Father, we're very grateful that we are able to be in your presence this morning to receive from you.
Father, you know which ones of us need, in a sense, Jesus to give us that look to stop us from what we're doing.
And you know, Father, which ones of us really need Jesus to pick us up.
And you know which ones, Father, need Jesus to put an arm of encouragement and affection around them.
And so, Father, we come here in different states together to receive grace from you this morning.
And we ask that the Holy Spirit would make Jesus real to us, that your word would have a powerful place in our lives,
and that we might respond in a way which is truly worthy to the great grace that you offer us.
And we ask this in the name of Jesus, your Son and our Savior. Amen.
Please be seated.
So, when I was growing up, Sunday was the worst day of the week.
I hated Sunday.
I grew up in a very religious home.
And obviously, there were very good things about my background.
And it's a very easy thing in Canadian and North American culture just to dump on your parents.
And I don't say this so that my kids can't dump on me.
There's things I did that I have done that, of course, are not Christ-honoring or perfect.
But I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in an area of Montreal.
So, we were like the only Gentile.
I was the only Gentile kid, the only non-Jewish kid on the street and in the whole neighborhood.
And so, I grew up in a type of home where on Sundays, you went to Sunday school, then you went to church, and then at night, you went to the evening service.
And that's the world I grew up in.
And I grew up in a home where you weren't allowed to play road hockey on days like today.
You weren't allowed to ride your bike.
You weren't allowed to play games.
You just had to be quiet.
And I hated it.
I really did.
And it was especially hard, of course, because all of my Jewish friends were out there.
You know, on a day like today, they would have been playing road hockey or, you know, throwing a football around or just having fun.
And I was stuck going to these things.
And when I wasn't there, just stuck having to be quiet all day.
And my memory is getting, I was probably not as quiet a kid as I should have been, and getting dirty looks from my parents.
And I hated Sundays.
I really did.
It was, in fact, that type of an upbringing was, in many ways, one of the primary barriers to me becoming a Christian.
And I mention this for two reasons.
One is that part of what, I don't know about you where you are in terms of things, or those of you who are watching online,
but for many people in our culture, that's one of the reasons they don't want to become a Christian.
Because it's just religion, and it's just oppressive rules.
And, you know, Christians have their own, you know, problems and stuff like that.
And, you know, if you go towards Islam, well, I don't know, if you go towards Islam, then if you're really into Islam,
you know, if you're men, you wear pants that are a bit short, because, you know, Muhammad wore pants that were short,
and you have to grow a certain type of facial hair and wear, you know, funny clothes,
and women maybe have to get themselves all covered up, and then maybe you're not allowed to go to school
or go to dance or, you know, whatever, dance or have art.
And it's the same thing if you're really into Buddhism, you have to wear robes.
And, you know, if you're really into Judaism, you know, then you have to wear a kippah.
And then there's all these rules about what you can do and not do, and rules, rules, rules, rules.
And it's just crushing.
And who on earth wants that?
The text that we're going to look at today is a very, very powerful text of freedom
and a rebuke to those who want to turn Christianity into a religion of a whole pile of rules.
It's a very, very powerful text.
It gets there at a bit of a circuitous or convoluted route, and it would be very helpful for you and for me
if you open your Bibles for yourself.
And let's look and see what goes on in the text and how it speaks to those people who want to pile rule upon rule upon rule
as a sign of the spiritual life or the religious life.
And here's how the story goes.
On sort of just a bit of a context, it's Mark 8, verses 1 to 23 we're looking at today.
And Mark is, if you're maybe watching this for the first time or you haven't watched it in a while,
Mark is an ancient eyewitness-based history, biography of Jesus.
It was written by a man who would have been an eyewitness for some of the events.
He based everything he writes on eyewitness testimony, and the gospel or the biography is written
when many eyewitnesses were around to correct it.
So we're reading, in a sense, an eyewitness document of the things that went on in Jesus' life.
And what's just happened before this in the story,
partially because I didn't get much time to preach on the last little bit.
I focused, those of you who were here last week, on the encounter between Jesus and the pagan woman.
But what we're seeing is that Jesus and his disciples,
Jesus has led us, the disciples, into a 120-kilometer walking journey
through the areas near the majority Jewish areas, but they're all pagan-majority areas.
