MATTHEW 12 COMMON RELIGIOUS MISTAKES2020 Teaching by Jerry B Simmons

Teaching Transcript: Matthew 12 Common Religious Mistakes

You are listening to FerventWord, an online Bible study ministry with teachings and tools to help you grow deeper in your relationship with God. The following message was taught by Jerry Simmons in 2020. Well, this morning as we spend our time together in Matthew chapter 12, we're looking at this encounter between Jesus and some religious leaders, the Pharisees. And I've titled the message this morning, Common Religious Mistakes.

Here, as we look at this encounter, as we look at the interaction that takes place, there's some really valuable lessons to learn. Now, for those of us who have been around a bit, you know the Pharisees, you're familiar with them. It can be very easy for us to kind of scorn the Pharisees and have a bit of contempt for the Pharisees as, uh,

We see the interactions that they had with Jesus. And yet at the same time, I would remind us to consider that although, of course, yes, they rejected Jesus and were antagonistic against Jesus, they weren't always that way. And not every Pharisee was that way, but there was this

from wanting to please God, wanting to know God, wanting to walk with God into this stubborn religion, ritualistic approach that they had when Jesus was encountering them. And it wasn't that they began that way or seeking that out, but that they kind of migrated into that position over time. And so we learn from the Pharisees some important things

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You sit down to a nice meal, looks delicious, smells amazing. You take a big bite, your mouth is full, and then suddenly someone starts praying. And you're like, oh, I want to pray. And then while someone's praying, you're like, what do I do? Do I chew on this? It's going to be loud. Is someone going to hear that I'm chewing on this? Do I try to swallow it? Do I just hold it in my mouth? The whole prayer? I don't know if you can see my, in my mind, I'm puffed out like that, but probably not.

But you've probably experienced that, right? You take a bite. Oh, you're not supposed to eat before you pray. Broke that religious rule. There's another one that maybe you do. If you sit near the back, you probably hear me do it all the time. It's that awkward moment when you start singing before the worship team does.

My timing's terrible, and I'll start singing the next line with the wrong lyrics while nobody else is singing. It's a mistake that I make religiously. And it might be something you've experienced too. Or maybe you've had that experience where you're handed the communion elements, you partake, you're down in the juice, and the pastor says, hold your portion until the end. And you're like...

Did anybody see me? I've heard accounts and tales of people who have had that similar experience, and then later on, when everybody partook, they pretended, I'll pretend to partake, so it kind of fit in, you know, I don't want to make that religious statement.

Well, those are not really the kinds of mistakes we're talking about this morning. Those are just some fun things to consider to get us started because the rest of the message is going to be heavy and condemning. And so you need a little bit of lightheartedness to start off. Okay, so common religious mistakes. We're going to look at four mistakes that we can see develop as we work our way through this passage with Jesus and the Pharisees, the religious leaders. The first mistake for us to consider is overemphasizing traditions.

This is a mistake the Pharisees made. This is a mistake that you and I will tend towards and easily slip into. And so it's something for us to consider, to overemphasize traditions. Check out verse 1 and 2 again. It says, And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, look,

your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath. And so you picture the scene here. Here's Jesus and his disciples. It's a Saturday, the Sabbath day. They're walking together.

through the grain field, probably on the way to the synagogue where the next account is going to take place within the synagogue. And so they're on their way to church essentially. And on their way, they're walking through this field that has grain that is ready for harvest. And it tells us that the disciples are hungry. We don't know how hungry they were. We don't know if they were starving or they were just like, hey, you know, we haven't had second breakfast yet, but they're hungry.

And so here they are walking through the grain fields and there's this good looking grain right there within their reach. And they begin to take pieces of grain from this field and they kind of thresh the grain, get away the chaff, blow away the chaff. And then there's the kernels of grain that they can eat. And so they begin to pop that in their mouth and enjoy a little bit of a snack on the way to church on that Saturday morning.

Well, the Pharisees are there on the scene. They're maybe traveling to the synagogue with them. You know, it's a common path, perhaps. They're on the journey with them, or they're just tagging along to try to, you know, find some fault in Jesus so that they can, you know, have their way and get rid of him. But they're there. They see what's happening. They're watching the disciples take the grain and begin to eat it. And they begin to accuse the disciples. They say, what your disciples are doing is not lawful to do,

And so they're concerned about the law. Now, as we consider this passage, there's two laws that we need to be mindful of. The first one is found in Deuteronomy chapter 23, verse 25, where God in establishing his law says, when you come into your neighbor's standing grain, you may pluck the heads with your hand, but you shall not use a sickle on your neighbor's standing grain.

