← The Church of Eleven22
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Amen. Amen. Amen. How we doing, church? Everybody all right? Good. I'm Pastor Brett. Always honored to be able to open God's word. And so that's what we're gonna do. If you've been around here for the last few months, we have been doing a verse by verse study through the New Testament book of Matthew. And we're gonna continue in that today. We're gonna finish chapter 14, we're gonna do all of chapter 15, and we're gonna take a chunk out of chapter 16. So I hope you had your double shot this morning and you're ready to rip it. Y' all ready? Matthew 14:34. Here we go. And when they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret, where the men of that place recognized him, Jesus. And they sent around to all that region and brought to Jesus all who were sick and implored him that they might only touch the fringe of his garment. And as many as touched it were made. Well, question number one is, do you know what you're looking for in life? I mean, you wake up every day and you give your time and you give your energy, you give your cares, you give your passions. You're pursuing something. What are you looking for in life? Maybe it's a little less stress, maybe it's a little more responsibility, maybe it's a little less burden. Maybe it's a little more attention. Maybe you're chasing happy. Do you know what you're looking for? I'm going to jump to the end and I'm just going to go ahead and tell you where we're going to land the plane today. And the truth is, what you're looking for, what you're looking for is Jesus Christ. You are looking for the kingdom of God. That's what you're after. Because a kingdom is anywhere a king rules and reigns, and anywhere that Jesus rules and reigns over a life, that life is lived in order. And that flourishing is the result of that. And so what we're all pursuing is flourishing in the kingdom of God. This is what we're looking for. In this town where Jesus is doing ministry, people were looking for a healer. They were looking for someone to do for them what they could not do for themselves. This is where we pick up in Matthew. Now, a reminder. The Gospel of Matthew was written by a Jew who chose to be an outsider. And it was written primarily to a Jewish audience. And the contention that Matthew is making is that Jesus Christ of Nazareth is what Israel was always supposed to be. In Genesis, chapter 12. God chose a man named Abraham, and he made a covenant promise with Abraham. And he said, I'm going to bless you and I'm going to make your name great, and you are going to be a blessing. You're going to have many children. And he did. And the generations of those children became the nation of Israel. And the reason God chose Israel was to bless them, to rule and reign over them, and. And so that they could be a blessing to the entire world. But over time, Israel misplaced their zeal for blessing. And instead of being blessed to be a blessing, they thought it was that we are blessed to be blessed. And they became inwardly focused. Instead of showing God to the world, they got very protectionist and they began to build walls. And this is where we are in the nation of Israel. A couple of things that jump out in Matthew 14, number one, Jesus rolls into this town and it says, the men of that place went and got their sick and they brought them to Jesus. That's what good men do. Good men take responsibility for other people. That's what they do. Godly men take responsibility for other people and point them to Jesus. And I just want to say, as a husband, as a dad, as a man who calls 1122 home, as one of the pastors here, men, I just want to say I'm proud of you. I'm proud of you, and I'm thankful to be one of you. I'm honored to be one of you. Last year, Pastor Joby challenged and called all the men of 1122 to stand firm and act like godly men. And I see many of you doing it. You can't go five feet around this movement and not see kingdom fruit falling off the trees. Thousands of people are getting baptized. Hundreds of people every week are surrendering their life to the lordship of Jesus Christ. Marriages are being healed, bodies are being healed. Chains are being broken. Religious do gooders are repenting of their religion and surrendering into a relationship with Jesus Christ. The sick are coming, the hurting are coming, the broken are coming. Kingdom fruit is falling all over the place on the ground. And I attribute a lot of that to men standing up and acting like men. Because where men lead and love well, people flourish. And there's a lot of flourishing going on. Good on you, man. Happy Father's Day. Happy Father's Day. That's all you get. Let's keep going. Hey. It's more than you normally get, so you're welcome. All right. The Pharisees and the scribes came to Jesus, and this is where you would hear, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Right? That's a Star wars reference for everybody who's not cool. The Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? It is 75 miles from Jerusalem to the town where they're doing ministry. Jerusalem is Pharisee headquarters. And so These brothers traveled 75 miles to check in on this rabbi, healer, miracle worker Jesus. And the first thing they say is, why don't your disciples do what we say matters? Here's the thing. When you're obsessed with being seen as right, you'll go a long way to prove it. When you're obsessed with being seen as right, you'll go a long way to prove it. This is what Pharisees and hypocrites do. They are trying to protect and promote their ideas by being skeptical about what is undeniable. Anywhere Jesus is at work changing people, you will find skeptics and critics. And I'm just here to tell you, it's no way to live, man. It's no way to live. Take it from someone who for a long time in his life would say things like, I'm not a pessimist, I'm just a realist. And by saying I'm a realist, what I meant was, I'm a skeptic. And what I was doing in my life was building walls of skepticism. And it was all about protecting me in my own pain. And so I would build walls of skepticism and I would discredit things, and I would discredit people just a little bit, so that when those people disappointed me and didn't live up to my expectations, it didn't hurt as bad. And somehow I always ended up proving myself right. Do you see how it works? Anywhere God's at work from this day to now, you will always find skeptics and critics, and there's no way to live. I mean, the only way to understand Jesus relationship with the Pharisees and the Sadducees is like, let's just say that you balled out on vacation, you saved up the money, and you balled out like