And this is towards the end now of his 120-kilometer walking,
mainly walking, but not exclusively, tour of these overwhelmingly pagan areas.
And here's how the story continues.
Verse 1.
In those days, when again a great crowd had gathered, they had nothing to eat.
He called his disciples to him and said to them,
I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat.
And if I send them away, hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way,
and some of them have come from far away.
Now, just sort of pause here for a second.
There's sort of two things which are interesting to help you understand the story.
The first is the word compassion.
And if you go back and you read the four ancient biographies that we have of Jesus,
you will see that time and time again,
the character trait that is most often connected to him is compassion.
And in this text as well, it's not just a character trait,
but it's something which is a very deeply held emotional trait as well.
In the original language, it's saying that there's something,
his compassion when he sees their need is gut-wrenching.
It is gut-wrenching compassion that he has for the crowd.
The other thing which is going on in this story is,
if you've read the little bit just before that,
you'll see that they're in the region of the Decapolis.
And if you go back several chapters to chapter 5,
there's a story which is sort of infamous in Christian circles
of Jesus healing the man who had a legion of demons inside of him.
And it's often referred to as the Gadarene demoniac.
And that story of when Jesus, as a man who's possessed by many demons,
he casts the demons out into the pigs.
And the man asks to go with Jesus, and Jesus says to him,
no, you can't come with me.
I need you to go to your home and tell everybody that you meet
what I've done for you.
But the people from the community have come to Jesus,
and they want Jesus to leave because they're terrified
of what they've just seen.
And so the interesting thing is we don't know,
because Mark doesn't do time markers, really.
He just goes from incident to incident.
So we don't know if this is six months later,
or a year later, or a year and a half later, or whatever.
But Jesus is now in the same region
where the healing of the deliverance of the Gadarene demoniac happened.
So it's very, very striking.
They so don't want Jesus there, they ask him to leave.
The Gadarene demoniac has given this test, this task.
This pagan has given this task of telling people what Jesus has done.
And now, whether it's six months or a year or whatever later,
as we'll see in a moment, over 4,000 people want to hear about Jesus.
That's the transformation which has happened.
It doesn't directly link it.
It just links it indirectly through the name tags.
So God bless that man's witness to Jesus, that nameless man.
And so now we have this very, very large crowd,
and they've wanted to be with Jesus for three days.
They've run out of their food, and they're hungry.
So this next bit, believe it or not,
this next little bit is something that has caused lots of debate amongst scholars.
What is it that's caused this debate amongst scholars?
Let's look and see.
Verse 4.
So Jesus says, you know, what are we going to do with this crowd?
Send them home.
And his disciples answered him,
how can one feed these people with bread here in this desolate place?
Now here's the thing which has puzzled all these commentators.
They write lots of stuff about it.
Is, like, duh, don't they remember the feeding of the 5,000?
Like, why don't they just say, you know, like, what's going on here with the text?
Well, there's several things which are going on in the text,
which I think are very significant.
The first thing is, one of the arguments, very powerful arguments,
for the historical credibility of this text
is the fact that it does not show the leadership of the Christian movement in a good light.
Not normally the way, if you're going to doctor things, you know, like, okay, I'm going to be bipartisan.
The next election, the conservatives are going to make sure that they try to make,
that underestimate anything that they did bad in the past will be sort of covered up,
and they'll emphasize the things they got right.
The liberals will do the exact same thing.
The NDP will do the exact same thing.
That's just human nature, so that when you're retelling the past,
you try to kick under the carpet anything which was, you know, like, evil or stupid,
and you try to emphasize those times when you're bright.
And so one of the things which is very powerful about the Gospels
is it doesn't do that for Peter or the apostles or the disciples.
It does not paint them in good light.
But the other thing is actually sort of a more important point in it,
because it may be obvious to many of us.
We go, well, why don't they remember the 5,000?
But here's the thing.
It's an important thing about the Christian life,
is that Jesus is restoring us to full humanity.
When you put your faith and trust in Jesus,
it isn't that now all of a sudden he wants you to pretend that you're an angel
or that you don't have any human needs or you don't have emotions.
