Jesus vs Religion | Mark 2:18-3:6 | Pastor Ty Hayes

In Jesus vs Religion, Pastor Ty Hayes walks through Mark 2:18–3:6, revealing how Jesus challenged empty religious traditions and called people into a genuine relationship with God. Discover the difference between following rules and following Christ, and how Jesus brings freedom, grace, and transformation.

Transcript

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Hey, we are continuing our series in Mark chapter 2. If you have your Bibles, we're going to be in verses 18 through uh chapter 3, verse 6. We're going to talk through three different stories, three different interactions that Jesus has. And I have kind of an MMA boxing bent to it. How many of you guys have ever been to, maybe you've been to or you've watched on TV a boxing match MMA round anything? Is anyone here old enough to watch the boxing match where Mike Tyson first got out of prison? Anybody seen that? Nobody? Cool. Well, I liked it. I thought it was cool. I was like one year old, but I thought it was awesome. So the rest of you, you can go watch it on YouTube. But man, I I appreciate the sport of boxing. I love MMA. And in this sequence, we're going to kind of talk about how Jesus gets in three different fights. Now, fight you might feel like is a strong word, but I really feel like it is because these people come and they verbally assault and attack Jesus. Now, what's kind of weird is these aren't people that you might think, these aren't criminals, these aren't thieves, these aren't murderers. These are the religious leaders, the pastors, the church people of the day, and they are coming at Jesus and they're coming at him hard. And today, if you're taking notes, my main theme, the main topic of today is Jesus versus religion. And maybe that kind of hits you weird because when you think of religion, you think of Jesus. But can I tell you there is a stark difference between being religious and being a follower of Jesus? Amen? Starting in verse 18, it says, Once when John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting, some people came to Jesus and asked, Why don't your disciples fast like John's disciples and the Pharisees do? Jesus replied, Do wedding guests fast while celebrating with the groom? Of course not. Could you imagine going to a wedding and not eating? That's that's crazy talk. The only wedding I've never ate at is my own wedding, ironically. Come on, I was too busy. They can't fast while the groom is with them, but someday the groom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast. Besides, who would patch up old clothing with new cloth? For the new patch would shrink and rip away from the old cloth, leaving an even bigger tear than before. And no one puts new wineskins or new wine into old wineskins, for the wine would burst the wineskins, and the wine and the skins would both be lost. New wine calls for new wineskins. Then it goes to the next day. One Sabbath day, as Jesus was walking through the grain field, his disciples began breaking off heads of grain to eat. But the Pharisees said to Jesus, Look, why are they breaking the law by harvesting grain on the Sabbath? Jesus said to them, Haven't you read in the scriptures when David did uh what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He went into the house of God and broke the law by eating the sacred loaves of bread that only the priests were allowed to eat. He also gave some to his companions. Then Jesus said to them, The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of the people, and not the and not the people to meet the requirements of the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even over the Sabbath. So that's fight one and two. This is the last one right here. Jesus went into the synagogue again and noticed a man with a deformed hand. Since it was the Sabbath, Jesus' enemies were watching him closely. How many guys know nobody watches you like people that hate you? Come on. If he healed the man's hand, they planned to accuse him of working on the Sabbath. Jesus said to the man with a deformed hand, Come and stand in front of everyone. I bet he loved that, right? Like, hey, your hand looks weird. Come stand in front of everyone. Then he turned to his critics and asked, Does the law permit good deeds on the Sabbath, or is it a day of just doing evil? Is this a day to save life or destroy it? But they would not answer him. He looked around and at them angrily and deeply saddened by their hard hearts. Then he said to the man, Hold out your hand. So the man held out his hand, and it was restored. At once the Pharisees went away and met with the supporters of Herod to plot how to kill Jesus. Let's pray. God, right now, I thank you for who you are. I pray as we dive into your word today that God, we would just, God, be reminded of how you are central to everything to us. That our faith is not built on what we do, but what you did. God, remind us to be in relationship with you. God, help us to decipher the word. We love you. We thank your name, I pray. Amen. I'm a brand new Christian. I'm like 19, 20 years old. I know enough to know that Christians should live differently than non-Christians, but I'm not exactly sure what that means. I want you to keep that in mind before you judge me, okay? So my