you really went somewhere nice. And I'm not talking about, like the Holiday Inn Express. I mean, look, if the Holiday Inn Express is nice to you, we're glad that you're here. You're so welcome. But that's all I'm talking about. Like, you did for it. And then you're like a day into vacation. It's your money, you Spending the money and you're so pumped about it. But then one of your kids is like, oh my God, the pool's so hot. The chicken fingers are too fried. Why are the waiters so slow? Right after about five minutes, all you hear is just, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's sucking the joy out of it for everybody. That's how Jesus heard the Pharisees. Just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here's the thing. Jesus is offering them the kingdom of God and showing them signs and wonders that can only happen by the hand of God. And what they want to do is protect their tradition. Now here's a parent hack about living with a grateful heart. If you're raising small kids, parent hack for you. When you teach your kids how to pray, I would encourage you to teach them how to pray these words first. God, thank you for we've been doing this with our children. I'm still raising my kids. I'm not talking like I got this all figured out, because I don't. But I'm seeing a little bit of fruit and I'm pumped about it. Because who knows that if you want to raise grateful hearted kids, it's not just gonna happen. Can I get an amen? You gotta be a little intentional about it. So God, thank you for. But before you start getting into God, thank you for the stuff he's in, the puppies, Try this. God, thank you for Jesus. Why is that important? Because if we can begin to enjoy Jesus as the ultimate gift, which he is, the greatest gift that's ever been given, if we can begin to enjoy him, then we can enjoy every other blessing that flows from him, every good and perfect gift that comes from the Father of Lights. That's why it's important. Now that's good advice. And let's just say that Pastor Joby and the elders and other pastors agreed with me. And they're like, that's good advice. And a month from now, you come back and we say, all right, how many of you guys are doing what Pastor Brit said and you're teaching your kids how to say God, thank you for Jesus. And let's just say 10% of you raised your hands, we'd be like, okay, cool. For the 10% of you, we appreciate it. The rest of y', all, you're living in sin. That's what the Pharisees are doing. They're taking what seemingly is good advice on the service and they're making an expectation, a standard that everybody else has to live from. Let's keep going. So the Pharisees came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, why did your disciples break the tradition of the elders? Jesus changes things. It's just what he does in the first century. They live in a shame and honor culture. And so the ways the scale of balance worked was that they believed that there was only so much honor to go around. And so the more honor Jesus got, the less honor was available for the Pharisees. And so it wasn't just complex. It was competitive. And inside of this relationship, you would see this tension all the time. So what was the big deal? Well, the big deal is in those words that they just said. The tradition of the elders. What is that? Well, the tradition of the elders was that a group of rabbis got together, and over time, they began to prescribe behaviors to help people not break God's law that he gave to Moses. So you had the first five books of the Old Testament. This is the law of God as given to Moses. And this is the standard. And then the rabbis created prescribed behaviors. Really good advice. Which if you hear it, when you hear the explanation of it, you're like, okay, that makes some sense. But what they did over time was they put it on plain in regards to authority. And so the tradition of the elders had the same kind of authority that the first five books of the Old Testament. So what they're saying is what the rabbis are saying is as authoritative as what God spoke to Moses. And they're holding it over people, and it's becoming a real burden. The way they would explain it is that they had built a fence around the law to keep people from breaking it. This is the big issue is the tradition of the elders. The only way I can really help us understand this on a, like, technical, legal level is like, if we took our Bill of Rights and we said, okay. There was a group of people who all got together and said, okay, the Bill of Rights says you have the right to practice free speech. However, this is specifically how you can actually practice free speech. Or you have the right to bear arms. But you can only bear arms Friday and Saturday nights after 11pm because everybody knows that only vampires, victims, and villains are out after 11pm so you can carry a gun, so you're not a victim. Right? This would be. Y' all never heard that before. You didn't grow up in Georgia, evidently. Now you think the next thing the Pharisees said would be like, why do you let your disciples run around kicking children for fun? Like, you think it would be this terrible thing. But here's what they say. Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders for? They do not wash their hands when they eat. Now, confession time in public restrooms. I judge people who don't wash their hands. I just do. I'm judgy. I think you should wash your hands. And so I'm judging you all, all the time. And ladies, I just want y' all to know, y' all married to some nasty animals. I'm just letting you know, I'm sorry to out you boys. I'm sorry. Just letting you know you should wash your hands because it's gross if you don't. That said, if you don't, it's not a sin. So you're telling me These brothers traveled 75 miles to check in on the disciples hand washing? What's going on here? Well, there's two things. One is that there was a purification ritual that was prescribed by the tradition of the elders. And the way it worked is you would wash your hands on the outside when you woke up in the morning and before you ate bread. And while you were washing your hands, you would say this blessing. And the blessing is this, blessed are you, Lord our God, king of the universe, who has sanctified us with your commandments. Sounds good so far. Comma, who has commanded us concerning the washing of hands? Now here's the question. Did he, Did God command the washing of hands? Well, it's an interesting question because God spoke to Moses and told Moses the way that his brother Aaron in the Old Testament, Aaron was a priest, and all of Aaron's sons were priests in the temple in the Old Testament. And that there was