Mercy Over Maintenance (Mark 2:23-3:6)

But here's another beauty in this, what the pharisees meant for evil, God used for mercy. On the cross, Jesus didn't protect a system, but he gave his life to save people. I want you to rejoice in that truth. That on the cross, Jesus didn't protect your systems. He didn't protect religion and the ways that you have and the rules that you have, but he came to save you. The pharisees might have rejected Jesus in the name of obedience. The question for us is, will we do the same or will we follow Jesus? [00:32:28] (38 seconds)  #MercyNotSystems

We might not plot against Jesus to kill him, but we can resist him. We can ignore him. We can push back when he challenges us and hold tighter to what what we've built than what he is calling us to. But here's the incredible part about our god. That even when we even when the pharisees resisted him, even when the Pharisees were plotting against him, god still works and he still moves towards people who are in need. There is nothing that you can do to stop the movement of god. [00:31:19] (31 seconds)  #UnstoppableGrace

So when your system is threatened, you'll align with anything that helps you to protect it. When your system is threatened, you'll align yourself with anything and everything in order to protect your system. You'll align with people that you normally wouldn't align with. You'll align with works that you normally wouldn't align with, with sins that you would normally wouldn't do. You'll excuse anything and everything to protect your system. The progression of the pharisees is is stark. They start with questioning about the grain. They move into accusation against the disciples, Jesus. [00:29:10] (40 seconds)  #SystemOverPeople

A hardened heart doesn't happen at once. It develops over time. The Pharisees didn't become hard towards God in a moment, but over time, they would question. They would have accusation. They would have resistance, and they ended in rejection of the son of man, of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. The disciple or sorry, the Pharisees were so committed to maintaining their religious system that when god himself stood before him, they chose the system over Christ. Church, where have you been so committed to your maybe religious system, to your view of God? [00:29:57] (44 seconds)  #BewareHardHeart

I'll tell you emphatically, no. That's not at all what Jesus is saying here. Jesus is not lowering the standard of obedience. He's correcting their misunderstanding of it. The Pharisees had taken god's law, and they had layered it with man made rules. And in so doing, they had missed what God was doing all along. Because remember, God's commands were always meant to reflect his heart, to bring life, mercy, and restoration to his people. [00:17:52] (32 seconds)  #ObedienceWithHeart

The law was not meant to weigh people down or push people away. That's what the pharisees lost sight of. They created extra laws, and they reduced obedience to rule keeping, and they missed the very heart of God in so doing. They reduced obedience to rule keeping. They were so committed to maintaining their religious system that they stopped reflecting the God who gave it to them. They became so committed to maintaining their system that they stopped reflecting God himself. [00:12:38] (37 seconds)  #HeartNotRules

But what the Pharisees had done, and we'll probably come back to this later, they had set up rules and bound them over other people. And the danger of this is that we are binding we could bind people where God has not bound them. You can bind yourself and say, I'm gonna stay over here. But if you try to impose that same rule, that same regulation on somebody else, your own convictions on someone else, it's a dangerous place to be because it's a misunderstanding of god's law. [00:19:23] (30 seconds)  #DontImposeConvictions

This is an insane question. The room knows it. Jesus knows it. The Pharisees know it. And in that question, Jesus traps them. Because if the Pharisees were to say, well, it's better to do good, then they would have no reason to accuse Jesus for healing on the Sabbath. Oh, of course, Jesus. It's better to do good on the Sabbath, to save a life, And he could heal the man and the Pharisees would be like, no, we just said it's better to do that. [00:23:38] (27 seconds)  #RelationshipOverRules