Part of the law that God had established was that when you're walking past, you're walking through, you happen to find yourself in your neighbor's field, God allowed in the law, it's okay, go ahead and partake of the fruit that is there.

Now you can't get a sickle and start harvesting and that's stealing, but God was building into the law the room for there to be generosity for the landowner and for there to be provision for the poor and those who are hungry and those who are in need. And so as you're walking through,

You had the freedom to, protected by God's law, partake in that way. Now, you know, someone comes onto your property and starts taking fruit off your tree, you might be like, hey, what do you think you're doing? We have a different perspective on that, perhaps. For them, in their culture and in their law, this was protected behavior. And so the issue that the Pharisees had with the disciples was not the behavior itself. Any other day, they wouldn't have had an issue with this. Walking through, plucking the heads of grain, eating it, no problem.

But because it's the Sabbath day, they had an issue. And they said, this is not lawful. This is breaking the law of God. And so that's the second law that we need to be mindful of. One example of this law, it's found throughout the Old Testament, but Exodus chapter 20, verse 10, God says, the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it, you shall do no work, you nor your son or your daughter,

nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your strangers who is within your gates. And so here God sets apart the seventh day, Saturday, says this is a special day. This is the Sabbath day. It's holy unto the Lord and you shall do no work. And to kind of remove, you know, some of the loopholes that

People might seek out. He says, look, your kids can't do work either. So you're like, hey, I'm not doing any work. I'm obeying the Sabbath, but you're making your kids work. No, no. God says, no, that's not okay. And your servants can't work either. And your strangers who are within your midst. Nobody is to work on the Sabbath day. It's to be a day of rest. You shall not. And so that's the law that God had established. This is the law that the Pharisees were accusing the disciples of breaking.

Now, having this law, the Jewish people, wanting to obey the law, wanting to honor the Lord and honor the Sabbath, they began to wrestle with the question, well, what is work? Makes sense, right? I mean, God doesn't elaborate and give a lot of detail here. He just says, you shall do no work. And so, well, if I want to obey the Lord and honor the Lord on the Sabbath, well, what is work? And so the Jewish teachers began to develop a systematic approach

detailed outline of what work is. And again, I would suggest that this started out with a sincere desire to love God and obey God. We want to honor God and obey this commandment. But what it morphed into over time was a strict legalism. And so they had this list of 39 categories of work. God said, you shall do no work. What does that mean? Well, here's a list of 39 things that

Let's walk through them one by one. No, I'm not going to do that. 39 things that were forbidden. This is what God means when he says work was what they were taught. The first one is carrying. Now that's kind of broad too. I mean, what does it mean to carry? I'm wearing clothes. Does that mean I'm carrying something? What does it mean to carry? And so they determined, well, two dried figs. That was the limit of the weight of what you could carry.

They also had rules about what manner of ways. You can't carry something with the palm of your hand, but you can carry something with the back of your hand. So if you can balance it, you're good. And each one of these had its own extra details. And so you didn't just have the 39 categories, but you had this exponential list of, here's the rules, here's the regulations. And it became a burdensome thing for the people to try to follow and to obey.

In this particular instance, while the religious leaders, the Pharisees, are accusing the disciples, they're accusing them of breaking the law in a couple different ways. One of the things they were doing was harvesting, because to pluck the head of grain off of the stalk was harvesting. And so they were breaking that law. It's number 17 on the list of 39. But then they were threshing. Now, normally they would have a threshing floor where they would break away the kernel from the chaff. And

The disciples here were doing that in their hand. They were just kind of rubbing it and breaking away the kernel and then they were winnowing. Normally on a threshing floor, they would throw it up in the air and the wind would blow away the chaff and the kernel would be left. But in a smaller scale, they were doing that themselves. And so they're harvesting, they're threshing, they're winnowing the wheat and then they're partaking of it. And by their understanding, they're fully convinced. They're not just making up something, you know, like,

Just to look for an accusation. They're fully persuaded. This is breaking the law of God. But it actually was not breaking the law of God. It was breaking the traditions that had been developed about the law of God. Breaking the traditions that they held as equal weight with the law of God. But it was not actually what God had declared.