a specific purification ritual they had to go through in regards to clean themselves before they went into the holy of Holies to make sacrifice for all of God's people. And so what the tradition of the elders had done has taken these words to Moses, added to it, stretched it, applied it, and made it make sense. And then they now held it over everybody's head as a standard and expectation. So on one hand you had a purification ritual. There was a misinterpretation or an over interpretation of something God had said to Aaron. And then on the other hand, you had a cultural superstition. There was a superstition in 1st century Judaism around a demon named Sheptah. And the way that Sheptah worked was that the idea was that Sheptah would grab onto your hands, which while you were sleeping, and this is how he would invade and eventually take over your life. And so when you take Ideology or religious ideology or moral standard, and you begin to mix it with cultural superstition. You put those two things together, you're heading into a very dangerous direction. This is what's going on. It's a big deal. It's a part of their culture. They say your disciples don't wash their hands, and so why don't they do what we matter? Well, Luke 11 is why they don't do it. Luke 11, verse 37 and 38. It says this. While Jesus was speaking, a Pharisee asked him to dine with him. And so he went in and reclined at the Pharisee's table. The Pharisee was astonished to see that Jesus did not first wash before dinner. Why didn't the disciples do it? Because the master didn't do it. And that was good enough for them. Back to Matthew. So the Pharisees are questioning Jesus, why do your boys break our rules? And so Jesus fires back, and he's like, all right, why do you break the commandment of God? For the sake of your tradition? For God commanded honor your father and mother. That's the fifth of the ten Commandments. It's a big deal. And whoever reviles father or mother must surely die. Exodus, chapter 21, verse 17. But you say, if anyone tells his father or his mother, what you would have gained from me is given to God, he need not honor his father. So for the sake of your tradition, and you have made void the word of God. In the first century, it was an honorable thing for young adults or adults to take care of their aging parents in late stages of life. There was no 401ks. There's no pensions. There's no assisted living. There's no retirement facilities. And so this was an expectation, and it was a very honorable thing. This is part of what it meant. To honor your father and mother was to care for them in late stages of life. I would still agree with this, but this was a normative practice. However, inside the tradition of the elders, they created something called the Corban Rule. And what the Corban Rule was is it said that if you dedicated your assets to the. To God through the temple, meaning that when you die, the temple got all of your assets. Then while you were alive, you still got to keep all your stuff and steward it. But as soon as you died, it went to the temple. And because you had dedicated it to God, you didn't have to use any of it to take care of your parents. Do you see what they've done? It's Religious trickery. They created a loophole in their tradition so that they could be selfish with their money and not have to do the thing that honored God the most. This is what they've done. So Jesus puts it right back in front of him. Now, what he says to them is a devastating statement. He says, you have made void the word of God. I just want you to think about who's talking. In John, chapter one, verse one, it says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, the Logos. Who is John 1 talking about? You're at church. There's one right answer. Jesus. That's exactly right. Y' all nailed it. I knew you would. I had no doubts. Jesus, who is the Logos. The revelation of God. The exact imprint of the character and nature of God. He is the fullness of God on the earth made manifest for the world to see. He is saying, you have made void the word of God with your traditions. I mean, this book is not just something that we go to for hope. It is holy. It is not just something that we look to for history. It is what we hold onto for life and death. It's not just true, it's trustworthy. It is not just a revelation. It is the revelation of God to man. This book is sacred. And for Jesus, the Logos, the one that this book is all about, for him to look at someone and say, you've made it all void with your traditions. What an indictment. What an indictment. He continues on and he says this. Well, before we get there, as a Christian for like, 25 years, a pastor for 25 years, and a Christian for longer than that, there's three postures that I've seen people take in regards to obeying, trusting, walking in the promises of God, living under the commandments, God, doing the things that God has designed for them to do. There's three postures people take. Posture number one is duty. They just take a dutiful posture. Maybe you grew up in the religious south like I did. Maybe you grew up Southern Baptist or Catholic, and most of what you heard in your life was, do this, do this, do this, do this, do this, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. And this somehow grabbed onto your worldview. And so when that grabs onto your worldview, you go through your life and you're just trying to figure out how to navigate the middle, how to do a little bit more good than you do bad. And you're trying to keep up appearances and you're trying not to act unhappy and miserable all the time, but kind of putting on a mask and you're playing the game, right? This is a dutiful obligation, is the way that you approach God and His Word. Is this something? This is. I have to do this. And at best, that can produce, like, some kind of moral life, at best. But here's the thing. It can never produce. It can never produce love. And because it can't produce love, it has no real staying power. At best, it's just a sheer power of will force. The second posture people take is delight. And this is what happens when you move from religious dutiful obligation into relationship, and you realize how far God has gone to send Jesus to save you from your sins, what Christ has done on our behalf in order that. That we may be right with God, the distance that God has reached in order to grab our hearts and to make us one of his children. You begin to realize that following Jesus is not something I have to do. It is something that I get to do. And I delight in him, and I delight in his new mercies every morning. I delight in His Word. I delight in the law of God. I want to be near him