says in Hebrews
chapter 1. That's right. He first trusted in Christ. Now that's how he rested. Now
how are you going to rest? You're going to trust in Christ.
You're going to trust in Christ. And he says here in Hebrews chapter
4 verse 3, the work was finished before the foundation of the
world. Ain't that what that says? It was finished. Because God's
purpose and grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the
world began. Because our Heavenly Father blessed
us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places according
as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world.
God rested on the Sabbath day because He first trusted in Christ. And then the second example,
was the rest which Joshua could not give. He could not give. Hebrews chapter 4 verse 8, If
Jesus, that's Greek for Joshua, had given them rest, then would
he not afterward have spoken of another day. There's another
day. This wasn't a rest. Entering
into Canaan wasn't a rest. The rest is in Christ. That's
where the rest is. They didn't find any rest in
Canaan. Few years. And then it was war. And then
they were defeated. And then enemies came in. Brought
them in under bondage. So he said, there remaineth therefore
a rest to the people of God. Christ is our Sabbath. You really
reckon God cares what you do on a day? If it's Tuesday or
Wednesday, You think God's law is more broken on Saturday than
it is on Tuesday? Men are so ignorant with the
things that they teach. Christ is our Sabbath. He's the
rest. He's what the Sabbath day is
all about. It's all about Christ. And ceremonialism
and legalism is a strong evidence of error in one's understanding
of the gospel of Christ. That's what the Lord's teaching
us over here. He said, now watch this, Matthew
12, verse 7. But if you had known what that
meaneth, you don't know what it means. You didn't know what
it meant to be saved. You didn't know. You thought
it meant this. You thought it meant work. You
thought it meant keeping ceremonies. You thought it meant titles and
recognition and men's works and all this type. That's what you
thought it meant. You didn't know what it meant.
He said, I told you in the earlier chapters, he said, I told you
to go learn what this means. Go learn what this means. I'll
have mercy and not sacrifice. And he said, if you knew what
that meant, you wouldn't have condemned them for eating corn
on the Sabbath. you wouldn't have condemned the
guiltless. Oh, my soul. To stand before
God guiltless. God's people are guiltless because
their sins and iniquities He remembers no more. They're gone.
Their sins are paid for. God didn't hide them somewhere
so that if you messed up, He could dig them back up and bring
them back out again. I've had that preached to me. Scare you to death. God took
my sins and put them back here in a box. He said, I'm going
to give you one more chance. You mess up, you're going to
have to pay the whole deal. Woo. Ain't no rest there. Ain't
no salvation there. A lot of people are guiltless
because of their sins and iniquities. He remembers no more. And they
don't remember them because they're paid for. They're paid for. He didn't just wipe them off
the slate. He didn't turn his back on them. He didn't say,
well, I'm going to forget it this time. No, God don't forget.
The only way you can satisfy God is to pay for what you've
done. Our debt was paid in Christ.
Paid. There's no compromise in the
character of our God. He's just in His justification
of those for whom Christ died. Christ is their propitiation,
the very mercy seat by which they're accepted and approved
of God. And this is the only rest there
is. You can rest in Him. I'm telling you, there's no rest
in religion. No rest in religion. Everything
else we yoke ourselves to is a burden and it takes away rather
than leaves us with a rest. Sabbath day wasn't given to burden
men, it was given to promote love to God and rest for weary
sinners and thanksgiving for the gift of God's amazing grace.
And then our Lord makes, He makes an astounding declaration here. He said, I'm the Lord of the
Sabbath. Now, that term as it's used here
means like Boaz was the Lord of the harvest. It was his harvest. It was his field. He owned it,
lock, stock, and barrel. Everybody that worked in the
field worked for him. Everything that was done in the
field was done for him. This day, this Sabbath, that
they burdened men down with trying to keep things that they couldn't
keep. He said, I'm Lord of the Sabbath. Even, he said, of the
Sabbath. I'm the Lord. This day was for
me. This is my day. This is my day. This day is about me. What's
done on this day brings honor and glory to me. This day points
to me. I'm the Lord of the Sabbath. The day serves Him, not the other
way around. And as the Lord of the Sabbath,
He alone reveals its true meaning and reason for being. Actually,
the Scripture says, and we'll get into that a little bit later
on here in Matthew, it said the Sabbath was not made, listen
to this, the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. When you consider the Sabbath
as a legalistic requirement in its keeping, then it's the other
way around. It's the other way around. But
the Sabbath was made for man. It was made for him to point
him to the rest of Christ. Designed to point him to God's
promised rest, not for him to be strapped down with an added
burden. And the Lord of the Sabbath,
as the Lord of the Sabbath, Christ is its highest end. You want to keep the Sabbath
day, you say, well, the Scripture said to keep Keep this day holy. You can't keep it more holy than
you do when you look to Christ. That's how you keep the Sabbath.
You want to keep the Sabbath? Believe on Him. Give Him all
the glory. Bow to Him. Rejoice in Him. And you kept the Sabbath. You
kept it. May God give us some understanding
of that day. That's what He says. If you knew
what this meant, I think that so often when I'm talking to
religious men and women and they're angry and they're mad and they're
jumping up and down and spitting out things at me that they don't
know anything about. I just think to myself, if you
knew what this meant, if you just knew, if God would give
you an understanding of what this meant, you wouldn't be throwing
all these accusations and condemnations at somebody who's trying to tell
you the truth. May God give us an understanding of it. Thank
you.