friend, his name is Marty, invites me to this MMA match. He worked for, I can't remember if it was T-Mobile or Verizon or some kind of thing, and he's like, I get VIP passes to this MMA fight. I'd love for you to come with me. And I love Marty. I'm trying to influence him to follow Jesus. So I'm like, no problem. I show up and find out this is not only an MMA fight, but it's an MMA fight slash bikini contest. Great way to start out witnessing for the Lord. I was like, awesome, let's do this. And so we get there, and he's introducing me to all his friends, and I'm talking to him, and they're asking, you know, what's your name? What are you about and stuff? And we're sitting up in this upper level, and we got all the snacks and all the things, and it's it's going good, and they're just about to start the first fight. And I've watched MMA on TV. I'd never seen it live before. These are amateur fights, so I think it's gonna be brutal, it's gonna be fun, I'm excited, and we look over the rail, and the rail's, you know, probably as high as the ceiling, and we're looking down at the fighters, and they go for the first match, and the guy runs and tackles the guy, and instantly his spine breaks. The fight stops, it's five seconds in. They bring out the stretcher, they bring out the ambulance, everyone's kind of like whispering what's going on, no one knows. They end up taking the guy to the hospital, like he'll he'll he'll never fight again, probably won't even walk again. They remove him and they're like, all right, round two, and we're all like, What is going on? Like, this is crazy. We get into round two, and I'm just like standing on the edge of my seat because I'm like, What's gonna happen? The next fight they go back and forth, they do three rounds, so three rounds of five minutes. By the third round, they had beaten on each other so much no one had fallen over that we're all sitting there like, what's gonna happen? And in MMA, you have a couple judges and they give points for different things, and at the end they bring one guy up and next to the other guy, and they're like, by one point, this guy wins, and they hold his hands up and everyone cheers. It was crazy. It was the most one of the most brutal things I'd ever seen. It was, I would say, I don't know if fun is the right word, but it was a it was an interesting night. Jesus, when he's in this passage, he may not be physically fighting, but he's in a fight with these religious leaders. They're looking to confuse him to get people to stop following him. They want all the influence, and they are coming at Jesus like never before. And I think if we're not careful, we can find ourselves in a spot where we follow religion more than we actually follow Jesus. Now I know instantly all of us are like, well, not not not I, not me, couldn't be me. I want to tell you, it is easier than we think to fall into a spot where we're more interested in churchy things than we are in Jesus. If you're taking notes, my big idea is this: Jesus didn't come to start a religion, he came to have a relationship with you, with me, with everyone that transforms people. See, there's three fighting rounds we see in this story. And round one looks like this: ding ding, round one, relationship versus rules. In verse 19, Jesus replied, Do wedding guests fast while celebrating with the groom? Of course not. They can't fast while the groom is with them. Can I tell you, religion is about rules? Jesus is about relationship. And these Pharisees were very comfortable making their faith about rules, about rituals, and about requirements. But Jesus changed things when he started describing your relationship with God as a relationship and not a list of rules. This would churn their belief system on his head. See, he came and when he shared the story, notice he didn't compare himself to a judge. He didn't compare himself to a boss or a taskmaster, he compared himself to a groom on his wedding day. What he's saying is, I want to have a deep relationship with you. Can I tell you, looking back now, rules never save my life. Only Jesus did that. Now, man, don't get me wrong. I love rules. When it comes to my house, I have many rules for my kids. Rules are not a bad thing. But when we put following rules in the place of God, we start to miss it. Guys, rules don't save us. Only Jesus does that. See, the Pharisees thought that spirituality looked like sacrifice and following every rule you could think of, but Jesus said that spirituality began with fellowship, with relationship, with being close with Him and close with God. Can I tell you the issue, just like it wasn't with rules, was never about fasting. Many of us think, well, maybe Jesus was hungry and he didn't want to fast. The Pharisees, I don't feel like this was talked about enough, started from a good place. 