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Once again, we have a great privilege to open up the Word of the Living God, his self-disclosure revealed in Scripture, and we're looking this morning at Luke chapter six, the first 11 verses. I've entitled my discourse to you, "The Son of Man, Lord of the Sabbath." Let me read the text to you, Luke six, beginning with verse one.

"Now it happened that he was passing through some grain fields on the Sabbath; and His disciples were picking the heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands and eating the grain.

But some of the Pharisees said, 'Why do you do what is not lawful on the Sabbath?'

"And Jesus, answering them, said, 'Have you not even read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him,

"'how he entered the house of God, and took and ate the consecrated bread, which is not lawful for any to eat except the priests alone, and gave it to his companions?'

"And He was saying to them, 'The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.'

"On another Sabbath He entered the synagogue and was teaching; and there was a man there whose right hand was withered.

"The scribes and the Pharisees were watching Him closely to see if He healed on the Sabbath, so that they might find reason to accuse Him.

"But He knew what they were thinking, and He said to the man with the withered hand, 'Get up and come forward!' And he got up and came forward.

"And Jesus said to them, 'I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save a life, or to destroy it?'

"After looking round at them all, He said to him, 'Stretch out your hand!' And he did so; and his hand was restored.

"But they themselves were filled with rage, and discussed together what they might do to Jesus."

Whenever God's truth is proclaimed from his Word, there will always be a host of deceptions to follow. That's how Satan works to come up with ways to distort what God has said, to somehow draw people away from God and the gospel, and of course we see that all the time in our culture. We see distortions of the gospel. We see it, for example, in the prosperity gospel that would eventually say that if you have enough faith and you have positive thinking, and oh, if you make the right financial donations, then you're going to have health and wealth and happiness, and that's a big seller around the world today - a total lie.

And then of course there's the progressive gospel of the Christian left that emphasizes social justice and radical love for neighbors and systemic care for the marginalized, based primarily on a gross misunderstanding and misinterpretation of Matthew 25. They focus on the teachings of Jesus on poverty and compassion, and they do so completely out of context. And of course, all of that Satan uses to distort the gospel. Social justice is a straight line towards liberalism and the cult of wokeism, and frankly, every denomination that has preached social justice eventually descends into an abyss of apostasy. Social justice ideologies imply, by the way, a quasi-Marxist view. I remind you, just parenthetically, that Christ did not die to bring about social justice. Christ died to satisfy the justice of a righteous God, who has been offended in ways that we cannot imagine.

Well, there are many other ways where Satan distorts the Word of God, what Jesus says, the Gospel of God, and so forth, and every time that is distorted, it brings a different light on who Jesus is, and ultimately denies the person and work of Christ, and it ultimately results in judgment. We see this all through Scripture, and of course, the unregenerate hate the truth. We are told that they love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil.

Well, today we're going to examine out of this text another distortion of the Word of God, and that is the distortion of apostate Judaism, as well as other quasi-Christian cults that that seem to somehow follow along similar veins of thinking. These are all Satan's strategies of deception that were prevalent in the first century; they're prevalent even today. And of course, the Lord knew of all of these things, all of these distortions back then. He knows about them today, and as we will see, he actually providentially orchestrates some encounters in order to reveal more fully the truth of who he is, so we're going to look at this text under two very simple headings. We're going to see a Sabbath violation in a grain field and a Sabbath violation in a synagogue.

