Last week, I was at a wedding, and you took a love offering for me so I could go to Sweden. My ancestry is from Sweden, so I've always wanted to go to Sweden. Pastor Voss, in Sweden, called me and said, “Would you come and speak at a camp conference we have?” I also have my twenty-fifth year of ministry, my twenty-fifth anniversary now. I was licensed in May of 1982, ordained in June of 1982, so what a better way to celebrate than to go work. I am going to be speaking, I think, about eight times over a period of four days in Sweden. You made that possible, so thank you for your love offering, your giving, to that. I�"ll let you know how it goes. I�"ll hopefully come back with some good illustrations for you. I just might be talking a little funny because that�"s in me. (Pastor talks with an accent), “Let�"s open up the Bibles” to Luke Chapter 6 (page 1020 of pew Bibles). Have you ever enjoyed the comedy of Jeff Foxworthy? He does those “You Might Be a Redneck if” Jokes. I usually laugh at him until he says something that resembles me. Then, it�"s not so funny anymore. I was thinking, “Hey, that�"s cutting close to home there. I don�"t want to be a Redneck.” I wrote down a few that I thought were somewhat funny: You might be a Redneck if the UFO hotline limits you to one call a day; You might be a Redneck if you refer to your fifth grade year as your senior year in school; If you think a three-piece suit is a pair of overhauls, a plaid flannel shirt, and thermal underwear, you just might be a Redneck; You might be a Redneck if Thanksgiving Dinner was ruined because you ran out of ketchup. I was thinking, “Hey, that�"s not funny. Mine was.” No… I�"m going to be sharing with you this morning, “You Might Be a Legalist if…” Understand when I say my “You Might Be a Legalist if” statements, I�"m not trying to be funny with them. That�"s really important because the Saturday night crowd, I didn�"t say that, and I did my first “You Might Be a Legalist if” statement, and they looked at me like “that�"s not funny.” It might be true, but it�"s not funny. They�"re not intended to be funny. They�"re just meant to be principles or truths for us to think about and meditate on. What is a “Legalist?” Understand when I say a legalist, I�"m not referring at all to secular law or secular society. I am speaking within the confines of Christianity, the confines of the faith. What does it mean to be a legalist? What is legalism? We often hear that talked about. Jesus dealt with legalism on a regular basis. He opposed legalism. Legalism, by my definition-you might have a different one, at its very core is law without love. There�"s nothing wrong with law. Law is a good thing, but in the church, law without love quickly becomes what we call legalism. There is a danger in legalism because it�"s so hard to detect. Really, it�"s hard to detect because legalism is pride in disguise. Legalism says the right things, tries to look right-play the part; but at the core of it, it�"s about exaltation of self. The Pharisees did the right things: [These were] the people that Jesus was always confronting, or they were always confronting Him. It worked both ways. The Pharisees prayed and gave and fasted, but they did so for the wrong reasons. They did so to be seen by men. Jesus was pointing out their hypocrisy, how they would put standards on people that they could not live up to and keep. Legalism is a dangerous thing because it sounds so religious, and it is. Sometimes you can be sucked into legalism and not even be aware of it. Sometimes you can be a legalist and not even be aware of it. So maybe it�"s possible, this morning, that if I say, “If you�"re struggling with such and such, you might be a legalist,” that you might go “okay, yeah, well, I can relate to that a little bit here.” Let�"s look at the story in Luke 6:1 (page 1020), “One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and His disciples began to pick some heads of grain, rub them in their hands and eat the kernels. Some of the Pharisees asked, ‘why are You doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?�" “Jesus answered them, ‘Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God, and taking the consecrated bread, he ate what is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.�" “Then Jesus said to them, ‘the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.�"” The first thing that Jesus establishes with them is the fact that what He has done is not unlawful. It�"s not unlawful. It might have broke man�"s law, but it didn�"t break God�"s law. Secondly, He lets them know that the Sabbath they�"re talking about keeping, He�"s Lord of it. It�"s His idea. It came from Him. The whole Sabbath concept [was] His call, so He makes sure they understand that He is Lord of the Sabbath. For man, it was unlawful. God had said, “You shall not work on the Sabbath. The Sabbath shall be a day of rest.” Good idea! We need to have a time of rest, right? If we don�"t have a time of rest, it�"s like the two men I told you about a long time ago who were having a contest cutting down trees with their axes. The one guy was cutting down a tree, and every time he saw his opponent sit down, he would chop all [that much] harder. He�"s like, “I�"m going to be way ahead because I�"ve never taken a break, and he�"s taken frequent breaks.” Well, long story short, the guy who was sitting down chopped more wood, and