Sunday Sermon | Don't Miss God: Gospel of Mark Series

How does someone end up standing outside a soldier's funeral with a hateful sign, genuinely convinced they're serving God?

That's the opening question of this Memorial Day weekend message — and Mark 2 provides a sobering answer. It doesn't happen overnight. It's a slow drift, usually starting with a good heart and a real desire to honor God. But when religious activity gets untethered from God's actual heart, it produces something cold, self-righteous, and ultimately capable of seeing a broken person as a tool rather than a human being to love.

In Mark 2:23–3:6, Jesus clashes twice with the Pharisees over the Sabbath. Both times, he exposes the same root issue: they've taken something God gave as a gift and turned it into an idol. They've learned the rules, protected the rules, and completely missed the God behind the rules.

Pastor Garrett McCord works through the passage with pastoral honesty — including a story from his own early ministry when he realized he was drifting the same direction — and lands on five sharp questions for self-examination: ways we can be doing all the right things while quietly missing God's heart for people.

The message closes with the Gospel: the Lord of the Sabbath died to give us true rest. And the invitation is still open — "Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."

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Transcript

Grief Protest And Religious Cruelty

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This is the gospel of Mark. Good morning, church family. My name is Garrett McCord. I'm the youth pastor here at FBC Bernie, and we're glad you're here. Uh I don't know about y'all, but it's a good morning to get into the word of God. I'm excited. Uh so back in 2006, Matthew Snyder was a 20-year-old Marine. Uh, and unfortunately, he died in a non-combat accident while serving in Iraq. And the funeral was set in uh to be held on March 10th in his hometown of Westminster, Maryland. And his friends and his family, they had gathered to mourn, to celebrate his life, to uh have a sweet time, to just honor him. But about a thousand feet away from the funeral, members of the Westboro Baptist Church had traveled all the way from Kansas to protest his funeral. They stood on public land holding cruel and hateful signs that said a lot of things that I can't read from stage this morning, uh, but some that said things like, Thank God for dead soldiers. Uh and that's terrible. And and it it resonates a little differently on a Memorial Day weekend. Uh and that that event actually got a lot of nationwide attention because it turned into a legal case. Uh and and it was just this terrible thing. And what made it worse is they claimed to be doing it in the name of God. They used religious language, they talked about judgment, truth, righteousness, and many people learned on that day that this was not an isolated incident. Many of you have heard of this church before. Uh, they have been doing this across the countries from year, they're a hyper-fundamentalist church that this is their thing. And it forced people on that day to ask, how in the world does someone get there? How does someone get so committed to what they think is religious truth that they can stand near the funeral of a grieving family and protest and completely miss the heart of God? Why do I bring that up this morning?

Mark’s Rising Conflict With Pharisees

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Well, because that is where we're at in our series in the book of Mark. We've been walking through the book of Mark these last few weeks, and we've seen the beginning of Jesus' ministry. He burst onto the scene, he started to call his disciples, he's been performing healings, and all of the things he's doing presses this question early on in Mark's account of the gospel of Jesus. Who is this guy? And this morning we're gonna continue to ask that question in Mark chapter 2, verses 23. All the way we're gonna be in Mark 3.6, so 2.23 to 3.6. And as we continue to ask that question, what we're gonna see is that Mark records a series of clashes with the religious authorities that continue to escalate, and Jesus is gonna expose these authorities' hardness of heart while simultaneously answering that question a little bit more, showing his true identity. And the danger of a text like the one that we are in this morning is that we shake our heads at the Pharisees and think, oh, those goofy goobers. Like they just missed it, they don't know what they're talking about. But what we're gonna see is that we are in danger of finding ourselves in the exact same spot. Because in Mark 2 and 3, the Pharisees aren't irreligious people. They cared about Scripture. They cared about holiness, obedience, they cared about protecting the Sabbath, but somewhere along the way they got lost. And what we're gonna see from the Pharisees is that a danger exists for us today. You can become so committed to religious activity that you miss the God behind it. So, with that in mind, let's go to Mark chapter 2, starting verse 23, if you'll read with me. One Sabbath, Jesus was going through the grain fields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. And the Pharisees said to him, Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath? He answered, Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions. And then he said to them, The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, and so the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath. Would you take a moment to pray with me? Would you take a moment and pray for your own heart? That the Lord would open your eyes and your ears to whatever truth he has for you through his word this morning. That he would make you aware of how his spirit has been working on you long before this morning. And maybe this morning you would see it more clearly and get a vision of what that next step might be. And would you pray for me that what I say would be true and helpful? I would hide behind Scripture. Father, we thank you for your word this morning. We thank you for the opportunity to gather together, Lord. I pray we would never take mornings like this for granted. And God, I pray that as we get into your word, we would deal with it well, we deal with it rightly, that it would encourage us, that it would convict us, and that you would change our hearts and our minds like only you can, God. We pray that you would get all the glory this morning. Praise things in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Fence Laws And Sabbath Burdens