And so the result was for the people of Israel, it was a burden upon them. The people were heavy laden because of these traditions that were created by men, but treated as the law of God. And so if you back up a few verses into Matthew chapter 11, you'll understand a little bit when Jesus says in verse 28, "'Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.'"

The people were burdened. Anytime that our traditions are treated as the law of God, it becomes a burden. Anytime that our teachings, our traditions, our rules, our laws, our regulations are treated with the same weight and

As what God says, it will become a burden to us and to those around us. And an overemphasis on traditions will have this result because it's asking more than what God is asking for. It's requiring more of ourselves. It's requiring more of others around us than what God actually requires. And so it becomes burdensome. And the challenging thing for us in all of this is that we all develop traditions.

And we have to be conscious of this reality. We have to be conscious of the difference between our traditions and what God actually says. Because when we overemphasize our traditions, when we give those the same weight, when we hold ourselves or others to them, it becomes a wearisome thing, a burdensome thing that God never intended. Jesus later on

in dealing with the religious leaders again, says you teach as doctrine the traditions of men. This is the issue that really is at the core of what's happening here in Matthew chapter 12. Now we can develop all kinds of traditions and I'm not going to try to go through them all.

I would leave that to you because, well, we all have our traditions. Here's the way that I spend time with God and his word. And it's this method. It's this formula. It's this pattern that I follow. And here's the way that I pray. And here's the way that I attend church. And here's the way that we should do this. And here's the things that we should practice. And here's the things that we shouldn't practice. And we all have our traditions. As a church, we all have our traditions.

We have traditions. We develop traditions. Here's how we do service and here's the normal order of service and we have traditions that we hold to. As a Calvary Chapel, you know, fellowship of churches, we have traditions that we hold to and things that we follow and they all start out great. They all start out with great intentions. They all start out with a seeking to know God and walk with God and traditions in and of themselves are not bad but becomes harmful.

when they're treated as if they are the commands of God. Do you have traditions that have become burdensome to you? Traditions that are burdensome perhaps to others because you apply these to them whether they like it or not? We have traditions about, you know, the proper posture for prayer and

How you should close your eyes and fold your hands. Traditions about our Bible versions. Traditions about praying before meals. Traditions about church attendance and what that should look like. Traditions about reading schedules. Traditions about 10%. Traditions about, we have traditions. And again, they're not necessarily bad. And they start out with good intentions of wanting to know God and walk with God. But I would encourage you to consider, have your traditions become burdensome? The Apostle John says,

In 1 John 5, verse 3 says this, this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome. Here's what it looks like to love God, John says, that we keep his commandments. And it's not a burdensome, it's not a grudging, like, oh man, it's so hard to walk with God, to do what God wants, to follow him, to please him. Oh, it's such a, you know, bummer to have to do this. It's not burdensome.

This is not what God intends. Now there are challenging things and God calls us to repent and our flesh, you know, would say, no, no, this is burdensome to repent of sin. No, that's our flesh. We do battle with those kinds of things. But at the same time, even when there is those flesh battles, there is this rest that Jesus provides. And it's not burdensome because we love God, because we're walking with God. And so we need to pay attention to what's happening with the religious leaders here.

Because it can easily happen to us. It's a common religious mistake. We get entrenched in our traditions and it becomes a burden because it's no longer out of love for God that we're seeking to do these things, but it's out of the keeping of our traditions. We're requiring more of ourselves, perhaps more of others than what God actually requires. Well, moving on to verses three through five, we'll find the second religious mistake and that is neglecting the whole counsel.

This is another one that we need to pay attention to because, well, there can be in our studies, in our pursuit of God, in our spending time with God and His Word, there can be a temptation to focus on some of our favorite passages, to focus on perhaps our favorite testament, whether it be new or old, to focus on one aspect of the Word of God and neglect the others.

Check out what the Lord says in verse 3 and 4. He says, Jesus challenges them with a question. Have you not read? Now, obviously, they had read Exodus, the instructions about the Sabbath. They had read that.

