Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. My name is Kurt. I'm a senior pastor here, and we're in the middle of a sermon series through the Gospel of Luke. And we're here as the assembled church this morning, not because we have to be, but because we want to be out of what Jesus Christ has done for us, out of the grace that we have experienced, the forgiveness that we have experienced through Jesus Christ. here to worship. An important part of that worship that's been a part of the church from ancient times, from the very earliest of times, is the Word. So we're going to open up the Word to Luke chapter 5, starting at verse 33. This is part of our verse-by-verse walkthrough of the Gospel of Luke. That's on page 861 of the ESV-2 Bibles, if you're using one of those and you want to turn to a page number. So it's the last section of Luke chapter five, and then the beginning section of Luke chapter six. Let's go to the Lord together in prayer. Heavenly Father, as we approach your word this morning, we confess and acknowledge that it is truth. It is the inerrant word of God. It is your revelation to us. It is God speaking to us, Father. So we thank you for your revelation and your truth, and we ask that you would help us understand it and apply it to our lives. I pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Cats can get comfortable and go to sleep just about anywhere. They can conform to any shape that they place their bodies in. Cats can make themselves into a circle. They can curl up in a little ball. They can conform to the shape of a square. They can conform to a rectangle if they want to. And then you can kind of see the cat inside the rectangle. But they could even conform, if they're small enough, into the size of a wine glass. Pringles can. And they could even conform to something that's not big enough to hold their shape. I think that's called a muffin top right there. Cat doesn't quite fit. Now we can't do that. We can't conform into spaces and shapes. We're not designed to do that. Praise God. But we do conform. We do conform. People conform at the heart level and who we're becoming in our personhood, who we are, we conform. Now everyone conforms except Jesus Christ. He's the perfect son of God. He doesn't conform. But we do. And in our passage today, we're going to see Jesus interacting with his critics, some of the Pharisees and scribes, teachers of the law, and they are not happy with Jesus because Jesus is refusing to conform. In this passage, we're going to see not only Jesus, but he teaches his disciples not to conform with Pharisaic Judaism. Remember, they had all these extra laws that they had tacked on to the Word of God, they had traditions, they had things that they did, and they clung to them very tightly. Jesus shows up and says, Nope, I'm not going to conform to that. I know you have expectations of me. I'm not following them. And of course, they became very angry. Now, I know some people desperately want to maintain the reputation of being a nonconformist. I understand that. But all of us at the heart level conform to something that's just a spiritual principle that the Bible teaches. We're all conforming to something or someone. So the question we want to answer by the time we get through this passage this morning is, what am I conforming to? What is it at the heart level that I am becoming more like? What am I conforming to? We're gonna explore a couple of side issues, namely the Sabbath, because a couple of these exchanges happen on the Sabbath, but that's the main direction we're heading this morning is conformity and the issue of what we're conforming to. Three sections, the first one is 33 to the end of the chapter, so let's take a look at that. And they said to him, the disciples of John fast often and offer prayers and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink. And Jesus said to them, can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them and they will fast in those days. He told them a parable. No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. If he does, he will tear the new and the piece from the new will not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one after drinking the old wine desires new for he says, the old is good. So we pick up our passage here. We took a break right in the middle of chapter five. And if you remember last time, a lot of people and groups of people had seen enough. They'd seen enough about Jesus to make a decision and a conclusion about him. They arrived at a judgment call on Jesus. For some, it was enough to follow him. For others, it was enough to say, I've seen enough. I'm not interested in this guy. In fact, I'm against him. And so the they said to him in verse 33 is probably continuing on. So here are these Pharisees, teachers of the law, these people that were experts in Judaism, and they were kind of hovering around Jesus and his disciples. And if you remember their goal, it was to find something wrong with him. They were against him. So this is an accusation. It says the disciples of John fast and offer prayers, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours don't. So it was kind of like they were coming to him and saying, do you want to explain this, Jesus? It's almost as if they might've been thinking, you know, you're probably new to this whole rabbi thing, and you might not have it all figured out, but just so you know, People who have disciples, this is an important part of discipleship, they need to be fasting. If not, the disciples of John and the disciples of Pharisees. Now the