Now, first of all, we need to understand what is the Sabbath, right? Well, the Sabbath was the sign of the Mosaic Covenant. You read about it, especially in Exodus 31; and the Mosaic covenant was the law of God that he gave to Israel through Moses to govern the Israelites as they entered into the Promised Land, and it consisted of 613 commandments, summarized by the 10 Commandments. Obedience to the Mosaic covenant was the means by which the blessings of the Abrahamic covenant would go towards his covenant people, Israel. And it also revealed the people's sinfulness. All you have to do is look at the righteousness of God and his law, and you are exposed. And that was its purpose. And all of that was to drive people to the promised new covenant that you read about, for example, in Jeremiah 31 verses 31 and 32 in particular. Obedience to the Mosaic covenant was to flow out of a love for God, and the result of that would be spiritual as well as material blessings. And if you were disobedient to the law, it would result in divine judgment upon you, upon your family, upon your people. You read about how God judged the Israelites and dispersed them throughout the nations; you read about that kind of judgment, especially in Deuteronomy 28 and 29. But the law was never meant to be a means of salvation, that somehow here are all of these commandments, and if you obey all of these commandments, you will be saved. But it was rather a way to show Israel how they should love the Lord their God with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength. It was also intended to prevent them from being assimilated into the pagan cultures around them. Now, unfortunately, many Jews gradually distorted the purpose of the covenant that God had given them, and they began to see it as a means of works righteousness, if you will; a means of salvation. As a result of that, you have all manner of hypocrisy and religious externalism, which really demonstrated that they weren't loving the Lord from their heart, but they were doing things to give them the illusion that God loved them and they were in good standing with God and kind of earning their way into his good graces.

I might add that the Mosaic covenant actually ended with the death of Jesus because he fulfilled all of the demands of the covenant, and he established the new covenant, as we read in Luke 22:20, the new covenant of his blood. In fact, Paul said in Romans 10 and verse four, "For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes." Indeed, as we read in Ephesians 2:14 and 15, that whole section, Christ became our peace by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances. Therefore, since the Mosaic covenant was given to Israel alone, and Christ brought an end to it with his death. Christians are not under the Mosaic Covenant. We read about this, for example, in Romans six verse 14, “For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace." Galatians 5:18, "But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law." And there are other passages that speak about that as well.

Now back to the Sabbath, or Shabbat, as the Jewish people call it, meaning to rest or to cease, to desist. God established the Sabbath as a day set apart to reverence Him; a day of rest, a day of refreshment from work, and I might add that nowhere in the Old Testament did God require Gentile nations to somehow observe the Sabbath, nor were they ever condemned for not observing the Sabbath. God commanded the Sabbath for Israel in the Decalogue. For example, in Exodus 20, beginning in verse eight,

"'Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

"'Six days you shall labor and do all your work,

"'but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work,  you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant, or your cattle or your sojourner, who stays with you.

"'For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.'"

So its pattern was established at creation. It's fascinating when you think about that. When God himself rested on the seventh day, as you read in Genesis 2:2, and it's fascinating that that pattern continues to this day, is it not? All you have to do is look at your calendars, and you will see that our weeks are set aside by sevens, and of course, all of this is a perpetual reminder that God made everything in six days and rested on the seventh, 6, 24 hour days.

However, I might add that there is no evidence of anyone keeping the Sabbath before the time of Moses, nor are there any commands to keep the Sabbath before the giving of the law at Mount Sinai, which is very interesting. The Sabbath was even linked to Israel's exodus from Egypt, and specified that this was why Israel was to keep it. Exodus 31, beginning in verse 12, we read,

"The Lord spoke to Moses, saying,

"'But as for you, speak to the sons of Israel, saying, "You shall surely observe My sabbaths;  for this is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am the LORD who sanctifies you.

"'"Therefore, you are to observe the Sabbath, for it is holy to you. Every one who profanes it shall surely be put to death; for whoever does any work on it, that person shall be cut off from among his people.

"'"For six days work may be done, but on the seventh day there is a Sabbath of complete rest, holy to the LORD; whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall surely be put to death.

"'"So the sons of Israel shall observe the Sabbath to celebrate the Sabbath throughout their generations as a perpetual covenant."

"'It is a sign between Me and the sons of Israel forever; for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, but on the seventh day He ceased from labor, and was refreshed.'"

Now, please understand, beloved, the New Testament abrogates the Sabbath completely. Believers are not required to observe the Sabbath during the Church Age. We are never commanded to observe the Sabbath in the New Testament. I could give you a number of passages to affirm that statement. Paul rebuked the Galatians for thinking God expected them to observe special days, including the Sabbath, especially in Galatians four; and there is never a warning in the New Testament to believers about breaking the Sabbath. In fact, the Jerusalem Council did not impose Sabbath keeping on the Gentile believers, remember in Acts 15. It's purely a matter of Christian liberty, Romans 14 verse five expresses that. The New Testament church met on the first day of the week. That's very clear from Scripture. Acts 20 and verse seven. And now some will argue that Sunday worship was not instituted until the fourth century. That is patently false. From Ignatius of Antioch to Augustine of Hippo, the early church fathers taught that the Old Testament Sabbath had been abolished and that the church now met on the first day of the week, on Sunday. And we read as we did earlier in Colossians two, beginning in verse 16,

"(Therefore) no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day -

"things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ."