the guy says, “I don�"t understand. I never took a break. How is it you chopped more wood than I?” He said, “Every time I took a break, I sharpened my ax.” So, his ax became sharper, and the rest was a good thing. Rest is a sharpening thing in your life. It�"s important to have rest. That�"s not the problem. The problem is the Pharisees and the teachers of the law wrote a book of oral tradition called “The Talmud.” It was thick and big, kind of like a book we�"re going to see in a media [presentation] in just a few minutes. It was a big, thick book of law, not God�"s law-but man�"s law, what man had said about what God had said. They held that up to the same value or greater than what God said. If you take the traditions of men, the laws of men, and hold them up as the same value as God�"s law, or a greater value than God�"s law, you might be a legalist. I saw an extreme example of this years ago when I was a youth minister. Our church in Rockford had a Christian school, and we had a varsity basketball team. The basketball team was competing in the state tournament. When you get to the state tournament, Christian schools from all over the state were there, but the sponsoring church was very legalistic in their approach to things. The first thing they said was “you have to have a haircut,” and not just a haircut, you have to have a haircut. You have to have your hair an inch off your ear and an inch off your collar all the way around, and your hair has to be tapered down. If you don�"t adhere to this policy, they will cut your hair for you. I should say they will “butcher your hair for you,” and it will cost you $10 in the process. If you don�"t submit to that, you�"re kicked out. One time I didn�"t cut my hair short enough, and they butchered me. It was awful. I don�"t think I had my haircut that badly since I was four years old. They shaved it and I went around wearing a Cubs hat for two weeks. They also had a rule of modesty. The cheerleaders had to have skirts down to their ankles. The guys had to have, underneath their basketball jerseys, T-shirts, and underneath their shorts, [they] had to have sweatpants-all the guys. If you ran in track or basketball, same deal. There were just a lot of rules. They had these rallies, and the rallies were more or less places to tell you, “Here�"s what a Christian does and doesn�"t do. Here�"s what we listen to. Here�"s what we don�"t…” blah, blah, blah, blah. One of our kids, well-meaning kid, goes up to the pastor. He�"s feeling convicted because of some of the music he�"s listened to. It could very well be that the music was not good; in fact, I think it probably was not the best music for him to listen to. It was probably something we�"d already talked to him about, but he goes to the pastor and says, “How can I get rid of this? This is wrong. I shouldn�"t be listening to this. Can you help me?” The pastor used that as an opportunity to berate the kid publicly in the youth rally. He tells the kid, “It�"s written right there” and “you�"re listening to the devil�"s music,” and [he] berates him in front of all his peers. I�"m livid; the principal is livid. Here�"s this group that wouldn�"t have even let Jesus in the door of their convention without giving Him a haircut. Here�"s this group saying, “You do not dress this way, cut your hair this way” and so forth. “These man-made laws are really important, but the Law of God which says that we�"re to love you is not important-not as important as our haircut and clothing policy.” I was going to tell the pastor what I thought when our principal took care of it for me. He did a good enough job for both of us. He let him know what he thought of his double standard. Sometimes people will take man-made laws that are not in here (in the Bible) and enforce them on people. Sometimes, even good things, even boundaries, people who have set good, healthy boundaries…but if it�"s not in the Good Book here, it�"s not something you should be telling somebody else they need to do. Now, you can do it, but it�"s not something you should impose on me and say, “Unless you do this, you�"re not righteous or holy.” I�"ve had examples where over the years I�"ll say, “Hey! Did you catch this show on TV that was really good?” “Oh…” A holy look will come over their face. “Our family does not watch TV.” “Okay. That�"s your choice, I guess, but that�"s not going to happen any time soon for me.” [Another example is] “Did you go see this movie?” “Oh, our family does not watch any movies that are over G rating.” “Okay, well that�"s fine, but don�"t put that standard on everybody.” I was in youth group when I was a kid, and they�"d be like “let�"s play some cards to pass the time.” “We don�"t play cards. Christians don�"t play cards.” You could go on and on. There are those who have standards-they have boundaries-and they�"re good, but when they try to make that standard and boundary-which they believe is pure, right, and good-yours and mine, there�"s a problem with that. If you try to preach something that�"s not in here (the Bible) to somebody and say, “This is the way you should be too,” you�"re bordering on legalism. That�"s not a good place to be. Pretty soon, our Christianity becomes defined by what we do or don�"t do rather than Whom we belong to. Are there standards as Christians? Are there things we do and things we don�"t do? Absolutely, but it�"s not what defines us. The