The Heart of the Matter (Matthew 12:1-21)

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Good morning. Go ahead and grab your Bibles. You can turn to Matthew chapter 12, be page 792, if you want to using one of the black pew Bibles there, maybe in front of you or behind you or under wherever you’re sitting. Just fair warning. This introduction got changed last night after a conversation we’re having at a worship team party. So I don’t know if it’s gonna work, but we’re gonna do it anyways. So I want a little bit of participation from you guys this morning. And so if you are a firstborn child, raise your hand. Alright? So I’m raising my hand too, not as an example of what you should do, but I am also their first born. Go ahead and put your hands down. So besides being the favorite child, what are some other things that people have said to you about kind of birth order being the first think about that. What do people comment? What are the common things that people say about the first born. And when I think about it, something that I hear a lot, and I think is true of my life, is that I was a rule follower. I was a rule follower. And then that could be positive or negative, as far as who the person is that you’re talking to, but sometimes that turns quickly into your bossy as a first born. And it makes sense, because as the first born, our parents had no idea what they were doing. They had no clue, but they knew there was rules, and they knew rules were a good thing, and so they put them in place to make sure that we were taken care of, that we were safe. And so they lay these rules out for us, and we don’t know anything different as the first child. At some point, though, sometimes those rules came to define who we were. Following. Rules became this is who I am. Now our three boys. So we have three boys. So this works really, really well. We’re given 3t shirts, and this is what those 3t shirts said based on birth order. Oldest child, I make the rules. Middle child, I am the reason we have rules. Youngest child, the rules don’t apply to me. And when you look at your family, your life, you probably can give an amen to some of those things based off of your birth order and your family. Now here’s the thing, regardless of birth order, I am convinced that every single one of us has the oldest child in us. Okay, it has the oldest child in us. Because one of the first things we want to do is we want to make the rules. We want to make the rules for our life. We also want other people to follow our rules, because, of course, our rules are the best rules. And so in our lives, we carry around this little book, and it’s not a tangible book, unless that’s your kind of personality. You might have that book. But for most of us, we carry it around in our minds and our hearts, and this little book is our rule of life that says, This is how I’m going to live my life, and by the way, I’m going to judge you according to what I think you should be doing. And we all have this at some point in our life. We carry this book around, and then we’re like, all right, all right, but I’m a Christian, I’m a person of this book. And yes, we are people of the Book of God’s Word. The problem is our little book. Sometimes we take this book and we say, all right, how can I live like this? And we start to make up our own rules so that we follow this book, and we start to say, this is how you live the Christian life. But somebody else has their book and it says, Well, this is how I live the Christian life, and what I’m describing, and many of you know, is what we would call somebody who’s a legalist, somebody who thinks based off of how they live, they can get right standing with God. If I do everything God says, or if I do things according the way that I think, I will have good standing with God. This is what the majority of religions in the entire world are founded on. If I do X, Y or Z, then this happens, I get heaven. I get to be with God. I get good things. But here’s the thing, if you’ve lived for any amount of time and reflected on that, that is a heavy burden to live with, to say, I have to live according to this every single moment, and I have to keep track of what everybody else is doing every single moment. Now, it’s no accident that Matthew in chapter 12 here moves us from what came right before in chapter 11, where Jesus gives us one of the most beautiful descriptions of who he is and what his ministry is like in chapter 11. So if you look right at the very end of Chapter 11, starting in verse 28 Jesus says this, come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden. Religion is light. And so we’re gonna contrast this heavy burden that religion is with the light burden of the Merciful Jesus. This morning, we’re gonna see that in three scenes in chapter 12 that are gonna give us three portraits of who Jesus is. So look first at this first portrait, which is Jesus, the interpreter of the law. So we’re gonna, I’m gonna read chapter 12, verses one through eight. At that time, Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, Look, your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath, He answered, haven’t you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread, which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests. Or haven’t you read in the law that the priests on Sabbath duty in the temple desecrate the Sabbath, and yet are innocent? I tell you that something greater than the temple is here. If you had known what these words mean, I desire mercy, not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the innocent, for the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. And so in this first scene, it starts off innocent enough. Jesus and disciples