So I was visiting with Natalie, my wife, a little bit earlier in the week, and we were talking a little bit about her church experience growing up, and she was in a good church, and a lot of great people, and God did a lot of great things along the way in that church to impact and influence her life. But I will say one of the things that stuck out to her most about her church life growing up was all of the petty rules that people said you must follow all of the time, no dancing, no secular music, no rated R movies, no wearing shorts that are above not more than two inches above the knee right, no. Belly button rings, no. Nose rings, no tattoos. Don't smoke, don't drink, don't cuss, don't chew and don't go out with guys or girls. Who do you've heard that one? Many of you heard the same rules in church when you were growing up. Maybe they're the same rules that you try to live your life by. Even today, there's just so many rules that we hear in church. There's these expectations that we hear about from other people. Somehow, my guess is that you could even think of others. You probably were thinking of them like, for example, women must wear dresses in church, and men should be wearing suits. Shame on you, because I'm seeing a lot of you not in dresses and suits. No. I mean, we used to hear we don't hear about this as much anymore, but it's still fairly common in a lot of places. No wearing, you know, hats. Men are not supposed to wear hats in here, right? Sometimes you hear people say that ladies are okay, right? Because they, you know, as long as it matches their outfit or those kind of things, but, but, but guys, you know, used to hear that one a lot, no running in the church, no food in the church, no drinks in the church. And how about this one, when you go to church camp, no mixed swimming. You know, I'm talking about boys swim in one pool, and girls must swim in another. There's just all of these different rules, these detailed little rules that sometimes are in our churches and we have to keep up with. And I wonder, I just wonder, what Jesus thinks about all of these rules. I mean, wouldn't it be nice to know what Jesus actually thought about all of these rules that we're talking about and that many of us have heard, and sometimes we're still trying to live our lives by today? Well, I think we can actually know a little bit more about what Jesus thinks about these kind of rules, because we're gonna see in this section of Luke today the rule police are going to come after Jesus and how he responds and reacts to them, and the things that he says to them will say a lot to us about those same kind of rules and the rule police who come after some of us today. So Luke, chapter six, beginning in verse one, look what Luke says there. He says, One Sabbath, Jesus was going through the grain fields, and his disciples began to pick some heads of grain. They rub them in their hands and eat the kernels. Some of the Pharisees asked, Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath? There's the rule police. The Pharisees were the rule police of this particular day and age. And when they were asking Jesus about this, they weren't just curious, like, Hey, we're just wondering why you guys don't follow the rules here, right? I mean, they were accusing them. They were saying, You're breaking the rules. Stop breaking the rules. Stop doing that is what they're really saying here. Well, what was the rule? What were they doing? That was so bad. Well, that's the tricky thing, because the law, the Old Testament, law that was given to Moses by God in the Old Testament under the Old Covenant, actually said that what they were doing was okay. Deuteronomy, 2325 says this, If you enter your neighbor's grain field, you may pick kernels with your hands, but you must not put a sickle to their standing grain. In other words, if you're hungry and you find yourself walking through another person's grain field, feel free to pick a few kernels up and eat them. Just don't drive your John Deere tractor through there and plow them all up. Okay? It's okay to do that, and that's what Jesus and them were doing.The problem was,is that this was a Sabbath day, and the Sabbath day was supposed to be a day of rest. It was a law you were commanded to rest, which means you're not supposed to do any work on the Sabbath. The problem was, is, what constitutes work? Because for some of us, work is getting up from the couch to go to the fridge, and others of us are like, I mean, I mowed 10 acres today, but I. Wouldn't call that work, right? I mean, we all have these different perspectives of what work actually is, but it didn't say, it just said, don't work, just rest. It's a day of rest. So the Pharisees labeled themselves the rule. Police were going to attempt to define what work actually is, and they came up with 39 general tasks that were prohibited on the Sabbath. You couldn't sow, plow, reap, you couldn't trap a deer, you couldn't put out a fire, you couldn't transport one object from one domain to another, and on and on and on. But the thing was, is that wasn't even enough. They took those general 39 tasks and then they subdivided them into hundreds, if not 1000s, of rules and regulations around these. And here's how