He's restoring you to what it means to be human.
And from a Christian point of view, the profound text about that is Genesis 1 and 2.
And so it's not the case in the Christian life that, like at the 8 o'clock service,
I don't know how many people had breakfast before they came.
Probably most of you have had breakfast before you came.
But it wasn't the case that a devout Christian wakes up on a Sunday morning and says,
Lord, today I want to place my order and I'd like you to provide, you know, toast and coffee and yogurt for breakfast.
I'd like you to provide a coffee and a cookie in the mid-morning.
And then for lunch I'd like this.
And in the afternoon I'd like this.
And then for supper I'd like this.
And then you just sit and pray until God magically provides it.
That's not the Christian life.
See, he's restoring you to humanity, full humanity.
And that means there's a dignity to work.
There's a dignity to prayer.
There's a dance that we are to master and learn between prayer and work.
It means that the Lord is wanting us to figure out the resources that we have and to use those in a way which are wise for creativity, for productivity, to meet your needs.
But he's also going to constantly put before you things that need to be done that he's calling you to do that are beyond your resources
because he wants us to know the one who controls all the resources and from whom all our resources come.
And there's to be this dance between, well, I have short sleeves, rolling up your sleeves and getting the job done.
And at the same time the Lord's going to call, like, here's a bit of an aside.
I don't know if he's here today.
I might be bringing before you in a short while whether we should plant a church in Seoul, South Korea.
Do we have the resources for that?
No.
Not even a fraction.
I'm not making this up.
I'm in a conversation with somebody as to whether we should, I've done a little bit of research on whether we should,
God should use us to help plant a church in Seoul, South Korea.
We don't have the resources for that.
Not even close.
If you come here on the last Sunday of April, probably there'll be a bit of a presentation
because we're going to have a bit of a role in seeing whether God is calling a church like ours to be planted in Charlottetown.
Not as far away as Seoul, South Korea, but it's 1,350 kilometers away.
We don't have the resources to do that.
But we know one who has the resources to do it.
So the disciples here aren't rebuked for saying to Jesus,
well, Jesus, I know the answer to this question.
Do your stuff.
Do a minute.
No, they're not rebuked for it.
Right?
They're not rebuked.
So what happens?
It's similar and different to those of you who are familiar with the story of the feeding of the 5,000.
Look what happens in verse 5.
He asked them, how many loaves do you have?
They said seven.
And he directed them to sit down on the ground.
And he took the seven, well, actually, just pause there for a second.
He directed them to sit, the crowd to sit down on the ground.
Now, if you really want me to hear my explanation of the miracle,
most of the, if you go back to, I think it's chapter 5.
No, it's chapter 6.
Chapter 5 is the healing of the deliverance of the gathering demoniac.
Chapter 6 is the feeding of the 5,000,
has the feeding of the 5,000,
where I sort of really go in depth to the miracle and what it signifies.
But the main thing we want to see here is that the whole story is setting up the miracle.
Including this important aspect of sitting down,
because if they're all sitting down, they can see.
If it was just a big crowd of 4,000 people,
most people might not know whether the disciples had brought in 10 wagon loads of fish and bread.
But when they're all sitting down, they can see there's nothing.
All there is is Jesus' prayer and is passing out this stuff.
And so by the end of this miracle, there is more matter in the universe than there was before.
And it's all set up in the story.
Verse 6 again.
And he directed the crowd to sit down on the ground.
And he took the seven loaves, and having given thanks,
he broke them and gave them to his disciples to set before the people.
And they set them before the crowd.
And they had a few small fish.
Just pause.
It's a different word than in the feeding of the 5,000 for fish.
So the other one would have been like, I don't know, fish this big or this big,
however, you know, like that.
These are like sardines.
Okay?
Little tiny fish.
Sardines.
And having blessed them, he said that these also should be set before them.
And they ate and were satisfied.
And they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full.
And there were about 4,000 people.
So from seven loaves and a handful of sardines,
they fed 4,000 people and had seven baskets of food left over.
In verse 9, there were about 4,000 people.
And he sent them away.
And immediately he got into the boat with his disciples
and went to the district of Dalmanutha.
