Help me, Father, Lord, we do come before you and we ask, God, that you'll give us clarity and wisdom. Lord, that you'll guide our path and give us the wisdom with our words and our decisions and our objective, our goals, our understanding, with our steadfastness as we seek to glorify you in everything that we do. Lord, let us honor you with your words and give us as the unction of the Holy Spirit, Lord, that we may be able to speak the truth in love, with clarity, and Lord, that it may be true truth. In Christ's name we pray, Lord, amen. Today is the 8th of February, and today we're gonna talk about the exclusivity of Jesus Christ. In Luke chapter six, If you'll stand up, we're gonna, when you get there, Luke chapter six, verse six through 11, we're gonna be speaking on this passage today. And let's go ahead and get started. On another Sabbath, he entered the synagogue 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 him on the Sabbath day, or 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 at them all, 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." John MacArthur said that divine truth is the most important thing. Divine truth is more important than anything else. He said, that's probably the most important statement I've ever made. And I agree with that. Throughout history, cultures have always hated truth. Jesus was in a culture that hated truth. More to the point, individuals have always hated truth. The truth that is true truth. I'm not talking about your truth and my truth. I'm talking about divine truth. We have a society that runs after ecumenicalism. to seek to bring everybody under whatever truth that we want it to be, whatever moral relativism that is the fruit of this day. In our own society, we can't even call out Islamic jihadists as terrorists. We're not allowed, because our president and the White House liaisons of the Muslim Brotherhood have actually banned the use of the terms terrorist and jihad combined with Islam, without using terms like fringe or radical, to suggest that it is a few misguided individuals. We can't even call out those monsters of evil on television, nor would the media ever get by with reporting the truth about Islam. There would never be a news agency that would report that these monsters came from a demented and perverted religion that teaches as a core pillar of its religion that the people who live in the world must submit to their prophet and worship their moon god, Allah, as the one and only God, and that if they do not submit, they must die. Nobody would ever teach that. You won't see that on the media. without the qualifiers that these are just a few fringe people who have misguided and perverted the peaceful religion of Islam. Never mind the fact that Our own president just came out blasting Christianity, talking about us getting on our high horse, because he said in his own words that even Christians have a history of mass murder, wickedness and violence, just like those few misguided terrorists of today. And yet he would not even claim and call it for what it is. Never mind the fact that Christianity has been attacked by the Roman Catholic Church because the true Christians were telling the people of the world about the Antichrist, who they saw as the Pope, and the mother of harlot church that he rode upon. Never mind the fact that the Turks were sweeping across the Middle East and they sought to murder all the Christians and the Jews and the Roman Catholic Crusaders went to war to protect and gain lands and property. It's a historical fact. They wanted new lands, and that's why they went. Never mind the fact that Christianity does not support the Roman Catholic teachings, but Islam, as a pillar of its own tenant, teaches one of the nine pillars is jihad. Islam teaches that. And it teaches everyone that claims that God is a third of three, or a trinity, must die. That's Islam and that's just one facet. Our president would not acknowledge that Islam teaches as a tenant of its religion that all infidels must die and anyone that is not a good Muslim as the best, most elite Muslim, they are false converts or backsliders and they must either submit or die. There is no moderate Muslim. Even King Hussein of Jordan said, there is no moderate Islam. Islam is Islam. That's what it is. You don't have a moderate. You have Islam and its teachings and its tenets. You have those that don't adhere completely to those teachings, but that is not the core of the teaching of Islam. At the core, Christianity is a dogmatic, steadfast truth of God's grace and mercy and love, and it is completely not like what you saw in the Crusades. It's not like what you saw in the Inquisitions. It was not something that they got from the Bible. It was something that the Roman Catholics got from their teachings outside of Scripture. Islam itself teaches jihad. In our culture, we want to see everyone and everything as good. And we all want to act as if everyone has a spark of good in them and all we've got to do is appease them and make them happy. That is everyone except for anyone that believes in and follows and teaches and commands or adheres to the commands of the Bible and what Jesus actually said. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by Me." He was making an exclusive statement that cannot be rejected. Any person that rejects Jesus Christ as the exclusive Savior has rejected eternal life. Either that or Jesus is a liar. To say that today is seen as bigoted. To say that today is seen as hate-filled or hate speech. If I say today in the media or in the news or in the public that Jesus Christ is the exclusive Savior and there is no other salvation apart from Jesus, I am labeled as a hate monger or a bigot. or a Islamophobe, or a homophobe, or anything else, if I try to demand truth upon the world. If I try to teach truth and warn people of the truth. Did you watch the video that just came out? Daryl Waltrip had the honor of being the keynote speaker. I don't know if you saw it or not. You need to see it. It's 28 minutes of, I just loved it. It was 28 minutes of beauty. He was the keynote speaker for the president at his prayer breakfast, where the president and his wife and the Dalai Lama were all present. And I believe there were Muslims there as well, dozens of Muslims. I know there were Muslims, but I don't know how many. They may have thought that Mr. Walter was a dumb redneck racetrack driver. Maybe he is, but I'll tell you what, he might be, but he's full of the Holy Spirit. He's full of love and compassion like nobody I've seen in a long time. You see, that dumb redneck that can just drive around the racetrack, he knew enough about Jesus Christ to know not just to go in there and butter them up with love. He knew enough to tell them about truth. True truth. Remember John MacArthur's statement that the most important thing is truth. Okay? It doesn't matter what you think or what I think, the most important thing is truth. They thought he was a goofball or an idiot, but instead they heard the exclusive divine gospel truth. And perhaps for the first time ever, Obama and his wife Now listen to this, and the Dalai Lama, a Buddhist, am I right? The Dalai Lama, any Buddhist? I think so. If I'm Hindu, one of them walks around, Obama calls him His Holiness and His Eminence. There's nothing holy about the Dalai Lama. To be holy means you must be like Christ. There's nothing holy about the Pope. Because he's not like Christ. He's not another Christ. There's nothing holy about anyone except for those that God calls holy. You see what I'm saying? When we talk about holy and His imminence, there's nothing imminent about any of these men. And they come in their pomp and circumstance and everyone's bragging about them and this little bitty racetrack driver. It's amazing to me that God used a race car driver to tell divine truth in the middle of a bunch of arrogant, self-righteous people who don't want to hear it. He got to preach the gospel to the Dalai Lama. And I don't know if the man's ever heard about it in his life. Perhaps for the first time ever, President Obama and his wife and the cabinet members and all the elite of the White House and all the elite heard the gospel. I'm telling you, I rejoiced. I was so ecstatic. The pure, blazing truth of the exclusive Savior, Jesus Christ, is the best gospel presentation I've heard in a long time. Because there wasn't any pretension about it. There wasn't any self-righteousness about it. There was the law, and there was the gospel. There was a testimony of a sin-filled, sin-stained heart that had been saved by grace. Mr. Waltrip said, you might think that you're a good guy or gal, this is not a direct quote, but I'm here to tell you, good guys and good gals go to hell. He said, if you've never gotten down on your knees and confessed your sin and cried out to Jesus to save you, then you're going to hell. He said, Jesus must be your Lord and Savior, or make no mistake, you will go to hell. And my heart leaped at the thought that these people who hate truth heard it. Obama lashed out. with his famous attack on the Christians and we've seen it all over the media, fringe media, not the direct media because they won't talk about it. But there was no denying that he heard the truth. Our president, he seeks to make an inroads and seeks to open the door to Islam. He actually said in his book, Daring to Hope or whatever it was, that when it comes down to it, he's going to side with the Muslims. When the winds go that direction, he will go with the Muslims. And he has done that. He's living up to that. Because he hates divine truth. He hates the true truth. And this is not an attack on the man. I don't hate his guts. I'm telling you guys, I don't hate him. I want to see him saved. I want to see God save that man. I've said this before, if we compare or compromise in the slightest, it will destroy your marriages and your families, your children, your work lives, your church lives. Your church will rise and fall on God's divine revealed truth, His inerrant truth. Without the true truth, we will fall into sin and error at the very first step. The first thing that we decide to compromise on and to give way to. Or the first time we decide not to speak when we should speak. The first time we decide to let everyone get along and just not say what God says because it's too offensive. That's when we fall into error and sin and somebody is destroyed. Somebody goes to hell. Somebody lives an immoral and corrupt life. Somebody compromises and it destroys them and possibly us. We must be people that are committed to the true truth, even if it means that we must separate from those that we say that we love and we care about because they hate the true truth. We have to. God's truth is