disciples of John, John the Baptist, had been fasting and that was a part of repentance. It was a show of repentance and it was a sign of preparation for the coming Messiah. The Pharisees fasted twice a week. They had regular set-apart fasting times that was part of their routine. And it was more than their routine, it was part of their law code, this oral law and tradition that they guarded and kept sacred in the sense of they elevated it and almost put it on par with actual scripture. In fact, Jesus said at one point, and we went through Mark, we saw this, he said, you've done a fine job of removing the law, God's word, and replacing it with your tradition. You're more concerned about following these things than you are about following God's actual law. So this was part of that law. It was fasting. So essentially the challenge by his critics are saying this, hey, you need to explain this. You are not conforming to our expectations. So Jesus responds with a question. Can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? In the first century, weddings and the celebrations that accompanied weddings were week-long festivals, so these seven-day periods where not only the family and the extended family and the friends, but the whole community would stop what they were doing and they would take part in this wedding celebration. Even the rabbis were excused from their normal fasting days so they could take part in the wedding celebration because it was viewed as an insult. If you had this wedding celebration going on and somebody stepped back and said, well, no, I'm fasting, I'm not taking part of this, I'm not gonna participate and celebrate, that was an insult. That was socially impolite. So they would have understood the importance of participating in this celebration and how it would be unthinkable to fast during one of these times. That's the illustration Jesus is using. So just to be clear, Jesus is the bridegroom in this illustration and his disciples are the guests. And he's saying it's not appropriate for them to be fasting because I'm here. It's like the wedding celebration is going on. And then he says, the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them and then they will fast in those days. Jesus is talking about his arrest and crucifixion where he will literally be taken away from them under Jewish temple guards. And again, if you've been to a wedding reception celebration, I'm sure everyone's been to at least one of those and Imagine in the middle of a reception at the VFW or wherever you've got rented out, this venue, and all of a sudden the police come in and they turn the groom up against the wall and spread his legs and cuff him and take him out. They might put a damper on the wedding reception, kind of like a wet blanket. And that's what he's saying. He's saying, look, there's going to be a time where I'm going to be led away from these disciples. Then they can fast. That's appropriate. So the whole teaching is essentially this. I'm not going to conform to your expectations. Fasting is okay, but the context determines the fasting. Not regularly prescribed, rule-based, regulation, oral law and tradition. So Jesus is coming out very plainly and saying, I'm not following your tradition. I'm not going to conform. And then in verse 36, he adds some additional teaching. So we've got two illustrations. One is a clothing illustration. The other is a wineskin illustration. The first one says if you take a new piece of cloth and you try to patch an old garment that's not going to work because the new piece of cloth hasn't shrunk yet and when you tie it and sew it in together it's going to shrunk and it's going to tear away. It's not going to work and you're going to ruin the garment. The second illustration is along the same lines he said you need to put fresh wine into fresh wineskins because they took animal skins and they sewed them up together and then they filled them with wine and that's how they stored the wine. And the fresh wine was put into fresh wineskins so that during the fermentation process it could expand and it could accommodate for the extra gases and things like that. If you tried to put unfermented fresh wine into old wineskins that had already expanded, would break. So in both illustrations trying to fix something results in both of them being destroyed and ruined. In this illustration he's saying and he's comparing the new covenant with the old and specifically his message of the gospel and Pharisaic Judaism. And he's saying, you can't put those together. You can't try to integrate them. You can't try to reach a compromise. He's saying, you can't take what I'm bringing, my message, the gospel, and try to make it shoehorned into what you're doing right now with all this tradition and oral law. And even on a more broad sense, the new covenant is not going to fit into the old covenant. Because it's just like the Galatians we went through, the gospel. You can't add anything or take away anything from the gospel because then you no longer have the gospel. It's something different. It's the same thing with this. You can't bring the gospel and try to put it into the old covenant. Bad idea. It's not going to work. You're going to ruin both. Now, this does not mean that the church needs to be open to quote we'll put it in air quotes new wine in other words at no point is there going to be another testament we've got the old testament we've got the new testament there's never going to be a new new testament there's never going to be a third covenant. There's the old covenant, the new