Matthew 2024

Matthew 12, 1 to 14.

At that time, Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. When the pharisees saw this, they said to him, look, your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath. He answered, haven't you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the House of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated Brit, which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests.

Or haven't you read in the law that the priests on Sabbath duty in the temple desecrate the Sabbath yet are innocent. I tell you that something greater than the temple is here. If you had known what these words mean, I desire mercy, not sacrifice. You would have condemned you would not have condemned the innocence. For the son of man is lord of the Sabbath.

Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there looking for a reason to bring charges against Jesus. They asked him. Is it lawful to heal on the earth. 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. Then he said to the man, stretch out your hand, so he stretched it out and it was completely restored just as sound as the other. But the pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus. Am I on? There we go.

Good evening. It's lovely to see you all, a warm welcome if you're new or just visiting. My name is John Maden. I am a member here at Cornerstone Chair. Let's pray, and then we will delve into the passage.

Lord helped us to see So it's all about you. Jesus, it's all about you. We gathered here this evening to rest and worship you, lord, you're all conquering, you're on the throne. Pointers to you, help me to speak clearly and faithfully, and lord help us to hear what you're saying to us. Open our ears, to your words and open our hearts that you would take our hearts and transform us so that we would, leave this place more in love with you.

So Matthew 12, please keep that open. I'm gonna start by painting you a picture. A picture of 2 Sabbath Days. It's gonna be Sabbath Day 1. And sabbath day 2.

So, sabbath day 1, a man gets up early. Let's call him Dean. Dean gets up early. That's a bit of texture. Dean gets up early.

Today is a new day and he's gonna make it count. He goes downstairs to make his coffee, but he can't. He can't grind his beans. It's a sabbath, grinding is prohibited on the sabbath. That's work.

No coffee for Dean. He glances over his shoulder, and he spots the pharisees that are already awake too. They're up and about, they're peering through his kitchen window, and they're pointing at him. Look. Okay.

Are they even doing in his kitchen window? He wonders to himself? He pauses cocoa pops into his bowl. He's 99 percent sure that cocoa pops aren't prohibited. He can't quite remember after all, they're about 1500 rules that he needs to keep today.

Meanwhile, the pharisees are watching, they're waiting. Not to worry. He goes to set up stuff at the hub. But halfway through set up, he remembers Carrying is definitely prohibited on the sabbath. That's work, so he throws it down.

Throws his stuff down. He looks around sheepishly to see if anyone saw. By midday, he's an anxious mess, by 3 PM. He's lost all track of the rules he's broken. By bedtime, he's broken and exhausted, and he knows that because he's broken these rules, he isn't right with god today.

He'll have to go, make a sacrifice tomorrow to deal with the mess, his mistakes. He lies in bed tomorrow, he says himself, I'll get myself sorted. I just need to try harder. Okay. That was Saturday day 1.

Sabbath day 2 Dean gets up. He goes downstairs and makes a coffee. He's weary. He's burdened. He's got lots of kids.

He eats his cocoa pops and even, has 1 of those chocolate straws to slip up the the milk. He puts on his favorite slugs and bugs tracks and dances around the room. Today, Dean is resting with god. He's worshiping god. He gives thanks to the lord, his savior, Jesus.

He reminds himself that he's a sinner saved by grace, and he delights in spending time with the lord. That's Sabathe too. 2 very different days, 2 very different deans. But what is the actual difference that's going on? Is it the rules or the policing of the rules?

Or his relationship with god? What does it mean to truly honor god's commandments? On day 1, we see the weight of religious tradition and that trying to keep the endless lists of rules in order to earn god's favor, and it's it's not life giving. It's not a life giving picture. It's rigid, rigid religion, rigid rules, anxiety, and exhaustion.

Whereas on Saturday 2, we see someone living under god's grace, trusting in Jesus, enjoying delighting in Jesus, like we saw in, that chapter last week in chapter 11, delighting someone who says, come to me, and I'll give you rest. There's rest. Let's turn to chapter 12 now with that in our mind, Saturday 1, and Saturday 2. And we're gonna look at this through the lens of 3 questions. And then a few final points.

So question number 1, are you content with the lord Jesus? Turn with me to verse 1. At that time, Jesus went through the cornfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some ears of corn and eat them. When the pharisees saw this, they said to him, look, your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the seventh.

