20, the 30th chapter Isaiah, the 19th through the 26th verse. For the people shall dwell in Zion at Jerusalem. Thou shall weep no more. He will be very gracious unto thee at the voice of thine cry. When he shall hear it, he will answer thee. And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, you shall not thy teacher shall not be removed into a corner anymore. But thine eyes shall see thine teacher, and thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, this is the way walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand and when ye turn to the left. Ye shall defile also the covering of thy engraving images and the carnament of thy molding images. Thou shalt cast them away, as a mistress cloth. Thou shalt sell it, give thee hints, then shall he give the rain of thine seed, that thou shalt sow the ground with them and bread of the increase of the earth. And it shall be fat and plenteous in that day shall thy cow feed in large pastures the oxen likewise in the young asses that year the corn ground shall eat. clean provender, which had been widowed, went out with the shovel and with the fan, and there shall be upon every high mountain and upon every high hill, rivers and streams of water in the day of the great slaughter when the tide was fall. Moreover, the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold as the light of seven days in the day that the Lord binded up the breach of his people. and healed up the stroke of their wound. Here we see God restoring his people and being merciful unto them. He's showing them his great mercy. And that's one thing about the Lord that we can depend on and count on, is the mercy of God, which is repeated over a hundred and some times throughout the scriptures, the Old and the New Testament, just how merciful God is. You've heard people use the terminology in different words, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy on me, mercy me. We desire when we have been caught with our hands in the cooker, we desire mercy. When we get caught doing something or something happens to us, we ask for mercy or whatever. Sometime we hear people say, God have mercy on your soul. the judgment when judges issue a death sentence or whatever and say, well, may God have mercy on your soul. It is, however, often a put down based on a critical evaluations of other state of guilt, not a sincere desire for mercy on that individual. Just as the other day, we've seen a young lady that's supposed to have killed her daughter or whatever, two-year-old, and we were saying, Lord, have mercy on your soul. You know, it's that they're not actually offering mercy, but they're saying may God have mercy on it, you know, because of the judgment that's happened. We know mercy is one of the weightier matters of the law though. Jesus Christ, in his contact with the Pharisees, That was some of the arguments they was bringing forth of whatever in Jesus was presenting the thing that thou should desire mercy rather than judgment. See, mercy is doing something or giving something to someone that they don't deserve. You understand that? They're getting something that they don't deserve, whereby grace and mercy are companions. grace and mercy of companions or fraternal twins or whatever you want to think about the two. But we want to leave the word synonymous out for right now. We want to not say they're synonymous right at this point in time. But in the Phariseeism, is Phariseeism, did it go out with the Pharisees or do we have modern day Pharisees? I think it's flourishing, and it's in our churches today, I know it's prevalent in our nation, that a lot of the so-called Christians are the people in the churches, nothing but Pharisees. They are high-minded, they're thinking of themselves, they castigate others, and they castigated Christ, and Jesus Christ ended up castigating them for abandoning mercy. They had abandoned mercy, and that's what I see with Christianity today, that politics and the preaching and teaching of the false prophets and the false teachers have introduced a Christianity. You've heard it said about in secularism, a lot of the media and a lot of people are saying, that's not showing Christ like Attitude that's not Christ like compassion that that's not Christ like But the people have been taught a wrong Jesus or wrong Their religious theology is all backwards it all crossed up Why is mercy so weighty a matter or whatever? We in a time and period now where people cast certain things completely out when they adopt one thing or another and Those who teach grace only apart from the law do not even see a need for mercy, since to them, grace cancels any need for mercy. If God's gonna be gracious to us or whatever, this is gonna happen whether or not. You see what I'm saying? This is going to come about. Some churches, some people don't see a need for prayer if God's going to supply our needs and God's doing all this. This is a way of teaching or whatever, a philosophy that a lot of people are hearing. As I say, a lot of us in a lot of religions or places, we're missing the mark because we don't have a complete understanding of God. We've forsaken assembling together of ourselves around teachers, or pastors, or preachers, or