This sermon was preached at University Park Baptist Church in Houston, Texas. For more information about UPBC, visit upbchouston.org. We're going to be looking at Luke chapter 6, verses 1 to 11 this morning, and so I'm going to read the passage and then we'll pray together, asking God to help us as we look to his word. Luke chapter 6, beginning in verse 1. On a Sabbath while he was going through the grain fields, his disciples plucked and ate some 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 priests to eat, and also gave it to those with him. And he said to them, The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. On another Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and was teaching. 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. Let's pray together. Lord, we're so thankful. We swim in your mercies and often don't stop and consider them. Lord, thank you for this country. Thank you that we live in a place where there is freedom to gather corporately, to worship you, to share the good news, to be an outpost for the kingdom. Lord, without threat of persecution or being unable to do what you've called us to do apart from great difficulty. Lord, we know that in large part that is possible because many have given their lives, they've risked their lives, and they given their lives that we might have this and enjoy this freedom. And so this weekend our hearts are full of thanksgiving for those that have done just that, that we could gather, Lord, in freedom and rejoice in Christ. So Lord, we lift up those families that are still missing loved ones who have given their lives in the service of this country. We pray for help and healing for them and a sense of gratitude and even pride in knowing that their loved ones have given their lives for others. Lord, we're so grateful for the freedom that we ultimately have in Christ. And Lord, for passages like this that remind us of the glorious, unhindered rest that we have in Jesus Christ. And so, Lord, I pray that we as a congregation, as busy Americans, would stare at this and see the rest that you hold out for us. Rest from our works, trying to earn your favor. Rest from trying to make money enough and more to feed ourselves and to go about the things that we need to do day in and day out. And being able to trust you to provide, being able to trust you to take care of us. So Lord, would you teach us? Would you guard us from giving ourselves to religion for religion's sake? Warn our hearts. And we pray that you would show us Jesus. We ask this in his name. Amen. Amen. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. At this church, we believe that. We believe that God is our creator. He's our father. Genesis 1 teaches that he created the earth in six days and everything that was in them and it was good. And then this is what you read in Genesis 2 verse 2. And on the seventh day, God finished his work that he had done and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it, God rested from his work that he had done in creation. And so God set aside The seventh day as holy from the beginning. And then as God created and called a people to himself, he called them to do the same thing. Listen to the fourth commandment that was thundered down by God from Mount Sinai. 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 to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male servant or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who was within your gates, for, and that's where Moses is giving us the ground for what he's just said, for in six days the Lord God made heaven and 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. The Bible teaches that God is our creator and he made us in his own image to know him and to love him. And so it wouldn't surprise us, it shouldn't surprise us that he calls us to do what he does. He rests and he calls us to rest. Fundamentally, the Sabbath was intended to be a great blessing to man. It was to set aside a day to stop striving, stop working, and to acknowledge that God is actually our provider, to rest and to worship. It would set God's people apart from the world. For Israel, it would be the best day of the week, not only because of the needed rhythms that we know just as creatures of rest and, of course, of worship, but because of the promise that the Sabbath holds out for God's people. One author says it this way, But when the Messiah did come, It was actually the issue of the Sabbath that caused the most problems. If you read the Gospels, you see that loud and clear. Delight and anticipation had been replaced with legalism. External man-made rules had become king. Self-righteousness, God, resulting in hard hearts toward God and to one another, to the needy. And this is where we pick up our study in Luke's gospel today in chapter six. We left off, if you remember, in chapter five with Jesus teaching about the new kingdom that he is bringing in. It's like a new garment. You can't patch an old torn garment with the new garment that you have or you will ruin both garments. It's like new fermenting wine. You can't put it in old wineskins or it will burst them. It demands new wineskins. And there will be some, Jesus promises, that prefer the old ways, the old wine to the new. But there is no life in the old. It is only in what Jesus brings, only in Jesus himself. And the Sabbath presents really a prime illustration. So it is the theme, if you noticed, of these kind of two pericopes, verses 1 to 5 and then verses 6 to 11. They're linked by the theme of the Sabbath. So the main point of these verses, I think, is there in verse 5, and we'll try to unpack it this morning. Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath. He's Lord of the Sabbath. Luke mentions two kind of pieces of evidence that I want to just give you if you're taking notes. There'll be two points to the sermon this morning. Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath, main point. Evidence number one, exhibit A, Luke demonstrates Jesus's authority as Lord of the Sabbath. His authority as Lord of the Sabbath. That's verses 1 to 5. And then Exhibit B, he gives an example of Jesus' actions on the Sabbath, verses 6 to 11. So you have his authority as Lord of the Sabbath and his actions as Lord of the Sabbath. And I just pray that we would see this. not only as a instruction to the Pharisees, instruction to the disciples here in Luke 6, but as instruction to our own hearts and our own congregation this morning, because he is Lord, not just of the Sabbath, but of all. Amen. Amen. So let's look together at this first half of the passage as we consider Exhibit A, Jesus' authority as Lord of the Sabbath. In verse one, we find Jesus and his disciples in apparently a rural setting, walking through, cutting through a grain field. And as they walk through the field, the disciples are picking some of the grain and they're grabbing it and they're rubbing it in their hands to take off the chaff. And they're throwing in their mouths and they're eating it. They're snacking on this this grain as they go. And we know from God's Word that God actually makes allowances for this. It should be encouraging that God thinks about these kind of things and gives them to us, that we would think about them well. He provides for the hungry, the needy. There's this spirit of provision and generosity in God's Word, in the law. We read in Deuteronomy 23, verse 25, So the idea is that you can help yourself to some of the grain. Just don't pull out your farming equipment, someone else's yard, someone else's crop, and begin to take their stuff. You can have a bite, you can't have the whole thing. So that's perfectly clear. There's a built-in expectation of generosity there. So no problem, except that this is occurring on the Sabbath. And so we see that there in verse two. But some of the Pharisees said, why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath? Now, what is the issue? They're taking a walk, they're snacking. It doesn't seem like they're performing any kind of work here. One thing we need to note just as a general idea about the human heart is that especially it can be often kind of gravitate toward legalism. gravitate toward, instead of kind of a broad idea of what it means to know and love God, very specific things. So gray areas for a legalistic heart are not comfortable. And so we need to fill those in with man-made rules, man-made commands. Now, the Old Testament does give some specific examples of what constitutes work on the Sabbath, but not enough for the hearts of some of the religious leaders. They're taking the Bible's silence and filling in the gaps. And so there was this manual called the Mishnah, which is kind of a to-do list, a to-do book, a manual on how to apply different areas of the law. And you turn to the chapter on Sabbath, and you'll find 39 regulations on what is work, what is considered work on the Sabbath. And some of those regulations included reaping, threshing, winnowing and preparing food. And so technically, you could look and see what the disciples were doing as plucking the grain. Well, that's reaping, rubbing it in their hands to get out the chaff and to take the wheat, threshing, winnowing, all under the heading of preparing food. That's four Sabbath violations and one little road trip for Jesus and his disciples. So it's a serious accusation directed at Jesus' disciples, but it's Jesus who represents his disciples, who answers, and we see his answer there in verse three. 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 priests to eat, and also gave to those with him. David's answer comes here with a tone of rebuke. Anytime Jesus asks the Pharisees, have you not read? There's a bit of a jab there. The Pharisees prided themselves, the scribes prided themselves on knowing the Old Testament scriptures. Of course they had read. Of course they knew this particular story. But they had completely missed the point. They knew the story. They missed the point. They knew the text, but they missed, they really missed God. They missed God's heart. They missed the underlying purpose of the law altogether. And so this is what Jesus is going to unpack. And when he references, and I think this is true with any of the New Testament authors, when they reference places in the Old Testament, they don't want us just to think about the quotation marks, the words inside the quotation marks. They want us to think of the entire context, the entire situation of what he's referencing. And this is no different here. The passage Jesus references is from 1 Samuel 21. There, God had rejected Saul as king of Israel and anointed David as the rightful king. And so if you just put yourself in that mindset, it's a kind of regime change there, where you have kind of God