transcendent, omnipotent, supernatural truth. And we are required to submit to God's revealed truth. We're not commanded to change it. We're not called to change it. When Jesus came into the society around Jerusalem and Capernaum and place to place He went and He preached the truth about everything. Everything that Jesus ever said. I want you to hear this statement. I thought about it very carefully and I want you to hear this. Everything that Jesus ever said is and was the most important exclusive truth that has ever been spoken about any subject that Jesus spoke about. Did you catch that? I'm gonna say it one more time. Everything that Jesus ever said is and was the most important exclusive truth that has ever been spoken about any subject that Jesus spoke about. You're talking about the God of the universe speaking. Your job is to quiet yourself, to close your mouth, to stop saying, but I think, but I would rather have it this way. Your job is to say, yes, sir. and to submit to truth. And Jesus is exclusive truth. He is truth incarnate. He is the truth. When He says, I am the way, I am the truth, everything that He said was the greatest truth about anything that He spoke about. Amen? He began being loved and adored. Because people wanted the miracles, they wanted the feeding, they wanted to see what He could do. All the miracles were amazing, and all the things He did were just astonishing. But when He began to speak divine truth, the true truth, those religious scholars and the Judaizers, lost their minds. They come unglued. They could not stand divine true truth. When He excluded and shunned them and spoke against the Pharisees, they hated Him with a violent passion. When He did not go to them and get their blessing and get their approval, but He said, My blessing and My approval come from God the Father. I've been called to be here and I am coming here by the power of God the Holy Spirit. And I am God the Son. I am the very Messiah that you must have. I am the truth. When he came in, the Pharisees went insane. Every waking thought of their lives was no longer about trying to be pious. But how can we stop this one? How can we stop Him? How can we kill Him? How can we crush Him? How can we belittle Him? How can we make this one, the divine true truth, go away? When He excluded them, they finally got to the point where they wanted to murder Him. Now, I've got to ask you, which is more loving? To tell the truth that leads to someone's salvation? To give them eternal life? To present them with eternal life? to tell someone what they must know about their standing before God and how they can have a right standing before the God that they don't even know, even if it's painful and it hurts them with the truth that you tell them. Is that more loving or to salve someone with a lie so that they feel comfortable and happy even if in that lie the outcome is their eternal destruction and damnation? Which one's more loving? See, the world today says you're a bigot, a hate monger, a monster if you tell people that Jesus is the only exclusive way. And if you tell people about sin and righteousness and the judgment to come. We see the gospel must be presented with 100% pure truth. It must be given to the world on God's terms. It must be completely God-standard, His own way of salvation. We cannot mess with it. We can't add to it. We can't take away from it. We have to think about the fact that people like Rick Warren and Sarah Young and Ann Voskamp and Stan Mitchell, the guy that's now the homosexual pastor, I guess, of Nashville. People like Beth Moore and the Pope. and many other, the Dalai Lama, are actually bringing in a false standard of Christianity. See, Jesus Christ is the standard. There is no other standard. There is a compromise and a reductionism that we are seeing in most every area of what passes as the church these days. People are now encouraged to come out of the closet, and we make fun of people if we tell them they need to clean it. If we tell people that they can actually, I've heard this said, and it's offensive to me on every level, when I hear people say, I'm a homosexual Christian, and you start talking to them, and they say, well, you don't expect me to actually be able to change my tendencies, my desires, my lusts, my passions. I can't change who I am. I'm a homosexual Christian. I've heard people say this. Well, an adulterer stops being an adulterer. A murderer stops being a murderer. A liar stops being a liar. It's the put on, put off principle. You put on the Lord Jesus Christ and you put off lying. When you put on the Lord Jesus Christ, you shun the things of this world, the lust of the world, the desires of the world. You don't any longer want to be like the world, but you want to be like Jesus Christ. Remember we just read in 1 Corinthians 6, 9? And such were some of you, not are, but were, homosexuals and liars and fornicators and thieves and blasphemers. They all come to Christ as sinners and they leave saved, sanctified, being cleansed. And this world says, how dare you, Christian, demand someone change? If there's no sanctification, there's no justification. If there's no call to righteousness and holiness and no desire for living righteous and holy, then what in the world is salvation about? If there's no change from darkness to light, from unrighteousness to righteousness, then what is salvation about? If God