They knew that. Jesus says, have you not read 1 Samuel 21? 1 Samuel chapter 21 gives us the account that Jesus is referring to here. It's when David has fled from Saul. Saul has tried to kill him again. And David had to run out in haste to save his life. But he finds himself heading out into the wilderness with no provisions. He didn't have time to, you know, gather up some supplies or anything like that. And so he stops off at the tabernacle on his way out

And Ahimelech, the priest, is there, and David says, I'm hungry. You have any food? And Ahimelech says, well, the only food we have is the showbread. And the showbread was a special bread that God had instructed the children of Israel to make for the tabernacle. Every week, they would bake 12 loaves of bread that would go on the table of showbread inside the sanctuary. And God had instructed every week, these 12 loaves should be replaced. And

And the ones that are coming off, the week old bread, well, that would be given to the priests. It's found in Leviticus chapter 24, verse 9. God says, it shall be, that is the showbread, shall be for Aaron and his sons. They shall eat it in a holy place for it is most holy to him from the offerings of the Lord made by fire by a perpetual statute. This is Aaron's and his sons. It belongs to the high priests and the rest of the priests.

They are the ones who are to partake of this bread and it's to be done in a holy place because it was holy bread. It was dedicated unto the Lord and meant to be used only for that purpose. And so when David comes to Ahimelech, Ahimelech says, well, I have the show bread. It's supposed to only be for the priests. But Ahimelech decides, you know, I think it's the right thing to do to go ahead and get, this is all the bread I have. And so rather than you go hungry, you

It's better for me to give you this bread that was dedicated to be used for this purpose. God had given instruction about the bread, but in this case, the high priest said there's room for an exception to those instructions. And so he gave the bread to David. Now there's a lot of discussion that could be had around this passage. I'm not going to get into some of the details, but if you want to wrestle with it in your mind, you're welcome to.

Part of that is in the account in 1 Samuel chapter 21, it tells us that David is alone, but tells Ahimelech that he has companions with him. And then Jesus refers to it as if David does have companions. And so some people wrestle with that and you're welcome to do that. I would encourage you to go check it out if it bothers you. Spend some time in 1 Samuel 21, spend some time here in Matthew chapter 12, and let the Lord wrestle with you about these things for a little bit.

if that is intriguing to you. But that's not the point. We're not going to get caught up in the weeds here. The point that Jesus is saying is that, look, this is an occasion that happened. God does not condemn it. He doesn't rebuke them. He doesn't rebuke Ahimelech. He doesn't rebuke David for this. Have you not read 1 Samuel 21? Going on into verse 5, he says, or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath, the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are blameless? So he gives them another example.

Okay, I know you've read Exodus. You know about the Sabbath. That's your favorite passage, right? But have you read the rest of the law? Which gives instructions to the priests that would require them to work on the Sabbath. Now again, the Sabbath law was on the Sabbath day, you shall do no work. But the priests themselves said,

were required to work on the Sabbath. In fact, they were required to work even more, twice as much, maybe three times as much in some cases. Numbers chapter 28, verse 9 and 10 tells us on the Sabbath day, two lambs in their first year without blemish and two tenths of an ephah of fine flour as a green offering mixed with oil with its drink offering. This is the burnt offering for every Sabbath, besides the regular burnt offering with its drink offering.

And so God had instruction for the priests. Not only were they to work on the Sabbath, but they were to do more work. Because it was the Sabbath, they were to offer extra sacrifice. And so Jesus uses this as an example to say, there is the law, you shall do no work on the Sabbath, but it's not the way that you're applying it to all instances of life. That's not the way that God intended it.

There's room for God to override that instruction. There's room for God to change and apply things differently for certain circumstances and situations. It's not that the law is canceled, but you could understand it as the law can be superseded. We have a speed limit law, right? But we also understand when an ambulance exceeds the speed limit, right? There's things that supersede that law, right?

In a similar way, God established the law for the Sabbath, but it was never intended by the Lord to be a law that would then be burdensome and inflict heavy afflictions upon the people. It was not intended that way. There's some laws that, well, God supersedes with other laws. An example of this that you might consider is the law of gravity. Now, I know you believe in the law of gravity because none of you are bracing for impact with the ceiling.

You know, you're not, you believe in the law of gravity. It's there, right? You know it. You're just held in place, the law of gravity. And yet, we have things that fly. We have birds that fly. We have airplanes that fly. These are not canceling out the law of gravity, but they're putting into effect other laws that then supersede the law of gravity. The law of gravity is still in effect with those that fly. And it's actually a part of

the physics of what's taking place for the planes that fly, for the birds that fly. It's part of the reality. It's part of what makes flight possible. And so it's not canceled out. It's not that the law of gravity is removed, but understanding that there are laws that supersede other laws. And the law of God is, well, it's developed the same way. Some laws are ceremonial laws, and there are exceptions to those laws. There are

occasions where those laws do not apply. Some laws are moral laws that never change and that there are no exceptions to. Some laws, God gives instruction and like the Sabbath law for the priests, God instructed them. And so the law for them to do the sacrifices supersedes the law of the Sabbath for them. But here's the point. Jesus is saying, you know, this law, this Sabbath law, and you're consumed with that. You've got a lot of focus on that.