because he wants to be near me. I want to be known because he has made Himself known to me. I get to do this. That's posture number two, delight. Posture number three is design. It's when you start following Jesus for a little while and you start taking faithful next steps, and all of a sudden you wake up and realize, wait, I don't just get to follow Jesus. Following Jesus is the very reason why I'm on the planet, that this is exactly what God put me on the Earth. To do is to follow Jesus and to make him known. And I pray. It's a posture that we all get to live from regularly. Jesus continues, and he says these words. He says, you hypocrites. Now, this word gets thrown around a lot. It's used 23 times in the New Testament, mostly by Jesus. And it's safe to say that Jesus is not a fan of spiritual hypocrisy. He goes on to say in Revelation that because you're neither hot nor cold, you're lukewarm. I spit you out of my mouth. He's not a fan of spiritual hypocrisy, no question. But what this word means is it's a Greek word, and it was mostly given to actors in Roman theaters who wore a mask. And so hypocrite literally means someone who wears a mask. And you may be here today and you may be self aware enough of your situation to say, honestly, I do this church thing and I'm really just checking a box. I'm really just. I feel like it's something you're supposed to do for whatever reason I do it, I don't really have any joy in it, but I'm just checking the box. And I would just say, man, look, no matter the reason that you're here, we're really glad you're here. Right? Regardless of why you came. And while you're here, you can take off the mask and you can trust the real Jesus with the real you because he really wants to change your life. You don't have to wear a mask and pretend with Jesus. He can handle all you got all the time. Jesus says, you hypocrites. And then he says, well, did Isaiah prophesy of you when he said, these people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me teaching as the doctrines, the commandments of men. What a devastating statement. You say all the right things in all the right places, but you love all the wrong things for all the wrong reasons. I think this is any pastor's greatest fear because unlike Jesus, we can't discern hearts. I mean, honestly, I can't even figure out what's going on in my heart half the time, much less stand a chance what's going on in yours. But any pastor's greatest fear is that churches would be full of people who are fans of Jesus, but they're not followers of Jesus. Jesus did not come to recruit Instagram fans. He came to save people from their sins. And he came to grab their hearts and pull them into his grace that they would be fully and wholly devoted followers of him, consecrated unto him for all of their lives. That's what Jesus came to do. And he says teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. There's a modern day doctrine. Look, there's not a lot of hand washing police going around today. Except for me. We don't really live in that world anymore. But there is a modern day doctrine that has subtly slipped into American evangelical Christianity. And it's peddled from pulpits all the time, all over the place. And I'm just going to call it out. It's got a name that you've probably never heard. It's fancy schmancy. It's called moralistic therapeutic deism. And what this teaches is ultimately is that there is a God who existed. Who exists. And he created the world and he watches over it. Okay, makes sense. God wants people to be good, nice and fair. The main goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about yourself. But this God, he's not particularly involved in daily life unless you need him to solve a problem. And that ultimately good people go to heaven when they die. It sounds good and it feels good, but it's all about you. It sounds very nice, but I'm just here to remind us today that we don't need a motivational speech. We need a new master. We don't need a smooth talking recruiter. We need someone to rescue us from our sins. We don't need charisma in pulpits. What we need is Christ Jesus. You may be looking for more or for different. You may be looking for some rules, you may be looking for something to help you feel better, but what you need is Christ. You see, religion, man's ideologies always peddle fear and guilt. And guilt is a powerful motivator it wants to control. That's what religion's after. Jesus offers love, the real thing, and his perfect love casts out fear. It goes on to say this and he Jesus called the people to him and said to them, hear and understand. It's not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth this defiles a person. Jesus starts doing heart surgery here. He starts pruning, he starts cutting away. Do you know that you can trust Jesus when he starts digging deep in your thoughts, when he starts cutting away the old stuff in your life to transform you into his likeness and into his image, you can trust him when he gets underneath the surface by the power of the Word of God, that is a double edged sword. And by the power of the Holy Spirit, when he goes to work on you, you can trust him and trust me, even though there is some pain involved, the surgery is always worth it. The surgery's always worth it. You see, the Pharisees believed and contended for an outside in experience. If we wash our hands and stay pure on the outside, maybe on the inside we'll be found clean. The kingdom of God offers something completely different. You see, the kingdom of God is not outside in, it is inside out. Religion asks, what are you doing? The kingdom of God asks, who do you love? Who do you love? It is an inside out transformation. Now I want you to listen to this heart cry from another Jew who lived in Old Testament times. And the Pharisees look at the law as something to be protected and as something that is A burden that they must get their hands around. There was another Jew that lived, and he was the king of Israel. And he saw the law completely different. You see, he didn't see it as a burden. He saw it as something beautiful. He didn't see it as something that was the heat that needed to be protected from him. He saw it as something that God gave him in order to protect him, to provide the life that he always wanted. And King David writes it like this. He says, the Lord is my shepherd. Listen to this with your heart. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He leads me beside still waters and by green pastures. He restores my soul. His rod and his staff, they comfort me. He leads me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. And even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows. I am so richly blessed by God, it is spilling out all over my life. And surely God's infinite goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Psalm 24. The earth is the Lord's and the fullness of it and everybody. He is the one who founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers. And here is the question we're all asking. Who can ascend the hill of the Lord? Who can stand in his holy place? It is he who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to another, who does not swear in vain. Who can ascend the holy hill. Who can be made right with God, who can spend eternity with God forever. Who can be in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart. Well, the question is, who is that who has clean hands and a pure heart? Well, the answer is, no one. There is none righteous. No, not one, except for Jesus Christ. He has clean hands and a pure heart. And when we place our faith by grace and in Jesus Christ, we don't just get new responsibility, we get a new identity. We get his clean hands and his pure heart. And we are completely covered in the finished work of Christ. And we can now boldly approach the holy place of God, not because of what we've done, but because of what he's done. Religion asks, what are you doing? Kingdom asks, who do you love? And then the disciples come to him, and they Say Jesus. Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying? And I bet Jesus was like, no, they got their feelings hurt. We should apologize. Absolutely not. Do you know what the most offensive truth I've ever heard is? And I've wrestled a lot with this. The most offensive truth I've ever heard is Jesus claims of exclusivity. When Jesus Christ claimed, and he said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me. When I really started to wrestle with this many years ago, I had an existential crisis. You would say, well, Pastor Brett, don't you believe that? Well, yeah, I believe it now. I believe it now. But then I really struggled with it. And do you know why? Because I grew up incredibly religious. I grew up. My dad's a pastor. Both my grandfathers were godly men. My mom was a godly woman. My brother is currently the pastor of a megachurch. My father in law has been a missionary in Africa for the last 20 years, has planted 2,000 churches. He feeds more than 20,000 orphans a month through his ministry. I've taken more Bible classes than you can imagine. When I was a little kid, we used to go on the weekends up to the church and clean the baptismal pools out with mops and with rags while all the other kids were having fun. I was practically born on the altar. When I was in the womb, they were shooting me up with Greek and Hebrew. Y' all tracking with me. They used to make a joke. They used to make a joke about us. They say, you know those Brit boys, they have a drug problem. Their mom and dad drug them to church on Monday and drug them to church on Tuesday and drug them to church on Wednesday, right? This is how I grew up. I have an extensive religious resume. Do you know what the daunting thing about the Bible is? You know what the terrifying thing about scriptures is? It's not that wickedness will be judged. Because we all want that. We want bad people to be held accountable for the bad stuff they do. We just have a different measuring stick around bad than the Bible, but we're okay with wickedness being judged. Do you know what the really daunting thing about the scriptures is? It's not that wickedness will be judged. The real terrifying thing is that my righteousness is a filthy rag before God and that in the kingdom of God, my religious resume doesn't count for one red cent in regards to justifying me in front of a holy God. It doesn't count for A thing in regards to making me right or giving me a righteousness. Do you know that the only thing that merits me or gives me any worth or value in the kingdom of God, there is only one thing, and his name is Jesus Christ. It is by Christ alone. He is my only hope in life. In death, Jesus said, every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. Let them alone. They are blind gods. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit. Have you ever followed the wrong person to the wrong place? Like, yeah, Pastor, for, like, a decade. I get it. There's been much debate on the stage over the years around, what's the greatest Christmas movie ever written or ever made? Pastor Jovi would say, die Hard, and I'd say respect. I'm a Home Alone guy. And I don't know if it's the first one or the second one's better. Probably the first one. But do you remember in the second one, they're late to the airport because they miss their alarms and they're running through and they're hustling. And Kevin, who's like the main little kid in the movie, he's messing with his recorder toy, and he keeps falling behind his family. And then he gets really, really distracted by this toy. And then he looks up, and in the distance, he sees someone who from a distance, from behind, looks like his dad because he's wearing a similar jacket. And he begins to follow this man through the airport, and he eventually ends up on the wrong plane going to the wrong destination. Right? Here's what religion has to offer. Religion has to offer God for from a distance. But if you keep following religious people who sound like they know something about God, if you keep following it, you will always end up in the wrong place. You will always end up joyless, burdened, and chained up. See, God's invitation to you and to me is not that we would follow him from a distance, but that we would draw near you. See, God did not send Jesus down here just so that we would appreciate Him a little bit more. He sent Jesus to save us and so that we would live holy and consecrated unto Him Him. Consecration is a Bible word that we don't use a lot, and it's got two parts. One is that God claims someone or something as his own. And anyone who places their faith in Jesus Christ would fall into the claimed by God unto himself category. But there's a second part is that these people would respond to God's claim on their life by living fully dedicated unto him that's what it means to be consecrated. But Peter said, all right, Jesus, we don't understand. Explain this parable to us. And he said, are you still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? Jesus is saying, coffee go in, coffee go out. You eat food, you got to go number two. It's just science, people. But what comes out of the mouth, the heart surgery, what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart. And this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts. Listen to how relational this next run of