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So, this scene picks up with Jesus and his disciples walking through these grain fields on the way to the synagogue on the Sabbath. And they start to get hungry. And so as they're walking through these fields, they'll grab pieces of grain off of these stalks and they were eating it like a snack. And the Pharisees see it and they start to kind of take issue with it. Which you might think, well, maybe they're not happy with them for stealing. They think they're stealing grain and this isn't their field. That's not actually the case. What they were doing was perfectly allowed. Deuteronomy 23, 25 says, When you come into your neighbor's standing grain, then you may pluck the ears with your hands. And so the action was fine. The issue that the Pharisees had is that it was happening on the Sabbath. Because the Sabbath was a really big deal for the Jewish people. In Judaism, the two biggest markers of their identity was circumcision and observing the Sabbath. And the Sabbath was meant to be a day of rest where all work was prohibited. It goes all the way back to Exodus. But the big question that all throughout their history was continually debated and asked is what actually qualifies as work? Because it never, there was no comprehensive list of this is or this isn't when it was originally given back in Exodus. And so over time, these fence laws were developed and they were compiled in this thing called the Mishnah, which is like the oral traditions and laws of all of the Pharisees and scribes and teachers over the years. And these fence laws were these traditions and interpretations that were meant to build a fence around the actual law, so as not to accidentally sin or not to accidentally make a mistake. It's like, okay, uh, so I'm not supposed to fall in the pool, so I'm now gonna say I shouldn't get within five feet of the pool, just so I don't accidentally fall in. And over time, what started with a good intent started to get increasingly strict and really cumbersome and burdensome. For example, uh in the Mishnah Shabbat 6, 1 through 3, it says that a woman may not go out wearing things like wool threads, linen threads, certain headbands, ornaments, a needle, a signet ring, perfume bundles, and other decorative items, because the concern is that she would remove the item, show it to someone, and then accidentally carry it in public, qualifying as work, therefore violating the Sabbath law. Crazy, right? Now, to be fair, this developed years and years and years and years over time, but that's the thing that Jesus is dealing with here. But here's the really interesting thing. When Jesus responds to the Pharisees, he doesn't get into a debate over fence laws. He brings up David. Which is like, why is he bringing up David? He brings up a story from 1 Samuel 21. David is on the run from Saul, and he stops by a town called Nob, which we think is where the tabernacle was at that point. And David asks for bread. We think he goes into the tabernacle, he asks for bread because he's hungry, his men are hungry. And Ahimelech, who's the priest at the time, his son was Abiathar, so there's a whole thing there. Uh but Ahimelech was the guy that David approaches, and uh he asks for bread. And Ahimelech says, Hey, I don't have any ordinary bread, but I have this consecrated bread. And this bread was what would be placed before the Lord in the tabernacle, and it was normally reserved for the priests to eat after it had been replaced. And Ahimelech gives it to them and they eat it. So again, the question is, why in the world is Jesus bringing this up? What does this have to do? Well, that that consecrated bread was considered holy bread. And most scholars believe when they work through this text that this actually occurred on the Sabbath. And so here you have David, a righteous man, doing something that was considered forbidden. But considered is the key word here, though, because God never condemns David for doing it. God never condemns Ahimelech for doing it. There's no consequences, nothing. Why? Well, the answer to that