 And here, dear friends, you must grasp this: a shadow has no reality. The reality is what makes the shadow. You see, the reality is Christ. He is the substance to the shadow of Jewish foods and festivals. You might say he is the reality that casts its shadow backward in history. The shadow pointed to the substance. Does that make sense?

I heard a guy say the other day, "I was so tired that my shadow laid down to rest." I don't know exactly how that fits into this, but I want you to realize that there's a substance and there's a shadow. So the point is: to preoccupy yourself with a shadow is to insult the substance. You see, imagine seeing a friend and talking to their shadow. It's absurd.  I always ask, like Seventh Day Adventists and other Sabbatarians, "Do you keep all 613 commandments of the Mosaic Law?" "Well, no." "Well, then, how do you decide?" And you show them Colossians two verses 16 and 17, for example. Why are you preoccupied with Christ's shadow rather than Christ himself? Why are you trying to force that on other people, and so forth?

Now, let me give you some examples of Sabbath absurdities, so you can see how Satan took that which God gave - that was pure and holy, to drive them to Christ - and to see what he did with it to make it into something that is absolutely blasphemous. For example, in Exodus 16:29; by the way, the context in that passage is God providing manna for six days, remember, but not on the seventh day as a weekly reminder of the Sabbath laws, and he challenged them to obey, and here's what he said,  "'See, the LORD has given you the sabbath; therefore, He gives you bread for two days on the sixth day. Remain every man in his place; let no man go out of his place on the seventh day.'"

Now, rather than saying, "Okay, we want to honor the Lord with this," what do deceitful hearts do? Come up with a workaround, right? That's exactly what they did. So they would extend the boundaries of what could be called a dwelling place, and of course, this is legal fiction. If you go to Israel today, in fact, if you go to Manhattan, you will see a wire that encloses all of Manhattan to extend the dwelling place, so you can do more on the Sabbath. You see that in Israel as well. It's called an "eruv," e-r-u-v. So an urban area will be enclosed by a wire or a string boundary, which symbolically extends the private domain of Jewish households into public areas, and therefore it will permit activities within it that would normally be forbidden in a public area on the Sabbath. I read about some of the Sabbath regulations from a conservative Christian scholar, a converted Jew, Alfred Edersheim, in his book The Life and Times of Jesus, the section “The Ordinances and Law of the Sabbath Is Laid Down in the Mishnah and the Jerusalem Talmud” - this is not exactly popular reading, but I want to share a little of it with you,

"The eruv," (in other words, that extended boundary that they came up with), converts all of those places into a sort of private dwelling. Thus, supposing a number of small private houses to open into a common court, it would have been unlawful on the Sabbath to carry anything from one of those houses into the other. This difficulty is removed if all the families deposit before the Sabbath some food in the common court, when a connection is established between the various houses, which makes them one dwelling."

Nice workaround. Similarly, he goes on to say,

"An extension of what was allowed as a Sabbath journey might be secured by another commixture, the eruv or connection of boundaries." And here's what they would do, "An ordinary Sabbath day's journey extended 2000 cubits beyond one's dwelling. But if at the boundary of that journey a man deposited on the Friday food for two meals, he thereby constituted it as his dwelling and hence might go on for another 2000 cubits. Lastly, there was another eruv, when narrow streets or blind alleys, were connected into a private dwelling by laying a beam over the entrance or extending a wire or rope along such streets and alleys. This," he says, "by legal fiction, made them 'a private dwelling,' so that everything was lawful there which a man might do on the Sabbath in his own house."

This would be a workaround, for example, of Jeremiah 17 verse 21 and following,

"'"Thus says the LORD, 'Take heed for yourselves and do not carry any load on the Sabbath day, or bring anything in through the gates of Jerusalem.

"'"'You shall not bring a load out of your houses on the sabbath day, nor do any work, but keep the sabbath day holy, as I commanded your forefathers.'"'"