But what's happening is you're neglecting the rest of what God has to say about the Sabbath. And this is an important lesson to learn. The Bible is not an encyclopedia where each subject is grouped together and dealt with exhaustively all in one place. If you want to know everything that God says, God's whole heart about the Sabbath, you can't just look at one portion. But you need to consider the whole counsel.

and see what God says about the Sabbath all throughout the scriptures. If you want to know what God says about marriage, you can't just pull out one portion and make that, you know, the final statement. But you have to look at all of what God says. From the beginning to the end, you have to understand the whole picture of what God is saying. That he teaches us, not all in one place in group subjects. We have the love chapter, right? 1 Corinthians chapter 13. Now we call it that. God doesn't call it that.

That's not everything that God has to say about love. There's some great truths and important values that we need to learn from 1 Corinthians chapter 13, but that's not all that God has to say about love. And when we wrestle with how can a God of love, you know, if God is loving, then how can this, right? We wrestle with that because we have only one aspect of love that we're looking at, that we're paying attention to, but we need to consider the whole counsel of

of what God says about love. Not just one aspect, not just one portion, not just one part. And there can be, for each of us, the tendency, the temptation, to fall into a neglect of the whole counsel. Where we have our favorite portions, we have our favorite subjects, we have our favorite topics, and we forget, we dismiss, we don't know what the rest of the scriptures have to say. We need to learn the whole counsel of God.

This happens sometimes with the subject of prophecy. There's a tendency for us, if we begin down the path of studying prophecy, it's a good path, great things in store, but sometimes the study of prophecy can come at the exclusion of the rest of the counsel of God's Word. Sometimes the study of apologetics can come at the expense of the rest of what the Scriptures have to say. And so we need to be aware that

of our tendency to gravitate towards our favorites, what matters most to us, what we think about, what we enjoy, what's important to us. And understand that what God speaks, he doesn't just do the whole thing all in one place, but he speaks all throughout his word. And that's why it's so important. That's why we always encourage everybody to journey with us through the Bible, spend some time getting to know. It's why we, even though we live in the New Testament era with Christ, we

We still spend time in the Old Testament. Because if the only righteousness we know is the righteousness that is imputed to us by believing in Jesus Christ, we have a limited understanding of righteousness. That's not all that there is to say about righteousness. That's not the only kind of righteousness. It is an important kind of righteousness, and we need to know that kind of righteousness. But there's also other things that God has to say about righteousness. And we can find ourselves in a place where we neglect the whole counsel of

of God's word in favoring certain portions, certain passage, certain subjects. It's a common religious mistake. Well, moving on to verse six, we get the third mistake to consider this morning, and that is missing the point of knowing God. This is one that, again, like the Pharisees, we can easily fall into. And although we would be quick to condemn the Pharisees, we would be quick to, you know, be critical of them. If you've been a Christian for any length of time,

I'm sure you found yourself in a place where you have attempted to relate to God in a way that you've actually missed the point of knowing God, walking with God, connecting with God. In verse 6, Jesus says, yet I say to you that in this place there is one greater than the temple. Now this is attached to the previous verse where he is saying, look, the priests are charged to

with offering sacrifices on the Sabbath day. It would, for anybody else, be a profaning of the Sabbath to behave that way. But it's not for them because God has given them this instruction. And the argument that Jesus is building here is that the temple itself is greater than the Sabbath law. And so it requires and it authorizes then for this work to be done. It supersedes the Sabbath law.

But then what Jesus goes on to say is, and then one greater than the temple is here. And so the temple supersedes the Sabbath law, but Jesus supersedes even the temple law. The religious leaders, the Pharisees, they were students of the scriptures. They knew the word. They memorized the word. They could recite it. They could communicate it. They could articulate it. Probably far better than any of us can. They devoted their lives to the study of the scriptures.