are walking through the grain fields. The disciples are hungry, so they grab some grain, they kind of rub in their hands so that they can eat it, and they have a snack. And we do this all the time. We walk through our house, we see, I’m a little hungry, the pantry, the fridge, we open it up, we take some out, we snack on it. We’re not really thinking about it. And the hunger here the disciples feel is not this like starving hunger or in their dire need of food. They’re just hungry. They’re walking through a grain field, and they enjoy a little snack. And it seems like Jesus and his disciples have a tale these Pharisees. So if you haven’t been with us in this series, who are the Pharisees? The Pharisees are the religious leaders of the day, the teachers of the law. They were the legalists. They wanted to keep God’s law perfectly and make sure everybody else kept it perfectly as well, and they are clearly watching Jesus and the disciples as they walk. And so I don’t know about you, but if you had the neighborhood or the kind of school tattle tale, maybe that was you. You weren’t really popular, probably for that, but we had a girl in elementary school whose goal was to sit out at recess and watch me and my friends play, just to go tell the teacher the wrong things we were doing. And I remember she just sit there. She watched us. As soon as she did something, she went and told them, we got called over, we got reprimanded, we got sent back, and then she’d come back and just sit there and just wait for us to do something else again. And she just would tell on us all the time. And when I read about the Pharisees in the New Testament, this is what I think about. Like they just follow Jesus at every opportunity to catch him in something. They watch him, to catch him doing something or saying something that they can say is wrong, that can get him in trouble. And so they’re watching the disciples, and they’re picking grain and eating it got them. That’s what they think. We got them. Jesus, your disciples are doing what is against the law. They are breaking the fourth commandment. What is the fourth commandment? Let’s look at Exodus. 28 through 11 will be on the screen for you remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days, you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord, your God. On it, you shall not do any work, neither you or your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days, the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. So the Sabbath day was a day of rest, a day that was set aside for the Lord. And so what you were supposed to do was cease from work, and when you cease from work, it’s an act of trust, saying, God, I don’t need to go harvest. I’m trusting that you will provide for me, and so I’m taking this day to set aside for you, and so you would get the rest you need. We all need it. God built this into the fabric of our lives because we are not the Energizer Bunny. We have to rest. And so he’s building this in as a good thing for us, a joy for us. So at the very least, okay, the very least, the Sabbath was meant to be some every week, you would cease from doing the normal routine of life, whatever it is you normally do, you would take a break from that to set aside for the Lord to trust in Him. So think my nine to five is done. I need to rest, and I’m going to be with the Lord in this rest. So that’s good. That’s the good, holy law of God. And the people want to follow God, which is right and good. That’s a good motive. They want to make sure they don’t break the Sabbath laws. And so quickly they start creating laws, rules. Around God’s law to make sure that they don’t break his law. So basically, they took the fence that Jesus put out there for us, it’s good to have a fence. That’s one of the functions of the law of God is to tell us God has designed things a certain way. Things work best. You’re most free when you work within the fence that God has designed he knows it’s good for us, but the Pharisees take it one step further this, you know what? Like, we don’t want to get outside that fence, and if we get really close to it, maybe we’ll be tempted to go over. So let’s create something else. And so I don’t know if you’ve seen this, maybe you’ve done this, but I’ve been to people’s homes where they have a fence in their backyard, and then they have little kids, so they put a pack and play in the middle of the yard, and the yard, and put their kids in there, and you’re like, Alright, so now they’re extra secure, because now they can’t get out of the pack and play, and then they can’t get out of the fence. And that’s exactly what the Pharisees are doing. They’re saying, We don’t want you guys get too close to the fence, so we’re going to make sure you’re really, really tight in here, so that you can’t possibly do that. You can’t break God’s law if you’re stuck here in the middle. But the problem with that is that God does not give a lot of information on what constitutes work on the Sabbath. One Rabbi put it this way, says the rules about the Sabbath are as mountains hanging by a hair for scripture is scanty in the rules. Many just saying, We can’t pinpoint everything that would be considered work, but we certainly try. And so over time, at the time of Jesus, they now have this kind of like 39 categories of what would be considered work. And these are just rabbis and religious leaders over time, saying, Hey, this is what work is. This is what work is not. And within that 39 categories, though there’s hundreds or 1000s of interpretations on what is actually considered work. And then they took it one step further, and they would start to give provisions for certain things. So you can only walk 3000 feet on the Sabbath