Clearing a Path for Grace
Introduction: I know something about a good number of you. I know that many of you don’t think you are very good Christians. In your opinion, you don’t pray enough. You don’t tell others about Jesus enough. You don’t have enough quiet times with the Lord. You don’t serve enough or give enough. And if we pressed hard enough, we might find a significant amount of guilt over these matters.
I know something else about a good number of you. I know that many of you don’t think other people are as good a Christian as you are. They don’t pray enough or memorize the Scriptures enough or study the Bible as intensely as you do. They don’t parent their kids in the right way. They aren’t committed enough to the pro-life movement. They aren’t Republican enough.
Jesus may step on your toes this morning or he may set you free. Last week, Jesus began stepping on people’s toes. In particular, he stepped on the toes of the Pharisees, the religious leaders of Jesus’ day. During biblical times there were a number of different sects within Judaism including the Sadducees, Essenes, Zealots and Herodians. These sects would be comparable to our denominations. Each sect was differentiated from the other by their beliefs and practices. The most famous group that Jesus encountered were the Pharisees.
The membership of the Pharisees is estimated by scholars to be only a few thousand, but their influence was greater than their number. In fact, the Pharisees were the only sect that survived the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Modern Jewish scholars affirm that Orthodox Judaism as it is practiced today is essentially the Judaism of the first century Pharisees. The Pharisees were meticulous about observing the law in both its written and oral forms. In particular, it is their emphasis on the oral law, which is called “tradition” in the Gospels, with which Jesus had the greatest conflicts.
The Pharisees were concerned that people not violate the written law of God. In order to prevent this from happening, they developed oral traditions that would legislate actions so that people would not even come close to breaking the Law. Jesus’ conflicts with the Pharisees focus on their legalistic zeal in condemning people who did not keep the traditions. Jesus refused to live by their standard, and this got him into all kinds of trouble.
Jesus is confronted for failing to meet the accepted standards of religious devotion.
It started in last week’s sermon when Jesus forgave the sins of the paralyzed man and then was seen at a riotous party at Levi’s house. In the minds of the Pharisees, Jesus and his followers never did enough. In our passage today, the Pharisees’ first complaint is found in verse 33.
His disciples are not praying and fasting enough. Luke 5:33 says, “They [the Pharisees]said to him, “John’s disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking.” Fasting, prayer and the giving of benevolent gifts to those in need were viewed as necessary acts of righteousness during Jesus’ time. The Old Testament law required God’s people to fast one time a year–during the feast of the atonement. But the Pharisees developed a tradition of fasting twice a week or over 100 times a year.
The Pharisees criticize the disciples for eating and drinking while their followers are fasting and praying. They couch their criticism quite cleverly by comparing Jesus’ disciples to John’s disciples. They thus give their criticism a higher level of legitimacy, since John is Jesus’ friend. In the contest for who is more spiritual, the Pharisees tell Jesus that his disciples aren’t making the grade. They don’t have enough quiet times. And Jesus isn’t meeting the standard because He is their leader.
His disciples are not resting enough on the Sabbath. Look at chapter 6, verses 1-2:
One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grain fields, and his disciples began to pick some heads of grain, rub them in their hands and eat the kernels. Some of the Pharisees asked, “Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”
One of the main institutions of Judaism is the Sabbath. God modeled the Sabbath when he rested after six days of creating and he legislated it by including it in the Ten Commandments:
Remember the Sabbath day by keeping 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, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. (Exodus 20:8-11)
The spirit of this commandment required God’s people to set aside one day for rest, worship and reflection. God’s intention was to liberate us from the tyranny of work. In their zeal to keep people from breaking this law, the Pharisees developed an oral tradition that legislated exactly what a person could or could not do on the Sabbath. They had laws governing how far you could travel. They went so far as to define what activities would constitute work on the Sabbath.
Until 1994, the Orthodox Jews in St. Louis could not carry a toddler or push an elderly relative in a wheelchair to the synagogue. Between sundown on Friday and sundown on Saturday, doing activities like this would constitute working on the Sabbath and thus breaking the fourth commandment. This regulation changed in 1994, when a 12 square mile area, called an eruv (pronounced AY-roov), was established where it is now lawful to lift things on the Sabbath.[i]
Jesus’ disciples, being hungry after service at the synagogue, pick wheat out of a field, rub it in their hands to clean off the husks, let the husks blow in the wind and then pop the kernels into their mouths. According to the Pharisees, these little activities are work, which is forbidden according to their tradition. Jesus’ disciples are not making the grade. And Jesus isn’t meeting the standard again.