sins are. For out of the heart come evil thoughts. Murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone. Pharisees love their policies and religious politics. Jesus loves people. One is about rules, the other is about a relationship. The Scriptures continue, and Jesus went away from there, and he withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon. He is leaving what is proper known Israel at the time. I think this is as far as Jesus ever traveled from his hometown. And Tyre and Sidon has got many prophecies about it in the Bible. There's a lot of history. But say it is completely a Gentile territory and it is very, very hostile. And so Jesus goes here with his disciples and it says this, and behold a Canaanite woman. This is someone who is ancestrally condemned, would have been viewed as an outsider, would have been looked down on as lesser than than the Pharisees and certainly even the disciples. This Canaanite woman, the lesser than woman, came from that region, came out and with crying said to Jesus, and have mercy on me, O Lord, son of David. My daughter is severely oppressed by a demon. But he did not answer her a word. And his disciples came and begged him, saying, send her away, for she's crying out after us. He answered, I was sent only to the lost house of the sheep of Israel. So you've got this outsider woman viewed as lesser than the disciples. And she comes up to Jesus, and right out of the gate, she calls him two titles. One is she said Lord. Second, she calls him by his messianic title, which is Son of David. This woman was looking for something. She was looking for someone, and she knew what she was looking for. At first, Jesus doesn't answer her, and it kind of seems harsh or crass. But when you put it in the context of this whole interchange, a couple of things are happening. One is that Jesus is about to Paint a word picture for the benefit of the woman and for the benefit of the disciples. You see, the. The disciples were still learning about the kingdom of God, but they were struggling. They were struggling because this woman, the scriptures say she annoyed them. She was interrupting their time off. She was interrupting their time away. She was taking their normal seat on the weekend. She was parking in their favorite parking spot. You get what I'm tracking here, right? She was annoying. Why? The reason that she was annoying to them is because they didn't value her. They saw her as less than. So. For the disciples benefit, Jesus is going to use this as a learning example. And then for the woman's. He is, at least in part, testing this woman's faith. Adrian Rogers, a pastor I used to listen to, he would say, a faith that has not been tested cannot be trusted. But this woman, you got to love her. She doesn't just walk away or give up. She came and knelt before Jesus and said, lord, help me. What a prayer. I promise that prayer is near to the heart of God. Lord, help me. And then he answered, it is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs. And she said, yes, Lord. Yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table. And then Jesus answered and said, oh, woman, great is your faith. Let it be done for you as you desire. And her daughter was healed instantly. What's going on here? You'd be like, hold on. Did Jesus the Christ, the son of the living God, did he just call this woman a dog? And I would say, yeah, he did. He did. I'm not going to apologize for it, but I will explain what he meant. You see, in Greek, there's two words for dog. One is, it means unruly, or it means nuisance or wild. And this was a derogatory term that the Pharisees, the Jews, even the disciples would have used to describe Gentile people, specifically Canaanites. They would have used that word over and over and over again in derogatory sense. A wild, unruly, nuisance of a dog. Jesus, when he says dog, he uses a different word. And he uses the word that represents more of, like a household pet or a puppy. This is a different word altogether. Now, I'm not saying you should feel better about it. I'm just telling you what it means. Here's the word picture. Greek is a word picture. Language. Here's the word picture that Jesus is painting at my house. We have two dogs. One's name's Penny, and The other's named Piper. I didn't want either one of them, but here we are. Okay, do you know whose chair our dogs come to while we're eating dinner? Every single time, do you know whose chair they get underneath? Mine. Do you know why? Because the most amount of crumbs fall off my end of the table. There's this Greek word called proskneuo. And the image that this word creates is one of the ways in which we understand what the Bible means when it says worship. And the word picture, the pros nuo is, is that the image it paints is that it's like a dog nudging the master's hand for his attention. That's one of the ways that we understand worship. Just a dog with his tail, wagon running up to the master, touching his hand with his nose, saying, if I have your attention, I have everything that I need. This is the word picture that we're seeing in this interchange. And as a reminder that this is always what Israel was supposed to be, God chose the nation of Israel to show his glory to and his glory through them so that there would be a people on the earth that worshiped God and treasured God and adored God and lived under his rule and reign, and they were so blessed and. And that they were flourishing that all the other nations in the world would see this people under their God being blessed, and they would say, there truly is only one God. And all the little g gods of this world would fall away, and everyone would worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That's what Israel was always supposed to be, to be a people that had received God's glory and showed it to the world. And you would say, well, that's amazing, Pastor Britt. We get it, and we understand. Jesus is Israel. We've said it a hundred times. What's the point? All right, let me ask you this. If next week you showed up here at one of our campuses and there were hundreds and thousands of Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus in their traditional, normal, traditional wear, and they were hearing this gospel, and they were responding and surrendering their life to the lordship of Jesus Christ, and we were doing a healing and anointing service, and the line was out the door first, before I even ask my question, let me just say, in the name of Jesus, by the power of the grace of God, let it be so. In this place, God has done a profound work and is doing a profound work, but may he continue to stretch us in what it means to be a