doesn't make you a new creature in Christ, then what is it that God does for you when He saves a dead, wicked soul? Can somebody tell me? Because I don't know. Apart from what the Bible says he does, I don't understand what the standard of salvation is in the world. Unless you just want it to be euphoria and utopia based on your terms. There's no commitment to truth in the church these days. And what passes for the church. I won't say the true church. only a commitment to comfort and even pleasure. The most important thing about the gospel is the truth of the gospel. It is narrow, but the beauty of the gospel is its narrowness. I want you to think about this. It's dogmatic insistence on there only being one door or one way, one truth. And here's why. I need you to think really close. How many people died for you? to save you, then there's only one door. His is the exclusive way of salvation. If you try to find another way, nobody else atoned for you. Nobody else got on a cross and bled and died and paid the price that God demanded. Nobody else could. Nobody. I didn't see Mohammed dying for you. I saw him killing for himself. I didn't see the Dalai Lama dying for you. I saw him forgiving himself and making himself richer. His phylacteries were increased. His wealth was increased because he had forgiven himself. The heart of Buddhism is you forgive yourself and become enlightened to the point where you're I don't know, cosmic universal light or whatever. If your gospel is just... Anything you want it to be, ask Jesus in your heart. Jesus wants to make you healthy, wealthy, and happy. He wants to save you. He'll bring you to heaven. He wants to make you whole. If you'll just ask Jesus to be your Savior, if you'll repeat this prayer after me, if your gospel, if what you believe to be the gospel is, oh, I was always a Christian. Well, I grew up in church, so I'm saved. I mean, how many other things can we think of here? Was baptized the baby my parents went to church, so I'm a Christian What other ones I mean there's I know there's a dozen more oh I went forward in a crusade, so I know I'm saved everybody went forward and we asked Jesus into our heart We prayed the sinner's prayer, and we're all good to go If you say you were born saved it's because you weren't but there are people that say it I Guys, if that's your gospel, you don't have Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. You are not saved. If you'll submit yourself to the church and be obedient to the church, then you're a Christian, but only if you obey the rules the counselors decreed, and only if your parents were Christians too. If you've gone to church all your life, then you're a Christian. If you've gone to Mass, and you've said the prayers, and you make the confessions to the priests, and you do the tithing, and you give the alms and the offerings, then you're certainly in, right? If you are all-inclusive and you never make any judgments about anyone or anything or any time, and you accept everyone as they are without any question by being mean or attacking anyone for coming in just as they are, and you're not one of those old outdated Bible thumpers, If you are more loving than the Old Testament God, and if you embrace all faiths, and all religions, and all sexual orientations, and all people, and if you don't shove your religion down people's throats, and you let anybody believe what they wanna believe, when they wanna believe it, and let people do what they wanna do, then it's evidence that you are a loving person, just like God is love, love, love, and you are all going to heaven. All of these are plays against the truth. against the divine true truth of God, and it's what the world wants to hear. That's the ear-tickling that God warned us about. You loving them straight to hell. Amen. This is the truth that the world wants and the corrupt heart of man wants, but it's not biblical salvation truth. The most important thing that you can do, the most loving thing that you can do is embrace truth to the point where you're willing to die for it. You understand what I'm saying? Because the only thing that can save the soul of your children and your family and your loved ones and the people in this community and the people in this world is the truth. And Jesus Christ is the only truth there is. He is exclusive truth Himself. In Him. The Bible tells us that though heaven and earth will pass away, His truth, His word will never pass away. The things that He has said will last for all eternity, forever. All of these things prove that the people that are holding on to these ideas are trying to make their own work and their own way of salvation, their own idea of heaven. There's not a Christian alive, or dead for that matter, who is in heaven or who will be in heaven that ever got there because they prayed a prayer. They believed in their heart. They did this or they did that. There's not one Christian in this room or one Christian that I have ever known that did anything to save themselves. It wasn't their work that saved them, it was grace. They've been sanctified. Let me back up there. Every true born-again Bible believer was saved by grace. They were called out by grace. They've been sanctified by grace. Righteousness had been imputed to them by grace. They've been justified by grace. They've been redeemed by grace. They've been regenerated by grace. They've been elected by grace. They've been called by grace. They've been set forth by grace. They've been loved by grace. They've been adopted into the family and the kingdom of the living God as the sons of God, all by the amazing grace that is of God through Jesus Christ alone. They are not saved, and they are going to hell for eternity. This is you, in one fashion or another. Either God has called you out and saved you by grace, or hopefully will call you and save you by grace. Or you are living a lie, because if you did it yourself, you are not saved. there is not one ounce of truth or justification or sanctification or holiness or godliness in a bankrupt system of works. Because works can not ever, can never make you right and just before Holy God. God sees our efforts apart from Jesus Christ as filthy rags, as inadequate, as disgusting, offensive, blasphemous, It's trying to say that the atonement that God demanded, the redemption price that God sent Jesus to pay for, is the same atonement that you and I can pay for by our faithfulness and our own effort and works. I really like your vehicle. Here's your quarter. We're even, right? You know, you worked really hard this week. Here's your dime. That's pretty good, isn't it? We'd say, God, I can come to You based on my work and my hard work and what I've done. And God looks at it and says, does it come close to comparing to the death, the life, and the sacrifice of my son? It is blasphemous and offensive when we try to work our way to salvation, our own idea of utopia. And what's amazing is the entire world seeks some God, some way that they can atone for their lives or make this God happy, appease this God, so that they can get to their idea of heaven, of utopia, where they can get what they want out of heaven, not out of God. They don't want God. And I'm going to tell you this. If you don't want God, you won't get heaven. If you don't want to be with God and to be like He is and as He is, and you don't want Him, why would He give you His stuff? That's all trinkets. That's sideline issues. And the world's made heaven and all the rewards as the issue. And all you gotta do is work hard enough to get to heaven. Jesus Christ says, I'm the way, the truth, the life. But he also said, no one comes to the Father but by me. No one comes to the Father. If you don't want God, everything else you're not getting either. God, I want to be righteous on my own standards. I want to be good enough to get to heaven because I want all the things you've got up there. I just don't want you. I just don't want you. Jesus Christ was the exclusive teacher and the only way of salvation. In the Gospels of Luke chapter 4 and 5, we've already seen this. We see that Jesus presented Himself to the people as the divine truth, as the Messiah, as the Savior. And He told them that He came to save the poor in chapter 2, the downtrodden, the miserable, and the blind. And right away the people looked at him as a teacher extraordinaire. They called him rabbi and teacher and master, but they didn't understand what that all meant. He was head and shoulders above the Pharisees in love and mercy and good works, and He excelled all of them in everything that He did. Everything that He said was the most profound thing that anybody had ever heard. And in Luke 2, when He finished speaking, they were in shock because they had never heard anyone speak as this man spoke. Remember, we talked about that. We actually did a whole entire sermon about it. They were just blown away about the things that He said and what He said. Because nobody had ever heard this. No one had ever heard anyone speak the way that Jesus did. They couldn't deny His miracles either. They couldn't deny the things that He did. That's a good English word. They couldn't deny the things that He was doing. His divine display of power. that only a divine God could do. The power that He had, the authority that He had over sin and death and disease. It was amazing and shocking. And remember, we talked about it. Even the Pharisees said that only God can do this one thing that Jesus said He did. He forgave sin. Remember the Pharisees? They said, this is blasphemy. And they were right. If you and I say we forgive sin like the Catholic priests do, that's blasphemy. Nobody can forgive sin. Nobody can. I can't forgive and you can't forgive. We don't have that right. But Jesus Christ comes in and He forgave sin and proved it by healing men. He walked around forgiving people and healing sin. Healing diseases. These Pharisees And the scribes, who were the religious leaders, were very upset. But what made these people so angry was the fact of what he did. When he did all that he did, those things that he did, the Pharisees thought they should be a part of, and he excluded them. He didn't go to them. He didn't get their permission. He didn't ask them for anything. What He did, He did by the power of God and not by their authority. And it angered them to the core because they had been rejected. Those religious leaders had been shunned and cast out and they were now on the fringe when they were the center of attention. And let me tell you what, a religious leader who's more interested in their own health, wealth, prosperity, their own way, their own attention, their own glamour, their own piety, those type of people, when you start putting them on the outside, you watch and see what