400 years before this, uh, Israel was wiped out, it was conquered, the the Jewish people were in all different kinds of lands, and they finally got an opportunity to go home, reclaim Israel, and when they came back, they not only wanted to set up political systems and buildings and all these things, they wanted to get back to the core of their beliefs, core back to the Jewish beliefs following God. And because most of them couldn't read, they didn't know what to do, Ezra, who was the prophet at the time and the priest, raised up these guys called the Pharisees. And the Pharisees were there to teach and help people to follow God's rules and follow God's laws. Good thing. Like pastors. But over the 400 years, they began to lose sight of why they did what they did. They forgot that they were there to help people follow Jesus, to help people draw close to God, and instead became a bunch of rule followers and tattletales. It got so bad that they felt like God's rules wasn't enough, and they began to add their own rules in place. Now that sounds like, oh man, that's really evil, that's terrible, but we do it all the time. Let me give you an example. When I want my wife somewhere by 8 30, I usually tell her 8 o'clock. Why? I'll just leave that mystery alone. I don't know. But you know, for many of us, we we create our own rules not out of evil, but because we want to be helpful. These Pharisees started in a good place, but over the years they forgot why they did what they did, and it became all about the what and all about the rules and not about the heart. When we first become Christians, man, we see Jesus as this loving lamb. He forgave our sins, he loves us, he embraces us, and the longer we're in church, maybe we start to see him as a lion. Man, Jesus is whipping us, he has all these rules he wants us to do. But when we begin to really mature, we should hopefully be able to see both. That Jesus is loving, that Jesus is caring, that Jesus is forgiving, but Jesus is also trying to mature us and grow us and not leave us where we were. See, the issues they were so focused on their religious activity that they completely missed the person standing in front of them. Are any of you task-motivated people? Anyone here? There's not a lot of guys with their hands up. Oh, that's kind of crazy. All right. Mind me never to hire any of you guys. It's all good. Man, when I have something that I want to do, when I'm working hard, when there's stuff to be done, I often don't think, man, there's a person working next to me that I need to see how they're doing. I'm so focused sometimes on the task at hand that I forget about the relationships and the people around me. That's where these Pharisees found themselves. They were so busy trying to do the right things that they forgot about the people they were supposed to be helping along the way. My daughter Thea, she's four. She loves to be helpful. Her new favorite activity is to help us wash the dishes. And every time after dinner, I'll go off and do something, and I'll have Thea run into my room and she'll come find me. And she's like, Dad, I did the dishes. And I'm like, that is so gracious of you. And she's like, I know you don't like doing them, I did them for you. And I'm like, Oh, that's so sweet. And I go in there, and all she did is put all the plates in the sink and turn on the faucet, and that's it. But to her mind, that's doing the dishes, and she's doing her best. And it'd be easy for me to be like, Thea, you're not, you're not doing the dishes right. Get back in there, put on the gloves, get the soap, do all the things. But what I want to recognize is that my daughter has a heart to serve. And it can be so easy for us sometimes to miss the people when we're trying to focus on the activities. Because religion says, follow the rules. But notice Jesus always said, come and follow me. Religion says, earn God's approval, but Jesus said, receive God's love. Imagine a husband who goes to all the marriage conferences, who reads all the marriage books, who listens to all the marriage podcasts, that can tell you his anniversary, he can tell you his wife's favorite color, his wife's favorite meal, but he's never taken his wife out on a date. He knows her favorite restaurant, but he's never taken her. He can quote you her birthday, but he's never bought her a gift. I'm trying not to make eye contact with my wife right now. That sounds silly, right? But many of us, we're tempted to do that in our relationship with the Lord. That we we know all the facts, we know all the things, but our heart hasn't changed. See, many people think that religious information, rather than having a relationship with Jesus, is what gets them there. But can I tell you that Christianity isn't primarily about systems, it's about a savior who came and loved and died for you. When I was in high school, texting had just become a thing. And I remember I was 16, had a job, and I finally got unlimited texting. I thought it was the craziest thing in the world. It's like, I can send as many texts as I want. This is wild. Remember one time I got invited to a friend's house and we're all there, and there's a bunch of us there, there's like 20 of us, and a bunch of guys and girls, and I walk into this to this bedroom, and there's a couple my friends there, and their girlfriends, and their friends, and they're all sitting there looking at their phone. And this is before we had social media or any of the things, so they weren't looking at social media. They're all sitting there on their phone and they were texting each other. It was the oddest thing I'd ever seen in my life. I was like, You're you're sitting five feet away from each other, but you're texting each other. When Jesus was asked about fasting, and they're