Now, I don't know how many of you have ever had conversations with Baha'is
or with our Muslim friends, our Baha'i friends or our Muslim friends.
But in both cases, our Jehovah Witnesses friends,
they will try to make a talk about how Jesus never claims to be God.
And especially if you're talking to some of your Muslim friends,
they have a deep suspicion about Paul and John.
But they like the Gospel of Mark because the Gospel of Mark is the earliest of the Gospels.
They will often say it's the least corrupted of the Gospels.
And they'll say that in the Gospel of Mark that Jesus never claims to be God.
And that's not true, as we've looked at in different texts already and we'll see later on.
And there are times that Jesus, very specifically in the Gospel of Mark, does claim to be God.
But what is also true...
So first of all, it's not true that he never claims to be God in the Gospel of Mark.
And this is more important than the claim.
He acts like God.
And he does things that only the triune God can do.
And that's what we see here.
We see here Jesus acting as only the triune God can act.
He does not act like the gods of the pagans and the gods and the goddesses of the pagans.
He does not act like Allah.
And he does not act like the God of Krishna or Buddha.
He acts in a way that only the triune God acts.
Because he is revealed in this miracle as doing something that only the creator and sustainer of the universe could do.
He does something that only the creator and the sustainer of the universe can do.
And so what we see here is that Jesus is revealed as the creator and sustainer of his fallen creation present in the flesh.
And doing what only the creator and the sustainer of all things can do.
And this is very, very, very important.
Because at the same time that we see him doing this, he's revealed.
Remember I said that what begins this is gut-wrenching compassion.
He's revealing the God that truly exists.
And the God that truly exists is a God of gut-wrenching compassion.
And it's also important because this is all one story.
And if you follow from this to the next to the next to the next, eventually you come to the point where Jesus dies upon the cross.
And when we get to that, we'll talk about the different things like the institution of the Lord's Supper and his temptation and his prayer in the garden.
And his words from the cross and what all of those things mean.
But what's being set up here is that who's dying on the cross, who's dying on the cross is the creator and sustainer of all things come in the flesh.
And that is tremendously important because it's only if the creator and sustainer of all things, the God who is revealed as a God of gut-wrenching compassion,
if he dies on the cross, then only he can truly stand.
Only his death can stand for all human beings if they accept what he's done.
And he's revealed here as he's concerned for the pagans.
This is a miracle for the pagans in pagan land.
He doesn't just die for Jewish people, for insiders.
He doesn't just die for Christians.
He dies for those in Saudi Arabia.
He dies for those in North Korea.
He dies for those in Rwanda and Uganda and Argentina and Manhattan and the Glebe and Oxford and Cambridge.
He dies for all and he can stand for all.
Why? Because he is the creator and sustainer of all things.
And it's not just that when he dies on the cross, he merely pays a debt because his life matters in two senses.
You see, if you go back and you read the Old Testament, what our Jewish friends call the Tanakh, and you read it,
you'll see that when there is a sacrifice, there's a very important symbolic act.
Whether it's the priest acting on behalf of all of the people or whether it's the person offering the sacrifice themselves,
there's the animal that's to be sacrificed is to be a perfect animal.
And in a sense, as we know it, looking at animals, an innocent animal.
I mean, it's part of the reason that we have, North Americans have a problem with the idea of killing animals,
especially those of us in cities like Ottawa who think that meat is produced by a factory
and comes out all wrapped in styrofoam and plastic rather than some animal had to die.
But for those who are in the country and are those who like to hunt, they know that an animal had to die.
But there is, in a sense, what happens in every sacrifice with the laying of the hands,
there is this sense that my shame, my wrongdoing, my lack of covenant faithfulness,
the many things that I fail to do that I should,
the ways that I have wanted to keep God at a distance or put him far away,
the ways that I have wanted to be a God myself,
and all of the consequences should fall upon that.
In a sense, when the priest or when the person lays their hands on the animal,
they're transferring, they're saying that this animal is going to bear the punishment
to pay the debt that I owe.
But there's something else that happens when you put your hand on the animal.
And that is that, in a sense, the innocence of the animal becomes yours.
Now, part of the great mystery of the Christian faith is that, as Jesus said,
salvation comes from the Jews.