Jesus’ problems don’t end here, as he is confronted one last time in this section.
Jesus himself is not resting enough on the Sabbath.
On another Sabbath he went into the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was shriveled. The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath. (Luke 6:6-7)
The Pharisees had decided that it was unlawful to help someone on the Sabbath if it could wait until the next day. They would allow for exceptions in life-threatening situations so that a pious Jew could break the law without condemnation if someone’s life was at stake. But healing an atrophied hand did not fit in with their exception clauses.
Now look at verse 8, “But Jesus knew what they were thinking and said to the man with the shriveled hand, ‘Get up and stand in front of everyone.’ So he got up and stood there.” Jesus is going to press the issue. You can almost feel the tension that is in the air at the synagogue. “Then Jesus said to them, ‘I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?’ He looked around at them all, and then said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He did so, and his hand was completely restored.” (Luke 6:8-10)
Jesus knows what He is doing. He knows beforehand that He is going to make a scene when He helps this man. He doesn’t back down, but instead, intentionally makes the legalism of the Pharisees an issue. He confronts the prevailing religious system.
Jesus confronts the legalistic rules of religion.
Was Jesus against fasting? No, He wasn’t condemning it as a practice. Was Jesus against prayer? Of course not; He has modeled a lifestyle of personal prayer and dependence on the Father. Was He against keeping the Sabbath as a day set apart different from the others? No, not at all. In Matthew 5:17-18 we read,
Jesus said, “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen will by any means disappear from the Law.”
Jesus’ lifestyle demonstrates that He confronts legalism head on. Legalism had detrimental effects on the lives of people then and it has detrimental effects on the lives of people today. Jesus confronts legalism for four main reasons that we see in this section.
Legalism demands conformity to an extra-biblical standard. Legalism often begins by taking very good things and codifying them beyond what the Scriptures establish. This is what the Pharisees did. They respected God’s Law and wanted to help people keep the law. So they developed personal convictions about how to honor God. Through practice and time, these convictions became codified. There are two problems with this. First, we tend to legalize external behaviors. The problem is that the initial principle becomes lost and now the standard of spiritual commitment becomes an extra-biblical standard rather than the biblical principle.
Unfortunately, Christianity has not totally rid itself of the tendency towards creating external standards that go beyond the words of Jesus. Jeff Butler, one of our pastor/teachers has perceptively said, “we love the law.” We love the law because it creates a quick and tidy way to measure our spirituality. There are a lot of non-biblical standards we use to measure our spirituality as well as the spirituality of others. These include political party affiliation, scripture memory, quiet times, parenting practices, commitments to different social causes or commitments to doctrinal issues that don’t matter for salvation. A lot of people get into vocational Christian ministry out of guilt because they have come to think that Christian ministry is the real mark of Christian maturity and faith.
When I lived in Chicago, I often car-pooled to Trinity with a friend who is now a missionary in Uzbekistan. On one particular morning as we were driving to school, he made a statement to the effect that if a man wasn’t having devotions every night with his wife and family that he was sinning and needed to repent. And then he continued on and on about how that was why America was going to hell in a hand basket. My first response to his statement was to try to change the subject. The more he went on, the more guilty I felt. I hope you see what I see in that statement. Though the practice is highly commendable, he had turned his personal convictions and practices into a spiritual law. It reeked of legalism. Somehow, I got the courage up to ask him if he had a chapter and verse on that one.
Legalism condemns and breaks fellowship with those who do not conform. In verse 7, on the day that Jesus heals the man with the atrophied hand, we read that “the Pharisees and the teachers of the law were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath.” And after he heals the man in verse 11, we see that “they were furious and began to discuss with one another what they might do to Jesus.” Jesus wasn’t conforming to their standard, so they are looking for a way to condemn Him.
There is an interesting thing I have discovered about pagans, people who have not yet experienced the forgiveness and love of Jesus. After years of exhaustive research, I have discovered that pagans tend to live like pagans. They say things, do things and believe things just as you would expect. They are wonderfully consistent.