fact that we are followers of Jesus Christ, that we love Him, serve Him and put our faith and trust in Him as our Redeemer-Savior, that defines us. That�"s what makes us believers. If we�"re not careful, Christianity becomes a very complicated thing, full of a lot of rules and regulations that are difficult to follow. We�"re going to watch an example of that in a media [clip] right now. Let�"s take a look. They had a book like that, literally. Jesus attacked that book on a regular basis. If we wouldn�"t know any better, all the things He did wrong on the Sabbath, it seemed like He was picking a fight. He was. He was trying to expose their hypocrisy. In Verse 6, “On another Sabbath, He went into the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was shriveled.” Only Luke tells us which hand was shriveled. Matthew and Mark do not, but Luke, the doctor, gives us that detail. “The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched Him closely to see if He would heal on the Sabbath. But Jesus knew what they were thinking and said to the man with the shriveled man, ‘Get up and stand in front of everyone.�" So he got up and stood there.” Can you imagine the tension here? They�"re watching to see what Jesus is going to do. If Jesus heals on the Sabbath, they will declare that to be work, and again-He is a violator of the Sabbath; He is guilty of death. Can you believe that? What will Jesus do? Will Jesus cower under that pressure, or will He defy their man-made traditions? “Then Jesus said to them, ‘I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do well or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?�" “He looked around at them all, and then said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.�" He did so, and his hand was completely restored. But they were furious and began to discuss with one another what they might do to Jesus.” If you think that God is more concerned about rituals and rules than He is about people, you might be a legalist. They thought in their minds that God was more concerned about keeping the Sabbath and not working than healing the man with the withered hand, [that] the God they served was more concerned that His law be kept than that the man who had the shriveled hand be healed. That�"s a perverted view of God, is it not? I talked to a lady about a story, first hand from her, and she told me she had been baptized seven times-seven times. I said, “Well, how in the world are you baptized seven times?” She had gone to a church that was pretty legalistic in its practice. They believe in a total submersion as in every body part under the water, and she had long hair. What would happen is the hair would rise to the surface, and the tip-top tips of the follicles would come out of the water. The pastor said, “Well, that one doesn�"t count. You weren�"t totally submersed,” so they dove her down another time, and the hair came up again. They�"d go down deeper, and the hair still managed to come up. She had long hair. They tried to pull the hair back, tried to hold it down four, five, six…It didn�"t work, and finally, number seven, somehow they managed. I don�"t know if they came in and had some people tag-teaming the hair, double teaming the hair, under the water, but they got it done. She was submersed, and number seven counted. She was officially baptized. I thought to myself, “What kind of god do they have there?” They have a god who is looking at that situation and instead of rejoicing that this person is now following Him, has made a decision to publicly profess their faith in Jesus, instead of that, God is focusing on follicles coming out of the water and going, “Ah, didn�"t count! Going to do it again! No, no, no, no, no, still hair coming out over here.” Okay, finally after the seventh time, the guy goes, “Okay? Thumbs up, Pastor. That one counts.” That�"s kind of the view of a legalist, that God is more concerned-He has His little record keeping out there, His little rule book-and He is marking down, kind of like Santa Claus, whether we are naughty or nice. When I was studying for the ministry, there was this young man by the name of Ed, and Ed was very pious. Most of the guys that were studying were just normal guys. We were all playing video games and sports. But Ed was pretty prized. He tended to walk around like this a lot and was just mature and so forth. Jack, his cousin, who became a pastor in Rockford with me for awhile, told a story about his cousin Ed when they were nine years old. They were driving down the street in the family car, and Ed noticed a store with a sign in the window while looking out the car window. It said, “Liquor for sale.” Little nine year old Ed went, “Sin!” Then, underneath that sign, it said, “Open on Sunday. Ed said, “Double Sin!” Nine year old Ed was outraged that this store was selling liquor on Sunday. A legalist will look at a law that is broken and say, “Sin!” and be outraged. Jesus would look at that liquor store differently. Jesus would be focusing not on the sign or the rule that was broken; Jesus would be focusing on the people that are coming in and out. Jesus would say, “What can we do to help that man who is drinking away his marriage, his life? What can we do to help that person who will die soon if he doesn�"t stop drinking or will kill somebody with his car? What can we do to help those people that are coming in and out?” That�"s the