Is it now that we are to understand that after his death and resurrection,
when we call out to Jesus and put our hand in the hand of Jesus,
when you do that for the first time and become a Christian,
there is something that happens.
There is that goes from you to him, the creator and sustainer of all things,
the darkness, the brokenness, the hatred, the prejudice, the lust, the gluttony,
the sloth and laziness that has made up your life and past, present, and future is laid on him.
And his death covers the consequences of that.
But as we see here, he's also, in a sense, the very perfect creator and sustainer of all things,
the man of gut-wrenching compassion.
And when you put your hand in the hand of Jesus,
his sinlessness covers you.
His purity and compassion in his love and his unbroken connection with the Father covers you.
There is this profound exchange when you put your hand in the hand of Jesus.
Is it fair? No.
Is it just? Yes.
Is it compassionate?
Unbelievably so.
Every single one of us is vastly worse than we've ever dreamed
and vastly more loved than we've ever imagined.
And that's what's communicated when you see this story
and know that this is the man who will die on the cross for you.
How does religion see Jesus?
I began this by telling the story of the fact that on Sundays, the way I grew up,
you had to go for Sunday school, then you had to go to church,
and then you came home and you did nothing all day,
and then you went to church at night, and then you came home and you went to bed,
and you woke up the next morning, in my case, saying,
thank God it's Monday.
So how does religion meet this?
Well, let's look and see what happens.
Look at Numbers at the end of verse 10,
and immediately he got into the boat with his disciples
and went to the district of Dalmanutha.
So basically what he's done is he's taken the boat.
Sorry, I'm looking at it from my point of view.
From your point of view, he's on this side,
and he's now come back to the Jewish side of the Sea of Galilee.
And when he gets there, the Pharisees,
which are like a denomination within Judaism,
the Pharisees came and began to argue with Jesus,
seeking from him a sign from heaven to test him.
And just sort of pause here.
All of these words are very good,
and it would be impossible to take the original language
and translate it just word for word into English.
You'd really have to add extra stuff
to try to capture what's going on here.
When you think, come and began to argue or discuss,
think of what Russia has been doing to the Ukraine.
And I'm not exaggerating.
And the fact of the matter is,
is that the word came is a word from the military,
and it's the word used when military leaves rank on rank
to go to battle.
That's the word that's being used for came.
And when it says that they,
losing my place in my notes here,
when it says,
do, do, do, do, do, do, do.
Oh yes, when it comes to say argue,
it means to dispute and oppose.
Not to have a bit of an argument
where you can come to a conclusion,
but an argument that will lead you beaten into submission
because you want to oppose everything that they say
and you want to make sure that you win.
And when it says seeking,
it doesn't mean seeking truth or seeking understanding.
It means seeking to gain control.
And when it says test,
it doesn't just mean a test to see what's happening.
It means setting up obstacles to discredit.
It is Russia invading the Ukraine.
So the Pharisees came and began to argue with him,
seeking from him a sign from heaven to test him.
And he sighed deeply.
This is another emotional word.
It's a deep,
from the center of who he is,
a sighing
of dismay.
So he has this deep sigh of dismay
and said,
why does this generation seek a sign?
Truly I say to you,
no sign will be given to this generation.
And he left them and got into the boat again
and went to the other side.
So what's going on here?
In fact, actually,
the original language emphasizes the refusal
in Jesus' response.
I mean, we can see it here.
Truly I say to you,
no sign will be given to this generation.
But in the original language,
it's even more emphatic.
So what's he doing?
I will not bow down to your criteria.
today or ever.
He said,
with compassion,
he is dismayed.
I will not bow down
to your criteria
today or ever.
Because, see,
that's what they're trying to do.
They want Jesus
to fit into their criteria.
And this
is a deeply human
thing.
The world,
if Jesus doesn't have
my views on
LGBTQ plus things,
and how on earth
could he be God?
For Muslims,
if he doesn't have
my criteria
about honor
and the right things,
he cannot be God.
And on and on
and on and on.
That we human beings,
if those of us
who are more scientific,
if his stories
don't sort of match
with our understanding
as a science
and all of that type of thing,
which isn't actually science,
it comes down to our philosophy.