giving the people this idea of the king that they wanted, like all the other nations, the tallest, the strongest Saul, and he was a failure. And so God raises up a true king after his own heart. You remember that place where David tries on Saul's armor and he tries to kind of go that way. It just doesn't fit. David is going to lead in a different way. There's a difference about him as king than the old way. That sounds a lot like what Jesus is doing now. Saul hated David. He jealously pursued him. He sought his life. So in 1 Samuel 21, David and his mighty men are on the run. And they left so quickly, they forgot to bring provisions, they didn't have weapons. David ends up getting Goliath's sword. If you don't remember that passage, you can go back and read it. But they go to the tabernacle and David there has this conversation with a priest, a Himelech. And the priest asks him, now then, or David asked the priest rather, now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread or whatever is here. But all that was available was the holy bread, the bread of the presence, literally the bread of the face, the bread that was set before God himself, the sacred bread that break fresh every week, set out before the Lord on this golden table in the tabernacle as a reminder that it was actually the Lord who was the provider for Israel. They were deeply dependent upon him alone. And then it was strictly reserved for only the Levitical priest to eat after it was changed out. We see that in Leviticus 24. But David and his men were hungry. They were famished. They were running from his enemies who were against the purposes of God. So the priest offers him the bread, provided that his men have kept themselves from women, that they were ritually clean, which they had. The priest knows the law. David knows the law. He gives it to him. David takes the bread and neither Jesus nor the Old Testament Author, condemn David or the priest for their actions. So the priest sees here a higher duty. The spirit of the situation leads him to meet the immediate human need and not be kind of restrained by what the law says. And this wasn't just any human, of course. This was the anointed king of Israel, God's representative to Israel, and he was on God's mission. So I think Jesus means for us to think about all these points of connection with these two situations. David, messianic king. Jesus, the true David, the true Messiah. David is on the run from his enemies, on his way to be crowned as king. Jesus is God's anointed king of the universe. He's been anointed at his baptism by the Holy Spirit. And now he's being confronted by his enemies. Eventually, they're going to seek to kill him. If you remember, that's what Doeg the Edomite does with the priest. He kills Ahimelech, the priest. Both David and Jesus are providing for their men. There were 12 loaves that represented the 12 tribes of Israel. Jesus is providing for his 12 disciples. And tradition says, not in the passage, not in 1 Samuel 21, but tradition says that the incident with David and Ahimelech also took place on the Sabbath. Because the bread was being changed out and that's when it would be changed out in preparation. And so if that's true, there's another point of connection that draws the two incidences all closer together. Jesus is doing this. He's taking kind of the harder case and arguing from that to the easier case, which is what's happening right now. If it was okay for David to do what he did, which Jesus says was not lawful, it was not according to the law, technically prohibited. And if that was okay to meet the needs of David and his men, how much more for Jesus and his disciples to nibble on grain and break some of these man-made extra rules? So he's saying that the law of God was never meant to be a restriction on man, but a blessing. He's reminding the Pharisees that God is a father. I have and have had teenagers in my house and we have curfews. You need to be home by a certain time. Always obeyed, of course. But how strange would it be if one of my children came home on time for their curfew and said, man, I sure am glad I made it, dad. Almost didn't, though, because my good friend broke down on the side of the road and he got mugged. But yeah, I couldn't help it because I wanted to be here on time. Do you think that's going to be pleasing to me? Oh, I'm so glad you made your curfew. No, you completely missed the point. You need to help your friend. What kind of friend are you? God is a father like that. He's not giving us his word, whether Old or New Testament, because he wants us to obey rules, because he's good. He does it for our own good, for our own blessing. David and Ahimelech were in the right. So Jesus is challenging a very strict, wooden, loveless approach to interpreting the law, making the law your master instead of God himself. The other gospels have these accounts and they're little bitty tidbits there that are just so good I couldn't not talk about them. Mark 2. Mark adds this, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So helpful. Sabbath was made for us. It's a blessing for us. We're not there to serve the Sabbath. In Matthew's account, this will challenge you, right? Or have you not read in the law how on the Sabbath, the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless? What? They profane the Sabbath, the priests, and are guiltless. I tell you