day, but if you put food 3000 feet, you could go to that food and then walk another 3000 feet, but then you were done. So there was these different provisions they were putting in to make sure that they could do a little bit more. And it was always about just trying to make sure we’re keeping the law of God. Anybody feeling burdened by that yet, would that be a lot to keep track of? And so with that background, we need to ask the question. It’s an important one, because this is their accusation, did the disciples break the Sabbath law? And I think it’s obvious that they did not. Okay. They did not two reasons why. I think that first, we can be confident if the disciples are breaking God’s law, Jesus is not afraid to lovingly rebuke them for that. Jesus lovingly rebukes the disciples for all the dumb things they say, for all the things that they do, for all their wrong thoughts about him and others. I mean, he does this routinely, so there’s nothing here where he would say, Oh no, the Pharisees have this accusation. So now I need to defend my guys and try and make an excuse for them if they’re breaking the command of God, Jesus would say it and uses an opportunity to rebuke to correct, not only the disciples, but the crowds and the Pharisees there too, to say, this is what you’re doing. This is what this law means. But Jesus doesn’t do that. He does not see them breaking the fourth command. The second reason is there wasn’t, I just mentioned there isn’t an absolute standard of what work is and what work isn’t so different. People would say what the disciples did was work, and others would say there was that wasn’t work. And so there wasn’t really this agreed upon, this is what’s happening. And so they didn’t break the fourth command, but they did break something. Okay? They did break something. They picked grain and ate it, which, according to these 39 categories, would be harvesting and reaping, taking the grain, rubbing it and eating it. So according to God’s law, they’re still in the fence, but they got out of the pack and play, and that’s going to be tough for the Pharisees to swallow, because now they’ve broken this, and now they’re getting awfully close to God’s law. But the thing is, over time, those 39 categories and all those different rules that they followed ended up becoming one in the same as the commandments. So if you break this, then you’ve broken the fourth commandment, and that’s what they’re accusing them in this moment, the traditions that they had, the tradition of the elders, became law. So if they broke that, according to them, they broke and guilty of breaking the fourth commandment. So according to that strict adherence to their rules, this is harvesting and reaping. And then Jesus says, you are missing the whole point of the law. You’re missing it. How does he say that? Because he’s going to bring up some Old Testament things to them, scriptures that they would have known and studied. And he says to them, Have you not read of course, they’ve read it. So what’s he doing here? He’s using a question as a. Tool to teach them, saying you’ve read it, but you have not understood what it’s saying. And so we can see it right there in the text. He uses two examples, David and the priests. First, with David, he’s talking about First Samuel, 21 David is on the run from Saul. He ends up in a place called nob, and there’s a priest there named Ahimelech. And David says, We are hungry. Me, my buddies, we’re all hungry. We need some bread. We need something. And Ahimelech says, All I have is these loaves of bread. And these loaves of bread were what they put on the table in the most in the holy place. Okay, so they put this bread out once a week in the holy place. Then they’d switch it out. When they switched it out, the priests were the ones that were supposed to eat the bread the priests and only the priests, but David’s hungry, and Ahimelech says, I have some bread. I can give the consecrated bread to you. And he is held. And David is held, guiltless. Nothing there that said they did anything wrong. And so Jesus is saying, you guys know this, you’ve read this. Then he goes to another example, the Old Testament priests, they were expected to work on the Sabbath day, the priests, and now that says they desecrate the Sabbath, because they really did double the work on the Sabbath. They would offer double the sacrifices, but there were provisions made for them to work on the Sabbath. And so they were held as it says, innocent. And so Jesus is saying, you’re missing the point of the law. If they are held guiltless here, what is wrong with them grabbing some grain and having a snack? And then Jesus gives us a key that we need to interpretation of the law. And he uses a quote from Hosea chapter six that he already used in chapter nine, which we did the first week, I believe, of our series, when the Pharisees were asking Jesus, why are you eating with tax collectors and sinners? And Jesus quotes Hosea six. He says, Go and learn what this means. I desire mercy, not sacrifice. I don’t know there’s the same Pharisees or different Pharisees, but they haven’t learned yet what it means, because he uses it again. If you had understood I desire mercy, not sacrifice, Jesus is after the heart of the law, not just the letter of the law. We saw this in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is always about the heart behind the law. What is actually there? So he goes after it’s heart of the matter. It always is. So every time we read Scripture and we read the law, we need to be thinking, what is this meant to be for my heart? What is this supposed to change in me? Not just what am I supposed to do, but how has this changed who I am? Why does God have this