Who can relate to the above cartoon? Unfortunately I can, all too well. I struggle with complaining. But, as Stephen Altrogge puts it in chapter 9 of his book The Greener Grass Conspiracy, to do so is to sin. Here’s some food for thought from the book:

“Complaining is one of those sins that doesn’t get much airtime in our churches. We talk about big sins like lust, greed, selfishness, anger, adultery, and violence. These are sins that populate our sermons and accountability meetings. … But God takes complaining very seriously. It’s not a little sin in his eyes. … Complaining is like smoke. Smoke proves there’s a fire somewhere, and complaining proves that discontentment is nearby.” (102-103)

“Complaining isn’t just an insignificant, minor, everyday sin. It’s a slap in the face of God. When we complain, we’re saying that God hasn’t been good to us. We’re making a loud statement to ourselves and to the rest of the world that GOd hasn’t been a good master. … Complaining is blindness. Blindness to all that God has done for us. … We’re surrounded by mercies, enjoying more than we could have ever asked for or imagined, and we’re complaining because we’re stuck in traffic.” The truth is, as Thomas Watson says, “our base hearts are more discontented at one loss than thankful for a hundred mercies. God has plucked one branch of grapes from you, but how many precious clusters are left behind?” (104-105)

“When I complain, I’m preaching to myself and everyone else that GOd is helpless. I’m saying that God doesn’t know what he ‘s doing when it comes to my life, that God is a new driver behind the wheel of the universe. … When I complain, I’m declaring that I serve a helpless, bumbling God. … I’m telling a lie about God.” (105-106)

“Complaining turns us into prosecuting attorneys” and “blasphemers.” (107-108)

“Complaining sucks the joy out life. The complainer can’t even enjoy the good things he has. Again quoting Thomas Watson, ‘Discontent is a fretting humor which dries the brain, wastes the spirits, and corrodes and eats out the comfort of life. Discontent makes a man so that he does not enjoy what he possesses.” (109)

Straight talk about complaining. So, let’s not be complainers. We believe God is good and we believe God is sovereign. We believe he withholds no good thing that we need and he works all things for our good and his glory. We believe these things. We don’t believe God is a cosmic miser or scrooge. So let’s not act like we do. Let’s not belittle our Lord. Let’s tell the truth about him in the way we live and things we say.

It was good yesterday to think about the gospel and how it affects us. Here’s one truth I want to follow up on. The gospel reminds us of how unlovely we are, how messed up we are, and how unworthy we are of God’s free gift of eternal life. But it does so with grace. We are not told that we stink and “oh well, sorry about that.” We are told that while we may be more flawed and rebellious than we ever dared to dream, we are far more loved that we ever dared to hope. The basis of God’s love for us is not anything in us. It’s not our performance or our education or looks or anything. The Bible just says he loves us because he loves us. This is what God told Moses and the Israelites in …

Deuteronomy 7:7-8 “The Lord … set His love on you … because the Lord loved you.”

This is what Paul wrote to the Ephesians:

Ephesians 2:4 “But God who is rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved.”

And this is what Ed Miller wrote in his book Letters to the Thirsty:

“He loved me because He loved me;

He proved it at Calvary!

If value is made by the price that is paid,

Then His blood made a treasure of me!”

The fountain of God’s love for his people has always been and will ever be His love for His people. That’s sounds a little confusing doesn’t it? It’s not half as confusing as God’s love for sinners. Hey, the Bible is a confusing book, full of mysteries, like God’s love for sinners. He loves us because we are in Christ. It’s not about us. It’s all about Jesus.

Hey, here’s a link for any who want to keep up with what’s going on with the Ellis and Coldiron family during the transplant process and procedure. Please pray for both families.

Luke 6:5-9 On another Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was withered. 7 And the scribes and the Pharisees watched him, to see whether he would heal on the Sabbath, so that they might find a reason to accuse him. 8 But he knew their thoughts, and he said to the man with the withered hand, “Come and stand here.” And he rose and stood there. 9 And Jesus said to them, “I ask you, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it?” 10 And after looking around at them all he said to him, “Stretch out your hand.” And he did so, and his hand was restored. 11 But they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus.

Honor the Lord of the Sabbath by doing acts of mercy and love.

There is another caution for us in this text. It’s as though Christ were saying to us, “Beware a religion that leaves you unfeeling and without compassion toward those in need. Beware a religion that keeps a list of things you think God likes or doesn’t like and all the time miss the things that are important to him.” That was the Pharisees. You see what they were really angry about wasn’t so much that Jesus broke their rules but that he had exposed their empty, heartless religion that left them without compassion on people. Indeed, he showed them that they were the Sabbath-breakers (they had missed the point of the Sabbath which was to give life) and that they had hatred in their heart. Here’s the question he was asking them?