the five, four ministries that has not neglected to declare the whole counsel of God. See, that's from getting lopsided preaching and teaching, maybe too much prosperity and too much grace teaching instead of a lot of the suffering, a lot of the denying yourself, a lot of the teaching that calls for sacrifice and repentance or whatever. By their definition, mercy is automatic once they're saved. Once they're saved, they don't have anything else to do. Once saved, always saved. They can live any kind of way they want to because Jesus saves and forgives. In theory, they can breathe right through a happy, joyous life, and Jesus has just done everything for us, and ain't nothing for us to do. Life with no fears of any eternal consequences, and that's why we see it in the political realm, in the religious realm, and throughout the nation today. A lot of Christian conduct that's not becoming of Christians. It does not truly represent who Christ is and the image of Christ, and it doesn't show us in the light as being very good sons of God. Because if that were true, why did Christ not make grace one of the weightier matters and leave out mercy? He said that mercy was one of the weightier matters, not grace. Why did he say that and do that? The Pharisees believed in keeping the law perfectly and being saved as a result of it, but we know the law wasn't able to save anyone. That it was weak through the flesh because they were looking at it in a legalistic sense. And you can't keep the law. They didn't understand what the spirit of the law was given to them. Modern Christianity teaches the law is done away with and all they need to do is have saving grace given when they accept the Lord. We're not under that old terrible law, the law is done away with. So we throw out those statutes and precepts and the concepts of God from the Old Testament throughout all the way back during the time. The baby with the bath water. Neither of these opposing approaches will work neither legalistic approach as the Pharisees did No approach that we on the grace and truth and that mercy is not required of that. There's nothing else for us to do As I said mercy and grace are companions and they're not easily parted from one another We you can't just separate them and then you have truth in that binding all that together you know, truth, binding that together. They work similarly. That's why I said I didn't want to say synonymous, but they work similarly. When a person murders somebody or whatever, and he's convicted and given a heavy prison sentence, die date, they give prison sentences of sometime light and easy or whatever. And capital punishment is in line with God's way of life. We know that God said if you take a life, you should lose your life. The way culture is now, the way politics, the way religion, the way this nation is, I'm not banking on capital punishment. I don't push capital punishment because a lot of times the righteous don't receive a fair shake. And we read a lot of times DNA-free and innocent people. That's because we have unjust men. We have unrighteous courts. We have an unjust court system. We're not a righteous nation as a lot of people try to portray ourselves. There's injustices that's overwhelming the nation. That's why crime and criminals and all this stuff is succeeding. I think it's because the church has not came forth as it should. God's church is doing what it's supposed to, but I think the apostate church is fostering a lot of the criminality that's going on because A bunch of the crooks are in the church that has the guise of wolves in sheep's clothing. That's one of the larger problems. But we know that God had instituted capital punishment. But the person committed the crime He should pay for the crime, and that's what we were. We were guilty, and Jesus Christ took our place. But sometimes that person could get a pardon or release, a governor, president or someone can release that person from, they could give them a pardon. Now, that's what a lot of people was talking about during the Trump administration of a lot of people that wasn't repentant, wasn't changed or whatever, that he was pardoned or whatever. that they were stooped in criminality and came out to continue doing more crime. A lot of the news and the media was talking about this week for him covering for Steve Bannon or whatever his name is or whatever. So we see that justice is gone in this nation or whatever. But yet the possibility always exists, somebody pardoning or releasing that person. this guy Stone or whatever they released or whatever that admitted his guilt. A lot of people like Flynn, Michael Flynn, he had admitted his guilt or whatever, but he was pardoned in the face of an unjust system. An injustice was done to make others continue to sin, to make sin rise up that much more. That's why if you don't punish murder with murder, then you have an escalation of crime, there's no deterrent for it. The prisoner is released under mercy of unmerited pardon, it's something that he didn't deserve. That's what grace is, God's unmerited favor toward us, something given by God, what grace is to us. is the riches of god given at christ's expense here what we've seen grace is that another person