like, Shouldn't your your disciples fast? When you would fast in religious sense, you're trying to draw closer to God. And Jesus is saying, I'm standing right here. Why would you be fasting? Many of us, Jesus is in the room with us, Jesus wants to be with us, and we're missing him because we're so focused on the things we feel like we need to do. And let me ask you, have you settled for religious activity while neglecting relationship with Jesus? Are you doing all the right things, singing all the right songs, listening to all the right messages, reading your Bible, praying all the right things, all the good things, but you're missing Jesus in the midst of it. Every morning I try to wake up and the first thing I try to do is read my Bible. Before I jump on the internet, before I do anything, I want to read my Bible. And there are times that I'm tempted just to read my Bible very quickly and get it out of the way, check it off the list. And I found that there's been days where I stop, I have to take a breath and remind myself, man, I'm not just doing this because it's a good thing to check off my list. I'm doing this because I want to be close to Jesus. Everyone say number two. See, round two. So we talked about, we talked about relationship versus rules. Now we're talking about transformation versus modification. And in verse 22, it says, And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the wine burst the wineskins, and the wine and the skins would both be lost. New wine calls for new wineskins. Religion is really focused on changing behavior. That it's more important than that you act right and look right. Where Jesus is worried about changing our hearts. See, these Pharisees wanted Jesus to fit within their system. They didn't mind that Jesus was popular, they didn't mind what Jesus was teaching as long as he stayed within their system. And can I be honest? Often so do we. That meant it is I I'm much more comfortable following new rules than I am changing something on the inside about me. That is so much easier to say, well, what do I have to do to be right than looking inwardly? And sometimes I just want to focus on changing a habit, changing an activity, rather than focusing on the messy stuff inside. It's easy to do. In this moment, Jesus refused them. See, he's basically displaying, I'm not here to patch up your religion, I'm here to start something entirely new. One of the things that he does that I just find so strange sometimes is he likes to keep things that I might throw away. A couple years ago, he had a coffee pot, and it was a very nice coffee pot, and this coffee pot stopped working. So him and my mother-in-law went to the store, they bought a new coffee pot, they put it in, and I'm looking at the old coffee pot, I'm like, hey, are we getting rid of this? And he's like, nah, I think I think we'll keep it. Just in case. You never know. So bizarre to me. I don't know. I love the man, but it was so bizarre. Many of us were tempted to hold on and cling to things that we know are long past. Sometimes they're items, like my family, but other times maybe they're a grudge, their bitterness, their emotions, their relationship that you know you should move on from. It is easy for us to get stuck in old ways. Jesus talks about the old clothes can't handle just having a patch. And the old wineskins, that's like the cup that they would keep their wine in, couldn't handle new wine. When I became a Christian, I had many friends around me that grew up in the church. They knew all the church things, all the lingo, all the services, all the stuff to say and didn't say. I didn't know any of it at the time. But I watched over and over again over the years that now many, many of my friends don't follow Jesus anymore. Grew up in the church, knew all the things, but didn't follow Jesus. It was easy for them to modify their behavior, know how to act when it came to church, but not really be transformed on the inside. Has anybody here ever seen the movie Transformers? It can be the 80s cartoon, it can be any of the cool movies. I don't know. I'm a Michael Bay guy, it's good. Expl movies need more explosions and less talking. Anyone else like, come on, it's good. It's good. Many, many Christians kind of become like that. Where we're transformers. We're very comfortable acting one way out there, and when we come into church, that's my best robot dance. We transform, we change. Nothing on the inside, but we just know, oh, this is how I'm expected to behave. Oh, I'm around my parents, I better knock this off. Oh, I'm around my friends, I better act like this. Oh, I'm in church, I better act like this. And rather than dealing with the stuff on the inside, we just change how we act. See, religion, it always wants to modify us, our appearance, our rule keeping, our external compliance, but Jesus came to transform. He's after the heart. He wants to change our desires, our priorities, the way we think, and even how we identify ourselves. Because it's easy in religion to be heard to hear over and over again, you just need to try harder. Try harder, try harder, do better with the rules. When Jesus comes and he's like, no, no, no, no. You need to be born again. You need to be totally transformed from the inside out. Religion's always worried about the