Sabbath As Gift And Practical Rest

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question comes in two points that Jesus makes at the very end of the section as he kind of recaps and then he ties it back into the situation. The first thing Jesus says is the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. And that was a huge statement in that culture, because we talked about how the Sabbath meant so much. It was a really big deal. But Jesus isn't saying that the Sabbath doesn't matter. What he's saying is that the Sabbath was always meant to be a means to an end. The purpose behind God giving the Sabbath was to be a blessing to humanity, not a burden. Because in Genesis, God rests on the seventh day, he makes it holy, he weaves the Sabbath rhythm into creation. And it was a gift. It was supposed to be the one day a week that we stop. Not because work is bad, but because we're limited. We can only do so much. And so we cease from work so that our bodies can recover, so our souls can breathe and our lives can be re-centered around God. It's also a time to worship, to recognize God is real, God is good, God is enough. Sabbath pushes back against the lie that everything depends on us. Because what you do on Sabbath is you stop, you give up things that you would normally do, and you realize that, hey, the world keeps spinning. I am creation, not creator. But the Pharisees in their tradition had obscured all of that. And had just turned Sabbath into a day that was just focused on rules, what not to do rather than the positive side of what the day was actually for. The Sabbath was always meant to be a means to an end. It was a means to the end of God. It was supposed to point God's people back to Him and the rest that He gives us. But they took a good rule and made it ultimate. And anytime you take a good rule and make it ultimate, it ultimately makes it a problem. And we know this can happen in life. For example, in our house, we have a rule. Everybody sleeps in their own bed. That's a good rule. Because here's what happens. If Leighton tries to sleep in our bed, really a few things happen. One, the space under our blanket officially becomes classified as a sauna. I'm a space heater, my daughter's a space heater, my wife is a space heater who's pregnant. And so I'm pretty sure you could cook an egg under our blanket if you throw another human being in there. Two, even though I'm the largest one in the family, I will somehow have to exist on the outer six inches of our mattress with three inches of blanket. Don't know how a three-year-old takes up that much space, but she does. Three, by 3 a.m. I will have been kicked in the ribs at least 15 times. I'm pretty sure I'm bruised at this point. And so hence the in-your-own bed rule is a good rule. The kids get sleep, which they need to avoid a nuclear meltdown by 2 p.m. the next day. Mommy and Daddy get sleep, which we also need to avoid a nuclear meltdown by 2 p.m. the next day. It's a good rule. It's for the people. But here's the thing all of us can probably relate to this. The last week, every night at 1 a.m., it sounds like the Air Force is taking target practice in my backyard. Because storms have rolled through, and I guess lightning just likes to hit the square mile around my house. And my daughter's terrified of storms, and so she'll come in crying. And let me ask you, in that moment, do you think I'm gonna say, well, sweetie, I I know you're scared, your tears are so sweet, but my hands are tied. A rule's a rule. You know, I don't make the rules. I mean, I do make the rules, but don't pay attention to that part. But you know, it is what it is. No, of course not. Why? Because even though it's a good rule, the intent behind it matters. The rule exists because I love my child. Sleep is good for her. Rhythms, boundaries, that's all good for her. But under the heart of all of it is a love for her and a desire for her to flourish. And so if that rule gets in the way of me loving her and helping her flourish, then it's not being applied as intended. Do you see it? In the same way, Jesus is not making the point that rules or the Sabbath doesn't matter. He's saying that God's intent does. The Pharisees have forgotten that the Sabbath was to be a blessing, not a burden. And now, before you leave this, again, we talked earlier, the temptation with these passages is to be like, oh, silly then. Here's the thing. In our culture today in the West, in America, we're usually not in the ditch of legalism with the Sabbath. We're in the ditch of neglect. One of my favorite authors put it this way: Jesus' audience needed to hear the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. We need to hear the Sabbath was made for man. And what I mean by that is for many Christians today, the idea of Sabbath is just an afterthought. We don't know what it means. We feel like we're legalistic if we try to keep it. Sure, we might go to church on Sunday, but other than that, it's just another day. In the words of the great philosophers, Rascal Flats, Sunday was a day of rest. Now it's one more day for progress. And we can't slow down because more is best. And it's all an endless pro sey, yay, yay, yes. Extra points if you know what song that's from. But look, we might not work at the office, but we catch up on work around the house, bills, yard work, maintenance, and I'll be the first one to admit that's me. Like this is my job to be up here right now. It gets complicated and sticky. I get it, but what I want you to see is Jesus himself told us that the practice of Sabbath is for our good. It's a blessing given to us by God. And I don't want you to miss out. And I don't have time to preach a sermon on how to practice Sabbath. That's not the primary thrust of this text, but I want to include it because it's important. And so if you have no idea what to do, just pick a period of time. Pick a day, pick half a day, pick something where you can actually start. And for that period of time, do something to start it. Maybe you light a candle, maybe you pray, maybe you read a Bible story together as a family. I don't know. And for that period of time, rest. And I don't necessarily mean do nothing, but do things that delight your heart in God. First thing, take this and throw it in a lake. Run it over with your car, light it on fire. At the bare minimum, turn it off. It does that. If you, everybody, if you hold your phone and you hold these two buttons, you can just slide this thing to the right. And it silences everything. It's incredible. You can do that. But but seriously, get rid of your phone, get rid of distractions, and do things that make you more aware of God's reality and goodness in your life. And for you, maybe that's time with family, maybe that's time with your kids. For me, it's time with my beautiful spouse and my two beautiful kids. Maybe it's a really, really good cup of coffee, or maybe it's reading a good book, worshiping the Lord, good music. I don't know what it is, but things that you can do to the glory of God and you can do that fill your heart with gratitude. That is the heart of Sabbath. And that's what the Pharisees were missing. But here's the thing, Jesus is about to make the point that they've missed a lot more than just the intent of the Sabbath. He's actually going to press that their misunderstanding of the Sabbath is a symptom of the fact that they've missed God himself. And that's we're going to see in verse 28.

