The Tragic Consequences of a False Gospel: 2016 Gospel of Luke #18
This is an exposition of Luke 6:1-11. This message by Pastor Rod Harris was delivered at Trinity Baptist Church on Sunday morning, June 19, 2016.
Intro:
It’s life’s most important question How is a man, woman, boy or girl made right with God? The Scripture is clear, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and the wages of sin is death (Romans 3:23; 6:23).” The apostle Paul said earlier in Romans 3, “There is none righteous, not a single one.” We are all sinners. We’ve violated God’s law. We are guilty of rebellion against the Creator. We’ve offended God’s person. The penalty for such is death. Eternal separation from God. This means every member of the human family is born under the judgment of God. That’s a problem. What are we to do? How do we escape God’s holy and righteous judgment? How do we move from being the object of His wrath to being the object of His favor? There is no more important question. This question serves as the backdrop for our text this morning found in the 6th chapter of Luke’s Gospel.
Text: Luke 6:1-11
We again find our Lord embroiled in controversy with the Pharisees.
We most often think of them as the “bad guys.”
If the gospel was a western they no doubt would be dressed in black.
However, for the most part, these were sincere, honest men seeking to serve God.
They took God’s law seriously.
They sincerely believed they were serving God’s kingdom and God’s interests.
The problem was they had reduced faith to a cold, mechanical transaction.
For them, faith was reduced to a religion of rules.
Righteousness was determined by a checklist.
That is what put them on a collision course with the Lord Jesus.
Jesus taught that faith was a response to God in the form of loving obedience born of relationship. The message of Jesus was that we live righteously not in order to be loved by God but rather because we are loved by God. Both the Pharisees and Jesus taught the need to live righteously yet their messages were fundamentally different. The Pharisees taught a rules based righteousness accomplished by our obedience while our Lord taught a righteousness given to us as a gift which causes us to live righteously out of loving gratitude and devotion. This is essential to understanding the tension that continues to build throughout the gospels between our Lord and the religious establishment.
Luke 5 ends with the Pharisees questioning Jesus about his eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners and then a complaint about them eating at all! “Why aren’t your disciples fasting?” In answering that second question Jesus makes it clear that the new life born of grace cannot be contained in the old system cherished by the Pharisees.
Luke 6 opens with questions again based on a rules approach to faith. Let’s look at our text in Luke 6:1-11.
[Read Text]
Thesis: The drama of our Lord’s encounter with the Pharisees in the opening verses of Luke 6 reveals the tragic consequences of a false gospel.
The Gospel is the good news of God’s gracious provision for us in the person of the Lord Jesus. The Gospel is that because God loves us, He has provided for our salvation through the sinless life and sacrificial death of the Lord Jesus. Salvation is God’s work. Salvation is not about what you do but what God has done. You can never do enough to make yourself acceptable to God. God demands perfection and you are not now and never will be perfect. That is why God made provision for you in the Lord Jesus. The Gospel is Christ and Christ alone. This is why Paul told the Galatians if anyone comes preaching another Gospel, let them be accursed. Let them be damned. Why such language? Why so harsh? Because to abandon the Gospel is to abandon the only hope of salvation.
With that in mind I want to consider just two (2) things from our text.
- The religion of rules in its fervent pursuit of religious devotion fails to understand the nature of genuine faith. (6:1-5)
- The religion of rules with its rigid devotion to ritual observance destroys the heart and soul of biblical faith and damns its adherents. (6:6-11)
Conclusion:
Our text says, “They were filled with fury.” The word means unthinking, thoughtlessness. It was a kind of madness. The parallel texts says that they plotted how they might kill Jesus. The self-righteous mind of those devoted to the religion of rules is not interested in mercy or even the truth instead it cares only for the observance of ritual. The heart and mind so focused is damned!
It is the kind of thinking that will lead you straight to hell because it refuses the only means of salvation. Friend, you can never earn your way into God’s favor. Your only hope is to throw yourself on the mercy of God. Your only hope of heaven is for you to say, “I don’t deserve heaven. I’m a sinner, rightfully under God’s judgment. But I turn from my sin and trust in Christ and in him alone.”
We end where we began. Life’s most important question. How can a man, woman, boy or girl be made right with God? Now you know. How are you going to respond?