something greater than a temple is here. And if you had known that what this means, I desire mercy, not sacrifice, you would have condemned, you would not have condemned the guiltless. You're saying you're condemning the guiltless. Now, how can you profane the Sabbath and be guiltless? The priests are commanded by God to work on the Sabbath, the same God that says don't work on the Sabbath. Jesus shining a light here on the Pharisees' rigid view of the law. These priests are God's holy representatives before the people. Jesus is God in the flesh. They're missing the forest for the trees. The true priest, David's greater son, David's Lord, something greater than the temple, stands right before them and they are accusing him. God desires mercy, not sacrifice. The Sabbath is not meant to be a restriction, but a blessing. That's Jesus's authoritative word on the matter. How can he say this? Because of verse five, look there, chapter six, verse five. And he said to them, the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. That, that's a staggering claim. You should underline that. You should connect that with the other statements that Luke gives us about who Jesus is. The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. Friends, the Sabbath was instituted by God. It was thundered down from Sinai by God himself to the people of Israel. If Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath, he is greater than the Sabbath. Lordship declares supremacy. He's the author of the Sabbath. He is God. The Sabbath exists to point to Him. He's the point of the Sabbath. Everything the Sabbath was meant to provide, peace, rest, restoration, communion with God, all supplied in Jesus Christ. He is the ultimate Sabbath, the rest for God's people. The author of Hebrews reminds us that the original Joshua sought to conquer and give rest to the people, but he failed. The ultimate Joshua, Jesus Christ, will not fail. Hebrews 4, verse 9, Luke is just continuing his project of not just identifying who Jesus is, but magnifying who Jesus is. He's told us already Jesus is the Son of the Most High, chapter one, a Savior who is Christ the Lord, chapter two. He's the beloved, well-pleasing Son of God, chapter three. He spotlighted these several places where Jesus shows his authority, his authority over disease and demons, to forgive sins as an authoritative teacher of God's Word and here as Lord of the Sabbath. So this is a clear claim to be God himself. And it shows Jesus to be the ultimate interpreter of the Sabbath because he is the author. That title, Son of Man, it just testifies to his true humanity. It hints at the coming glory that he brings because it's rooted, we know, in that passage in Daniel 7 of the Ancient of Days, the Son of Man coming to the Ancient of Days. Just as David represented Israel as king, Jesus comes to represent mankind, his people, as king. The difference is that Jesus is going to provide a perfect representation of man. He's going to provide a perfect atoning substitution for those who have not kept God's law, for those who have fallen short of the glory of God, who have turned from it. and any works that we might use, even things that we might be thinking in our mind right now to justify a standing with God, all fall short. But Jesus fulfills the law in our place. He pays the penalty that the law requires for disobedience. You know, that's death as it relates to the Sabbath. Exodus 35, to whoever does work on the Sabbath shall be put to death. Friends, if that's true for that command, for working on the Sabbath, can you imagine any lesser penalty for murder and lust and adultery, sinful anger? Jesus took the death that the law required for sin upon himself. He went to the cross to lay down his perfect life as a substitute for our sinful life. And then he took the punishment for our sins, which is God's eternal righteous wrath, so that we might, by faith, have his righteousness. That we might, by faith, be forgiven of our sins and made right with God the Father, be adopted as sons and daughters, and enter into a rest with God. enter into perfect fellowship with him. And then he rose from the grave, defeating sin and death forever. And he calls us now to turn from our sin and to put our faith and trust in him. If you've never done that, if you don't know what it means to be a Christian, that's our call to you this morning. It's a turn from your sin and put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. I'd love to talk to you more about that if you want to know what it means to be a Christian, but it's really that simple. Acknowledge your sin before a holy God, turn from it and put your faith and trust in Jesus who died for you and rose from the grave. Come find me today. Come tonight at our time outside. I'd love to talk to you more about what it means to be saved. what it means to be a Christian. But there's another episode here that we need to get to as we're looking at our passage. Exhibit B. That's Exhibit A. He's Lord of the Sabbath. Exhibit B, his actions. Let's observe his actions on the Sabbath. We don't know when this day is in relation to the first day, but fast forward to another Sabbath Saturday. Jesus and his disciples are now in the synagogue. Jesus is teaching. Okay, and just observe that. He's regularly, faithfully observing the Sabbath himself. And Luke is going to introduce the characters here