And so when Jesus says, have you not read in verse 3, he's not sincerely asking in the sense of, I don't know, have you read? He's challenging them. I know you've read, but you've forgotten that you've read 1 Samuel chapter 21. In verse 5, when he says, or have you not read? Again, he's challenging them. He's not asking a question. Maybe you haven't read that. He knows they've read that. They've studied the scriptures. They know the law. They know the prophets. They didn't know him.

And that's the point Jesus is making. I say to you that in this place, there is one greater than the temple. You know the law back and forth. You know it, you can quote it, you can recite it, but you're missing the whole point of the law. Putting it another way, Jesus said this in John 5, verse 39. He said, you search the scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life. And these are they which testify of me. You pride yourself in knowing the scriptures, but you don't know the law.

You're very proud of the excellent students you are of the word, but you've missed the point entirely because the scriptures testify of me and you're rejecting me. And there is that possibility for every one of us where we can become students of the word, readers of the word, memorizers of the word, worshipers of the word in a way that doesn't actually connect us to God.

Where God is right there, but we don't know him. We haven't connected to him. We haven't spent time with him. There's not a real relationship there. We've learned about him, perhaps. We've learned about laws and details and trivia and all of those things, perhaps. We don't actually know. We're not actually walking in relationship with him, even though we're immersed in the scriptures.

A few chapters later from John chapter 5, we have in John chapter 8, Jesus challenged the religious leaders again. He says, These religious leaders would declare, we love God. God is our Father. We know Him. We walk with Him. And they could point to their knowledge of the scriptures in support of that.

But here Jesus is calling attention to the reality, but I came from the Father. If you really knew the Father, if you really were your Father, then you would love me because he sent me. They were studying the scriptures. They were spending time in the word in a way that did not connect them to God. They didn't know the heart of God, but they knew the word of God. And this morning, it's important for us to consider, do I know God? Do I know him? Am I connected to him?

Not do I know about him? That's important. We need to know about God. We need to learn about God. But is that the limit of my relationship with God? Maybe think about it this way. How do you know what you know about God? The things that you know about God. You know, hey, people are quick to say all around us. We hear it all the time. You know, here's what God says. Here's what God thinks. Here's God's perspective. And maybe you're one of those who might say that. But how do you know what you know about God?

If what you know about God is primarily what other people have told you about God, can I just suggest that you're doing it wrong? That's not God's intention for you to know about him through somebody else. God wants to reveal himself to you. And he does reveal himself to us through his word. But we need to be careful that we don't spend time engaging in the word, quoting the scriptures and miss the connection to God because

that is intended by the Lord through his word. What if I were to go talk to your friends and family about you? And I learned all kinds of things about you. I learned your favorite color. I learned the way you like your coffee, what time you leave for work, and what time you get home, and the kind of things you do, and what you do for fun, and your favorite kinds of music. And I learned all about you. And then I started walking around, talking to people, and acting like you and I are good friends.

And there you are, and I walk in, and I start telling people about you and what you like and the way you do things. And you're like, who is this guy? How do you know all this stuff about me, you creep? Like, what's wrong with you? You know, if I do that to you, you know that didn't come from relationship with you. That came from some other means. In the same way, God knows. We walk around talking to people about, this is what God wants, this is what God likes, this is what God doesn't like, this is what God thinks, this is what God would handle that situation.

Perhaps, meanwhile, God's saying, what are you talking about? You don't even know me. You might know facts about me. You might know thoughts about me. You might know what other people say about me, but you didn't invest the time with me to learn that from me. And it would be different if I went and investigated you amongst your friends and family, or if I went and spent time with you and learned those things by walking with you, by knowing you, by having that relationship with you.

The same thing when it comes to our relationship with God. We need to approach the scriptures. We need to approach our time with the Lord. We need to approach our prayer time, our church time, in a way that the objective is to connect with God, to meet with God, to know God. Not to just learn stuff. Not to just alleviate our conscience. Not to just be religious or mark off, you know, something in our spiritual checklist. But we spend time with God in his word.

We need to make sure that we're knowing God. We're connecting with him. That it's a real relationship that is developing. Where we're connecting and speaking to God and he is speaking to us. Well, finishing it up in verses 7 and 8, we get the fourth mistake to consider this morning. And that's condemning the guiltless. These are common religious mistakes. Any one of us can easily fall into this trap of overemphasizing traditions.