If he doesn't
tick off
all of the boxes
in my philosophy
and in my theology,
in my ideology,
if he doesn't
tick off
all of those boxes,
then no,
he's not God.
And Jesus says,
I will not bow down
to your criteria.
Good grief,
he just created matter
out of nothing.
And how could he be God
if he meets your criteria,
your criteria,
your criteria?
And even if he met
our criteria,
well,
all the people in Saudi Arabia
would hear our criteria
and say,
your criteria sucks.
Our criteria is better.
And all of the people
in Manhattan
would say,
your criteria sucks.
Mine's better.
And all of the people
in North Korea
would say,
your criteria sucks.
Mine's better.
How could he be God
if he has to bow down
to your criteria?
The fact of the matter is,
is that some of our criteria
are fine,
but most of us
need to be delivered
from our criteria.
I have a friend,
and he was in his late 30s
and still never married
a single guy.
And one day,
one of his friends said,
your problem is
you have non-Christian criteria
about dating and marriage.
My friend was a minister.
And at first,
he was really mad,
and then he realized
he was cut to the heart.
He was married
nine months after that.
I have two kids
still together.
Most of us
have to be delivered
from many of our criteria,
and Jesus will not
bow down to them.
He will not bow down
to them.
Jesus would have played
road hockey on Sunday,
and my church
that I grew up in
might have thought
that he was not
a Christian.
And my Muslim friends,
he'll wear pants
that are long.
He might wear them short,
but if he does,
it's just because
he feels like it.
Maybe he'll wear
short pants one day
and long pants
the next day
just to show you
have freedom
to wear your pants
any length you want.
Maybe he'll grow
a big, long beard,
and then the next day
shade it.
Why?
It's free.
For freedom,
Christ has come
to set us free.
And this becomes
even more important
as we see this text
all come to an end,
at least in terms
of this particular Sunday.
Look what Jesus says,
to bring home my story
and all,
and the danger there,
and to make it
a far more human connection.
Look what he does
in verses 14.
So they get into a boat,
and they go to the other side,
but here they just,
I mean,
the lake is sort of shaped
like this,
and so they've gone
to the pagan area.
Sort of all reverse
this for you.
The pagan area,
now it's the right way
for you.
Now they've come
to the Jewish area.
Now they go down
to another part
of the Jewish area.
They get in a boat.
And now they're in the boat.
If those of you
have good visual imaginations,
you could be screenwriters
or cinematographers
or directors for plays.
There's 13 men in a boat,
Jesus and his 12 disciples.
They're rowing.
Some of them are rowing.
And it's a long time,
and it's maybe a nice day,
and they're just sitting there
rowing across the lake.
Verse 14,
now they had forgotten
to bring bread,
and they only had one loaf
with them in the boat.
And Jesus,
so he's just there.
I don't know how long
they've been out rowing,
looking around,
everybody thinking
their own thoughts.
Maybe if you were doing a movie,
there'd be little voiceovers,
you know,
one guy thinking about himself
and saying,
boy, they really had good hummus
over there.
I wonder if I could make it
like that at my home.
And another one's thinking about,
what did my wife want me to bring
when I came back?
And maybe another one's thinking about,
you know,
I'm a better rower than these guys.
Who knows?
You know,
they're just thinking, okay?
They're just thinking.
And in the middle of that thinking,
all of a sudden,
Jesus says,
verse 14,
and he cautioned them
or warned them,
saying,
watch out,
beware of the leaven
of the Pharisees
and the leaven of Herod.
Okay?
Watch out.
Beware of the leaven
of the Pharisees
and the leaven of Herod.
bread.
So now they look around
and they begin discussing
with one another
the fact
that they had no bread.
Now, by the way,
I mean,
basically they're wondering
if Jesus is passive-aggressive.
You know,
passive-aggressive people
don't want to tell you off
because you didn't bring the bread.
So they raise up
something like that.
It's passive,
but it's really aggressive.
And Jesus,
aware of this,
said to them,
why are you discussing
the fact that you have no bread?
Now,
from here on in the text,
because we're just wrapping this up,
what we are going to see here
is four or five or six questions.
If you're a Christian,
these are questions
for the rest of your life
to examine your conscience.