paid the penalty that we were deserving of we were sentenced deserving of death but he stepped in and paid the penalty he was our pardon and release he was our perpetuation he was our covering for sin now The judicial penalty for that crime is removed. They don't have to pay it. They've been pardoned and released. And that's what Christ did for us. He pardoned us and released us from the death penalty so we have eternal life if we continue in him, if we are part of his church. That's why I say we have to continue in him. And he said, those that continue in my word, then are my disciples. He granted a pardon to the woman that was caught in adultery. But he told her to go forth and sin no more. That's a greater thing what happened unto her. So it wasn't just a blank check when Christ saves you. There are stipulations or conditions that you have to continue on. Since now that person that's been pardoned is now living under undeserved mercy or grace, is he free to commit the same crime again with no penalty? No, because now he has to pay for committing another crime. That's why they say if you Lose your sacrifice if you come back and put Christ to open shame and it's impossible to renew it unto repentance because that only works. You didn't lost the life or the death that you had given. You're not able to. So just like this person comes back and commit a crime. Well, this person is chargeable with another crime at that time because it didn't release him from all crime. Whereas Jesus Christ, when he paid the penalty for us, you have to kind of be a mature Christian to look at it and understand it. It's just that he paid for every crime we had committed or will commit. not that we are free to continue. That's why Paul said, shall we continue in sin that grace shall abound? No, we have to stop sinning. We have to turn away from sinning, just like he told the woman, sin no more, and that's the worst thing, because there are consequences for our sins. That's where the mercy of God comes in, because just like David, he was a son of God, but there were some extreme consequences for David's sin. He told David to swore to never leave from his house again. David was under a heavy, heavy penalty for that sin with Bathsheba. A lot of people don't see it, so he didn't get away with it. God was merciful unto him and he said, I've put away your sin. But that child did lose his life. Gerari did lose his life. That's what that, but God granted mercy for a reason. God's the one that can grant mercy. We should be God-like. We should be merciful. That's why they say God is a merciful God. So he had put away David's sin. Okay. Now, if David had to continue to do anything, he must suffer again. And that's why he told the Dutchess women, sin no more, because I saved you from that Commit adultery, but if you go and do eat not just adultery if you go in and doing other sins or whatever Because he didn't say don't commit adultery no more worse thing. He says sin no more So we have to purge our life. We have to not continue in sin. We have to, anyone that's named in the nice name of Christ shall depart from iniquity and sin. We have to have a new mind. God has granted us a new birth. If we are a new creation in Christ Jesus, that's the difference from us and those that are born, not born again. If we are a new creation in Christ. Thus, law and grace of mercy cannot be separated. It cannot be separated. It cannot be law or grace, but law and grace. That's why I say, we can't just throw out the law and say it's just nothing but grace. Us that have received the grace of God, we still understand that there is a law. We continue, the law is not contrary to us, because now, since the law is a part of God's nature, it's a part of who we have become. We have lost that old nature, and we're fighting against that nature. We're trying to have the same mind that was in Jesus Christ, and that was a mind not to sin, because we had received the mercy of God. Now, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, right, according to Romans 3 and 23. All of us need pardon that we do not deserve. Nobody deserves being pardoned. It's God's grace that set that for us. So everybody, God can be merciful to who you want to be merciful unto us, but it was God's grace that gave us the pardon that had justified us, put us in a right standing with God. Grace is unmerited pardon and the goodwill of God. We're saved by his grace, nor was saved by the grace of God. That's something we can't merit. That's something God just comes in and does. No merit of our own. Now, like a president or governor, when I was talking above, God revokes it when we set our course on sin. God can revoke that pardon. That's why it says it's impossible to renew it unto repentance. That's why Judas, he says, won't be unto him, because he's sinning against grace. He's sinning against the truth. That's why the blasphemy of the Holy Ghost is a sin one can't be forgiven of, because it's against the truth of God. That's the only unpardonable. It says if one committed unpardonable sin, you hear of James talking about, there's one sin that's unto death. And that's against the Holy Ghost. We hope that we don't do it. Anyone that we know would do