covenant. There's not going to be a new gospel. In addition to that, there's never going to be an appendix or some supplemental materials or an excursus or something that helps clarify and correct what the Bible says. And sometimes you'll hear this from false teachers and cults. They'll say, no, the Bible's fine. as long as you use our version that we've translated, and we're not going to disclose who the translators are, but the Bible's fine. You just need this extra teaching to help clarify it and correct some of the things, because there's new revelation from God that he's given to somebody else out in a field or on golden tablets or in a vision or something like that, and this is what you really need. Here's the truth. That's not what this is saying. There's no new additional teaching. Jesus is telling them that the gospel is not going to fit in Pharisaic Judaism. And as a result, he is saying, I am not going to meet your expectations. I'm just not going to do it. And I'm not going to teach my disciples to meet your expectations either. It would be foolish to try to make it work. Now, having said that, we need to also understand that it is still the same God. The God of the old covenant is the God of the new covenant. The God in Genesis 1 is the same God in Luke chapter 5. It's not somebody different. It's the same overarching grand redemptive plan from the beginning to the end. However, the new covenant is new, and it needs to be allowed to exist as new. Finally, in verse 39, he says, no one after drinking old wine desires the new, for he says, the old is good. Notice that the quote, the old is good, is in quotations. Jesus isn't saying, yeah, stick with the old, the old is good. There's nothing wrong with the old covenant. It was exactly what God wanted for that time. He's saying those that say, stick with the old for the old is good, aren't even interested in trying the new. I said, you guys are so interested in maintaining your traditions, you're not even interested or open to this new thing that God is doing. Now, to some extent, I think we can all confess that the older you get, the less likely you are open to change. I think that's pretty universal. Multiply that by about 10 or 50 or maybe even 100. Remember the context here. Technology was non-existent. Things weren't changing rapidly. They had done the same things that they had done for centuries. And they would continue to do the same things just as they had done it for centuries. They ground flour with a millstone, their parents would ground flour with a millstone, their parents, and they would after that. It was very unusual for a child to go off and do something different. They did what their parents did, and their parents did what their parents had done, and their parents before them. So it was very much a stable culture, and not only that, but that was valued. That was considered a good, positive thing. So in this context, in which they were already prone to maintain the old ways, these people are even more prone to maintain the old ways. And Jesus is saying, you don't want to change, you're just resistant. However, it is time to let go of the old and be thankful for the new. The next section is one through five from chapter six. On a Sabbath, while he was going through the grain fields, his disciples plucked and ate some of the heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands But some of the Pharisees said, why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath? And Jesus answered them, have you not 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 bread of the presence, which is not lawful for any but the priest to eat, and also gave it to those with him. And he said to them, the son of man is Lord of the Sabbath. Jesus refusing to conform now to Sabbath expectations. So here's what's going on. Jesus and his disciples are out walking around in the Galilee region, probably near Capernaum, and they're walking through or next to some grain fields. So they're either walking by the fields or maybe they had some paths that would cut through fields and maybe they're walking through those And they're hungry, so they reach over and they grab some and pop it in their mouths and they eat it. And the Pharisees are right there hovering around saying, ah, gotcha, I gotcha, you just broke the Sabbath, that's work, that's part of our law, nobody's gonna follow you anymore, you're gonna be discredited, you're a sham, forget it, you just broke the law, gotcha. So Jesus has to respond to that. They've been accused of breaking the law. Now the Sabbath, of all the laws, was one of these things that was very tightly held on to. They had the Word of God, which we'll get to in a minute. of the Ten Commandments. But then they had added to the Sabbath law all of these extra things over and over and over again. They had an incredible large amount of detailed rules about the Sabbath, how far you could walk on a Sabbath day, how much you could carry, as far as weight goes before it was considered work. They even said you need to prepare on the day before an extra meal just in case someone came over to your house for a pop-in type visit and you'd have something to eat them. So they had all kinds of extra rules regarding the Sabbath and they're accusing Jesus of breaking their rules. Now, in fact, Jesus was not breaking the law. This very thing that he was doing is provided for in the Old Testament. Deuteronomy 23, 25 says this, if you go into your neighbor's standing grain, that's what they were doing, you may pluck the ears with your hand, which is what they were