Lord Of The Sabbath And Authority

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Verse 28, Jesus says, So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath. And so when Jesus says that, what he's doing is he's making a claim about himself. Son of Man was a messianic title from the book of Daniel, and it was one of the favorite titles that Jesus would like to use for himself. And so to claim to be not just the Son of Man, but to claim to be the Lord of the Sabbath is to claim authority over one of the most sacred gifts that God ever gave his people. The Sabbath belonged to God. It was commanded by God, blessed by God, observed in honor of God. And so earlier, when Jesus spoke with authority on God's intent, right? So remember that, he didn't debate the laws, he said, I'm going to tell you God's heart. And here's the flow of his argument. He says, I'm going to tell you God's heart, and I have the authority to tell you God's heart. Like not anybody can just walk up and say, hey, this is what God's thinking right now. So to say that, that implies a greater authority than any of those scribes or Pharisees that are people that were there in that audience that day. He says, I can define Sabbath because it belongs to me. And ownership carries authority. Think of it this way: you come over to my house, uh, and you could give me your feedback on how you think the furniture is arranged, how the paint on the walls is picked out, the carpet, the tile, and that's great. Thank you so much. But there's a certain point where I'm like, thank you for your input, but I own this house. Well, technically the bank owns it, but I'm paying the money so that I can own it one day. Like, this is my house, right? And at the end of the day, I say, hey, because this is my house, I have authority here to decide what it looks like and how it's kept. Ownership carries authority. Jesus says, I have the authority over the Sabbath. And a little sidebar here, it's not just the Sabbath. Right? Jesus is making a claim to be God, and we'll get to that here in a minute. But the God of the universe, the God who made the lungs in your body that take oxygen and turn it into your blood so that your heart can be and you can get things to your brain, and everything that works a certain way is that way because God made it and God gave it to you. And ownership comes with authority. You are not your own. You are derivative. You come from someone else. And so the question is: does that someone else have that authority in your life? Over how you spend your money, how you treat people, how you talk, how you spend your time, the things you look at, the way you treat people you disagree with. Because you ultimately belong to him, and ownership carries authority. And here's the thing: the point Jesus is making here about authority fits within the flow of Mark's gospel. He teaches with authority, he casts out demons with authority, he heals with authority, he forgives sins with authority, and now he claims authority over even the Sabbath. And so we keep coming back to that question: who is this man? And he keeps pointing to all of this authority. And the answer is the Son of God in the flesh. He's saying, the God of the Sabbath, the God who created it, the God who blessed it, that's the one who stands before you today. So sure, the Pharisees have missed the Sabbath. They missed the point. But it's because they missed the God who made it, who is looking them in the eyes and talking to them at that moment. And what we see happen in the text next is a prime example of that. Jesus is almost running a case study of sorts. So let's get back to Mark chapter 3, verse 1.