1 John 3:17 But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?

If your religion keeps you from doing drugs or drinking alcohol but does not make you compassionate toward addicts and alcoholics then something is seriously wrong friend. If your religion causes you to give thanks to God for his forgiveness of your sins through Jesus’ death on the cross but doesn’t move you with compassion for all those who don’t have that, something is seriously wrong.

Friends, listen to the Jesus of the Bible: there is more to religion that staying away from bad things and bad people. “Haven’t you read” …

James 1:27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

Gal 5:6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.

And see, that’s the kind of religion we need. And if you look in those verses you’ll see that there are a whole lot of needy people and lost people who need us to have that kind of religion as well. And that’s the kind of religion we have received; we believers here are withered-handed sinners who have been rescued by Christ; we are self-righteous or self-loving sinners who have been given an eternal rest by our Lord; and even now, if you are feeling sorry for your sins, God offers you healing and rest … this is what we have received. BUT, BUT, BUT freely we have received and so freely we give.

Luke 6:1-11 1 On a Sabbath, while he was going through the grainfields, his disciples plucked and ate some heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands. 2 But some of the Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath?” 3 And Jesus answered them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him: 4 how he entered the house of God and took and ate the bread of the Presence, which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those with him?” 5 And he said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.” 6 On another Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was withered. 7 And the scribes and the Pharisees watched him, to see whether he would heal on the Sabbath, so that they might find a reason to accuse him. 8 But he knew their thoughts, and he said to the man with the withered hand, “Come and stand here.” And he rose and stood there. 9 And Jesus said to them, “I ask you, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it?” 10 And after looking around at them all he said to him, “Stretch out your hand.” And he did so, and his hand was restored. 11 But they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus.

Honor the Lord of the Sabbath by truly resting in Christ. Let’s say this again: please know that man-made religion kills. This is somewhat of a carry-over from last week and the end of Luke 5. There we saw Jesus condemn any kind of religion of man that seeks to justify himself on the basis of his good deeds or his not doing bad things and his keeping religious rituals. What we always have to hold to is the truth that sinful man is so lost in his sin that he needs a rescue and only this will do. But let me say something a little more here.

It’s real easy to read this and simply condemn the Pharisees and other kinds of religions that are legalistic, that try to get God’s approval by their efforts. It’s easy to do that because that’s what Jesus did. Right? But beloved, look behind or deeper into what Jesus was doing. Jesus was simply attacking whatever it was that kept people out of heaven, that kept people enslaved, that kept people blinded to the grace and glory of God. Do you see? Jesus is against anything that keeps men from worshiping God. Listen, Jesus attacked anything that deceived men into thinking that they were right with God when they really were not.

Now, in his day on earth, what was the dominant religious thinking that did that? Legalism – self-righteousness. Had it been something else, Jesus would have attacked it. The reason I bring this up is we have to be aware of our world today, right now, 21^st century, America. What is the main religious idea that keeps people blinded to the glory and grace of Jesus? What’s the main religious idea, the main way people think about God that keeps people under the delusion that God has accepted them when he really hasn’t? It’s cheap grace. It’s the idea that God loves me no matter what and I can do no matter what and I can live how I want to … it’s motto is “It’s easier to ask for forgiveness that to get permission” so just live how you want, and God will rubber stamp your life because the Lord exists to make you happy, wealthy, and wise. And above all, God is all about tolerance and will not condemn nor judge anyone; now, no one says it like that because when you do it sounds wrong, but that’s how people think.

Friends, let me just tell you something: cheap grace is blinding just as many people to the glory of God, spiritually killing, deceiving and sending to hell just as many people as Phariseeism did in Jesus’ day; and it does that because it is a man-made religion; it’s the religion of men; it still has self in the center; it does not have God in the center; it does not really deal with our sin – it preaches forgiveness but not transformation and that is a half-gospel, which is a false gospel masquerading as the real Gospel; it’s a false Christ, a false religion.

Friend, are you suffering under that delusion? The delusion that everything is OK with you and God because you would never think God would judge you or your sin, just overlooks it, just wants you to be happy no matter what? Let me explain the only way he can be pleased with you so that we are real clear on this – you must truly rest in Jesus. The Bible tells us that there is a rest, an eternal Sabbath rest that we are all invited to enter into – you can call it eternal life. Heb 4 call us to this and speaks there of how Jesus worked for us and because of his work, his obedience, his good deeds, namely his death on the cross and his resurrection, namely those two good deeds, that we can rest forever with God and we don’t have to earn eternal life, earn his acceptance or favor or pleasure; he worked and we rest. So the Bible calls us to rest in Jesus – rely on Him – trust in Christ and not in self.

But the Bible then says strange things like this: Heb 4:11 Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.