doing, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor's standing grain. So this law was there to basically make a daily provision for people, especially the poor and the needy. So if there was someone who didn't have means to secure food for their family, they could come by and just eat to satisfy their hunger. Now, that was perfectly acceptable. That's very different than bringing along two or three guys with some sickles and sacks and a cart and say, yeah, we're just getting enough to eat here, don't mind us. That's something very different. That would be stealing. This is provided for in the law. So Jesus and his disciples are not doing anything wrong. They're not breaking the law. It's impossible for Jesus to do. So big difference. What they're doing is not conforming to the Pharisaic Judaism expectations of the day. He's refusing to conform. That's all they're doing. Now we get Some other information from a parallel on this passage. If you remember, the Bible has four accounts of Jesus's life and ministry, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. So when one of the other authors provides the same account that another author provides, that's called a parallel. So in the Matthew parallel of this exact event, we read this. Jesus said, or have you not read in the law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless? And if you had known what this means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the guiltless for the son of man is Lord of the Sabbath. If you remember from a couple of weeks ago, Jesus, every time he spoke, his word was the final unquestionable authority on whatever he was talking about. Now, they didn't understand this fully at this time. We understand this. Whatever Jesus says goes. He is the final authority. So when he says the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath, he is emphasizing his position and authority as the Son of God, saying, look, what I say goes. What I say about the Sabbath is what God says about the Sabbath. So he's not conforming to their man-made rules. And we've got a couple clues about what he means by all this. First of all, he brings up David And he says, those who were with him when they were hungry, they went in and they ate this bread of the presence or the show bread. There was this bread in the temple that was on display all the time. It was only for the priest to eat. But they came in, David, and he ate it and he gave it to some of his men. And he said, they're guiltless. So what he means by that is the same thing as what's going on here. There is provision for acts of mercy and for those who are in need. So David was not doing anything wrong because it was a work of necessity. In the same way, they're hungry, it's provision for those who don't have means. I desire mercy, not sacrifice. Jesus is clarifying what the Sabbath means. Now we do know that the Sabbath commandment is still there. This is part of the 10 commandments. This is commandment number four, remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days shall you do all your labor. The seventh is holy, it's consecrated, it's to the Lord, neither you nor everybody in your household. And it summarizes it by saying for the Lord created and did all his work in six days and on the seventh day he rested. So this is a creation ordinance and it's part of the Ten Commandments. Those don't go away. So Jesus is affirming the Ten Commandments, and he is affirming the Fourth Commandment. Now, if you remember from some of the other Gospels, when Jesus normally talked about the commandments, he usually had to tighten them down, because they were taking the commandments and saying, well, as long as I haven't broken that literally, I'm good to go. And so as long as I don't actually steal something, as long as I don't actually commit adultery and be unfaithful to my spouse, I can do anything I want up here in my head, and I'm fine. Jesus said, no, that's not right. Even if you look lustfully, even if you're angry at somebody, then you've committed adultery, then you've committed murder in your heart. So he had to tighten those down. Now this one, they had tightened down. They had grabbed a couple of come-alongs and tightened that thing way too tight to the truck bed because they had taken all these extra laws and they had made the Sabbath so restrictive, Jesus is now having to loosen it. So he's not getting rid of any of the Ten Commandments, he's defining them as they should be observed. So that's what we see here. Now the example of necessity, The fourth commandment is still in effect today, and the traditional understanding of the church as illuminated by scripture is that we are to continue to observe the Sabbath. We don't observe it on the last day of the week. We observe it on the first day of the week. The Lord's Day is what the New Testament calls it. And even we see that at the creation ordinance and in the Exodus law giving, we see God's provision for that. He doesn't say you shall work Sunday through Friday and Saturday you shall rest. He says six days, which allows for the new covenant fulfillment and the new covenant practice and observation of Sunday. Except for works of necessity, works of mercy and religious duty. And that's why he even says in here, in the parallel, how on the Sabbath, the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless. In that Matthew parallel, he's saying, look, the priests are working on Sunday, and that's technically work. And that would, some people would consider that profaning. He said, but that's guiltless. They're guiltless. So