Healing That Exposes Hard Hearts

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It says, Another time Jesus went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, and so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath. Jesus said to the man with a shriveled hand, Stand up in front of everyone. And then Jesus asked him, Which is lawful on the Sabbath? To do good or to do evil? To save life or to kill? But they remained silent. He looked around at them in anger and deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, Stretch out your hand. He stretched out, and his hand was completely restored. And then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus. And so they returned from their walk in the fields, and when you read Mark's account, it seems like these might be two different stories, but when you read Matthew's, it's actually pretty intertwined, and you realize that, oh, they came to the Sabbath right after that situation happened in the grain field. And so these are probably the exact same Pharisees who he just had that clash with. And so when they're watching him, it's not because they're curious about his healing. They're looking for some way to trip him up. And Jesus knows this. And so he forces an issue. And he sees a man there who had a shriveled hand, probably been like this for a really long time, and he says, Hey, stand up. And he asks a question. He says, What's the right thing to do on the Sabbath? Heal this man or let him die? And at first you might think, like, I feel like it's a little dramatic, Jesus. Like he's not about to die. Like he's had this for a long time. Like, couldn't this wait? But that's the exact point Jesus is trying to make. You see this man who's been paralyzed from, who knows, could be birth. And the fact that the Pharisees would say, couldn't this wait, shows they've missed it to begin with. They become so focused on defining what counts as work that they've lost sight of what the Sabbath is for. And Jesus presses this further in Matthew's account of this. He says, uh, in Matthew 12, 11, he said to them, If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a person than a sheep? Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath. See, the Sabbath was supposed to reflect the heart of the God who gave it, which meant it was for doing good, for mercy, for the relief of suffering. And the reasons the reason Jesus goes to these lengths and makes this display is because he's forcing the Pharisees to see the moral direction of their hearts. Hey, you haven't just missed the Sabbath, you've missed God. As William Craig puts it, in the name of piety, they had become insensitive to both the purposes of God and to the sufferings of man. In other words, they became so focused on being religious that they stopped seeing what God wanted and stopped caring about others. They missed God's heart. And what Jesus is making clear here is that missing God's heart puts you on a path to cold, hard hearted religion. They can see a man who's got a birth defect or a the bare minimum