Taking things that probably started out for good in a desire to love God and know God and walk with God, but then elevating them to the point that they are equal to the law of God. And it becomes burdensome to us and to the people around us. We can make the mistake of neglecting the whole counsel. We take one piece of something that God says and we neglect the rest of what God has to say about that throughout his word.

And we can know it inside and out, backwards and forwards, and yet not actually know the heart of God and the mind of God ourselves. Because we haven't been connecting to God, even though we've spent time in the Word. We don't know Him. And these things build up and bring us to a place where then we begin to condemn the guiltless. We begin to condemn people that God is not seeking to condemn.

In verse 7, it says, Jesus says, And here he quotes from Hosea chapter 6. And so again, he's calling them to the scriptures. You know this portion, but you're neglecting these other portions. 1 Samuel 21, the rest of the teaching about the priests on the Sabbath.

And here in Hosea chapter 6. Now there's an interesting side note that you can meditate on and consider if you would like to later on. In this addressing of the situation, Jesus references the office of prophet, priest, and king. The prophet Hosea here in Hosea chapter 6, quoted in verse 7. He references the priests operating on the Sabbath day. And he references King David and his encounter with Ahimelech.

Prophet, priest, and king. Offices, roles that God had established for the nation of Israel. Roles that Jesus fulfills. All three. He is the prophet, the priest, and the king that was foretold and proclaimed from the very beginning. Interesting things to consider. Here as he quotes from Hosea chapter 6, he's quoting the prophet Hosea when Hosea is challenging the nation of Israel regarding their unfaithfulness to God. And you might be familiar with that passage. It's

When God says your faithfulness is like a morning cloud. Like there was this commitment to be faithful. There was this commitment to walk with God, to know God. There was this commitment. You might call it a resolution. And like a New Year's resolution, like a morning cloud, it's just burned off. It's gone. It's vanished. You said you were going to be faithful. You said you were going to walk with God and it's just long vanished. But what the nation of Israel did, although they were not faithful to God, they

They would continue to come back and offer sacrifices to God. And they would, in a sense, try to cover up their unfaithfulness with their sacrifices. Or they would try to make up for their unfaithfulness with their sacrifices. Or they would try to excuse their unfaithfulness with their sacrifices. They tried to make sacrifices, you know, a free pass for sin. So they could be unjust or unrighteous or unfaithful.

And God speaks to them through the prophet Hosea and says, I desire mercy, not sacrifice. The way you're going about things is all wrong. That's not what I want. I'm not looking for sacrifice to pretend like you're faithful when you're actually not. No, what I want is actual change. Be merciful. Show loving kindness. Be loving towards God. Be loving towards the people around you. God says, that's what I really want. That's what I'm looking for.

And you know this scripture, Pharisees, but you don't know what it means. You could probably quote it, but you don't know what it means. And so it's put you in a position now where you're not willing to show mercy. You're not interested in showing mercy. You don't care about mercy. You're condemning the guiltless. You're all bent out of shape about this Sabbath law, but you're not paying attention to the rest. It's causing you to come against people that God is not against. In just a few verses, it says,

In fact, in the verses that follow after this, Jesus is in a synagogue and they test Jesus again on the Sabbath. Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? And Jesus goes on and heals this man with a withered hand. And then it tells us that the Pharisees went out and plot against Jesus, how they might destroy him. Kind of highlights for us some of the issues of these traditions, some of the issues of neglecting the whole counsel of God and missing the point of knowing God, because it's so obvious, right?

It's not okay to pluck a head of grain and to eat that on the way to synagogue. You can't do that. That's wrong. But it's okay to go plot and destroy someone on a Sabbath day. That's okay. No problem with that. We're fine with that. We can, you know, come up with a plan to kill Jesus. That's legal. That's fine. But to dare to take a, you know, kernel of grain and eat that, no, that's wrong, you know. Like, it's so obvious to us, right? But it wasn't obvious to them. They're all twisted up by their traditions.

by their neglect of the whole counsel of God, and by their lack of knowing God. So they're bitter. They're burdened. They're condemning. It's the way that they were. It wasn't just this instance, but it's the way that they were continually, condemning people that God was not condemning. Remember on another occasion, the religious leaders bring the woman who was caught in adultery before Jesus. Allah says to stone her. What do you think, Jesus? Let's stone her. Ready to condemn. Quick to condemn. Quick to destroy.

