Lord Of The Sabbath

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. We've been in the Gospel of Mark. We continue in the Gospel of Mark now with this series called Simply Jesus. And it seems like a lot of people like Jesus, but they don't really know Jesus. Jesus has been shaped into whatever they want him to be. He becomes our therapist, our life coach, that little kind of smiling cherub over our shoulder, just sharing positive images with us and different affirmations here and there. But is that the Jesus that really we find in the chapters of Scripture, specifically in the simplest of the four Gospels, the Gospel of Mark as we are walking through it? And here's the problem with that kind of a Jesus that I project, that I make into whatever I want him to be, is the fact that he can't really transform me. He will never contradict me. And therefore, he can't really make any difference, any change in me. The Jesus we need is simply Jesus, the Jesus of Scripture, the Jesus of the New Testament, the Jesus we meet in the Gospel of Mark. And the world simply right now needs Jesus more than ever. Amen. All right. So we are reading now in chapter two and three. We're going. It's a long section, but it all hangs together around the fact that Jesus contradicts, confuses, confounds and causes controversy. Yeah. All those C's. Do you like that? The fact that he is really almost offensive to some of the religious leaders and not just the religious leaders, also the irreligious leaders that we'll meet in this text. It's rather amazing. So we're going to follow along. You can actually find the notes to this message in the Bible app. The you version of it. And we're going to be in chapter two. So will you join me as we start reading chapter two, verse 13, all the way through three, verse six. He went out again beside the sea and all the crowd was coming to him and he was teaching them. And as he passed by, he saw Levi, the son of Alpheus, sitting at the tax booth. And he said to him, follow me. And he rose and followed him. And as he reclined a table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. For there were many who followed him. And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners? And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, those who are well have no need of a physician. But those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. Now, Jesus disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. John's disciples and people came and said to him, why do John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast? But you, your disciples do not fast. And Jesus said to them, can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them and then they will fast in that day. No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins and the wine is destroyed. And so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins. One Sabbath he was going through the grain fields and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck the heads of grain. And the Pharisees were saying to him, look, why are you doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath? And he said to them, have you never read what David did when he was in need and was hungry? He and those who were with him, how he entered the house of God in the time of a biotar, the high priest and ate the bread of the presence, which is not lawful for any, but the priest to eat and also gave it to those who were with him. And he said to them, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the son of man is Lord, even of the Sabbath. Again, he entered the synagogue and the man was there with a withered hand and they watched Jesus to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath so that they might accuse him. And he said to the man with the withered hand, come here. And he said to them, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm to save life or to kill? But they were silent and he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, stretch out your hand. He stretched it out and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and immediately held council with the Herodians against him. How to destroy him. So from all of these stories strung together, I think by Mark, because they all represent controversy and conflict and a bit of offensiveness on Jesus part. Who is this? Jesus would be the big question to ask. Who is he that does these things? Who is he that hangs out with those people? Who is he that tells off t...