outside in. Oh, if you change your fake it till you make it, if you change your behavior, it'll it'll work out. When Jesus is saying, if you'll change your heart, your behavior will follow. When spring comes, can I tell you? We never go outside. Has how many people have ever gone outside in spring and felt like you needed to pick all the leaves off your tree to make room for new leaves? Anybody ever done that? If you've done it, you're weird. I'm just saying. It's weird. We never have to worry about that. Because when the new leaves grow in, the old stuff falls away. My daughter Eden's getting her first set of teeth. I'm not too worried about her baby teeth because at some point, when her new teeth come, those old teeth are gonna pop out. When we begin to change our heart and become alive again, I'm not so much worried about our behavior immediately because I know that when Jesus starts to transform the inside, the outside will begin to follow. See, when Jesus takes over a life, it begins pushing out our old attitudes, our old habits, and our old way of thinking. Not because someone's forcing us or yelling at us, but because life is growing on the inside of us again. Now, this one uh I put in here specifically because when I preached to Fort Hall, I wanted to connect them a little bit. I grew up kind of ghetto adjacent, you know. I mean I was close to the ghetto. And I remember one day I was 15, 16 years old, me and my friends decided at like 10 p.m. we wanted to get some Little Caesars Pizza, because at 10 p.m. nothing hits like Little Caesar's Pizza, I'm just saying. And we were gonna rent a movie because back then we had blockbusters, not Netflix. Anybody with me? A few of you, all right. The rest of you need to get older. Come on. We grab our pizza, we grab our snacks, we hit, we grab our blockbuster movie. I don't remember what it was. We're walking home and we have to walk through this kind of dark segue. It goes by the skate park, and then we're gonna arrive at my friend's house. And right about when we get to the skate park, there's about four of us guys, ten of these guys pull up on bikes. Now, I'd like to say they're a motorcycle, like they're biker gang, but no, I mean like literal bikes. And they're like, What do you guys do? And uh, we're going to my friend's house, and they're like, give us your pizza. I'm like, dude, if there's fighting words between us, it's give me your food. Like, no, standing strong. And next thing I know, these ten guys are jumping on the four of us and they're pounding on us, and they hit us, and the cops get called, and we're like bruised and battered. Go, and um, it happened in the dark, it happened so quickly that I didn't, they were like, Hey, can you point out the people? Couldn't point them out, but it freaked me out. I had never had 10 guys jump me like that before. I remember going and walking by there in the light of day, and I just like creeped out. I kept looking over my shoulder. I'd go to high school and be like, those guys could have been anybody, it could be anyone around me. Like it it terrified me. And there were like Days, weeks, even a couple months, where man, I was just like on edge the entire time because I'm like, at any point, anyone can just grab me and take me, and what am I gonna do? And I remember I got into this grocery store, and it's me and one of my other friends, and these three guys walk up and they start mocking us, and they're getting in our face, and all this kind of stuff, and my friend just walks away, and those guys walk away, and I remember there on the inside, I was like, I don't want to live in fear or like a coward for the rest of my life. And I had this gut check where it's like, I've got to make a decision. And being, you know, 16, I didn't make the wisest decision. I went where I saw those guys walking down the aisle, and I like tapped one of them on the shoulder, and the three of them looked at me, and I looked at them and I was like, What's up? And they were like, one of them kind of like went like this, and the other one was like, Oh, you're, you know, my sister's name is Emily, oh, you're Emily's brother, like, we're so sorry, da-da-da. And they walked away, and I was standing there, like, yeah, I'm tough, but on the inside, I was screaming like a little girl, like, oh my gosh, I'm alive, I'm safe. I tell you that story to tell you this: that it wasn't about my outside behavior, but I had to make a decision on the inside whether I was gonna live in fear, be scared, be nervous the rest of my life, or whether I was gonna stand tall in that moment. Now that's a pretty silly example, but we all have moments in our life where we have to decide who we want to be. And it's not about changing our behavior, it's about nailing down our identity. I didn't want to, I didn't want to identify myself as a victim or a coward. What old mindsets, traditions, comfort zones, or habits is keeping you from experiencing more of the power of God in your life? What emotions, what things on the inside, when God begins to press in, causes you to pull out? Number three, everyone say, Praise God. People versus performance. In verse 27, it says, Then Jesus said to them, The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people, and not the people to meet the requirements of