So verse 1, what do we have? It's an idyllic scene. It's a Saturday afternoon. Jesus is with his mates, the disciples, and they get hungry, so they pluck some grain, classic, disciple behavior. They're always getting hungry, those disciples.

It's a little bit like me when I work from home. If you had like 1 of those time lapses, you'd see me just sort of going up and down the stairs carving off more cheese. So that's what they do. They're snacking. And, you know, this is as sort of restful as it gets.

They're snacking in a field of weeds that it's you can imagine that sort of warm summer's day I walked here. It was freezing. This is beautiful. They're with Jesus, snacking on a warm summer's day. Picking picking grains, like we would, sort of, blackberry as we walk along a path on 1 of the the, church walks.

It's, it's an idyllic scene in verse 1, but verse 2, The pharisees are lurking. What are they even doing in a field of wheat? They're lurking in a field of wheat? What are they even doing on the Sabbath? Like, when they confront Jesus in a synagogue, we we could sort of get that.

That's you know, even says like their synagogue. It's an understandable place for a pharisee to be, but out in the field, sort of lurking in hedgerows. And really, this is key because there's a restlessness to the pharisees. The pharmacies are exactly the sort of people who turn up at Dean's kitchen window at 7 AM on a Saturday morning to check he's up to no goods. They're restless.

They're going out into the field to enforce the rules. The pharisees are like our lovely Kingston parking officials that roam the streets. If you live locally, you'll know the ones. On their bikes, they zoom up and down the streets, bringing terror wherever they go. For them, the rules are black and white.

Alex from church, like, you know, when he comes to fix your your windowsill, and his vans outside, he overstays by 1 minute. They're there waving a bright yellow fine, a ticket at you. You leave your car to go shopping kingston. The car tires 1 inch over the line, yellow ticket on the wind screen when you get back. Welcome back.

And we all have a bit of this faricinas too. The the COVID pandemic showed us that. You know, the pharmacy say, look. We say, look. They're sat on a park bench.

They're breaking the rules. And if that doesn't resonate with you, you're probably the 1 sat on the park bench. But there's a problem. For the pharisees and their rule keeping. There's a problem.

So the Torah in in god's law in in exodus chapter 20, it's it says do not work on the sabbath. That's a problem for the pharisees. What is work? What is rest? Is snacking work?

Is snacking rest? And the firacies, they cannot stand this gray area. They just want to go around and hand out their yellow tickets. They're so focused on the rules. This this reminds me so much of COVID lockdown when literally everyone in this country is just trying to work out Could you walk for more than 30 minutes?

Could you walk for less than 30 minutes? Could you walk for 30 minutes and then come home and then go out again for another 30 minutes? Could you drive to a local landmark to test your eyesight? Those sort of questions. Everyone was asking them.

And in fact, in in the case of the pharisees, they were so worried about these gray areas that they just their response was to just create rules. So they created hundreds and hundreds of extra rules to make sure that no 1 got anywhere near god's breaking god's actual laws. They're just bringing work upon work, rules upon work. This is this is a restlessness in their hearts. It isn't restful work.

And you have to pause and say, I thought god's law is life giving. You just sung about the life giving god. This is his law. Look at verse 2. This is exhausting.

They aren't content to be with Jesus on the Sabbath. They're busy. They're lurking. They're enforcing. Look.

Look. Rule breaking on the Sabbath. Look pointing. You get that sense everywhere they go. They see rules and everywhere they go.

They're looking for rule breaking. It's backbreaking work in the towns and even out in the fields. And this has gone on for so long for hundreds of years. This approach to god, it began when god's people were off in exile in Babylon. And we've just been reading about this as a church Anyone who's around for media fast, we're reading in ezekiel god's judgment when his people turned their back on him and broke the law.

Broke his law. He, in fact, in chapter 20 is 3 times. He talks about you profane the Sabbath. It's there. We've been reading about it, and the pharisees, they know that they were born out of this exile.

So they understood, as well as anyone that breaking god's law leads to judgment. God continuously reminded them. In fact, we we it took about 4 of the 5 media fast days to go through. And what they've done is they've tried to This they've tried to protect god's law with their own rules. So they've just created a framework.

They've put god in a box. They've said we're so worried about this judgment. We've forgotten about god. We're just gonna go through. We're gonna make sure no 1 even breaks the rules accidentally, and they've become restless in their hearts.