here and mark in his Gospel, recounting the same story, says, Jesus said this, The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. The Sabbath was made for man as a gift to bring rest, to bring freedom to God’s people, to us. And yet the Pharisees, with all their man made rules, are making Sabbath Keeping a huge burden to the people, a huge burden. It is heavy, and when you worry so much about following everything surrounding the law. You miss out on the rest. You miss out on the joy that God wants us to have so all the good and the joy that the law was intended to bring. Instead, you can’t rest. You can’t instead of resting in the non work, you end up working really hard not to work. Are you tracking with that? You’re working really, really hard to not work, which means you’re working because you’re so burdened by making sure. Am I doing everything the right way? Have I done everything according to these rules and these traditions? And I love how J C Ryle puts it. He says, The Plain Truth is that our Lord did not abolish the law of the weekly Sabbath. He only freed it from incorrect interpretations and purified it from human additions. He did not tear out of the 10 Commandments the fourth. He only stripped off the miserable traditions with which the Pharisees had encrusted the day and by which they had made it not a blessing, but a burden, a burden. And then Jesus goes on to give this claim of deity to the Pharisees in this moment, to kind of bring everything and tie it together. He says, something greater than the temple. Is here when the where the priests do their work, something greater than that. Is here because Jesus is the presence of God. He is God. He is dwelling with His disciples. He’s dwelling with his people. And then he finishes by saying, He’s the Lord of the Sabbath, which, again, is a claim to deity. He is saying, I am God over the law. I am God over the Sabbath. Sabbath commandment, the one you’re accusing them of, I’m the one that created it. I’m the one that gave it. I know what it is. I know the meaning behind it. And if the disciples are in the presence of God, who is the creator of the Sabbath, then how could they be breaking the Sabbath commandment, the Pharisees are missing something important, they are missing that even if they follow the letter of the law, they are missing the heart behind the law. Even if they could follow everything to a T the letter of the law, they’re missing Jesus, and that’s what he’s saying, you’re missing me. So you could follow the Sabbath all you want, but my disciples are with me. They know who I am, so regardless if they can follow the letter of the law, they are missing the one that they need, the one that we all need. Now this is a big claim, and anyone can make a claim. I can say I’m the biggest Cubs fan in the world, but I’ve heard hundreds of people say that. So who’s right? Somebody’s got to back it up. So can Jesus back up this claim that something greater than the temple is here, that he is the Lord of the Sabbath. And of course, he can we see that in the second scene, when he shows he is the merciful healer. Started here in verse nine through 14. Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there looking for a reason to bring charges against Jesus. They asked him, Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? He said to them, if any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a person than a sheep, therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath. Then he said to the man, Stretch out your hand. So he stretched it out, and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other. But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus. So we’ll pause there. Jesus’ words have already upset the religious leaders, and now they’re moving into the synagogue on the Sabbath, and this miraculous healing that Jesus does is different than most other encounters most other healings. So Jesus does not initiate this healing with this man. He does not go to this man and say, Do you want to be healed? Jesus has done this before. It is not initiated by the man himself. The man with a shriveled hand is in the synagogue, but he doesn’t say, hey, Lord, can you please heal me? Like many people did, who’s it initiated by the Pharisees? The Pharisees looking for a reason to bring charges against Jesus, so they know everything Jesus just said, and they want to bring a charge against him. So if he’s willing to do this on the Sabbath day, then we got him. We got him. Now, not just the disciples, we’ve got him. And so they asked this question about the law, about the Sabbath and healing and doing work, Jesus just quoted, I desire mercy, not sacrifice. So of course, he’s going to have compassion on this man, and in His mercy, heal him. But before he does, as Jesus often does, he’s going to ask them a question. He’s going to teach them. And to do this, he goes to animals. Okay, he goes to animals. And this isn’t the family pet like the sheep. That’s the family pet. Like animals back then meant your livelihood. It meant food, it meant drink, it meant money, like you needed your animals. So they mean life. And so Jesus asked them a question that he knows the answer to, if your sheep falls into a pit on the Sabbath day and you’re not allowed to do work, would you save it? Would you take hold of it and grab it out? And he knows the answer. The Pharisees know the answer. Of course they will, because their animal is in need. And he’s saying, if, if you would do that for your sheep, how much more valuable is a person? It’s like seeing the commercials, you know, for the pets, and then the commercials for the people who are starving, like, which one resonates with you more? I mean, they play