Edersheim comments further on just the absurdity of some of the rabbinic rules that they came up with concerning a beast of burden. He says, "An ass might not be led out on the road with its covering on, unless such had been put on the animal previous to the Sabbath, but it was lawful to lead the animal about in this fashion in one's courtyard. The same rule applied to a pack saddle, provided it were not fastened on by girth and back strap. Upon this, one of the rabbis is reported as bursting into the declaration that this formed part of those Sabbath laws." He went on to say, "which were like mountains suspended by a hair, and yet in all these wearisome details, there is not a single trace of anything spiritual, not a word even to suggest higher thoughts of God's holy day and its observances."

Oh, dear friends, the staggering depths of hypocrisy. There are 24 chapters in the Talmud, which is essentially the primary source of Jewish law. 24 chapters that focus solely on Sabbath restriction and the Mishnah, which is the main text of the Talmud. I can list 39 major types of labors forbidden on the Sabbath day. I'm not going to read all of them to you, but let me give you some: no baking, weaving, making two loops, weaving two threads, separating two threads, tying, untying, sewing stitches, tearing, trapping, writing two or more letters, erasing two or more letters, building, (which included you can't open an umbrella, which is analogous to erecting a tent and falls under the category of construction), extinguishing a fire, kindling a fire, for preparing a meal. By the way, they have in Israel Shabbat elevators - maybe you've been there on Shabbat - when you get into the elevator; if you get into the Jewish elevator, all of the buttons are already pushed, like kids used to like to do, and you get on; all of them are already pushed, so that way you don't ever push for a floor and thus light a fire and thus violate the Sabbath. You couldn't put the finishing touch on an object. You couldn't transport an object between private and public domains, or over four cubits within public domain, and on and on and goes. So, I mean, rabbis just conjured up all kinds of regulations that impacted everything imaginable to somehow earn their way into heaven. John MacArthur records more of Edersheim's commentary, and I like what he said:

"There were laws about wine, honey, milk, spitting, writing, and getting dirt off clothes to avoid work. Scribes could not carry their pins, or tailors their needles, or students their books. You couldn't carry anything heavier than a dried fig, and if the object in question had been picked up in a public place, it could only be set down in a private place. If the object were tossed into the air, it had to be caught with the same hand. To catch it with the other hand would constitute work and therefore be a violation of the Sabbath. No insects could be killed. No candle or flame could be lit or extinguished. Nothing could be bought or sold. No bathing was allowed, since water might spill onto the floor and accidentally wash it. No furniture could be moved inside the house, since it might create ruts in the dirt floor and thereby constitute plowing."

Glad they thought of that.

"An egg could not be boiled, even if one did even if all one did was place it in the hot desert sand. A radish could not be left in salt because it would become a pickle and pickling constituted work. Sick people were only allowed enough treatment to keep them alive. Any medical treatment that improved their condition was considered work and therefore prohibited. It was not even permissible for women to look in a mirror, since they might be tempted to pull out any gray hairs they spotted."

Some of us are way beyond that.

"Nor were they allowed to wear jewelry, since jewelry weighs more than a dried fig."

You get the idea, and I know we laugh at this, but folks, this is what Satan can do in the human heart to distort the truth; so much of their religion was a sham.

So, with this background, we come to our text first of all under the heading "A Sabbath Violation in a Grain Field. Notice verse one, "Now it happened that when he was passing through some grain fields on a Sabbath..." by the way, there would be many pathways through fields in rural areas, and they do much of the same thing today in underdeveloped countries that I've been to - so they're passing through some grain fields on a Sabbath, "...and His disciples were picking the heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands, and eating the grain." Now this is probably wheat or barley, and they're obviously hungry, and the wheat and the barley is obviously ready for harvest, so it means it would have been between April and August. And we know that God allowed travelers to pick grain - Deuteronomy 23:25, "When you enter your neighbor's standing grain, then you may pluck the heads with your hand, but you shall not wield a sickle in your neighbor's standing grain, so this was permissible."