So when when we read about the Sabbath, all they see is oppressive law enforcement. They're like the people outside. They see god as an oppressive local counselor coming up with new regulations, and that is why the firacies are lurking in the field, which leads to Our first question this evening, are you content with the lord Jesus or are you restless with him? Are you always busy away with rules and religion? Are you content with the lord Jesus?

What might that look like today in Kingston in 20 25? I don't see many of us marching around enforcing the Sabbath. I didn't see that this morning, but I think for many of us in church, I'll walk with with Jesus often defined by a spiritual restlessness in our hearts. We're rarely content just to be with him. It's not very sort of modern man.

We're not like Martha in Luke chapter 10. Jesus says to You're worried and upset about many things. Does that sound like anyone here? Sounds like me. Whereas Mary was content, content to sit at Jesus' feet and listen to what he said to spend time with him.

The disciples are content of Jesus in this passage. The pharisees are not. That idyllic scene in verse 1, the disciples love being with Jesus. And I it's it's wonderful. Like, so often, you know, the disciples get so much wrong in the gospel accounts.

And we we often sit here and we laugh at them and we say, oh, look, the disciples again. It's the disciples again. They've missed it. They're arguing. They're telling the wrong people to go away, but they got 1 thing right.

They stuck to Jesus. Everyone else in the gospel accounts, they come and go too busy, too restless, maybe like Judith wanting something other than Jesus, something different that were a different lord but like the pharisees, or or maybe the others like the pharisees are too busy with the policing of the rules and religion, but the disciples, they loved to be with Jesus, and we need to be content with Jesus too. To rest with Jesus. We need to learn to pray. And as a as a sort of thinking about how this applies, well, many of us will be saying, I'd love to be content with Jesus, but I'm not come to him.

Come to him to pray. Ask god that he would teach you to pray. This is this is why as a church, and and we need to hear the elders. They keep saying, learn to come as a church and pray. They know.

They know us. They love us. They pray for us. They know what we need. Jesus knows what we need, and that is pointing us to him.

Are you content with the lord Jesus? So second question, are you missing the points when it comes to Jesus? Jesus response is show the Faracies that they've missed the point. They've missed the point. Let's look at verse 3 and 4.

He answered, haven't you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of god, and he and his companions ate the constricated bread, which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests. So first, Jesus points the firacies to the king David to show them that they've missed the point. In 1 Samuel, David and his men eat the con concentrated bread, which was only meant to be eaten by the priests, but David ate it. On the Sabbath, and he isn't condemned for it.

No yellow parking ticket for King David. Jesus is showing us that the pharisees have completely missed the point, missed the compassion of the Sabbath Law. That human need is more important than their rigid applications of god's rules. The disciples in our passage are hungry in the fields. In fact, as we know, the disciples are always hungry, and Jesus always sees their needs.

He's always looking at their needs. The pharisees just see the disciples and see the rules. Jesus sees our needs. Jesus knows that the law of god life giving, that the Sabbath was a gift to serve god's people. It gives rest and meets a hunger, but the pharisees don't get it.

So Jesus then shows them that Jesus then shows him as that the sabbath is about god's work. Let's move on. Look at verse 5. Jesus says, or haven't you read in the law that the priests on sabbath duty in the temple desecrate the sabbath and yet are innocent. The priests are carrying out their duties on the Sabbath.

But that is okay. Again, no yellow ticket because they're carrying out god's work. It is life giving. Can't you see Jesus says You've got lost in the rule book. You've missed the point.

This whole encounter shows us that the pharisees know the scriptures, but they don't know the author. They were blind to the compassionate heart of god. They couldn't see that the Sabbath Law was there to serve god's people so that they could do god's work. The Sabbath was there so the people could do god's work, not refrain from work, but do god's work, the purpose was to rest and worship god. And that is exactly what Jesus and his disciples were doing.

They were there in the they were there and they were doing god's work. If you look at verse 1, it says at that time. If we go back, the time hasn't moved on at so at that time, what what was that time? When you sort of go back in in chapter 11, you see in verse 25 is at that time. You go back further.

What what's Jesus doing? Chapter 11 verse 1, just over the page. After Jesus had finished instructing his 12 disciples, he went on from there to teach and preach in the towns of Galile. He's teaching and he's preaching. He's doing god's work.