the Sabbath. Religion values performance, but Jesus values people. Can I tell you the Pharisees cared more about protecting the rules than they did about helping the people around them? In the first story, the disciples are hungry. Says they're sitting there and they're hungry. And rather than seeing people that need to be fed, the Pharisees didn't say, Well, here we have extra food, so you don't have to work on all these things. The Pharisees just wanted to point out, man, you're breaking the rules. Next, Jesus identifies a man with a withered hand. It means it was crumpled, it couldn't be used. And Jesus saw an opportunity to restore this man, to heal this man. But again, the religious leaders just saw a broken rule. These religious leaders were more concerned about looking right and acting right than they were about helping people. Now that's easy to be like, yeah, I'm Team Jesus, but man, when's the last time you've taken a risk for people? Can I tell you, people and relationships are always a risk? Because people are always messy. And some of my biggest failures, some of my biggest regrets, and some of my biggest wins have all been centered around people. That when people come and I see them and their their lives are being transformed, and I believe in them, man, I am quick to jump behind them and say, man, let's do this, even if it's messy. And sometimes those people's lives just obliterate and it looks bad. And sometimes those people rise to the occasion and their lives are transformed forever. And I never know, obviously, beforehand what's going to happen. It's messy, it's risky. I I risk sometimes believing in the wrong person and looking foolish. I risk, you know, doing having someone that stands up for me saying or doing the wrong thing. But can I tell you, the moment that we get to a spot where we say, Man, I'm not taking a risk on people, we're done. If we stop believing that Jesus can transform the lives of people, if we stop taking risks so that other people can know Jesus, then we have missed it. My buddy Adon over here, I love sharing stories about him. It's fun. It's first week of church. Shows up and he shaves the top of his head and not the sides. He has the same haircut as me, but on purpose. It was really weird. And he goes up to me and he's like, hey man, don't like church. Not interested in God. My mom made me come. Dude, you're like 30. That's weird that your mom made you come, but that's awesome. Like, let's do this. Slowly, God begins to transform Adon's life. Adon feels a call to ministry. He's rising up, he's doing all the pastoral school stuff. It's been awesome. A couple months ago, I take Adon to this pastoral conference. And most of the pastors that go to this pastoral conference, I love them to death. They're a little older, a little more traditional, wear suits to the meetings, all that stuff. So I'll just put it lightly, I already look kind of out of place, and me and Adon are rolling up together. And we're getting some heads turned. They're like, is there security in this church? Like, what's going on here? It's getting a little sketchy. And uh I warned our team beforehand, I was like, hey, I was, you know, our our our government of our denomination had some things they're voting on, and one of the things was whether they wanted me to be a pastor that represented our state to other things. And I remember telling our team, like, hey, they're gonna take a vote, and I'm one of the people that they can vote for. And I just want to let you guys know that me and popularity contests are kind of like oil and water. We don't mix. And so I'm like, I just want you guys to be prepared emotionally that I'm going to lose this vote. And I have good staff and a good team, and they believe in me, so they're like, no, you got this, man. You you go. We take the vote, and it's like quickly. They didn't even have to count the vote. They're like, other guy won, Ty lost. And I'm over there, and I'm like, I'm good. My friend Adon is, he's mad for me. So I watch him, and there's some social protocol that he didn't know. And if I'm embarrassing you, dude, that's okay because you can embarrass me later. Uh he doesn't know, and so he's going up to each and every person that voted. And again, this is voting unanimously and and all this kind of thing, or not unanimously, anonymously. Very good distinction, uh, anonymously, and he's going up to each and every pastor and saying, Who'd you vote for? And I had our superintendent who's like the leader of leaders for our state, come up to me. He's whispering, he's like, Todd, I just love what God's doing in your church, and I love Adon. Can you please ask him to stop bullying pastors into voting for you, please? I was like, I got this, I got this. Cracked me up, it made me laugh. I'm always gonna take a risk on people. I'm willing to look silly, do silly things if it means that people can be transformed by the love of Jesus. See, Jesus was more concerned about helping somebody than he was about protecting these people's traditions. Religion focuses on performance. How do I look? Did I follow the rules? But Jesus focused on people. Who in the room is hurting? Who has needs? Who needs hope? See, these Pharisees were more interested in preserving their tradition than they were in seeing a