One of the wonderful things
about all Christians
is this phrase
of examining your conscience,
that sometimes we need
to ask ourselves some questions.
You know,
maybe it's early in the morning
or maybe it's on a retreat
or, you know,
maybe it's at a,
you know,
because some people,
the countryside's the right place
to do this.
For others,
a countryside just terrifies them.
It has to be a cafe
on a busy street
with the hub behind them.
But they just,
you ask yourself
some searching,
penetrating questions.
And here's what we see
is that Jesus asks
these penetrating questions.
For those of us
who are Christians,
it's questions
for the rest of our lives.
And it reveals
two great dangers,
but it also reveals
it in,
to their contrast,
this profound vision
of what the Christian life is.
And the Christian life
is not either
piling on rules
upon rules
upon rules,
nor is it
you're taking out
all of the things
in the Bible
that you don't like.
But the Christian life
is that you're gripped
by the gospel
and you're called
time and time
and time
and time again
to remember the gospel
and then to be
propelled forward
in creativity
and insight
and wisdom
to grow out of that
which you remember.
It's this dance
between remembering
and holding fast
and questions
which propel you
into growth
and self-awareness.
Listen.
So why are you
thinking about no bread?
here's the question.
Do you not yet
perceive or understand?
Are your hearts hardened?
I mean,
it's a good thing
for me to say to myself,
am I really
understanding
what's going on?
Am I really doing it?
It's a good thing
to ask myself,
is my heart
becoming hard?
Having eyes
do you not see
and having ears
do you not hear?
And do you not remember?
I mean,
we all know
one of the common problems
is as soon as we've left church
we've forgotten
all we've learned
and all of our commitments.
In a sense,
the church is just
to help a way
to remember
that we need
to remember together.
It's one of the reasons
why things like
small groups
and mentoring relationships
are so important
because we need help
to remember together
and ask questions
out of remembrance
together.
do you not remember?
And what do you have
to remember?
Well,
when I broke the five loaves
for the five thousand,
how many baskets
full of broken pieces
did you take up?
They said to him,
twelve.
And the seven
for the four thousand,
how many baskets
full of broken pieces
did you take up?
And they said to him,
seven.
And he said to them,
don't you yet understand?
So on one hand,
this is very frustrating
because we'd want,
okay, Jesus,
you don't have a pen,
have a pen.
I want you to write
the things down
right now.
Okay?
Dum,
dum,
dum.
got it.
The problem is
when we write it down
and get it,
we close the book,
throw it behind us
and go on with our life.
The opening thing
was the key thing.
Beware of the leaven
of the Pharisees
and of Herod.
What do you need to do
to beware of these things?
You know where,
we need to,
you need to ask yourself,
am I thinking right?
Am I looking at things
the right way?
Am I understanding?
Am I remembering
the great truths
of the faith?
And am I understanding?
Right?
And we need others
to do this.
That's why we need church
and we need small groups
and we need Christian friends
and mentoring
and discipleships
and good Christian books
to help us to remember,
to understand,
and to be propelled.
And the two types of leavens,
what he's warning you about here
is that there's things
which are very,
very small,
like yeast.
Like if you make a sourdough loaf
or a big loaf of bread,
you don't need very much yeast.
You don't need much sourdough
to make a sourdough bread.
But yet that little tiny bit,
when it comes in
and it's kneaded in
and everything like that,
it ends up transforming everything.
And that,
and he's saying,
in a sense what he's saying
is he's saying,
beware of religion
and irreligion.
Beware of religion
and worldliness.
It's the Pharisees,
the ones who want to add
and add and add.
Let me tell you,
I can tell you this right now.
I don't know how many times
I've read the Bible
from cover to cover,
50 times.
There is nowhere in the Bible
that says you can't enjoy
a sunny day
by playing a game outside.
Now, I will stand rebuked
and I will repent next week
if you show me a text
that says that
between now and next Sunday.
But it's not there.
It's not there.
And you see,
religion wants to add
and add and add and add
and before you know it,
it's adding things
where we've looked at this
in other weeks
that are just kooky,
that they're the opposite
of what the Bible says.
Right?
Like the fact of the matter is,
is if you look at Sabbath keeping,
Sabbath keeping is the day
where you set it aside
for the Lord.