When Ministry Becomes Self Focused

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a very debilitating injury as a tool for your own purposes. The problem was I was still a real dumpster fire. Like constitutionally, a lot of work to be done there. And by his grace, he led me to Dallas Baptist University. And while I was there, God really began to clean me up from the inside out. Just the Lord got me plugged into community. It was a great environment. And as great as DBU is, though, it can tend to be a little bit of a bubble. It's literally a gated community in Dallas. There's one entrance, one exit, you all hang out together, everybody lives on campus. And it's easy to start thinking that Christian maturity means being surrounded by people who already know the rules, who already know the language, who know how to behave, who know how to look put together. And again, it's a great environment, but over time you can start to get real comfortable in that kind of bubble. In my second semester, I took a job at Community Baptist Church in Ferris, Texas, to be the part-time youth pastor. And it was a little bit of a rough gig, to be completely honest. When we started, I think we had, what, like five students. Uh four of them were siblings, so that was humbling. Just one family keeping the ministry afloat. If they were sick, we were out. Like it was not great. And it was just a rough context to do ministry. Uh it was a very low-income town. There were a lot of drug issues, a lot of broken homes, absent fathers. Uh it was it was just rough. Uh and there were just every week, there was one specific girl who would come up to me and just brag about all of the atrocious decisions she made during the week. And, you know, at first I was burdened for them. Like my heart broke. I was like, man, I'm so glad I'm here to get to be a light and all this sort of stuff. But over time, if I'm honest, I started to feel like they were the burden. And I started to see them less as students who needed mercy and more like problems to my personal ministry success. That they were getting in the way of this looking a certain way or me getting a certain platform. And one night everything kind of came to a head. Like it was a crazy Wednesday. There was like some drama. Some kid stole some money. I got blamed for it somehow. Don't ask me. And I go home and I'm talking to Christine. I mean, we're back at college at this point, we're not married, so we were just talking before we went our separate ways. And I'm like, hey, I think I might be done. Like, I think I'm gonna go like be a chaplain in the military or something. I don't know. Like, that's where I went. That's how rough of a night it was. It's like, hey, the military's gotta be easier than this. And I was like, I'm done. I can't do this anymore. And so I'm sitting there, she bless her soul, like talked me out of it to the best of her ability. But I'm still sitting in my bed that night and I'm like, why am I doing this? Like, what is the point? Like, these kids are just, they're they're just the worst. And then God, in that moment, it's like the Holy Spirit smacked me across the face and said, You were that kid. Man, there was a youth pastor who loved you enough to see through all of your mess, all of your rebellion, all your two-faced, double life just junk to show you the heart of God. And that's what I've called you to be to these students. And I realized, man, like I was just wrecked. Like I got into this because I saw the heart of God in my own life, the mercy, the compassion, the grace. And somewhere along the way, I got caught up in all the noise of the bubble. Looking impressive, doing the right things, checking the box. I'd learned the language, the expectations, what faithfulness was supposed to look like. I'd gotten good at playing the game, but I missed God's heart for the broken and the hurting. I was becoming the kind of person who cared about ministry while forgetting about the God and the people that the ministry was supposed to be for. And ultimately, I thought that my activity made me holy, but in reality, religious activity detached from God's heart of compassion and mercy is just noise. It's a waste of time. And so the warning for us this morning is this that just like the Pharisees, we can become religious enough to know what is