really sad music with the pets, which I understand gets people. But like, what is it, if you’re willing to do this for an animal, why wouldn’t you do this for a person? And Jesus saying, if you’re gonna pick up your sheep, and this man has a shriveled hand, why would I not help him when he’s in need? What could be unlawful about helping him, whether it’s Sabbath or any other day, there is no law against doing good. There’s no law against doing good, against loving God and loving others. And once this point is made, Jesus tells the man to stretch out his hand, and as he does, his hand is restored. It goes from shriveled to just like the other one in the presence of everybody there in the synagogue. And. And in those moments, there’s probably awe over what the people just saw. And I’m sure the Pharisees had that awe too for about a second, and then that awe turned to anger. And they leave and they say, we now have reason to plot his death. That’s their response to his teaching. That’s their response to his healing. It’s worth considering. The question here, though, is like, what work did Jesus actually do in that moment? He did not go over to the man and touch him? Jesus said, Stretch out your hand. And the guy stretched out his hand. So if anything, the guy did more work. All right. I mean, there’s no law against speaking to another person. Jesus said, just stretch out your hand and he heals him. Now, what’s interesting is, the Pharisees had provision in their rules that if it was a life threatening thing, you could help someone, but Jesus could definitely heal this man the next day. Why does it have to be the Sabbath? And Jesus is saying, Why can’t good happen all the time? It’s not unlawful to do good. But their response is, we got him, and they leave to plot his death. Another question was asked in light of what Jesus has said and done so far, is this, and this is a difficult one, is it ever okay to break the letter of the law? Or we can ask it this way, Are there exceptions to the rules, even if those are God’s rules? And you’re going to see here John seven in John seven, Jesus is talking to the religious leaders, and he it should be on the screen for you. Yeah, Jesus talking to religious leaders. And he’s kind of showing them, even from their own ideas, that they make provision for this to happen. Says, Now if a boy can be circumcised on the Sabbath, so that the law of Moses may not be broken, why are you angry with me for healing a man’s whole body on the Sabbath? Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly. And so the thing was, they you’re supposed to circumcise the child on the eighth day. Well, what if the eighth day is the Sabbath day? What do we do? And so they came up with this idea, saying there’s a higher priority to circumcise the child than to not work on the Sabbath. So even the religious leaders are coming up with these different provisions so that they provisions so that they can follow because there was a priority or a higher value placed on some things than other things. When we study the 10 Commandments, we talked about this, what are the first commandments to to God, and then we go to others, the priority is always God. And so when we see this, we start to think like, oh, are there other examples of this? And what happens if two of God’s commandments kind of come in conflict? What do we do? Well, one that I want to show you from Scripture is in Exodus. Now we start exodus in two weeks. So I don’t want to steal too much of Brandon thunder for week one. But I have to So, because here is the one of the top examples. When we think about this, according to the 10 Commands, we do not murder and do not give false testimony. Okay, do not murder, do not give false testimony. When Pharaoh wants to kill the baby boys in Israel. He sends some midwives to do his dirty work. He says, When you go for the delivery, if it’s a boy, you kill it. And it says that the midwives feared God, they would not do it. And when Pharaoh says, Why aren’t you doing it? They say, well, the Israelite women just have babies really fast, and so by the time we get there, a baby’s there. So we can’t really do this. They lie, they lie, they give false testimony to the Egyptian king. And you start to think like, Well, yeah, of course. What about Jewish sympathizers in the Holocaust. SS, comes to your door and knocks on it. Are there Jews here? You know there are no are they guilty? RC Sproul says this about this whole kind of idea of when we were looking at these different difficult passages in Scripture, he says, we are always and everywhere obligated to tell the truth to whom the truth is due. We are speak the truth where justice and righteousness requires the truth. But in this case, righteousness required deceit, being righteous before the face of God required, in this specific case, that a murderer be deceived. You start to say like, yeah, so even there we see in Scripture, and the midwives were rewarded by God for what they did, because they saved life, and that took priority, that had a higher value in that moment. What about the New Testament? Children? You’re supposed to. Obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. And here’s what I tell my kids all the time, unless, unless I tell you to do something that goes against God’s word, right? You are to obey me in everything, unless I cause you to stumble in following God. All of us. Romans 13, let everyone be subject to the governing authorities unless they tell us we cannot worship God, unless they tell us we cannot worship Jesus any longer. So you start to see like, okay, the the letter of the law versus the heart of the law. What? What is? What are we getting after into these moments, and I just