What? Strive (Greek: agonize) to enter that rest. “Preacher, You just said Jesus strove for us, he worked for us, he died, and now we rest. But the Bible says, “Strive.” What gives?” Beloved, don’t you know that the striving we do is the striving to rest in Jesus? Don’t you know that it is work to trust in Jesus alone and not fall into legalism? Don’t you know that sin and Satan want you to go to hell and are fighting for your soul and there is a fight to rest in Christ and keep on resting? Don’t you know that it requires effort to believe that Jesus is better than money, or sex, or sports, or safety, or security, or the praise of men … to rest in Jesus more than those things? And beloved, if someone does nothing but rest in those things instead of Jesus, then they are not resting in Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath, who purchased their rest for them. Are you striving to rest? Don’t you know resting in Jesus looks like cutting off sin and loving Jesus and following him? Are you resting in Christ or other things? Come to Jesus my friends. Fight unbelief. Fight to believe in Christ. Fight against sin and doubt and legalism to trust in Christ. Get out your sword and kill lust … legalism … worldliness … anger … fear! Fight the good fight of [rest]/faith. Come to Jesus. Stay in Jesus. He is our rest.

Luke 20:27-40 27 There came to him some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, 28 and they asked him a question, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. 29 Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and died without children. 30 And the second 31 and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. 32 Afterward the woman also died. 33 In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife.”

34 And Jesus said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, 35 but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, 36 for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons7 of the resurrection. 37 But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. 38 Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him.” 39 Then some of the scribes answered, “Teacher, you have spoken well.” 40 For they no longer dared to ask him any question.

I know the title of this blog post may be a little unappealing to many but bear with me. There’s an obvious point that Jesus was making in the above debate: nobody will marry or be married in the new heavens and the new earth. The not so obvious (though I hope it is obvious to most) is that there will be no need for it. For one thing, marriage was meant to serve the gospel by giving us “sight-learners” in the age of faith and hearing a picture of the glorious and mystical union of Christ and his church (see Ephesians 5). In the coming age, the age of sight, there will be no need for such a picture, as there will be no need for faith. Oh what a union that will be!

Furthermore, marriage was meant to serve us as well since marriage, from the beginning, does give us a physical union with someone. It was not good for man to be alone. There was something missing. He needed a flesh-and-blood helpmeet and companion. But in the new heavens and the new earth there the helping is over, at least in the Genesis sense. And the need for companionship, at least in the earthly sense, is over as well. The union we have with Christ and with one another will transcend any need for union we have otherwise.

And think with me further. Of all the things I know about marriage, it is the greatest growth agent I am aware of. Nothing challenges us or gives us a context to grow in our understanding and practice of the gospel truths more than marriage. No where is there a better place to learn patience, forgiveness, kindness, love, sacrifice, and all the other graces that God wants to dress us up with. And that’s just it, isn’t it? In heaven that dressing will be complete. We will be made like He is when we see Him. We will be perfected once for all. No more indwelling sin. The battle will be over. It will be finished … except for the infinite enjoyment of the glory of God in Christ. Marriage is unnecessary at that point. For those of us who enjoy our marriages and treasure our beloved that can sound disappointing. And I am not saying that we will not know our spouses who died and went before us to the Lord. But I am saying that we will not know them in that way. And I am saying, as good as knowing them in that way was/is, something better than that awaits us. Something better than marriage. For those who have been married for sixty years and can’t conceive life without their wife or husband, is it not astonishing to meditate on how glorious Christ must be and how glorious it will be to enjoy Him in His undiluted glory! It will be better than marriage … even the best of marriages. To him be the glory!

Luke 6:1-5 1 On a Sabbath, while he was going through the grainfields, his disciples plucked and ate some heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands. 2 But some of the Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath?” 3 And Jesus answered them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him: 4 how he entered the house of God and took and ate the bread of the Presence, which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those with him?” 5 And he said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”

It’s tempting to read these verses and others like them in the Bible and say, “Oh, Jesus is saying the Sabbath is not important.” But in fact, Jesus is teaching right the opposite. Look at what Jesus is saying: “I am the Lord of the Sabbath. So, you don’t just get to do what you wish to do on the Sabbath.” That’s what the Pharisees did. They fit the Sabbath to their own ways. But if you are going to honor the Lord of the Sabbath then you have to keep the Sabbath, not in a way like the Pharisees mind you, but you do have to keep it like he would tell us to.

Remember, Jesus is not upset with the Pharisees because they kept the Sabbath. He is upset with them because they kept the Sabbath in the wrong way … in their case, by adding to things God had told them to do. But would it not be possible to keep the Sabbath in the wrong way by subtracting from what God had told us to do? You can overdo and you can underdo it!