happens. Somebody's gonna get hurt. Somebody is going to end up regretting that. You don't put these people on the outside. And in fact, most of the time, it's the church and the people in the church. You don't put those people on the outside. And these people would not accept being put on the outside, and Jesus threw them out. He never had anything good to say about them. He came for the downtrodden, the poor, the miserable, the blind. Now let's look at chapter 6, verse 6. Starting in verse 6, we read this, on another Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was withered. Jesus was constantly showing a divide between the true faith and the true religion and the falseness of the Pharisees. He was constantly showing the right path of God, the right truth of God, the right way of God. And here's what you've got to understand. He doesn't have to be hate-filled. He doesn't have to be angry. He doesn't have to be mean. He was direct. He was insistent. But He wasn't hate-filled and mean unrighteously. He wasn't going at them and trying to attack them and hurt them. He was trying to expose them to their sin and their wickedness. And they built up so much animosity towards Him that they were completely rejected and completely shunned. The first thing they should have done was recognize the Messiah and repented. I want to explain it to you. When you get to heaven, you don't walk into heaven and say, okay, God, here's my list of doctrine and theology. What do you like? Now, if you've got some problems, I'm sure I've got a couple things wrong. I'm sure that there's some things that I've done wrong, but I'm sure you're going to agree with most of what I say. How's that sound for you? You get into heaven, and God starts saying, you're wrong here, here, here, here, and you go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Hold on, God. Who do you think you are? I studied for years for this. I studied for years for this doctrine. I went through five years of studying, and I've got Paul Washer, and I've got Jeff Knobla, and I've got everybody else, and they all agree with me. Who do you think you are telling me? That's exactly what these people are doing. We have tradition on our side that says, this is what should happen. Jesus, who do you think you are? Who do you think you are? He was giving the people a clear vision of the wickedness and the falsehood and lying deception and the misery that they were under when they were under the Judaizers system, the Pharisees system, not God's system. Remember that God said, on the Sabbath day, don't do any work, rest, enjoy yourself, have fun. Don't work. They built everything else up around it, mounted it up like a big, huge mountain. I think the best way I can think of would be the Pharaoh's pyramid. You go in the very center, and there's this little room. Imagine that room being God's command. They built up the entire pyramid around it, which had nothing to do with that little room. You think about it that way. They had built up all these rules and all these regulations that had nothing to do with the command of God. And they said, you have to adhere to these commands too. In fact, you have to hear these commands above the main command of don't work. Pretty simple. Go enjoy yourself. Take a day. We'll take a nap on a beach. Go enjoy yourself. Go have a good day. Even today, you think about it. What do we call Sunday? Sabbath Sunday or the Sabbath day. And we try to make Old Testament legalism. A lot of churches do. You can't do anything on that Sunday. You can't do anything. And we make that Old Testament legalism part of what we do in Christian worship today. We see it. The compromise. Jesus came in to show a clear distinction between their religion and the true religion, the true truth. He exposed the deception and the dead system that the Pharisees and the Sadducees and all the religious elite had created in the name of Jehovah. Jesus showed himself to be the exclusive teacher and divine transcendent truth. The only way to God and salvation from the wrath of God. He showed the world that all other ways of religion were bankrupt. When he spoke of any other religion, it was definitely bankrupt. But his main target was perverted Judaism. What the people, the Pharisees, the religious elite had done to his religion. He had to completely destroy it and get rid of all of it and remake it in true truth. He had to come in. He says, I have not come to destroy the law, but to perfect it, to make it known so that you understand what the law's demand is. Think of it this way. The Pharisees and the Sadducees and the scribes, they would teach you that you could do these works to obtain your salvation. God's Old Testament prescription was these works are never good enough. There's a Messiah coming. They were part of a religious prescription to help you to understand that you were not good enough to save yourself, that nothing you could do on this earth would ever atone for your wickedness, because you would always be guilty of sin. And they said, if you did these things and you pleased us and our religion, you would go to heaven. Jesus came and said, that's blasphemy. I came to die for my children. I came to die and make the only way. This has always been the true truth. It's always been the truth of the Old Testament and it will always be the true truth. No one comes to the Father but through