crazy it got. One of the ways that they defined work was that you could not travel somewhere more than 3000 feet from your home. All right, so you start walking away from your home if you got to 3000 feet, I guess you just had to stop, sit down and wait till the Sabbath day ended. Because if you went one more foot, then all of a sudden you were breaking the Sabbath. If you went 3001 foot. Now that seems a little bit insane, but I guess they measured the number of steps that they actually took, but it went even above and beyond that, because here's how crazy it got. They said, Well, you know what? Here's what we'll do. If you go 1000 feet, I mean 3000 feet before the Sabbath, not on the Sabbath, but the day before, and you actually put food at the 3000 point mark, then here's what we'll say. We'll say that where that food is is we'll call that a home. And since that is a new home that you're at, then you can go another 3000 feet after that, and it won't really be called work. And I guess you could do that for another 3000 and so on. And so for someone, they could go 3001 foot with no food being there and they were working. But somebody else could walk 15,000 feet, but food was every 3000 feet, and they didn't work that day. This is how crazy some of the rules that got. They were spelling all of these things out. The only problem was they weren't in the Bible. There. Wasn't there. This was a written collection of oral law, or oral tradition written down in what's called the Mishna. And so the Pharisees the rule police, saw Jesus and his disciples acting out in this way. They were violating the rules, breaking the Sabbath commandment, called him out on it. So let's see how Jesus responds. Verse three, Jesus answered them. Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry. Verse four, 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. Uh, oh, we've got a problem now, because now Jesus is pointing to them to a time when the priest and David apparently broke the rules and it was okay. This is written about in First Samuel, 21 and 22 and in those chapters, we learn about how David and his fighting men were out on a mission. They were hungry. David goes into the tabernacle. He asked for some bread. The priest says, I don't have any ordinary bread. I've got consecrated bread, but you can't eat that bread. The reason why is because of Leviticus 24 Leviticus 24 has instructions given to Moses that said, bake 12 loaves of bread before the Sabbath and put those in the tabernacle, in the holy place, on the table. And that would be sacred bread that was declared sacred. It was consecrated bread. And then, before the next Sabbath, baked 12 more. By the way, these represented the 12 tribes of Israel. And then you can replace the old bread with the new bread. The new bread would become sacred or consecrated. That would stay there a week. The old bread you could eat, but only if you were a priest. It was the law, it was the rule, but the priest and David actually took the bread and gave it to his men who were hungry. They used it to meet a need. This is important, because what Jesus is pointing to in this example here is not the oral law, it's not the traditional things, the extra biblical things that we were just talking about. This was actually a written rule under the Old Covenant, and Jesus is saying that this priest in this guy broke the rule. And so what was Jesus trying to say by bringing this up? Well, basically, he was saying this, it's okay to break the letter of the law to meet a human need. In other words, if the rule keeps you from loving people, then you've carried the rule too far. If the rule keeps you from loving people, you've carried the rule. Too far. You need to know the intent behind the rule. And Jesus, of course, knew the intent. He had the authority to declare that this was actually okay in this moment, and he even says so. Next, look at verse five. Then Jesus said to them, the Son of Man, which is a way that he referenced himself often in the way that Luke writes about him, the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. We're talking about breaking the rules on the Sabbath. And he reminds you, hey, I'm the one who came up with that law in the first place, right? And so if anyone would understand the intent behind it, it would be me. And so he's trying to tell these Pharisees the rule police of his day, that in this moment, they've gotten so carried away with the letter of the law that they've missed the intent behind it. Jesus, again, is saying, if the rules keep you from loving people and showing compassion to them, then you've missed the intent behind the rule you've carried it too far before we move on. Can I just make sure we understand what I'm saying here?Jesus broke the rule. Jesus broke the rule of workingon the Sabbath in order to love his disciples and meet their need. This what Jesus did. The crazy thing is, he's about to do it again. Look at verse six. It says On another Sabbath he Jesus went into the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was shriveled. 