And the pharisees just cannot see it. They shout look, but they are spiritually spiritually blind. They shout look, but they don't see Jesus. It's a tragedy. They spent hundreds of years enforcing these rules.

And then the rule makers come into the world. God made flesh immanuel god with us. He's there in a field of wheat. And all they can see is their own device rulebook and their own self importance. They're yellow parking tickets, that that makes them feel so powerful.

They don't look and see the lamb of god that takes away the sin of the world. Like John the Baptist in John 1. They look, but they are blind. They're blind. They do not see.

So are we missing the point when it comes to Jesus? Have we turned a life with him into a formula or a framework? The pharisees professed to know god's words, but they didn't know god's heart. Is that like some of us here? We like to know the right answers.

In fact, we love to know the right answers. We enjoy the bible studies, but there's no love for Jesus. It's at us. We just sang these words, true delight is found anew alone. Is that true of our lives?

True delight? This is this is difficult stuff to work through. And I know because I've I've been working through it. Especially we're in such a anti rules anti establishment, anti sort of religion age. But I I I think 1 1 thing that stuck with me is before Christmas, we saw in the, as we worked at church, the letters, in Revelation.

We saw in the letter to Later Sierra, this this picture of, a church getting on with church, but Jesus left on the outside knocking on the door. Have we missed the point? For us in this individualistic age, it may be other things that get in the way of us being content with Jesus. So less about the sort of rule enforcing. Maybe in this individualistic age, it's that we're often very focused on ourselves.

Often looking at ourselves and not at Christ. We turn church into a story that's all about me. Not me, all about you. We turn church into a story. It's all about me.

And we're always looking at others. Always looking at others. Not not Jesus. We're always looking around comparing ourselves to others. It makes us anxious and tired.

It's is why I'm often very anxious. I'm always looking and comparing and looking and comparing outside of church inside of church, looking. Comparing and Jesus says you've missed the point. Look at me, find rest in me. And if you don't know Jesus here this evening, look at him, come and see Tom talked last week, of this great invitation at the end of chapter 11.

Verse 28, come to me all your weary and burdens, and I'll give you rest. What an invitation? What an invitation that imagine being invited to meet the king. You receive the letter through the post. Before you even open it, you know.

You know this is the 1 There's a royal sort of weight to it. It's heavier than everything else. And you open it and it's beautiful. It's embossed with gold. The master of the royal household is commanded by his majesty to invite John to come and meet the king.

What do you do with that invitation? You don't put it to 1 side and forget about it. You get excited. You put it somewhere on display. You think about it.

You follow-up. Jesus, the king of the universe says, come to me. All who are weary and burdened. Are you weary? Are you burdened?

What an invitation. Don't just cast it aside with the rest of the mail. Go to him. If you do not know Jesus, go and look, investigate who he is, who he says he is, what he says about who you are, see his love for you, that he's died for you. To give you rest, rest from your sin, to free you from the burden of sin and death.

What an invitation? Don't don't cast it aside. Please talk to someone around us. Someone who's here, come talk to me. Yeah, it's just don't be so quick to point and judge Jesus.

So it comes to, my third question. Are you trying to earn god's favor. The pharisees have become all about the outside appearance and not about the internal heart. There was so quick to jump on the disciples and judge them. So quick to point the finger.

It's the yellow parking fine again. At the heart of it, the pharisees think that they can earn god's favor through their rule keeping. At the heart of their restlessness, they think they can earn god's favor. They don't love god in their heart. They just care about outward appearances, and we'll see Jesus flips this around.

Look at verse 6 and 7. I tell you that something greater than the temple is here. If you had known what these words mean, I desire mercy, not sacrifice. You would not have condemned the innocence for the son of man is lord of the Sabbath mercy, not sacrifice. Here we see Jesus is quoting to the pharisees, hosea 6 4 6.

They would have known it. God is telling Israel. You've become so busy with the outside, so busy offering me sacrifices and your hollow religion, you've stopped loving me. God wants relationship. He wants relationship with you.

He wants relationship with us, his people, not our outward religion. Mercy, not sacrifice. In the end, there are only 2 hots. 1 that turns to Jesus and says, as we sung, o lord, my rock, my redeemer, have mercy on me a sinner. And 1 that says, oh lord.