The problem I am discovering is that my ministry to them is often thwarted because I want them to be religious before I tell them how much Jesus loves them. What is worse is that I often find myself condemning them in my heart for the words they say, for how they raise their children, and for the lifestyle I perceive them leading. I find myself separating from them, often with the excuse that I have some religious activity to attend.
I love Jesus’ example from last week. Levi is so excited to be a follower of Jesus, he throws a huge party for Jesus and invites all his buddies over. They come in smoking stogies and bringing in coolers full of malt beverages and telling off-color jokes. Jesus is there with them. He is full of the Holy Spirit. He is distinct, different, but ministering grace.
Legalism values control more than freedom and maturity. When the Pharisees get together to discuss Jesus, they are not talking about how to promote him. Rather they are attempting to control him. Jesus is starting to get a following and the ideas he is living and promoting are lethal to their ability to keep their laws intact.
A couple of years ago, I took a call from a young man who was considering the Evangelical Free Church as a denomination in which to serve as pastor. After some initial discussion about doctrine and leadership structure, he asked me about our church’s stand on alcohol. I told him that the church didn’t take a stand, but I preferred Bud Light. Just kidding! I didn’t say that to him, but I did tell him we taught against drunkenness, but we left this lifestyle choice up to the individual believer.
He then asked me if our elders drank alcohol. I told him I had no idea if they did or not, but to my knowledge each was living responsibly in this area. He then asked me if I didn’t think it was important to have a written policy concerning the use of alcohol that they would sign. I agreed with him that this was a good idea and at the same time we should decide whether they could smoke or not, what kind of car they could drive, how long they could work in a given week and how many times they should kiss their wives. He didn’t appreciate my point. He then asked me if I drank alcohol. The conversation did not last much longer.
Legalism produces insecure and immature followers. Legalism stunts spiritual growth. Some of us live our Christian life by a set of unbiblical expectations that we have come to believe define spiritual commitment. Our Christian life is often a life lived failing to meet those expectations and never doing enough. This results in great insecurity in our relationship with God. Other people outwardly live model Christian lives but they have a heart of a Pharisee. They never grow because they are always judging people for how they are not like them, instead of loving people where they are.
Jesus’ problems with the Pharisaic rules center on the issue that people could live their lives in accordance with their rules but never live the life God wanted them to live. Legalism only demands a change of behavior that can be measured externally. Legalism does not demand a change of heart. Jesus, on the other hand, wants the change of heart.
Thomas Merton said that “God is not a Nazi.”[ii] Some of us live our Christian lives as if God were a Nazi. We are living in fear of what God may do to us or to someone close to us if we don’t do enough of the “right” things. Thomas Merton is right. God is not a Nazi. God does not use coercive threats to get us to conform to an external standard. Instead, he works through the power of his Spirit in our hearts to change our values and to renew our minds so that we freely choose to honor him with our lives.
Jesus confronts legalism because legalism is resistant to the message and ministry of Jesus in the lives of people. Jesus is confronting the Pharisees and us with His Gospel, His good news.
Jesus confronts us with the Gospel.
There are five characteristics of the gospel that are taught or modeled by Jesus in these conflicts with the Pharisees.
The Gospel brings a time of joy instead of sadness. When the Pharisees question Jesus about why His disciples are not fasting and praying, He answers, in verse 34 of chapter 5, “Can you make the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast.” Fasting was always associated with grief and mourning in regard to sin. Jesus’ reply assumes that there will be a time for mourning and fasting but when the bridegroom is around, it is time for laughing and dancing.
As we live out the gospel, Jesus’ desire is that we experience joy, not insecurity and guilt. Jesus told his disciples, “If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete” (John 15:10-11).
When the Holy Spirit convicts our hearts of sin, he does so in hopes that our response will be godly sorrow, not paralyzing guilt, because godly sorrow leads to repentance. Repentance leads us to the cross and to an empty tomb, where there is a risen Jesus offering forgiveness and grace. And where there is grace, there is dancing. If you are racked by legitimate guilt because of your sins, I have good news. The bridegroom invites you to the reception at the empty tomb. If you are in that empty tomb and the guilt is still crippling, one of the reasons may be that you are under a pile of laws that someone other than Jesus made up.
The Gospel cannot be mixed with the legalistic rules of religion. He makes this point in verses 36 through 39 of chapter 5. Look there with me.
He told them this parable: “No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, ‘The old is better.'”