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. The rule police were spying on Jesus to see if he would heal someone, which again, shows you that they had faith that he could do so, but yet they would never really receive Him for who He was. The thing about this was that it was technically okay to heal someone on the Sabbath as long as their life was in danger. But if it could wait for another day they weren't literally about to die, then it was considered a work if you healed them and didn't wait till the next day. So the rule police were watching Jesus closely, because this guy could wait another day. He's not going to die. He's been living with this condition for a while now, let's see what Jesus does verse eight. But Jesus knew what they were thinking and said to the man with the shriveled hand, get up and stand in front of everyone. And so he got up and stood there. Can you imagine this seed? I mean, if Jesus was gonna heal the guy or do something. He didn't have to do it this way. Hey, buddy, come here. Get behind this wall. I see your hand. I'm gonna heal you. I don't want them to see that we're breaking the rules out there. Nobody will know it won't even cause a fuss, right? That's what Jesus could have done. Hey, buddy, come here. Stand right here in front of everyone and get ready to watch thefireworks.Man. You imagine being this guy in this position and standing up there in front of everyone. Verse nine, then Jesus said to them, I ask you which is lawful on the Sabbath, to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it. Again, Jesus just cuts right to the intent behind the law, behind the rule. He says, Is it is it better? Is it better to keep the letter of the law and not can do work, what's considered to be work on the Sabbath, or is it better to actually break the law to do what is considered a work if it means helping someone else. I mean, if you can show compassion and meet somebody's need right there in this moment and prevent them from suffering even one more day, then isn't that better than keeping some rule that says it's defined as work and getting in trouble with the rule police.Jesus shows us that it islook at verse 10. He looked around at them all, and then he said to the man, Stretch out your hand. He did so, and his hand was completely restored. Wow. Here's what's so ironic though about this situation. Did you see the work that Jesus had to put in to accomplish this? The fuss is all about working on the Sabbath, and what did Jesus do? You? He said four words, man, somebody better get the guy Gatorade. I bet he was exhausted after that. You can't work on the Sabbath by using four words, dare you once again, what someone defined as breaking the law. Jesus says it's worth breaking it if you're showing love and compassion to someone else. But this makes the rule police a wee bit angry. Look at verse 11, but the Pharisees and the teachers of the law were furious and began to discuss with one another what they might do to Jesus, the word translated furious there in the original Greek, means mindless rage or irrational anger.This is what happenswith rule police.Rule policehave a hard time loving Rule Breakers.Rule policehave a hard time loving Rule Breakers. Instead of loving Rule Breakers and showing them grace and compassion, they show mindless rage and irrational anger when other people don't follow the rules. These are the rules. I follow the rules, and because I say so, everyone else should be following them too. But Jesus shows us here that he became a rule breaker in order to love people. And here's what we said earlier, based on the series that we're looking at. If Jesus puts His life in us and begins to express his life through us, then what we see Jesus doing during His earthly ministry should be the kind of things we expect Jesus to do in and through us. And so if we see Jesus breaking rules to love and serve people, then shouldn't we expect him to lead us to break rules in order to love and serve people today as well? Youshould weJesus did?I guess the question is, is, what rules was Jesus willing to break? We know Jesus never sinned. He was sinless. He was perfect. Rules that we're talking about here are rules that went beyond the intent of the law. The rules that we're talking about are rules of tradition, extra biblical rules, things that you won't find in the Bible, but somebody else somewhere says, based on something you can kind of see in there, that this should be the rule, or maybe it's not even in there at all. And they're just like, I still think that's what it should be. And it gets passed down and down and down to others. We talked about some of them earlier. How about the dress code? Right? Men wear suits. Women wear dresses. You know? Some can wear hats. Some can't. All of those things. Again, that's not in the Bible. Had someone come up to me after the first service, and they said that their father, I mean, they grew up in a church where it was expected that men wore suits every single Sunday, that women were to wear dresses. And her dad was just crazy hot natured. I mean, sweat like you wouldn't believe and so I mean hot, 100 degree Texas weather, and he decides not to wear a suit one day, and he was shamed for not doing so,shamed verbally by so many people in the church that it took years, decades for him to ever get the courage up to go back to church again?Because the rule police said you