You trust that you,
the work you need,
you think you need to do work,
seven days worth of work,
but Jesus says,
trust me,
you can get your work done
in six,
you can get seven days
of work done in six days.
And you trust me with a day
and you spend it
to gather with other believers
to remember and to rejoice
and to receive grace.
And then the rest of the day,
yeah, we'd like you to rest,
but we'd also like you to feast.
You know,
it's completely forgotten
for those who are really,
really, really into Lent.
If you add up
the numbers of days of Lent,
you'll see it doesn't add up right.
Why?
Well, because the Sundays
were excluded.
The Sabbath is a day
of celebration
and to feast
and to rejoice
and to relax
and to have people over
and have a bit of a party,
you know,
to be generous,
not to have long faces
and act like you're a vampire
afraid of the sun.
And so the religious
want to add and add
and add and add and add
and the world,
Herod wants to take away
and I don't like that teaching
about sex,
so snip that away
and I don't like this
and I don't like that
and I don't really approve of that
and take that away.
And those are the two types of leaven
that can get into your soul
and you think you're a Christian,
but you've made,
you're something completely different.
Here's the thing in closing,
if you could put it up,
Claire.
It's a prayer.
Lord,
grow in me
a penitent,
humble,
loving,
obedient,
available,
teachable,
trusting heart
towards you.
I've organized them
in a way
so that it sort of says
float
with lots of
apologies
to English
language.
That's how I remember it
in my prayers.
It's actually a prayer
that I try to pray
every day.
That to you,
Lords,
towards you,
that I might have
a penitent heart,
that I might have
a soft heart
for the things
that I've done
that are wrong.
And that I might be
humble before you,
that I know you don't have
to bow down
to my criteria,
I need to learn
to bow down to you.
And it's not about me,
it's about you.
And I am not
the center of the universe.
universe.
And I want to
not just have
a cold relationship
with you
or a white-knuckle
relationship with you,
I want there to be love,
I want there to be affection,
I want there to be
delight.
And I want to be
obedient to your word,
I want to remember
your word
and be obedient
to it.
And I want to be
available to you,
not just thinking
that you're sort of
an addition to my life
where I run my life,
I want to be available
to you
because you are my savior
and you are my Lord.
And I want to be teachable
because I don't know
everything
and I'm wrong
about a lot
and I need to keep
being taught by you.
And I want to trust you.
I want to trust you.
That's the world
that Jesus asks us
to enter into
when we trust him
as our savior
and our Lord.
I invite you to stand.
Let's bow our heads
in prayer.
Father,
you know those,
you know the ways,
some of us,
Father,
might not be
at all attracted
about anything
in the world
but there's stuff
about religion
we really like.
And all of us
probably have
Father traditions
and other types
of things
that we think
are from the Bible
but a lot of them
are just us
and they might be
very good for us
because of the state
of our disorder
and chaos
but they're just for us.
They're things
that you've given us
to help your lordship
come into our lives.
They're not meant
to be imposed
on everybody
as a rule.
And you know
those things
that we sort of
like to kick
under the carpet,
Father,
that we don't really
like about your word.
And you know
those ways
that we like
to appear
more righteous
than others.
Father,
we are so thankful
that Jesus
knows everything
about us
and still he loves us
and still he died
for us.
And we thank you,
Father,
that we don't come
before you
giving you a long list
of the perfect things
we've done
but we can come
before you
as your children
and we know
the final word
about us
and you see
that we're clothed
with the righteousness
and compassion
of Christ
and that he has paid
the debt
that we owe.
And we know,
Lord,
that you desire us
to grow into the clothing
that we've been clothed
with in Jesus.
And so,
Father,
we ask that your Holy Spirit
would help us
to be gripped
by the gospel
and to remember your word
and that you would grow
within each one of us
hearts that are penitent
before you,
that are humble
before you,
that are loving
before you,
that are obedient
to you,
that are available
to you,
that are teachable
by you,
that trust you.
And Father,
we ask that you would
grow us
into such a people
like that
and that you would
grow us as a church
into such a people
as that.
And we ask this
in the name of Jesus,
your Son
and our Savior.
Amen.