"But," verse two, "But some of the Pharisees said, 'Why do you do what is not lawful on the Sabbath?'" Now, by the way, I have to laugh at this because they have already broken the Sabbath by traveling 3000 feet beyond their dwelling, right? So I mean, they're seeing the speck in somebody else's eye, but not the log in their own. So why are you doing this? This is unlawful to do on the Sabbath, which, by the way, is not true. God made a provision for them to do that, as we just read. So the Pharisees now are dogging Jesus and the disciples, and according to their rabbinic laws and traditions, they are violating some of their laws. For example, the law says, "no reaping," well, you're guilty of picking grain. "No sifting," you remove the husks and the shell. "No threshing,” - you rub the grain together in your hands. "No winnowing" - you threw the chaff in the air. "No preparing a meal" - you ate the grain after you prepared it. Don't you hate being around people like that? By the way, the punishment was to be stoned to death because you violated God's covenant. I mean, this is just absurd.

Well, Jesus, of course, saw right through these clowns. He knew what was going on. So Jesus said to them in verse three, "'Have you not even read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him...'" In other words, you are obviously ignorant, you great scholars, of a similar scenario recorded in First Samuel 21, that utterly refuse your self-serving ridiculous accusations.

Verse four, "'...how he entered the house of God and took and ate consecrated bread, which is not lawful for any to eat except the priests alone, and gave it to his companions?'"  You're obviously not aware of that, are you? By the way, the context there, you may recall, was David and his men were fleeing from the jealous rage of King Saul, who wanted to kill them, and they had traveled four miles from Gibeah, which means "hill"; that was the home of King Saul. They traveled up to Nob, which was the city of the priests, and on top of Mount Scopus, which is about a mile or so northeast of Jerusalem. Well, they needed some food, they were hungry, and in First Samuel 21, beginning in verse six, "So the priest gave him consecrated bread; for there was no bread there but the bread of the Presence, which was removed before the LORD, in order to put hot bread in its place when it was taken away." By the way, the consecrated bread or the bread of the Presence was "removed," it says, "from the Lord," and that refers to that they would have 12 loaves that were placed on the altar as food for the priests, and after seven days they replaced the old loaves with 12 fresh loaves, and only the priests were allowed to eat week old bread (Leviticus 24:9).

So consequently, in that scenario, you have a vested Aaronic priest, his name was Ahimelech, and he had the authority to make a judgment call regarding specific interpretations and applications of Torah since the preservation of life was at stake, he agreed to David's request and thus violated the ceremonial law, so to speak. So consistent with common rabbinic method of argumentation, Jesus argues from the lesser to the greater - a little bit technical, but it's fascinating to see how all this works. And the point with all of this is simply to say, "Okay, Pharisees, let me ask you: If a human priest like Ahimelech could show compassion and supposedly violated God's ceremonial law to save the life of David and his men, then surely the Son of God, who is the Lord of the Sabbath can disregard some ridiculous man-made rule like we have here in your rabbinic tradition."

 Let me give you another illustration in Matthew's account. Jesus exposed again the inconsistency of the Pharisees in their administration of even their own made-up laws. In Matthew 12 verse five, Jesus says, "'Or have you not read in the Law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple break the Sabbath and are innocent?'" Well, that's interesting. The point is, the ancient priests had to light fires on the altar to slaughter the animals for sacrifice, or for the sacrifice of the animals that were slaughtered, and clearly that would have been a violation that you've come up with here. Again, the hypocrisy associated with legalism and authoritarianism is fraught with double standards. He went on to describe what happened there, in verse six, it says,

"'But I say to you that something greater than the temple is here.

"'But if you had known what this means, "I DESIRE COMPASSION, AND NOT A SACRIFICE," (he's referring to Hosea 6:6), "'You would have not condemned the innocent.'"

So again, you have another example of Jesus demonstrating how these religious leaders didn't have a compassionate bone in their body. And of course, I would add that the main emphasis even of that text in Matthew is the deity of Christ.

So, back to Luke six. He was saying to them in verse five, "'The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.'" Obviously, he was saying a lot more than what we have recorded here, but that was the gist of it. And of course, the phrase "the Son of Man" is a messianic title that Daniel revealed all the way back in Daniel chapter seven; and so Jesus is basically saying, "Okay, you want to know why the disciples are doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath? All right, here it is. It's because it is not unlawful, and because I gave them permission." In fact, Mark chapter two verse 27 adds this, "Jesus said to them, 'The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.'" So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath. In other words, you're looking at the Creator God here. I am the Lord of the Sabbath. I am the one who has supreme authority over the Sabbath that I instituted at creation.