miracle. I remember when I first came to this church and uh it looked a little different than it does now, and there were some things that I'm like, oh, we need to change, we need to update. And how many of you guys know that change is never popular? Young old, I don't know, I was gonna say black, white, I don't know, I don't want it to get weird. Young old black white, boy, girl, whatever it is. None of us like change. Unless the change is, you know, what we want it to be. But most of us don't want change. And I remember being here and I was like, oh, there's some things that I'm probably gonna change. And I tried to be tactful and do all the things, and man, is it fair to say I'm looking at who's here? Jeannie, was it fair to say that some of those changes were hard, right? I remember when I brought up going to two services and I was like, man, I think I'm gonna get jumped again out of the board meeting today. It's good. Changes are hard. Can I be honest? I don't even like changes. A couple months ago, my wife went to the store and she got me a brand new electric toothbrush. I don't like electric toothbrushes. I was like, what's wrong with the one that I've used, you know, for forever? You just do the things, and so I'm I I so don't like change that I'm standing there just brushing my teeth normal with an electric toothbrush. I don't know, it's weird. I don't like that my kids are getting older. I don't like that my daughter Thea knows bigger words than I do at this point. It freaks me out. I'm like, what are you doing? I don't like that she tries to tell me I'm wrong. I'm like, what is happening? Change is hard, change is difficult. But sometimes we need to change things in our own life, in our own hearts, sometimes in the church, sometimes all around us, because I would rather change things so that people can be transformed and know Jesus than hold on to my old dead religion. Amen? See how this looked had become more important to these people than what Jesus could do. And instead of celebrating this miracle, they began to plot to murder and kill Jesus. It's hard sometimes to give up our old way of thinking. Last year I got ordained, which for pastors is like the highest level that you can get. It's like, I don't know, level three certified or whatever. And I was I was pretty excited, and they're throwing a service for me, and all these people are invited, and my wife's like, hey, all these pastors are gonna wear suits, you should dress nice and wear suits, and I looked about how I look now. And everyone's and I'm I'm literally the center of attention. They're hosting a service where for 10 minutes it was super awkward. A guy was on the stage talking about how great I was, and I was like, dude, you're saying in front of my mom, this is weird, I don't know. And um, I go up to the front, and all these guys in suits are praying for me, and I'm wearing this, and and then inside of my heart I get a gut check where God's like, Why did you dress like that? And I was like, God, because I don't want to forget where I came from. You know what I mean? Like, I'm I'm hard, I'm good, and God's like, let it go. And sometimes in our in our hearts, we have a hard time changing things because man, we we miss how things used to be. We miss who we used to be. When I'm telling you that God has better things ahead of you than behind you, amen. He has better things before you than behind you. Can I tell you the future is bright? It's easy to see the world and think, man, things are dark, things are evil, things are going backwards. But can I tell you with the power and love of God, things can be brighter than ever before? Amen. When I look at the next generation, man, I get I get excited, I get hopeful because I believe that God can do something like he's never done before. See, where these people saw people as problems or interruptions, Jesus saw an opportunity. So let me ask you do you see people as problems? Do you see them as interruptions? Or do you look at people the way that Jesus did? These Pharisees, these religious people, they had religion, but they didn't have Jesus. They had rules, but they didn't have relationships. They were modified, their behavior looked good on the outside, but they were never transformed on the inside. They had performance, they could do services better than anyone else, but they didn't love anyone. So the question today isn't whether you're religious, the question today is whether you're following Jesus. Because can I tell you, Jesus didn't come to make you more religious, he didn't come to make you more churchy or anything like that. He came so that your life could be transformed and that you could have relationship with him. Last story, and then I will end, I promise. My first ministry position out of Bible college. I go to this church in a small town on the Oregon coast. It's called Port Orford. Town of about a thousand people. Most of them are retirees. There's uh I think between middle school and elementary, because they put them together because the town was so small, there was about 70 kids, and I show up and I'm the kids and youth pastor, and on my first Sunday, there's three kids. All three of them are the pastor's kids. This church was about 50 people, and it had been about the same 50 people for 50 years. And