Some will want to take bits and pieces of the gospel and patch the hole that is apparent in their religious system. I will please God according to my religious traditions, but where I fail, I will sew on this Jesus patch to cover the breach. Jesus says you can’t use the new to patch the old. He tells us He didn’t come to add devotional routines to a broken system.
Some want to live in both worlds, the world of grace and the world of law. But this is like pouring new wine into old, brittle wineskins. As the wine ferments, the old one will not be able to expand to accommodate the rich wine that is brewing. The old skins will burst and what is left is a mess.
Becoming a Christian, a follower of Jesus, involves a change. Jesus does not allow his message to be mixed with the religion of works, and it is incompatible with the religion of works. You must leave the one to fully embrace the other.
The Gospel prioritizes human needs above ceremonial rites. When confronted with the fact that His disciples are eating kernels of grain on the Sabbath, Jesus addresses the Pharisees over legalization of the law in Luke 6, verses 3-4: “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God, and taking the consecrated bread, he ate what is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.”
Jesus points out a situation in 1 Samuel 21 where David, in a desperate plight, breaks the ceremonial rites of the law for the greater need of human survival. And in that case, David was not condemned. People are more important to God than keeping a ceremonial law.
After pointing out the precedent-setting actions of David, Jesus makes a final point to the Pharisees. A succinct statement. A staggering statement. We find it in verse 5: “Then Jesus said to them, ‘The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.’”
The Gospel establishes Jesus as the standard. The Sabbath was a divinely created institution. Jesus looks them in the eye and says, “I am Lord over the divine institution. I am its author, therefore, I set the standard. I am the Standard. You are not.”
There are a lot of things we can feel guilty about in our Christian lives that Jesus did not standardize as common Christian practice: fasting and prayer for revival, daily prayer for world evangelization, winning someone to Christ each week, weekly memory verses, reading through the Bible in a year, no kissing before engagement or other public displays of affection.
Are these things good? Some are. If you are feeling guilty, relax. Jesus didn’t establish them as the standard. If you think these things are important, I appreciate your convictions because I hold strong convictions, too. But let us be cautious not to measure our commitment or another’s commitment by these standards.
The Gospel sets people free to love others. The Pharisees had legislated the Sabbath to such a degree that people were not free to express genuine compassion and love. But Jesus has been commissioned “to preach good news to the poor, proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, and to release the oppressed” (Luke 4:18). When Jesus sees the man with the atrophied hand, He isn’t going to let legislation stop Him from doing what He has been commissioned to do. The needs of people can’t wait until tomorrow.
Philip Yancey in his book, The Jesus I Never Knew, recounts a discussion he had with the editors of the Russian newspaper Pravda. The editors were lamenting that even though Christianity and communism had very similar ideals, the Russian government was unable to motivate the people to compassionately give for the children affected by the Chernobyl accident. They said the average Russian citizen would rather spend his money on vodka. Yancey makes this perceptive comment:
Seventy-four years of communism had proved beyond all doubt that goodness could not be legislated from the Kremlin and enforced at the point of gun. In a heavy irony, attempts to compel morality tend to produce defiant subjects and tyrannical rulers who lose moral core … Goodness cannot be imposed externally, from the top down; it must grow internally from the bottom up.[iii]
Jesus invites us to be in relationship with him by following him. The gospel will set us free to willingly love others at our expense. And only the gospel can do this. Legalism never will.
Conclusion: There is a fine line between legalism on the one side and license on the other. Being free in Christ gives us much liberty that can be dangerously applied. I have not dealt with the other side of the gospel this morning because Jesus will begin doing that for us next week.
As I reflect on the conflicts Jesus had with the Pharisees, I picture a person with a machete clearing a path in the jungle so that there is room enough to build an airstrip. Jesus is clearing a path so that there is room enough for grace.
Jesus wants to clear a path in your life. He wants to set you free to stop living by a list of rules that some other lord has made for you. A list of rules will leave you defeated because you can never do enough. He wants you to experience the good news that Jesus has done it for you.
Jesus wants to clear a path in your life. He wants you to stop using the title “lord” for yourself. It is reserved for him. He is the standard bearer. He wants to break the back of legalism that rules in your heart.
Tags:
Grace
Pharisee
Fasting
Sabbath
Legalism
[i]. St. Louis Post Dispatch, November 20, 1994.
[ii]. Quoted in Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew, p. 76.
[iii]. Yancey, p. 75-76.