So we have a Sabbath violation in the grain field, and he gives another illustration or we have it recorded here in Luke's gospel: a Sabbath violation in a synagogue. Notice verse six,

"On another Sabbath He entered the synagogue and was teaching; and there was a man there whose right hand was withered.

"The scribes and the Pharisees were watching Him closely to see if He healed on the Sabbath, so that they might find reason to accuse Him.

"But he knew what they were thinking, and He said to the man with the withered hand, 'Get up and come forward!' And he got up and came forward.

"And Jesus said to them, 'I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save a life or to destroy it?'"

And then verse 10 says, "After looking around at them all..." let me pause here. Mark adds this in Mark 3:5, "After looking around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart..." so back to Luke 6:10, "After looking around at them all, He said to him, 'Stretch out your hand!' And he did so, and his hand was restored."

By the way, I mean that is absolutely astounding, is it not? Can you imagine that man looking at his withered hand, whatever it was, and other people seeing that, and suddenly it is instantly perfectly? I might add... publicly restored; a recreation, if you will. You would think people would just be praising God at that point. No, look at verse 11, "But they themselves were filled with rage, and discussed together what they might do to Jesus."

Unimaginable. Mark three and verse six adds this, "The Pharisees went out and immediately began conspiring with the Herodians against Him, as to how they might destroy Him." You see, what's going on there is Roman law did not give them the power of capital punishment, so they had to come up with a workaround; and they're great at workarounds. Plus, they could see that the people, as we would say in our culture, everybody's trending towards Jesus, right? So they got a big problem here. I mean, this miracle is obvious once again; no one could deny it, and so they're furious. Their power and their authority was being threatened publicly.

Moreover, Jesus, every time they encountered him and had a any kind of a discussion with him, he made them look like fools. So his popularity is gaining momentum, and they're threatened. So they began, as Mark says, "conspiring with the Herodians against Him as to how they might destroy Him." You see, they needed Greco-Roman reinforcements here to hatch a plan. By the way, this is also quite fascinating when you think about it. You see, the Herodians were secular Jews that were loyal to Herod, and they were considered to be traitors. Moreover, when you study what the Herodians thought about the Pharisees, you'll see that they thought they were a bunch of idiots, a bunch of religious con artists, and that's in many ways, what they were. But the enemy of my enemy is my friend, right? And so that's what's going on here. We're going to get with Herodians here, and we're going to find a way to get rid of this guy. Well, enough of all of that, folks, what I want you to see is: God hates hypocrisy; and it is so easy to manifest itself in the human heart. He despises religious ritual that is bereft of of genuine love for him. And the Pharisees were the poster child of all of this. I mean, they were scrupulous, fastidious keepers of the Sabbath-they observed every minutia - or tried to - every minutia of not only God's requirements but the myriad of requirements that they concocted; yet in their hearts, they had no compassion for people, for the man with the withered hand.

Moreover, in the midst of their righteousness, they're scheming to kill Jesus. Oh, dear friends, the deadly deception of mechanical orthodoxy, an empty ritual. And here we must look at ourselves as well. It is easy for we, as evangelicals, to come to church just merely out of tradition, rather than aspiration. How many people, maybe even in this auditorium, came here today not to worship the Lord in spirit and in truth, but because that's what you do on Sundays in the South? That's what you've done all your life - just tradition, you know, this is kind of what we do. How many people claim to love the Lord their God, and yet throughout the week they exist as though, or they live as though he doesn't even exist? And then people wonder why their life is meaningless, why they are miserable, why they are empty, why they are sad. I had someone tell me the other day, "I feel like my life is going nowhere." And when I asked that person about their walk with Christ, they didn't even understand what I was saying, and yet they haven't missed a church service in years.