difference with how a legalist sees things and how Jesus sees things, the way we should see things. “Sin!” But what about the broken lives that sin represents and causes? Thirdly, did you notice the theme here in this passage? There is quite a theme that is going on. Notice that no matter what Jesus does in the Pharisees�" eyes, it�"s wrong. Basically, it�"s like they are consumed with spying on Jesus. Luke 5, they�"re criticizing them for not fasting and praying at a party they�"re not invited to. Here the Disciples are going through a field, picking grain. They are not traveling with the Pharisees, yet the Pharisees expressed an opinion of displeasure over what they�"ve done. In the synagogue, Jesus does the wrong thing by healing the man with the shriveled hand, but notice they were looking, Verse 7, “for a reason to accuse Jesus, they watched Him closely…” They were consumed with Jesus. Do you think the Pharisees had any problems of their own? Do you think they had any sin issues in their own lives to deal with? Probably. Yet, they were consumed with what Jesus and the Disciples were doing. You might be a legalist if you are more concerned about pointing out sin in others than dealing with the sin that�"s in your own life. How many of us are sinners out here this morning? The majority. There are a few saints here, and you know who you are, but most of us are sinners. How many of you have enough to do just taking care of your own life and your own bad attitudes and actions? Thank you, Chris, I see that hand. Okay, a few more. We have our hands full with ourselves, don�"t we? We�"re problems enough. We open our yapper when we should keep our yapper shut. We don�"t open our yapper when we should open our yapper. Our eyes go where they shouldn�"t go. Our hands do what they shouldn�"t do. Our mind thinks about what it shouldn�"t think about. It doesn�"t think about what it should. Our feet go where they shouldn�"t go. We�"ve go problems, yet sometimes there are folks who are more concerned over what other people are doing and finding fault in somebody else rather than dealing with the faults that are in their own lives first. Jesus talked about this to this group. He said, “You�"re trying to take the speck out of your brother�"s eye, when you have a log in your own. First take the log out of your own eye, and then you can see clearly to help your brother with the splinter in his eye.” Years ago we were meeting in another building. There was a man in our church who just loved the Lord. That hadn�"t always been the case. He was a man who had recently divorced. He was an alcoholic and had been so for years, and he had been suicidal. After coming to our church over a period of weeks, he gave his life to Christ-[he] had a dramatic conversion experience. He became a new person. He hadn�"t drunk in years; he was plugged into ministry, happy in his walk, but there was still a little bit of French in his vocabulary. You know what I mean by that, right? Maybe he�"d be doing something for the church, building something and hit his thumb with a hammer, and a little French would come out. There was a couple who had come from a pretty legalistic background, and they did not at all approve of the word they heard this man say. So they wanted a meeting to discuss this problem. So the couple and I and this new Christian met in church, and they opened their Bibles up to Ephesians 4. They began to beat him over the head with it. They said, “In Ephesians 4, it says, ‘Let no unwholesome word come out of your mouth,�" and yet you swore by saying this word. Christians do not swear. If you were a Christian, you wouldn�"t swear, and you�"ve let unwholesome words come out of your mouth. You shouldn�"t be a part of this church. The pastor should kick you out of leadership because you swear,” and there was all of this other stuff coming out. I am trying to temper the conversation, trying to get us back to reality a little bit here, but he just got offended and hurt, angry. He stands up and he says, “If this is what Christianity is about, if this is what this church is about, I want no part of it,” and he walks out of the church. Now, everything ended okay because I called him as soon as I got home. We talked. Everything is fine. He still goes to our church. As a matter of fact, you know this story happened 12 years ago, maybe 14 years ago, he was here last night. However, I didn�"t tell him-he didn�"t know the rest of the story, which is what I�"m about to tell you. I spoke to the couple after he left, and I said, “Can I explain Ephesians 4 to you here? The word ‘unwholesome�" does not mean swearing here. Notice it says, ‘Don�"t let any unwholesome word proceed out of your mouth, but only that which is for ratification,” so this word in the Greek is the opposite of the word edify. The word edify means to build up. This word unwholesome in the Greek means corrupt or to tear down. “Don�"t let a word that tears down proceed out of your mouth.” [I said], “The irony is in lecturing him on Ephesians 4, you just broke it. Ironic isn�"t it? You just violated Ephesians 4 by tearing that man down. Shouldn�"t we be more excited about the fact that he is now a Christian and is no longer suicidal and is no longer drinking and serving the Lord? Shouldn�"t we be more excited over that than concerned over the fact that the Holy Spirit has a little work to do yet in his mouth? And