Quick to weigh down with guilt. John 3, verse 17, Jesus says, God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. Now, when Jesus comes the second time, there's going to be a judgment. There is going to be a condemnation. There is going to be a dealing with sin in a very severe way. But Jesus says, look, here I am now, first coming of Jesus, different than the second coming. Jesus says, God didn't send me to condemn the world.

Jesus looked at his disciples and he said, that's you. God sent you to condemn the world. No, that's not what Jesus said, okay? In case that's not clear. He didn't say, I'm not going to condemn the world because that's your job. No, no. That's for later. What God has sent me for is to save the world. And so Jesus was friends with sinners. And that doesn't mean that he condoned their sin. And it also doesn't mean that he never addressed their sin or called them to repentance.

Jesus did address sin and call people to repentance. But at the same time, he was friends with sinners. His approach to them was different than the scribes and the Pharisees. That even though there was the need for repentance, think about Zacchaeus, right? Zacchaeus, I'm coming to your house today. And Zacchaeus had some issues. He needed to repent and he did repent, but it wasn't through condemnation. That's not the way that the Lord worked in his life. Religious people,

That's us. I know we say Christianity is a relationship, not a religion. And that's true, but it's also a religion. And sometimes we forget and we get sucked into the religion aspect of it, the ritual side of it. And we begin to condemn those that God does not condemn. Those that God is seeking to reach, calling them near. We can easily be pushing them away. I was thinking about a time period in my life where when I was young and I

really walked away from relationship with the Lord. And I was absent from here, even though I was, you know, attending here since I was a young teen. I was absent from here for a season of time. And as I was beginning to get right with the Lord and sense the Lord calling me back to right relationship with him, I began to work my way back to attending church here.

And in the process, I was dealing with my own internal feelings of guilt and condemnation. And there's a whole mess of stuff that you have to go through, you know, in your own mind and heart whenever you're going through things like that. And so sometimes just getting to church is like the hardest thing in the world. And I remember coming back, battling those things, having those things, you know, weigh on me, like barely kind of making it to church. And then I arrive, and then there comes additional condemnation, not from within, but now others who are

Poking, teasing, taunting, scolding, scowling. Probably not malintentioned, but I remember the feeling. I've heard many accounts of similar feelings. We need to recognize that we can easily fall into the trap, bringing condemnation upon people that God is not condemning. Even when people are in sin and they know it's sin,

God is calling them out, not seeking to destroy, not pushing them away. He's calling them back. And we need to be careful to not be engaged with the work of the enemy and be part of the pushing away, be part of the laying on of burdens, but to be part of the calling back and drawing back and helping. So that even when there is real issues and real problems, we're working on God's behalf because we know him. We know his word.

We know it's tradition. We know what he actually says. And we know that what's most important to him, that those who are bound up and caught up in sin, be delivered and redeemed by coming to Jesus Christ and receiving the forgiveness and the grace that he offers. Here the religious leaders, they've got caught up in their traditions, sucked into their religion and their rituals, to put them in a place where they are opposed to the work of Jesus.

We may not like to think about it or admit it, but when we get caught up, we do get caught up. We can get sucked in to our own traditions, to certain aspects, to the neglect of the rest of what God says. Missing out on the knowledge of God and relationship with God, we can find ourselves in that place of opposition against God as well. Condemning those that God is not condemning but seeking to redeem. These are common mistakes.

to let them stand as reminders, as warnings, as reason for us to go before the Lord and allow Him to do some searching, to do some revealing, that we might turn, that we might break away from these patterns and traditions and get back to what it's really all about, knowing God, loving Him. Let's pray. God, we thank You for Your Word and how You are able to challenge us and remind us of what's really important. And God, if we've

been caught up in some traditions, if we've been caught up in certain subjects or aspects of your word to the neglect of others, Lord, if we've missed the point of spending time with you and knowing your heart and mind, I pray that you would help us to be able to see that clearly, Lord, that we might repent and turn from it. Help us, God, to keep the main thing the main thing. You desire our hearts.

for us to know you, for us to love you, and to receive your love that we might walk in your ways. And it's not burdensome, but it's all the overflow of our relationship with you. I pray, God, that you would help us as we interact with one another. Protect us, Lord, from being agents of the enemy and bringing condemnation to those that you're seeking to draw near. Help us, God, to speak the truth, but to speak the truth in love. Help us, Lord, to be able to interact with each other in a way that

represents you well, that reflects your heart, magnifies you and your name to all around us. We pray this in Jesus' name.