So when we look at this, we must be reminded also of ourselves. My friends, if your worship is merely out of duty rather than desire, you must understand that God equates your religion with the wickedness of witchcraft and idolatry. This kind of empty ritualism is why God brought judgment. You will recall upon Judah at the hands of the Assyrians, about 700 years prior to these scenarios, remember, Israel was supposed to be a channel of blessing to the nations, but instead they rebelled against the Lord their God, and they had this empty worship, just formalism, that God equated to witchcraft and idolatry. He even compared them to the the wickedness of homosexuality of Sodom and Gomorrah in Isaiah one verse nine; and so we see how God denounced their ritual acts apart from genuine heartfelt obedience in Isaiah one. Let me read this to you, beginning in verse 11, He says,

"'What are your multiplied sacrifices to Me?' says the Lord. 'I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed cattle; and I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls, lambs, or goats.

"'When you come to appear before Me, who requires of you this trampling of My courts?

"'Bring your worthless offerings no longer, Incense is an abomination to Me. New moon and sabbath, the calling of assemblies - I cannot endure iniquity and the solemn assembly.'"

 Dropping down to verse 16,

"'Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from My sight. Cease to do evil,

"'learn to do good; seek justice, reprove the ruthless, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.'"

My friends, I would ask you: Do you worship the Lord in the privacy of your heart, in spirit, and in truth? Do you have a secret devotion to the Lord your God during the week? In other words, do you worship him privately, in the sincerity of your heart, or just publicly because that's kind of what you're supposed to do? Do you truly love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength? I know we all fail there, but is that the desire of your heart? And to love your neighbor as yourself? Those are the supreme commandments. I mean, do you love his Word? Do you long to be nourished by it? Do you have a hungering and a thirsting for righteousness? Do you have a burden for the lost? Do you hate your sin and your hypocrisy more than what you see in others? Do you long to see the Lord return in all of his glory? Folks, this is the stuff of genuine saving faith, as opposed to like the Pharisees, just a religious veneer, where we're just Christian in name only. The Pharisees were all sizzle and no steak. I mean, they were as phony as a transgender pastor wearing a rainbow robe, like we would see today, and equally abhorrent to God. You know, it's for this reason that the Apostle Paul tells us, under the inspiration of the of the Spirit, "test yourselves, to see if you're in the faith. Examine yourselves or do you not recognize this about yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you, unless indeed you fail the test." you see, if you were to ask those Pharisees in that day, "Do you believe that you are honoring and worshiping the Lord?" "Oh, yes, more so than all others." But oh, how deceived they were!

My friends, a hypocrite may have the same firm confidence that they are saved, but what distinguishes genuine saving faith from presumption is the Spirit's witness in the heart. We read about this, for example, in Romans eight verse 16, "The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God." By the way, that doesn't mean that in some mystical way you hear some voice saying you're saved. "Don't worry." No, no, no, no. No, what that means is the evidence of the fruit of the Spirit, like you would see, for example, in Galatians five, is manifest in your life because the Spirit is the one that is producing that, and you can look at your life and you see the fruits of genuine repentance, and you see the fruits of the Spirit in your life, and others can see it as well - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control. You see that. It's the Spirit of God that helps you in your conscience look at that and say, "Oh, I am woefully, woefully behind in all of this, I lack in so many ways. But Lord, that is the desire of my heart, and little by little I see more of those fruits on the vine of my life solely because of your grace, but I am never satisfied with it." Folks. That is the stuff of genuine saving faith, not legalistic "do this and do that" because that's what your religion says to do.

John MacArthur said, "When believers are compelled by love for God, feel deep hatred for sin, reject the world, long for Christ's return, love other Christians, experience answered prayer, discern between truth and error, long for more, and move toward Christlikeness, the work of the Holy Spirit is evidenced, and those believers have witnessed that they are truly children of God." Beloved, this is my burden for each one of you. May God grant full assurance to all who truly know him and honor him, and may he also bring great conviction to those who don't. Let's pray together,

Father, thank you for your word that penetrates even the most recalcitrant heart. I pray that by the power of your Spirit, the words of truth that you have brought to bear upon our souls this day will bear much fruit to the praise of your glory. We thank you for your grace, for your goodness, for your long suffering, for your loving kindness, and how we long to see you come and take us unto yourself. Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly. We love you and we praise you. Amen.