don’t want to put a stamp on it. Said I did that. I want to know that it’s changing me, that I’m following God because I love him and I know the real heart behind the law. And what is that? Jesus summarizes it for us in Matthew 22 to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. And the second is like it, to love your neighbor as yourself, loving God and loving others. There is no law against doing good. The temptation for all of us, especially if you’ve grown up in the church, or the longer you are in the church, is to become a rule follower and take it one step further, probably a rule maker. We’ve already seen that I know how to live the Christian life. I know how to live out these commands better than somebody else. And why is that? I think it’s because we a lot of times wrongly come to God’s word, and think it’s only something that tells us what not to do, like I come here to find out, what does God say, Don’t do this. Do you know how many good things are in here? Too many times God says, Do this be this kind of person? Over and over again, and there is no law against doing good. So when we come to this book, we need to say, No, it’s not about the rules. It’s about how do I show my love to God and my love to others by following these things? So the principle here is, when we come to Scripture, we ask is what I’m about to do glorifying God and for the good of others. For the midwives, that’s the exact question they needed to ask. They fear God, and they knew it was better for others. Then in that moment, they save those lives. So the scene ends, the Pharisees leave to plot against Jesus, and the next scene begins because Jesus leaves, and we find our last portrait of Jesus is that He is the Spirit filled servant. We’re going to finish looking at verse 15 through 21 aware of this, Jesus withdrew from that place. A large crowd followed Him, and He healed all who were ill. He warned them not to tell others about Him. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah. Here’s my servant, whom I’ve, whom I have chosen, the one I love, in whom I delight. I will put my Spirit on him, and he will proclaim justice to the nations. He will not quarrel or cry out no one will hear His voice in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out till he has brought justice through to victory. In his name, the nations will put their hope. And so Jesus is used to making the religious leaders upset. We’ve seen that time and time again. He knows what they are doing, and so he moves on, but not secretly, because there’s crowds following him, as there often are, and he starts to heal, because they just saw him heal somebody. And so they bring people, and they all want to be healed. And so it says he’s healing all of them, saying, Don’t Tell everybody about me, because nobody really understands why I’m here or what I’m doing. And so he continues to heal. And then we get this quote from Isaiah 42 Matthew’s quote from Isaiah 42 is the longest Old Testament quotation he gives in his entire Gospel, and it draws attention to everything we’ve seen this morning, in chapter 12, but also throughout nine through 12 in our series. And Isaiah 42 is known as one of the suffering servant passages that talks about this suffering servant who would be sent by God. And one author I read this week said there’s five essential questions about Jesus that are answered here. And so I want us to just look at those real briefly, five essential questions. First, who is Jesus? Look at verse 18. Here is my servant, whom I have chosen, the one I love, in whom I delight. I hope that language sounds familiar to you, because in chapter three, when Jesus is baptized by his cousin John, and he comes up out of the water, a voice from heaven says, This is my Son, whom I love. With him I am well pleased. So who is Jesus? He is God’s Son. He is the suffering servant. He is the Messiah. He is the Lord of the Sabbath. He is greater than the temple. The second question, what is the source of his power? Keep reading verse 18. I will put my Spirit on him. Back to chapter three. What happens when Jesus comes up out of the water? At that moment, heaven was opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and a lighting on him. Jesus is given the Spirit as a source of his power. As he begins his ministry, what does he do? What does he do? Keep reading in verse 18, I will put my Spirit on him, and he will proclaim justice to the nations. What does Jesus come to do but show the mercy of God in saying, The kingdom of God is here, Grace is here, salvation is here in me, that’s what he does. That’s what he comes to do, is to proclaim the good news to everybody who will listen. The fourth question, how does he do these things? Look at Verse 19 and 20, he will not quarrel or cry out no one will hear His voice in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out till he has brought justice through to victory. He comes gentle. He comes as a merciful healer. He comes to bring people in, the vulnerable, the weak, the tax collectors and the sinners, those who are sick, those who are down and out. That’s who he comes for. We’ve sung songs this morning already about this idea. Do you remember our call to worship? There’s a reason we do that, because every single day, every time we meet together, you are walking in here, and you feel like a bruised reed, some of you, or a smoldering wick. And Jesus will not come and break that reed. He will not put out that flame. He will support and encourage that reed. He will fan into flame, because that’s what he does as a God of mercy. So when we say to all who are weary and need rest, when we say that, we mean it to all weary need rest, to all who feel alone and want