movement for all people, all types of people to discover and deepen a relationship with Jesus Christ. We want to be stretched by the power and the grace of God to reach all types of people in our city and around the world. Let it be so in Jesus name. But what if it were so? Would you love it? If it were so, Would you love it or would it make you a little uncomfortable? That's what the disciples are feeling. How uncomfortable are we really willing to be for the sake of this gospel? If it's true, it is worth our lives. It is worth our lives. Jesus continues. And it says this. Jesus went on from there and walked beside the Sea of Galilee. And he went up on the mountain and sat down there. And great crowds came to him, bringing the lame, blind, crippled, mute and many others. And they put him at his feet. And he healed them so that the crowd wondered when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled healthy, the lame walking and the blind seeing, period. And they glorified the God of Israel. This is what God's people want more than anything. We want God to receive the glory that he's due. We want his name to be famous among the nations. We want God to receive his glory. They glorified the God of Israel. That is what we want. For people to see him, to treasure him and to worship him. We do not want attention for ourselves. We want all the attention to be on God. This weekend is the US Open. It finishes up today. So let's just say my boy Scotty Scheffler makes his comeback. I'm believing it. I'm believing he's going to do it. Let's just say he does. And he ends up winning the tournament. And after the tournament's over, a reporter walks right past Scottie Scheffler and goes to his bag and gets a nine iron out and is like, nine iron. You did such a great job today. Your distances were perfect, your divots were immaculate. The spin control was second to none. Everybody would be like, what are you doing? Why are you making a big deal about the instrument? You should be making a big deal about the person that was holding the instrument doing all the work. I'll take it one step further. Let's just say he takes a 1 inch putt at the end, he putts it in and he wins. And one of his kids runs out and grabs the ball out of the cup and holds it up. And the reporter goes to the child and it's like, oh, how did you do it? How did you do it? I know, I'm sure you were so stressed and you put in so much work. How did you get that ball out of the cup? How did you do it? The kid with any sense would hold the ball up and be like, I didn't do anything. My dad did all the work. This is the testimony of the church. We're not saying we're sitting here doing all this, Praise God, he would use us to do anything. But we're the instrument, we're the child. And we're pointing to our dad saying, give him all the credit because he's the one doing all the work. He's just letting us enjoy it. Jesus called his disciples and said, I have compassion on this crowd. Largely Gentile, largely outsiders. I have compassion on this crowd. Last week, Pastor Joby preached a beast of a sermon through the feeding of the 5,000. And incredible. And one of the things that he said was that compassion is not. It's just not something that you feel. It is something that you have. Compassion is love in action. And I just want to encourage you and say, thank you, church last week, because you put love in action. We as a Church sponsored 6,947 compassion children. And they are now set free from poverty in Jesus name. And they are being discipled in a local church. Good on you. If you haven't sponsored a child yet, you still can do that. You text the word sponsor to 83393 and you can be a part of God changing a child's life. Jesus sees this crowd has compassion on them. And it says this because they've been with me now three days and have nothing to eat. And I'm unwilling to send them away hungry, lest they faint on the way. And the disciples said to him, where are we gonna get enough bread in such a desolate place to feed so great a crowd? And you would be like, hello, it's been like one whole month since the feeding of the 5,000. This is cool. And Jesus said to him, how many loaves do you have? They said, seven and a few small fish. Sound familiar? And directing the crowd to sit on the ground, he took the seven loaves and the fish and gave thanks. And he broke them and gave it to the disciples. And the disciples gave it to the crowds. And they all ate and were satisfied. Yum. And they took up seven baskets full of broken pieces left over. Those who ate were 4,000 men, besides women and children. And after sending away the crowds, he got into the boat and he went to the region of Magadan. Last week, feeding of the 5,000. This week, feeding of the 4,000 very similar miracles, two different miracles. And here's the significant difference. In the feeding of the 5,000, it was primarily a Jewish audience. In the feeding of the 4,000, it's primarily a gentile audience. What is the significance of this sign or this miracle? It's that this gospel, this living, daily bread is for all people. And it can satisfy anyone who will eat from God. God's table. That's the significance of the miracle. I love that the disciples asked Jesus. They're like, where are we going to get enough? Sometimes you read the disciples and you're like, all right, bros. Like, how dumb can you actually be? Up until this point in Matthew, here's what the disciples have seen firsthand. They've seen every disease, affliction, pains, demon possession, epilepsy, paralysis, leprosy, healed. They saw the centurion servant healed. From a distance, they saw Jesus heal Peter's mother in law. He's cast out demons. He calmed the storm by rebuking the wind. He cast demons out of a man into a herd of pigs. He healed the woman with the issue of blood. He gave sight to two blind men. He gave disciples authority to do the same thing among the house of Israel that he was doing. He heals the man with the withered hand. He feeds 5,000 plus men and women and children. Feeds 4,000 plus women and children. What's going on with the disciples? Well, here's what's happening. They forgot to remember. It's easy to look and say, what's your problem? But for us, when the pressure is up in our life, when we feel like we're going to disappoint others, when we feel insecure, we feel fear or we feel tired, what do we do? We get worried. We get anxious. Why do we worry? We worry because we forget to remember. We forget to remember that God is faithful. When we look over our shoulder, we see two things. In our history and in human history. We see a lot of happy days and we see a lot of hard times. But behind all of that, we see the sovereign, faithful