I show up and we go from three kids to about 30 kids within six months. And I'm excited. I'm like, man, we're seeing kids change, we're seeing kids grow, and uh my pastor's like, hey man, I'm noticing that all these kids, these teens are coming to your stuff, but none of their families are coming to church on Sunday. And I'm like, you're right. So I get a card and I start passing it out to all the kids and their teens, inviting their family to come to service. We have a big service where all the families come and none of them ever come back. And I remember I'm sitting down with the pastor and he pulls me into this board meeting, and we're talking about why all these kids are coming and why their families didn't come back, and I was just like, guys, can can I be brutally honest? And I could tell by their faces that I shouldn't have been, but I was young and dumb, so I was gonna be anyways. I was like, this church service doesn't have a lot to offer these people. Like when they come and they're looking for hope and they're looking for Jesus to do something like he's doing in their kids and their youth, they're not finding that here. And then I proceed to hear from the board about how they're mad at me, and actually they don't think the ministry is going very well because they found some cigarette butts in the parking lot after youth group, and that means kids were smoking, and how dare I! And so it got to the point where I was like, I'm I'm sorry. And so every Wednesday after youth group, I'd run out there and kids would smoke before and after youth group, and I'd sweep up all the trash and all the cigarette butts, and I tried to hide it so no one on the board found it. And eventually got to the point where they were just mad because the people, the way we did ministry, looked different than how they were used to. And rather than celebrate people coming to know God, they wanted to keep things the same way and have the people leave. And again, it's easy to villainize that group. I I have in my mind, in my heart sometimes, but can I tell you, where in our life, where in my life, where in your life, are we more comfortable with our man-made traditions, with our comfort zones, with our ways than we are with reaching people for Jesus? Where in our own life is Jesus asking us for something that we're unwilling to give up? So let me ask again, are you following a religion about Jesus? Or are you in a living relationship with Jesus? Do you know a lot of things about Jesus? Do you know all the right things to do? Are you actually in a loving relationship with Jesus that is transforming your life? If I could have every head bowed and eyes closed, I just want to pray for you today. And I just, there's nothing special. I just don't want you to be distracted in this moment. I want to pray for two groups of people today. I want to pray for those that maybe don't know Jesus today, and you'd like to begin to follow him. If that's you, when I count to three, I want you to raise your hand, and there's nothing crazy about raising your hand, it's just a way for me to follow up with you and pray for you. And here's the big thing the Bible says that when we believe in our heart and confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord, that we are saved. And so on the count of three, I'm gonna have you raise your hand, and we as a church are gonna pray a prayer with you because I don't want you to be embarrassed. And I want you to begin to follow Jesus today. One, this is the most important decision of your life. More important than where you live, where you work, who you're married to, your relationship with Jesus is the most important thing. Two. Maybe you want to wait. You're thinking, I'll think about it, I'll get back to it, I'll do it next time. Can I tell you, don't wait. This is important, this is urgent. Begin to follow Jesus today, now. Three, if that's you, would you just raise your hand? I'd love to pray with you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Church, would you just repeat after me and say, Dear Jesus, thank you for saving me, for loving me, make me bold, make me powerful, make me loving. Help me to follow you all the days of my life. Amen. The second group I want to pray for today is maybe you're here and you've identified some spots in your heart, some spots in your life where you've put tradition, religion, rules, performance ahead of people. That you've put church things ahead of God. And today you're saying, God, I don't want to be better behaved. I want to be changed from the inside out. And you need some help because you're following Jesus, you love Jesus, but it's easy to forget our why. It's easy to get distracted. If that's you and you want to be re centered on your love for Jesus, you'd love for me to pray for you. Would you just raise your hand? I'd love to pray with you. God, right now, you see these hands, you know these lives. God, help us to identify the things in our hearts, in our lives, that God keep us from you. That keep us from other people. God, make us about you, make us about others. That God, we wouldn't be concerned on how silly we look, the weird things that we do, but God, we would be concerned about loving you and loving people. Because in your precious name I pray. And everyone said, Amen.