cannot wear anything other than a suitto church.How about don't drink, don't smoke, don't cuss or chew, and don't go with girls or guys who do,that's the rule.There's certainly some wisdom,certainly some ways that the spirit would lead us to not act out in regard to some of these things with sin. But here's the thing, here's the other side of that rule keepers sometimes become rule police, and rule police project their rules onto everyone else. And if we don't have room in the church for people in our world to engage in these kind of behaviors, then you and I will never, ever reach the lost, because this is what the lost. Us.Jesus will lead us to love people, to be excited that they're here, and to give space for Him and Him alone, to work in their lives on their behavior and speech and actions in his own timetable, not ours. The problem is that many of us, instead of resting in our righteousness that we have in Christ, are so focused on selfish or self righteousness by obeying the rules. And the reason that we call everyone else out on not obeying the rules is because it reinforces our own self righteousness. If we follow it, and we catch someone else not following it, and I point it out and give them a hard time, I'm really not making it about them.I'm making it about me.Look how self righteous I am. They're not obeying the rules and I am. That's what this becomes all about. Let me give you an example as we close. I don't know if you ever saw the movie Philip Mina Philomena came out a dozen years ago or so, based on true story, a true story of a young girl. She was a teenager, she got pregnant, her parents, when she got pregnant and found out, sent her to live in a convent, and they were so ashamed of her that they basically told everyone around them that she was dead, that she died. They didn't want anything to have to do with her. Shipped her off to this convent. She ends up having the baby at the convent. She gets to see the baby for one or one hour a day, maybe seven days a week. Eventually, after a year or two, the baby was adopted and taken away, not by her choice, but forced to no say so in the matter, the movie picks up 50 years later, and she's never known what happened to her son, no information. Doesn't know if he's okay. She desperately wanted to find him, to just see what happened, but she couldn't find him. She couldn't figure it out. They wouldn't give her any information at the convent. And so she finds this reporter and asks him to help her out, to see if he can help track him down. And he does, he ends up finding out who adopted him, and also found out, unfortunately, that he had passed away just a few years prior to her trying to find them and do this particular search. But in the process, they began to find people that knew him and learn more about his life, and one particular person had this homemade video that they showed at his funeral to help get to see some of the things about his life growing up, and she got to watch her her baby, grow up in these pictures, but then all of a sudden, at the end of the video, was a picture of him standing next to two nuns at the same convent that she had grown up in or spent a few years in as a teenager, he had actually gone to the convent to try to find his mom, figure out who she was, and see if he could meet her before he died, one of the nuns, Sister Hildegard, who had been there at the Time that Philomena was there. There was no way that she was going to let that happen. She basically told him that his mother had abandoned him and didn't want anything to have to dowith him. Broke his heart.Mr. Porter gets mad. I mean, livid. He is hot. He goes to the convent. He confronts sister Hildegard, says, Why would you do that? You could have granted a dying man his wish to help see his mom and know who it was. You could have given her some peace and comfort to know what happened to her son. And then he yells at you and just says, this was not a very Christian like thing for you to dothat got her attention.He's old. She's sitting in a wheelchair. She turns and she glares at him. She picks herself up a little bit at the edge of the wheelchair, and she looks at him with severe hatred. And she says, I kept my vow of chastity my entire life. She fell to the sin of foreign fornication. She she got whatshe deserved.Sister Hildegard was a rule keeper who turned into the rule police. And rural police have a hard time loving other people.They use other people for self justification.Guys, this is what we do when we turn the church into a bunch of rule keepers who turn into. The rule police, we have a hard time loving and showing grace and compassion to others.But do you know who didn't have a hard time with that?Jesus, wesaw it today. He broke the rule police's laws in order to love and show compassion to others, and he will express His life in us and through us to do the very same thing today. And so I guess the question becomes, I ask each one of you personally, what rules are in the way of keeping you from loving people today. What rules in your own life are keeping you from loving, showing mercy, grace and compassion to other people today, and may you take it before the Lord and do as he leads and empowers you to do so let's pray Amen.