technically right, but hard-hearted enough to stop seeing the person in front of us. To go back to that question with Westboro, do you know how you get there? You miss the God you say you're serving. And it doesn't happen overnight, it's a slow berm. Usually starts with a good heart. You know, you can stand for biblical truth on important issues abortion, gender, care for the poor, but when people on the other side of the issue start becoming people to be shamed and destroyed on the internet, rather than image bearers to be love and one to the truth, you've missed God's heart. You can care deeply about the church and the things in the church, but when church politics and preference become more important than being filled up with the Spirit to go and share the message of the gospel with your neighbors, you've missed God's heart. You can be passionate about sound doctrine, you should be. But if doctrinal precision makes you arrogant, suspicious, and unable to rejoice when God's working through people outside of your tribe, you've missed God's heart. You can care about holiness and you should, but when holiness becomes mainly about identifying what is wrong with everybody out there rather than what is wrong in your own heart, you've missed God's heart. You can care about your kids being raised in the faith. You should. But when your concern about their behavior becomes more about protecting your image than shepherding their heart, you've missed God's heart. And look, I don't want to shame anybody here. I'm pretty sure I've done every single thing I just talked about at some point in my life. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. But think about this, y'all. In a world, like, like turn on the news. Get on Instagram or X, actually don't delete those, but get on the news. In a world that, like, we've just lost any ability to have any sort of sound, kind public discourse about literally anything in the world. Like it can be from the local, like municipal level to the highest levels of the federal government. Like, we just can't talk about things anymore. And we say, like, hey, the world needs people to stand on truth. Yes, the world needs people to stand on God's truth in love. The Holy Spirit works through that kind of standing on truth. And so I don't want to just do the same thing the Pharisees are doing here this morning and speak about all the things you shouldn't do. I want to call you to a vision of something that's better. Of as believers, we can step into a world that has completely forgotten how to talk to each other. And yes, we can see, hey, these people stand for something that might be very, very wicked, but they are not the enemy. They are captive to darkness. And they need to be rescued, not vanquished. That's the heart of God. But that's the question: do you know God's heart? And that can only come from proximity. Like as you spend time with the Lord, you begin to learn his character. As you learn his word, you get texts like Exodus 34, 6 through 7. This is where God reveals his name and his character to Moses, the most quoted verse in the Bible by the Bible. The Lord, the Lord, compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin. Does that passage characterize you? Compassion, a deep love for those around you, even the broken and the hurting. Mercy, action that springs forth out of that love and compassion, actually doing something with those feelings. Steadfast love, a faithfulness that shows up time and time again, day after day, night after night. And look, that doesn't mean not standing on truth. The passage that I just read, Exodus 34, 6 through 7, the very end talks about how the Lord is just, justice will come. But again, are we characterized by God's heart of compassion, mercy, graciousness? Or we have have we just gotten in love with a bunch of religious activity? And look, the way that you process through this is you gotta get in community, you gotta get vulnerable. Don't try to think through this yourself. We're really good at lying to ourselves. Get around people who love you and know you and give them permission to speak into your life. Because it's a scary thing to realize it's possible to be real close to God in proximity, but miles away in the heart. Don't miss him. And so to summarize, and we're gonna land the plane here