kind of one by one. And we see first it's Jesus and a man with a withered hand there in verse 6. On another Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and was teaching and a man was there whose right hand was withered. So he's teaching, and only Luke, interestingly, mentions that it was the man's right hand that was withered. Perhaps that points to it being his dominant hand. And so not only is his hand withered, but he's unable perhaps to work, provide for his family. He's made particularly destitute, in need. And I think that word wither just means what you think it means. If you have flowers in a flower bed in Houston, they get too hot, they wither, they dry up. That's what this means. His hand had atrophied, it had dried up and kind of shriveled up. So it's Jesus teaching, this man is there, and then there's others there. Another set of eyes in the synagogue that day, verse 7. And the scribes and the Pharisees watched him to see whether he would heal on the Sabbath, so they might find a reason to accuse him. These scribes are the lawyers of Scripture. They know God's Word. They're ready to render judgments on God's Word. The spiritual leaders, the Pharisees, are there of God's people. And what a sad description. The scribes and the Pharisees are in the gathered assembly of God's people, gathered for worship and instruction from God's Word to watch and see if Jesus would perform a miracle on the Sabbath. Not to rejoice, not to inquire more about who Jesus is, not to submit their lives to him, but to accuse him. Do a miracle. Do something that only could be attributed to God so that we can trap you. That word watch is a very emotive word. It carries the sinister tone, like spying out, stalking. If you're looking for a definition of spiritual blindness, this is it right here, right here. What a demonic motivation. It shouldn't surprise us that Jesus refers to the Pharisees at points as sons of Satan, the ultimate accuser. We know what you can do, the only things that God can do, but we're only here to accuse you, to catch you doing something wrong. And that accusation would also be based on some of these Mishnah rules that stated referring to healing, particularly medical care. That it could only be done on the Sabbath if a life was in immediate danger, a baby was being born, or circumcision needed to take place. Everything else can wait to another day. Later in Luke's gospel, one of the religious leaders actually says it out loud. Luke 13, 14. Jesus knows this man does not fit any of those categories. He's not about to die. He's not pregnant. There's no sacred decision needed. And he knows that it's the Sabbath. And he's intentionally, intentionally going to bring the situation up before the people in a public way, put it in the face of the religious leaders to teach a lesson for us all to see. Pick it up there in verse 8. 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 do harm, to save life or to destroy it? So whether by the power of the Holy Spirit or through his divine nature, Jesus knows their thoughts. He knows our thoughts here today. Isn't that refreshing? just to know that Jesus knows us. He knows why we're here. He knows the kind of week that we've had. He knows our deepest longings and pains, our fears. There's no need for pretense, no need for hiding. He's the Lord. He knows and he calls the man up front and he comes. I just know this man's obedience in this scene. It's helpful to see. And his question in verse 9 leaves them no wiggle room, nowhere to go. Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it? And I think what Jesus is doing here is he's removing all neutrality from the situation, removing neutrality from your options. He's saying on the Sabbath, you will either do good or do harm. From God's perspective, a refusal to do good is to do evil. As one author put it, good omitted is evil committed. And the irony here, isn't this ironic that the scribes and the Pharisees, so concerned about keeping God's law, upholding the law, the ones with the high view of scripture, Can't see their lack of concern and love for their fellow Israelite puts them as the most clear and obvious lawbreakers in the room. So Jesus just shines a light on that, on their hypocrisy. They're against him. They're against the helping and healing of this man. But Jesus is about to show, and this is helpful for us to see, he's not concerned about man's approval. He seeks the father's approval. And we know the father gives his approval. Look at verse 10. I can't imagine the silence in the room when Jesus just pauses and looks around at everyone in their face. Can you imagine staring at Jesus there? God in the flesh looking at each of them piercing through the facade of religion to their very soul. You can just see their faces one by one turning away in shame. And then he calls the man to do, listen, what he cannot do on his own. Jesus calls this man to do what he cannot do on his own. Stretch out your hand. That's the whole point. He can't stretch out his hand. It's atrophied. It's shriveled up. He can't do it. But Jesus enables him to do it. He calls him to do it and he enables him to do it. The power of the spirit goes forth and by faith, he stretches out his hand, which is the healing. You see that? I think that's powerful. I think this is what happens when we get saved. We, apart from God's grace, are unable to respond to the gospel. We have withered, dead, dried up hearts and the gospel goes forth with it, an invitation to repent and believe. And then Jesus says, believe. Jesus says, believe. And that call is effectual. That's what Jesus said to Lazarus. Come out. He came out. That call causes a dead heart to pulse with spiritual life. It's a miracle every time. As we ask God to do the work of calling, regenerating, we simply put the message out there. Repent, believe, believe, believe. And some hearts believe that were dead seconds ago, they're alive. But the response of the religious leaders is unchanged. Verse 11, I think it's borderline hilarious that Jesus doesn't actually do any work to heal this man. He doesn't touch him. You know, he just speaks to him. So they really are frustrated on multiple levels. And they're left with nothing. The other gospel accounts make it explicit. They're ready to kill him. They're plotting to how they might destroy him. And I think that's another just subtle irony. Jesus is asking, would you do good or harm on the Sabbath? Would you save life or destroy? Well, obviously, they're going to seek to destroy and even his own life. Well, what's Jesus' point? God desires mercy more than sacrifice. That's from Hosea 6.6. to do good, not to miss the heart behind God's law, to bless his people, to love God and love neighbor. The self-righteous person will never be interested in mercy. Never be interested in mercy because they don't understand that they've received mercy or that they need mercy. But showing mercy to others is consistently seen in scripture as a sign that you know God. It doesn't mean that you get saved through doing acts of mercy, but it does mean the gospel creates a life of love. And if that life of love and mercy is absent, what reason do we have to believe that we have received mercy in the first place? That our hearts are not as hard as the Pharisees in this story. Consistent message. Go read the prophets. Read the prophets. We know Hosea 6, 6. I desire mercy, not sacrifice. The message there is to the northern kingdom. Your sacrifices and burnt offerings in themselves hold no weight, Hosea says, because your life is void of love for those that are needy. Amos says the same thing in chapter 5. Micah concurs. He has told you, O man, what is good and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, to walk humbly with your God? Micah 6, 8. Listen to Jeremiah's words to King Josiah, actually to King Josiah's son. The people are about to go into exile and Jeremiah is speaking to the son of a godly king. and saying, you need to do what your dad did. This is what he says in Jeremiah 22, verse 15. Is not this to know me? Jesus' actions on the Sabbath remind us that religious observance apart from loving mercy to the lost and the hurting, those suffering, is bankrupt. Bankrupt. Gathering regularly apart from closing our heart to those around us, John says in 1 John 3, Even on the Sabbath, perhaps especially then. So I want to close with a word of application to us. There's a lot we could say, but just a few things I want to mention before we're done. First, Jesus came to fulfill the law, not to abolish it. He came to fulfill it, not to abolish it. That means believers in Jesus are not under the Mosaic law, nor required to keep the Sabbath today. However, as Americans, we need to understand that probably doesn't mean what we naturally think it means. We who like to work a lot and play a lot and fill in the blank a lot, even when it kind of merges into Sundays. Oh, we can do a Saturday night service. It works a lot better for my family and then have Sunday free. What we see happening in the New Testament is that Christians began gathering not on Saturday, but on Sunday. They began consistently assembling on Sunday, the day Jesus was raised from the dead. And so God sanctified, set apart the Lord's Day. John references Sunday as the Lord's Day in Revelation 1, verse 10. That's when God's people gather. The Messiah has come. And we have begun now to enter into his rest. And yet we still look forward to that day of final rest when he comes again. And so when we gather for worship, when we set aside a day for the Lord in the midst of our busy schedules and weeks, we are proclaiming that reality still today. So this is our church's position on the Lord's Day from our statement of faith. of the Lord's Day. The first day of the week is the Lord's Day. It is a Christian institution for regular observance. It commemorates the resurrection of Christ from the dead and should include exercises of worship and spiritual devotion, both public and private. Activities on the Lord's Day should be commensurate with the Christian's conscience under the lordship of Jesus Christ. So that's where we land as a church on how we do this gathering, regular gathering on Sundays. Understanding that the freedom that we have in Christ frees us from man-made rules and regulations. But it frees us to love Jesus more, not less. It frees us to love and serve his people more, not less. It's commensurate with our conscience. So we're not trying to bind people's consciences and giving you a list of rules and can and can'ts that you can and can't do on the Sabbath. But we wanna have the tension there that we live under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. He's our King. I love that tension. So friend, is Sunday a priority for you and your family? Is it a priority? I'm talking about your heart posture. ordering your week, ordering your life around Jesus Christ, resting in Jesus Christ, unplugging from the normal things that you do day in and day out. It's his day. Does he have a day? Does he have your attention? Does he have your devotion? Or is it always with one eye on the phone, one eye on the schedule, one eye on the activity list? Are you resting in him? And then are we acting like Jesus? Are we doing what he does and helping others, gathering with his people, praying with his people? Is that a delight or is that a burden? And if it's a burden, what an opportunity, what a grace that we could say, Lord, I bring my heart before you in repentance. Because I've tried to place devotion to you on one of many other categories in my life. How can you cultivate Sunday as more of a joy? Make Christ more central. Secondly, I want to just warning, beware of this attitude of the Pharisees. How did they know Jesus' disciples were in the grain field? I mean, come on. Unless they're right there. Unless they're following them. Unless they have a surveillance team. You know, the van with the thing. That's what they're doing. They're waiting for him to do something wrong and they miss him all together. So don't be the religious police. Don't be the church police. Don't be the SBC police. Don't waste your life. Be a faithful lover of Jesus first. Don't miss your time with Jesus, prayer with Jesus, fellowship over the word and with his people. Do you know that totally changes the way that you engage with others in sin and error? Completely transforms it. When you know Jesus and walk with Jesus and when you don't. When you don't, what you have here are the Pharisees actions. If you're here and you're maybe a religious skeptic and you say, yeah, I'm here, but I really don't believe this. And I know a lot of things about Christians, what they've done. Listen, I'm glad you're here. Let me just make you aware of something called confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is something where you've already made up your mind about something, and then you interpret all the facts that come to you along that narrative that you've already made up your mind about. And friend, what I wanna do is just discourage you from doing that about Jesus. I wanna encourage you to look at the evidence of the gospels, look at Jesus Christ for what the Bible tells us about Jesus objectively, and let those facts stand for themselves. Don't be like this, standing around looking for things that are wrong or that would inconvenience your life, but take an honest look at Jesus. That's all I'm asking. Take him seriously and see what God might do. Lastly, meditate and pray about what God means, that he desires mercy and not sacrifice. Meditate and pray about what God means, that he desires mercy and not sacrifice. Specifically for us as a congregation in this neighborhood, Friends, I don't want to be a people that meets here for worship and fellowship and members meetings, and then just closes our eyes to the needs around us. We see a great example of that here, of what not to do. The poverty that's right here, the lostness that's right here, the crime and the fatherlessness that's right here, the drug addiction that's right here. Friends, we are here on purpose. These things are not distractions that get in the way of us doing regular ministry. We are here on purpose. We trust in God's good providence that he has us here. Not just to come in and out, but to be a shining light to Jesus Christ. So there is no neutrality. There's no neutrality. It's honoring to God. Is it honoring to God to do good or evil on the Lord's day? It's one or the other. HCU is here. Bonham Elementary is here. The Women's Pregnancy Center is here. Homelessness is here. Refugees are here. Apartment complex after apartment complex full of lost people are here. Some of those folks may walk through our doors. Most of them will not. We need to go to them to love them, to tell them about the Lord of the Sabbath, the one who can bring rest to them. We need to call them to believe and repent and watch God do the miracle and watch Jesus build His church. That's our prayer. Amen? Amen. Let's pray together as we close. Lord, I confess No one knows better than you my inadequacy for a message like this. So we pray that as a congregation, we would all come under the authority of your word and we pray that by your spirit, you would reprioritize our hearts or that you would just address idols and loves that have gone out of proportion and whether that's convenience or comfort, whatever it may be, We pray eternity would rest heavy upon us. We pray that we would be directed by your word and that we would love you and love our neighbor, that we would love the gathering of your people. We would love the people that you have put together in this body of believers at UPBC. We would love our neighbors. We pray that we would repent of any self-righteousness And Lord, we pray that you would use us for your glory, that you would do the miracle. We would just be faithful. We just want to be faithful. We want to not fear man. We want to fear you. We want to share the gospel. And we want to ask that you would do the work, that you would cause hearts to beat. So we pray you'd be glorified. We love you. We ask these things in Jesus name. Amen.