community, to all who mourn and long for comfort, to all who feel worthless and wonder if God cares to all who fail and desire strength, to all who worry and want peace, to all who sin and need a savior, to all who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Jesus invites you in. Jesus does as the merciful healer, as the merciful Savior. So when we say that, hear Jesus’s words to you, because he will not break that Reed, he will not put out that flame. He is here in his mercy to bring us encouragement, to save us. And then finally, what is the scope of his mission? Look at Verse 21 in his name, the nations will put their hope. The scope of his mission is worldwide, salvation, not just for Israel. The word nations here includes Israel and includes the Gentiles, includes everybody, because he didn’t just come for the Israelites. He came for all of us to know who he is. That’s the scope of his mission, to know who this merciful Savior is, to give your life to following him. And so what is the big idea this morning? What is the big idea that we should be taking away from this passage? It’s this embrace a life of mercy by following Jesus, the King of Mercy. Embrace a life of mercy by following Jesus, the King of Mercy. This is who Jesus is, and this is who he will always be. And our lives should be marked by mercy like Jesus’s life. Our ministry should be marked by mercy like Jesus’s was. So how does this happen? What does this look like? Just a few thoughts for a few different groups that are here today, if you’re here and you’re you’re seeking, you’re asking questions about who Jesus is, what Christianity is, what does the Bible teach? We’re so glad you’ve chosen to be here this morning and get to hear about our merciful Savior. And so I would plead with you to come to Jesus for the first time, to come to this Savior, this King of Mercy. This is his invitation. In his kind and compassionate heart, a God of mercy who receives you and will forgive you. The Puritan preacher Richard Sibbes, in his book The bruised reed, which we studied as a church in the summer, says this, and I would encourage you to think of it now, are you bruised? Be of good comfort. He calls you, conceal not your wounds open all before him go to Christ. There is more mercy in him than sin in you. And that is true, more mercy in him than sin in you. So give your life to following him if you’re here this morning and. You know, you know in your heart that you are making your Christian life harder to live by the fences that you are building up in your life, you need to start tearing those down. The first place to go is to say, is this in his book, if the rules I’m following are not in this I need to take a second look at them and then ask the question, Am I neglecting doing good because I’m trying to follow the letter of the law God has called me to do good things for others? Is something stopping me because of some rule I’ve created to try to save myself from breaking God’s law? If it is when you ask the question, is this for God’s glory and for the good of others, then we probably need to scratch our ideas and do good, because there is no law against doing good. His burden is light. There is joy and freedom in God’s fence. But don’t make your own. Alright. Don’t make your own. And then the other thing we need to consider, if we have been walking with Christ for a long time, have relationships with people, we need to start asking, am I building fences for others? Am I creating barriers to somebody coming in to hear about Jesus? Am I creating barriers saying there’s a law you have to follow first. That is not the way for people to be saved. They need to hear about a merciful Savior, and then they start to understand like, Oh, this is what he says. He wants to change me. But if we just come with rules and laws and rules and laws that may harden a heart, so we first come like Jesus did this time in mercy, and say, Come in, because they’re A bruised reed, they’re a smoldering wick, and we need to bring the mercy of Jesus in those moments first. So is there a good that God is calling you to do today? And then finally, church, I just want to encourage you as a church today, because I believe, in the last 10 years that as a church, collectively, we have torn down some fences. I have seen people tear down fences and live in God’s freedom, more than restricting ourselves by our own ideas and our own rules that we have put into place, I have seen this place become a place that is much more comfortable for messy sinners to walk into, because we finally realize that we’re messy sinners too, and I’ve seen that happen in this church, and so I wanna encourage you in that I have seen this place become a place more filled with mercy and compassion, and that mercy and compassion is the reason Some people have stayed here and made Cityview their home, and now they’re able to display that mercy and compassion to others. I’ve seen more and more of us have a heart for being concerned for others more than we’re concerned for ourselves. So be encouraged. Be encouraged by that. But don’t be content, right? Don’t be content. Don’t let our guards down. We need to keep going, following the King of Mercy together. Okay, let’s follow him together. Let me pray, Jesus. We thank You that You are our merciful King, our merciful Savior, that you have called us as your own. And I pray Lord, as we go from this place that we follow the King of Mercy, that we give our hearts and our lives to you. We give our ideas and rules that we’ve created over to you, and let you change them. Let you teach us and correct us to live the way you have called us, to help us to be people of mercy. Lord, we love you, and we pray this in Jesus name amen.