Look what I've done with my life. Look what I've done with my life. Look how great I am. Look. Look at me.

God wants heart transformation. He wants to get in where nobody else sees. See the pharisees, it's like when you're we were painting our bedroom recently, and I sort of was left with all the unglamorous bits of, like, painting behind the chest of drawers and behind the bookshelf. The pharisees, they just paint round. They leave it.

That's what they're about. But, no, God wants to pull out the furniture. Get stuck in in your life. He wants to get in where nobody else sees. He wants heart transformation.

They should humble us. The world wants to come to god and say, look at me. I'm a self made man. I'm a self made woman. But mercy mercy.

There's no true mercy in the survival of the fittest. We cannot fix our hearts. We can try keeping rules to sort ourselves out and we can try harder as we saw in Sabbath Day 1. We can try harder every day. We can keep going every day.

We get to bedtime. Tomorrow will be different. I'll try harder. I'll try a harder guard, but it won't help us. It won't change our hearts.

It won't help us to love god. It won't bring us into relationship with him. It certainly won't give us rest You see, when we try to make ourselves right in the eyes of a perfect god, it's like a man or woman trying to maintain a immaculate house. At first, there is joy in the painting. Painting the walls, buying the furnishings.

It's an immaculate house. But after a while, the burden grows. There's clutter. They sweep it away. We sweep it away into the into the cupboards.

Then there's more clutter. So we go to Ikea. We get more storage. The answer to clutter is always more storage, but there's more clutter. It's never ending.

Some of you will know this. Maybe this is very personal to meet up 2 young kids. But every day, it just comes out into the house. If you're trying to keep it immaculate house, there's just it's endless. Isn't it in the cycle?

You load the dishwasher. You unload the dishwasher. You load the dishwasher. You unload the dishwasher. You load the dishwasher and do the washing up.

You never deal with the mess of life. It's like a man or a woman trying to keep it immaculate house, and they just can't. They can't deal with the the mess, the clutter. And then what about the dirt? So what do you do?

You spend hours cleaning your life. Trying to get yourself right. Trying to sort out all the things. The things we see that Jesus says the anger in our heart. The rebellion against god, the the ways that we know we don't meet his perfect law.

To be clean. We clean. And before you know it, the houses consume all your time. Some of us, we need to hear that just for our own houses, not the illustration. The houses consume all your time.

Your life is passing by, and you're just there trying to sort every bit of dust, and you've forgotten to live. If you try to justify yourself before a perfect god, it will leave you exhausted and your heart will be the same as when you set out. But there is mercy. There is mercy. Lord have mercy.

And there is hope. Look at verse 6 again. I tell you that something greater than the temple is here. It is me. Here I am.

Jesus says. This is his mic drop moment. Something greater. Jesus says it all points to me. You can go round and round and round trying to justify your life, and you'll be back exactly where you started.

Or you can go to him. He will humble your heart. He will cut away the things that need to go. He will clean you he'll cleanse you, but you go to him. Go to him.

He says, come to me. It all points to me. Let's just let's just stop and think about that for a moment. You see, in the beginning, god made the world and declared it good, and he rested. He declared us humankind.

Good. Goods. Good in the garden, and Adam and Eve rested with him. They rested. It's a idyllic scene.

That verse 1. But then we rebelled. We ate the fruit. We didn't listen. We were sold a lie by the serpent of lies that we could obtain something greater.

And so we've hunted for something greater. And what happens? We leave the garden. There's fratricide. Cain kills his brother.

There's death again and again. Go back and look through the sermons of of his church. I remember. I think it was Tom, the pendulum. 1 after the other.

Death. Death. There is no rest. Endless striving, the endless striving of humanity, strive between the brothers, slavery in Egypt, war, endless war. There's the tabernacle in the desert.

There's the temple. There's the law. God gives his people the Sabbath, but they sin. We've seen it in ezekiel. They rebel.

They There's no rest. They turn away from god. Time and time again. It's crying out. Is there not something greater?

The rules go on and on. It goes on. The restlessness and the human heart. It goes on and on. Is there not something greater?

Is there not something greater? We need something greater. But Jesus is here in a field of wheat. And he says, I am the lord of the Sabbath. I am greater.