works of necessity, works of mercy, and works of religious duty. So religious duty, pastors, ministry people today, their work ends Sunday. We get that. That's an exception. Works of necessity. Okay, how about the nuclear plant operator or police and fire? We're not just going to say everybody's got the day off. We'll let the new plant run on its own. Those are works of necessity, works of mercy, physicians, doctors, nurses, medical staff. We're not going to shut down the ER. We're not going to unplug everybody on ICU on Sunday. Okay, that's mercy. We're going to continue that. And we're going to see that in the next passage as well on the Sabbath. He said, no, you can do good on the Sabbath. That's okay. So except for these exceptions of work, necessity, and religious duty, we are to continue to observe the Fourth Commandment today. It hasn't been abrogated. It's not been thrown away. Now some people, because of poor teaching, have kind of swung all the way to the other side. The pendulum's kind of swung all the way this way, because for a while there, I know I've heard a lot of stories, very common, there seems to be a common denominator, people that have grown up with a church background and said, When I was a kid, my mom made me go to my room and I had to be quiet all day or we had to take naps for two hours and they wouldn't let me get up and I couldn't go outside and play with the other kids. I'm not doing that anymore. I'm letting my kids play. Okay, some of that could have been legalism. Some of that could have been extra rules on top of it. But the pendulum swung so far the other way that there are large portions of the church, not all of it, but large portions that say, hey, you can do whatever you want. Nothing different. Go to church on Sunday if you can. Otherwise, you know, don't worry about it. You're good. And yeah, this really no longer applies today. It's part of the Ten Commandments. It's not legalism. It's part of the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are based on the unchanging nature and character of God. So we need to ask ourselves at the heart level, does God change? No. Do the Ten Commandments change? No, they do not. They change in how this one changes on what day it's observed. But the Ten Commandments have not been done away with. And if you think about it, again, at the heart level, let's ask ourselves, would any of the other commandments work this way? Would we say, well, 40 out of 52 weeks out of the year, I maintain faithfulness to my spouse, but you know, every once in a while, it's okay. No, we wouldn't do that. Now, we're not gonna get into the very specific applications of how to best observe the Sabbath, because there is room for disagreement on that. But at a bare minimum, we need to understand this. It is the Lord's day. It is first and foremost, a day for worship, for gathering as the assembled church. And it's still in effect, Today, the question is, what are we going to conform to? Will we conform to the world, which has no interest in worshiping God, no interest in church? Why would I give up my weekend to go worship God? Are we gonna conform to the word of God? And I know this is an area where there's been a lot of murky teaching in the church, specifically in, I'd say, the last 40 to 50, 60 years. But to summarize, we need to understand this. It's part of the Ten Commandments. It's still in effect today. God calls us to observe the Sabbath. Also remember this as a guideline. It's not so much what's prohibited on the Sabbath, but what it is for and where it is to be filled with. And first and foremost, it's to be filled with God's people worshiping God. So unless providentially hindered, this is where we're at on Sunday morning. So Jesus clarifying the Sabbath as Lord of the Sabbath, remember everything out of his mouth is the unquestionable final word. And he is saying to them, I am not going to conform and my disciples are not going to conform to your expectations. Last section, six through 11. On another Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and was teaching a man, excuse me, and was teaching and a man was there whose right hand was withered, and the scribes and the Pharisees watched him to see whether he would heal on the Sabbath so that they might find a reason to accuse him. But he knew their thoughts, and he said to the man with the withered hand, come and stand here. And he rose and stood there. And Jesus said to them, I ask you, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it? And after looking around at them all, he said to them, he said to him, stretch out your hand. And he did so. And his hand was restored, but they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus. Jesus enters the synagogue, could be Capernaum again. He did a lot of teaching in the Capernaum synagogue. And it says there was a man there with a withered hand, which meant it was maybe didn't have full use or maybe it was deformed or was tight in a fist, we're not sure. And verse seven says that Jesus was being watched closely with great personal interest by these Pharisees to see what was going to happen. And it says, so they might find reason to accuse him. To accuse him of what? Breaking their expectations for the Sabbath, the Pharisee of Judaism. Again, they're waiting for him to do something that breaks their expectations so they can jump out and say, aha, gotcha. Again, you're breaking the law. No way anybody is going to follow you. You're not going along with what's expected and the norm and what's important to God, even though it was only