Jesus Offers True Rest To The Tired

SPEAKER_00 29:55

in a moment, Jesus is pointing out the reason the Pharisees missed the point on the Sabbath is because they missed the God who made it. And it led them to hard-hearted religion that saw this broken man as a tool to be used for their own purposes. And in the same way, we can be so preoccupied with religious activity that we miss God's heart and treat people the exact same way. And I'll close with this. The text ends with Jesus healing this man, and Mark records that the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians as to how they might kill Jesus. They didn't have any plans yet. This is still years, uh still years to go in Jesus' ministry. But in their closed-off hardness of heart, they looked at each other and said, Hey, when the time is right, we gotta get rid of this guy. And the great irony of the story, Jesus earlier asked, which is lawful on the Sabbath, to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill? The so-called Sabbath breaker healed a man, while the so-called Sabbath keepers plotted to kill one. Not just kill any man, but to kill the Lord of the Sabbath. And they would kill him. Not the next day, not the next week, but years later, Jesus would come into Jerusalem to the shouts of praise. And he would clash with these same authorities and religious leaders, and they would pay off one of his closest disciples to betray him, and he would be arrested under the disguise of darkness and run through some sham trials before he would be sentenced to execution by crucifixion. They would beat him to where you couldn't recognize him as a man. They would make him carry his own crossbeam up a hill, where they would nail him to that cross beam and stick him in the ground until he suffocated to death. Yet none of that was because these authorities or religious figures or darkness had conquered Jesus. No, Scripture says that this was the plan all along, before the beginning of time, that the Lord of the Sabbath rest would die to give us true rest. Because God made the world and everything in it. He created the world good, perfect with order, and he created us to live within that order and to glorify him. But we decided to rebel. And we brought sin, death, and evil into God's perfect world. And that sin separated us from God. It placed us under his wrath because he is just. He can't just sweep sin under the rug and act like it didn't happen, because then it would mean that none of this actually matters if there's no justice. But God didn't want us to be separated from him for eternity, and so he sent Jesus, God in the flesh, the Lord of the Sabbath. And on that cross, he became our sin. He took our place and he absorbed the wrath of all of the sin that we had earned, every lie we've told, every time we've treated someone poorly, every comment we shouldn't have made, everything that we shouldn't have looked at, it got poured onto him so that we could be forgiven. By his stripes we are healed. And then they put him in a borrowed grave and he got up to prove that we, if we would confess with our mouth and believe in our heart that Jesus is Lord and God raised him from the dead, we will be saved. That we will be made right with God, that we'll be adopted into the family, that we will have eternal life, that we will have true rest. We'll have rest for our souls now. Rest from striving, from constantly trying to measure up, to produce more, to do more, to be enough in the eyes of the world and everybody around us. But not just rest now, rest to come. The truth that one day Jesus is coming back. And he's gonna wipe every tear from every eye, that he's gonna make every sad thing come untrue. Come, Lord Jesus, come. New creation, dwelling with God in perfect rest forever. And so maybe you're here this morning and you're tired. You're tired from trying to hold everything together, tired from carrying anxiety, cynicism, tired from trying to keep up appearances, pretending your marriage is fine, watching your kids wander, grieving someone long after the services have ended, tired from fighting the same old sin, tired from trying to prove that you're enough, tired from trying to be successful, put together, impressive, in control, tired from trying to do all of this, failing, and then wondering if God is disappointed in you. If that's you, the invitation of Jesus this morning is not try harder and figure it out. It's not, hey, follow a bunch of rules and you're stalt start to feel better. It's come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. I don't know about you, but I need that this morning. And maybe you need to step into that for the first time. Maybe you've never confessed with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believed in your heart that God raised him from the dead. You've never placed your faith in Jesus. You might have been really close to God in proximity for your whole life. You might have grown up in this very sanctuary. But you say, if I'm honest, I've been miles away from God's heart. The solution is not to clean yourself up, to try and align yourself with his view of things on your own willpower. The solution is you get before him and you say, Jesus, I ain't got much. I really don't have anything to offer other than my own sin. But whatever I have, Jesus, it's yours. Your King, your Lord. Will you save me? I need you. I give you everything, Lord. Will you come? Will you bring me into your family? And if you need to do that, that's you. We're gonna have prayer partners down here in a minute as the band comes up and we're gonna enter into a time of response. I just encourage you. Start that conversation. Come, ask for prayer. Or maybe you say, Hey, I I see a lot of myself and those Pharisees that I have I have fought for a lot of things of God, but in the wrong way. I I've I've torn people down, I've I've I've said things that I shouldn't, I've not reflected the heart of God to the people around me. It's okay, there is freedom in confession and healing. God is faithful and just. If we confess our sins to Him, we will be forgiven, we will be healed. Confess your sins to one another and be healed, says James. And so maybe you need to come down this morning to pray and just hey, hey, I need to confess. Like I've been I've been running from God. I've been miles away in his heart. I might have put on a good facade, but I'm tired. I need true rest in Jesus. I need to come back to that rest that I accepted so many years ago.

Response Prayer And Closing

SPEAKER_00 36:18

I don't know where you stand with the Lord this morning, but I do know that when the word of God is preached, we're commanded to respond. And so that might be standing and praising the Lord for the work he's done in your life. It might be hitting your knees here and crying out to the Lord, it might be making a decision for the first time. Whatever it is, I promise you it's for your good. God loves you, He cares for you. Will you pray with me and respond? Father, we thank you for this morning. We thank you for the opportunity to worship you together, to hear your word. Lord, and I confess, I'm sure for all of us here at some level this morning, there's so many times when we might start with good intentions, we might have the right aim, but somewhere along the way we just get lost and we miss you. I pray that we would just come back to simple things. A love for you, a love for others that comes from the love you've shown us. That we would come back to your heart, God. Forgive us when we've made it about things it shouldn't be about, when we've made it more complicated than it should be, when we've made it about us. Help us to just clear the deck this morning and to begin again with you, Father. We love you, and we praise you. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen.