Luke 11:33-54

Discussion Questions

1. How do you “let your light shine” in daily life? How could you do a better job of doing so?
2. What’s a recent example of when you responded as a rule follower, rule bender or rule breaker? How could you have improved your response?
3. Do any of the “woes” referenced in this passage stand out as something you must be careful to avoid?

Transcript

We study through books of the Bible here at The Village Chapel. Today is no different. If you’d like a paper copy to follow along with, just raise your hand and Lindsay Auman, fresh off the glow of the women’s retreat, will deliver it to you. Yeah, I heard that it was amazing. It was really, really good. So grateful you guys had that day together. And we always like to say, if you need a paper copy of a Bible at home, feel free to take one with you with our blessing. If you’re following along with a device, you can just grab our Wi-Fi info and password off the screen and our QR code that has all the notes and quotes and hymn texts and all of that stuff on it. I would like to extend a welcome to our online visitors. We’re so glad you joined us this morning. Grateful to have you digitally in the room with us. Last week we had visitors from, here’s the top five countries, United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and the Philippines. So grateful to have you with us. Welcome.

This morning, as Pastor Tom said in his prayer, we’re going to finish out Chapter 11 of Luke. We’ve been camped out here for about three weeks, and we started out with Jesus praying and teaching His disciples to pray and then teaching them about the father heart of God. And then Pastor Tommy took us through a pretty tough passage last week, Jesus casting a mute demon out of a man, but then He talked about spiritual warfare, and He continued to warn the crowds about not missing who was standing in front of them teaching, the greater Solomon, the greater Jonah. Well, here’s where we’re going this morning to finish out this passage. We’re going to have four verses where Jesus is going to briefly talk about inner light and inner darkness. Then we’re going to see how it applies to a conversation He has with some Pharisees and scribes, and that will continue on next week when Pastor Ryan is going to start in on Chapter 12. We’ll see how that inner light, and the inner darkness, is going to apply to the disciples as well.

Just like Pastor Tommy mentioned last week, this passage today, you’re not going to find a lot of coffee cup verses in this passage. There’s not little bits that you’re going to inscribe on dish towels that hang over your stove. It’s not going to be the feel-good sermon of the year because Jesus is going to have a very pointed and sharp conversation with these Pharisees and lawyers. He’s going to pronounce six woes against them, which is the strongest warning from God that we see in the Bible. And yet Jesus is not doing it out of vindictiveness. He is righteously angry, but He’s not just doing it out of anger. He’s doing it out of a lament in hopes that they will repent and turn to Him. And I think personally that He’s pretty sharp because He knows that His time on Earth is limited, and there are limited opportunities to intersect with these Pharisees and scribes to invite them to repent and change.

Just like if you’re walking on 21st Avenue with your child and he steps off the curb into traffic, you’re going to very sharply yank him back to save his life. That’s what Jesus is doing here with these pointed and sharp warnings. We’re going to talk about rules and the law a bit because both the Pharisees and the scribes were obsessed with laws, with the way they appeared on the outside, with the way they handled their lives. And they were obsessed with some 600 rules and regulations that they had created in addition to God’s law. God’s law is good, and Jesus, He reverently affirmed God’s law in His ministry. But what the Pharisees and scribes have done is way, way beyond God’s law.

So, let’s talk rules for a second. On the one hand, man, in this country, we are so obsessed, with warning labels and rules and regulations. It seems like almost everything we eat or drink has some kind of a warning label on it, to where you’re just like, “Eh, I just don’t really want to eat or drink anything because it’s all bad.” It’s not all bad, but you know what I mean. And then think about, Kristen and I were talking about this this week, think about driving up Pacific Coast Highway 1 up the coast in California. You have the mountains on one side and the cliffs and the rocks and the ocean on the other. It’s just the most amazing, beautiful drive. And it comes with speed limit signs, warning signs for curves, and danger signs. If you ignore the rules, if you ignore the signs, pretty soon you’re going to zip around a curve and… Right? Just right off the edge of the cliff.

In our country, we drive on the right-hand side of the road and there’s little stripes or lines down the middle of the road that indicate where we drive. That’s a good rule. For the most part, we trust that somebody coming towards us is going to stay in their lane. So, there’s a lot of good uses of rules and regulations, but because this is a little bit of a lift, a little bit of a heavy passage, I curated my top 10 list of silly laws yesterday from the internet. So, we’re going to take a look at silly laws. In Alabama, there’s no wearing a fake mustache in church because it might cause laughter. And if you’re a fisherman in Florida, sorry, it’s illegal to fish while driving across a bridge. Don’t do it. And also in Florida, if you drive your pet elephant to work, you have to pay the parking fee and the parking meter when you tie him to the parking meter. Next time you’re in New Orleans, you can’t tie your alligator to a fire hydrant. Don’t do it. And there’s no whale hunting in Kansas.

My wife is from Kansas, and up till now, we’ve not seen any whales. So that’s a useless law. In Arizona, Arizona, this is a good one, illegal to let your donkey sleep in a bathtub. We have two miniature donkeys at our place. We do not allow them in the bathtub. That’s a good law. And in California, hunters beware, it’s illegal to set a mousetrap without a hunting license. Okay? It’s a very small license, they’re very small. Okay? And then there’s a town in Colorado, cats may not run loose without having been fitted with a taillight. I wouldn’t want that job. “What are you?” “Oh, I’m a cat.” Anyway, yeah. Yes, stop while you’re ahead. It’s several states. Check this out. It’s illegal to have an ice-cream cone in your back pocket, which sounds so silly. Pretty soon you won’t have an ice cream cone in your back pocket. You just have a wet back pocket, but the reason why was because there was a time when people would hide an ice-cream cone in their pocket and then they’d go steal a horse by offering him the ice-cream cone. Interesting.

We also have a horse, don’t feed your horse ice-cream. Okay. And then the last two, I included a bonus law just for fun. The last two are Tennessee laws. It’s illegal for frogs to croak after 11:00 PM. Our frogs don’t pay any attention to that law. And then here’s a really good law to finish out. It’s against the law in Tennessee to drive while you’re asleep. So just know. Okay, back to our passage. There’s wisdom in these warnings of Jesus, pointed, sharp, hard conversations. We should pay attention to the warnings and the reason for them. We should pay attention. So, let’s pray and then we’ll dive into our text.

God, thank You for Your Word. Thank You for loving us enough to send us Your Word. We ask this morning for illumination from the Holy Spirit as we read Your Word and illumination for how it might apply to our lives, how you’re calling us to live. Lord, we did not make ourselves, we cannot keep ourselves. We could never save ourselves. And so, we turn to You, our maker, our keeper, and our Savior through Jesus Christ. Amen.

Okay, so Luke, Chapter 11, starting in verse 33. Jesus says, “No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a basket, but on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light. Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness. Therefore, be careful lest the light in you be darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright as when a lamp with its rays gives you light.” I like the hopeful ending of those four verses. Well, verse 33, “No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar under a basket,” that’s plain enough, right? Because the function of light is to shine. We don’t want to ignore that.

But then following right after that, Jesus says, “The eye is the lamp of the body.” And what in the world does He mean by that? Because the eye doesn’t illuminate, but what the eye does, it lets light in, allowing the mind to process and assimilate and respond to what it’s perceiving from the outside world. So, Jesus is saying, “When your eye is healthy, it’s letting in the light of Christ and our whole being is illuminated.” And in the Bible Speaks commentary, Michael Wilcock puts it this way, which I really love, “The ability to see things clearly should affect the whole way you act and live.” Jesus cautions us to, “Be careful lest our inner light be darkness.” And when He tells us to watch out, we need to pay attention. When He says, “Be careful,” or “Take care,” pay attention. We should heed His caution to make sure that we’re focusing the lamp of ourselves, our eye, the direction of our gaze on Him, allowing that to be the way we perceive the world around us.

Proverbs 4:18 and 19 says, “The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day. The way of the wicked is like deep darkness. They do not know over what they stumble.” I feel like that is exactly what Jesus had in mind when He was making these statements. One of C.S. Lewis’ most well-known quotes that actually is inscribed on his memorial stone in the poet’s corner of Westminster Abbey says, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen; not only because I see it, but because by it, I see everything else.” That’s really good. Not only is the truth of Christ as evident as the rising of the sun, but also, it provides a lens through which we view, perceive and interpret the world around us, which is what we call a world view. That’s what Jesus is encouraging us to do in these four verses, have the eye of our being focused on Him. So, He’s the lens through which we see and perceive and interact with the world around us.

Keep these four verses in mind as we go on through the rest of the passage because if Jesus has just taught us what inner light and inner darkness look like, His conversations coming up with the scribes and the Pharisees, are going to reveal what the lack of inner light looks like. So here we go. Verse 37, “While Jesus was speaking,” while He’s talking about inner light and inner darkness, “…a Pharisee asked him to dine with him, so he went in and reclined at a table. The Pharisee was astonished to see that he did not first wash before dinner.” We read that here, Jesus accepts the invitation to have lunch at this person’s house. And there is, I’ll talk about it in just a second, a hand-washing ceremony that the Jews went through, lots of times during the day, especially before meals. And we read that Jesus elects not to do that and it blows this Pharisee’s mind.

The word used here means he’s astonished, which has a dual meaning. It either means being amazed at something great or horrified at something terrible, which is how the Pharisee is interpreting what’s going on with Jesus right here. Well, so the rule of hand washing went something like this. You would take water, you’d pour it over one hand up to your wrist, and then you’d let it drain off, and then you’d pour what’s called the second water. You’d pour it on wrist again, your hand, let it go all the way up to your elbow, let it drain off. Then you’d repeat it on the other side. And there’s a beautiful Hebrew prayer that accompanies this ceremony and it reflects on the purity of its origins, “Baruch ata Adonai, Eloheinu Melech ha-olam, asher kidshanu b’mitavotav, vitzivnau al n’tilat yadayim,” which means, “Blessed are you, O Lord our God, king of the universe who has sanctified us with Your commandments and commanded us concerning the washing of hands.” Just beautiful. What a beautiful prayer.

Well, the origins of this, they were based on God’s commands in Numbers and Leviticus, originally instructions to priests, but the Pharisees had expanded this to all people. And here’s the kicker. It was not meant to practice hygiene. We all wash our hands before we eat a meal. Good hygiene. This wasn’t about hygiene. This was about washing away the filth from contact with the outside world, with the Gentile world. Jesus perceives all of this without the Pharisees saying a word, and He launched into this speech that we’re fixing to read. And man, I’m thinking that as Jesus began talking, the room went really quiet. And I think there’s a lot of pairs of freshly washed hands that are sneaking under the table as Jesus says what He says.

So, let’s read verse 39. “And the Lord said to him, ‘Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are filled with greed and wickedness. You fools! Did not he who made the outside make the inside also? But give as alms those things that are within and behold everything is clean for you.'” This idea of washing just the outside of the cup. Anybody ever have one of those great little stainless steel coffee cups that fits so well in your car? And maybe you’ve got coffee in it, maybe it’s a protein shake. Maybe you forget about it in the car for a week, two, three, maybe it slides under the seat. Then one day you find that stainless steel coffee cup and it looks amazing on the outside. You’re like, “Oh, my cup. I love it.” Then you open the lid. Oof, right? A lot of colors, a lot of fuzzy hairy stuff growing.

Here’s another question. Anybody ever have a cup so far gone, you just throw it away? I see a few hands raised. I speak from experience on that one. Well, okay, as dramatic as all this is, that’s what Jesus is saying to this Pharisee. He’s saying, “You guys look great on the outside. You’re so religious, you follow all these rules, but it’s only on the outside. And man, on the inside, you are filled with greed and wickedness.” Jesus challenges them to repent so that their insides and their outsides match up – He’s calling out their hypocrisy here. The word hypocrite means someone who is play-acting like an actor, somebody that is different on the inside and the outside. And it’s the opposite of integrity, which is a unity in your life where your inner life and your outer life look the same.

Okay, let’s keep going. Verse 42. Here’s these three woes, “But woe to you, Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and every herb, and neglect justice and the love of God. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. Woe to you, Pharisees! For you love the best seat in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces. Woe to you! For you are like unmarked graves and people walk over them without knowing it.” Wow, three woes here. Woeful giving, woeful pride and the woeful effect they had on others. Man, the Pharisees were legendary tithers. Even down to the point of their garden herbs, they bring in a little harvest of mint or dill or whatever. They scrupulously made sure, “Okay, if I have 10 leaves here for dinner, oh, I’m going to take one with me to the temple.” Scrupulous tithers on the outside, totally neglecting the needs of the widow, the orphan, the poor.

The total antithesis of Micah 6:8. “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” And speaking of walking humbly, total antithesis of that because these Pharisees, we are told, loved the front seats, not like our front row here, glad you’re all on the front row, but they loved the front seats of the synagogue because they were facing the crowds, and they could just bask in the limelight, and they loved being greeted like rock stars in the marketplace. But finally, perhaps most seriously of all, Jesus pronounces woes on them because they are leading others astray, contaminating their faith.

In Israel, if a person touched a tomb or unknowingly stepped on an unmarked grave, they were ceremonially unclean, and they had to go offer a sacrifice to cleanse themselves. So, you need to know that, in Israel, not all graves were in cemeteries. A lot of times, families just buried their loved ones outside of a cemetery. Sometimes these graves were unmarked. And so, it would be easy for an unwary person to step on those graves. So, what they did when there was a feast time or a pilgrimage like Passover where a lot of visitors would come to town, family members would whitewash these graves as markers so that someone wouldn’t unknowingly step on it, become unclean and defile the temple. And Jesus is saying to the Pharisees, “Yeah, you might look good on the outside, but here’s what’s so bad: You are like one of these unmarked graves, full of greed, full of wickedness, full of death, and you are causing others to stumble and become unclean because of the way you practice your faith.”

Continue with verse 45: “One of the lawyers answered him, ‘Teacher, in saying these things, you insult us also.’ And he said, ‘Woe to you lawyers also.'” So, can you believe the hubris of the scribe? Here, Jesus is just punching on the Pharisees, and the scribe has the hubris to stand, say, “Hey, when you’re talking about him, mister, you’re insulting us also.” And all of a sudden, Jesus turns and looks at him and says, “Oh, yeah, you know what? I actually wasn’t talking to you, but now that you said something, let’s talk.” Man, I’ll bet the guy wished he had kept his mouth shut.

So, let’s read what Jesus has to say, verse 46 on. So, “Woe to you lawyers also! For you load people with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers. Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets whom your fathers killed. So, you are witnesses, and you consent to the deeds of your fathers, for they killed them, and you build their tombs. Therefore, also the Wisdom of God said, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute, so that the blood of all the prophets shed from the foundation of the world may be charged against this generation from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah who perished between the altar and the sanctuary.’ Yes, I tell you, it will be required of this generation.” Why I think Jesus is pointing out this generation is because this generation is witness to the presence of Jesus in the flesh incarnate, God’s Son. That’s why I think He’s saying that.

So, he finishes up, “Woe to you lawyers, for you have taken away the key of knowledge. You did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering.” So again, Jesus pronounces three woes on the scribes, woes related to their abuse of God’s Word, woes of overloading and burdening the people, woes of memorializing dead prophets and woeful deprivation of the word to people. So, as I said earlier, the scribes had taken God’s law and added over 600 rules and regulations to it, laws which were hard for the average person to understand, as well as keep. And here’s an example: Carrying a load on the Sabbath. You were not allowed to carry a load on the Sabbath. However, the amount of weight that you were allowed to carry on the Sabbath was the weight that amounted to the weight of a dried fig. I don’t know what that weighs, but I don’t think it moves the needle at all.

Imagine you’re carrying your little dried fig with you because you’re allowed to do that. Well, you set it down so you can open the door. Well, when you pick it back up again, now you’re carrying the weight of two dried figs, and you’ve just broken the Sabbath. That’s how absurd these laws were. And what a contrast to the heart of Jesus who says, “Come unto me, all you who are weary and heavy laden.” God’s desire is not to weigh us down with impossible burdens, but to take away the load of sin, shame and guilt that we are carrying.

The second woe was about the dead prophets. The scribes were building memorials to dead prophets, but the irony here is they are not worshiping these dead prophets but honoring them when it was their ancestors that killed the prophets. And then to go further than that, they were killing modern-day prophets. None the least of which is Jesus, the greatest prophet, whom they are planning on killing. And I’d just like to put it out there that it’s easy to honor a dead prophet because he’s not able to speak out against you. Right? A dead prophet is a quiet prophet. And then lastly, He criticized the experts in the law because not only are they outside the law, they are confusing and burdening and preventing people that would really love to honor the law. They’ve made it immeasurably harder for the average person to enter the kingdom.

And then to finish out the last two verses here, verses 53 and 54. “As he went away from there, the scribes and the Pharisees began to press him hard and to provoke him to speak about many things, lying in wait for him to catch him in something he might say.” Well, one would think that perhaps a scribe or Pharisee would walk away from the embarrassment of this encounter and the public chastisement of Jesus with maybe a thought towards a little introspection and maybe some repentance and turning towards the light. But they respond exactly the opposite, trying even harder to trap Him in something that He’s going to say. Well, how are we doing? What a hard passage. I’ve got to tell you; this passage this week has really challenged me. I’ve just been thinking a lot about the area of hypocrisy, of not having an integrated internal and external life, really challenged me in the area of how I do or don’t follow God’s laws, not in a performance legalistic manner, but just do I follow? Do I walk the way God wants me to walk and pay attention to His laws? What’s my motivation for doing any of that?

Here’s three things that have been weighing on my mind this week from this passage, and I think the first thing that’s been on my mind is this most basic question. Why does God care about sin? Why does He care how we live? Right? What made Him righteously angry with the scribes and Pharisees in this passage? Because it’s not a secret that God does care how we live. He makes it very plain. He does care about sin. I’d like to say that He cares about sin because He cares about us. If God were indifferent or apathetic towards us, He wouldn’t care. He wouldn’t care how we lived our lives, but care He does. He loves us so much that He wants us to have life, flourishing life, abundant life. And He’s therefore opposed to that which prevents that abundant life. And He’s opposed to that which causes us harm.

Rebecca Manley Pippert says it so well. She says, “God’s wrath is not a cranky explosion, but His settled opposition to the cancer of sin which is eating out the insides of the human race He loves with His whole being.” Friends, God is opposed to that which causes us harm. And I think we’ve seen this passage that God cares about sin because He’s vehemently opposed to those who cause others to stumble, like the scribes and Pharisees in our passage. Matthew records Jesus saying, “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” That’s like a one- or two-ton stone tied to your neck right before you’re pushed overboard. Jesus is saying, “Man, if you cause someone to stumble, that’s a better outcome for you.”

Ezekiel, Chapter 34, God is speaking out against those who are charged with shepherding the flock who are derelict in their duties. And here’s one of the verses from chapter 34: “The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness, you have ruled them.” God is really opposed to those who lead others astray. And I think God cares enough about sin to do something radical about it, to go to the cross to die in order to kill sin, to do away with it. Alistair Begg says this. He says, “What you have in the cross is the appeasement of the wrath of God by the love of God through the gift of God.” That is exactly what God has done in his commitment to us because He cares about our well-being. Well, if God does care about how we live, if He has a way that He wants us to go, are we going that way? How are we living?

The second thing that had been on my mind this week as I was studying the passage is this question: How is our faith? How is my faith affecting others? Many of the warnings of Jesus in this passage, they’re double-edged, talking to the scribes and Pharisees. Not only is He concerned and warning and criticizing them because of the condition of their hearts, but that double-edge of how the condition of their hearts is leading others astray. Jesus is angry that instead of pointing people towards God by their actions, by their lives, they’re leading people away from God. I ran across this quote this week, 19th century British writer, William J. Thoms. He said, “Be careful how you live. You may be the only Bible some person ever reads.” That’s akin to, there’s another phrase, “You may be the only Jesus someone ever sees.” And I couldn’t find out who was the originator of that quote, but we might be, very well might be the best and the only example of Christianity that someone ever knows.

So, my question is, how does that resonate with you? How does that resonate with me? You might be thinking, “Wait, I didn’t sign up for this. Got Jesus, really happy just being over in my corner of the world right over here. Everybody else can do whatever they want.” And I hate to say it, but that’s really not what believers are called to. It’s not really an option. We don’t get this introvert’s clause when we become believers. “Yeah, but God, I’m an introvert. I don’t want to talk to people.” Kent Hughes, who has a great commentary on Luke called That You May Know The Truth, describes it this way: “All of us inevitably communicate what we are. We can do all the right religious things… but we will ultimately impart what is within. We leave our fingerprints on each other’s souls for Christ or for unbelief.”

Man, I hope that last sentence gives you just a little bit of a pause, a little bit of a catch. Right? “We leave our fingerprints on each other’s souls for Christ or for unbelief.” Now, we can’t help but spill over into each other’s lives. It’s the way we’re made. We’re created for relationship. And because our relationships strongly impart and form our identities, we are a part of what forms each other. We can’t help it. So, no matter what, we’re forming each other. So, the question remains, how is our faith affecting others? When people look at my life, what kind of a God do they see? Do they see a God who is petty and vindictive, a God who insists on following the rules? A God who says that results are the only metric that give value and dignity to a person? Or do they see a God who is full of grace and mercy? Do we live as if God matters?

The last thing that I’ve been thinking about so much this week, thinking about the Pharisees and the scribes and how critical Jesus was of them is this — Friends, neither rule following nor rule breaking is going to save you. That drives right down to the very heart of the Gospel. It’s not what we do or what we don’t do. It’s what Christ has done. And this is where the scribes and the Pharisees were so off target. I think there’s three basic approaches to observing rules. We can be a rule follower. We can be a rule bender; we can be a rule breaker. The rule follower says, “Man, I got to follow the rules for life to work.” A rule follower might think, “Man, if I just button things up and do everything right, man, life’s going to work out, God is going to be pleased with my performance. God might even say, ‘Man, now there’s a fellow I can use because he does everything just exactly right.'” Of course, if you know my life, you will realize that’s…

Anyway, but I’ve got to encourage this along that path of trying to follow the rules, along that path lies our inner Pharisee, because we try and bolster up how we feel about ourselves by how well we’re keeping the rules. Well, the rule bender, he says, “I only follow the rules when it’s to my advantage. Rules are just a tool, a means to an end.” A rule bender might follow the rules when it’s convenient for them, but then they’ll bend the rules when it’s not convenient. And I just wonder if some of us might spend a good bit of time in that space right there, using the rules for our advantage, but also not being too committed to them. And then follow that up with the rule breaker who says, “Don’t tell me how to live my life. My life, my rules. Rules apply to the other guy. It’s all up to me.”

So, the question is, where do you see yourself in these three categories? To be honest, I spend time in all three. There are times when I find myself trying so very hard to obey and to do everything right so that God will be pleased with me. But then there’s times where it’s just not effective or efficient or convenient to keep the rules so that I just try and bend the rules and try to manipulate God to allow me to do my thing and bend the rules to fit my agenda. And then there’s even other times, honestly, where I just don’t care about the rules. I’m just going to do things my way.

I think each of those three paths, it’s our way of trying to make things work for us, to retain our autonomy, to not live a life given to Christ. And frankly, I think the truth is none of those ways of observing rules is ultimately going to work out well for us. Because Jesus is calling us to a relationship, calling us to Himself, not calling us to some path of seven steps to a perfect life. The hard but beautiful truth of the Gospel is this: Friends, there’s nothing that we have done or will do that can make God love us any more than He already does, which is hard. It’s not up to us. We can’t do anything to make Him love us more. By the same token, there is nothing that we have done or will do that can make God love us any less. His grace will always outmatch our sin.

I consider this week what we learned about the Pharisees. Boy, they could not wait to get home after being out in the public. They could not wait to get home and wash the filth of the Gentiles, the outer world off their hands. And contrast that with Jesus who cannot wait to run to us and throw His arms around us. In our brokenness, in our filth, He wraps His arms around us, takes all of that off of us, wraps it around Himself like a cloak, carries it to the cross where He puts it to death. That’s what the Gospel says. John Stott sums up what the scribes and Pharisees were missing, even though Jesus was right in front of them, and this is what he says: “This is the difference between them (the law and the gospel): The law says ‘Do this’; the gospel says ‘Christ has done it all.’ The law requires works of human achievement; the gospel requires faith in Christ’s achievement. The law makes demands and bids us obey; the gospel brings promises and bids us believe.” Isn’t that lovely?

I’m going to close with this familiar Tim Keller quote, which, friends, this is the gospel. And I’d like to encourage you, if you’ve never thought about a relationship with Jesus, why don’t you start that today? We have a prayer team that meets in the back. They would love to pray with and for you. Myself or any of the pastors will be up here. We would love to talk with you. Here’s our last slide from Brother Tim Keller. “The gospel is this. We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves [if we’re honest with ourselves, more sinful and flawed in ourselves] than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.” That’s some really good news. Amen.

Let’s pray, church: God, we are so grateful that You actually do care about the way we live our lives, that You actually do care about the effects of sin and how it causes us harm, and You want to do away with it. We’re so grateful that You have cared so much that You entered into space-time history, that You lived a life of perfect obedience, that You went to the cross to take our sin upon You and exchange it for Your righteousness. Wow, what a great deal that has turned out to be! We love You. We are thankful. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Songs, Readings & Prayer

Songs

“Come, People of the Risen King” by Keith Getty, Kristyn Getty & Stuart Townend
“Jesus Strong and Kind” by Colin Buchanan, Jonny Robinson, Michael Farren & Rich Thompson
“Yet Not I But Through Christ In Me“ by Jonny Robinson, Michael Farren & Rich Thompson
“Take My Life, and Let It Be” by Frances Ridley Havergal (1874)
 “Doxology” by Thomas Ken and Louis Bourgeois

All songs are used by Permission. CCLI License #2003690

Call To Worship: Who is Like You, O Lord

Leader: The word of the Lord is upright, and all his work is done in faithfulness.
People: He loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord.

Leader: Who is like you, O Lord, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?
People: You will return in power and glory, to set all things right, and to make all things new!

Leader: Who is like you, O Lord, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds?
All: Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns!

Confession: “He was Conceived by the Holy Spirit and Born of the Virgin Mary”, The Apostles Creed

Leader: What does it mean that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit?
People: Jesus was conceived not through a human father but by the Holy Spirit coming upon the Virgin Mary in power.

Leader: Why is it important to say that Jesus was born?
People: It is important to affirm that he is one of us: truly human, born to a human mother, and raised in a human family.

Leader: What does the union of Jesus’ two natures teach us about his ministry?
People: All Jesus does as a human being he also does as God. His human words and deeds are saving because they are the words and deeds of God the Son

Source: ACNA, Q. 53, 55, 58

Classic Prayer: Esther DeWaal, 1930

“Uncrowd our hearts, O God, until silence speaks, in Your still, small voice; turn us from the hearing of words, and the making of words, and the confusion of much speaking, to listening, waiting, stillness, silence.”

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