important to them. Interestingly though, they believe he has the power to heal. It says they're watching to see if he would heal in front of them. It's almost as if they want him to heal so they can catch him. So even though cognitively they're giving assent to the fact that this guy has the power to heal, that doesn't matter. They want to catch him doing something wrong. Some have even suggested that this man is a plant. They showed up, and they wanted to catch in something, so it's almost like, okay, Jesus is over there. Yeah, why don't you sit right, right here? Yeah, so Jesus has full view of you. Have a good worship service, and then went over and waited to see what was going to happen. Who knows? Who knows? They were intent on trying to find him doing something wrong, so it's possible. Now, in reality, is there a law against healing on the Sabbath? Nope, that was never part of the Old Testament law. And as we see from Jesus, that was never God's intent to withhold doing good on the Sabbath. So in verse eight, Jesus calls the man with the withered hand and has him stand. Remember, they're all seated in the synagogue and the traditional teaching position is also seated. So everybody's seated except the man now is standing. It's almost like Jesus, well, it says he knew their thoughts. He's basically saying, okay, you're not going to have to watch really closely. This isn't something you're going to miss. I'm going to make this real obvious. I'm going to heal him right in front of everybody so there's absolutely no question about what is going on. In fact, let's talk about it. And so he asks them a question. Is it lawful, the exact charge that they're making against him, that he's breaking the law? Is it lawful, and then he asked them two things, to do good or to do harm in regards to the man standing in front of him, to save life or to kill? What happened back in chapter four? Remember the Nazareth synagogue experience? They tried to kill him on the Sabbath. What is it that they're trying to do right now? And as we're gonna see at the end of the passage, kill him. on the Sabbath. So he's asking them, which of these things are lawful? Verse five says, and he looked around at them all. And I have to wonder how long did this go on as he went around the synagogue and locked eyes with every single person standing there, or excuse me, sitting there. How long does this take? And he looked around at all of them. And Mark, the parallel Mark says, he looked at them quote, with anger. Anger. We don't like to think of Jesus as angry, and I don't ever want to see Jesus angry, but it says he looked at them with anger. As he's looking at these important religious people that are very intent on following God's laws, he looked around at each one of them and says, really? Nobody? Not one guy, huh? This guy standing here, you know the right answer, but you're not going to say it. Because you really don't care about following God or healing this man. What you care is protecting your own traditions, looking good, and making sure you accuse me of doing something wrong. That's what was going on at the heart level. Not one person. So Jesus says, stretch out your hand and he's healed. And it says immediately, excuse me, but they were filled. I think the parallels might say immediately, but they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus. Again, the parallels say how to destroy him. He had just asked them what's lawful to do to save life or destroy it. And what do they do? They go out and decide, how can we destroy this man? Because He is not conforming to our expectations on how to properly obey God's commands and the Sabbath. They have no problem planning to murder someone in their hearts on the Sabbath, but healing somebody is forbidden. Now think about the hardness of heart that has to lead to that spot. Here's the thing, this is where they found out. This is where the Pharisees and the scribes found out for certain that this wasn't some kind of wannabe rabbi from up north that maybe just didn't understand how things worked, or maybe he meant well, but he hadn't been trained in the traditional rabbinic schools. No, this is when they found out and had it confirmed in their hearts and minds He is intentionally not conforming to Pharisaic Judaism. He is purposefully refusing to go along with Jerusalem and the scribes and the Pharisees. And they were furious. They were absolutely furious. There was incredible pressure to conform, not just on Jesus, but on Jesus' disciples. Can you imagine? Remember, he's saying these things. He's completely fearless. But the disciples are following around, somewhat new disciples. I mean, they're standing there confronting these Pharisees and teachers of the law, saying, no, it's lawful. They can go ahead and eat. And they're standing there with a grain. I guess I'm going to eat it. I'm going to get really big trouble from these guys. I'm going to be marked from this point forward if I follow what Jesus says. Incredible pressure to conform. And remember also the ancient Near East context of the time. Social pressure, family pressure, huge. No one wanted to be an outcast or to be ostracized. Remember that was the issue in John with the blind man who was healed. The parents were like, I'm not getting in the middle of this. You ask him. Because they were afraid of being put out of the temple. Huge pressure to conform. But Jesus says, no, I'm not going to conform. Here's the thing, today most people are conforming, but not to Pharisaic Judaism. That's not really a big problem in North America today in 