hand of God holding it all together. He is faithful. Scriptures continue. And Pharisees and Sadducees came to test him. And they said, show. And they asked for him for a sign of heaven. All of that list of miracles I just saw, I just read through. The Pharisees saw most of this, but that's not good enough. We want to see another sign. And he said, all right. When? This evening. You say it'll be fair weather, for the sky is red in the morning. It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening. You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the time. An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it. And except the sign of Jonah. You ask, what's the sign of Jonah? Jonah? Well, I'm glad you asked. Jesus answered in Matthew, chapter 12. He says this. An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. What is the miracle that Jesus is pointing at, calling the sign of Jonah? The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It's the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It is the miracle of all miracles. The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the centerpiece of our faith. It is the single most important event in human history. You are either all in on the reality and the implications of the resurrection, or you are not in at all. You can bring all of your questions about the Bible, you can bring all of your questions about about Christianity. But eventually it all boils down to two things. One, did Jesus Christ of Nazareth walk on this earth? Did he claim to be God and have the power to forgive sins? And did he die on a Roman cross? And is that death, the perfect final sacrifice needed in order for sins to be forgiven? That's question number one. Question number two is, did he go into that tomb and three days later did he come out alive? And I'm here to give testimony according to the witness of scriptures. And that by the power of the Spirit of God and by the power of God revealed to man. On the third day, a dead man walked out of that tomb alive. And he is still alive today. He is still alive today. The apostle Paul says if Jesus Christ did not resurrect from the dead, then we're all wasting our time here because our sins are not forgiven. But if Jesus Christ did resurrect from the dead, then it changes everything about everything. And it is worth our lives. It is worth our lives. So he left and departed. And when the disciples reached the other side, they had forgotten to bring any bread they hungry. And Jesus said, watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. And they began discussing among themselves, saying, we brought no bread. But Jesus, aware of this, said, oh, you of Little faith. Why are you discussing the 5,000 and how many baskets you gathered? Or the seven loaves for the 4,000 and how many baskets you gathered? How is it that you fail to understand that I did not speak about bread? Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. And then they understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven of the bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. What's Jesus saying here? What is leaven? Well, leaven is like a fermented dough. And you add it to other ingredients like flour and water and sugar, and you just have to add like a tablespoon of leaven to as many other ingredients as you want, and eventually that leaven is alive and it will take over the entirety of everything else. What Jesus is saying is that man made prescribed religion. If you are trusting in your works, in your merit and your ability to keep the rules, if you are trusting in that in order to make you right before God, that that is poison in your soul and you are completely blind. That's what he's saying, that just the smallest amount of legalism, of judgmentalism, just the smallest amount can get in your soul and it can overtake your soul and it will be poisoned to your life. And the same is true of habitual practices of sin where we know there are things that we do them and we pursue them over and over again. And they are not patterns of behavior that are bringing glory to God. They are not producing joy in our lives. They don't reflect God's heart for us. But for some reason we keep hanging on to them. We keep pursuing him, we keep chasing him. And I would ask you today, will you lay it down? It is an inside out work. You have to get uncomfortable inside through confession and repentance before you can begin to be uncomfortable and have an impact on this world. For the sake of the gospel, how uncomfortable are you willing to be to walk whole and full in the kingdom of God? Will, will you lay it down? He says if we confess our sins, that God is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness, whether it be the unrighteousness of religion or it be the unrighteousness of rebellion. I invite you today, lay it down. Will you bow your head and close your eyes and pray with me? We're going to respond like we always do. We're going to respond by singing true things about God. We're Going to make confession of faith through song. We're going to respond by bringing. We're going to bring our first and best in our tithes and offerings like we always do, however you normally do that. And then we're going to pray. We're going to come to our altars, and I would ask you, if you have business to do with God, to come and put your body in the posture you want your heart and life. Kneel before him like the Canaanite woman and say, lord, help me. He hears that prayer every single time. Lord, help me. We're gonna respond as soon as I say amen, we'd invite you to respond as God leads. Father, we thank you for your grace, for your goodness, for your kindness that leads us to change. Father, we thank you for your word, for your promises. We thank you that your law is beautiful, that your commands are sanctifying. God, we thank you most of all for Jesus and because of the work that he's done on our behalf, we now could be in relationship with you and God with this next five minutes. Would it just be a relational time where we know that we're seen by you and that, you know we are excited to see you and that our worship would be that of us nudging your hand, saying, father, we know we have your attention and we love it. God, I pray anywhere we've gotten comfortable, anywhere we've gotten apathetic, anywhere we feel stuck in our faith. Would you stretch us? Would you truly continue to grow us in what it means to be a movement for all people? We invite your presence into this place, and we pray this by the power of the spirit of God and all God's people said, amen. Amen. Would you stand with me at all of our campuses and let's respond to the gospel.