I am greater than the temple. It's all been crying out. It's all been crying out for Jesus. Come to me, and it and we're the same. It's all all our restlessness.

At the at the heart of it, we're crying out for Jesus. You see, if if the heart if the problem of us striving, our spiritual restlessness was religion, then we then the pharisees are right. We just need more rules and better enforcement. If our restlessness is work and work practices, we just need better laws. We just need that 4 day working week.

Or a 3 day working week or 1 day or really retirement. If our problem is our mental health and our anxiety, we need better therapists or better self help books or better productivity. But if at the heart of all our striving is our rebellion against god, we need someone who can reconcile us. And that's someone's Jesus. Romans's chapter 5 verse 10 says 4 if while we were god's enemies, in rebellion, we were reconciled to him through the death of his son.

How much more have having been reconciled So shall we be saved through his life? It's all crying out. All of human history is crying out for 1 man and he's in a field of weeds. And he's just said, as we saw in the people chapter, come to me, are you trying to justify yourself before a perfect and holy god? Jesus says, you don't have to.

I am the lord of the Sabbath, he says. The temple didn't offer rest, not true rest. It was endless sacrifice that went round and round, but there's something greater. There's someone greater. Is Jesus, he has died on a cross once and for all, for our sin.

The perfect sacrifice, no more peace with god through Christ. Peace with god through price. Rest and worship to be endured. God wants a heart of mercy and love, a heart that loves Christ. Not empty rituals and outward performances.

Jesus says. Jesus says, mercy. God wants mercy not sacrifice. Come to him. So 2 final points to finish.

The first, how do we how do we think this through? How do we live all of this out wisely? Does that mean that the Sabbath no longer applies now that something great in the Sabbath is here? Yeah. Not in the old testament sense.

You see, there is no explicit command in the new testament for Christians to keep the old covenant sabbath day or to consider Sunday the the sabbath. And for Christians, it's even more wonderful than that because every day is a sabbath because we rest in Christ. We get the privilege, the gift of the sabbath, not just once every 7 days. We get it all the way through the week. Jesus says come to me.

He doesn't say come to me on a Sunday. He says come to me. I want all of you. And for Christians, there's freedom. There's freedom.

Every day. It's life giving. He's the lord of the Sabbath. And I think, it's so important for us to hear that, that we can come to him for rest. I think, the same time as we as we want to work this out faithfully, I think, we often take that freedom for granted.

But in our culture, we we often just don't give this any thought at all. So, as we sort of try to live this out, don't take Jesus' rest for granted. It's been bought at a cost. Don't just put Jesus to 1 side until Sunday and get him out. Now he wants relationship, every day, all of you.

And then also give this some thoughts if you if you haven't before or if you haven't, not a lot. Like, is there a rhythm is there a rhythm of rest and worship in your life? Are you content with the lord Jesus? Or are we all just too busy? It's a a rhythm of rest and worship.

Even god rested in Genesis. If it's good enough for god, it's probably good enough for us. We heard last week, we're just such a restless culture. And it's given us a gift to take the time to think it through. What is work?

Back to those questions. What is work? What is rest? How can I make time? Ask yourself, how can I make time for rest and worship with Jesus?

And then finally, the second point. Jesus lordship brings healing and restoration. Very briefly. Let's just look at this picture of what Jesus lordship looks like. Verse 9, going on from that place, he went into the synagogue.

And a man with a shrivelled hand was there looking for a reason to bring charges against Jesus, they asked him, is it lawful to heel on the sabbath. He said to them, if any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit in 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. Then he said to the man, stretch out your hand.

So he stretched it out and it was completely restored just as sound as the other. What does Jesus' law chip look like? 3 very quick things. There's healing. Jesus is like a doctor.

You'll only come to him if you realize that you're sick, but if you do come to him, he will heal your rebellious heart. Second, there's love, Look how Jesus values the man with the with his hands. And he loves us too. He sees us here. He sees that we're like like sheep fallen in a pit, whether you're a Christian or not a Christian here today, call out, investigate him.

If you don't know him, if you do know him, call out to him, he will reach down and lift you out, and then Lastly, there's restoration for our restlessness. There's no rest in this world apart from god's intervening grace through Christ our lord. There's no rest without Jesus. So go to him. He says, come to me the lord of the sabbath and rejoice with him.

He says, come to me. I am the lord of the sabbath.