2016. Most people are conforming to the world. Most people are conforming to the world. Researchers were looking at church attendance for the last 70 years and what they noticed is It's not really changing. We keep getting 40%, 40%, 40%. But then they were getting this information from denominations that were saying, we're losing numbers, we're losing numbers, we're losing numbers, and that doesn't seem right. And they got an idea. They said, well, I got an idea. How about instead of polling people and asking them to self-report whether or not they're a regular church attender, let's look at the hard numbers. Let's take data from actual attendance at churches. What they found out was the number was more like 17%. So people were over-reporting. And they call this the halo effect. People tend to over-report positive behavior, under-report negative behavior. So it's more like 17%. And if we remember this, people that attend church and sit in the pews, not everybody is a regenerate believer. We can't see into people's hearts. So what's the actual percentage? And what kind of churches are these, really? Are they the mainline liberal churches that have abandoned the scripture? I mean, the percentage of people in North America that are actual Bible-believing, followers of Jesus Christ, probably like 10, 5%? So congratulations, you are a non-conformist compared to the rest of the country right now. Most people are conforming to the world, the smaller percentage are the non-conformists because we understand that most people are going along with the world. Most people believe evolution is true, creation is a lie. Most people believe that it's not important to be part of a church, to join yourself to Christ's body, to regularly come to worship in the table. Most people would probably not stand up at their workplace and say, yeah, I believe in Jesus Christ is the only way. Every other religion of faith is a lie. Most people would probably not go there. So you are among the non-conformists. The problem is that people are conforming to the world, and God actually has told us pretty plainly what to do on this issue of conformity. Romans 12 says this, do not be conformed to this world. much more plain than that, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. And by testing, you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. And then Romans 8, 29 says, for those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son. So God says, do not be conformed to the world Do be conformed to Jesus Christ. Be transformed. Let your mind be renewed by the Spirit of God and the Word of God. And we understand that that is a process. The Holy Spirit does a special operation on our heart. He regenerates hearts. That's how believers are made. People who are not interested in God and don't understand God, God renews their hearts through the proclamation of the Word, through reading the Word. They hear the words and God's Spirit says, these are true. You're a sinner, you need to repent, trust in Jesus. And then once people have that initial regenerating new life, then the rest of our lives, and we're all in the same boat, we're being transformed and renewed daily into the image of Christ. Being transformed and renewed by the word of God and the spirit of God. That means as we read scripture and as we hear the word of God, that informs how we look at the world and what we think about things. Because this is true. It's reality. And we start to see increasing differences between what the Word of God says and what we're hearing from the world. And we say, that doesn't match up, that doesn't match up. And the Spirit of God leads us into His truth. It's a process being conformed into the image of Christ. Now Satan, who is our enemy, does not want people being conformed in the image of Christ. So anything other than being conformed in the image of Jesus Christ through the washing and renewal of his spirit and his word, anything else other than that is considered a victory for Satan. That's a W in the win column. Any other religion, any other self-righteousness, agnostic, atheist, whatever, it doesn't matter. That's cool. You can do that. Or even the gospel but twisted enough so that it's no longer the gospel. That's good. The only thing the enemy doesn't want is biblical Christianity, the Spirit of God, the Word of God being conformed. Here's a statement I found really interesting. This is a comment directed at the church from a recent article. The church must radically change itself to adapt to social, religious, and political conditions or condemn itself to marginalization. What does that sound like? Radically change itself to adapt. What does that sound like? conform. So the world is saying, no, no, no, no, you guys need to conform. The church needs to conform. It's almost, even from a sympathetic point of view, it's almost like the world is saying, yeah, I don't know about you guys. I don't know what to tell you. Unless you change, I don't know what's going to happen. I just, you know, your numbers are going down. I just see, you know, less and less people find you relevant. And I don't know how you guys are going to survive. Look, the pathway out is you need to conform to the world. 1 Peter 1.14 says, As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, You shall be holy, for I am holy. Followers of Jesus Christ are called out to be God's covenant people. Be holy as I am holy, be transformed by the renewing of your mind in the spirit of God. Do not conform to all those other things, the ignorant passions of your former ignorance, all the things that are self-directed, sin, the world, be called out. And here's the thing, and this is important, as a called out people, we'll call it the church largely, church universal, as a called out people, if we are being faithful, then we are never going to look relevant to the world. The world can stand back and say, yeah, I don't know what you guys are going to do. You need to become more relevant and adapt If we're doing things correctly, they will always say that. The unregenerate person who has not had a spirit change in their heart will never find the church attractive and appealing and something that they want because that's a heart work that God does. It's a big difference. Now, Jesus obviously understood this principle. If Jesus wanted to appear relevant to the Pharisees, If he wanted to make sure that everybody was on board, he would have been doing things very differently. But instead, he refused to conform. He said, no, I hear you. I'm not going to do that. Instead, I'm going to do this. I'm going to follow God as he has revealed in his word. Similarly, If the goal of following Jesus, if the goal of the church in following Jesus is to appear relevant to the world, then we would be doing things very differently as a church. But, of course, that's not the goal. The goal is faithfulness to God and His Word. So there are, at many points, times where we have to, unapologetically but not hostile, say, no, we're not going to conform to your expectations because we're going to be transformed by the Word of God and the renewing of our minds. It is expected that the church will be marginalized. It's expected that we're going to be viewed as not in step. And like Jesus, it is expected that the world would become increasingly hostile towards the followers of Jesus. If it was hostile to Jesus, it would become hostile to the church. That's important to remember. Now there's a lot of pressure, and to some extent a lot of pressure, but there will be even more pressure to conform. In fact, there's a lot of places where actually just preaching through the Bible like this and touching on some of the hot-button issues, especially if you touch on any of the gender, sexuality, some of these other things that it seems like the world is falling in love with right now. There are some times where if you preach the Word of God as is, the world will say, that's hate speech. Stop that. And that's where we have to say, no, I'm not going to conform. I'm going to stick with this. Not in a hostile manner, not in an elitist manner, like we've got some kind of superiority over anybody else. That's not it. One last point, it's not going to be the nominal Christians that are on the receiving end of this hostility. In other words, it's not going to be the mainline denominations that have abandoned the authority of scripture. It's not going to be the non-denominational churches that don't take stands on any of these things, that have these big, broad, kind of everybody's good, everybody's okay type of stands. No, they're going to be fine. It's going to get to a point where they're going to say, okay, no, you, you church that stubbornly clings to your Bible, you need to conform. And if you do, okay, well and good, you're free to go. But if not, you're part of the problem. We don't like you anymore. And we need to understand that we're going to be in that position of Jesus' disciples. We're going to be standing there, we're going to have our Lord and Master on one side and the world on the other side, and we're going to be standing there saying, what do I do? And the answer, of course, is being conformed to the image of Christ. So the question is, Where do we stand? Remember at the beginning, I said that was the question. What are we conforming to? Although we're not cats, we can't fit into these weird shapes, but we are people and our hearts, at the heart level, are always conforming to something or someone. What am I conforming to? That's the question we all need to ask ourselves. What am I conforming to? On the exclusivity of Jesus, and the inerrancy of Scripture, and on the hot-button topics today on the Sabbath, on how we observe the Sabbath today? What am I conforming to? Is it going to be Jesus Christ and His Word, or is there going to be anything else? Is it going to be the Word? When Jesus calls people to follow Him and leave everything behind, He calls them to conform to Himself. Amen. Heavenly Father, we recognize that we are incapable of finding our own way. We are incapable of seeking truth within ourselves and being confident of arriving at the right answer. Father, it's because truth is not within us, it is with You. It is Your Word. It is Your Son, Your Spirit. Father, we confess that There are too many times where we are in the moment, tempted to go one way or the other, and there are times when we fail. There are times where we bend and conform. Father, may it not be so. May we continually be renewed by Your Spirit and Your Word. Father, we ask that we would bend the knee, that we would humble ourselves, that we would acknowledge that You are God, that we would acknowledge that Your Word is the final, unquestionable authority on all matters. And then Father, would you give us a full measure of your spirit that we would rejoice in following your commandments, that we would do so out of gratitude for what you've done for us, not out of legalism or fear or worrying about achieving our own righteousness. Father, out of sheer joy and gratitude for having our sins forgiven. Lord, we pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.