Sermon Tone Analysis
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In this passage Jesus is restating his intent to end religion by replacing it with himself.
Jesus is not a reformer he is a revolutionary. is not that he’s here to do reforming of religion, but he’s here to absolutely end religion and to replace it with himself.
Do you see what I mean
Let’s take a look at this passage, which actually, as you can see, is two incidents that are linked together here, both having to do with the Sabbath.
What we’re going to see is, on the one hand, the futility of religion and, on the other hand, the finality of Jesus Christ.
What Jesus says this week in this passage is not that he’s here to do reforming of religion, but he’s here to absolutely end religion and to replace it with himself.
Do you see what I mean?
Let’s take a look at this passage, which actually, as you can see, is two incidents that are linked together here, both having to do with the Sabbath.
What we’re going to see is, on the one hand, the futility of religion and, on the other hand, the finality of Jesus Christ.
The futility of religion
1.
The futility of religion
Let’s look at the futility of religion in
Here we have Jesus in a synagogue on the Sabbath day.
There he encounters a man with a shriveled hand.
The Pharisees are watching to see if Jesus will violate the Sabbath commands.
Jesus gets angry at them and heals the man with the shriveled hand.
What do we learn here?
First, the law of God directed that you had to rest from your work one day in seven.
Yet as great as that sounds, the religious leaders of the day saddled this law with so many specific regulations.
There were 39 types of work, types of activity, you could not do on the Sabbath.
One of them was picking grain as you walked through a field.
Of course, in the second incident they’re looking to see whether Jesus does something that breaks one of those regulations.
Jesus angry at their hardness of heart heals the man.
What do we learn here?
Religion turns liberation into load.
The Pharisees had taken the Lord’s Day of respite and turned it into a day of requirements.
Jesus is angry because their hard hearts had make his day hard instead of a foretaste of heaven.
What is the Sabbath about?
It’s about restoring the diminished.
It’s about replenishing the drained.
It’s about repairing the broken.
Jesus healed this man so that everyone would have an living illustration as to the intent of the Sabbath.
Religion had caused their hearts to be as the man’s hand.
They were insecure and anxious about the regulations.
They were tribal and self-obsessed with their own instead of caring about the man.
They were judgmental.
Why?
The answer is religion, because in this great verse 27, which we’ll get back to actually in the second point here, is a very, very profound statement.
He says, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”
For a minute, let’s not think about the particular rule of the Sabbath.
God says many things.
He laid down many laws.
He says, “Rest one day out of seven,” but he also said, “Don’t commit adultery.”
He said, “Don’t lie.”
He said, “Give your money to the poor.”
For a minute, let’s not think about the particular rule of the Sabbath.
God says many things.
He laid down many laws.
He says, “Rest one day out of seven,” but he also said, “Don’t commit adultery.”
He said, “Don’t lie.”
He said, “Give your money to the poor.”
Here’s what Jesus is saying.
He says there are two spiritual paradigms.
In one, the moral law is a burden.
It enslaves you.
In the other, the same moral law can be a blessing, can be a gift, can lead to flourishing.
For one group obedience is a burden.
For the other group it is a gift.
In verse 27 he’s talking about two spiritual paradigms, and he’s contrasting them because they’re radically different.
These paradigms are the gospel of Jesus Christ and human religion.
Most people in the world believe there is a God and you relate to him by being good.
All religions are based on that basic principle.
Some religions are what you might call nationalistic.
What they are is they say you connect to God by coming into our people group and taking upon yourself the markers of being part of this society.
Other religions are spiritualistic.
They say you reach God by working yourself through certain transformations of consciousness.
Other religions are formally legalistic.
There’s a code of conduct, and if you do it, then God will bless you.
They’re all based on the same idea.
Religion is based on the principle that,
“If I obey and I perform, I’m accepted.”
Christianity is not only different than that.
It is absolutely diametrically opposed to it, completely opposed to it, because religion says,
“I obey; therefore, I’m accepted,” but Christianity, the gospel of Jesus, is, “I am fully accepted in Jesus Christ; therefore, I obey.”
The gospel is not like religion.
Religion is, “I give God something, and then he owes me because I’m a good person and he needs to treat me that way and other people do too.”
Christianity is saying God through Jesus Christ gives you a complete salvation which you receive by sheer grace, and then you gladly and gratefully live for him … exactly the opposite.
In religion you are saved by being better than everybody else, by rising above the masses and living the good life and taking the narrow path and going the way of performance.
In other words, you are saved by being better than others, but in Christianity you’re only saved if you admit you’re absolutely no better than anyone else, and you can only be saved by grace.
Those are two absolutely different paradigms.
Our text shows us one particular way of contrasting these two paradigms.
Our text teaches us how the moral law functions?
Here are two people, and they both want to obey what God says.
Here they are, but the moral law, God’s law, functions in two totally different ways in the two different paradigms.
In religion, the purpose of obeying the law, the purpose of the law, is to assure you that you’re okay with God.
That’s the purpose.
You’re working very hard to do all these things to assure yourself you are a good person.
Therefore, God owes you to answer your prayers and bless you and take you to heaven and so on.
In religion, the purpose of obeying the law, was to assure you that you’re right with God.
Working hard at obeying the law would assure yourself that you are a good person.
Therefore, obligating God to answer your prayers, bless you, and take you to heaven.
As a result, when you come to the law, what you’re most concerned about is detail.
You want to know exactly what you have to do, because you have to push all their buttons.
You have to know exactly what you have to do so you can be assured.
The purpose of the law, the purpose of obeying the law, is to assure yourself you’re a good person, that you’re doing everything right.
You’re not going to want to look at the broad meaning, the broad moral purpose, the broad motives of the law.
You’re going to be very concerned … In fact, you’re going to write into the moral law sorts of details that aren’t really there so you can assure yourself you’re obeying it.
In the gospel, the law of God has a completely different function.
It’s there to take you out of yourself.
It’s there to show you the kind of life of love you want to live before the God who has done all this for you.
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