And see that’s where we are in this day and age. We underdo it. Friends, can we just acknowledge that in our culture and context the danger is not that we are over strict in our observance of the Lord’s Day? It would be bizarre for me to take this text and tell you to stop being so strict on the Sabbath. I don’t know of anyone who falls into that category! For us the temptation is to think of Sunday as the extra day to get stuff done, that anything goes [in the name of grace] and often the leftovers of our life are given to God. But Sunday is the priority and primary day of the week – it’s actually the first day, not the last day [which usually gets our leftovers]. Sunday is the day we should orient everything else around.

Ray Ortlund, Jr. wrote on his blog:

If we would stop treating Sunday as a second Saturday, one more day to run to Home Depot, one more day for the kids’ soccer games, another day for getting ready for Monday, if we would rediscover Sunday as The Lord’s Day, focusing on him for just one day each week, what would be the immediate impact between today and one year from today? By one year from today, we will have spent 52 whole days given over to Jesus.  Seven and a half weeks of paid vacation with Jesus. He’s a good King.  Maybe we should put him first in our weekly schedules.  Not fit him into the margins of our busy weekends, but build our whole weekly routine around him.

See, here is what needs to be said, and please hear this with as much love as possible: Sunday is not a second Saturday.

And I don’t have a bunch of rules or lists for you. But I would just remind you of this principle – “All things are permissible but not everything is beneficial.” Use wisdom.

And ask, “What the Sabbath was all about?” The idea was to cease from all our normal activity in order to rest our bodies and minds and draw near to the Lord, to re-center our lives upon him. The idea was to disentangle yourself from all your normal activities so that you could rest and focus on God.

Is that what you do? In some ways it is if you are here this morning because,  primarily, keeping the Sabbath according to the pattern of the Bible is worshiping with God’s people [remember, Jesus pointed them to the Scriptures to teach about the Sabbath: “have you not read (v3)” – likewise let me point you to the Scriptures; “have we not read” in 4:15, 16, 31, 44, 6:6 that Jesus gathered with God’s people for worship, for the reading and teaching of God’s Word?].

Friends, we can see from this text that if we have a legitimate physical need, like eating (see the disciples) or healing of the body (see the man with the withered hand), then that’s OK. If we need to do some act of mercy and love, then that’s OK. But we have to be careful because in our world, we are so busy today, we tend to think everything is a need and so everything we didn’t get accomplished during the week, we should do on Sunday … should we? Beloved, God gave six days and if you can’t get it done in six days, maybe you have too much to do and you need to say “no” to some things; and we sure need to say “no” to anything that keeps us from gathering with God’s people and worshiping him. Beloved, you are not the Lord of the Sabbath. Your schedule is not the lord of the Sabbath. Your life is not the lord of the Sabbath either.

And see, right here, we are just a millimeter away from legalism. Because you can hear what I am saying or what the Bible is saying like this: “JESUS IS LORD OF THE SABBATH. I must keep it or God will not bless me.” See, that’s hearing it like a Pharisee, always scared that God will hurt you and always trying to win his favor. Or you can hear it like this: I am the Lord of the Sabbath … and “I have come to give you life and life more abundantly” and “Come to me all you who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” Beloved, do you honestly believe that if you give every Sunday to the Lord for 52 weeks and center it upon him and rest your body that you will actually lose something, that you will be hurt in some way? Friend, God has been so good to us to give us this day to rest and refocus on Him.

I don’t want to add a burden to you or condemn you. I do want to maximize your enjoyment of Christ, to help you drink from the fountain of living water, to help you rest your soul; and friends, this day, this gathering, is all about reminding you of the only One who can give you rest; it’s all about helping you feast on Jesus; nourishment; it’s all about reminding you of who you are in Christ so that your soul can soar on eagle’s wings. What God wants us to see that is that the Sabbath is an expression of his love to us – it’s a good gift from a good king. Our keeping it is an expression of our trust. And his command to keep it is an expression of his sovereignty.

J.C. Ryle said, (150 years ago), “It is only a few steps down from no Sabbath to no God.” Friends, there is a connection between what you do on this day and what you think about Jesus. That’s why I said at the very beginning that how you keep the Sabbath is a thermometer of how you feel about Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath.

“What Satan offered Christ in the temptation in the wilderness, Christ refused. But Christ did not refuse the offer because He didn’t want what was offered. He didn’t want it on those terms, but the reason He had come down to earth was to obtain those very kingdoms. He refused the tempter’s offer because He was planning to knock him down and take the kingdoms of men from him . . . This is a central part of the message of the New Testament — Jesus took the devil’s stuff” (Doug Wilson, Heaven Misplaced, pp. 61-62).

Jesus took the devil’s “stuff” and fixed it. And then Jesus takes that “stuff” that he fixed and gives it to us.

Today is the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Today thousands of babies will die. Today many of them will be killed. Today most of those killed will be girls. Watch this trailer (not graphic).