Him. This man, back to our passage, this man had a shriveled up, contorted hand and he couldn't function in society. Now you understand this is a labor-intensive society that this downtrodden poor man could not do labor in. He could not work in. He couldn't function in this society. Notice though that the Pharisees, they were watching Jesus already wanting to see that if he would perform a miracle. They weren't wanting to praise God so that they could worship God and magnify Him, they were wanting to accuse and attack God of a miracle. Do you catch that? In the synagogue, I mean, it wasn't a sin to do a miracle. It wasn't a sin to help. What's the greatest commandment? You're to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and yourself. Oh, your neighbor as yourself. What does it mean to love them if it doesn't mean to serve? and to pour yourself out to them, and to try to help them in their need. See, the scribes in verse 7 says this, 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. This man's hand was tore up, contorted, manipulated, and they wanted not to worship God on the Sabbath. That wasn't their intent, that wasn't their desire. In fact, I would say it never was. Their intention and desire was to accuse and attack Jesus because He did something no one had ever done in their presence. He healed a man. a divine miracle from Almighty God is performed and something that only God Himself can do. He comes down on the earth and He heals a man. Have you ever seen a man's withered hand that's just absolutely contorted to the point where it's like a shriveled up prune and see it just come back to life completely full and ready to go? It's never been seen. Boy, if Benny Hinn could do something like that, boy, he'd have a name for himself, wouldn't he? You know, if Joel Osteen could do that, he'd have a lot more money, he could spend a lot more money on his teeth, more hair implants, all the deal. I'm telling you, he'd make some serious money, couldn't he? If all these faith healers could do the stuff that Jesus did, man, could you imagine the money they could make. Never seen it before. These Pharisees had never seen this type of miracle before, and they looked not for the miracle of God. but they looked to accuse the Lord of glory." The Pharisees, they got it wrong. They wanted to attack Jesus and to punish Him and to rebuke Him and maybe even tarnish His impeccable reputation and character. And if they couldn't do that, they wanted to find a reason. to kill him. They could care less for the man. The Pharisees saw the miracle as an opportunity not to worship God, but to accuse the Messiah of wrong in the area that they saw that they could attack him in. Think about it. They couldn't accuse him of being a liar. They couldn't accuse him of false miracles. They couldn't accuse him of false truth, because every time they tried to catch him in something wrong, what happened? He turned it on them. You say this, I say this, which one's more right? And he kept turning it on him, and the Pharisees didn't know what to do. In fact, it got so bad that they stopped asking him questions because they ended up looking like fools, right? They didn't know what to do with the questions they were asking Jesus, because every time they said anything, they looked to the people like hypocrites. You know why? They were. They were. Because in their hearts, they could care less about this man. They wanted to attack God, the Lord of the Sabbath. But they found out that they could attack Him based upon their legalism. The people were in bondage to the Jewish law. You see, Jesus said, they sit in Moses' seat. And so you have to do, for now, you have to do what they say. but don't do what they do, because they bind people with bondages that are so heavy that they can't bear them, and they wouldn't even bother to lift a finger. The Sabbath was the culmination of everything to the Jews. It was where the people and the law were mingled together, and a display of keeping the religious order was on display for everyone to see. And unfortunately, these Pharisees found that they could be powerful and wealthy and dominate the religion and the people. All they had to do was just put God to the side. When God showed up, they would not be put to the side, so they looked for a reason to kill the Lord of glory. The people were in bondage to the Jewish Sabbath. Not God's law, but the man-made rules. They couldn't get out of the rules because they were in Moses' seat. We have to remember that this system taught them that they had to obey what the leader said or they would not have eternal life. They had to obey it. This system said that. Not God, but the system of Judaism said that. And when Jesus came in and He gave divine truth, these wicked men, they lashed out with hatred and with anger and rage, and it was masked behind their religion. They would ask Jesus questions about the Sabbath. They would challenge Him. Why are you doing the things you're doing? What do you think you're doing? How dare you do it? And we saw it in the last week when they even questioned about His disciples getting something to eat. And they tried to say they were winnowing and they were doing all this work that they weren't supposed to be doing. Remember we talked about that? Verse 8, But he knew their thoughts, and he said to the man with the withered hand, Come and stand here. And he arose 