He�"ll work on that.” “Oh, you�"re looking at the wrong thing.” I said, “He knows that is wrong. He knows he shouldn�"t do it. The Lord�"s working on him. But we�"re not going to be legalistic here.” I�"ll tell you what happened. A couple of weeks later, I get a phone call from the woman, and it�"s a totally different situation. She leaves a message for me, but she doesn�"t hang up the phone. In those days, I had a machine that would record forever. It was like an hour long tape. I�"m listening to the message, and I notice she is continuing to talk to her husband. I was like, “Oh, she�"s recording on my machine here.” I felt like I shouldn�"t listen to it because it�"s like eavesdropping, but then I thought, “It is my machine. It�"s my tape.” I don�"t know what you would have done, but I decided to put my feet up and listen. So, I�"m listening, and she starts to get upset about something. She can�"t find the remote control, and I�"m listening because she�"s getting hotter and hotter. You know how it is when you can�"t find the remote control. You get mad really quick, right? “Where is that…?” So, I�"m listening to this, and I�"m thinking to myself, “I wonder…” and sure enough. It reached a fever pitch, and she said to her husband-she called out his name-“I can�"t find the blankety blank remote!” Ohhh! Only she didn�"t say “blankety blank” on the tape. She said a French word, the same word in fact that she had just lectured this fellow on about a month earlier. Now, I should have probably taken the tape and said, “Can I play this for you?” but I didn�"t do that. I just let it go, but I had a good chuckle in my office. I just shook my head. God might sometimes shake his head at some of our hypocrisy. The Pharisees saw a violated law, and Jesus saw a man who needed a miracle. That was more important than their man-made laws and traditions. Jesus saw a group of people that desperately needed to work on issues in their lives [yet they were] consumed with trying to fix Him, and He didn�"t need to be fixed. Legalism can be a scary thing because sometimes we don�"t even detect it in our lives. Pride is a very blind thing. When Jesus was once asked, “What�"s the greatest commandment?” Sum up the law, basically. “Sum up the law; tell us what�"s in the law.” What did Jesus say when He was asked that question? The most important part of the law…Did Jesus go, “Okay, rule number one” and then continue to recite 500 things? Did He do that? When Jesus was asked to tell the most important part of the law, He said two things. What were they? “Love the Lord, your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.” The common theme in both is what? Love. So what Jesus is saying is that the core of the law is love. The laws that God has for us are not meant for us to use as weapons to beat one another over the head with. They�"re not meant to invent new laws that nobody can attain. It is meant to keep us from hurting others, from hurting ourselves, or squandering our one and only life. That is the purpose of law. Law without love is legalism, and legalism smothers and destroys people. The core is love. Michael W. Smith sings a song about the fallings and shortcomings of you and me; but he�"s quick to point out of all the things that we have done wrong and all the things we�"ve failed, God never stops loving us. And we are lucky to have that song for you right now. So let�"s listen to Michael W. Smith as he talks about this important truth. (You can view this by clicking on this link: http://www.sermonspice.com/search?fpage=1&q=never%20been%20unloved) We�"re going to continue on in Luke 6 next week, so feel free to read ahead, think on that, mediate on that and prepare your hearts. Let�"s pray: Father, as we look at this passage today, we see the lesson that Jesus was trying to teach. We see that Jesus was trying to say that man is more important to God than anything. There are times when we take man-made traditions and rules, and we elevate them to be equal or put them over the laws of God. It�"s legalism. Help us not to do that. There are times when we view you as a God who is more concerned about the rules we break than the broken lives. You are a God who is concerned with people. You�"re a God who loves us in spite of our sin, in spite of our shortcomings. Forgive us for those times when we have done that in our own lives. We put programs over people. We�"ve made the wrong things our priority. There have been times in our lives where, like the Pharisees, we have been more concerned at pointing out faults in others than we have in dealing with the sin in our own lives. Law without love is legalism. Law in itself is good. You want us to be believers who uphold law and value law, but love is the core of that law. The danger is that we don�"t see it. The danger is that we can practice it and not be aware. Legalism is pride in the disguise of righteousness. Might the righteousness that is in our lives come from Jesus, not man-made righteousness, not righteousness that we try to create of ourselves, but righteousness that is a gift and is by faith. Thank you for the things we have learned this morning and seen. We pray that through the presence of Your Holy Spirit, we will put these things into practice and live them ,and our church will be a place and our people would be a people who are free from legalism but alive in Christ. In Jesus�" name, I pray, Amen.