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 or destroy it? To save life or destroy it? They knew that it was better to do good, but they also knew that they could not answer it. You see, if they said it's better to kill, the people would have killed them. They would have stoned them for blasphemy. If they said it's better to do good, then he would have said, then why is it that you condemn people for doing what God sees as righteous? They couldn't answer. They were in a conundrum here where they could not give a response. And because of their wicked hearts, God incarnate, Jesus Christ, the divine truth, became sorely angry. He became angry beyond rage because these people were being punished under a system of man's works. They knew that they couldn't answer it. And Jesus knew it. He's God in the flesh and they knew that He was God. Remember that when God the Father came down in this cloud and here Jesus is being baptized and you hear a rumble and a thunder that says, this is my beloved Son. When you see heaven open up and the Holy Spirit come down as a dove, everybody sees it. The Pharisees were there and they knew what was going on. They had the records. They knew that this was the Messiah. They knew how He was born. They knew everything about it. It wasn't a trick to them. They knew it. And yet, because He did not affirm them, they wanted Him dead. They wanted to stop Him. Look in verse 10. And after looking at them, He said to them, He said to him, stretch out your hand. And he did so, and his hand was restored. See, Jesus looked around and He gave them a chance to answer, and He weighed them. He found them wanting. He judged them at that moment to be defiled and wicked by His own statement. He looked at them and asked them, which is better? to glorify God and to heal people or to kill them on the Sabbath. They couldn't answer. In an act of utter contempt for their religion, Jesus did what God wanted done. He showed love, compassion, and tenderness. God was the one who said that if you see someone in need, stop and help them. If you see someone hungry, feed them. If they're hurt, heal them. If they're in pain, cry for them. Show love and compassion to your fellow man and love your neighbor as yourself. But verse 11, they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus. From that point on, they sought how to kill Him. Jesus showed the greatest love that had ever been displayed, and yet these monsters of iniquity sought all the more on how they might punish Jesus because of a divine miracle. Beloved, the truth is always hard. It will always be the hardest thing. It will be the thing that the world will cause you and try to get you to run from, to compromise on, in every aspect of your life. Your own family, the sinful desires in your own heart will cause you to want to run from truth. The world will cause you to want to run from truth. It will always be hated, and it will always be unwanted by a world that loves to have their ears tickled. That is the one reason why there are so many denominations. That's just one of the reasons why there are so many denominations that call themselves Christians. That's why it is so terribly important that you understand that everything that names the name of Jesus Christ is not Christian, and it is not honestly Christian. It is not fully committed to Christ. There are more wolves eating sheep, spreading lies, and there are more goats who love the lies than there are sheep and shepherds who proclaim the truth. There's only one exclusive way, there's only one exclusive truth, and there's only one exclusive life. Compromising on biblical truth, it will be easier. It will be more fun. There will be more pleasure in it for you, in this world, for a season. But in the end, there will be total ruin of everything that you started running for. There will be a destruction of your life. And you may hear, depart from me, you worker of iniquity, for I never knew you. Is that what you want? Is that the type of truth that's acceptable to you today? God wants you to finish your race well. To run well. on this race that you started. He wants you to be dogmatic and steadfast. Even if the world hates you, God is with you. If you do, you will never have to worry about losing your testimony, or covering up sin, or compromising, or losing loved ones and friends and family to Satan. Because if you stand on true truth, on God's divine truth, and you trust the way that God has said, prepared, and given you, that way ends at the throne of grace. That's the greatest truth there is. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, you are the exclusive Savior and the way, the truth, the life. God, we understand that we cannot compromise. Lord, you refuse to allow the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the scribes and the Romans and even the Jewish people, you refuse to allow them to corrupt the truth. They had already corrupted their own religious ideas, but you refuse to allow them to corrupt the truth. We live in a society that is hell-bent on corrupting the truth and compromising and make every way open to every man except for biblical Christianity. God, I thank you for people like Darrell Waltrip that are willing to stand up and willing to defend truth. We may never be a big church or a popular church, but God, let us be a true church. In Christ's holy name I pray, Lord. Amen.