that. We return to his good graces when we repent sufficiently to change his attitude of mind toward us. Peter, denied that he knew the Lord or whatever, but Jesus had prayed for him that when he'd be converted, he would in turn go back and preach and strengthen his brothers, that he would turn. A lot of times we fall off the path or fall off the road, but through God's grace, through God's spirit, God can grant us repentance. God grants us repentance in a turn and a change of mind. God can be merciful to us according to our attitude or what we're displaying, just like he had sent us Ahab to death. When Elijah came and told him about it, he said, see how Ahab humbled himself? I won't do it, but I do it in his children's time. See, so our attitude of disposition or whatever sometimes motivates God to show us like he's acting differently, even we know God don't change. That this was in the cards, or this was foreordained by God. He is not beyond chastening us to ensure that we do repent. That's what he says, he scorns and chastens and punishes every child he receives. So that's why a lot of times, that's why a lot of us don't sin, because we know our father will whip us. It's a lot of people do things, that's why they say a lot of people doing things because they know there's not gonna be any punishment behind it. A lot of children, if you're not ever whooping them, you just keep talking and not doing anything, those are idle threats. But God chastens us and He disciplines us to make us turn from those sins where we won't do them again. That's putting the fear of God into us. Those that don't learn those lessons, sometimes God takes them completely out of life. God takes them away. But there's no children of God, none of God's children that God has that he can't control. He's in control of all things and all people. And that way, chastening us is a wonderful expression of his love because if we truly repent from our heart and ask for forgiveness, he don't refuse us or whatever. And that's what I've been teaching on the last week, is when we cry to God, We were in sin, though we did something wrong, so we have an advocate with the Father. If we pray to God in Jesus Christ's name and saying that Christ died for those sins, he's seen our weaknesses and impermanence. His blood paid the cost for that. We turn to Him in repentance and sorry and remorse and grief unto God. That's our perpetuation. That's our covering. Jesus Christ is recovered by the blood of the Lamb, and God forgive us. But there are consequences for those sins now. Each sin and transgression we receive is just recompense of reward. God knows how to chastise His children. That's what I say. Be it ever so, he's gonna choose the delusion or choose however way you choose to chasten us, but it's to bring us to correction. He's correcting us and reproving us. He cannot refuse for he is in love and his mercy endures forever. We're continually merciful to our children. That mercy don't run out no matter what your children do. You're continually merciful to those children. He was merciful unto Adam in that he allowed death to come unto Adam because he says, let us pull him out of the garden, lest he eat and live forever in this condition of that state of knowing good and evil. That's why God takes us out of this life, so we won't continue to sin, and so we won't fall below a point where there's no returning from, a point of no return. So that's why God takes some people out of life. He removed Enoch from the world he was in. It says Enoch was translated because time was getting so critical and short. He removed Enoch so Enoch wouldn't be removed from God. He's not going to allow no temptation or nothing to come unto us that we can't bear, because he's a mercy for God. Pharisee or Republican? Pharisee or Republican? The Pharisees perverted judgment by considering their own desires ahead of others to the point of stealing widows' houses. And all of the laws and all of the things they did, they were oppressive. That's why I say we see it in this nation. We see it in the churches. We see it in the world today. It's oppressive. It's oppression. A lot of churches are set to take almost every dime from you that they can. Offerings, collections of special gifts, different things, programs and things going on, whether it be CDs or whatever it be, there's a lot of them chewed upon that gets and takes material advantage of. That's why Paul says, when he leaves, there will be coming to the flock, grievous wolves not sparing the fly. They have you putting up your last dollars and all kinds of money or whatever so that they can ride in a brand new jet, Mercedes, live in luxurious homes, wearing fines of clothes or whatever, fleecing the flock. They have that ability. They're not merciful. They're not satisfied in learning contentment. Mercy never entered their minds, even for themselves, for they felt they needed none. It was like Judas when he said about the woman that had not known in Christ's feet, he said, that money should be taken and given to the poor. Well, he didn't care about the poor. It was just that he was stealing from the pot, and he wanted that money in the pot so he could feed off of it himself. As Christ noted, they would stand in the temple proclaiming their righteousness to God and man while demeaning the public. And he said, I'm not like this guy. They think that they was above him. They thought of all of what they were doing, tithing and praying and fasting and things. But they was looking down on the public and who wouldn't even raise up his head or raise his face to God praying, God be merciful, give me a son. He was looking for mercy. The Pharisee wasn't looking for mercy. He felt that he was all right with God. He felt that he didn't need that because of who he was and his status with God. But the publican didn't even look up. He beat his breast and said, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. Which one left there justified? It was the publican. Do we love and show mercy as God, as Christ did? Matthew the 20th chapter, read it in both versions here. So the last will be first and the first last, for many are called but a few chosen. Amplified says, so those who are last in this world shall be first in the world to come. And those who are first in this world shall be last in the world to come. Those that minister to others will be ministered to at times to come. Sometimes those who are least are being esteemed and most important in the next life. So status in this life or who we are in this life, it has no bearing on what God has for future life. We look up and honor men and worship and honor people or whatever, but it's not so in God's kingdom with God's people and God's way. That's why we look for his kingdom to come. In a sense, everybody is called to recognize God through the natural world, but the word chosen shows that God must personally rescue us from our self-centered blindness. All of us, everybody, call to God, or hear God's calling and know God's calling, but he say only a few chosen. There's a certain amount of the elect of God. Those that the elect of God. Using the term elect, according to Titus 1 and 1, reinforces the idea that God separates some few from the many who are called. Paul says, I'm a Paul, a bondservant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God's elect. There are some God chooses and sets apart according to his election. There'll be many called, like I said, a few chosen. Romans 9 and 11 and then 14 through 16 confirmed God is actively participating in the process of separation. He hadn't gone anywhere. It's his word and it is spirit that do it yet still work among us and still work. He gave the example of Esau and Jacob. He says, for the children not yet being born, not having any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to the election might stand, not of works, but of him who calls." There's a reason God calls each and every one of us. There's a purpose, and it's not by works. Those two words that he was born to say, Jacob I love, Esau I hate. So what shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? No, certainly not. For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion. So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. That's why I say God shows mercy and he's a merciful God, but it's up to him to show mercy to the ones that he wanna show mercy to, not each and every one. So, but we can't ask the creator of all of creation, why do he do certain things? We would be like Job did. God does what he does because he is God. It's beyond our wisdom and understanding and comprehension. When we honestly and squarely face our faults and weaknesses, we recognize or probably sympathize with the public in needing mercy. Recognizing a great gulf between God's holiness and our own spiritual proudness that when you can see the awesomeness of God and we see ourselves in our faults and weaknesses. Don't we sometimes at home, in our own minds, say, God, be merciful unto me and see our... You see what I'm saying? Why would you choose me? We're thankful for God's grace in choosing us, but we see it couldn't have been nothing of us and nothing we could have done. On the other hand, in actual living, we may fall into the Pharisees category without realizing it, and it's many of us that do that. We end up thinking that we're special, looking down on others, thinking now that we are somebody, not realizing or forgetting it was God that gave us the power to get wealth and to get wherever we are. It was by God's grace. If it wasn't for God's grace, we would be like somebody else. We didn't do any of this. It was God who made the way. It was God who empowered all this. Another subheading here we can look at is the unyielding stricture of the Pharisaical rules. Have you ever had somebody that's not pliable? when I say power, but in other words, they're such a legalist. You know, that's why, you know, with my grandchildren, I'm more lax or whatever, where the parents may be more strict with them or whatever, because I've raised my kids or whatever, and grandparents normally are more merciful to the children than the parents are, because that's discipline in their area. I'm trying to make a thing, an understanding here that Not that you don't know about law or enforce law or whatever. You learn through experience or whatever a little bit more way to get. get more out of a person than an individual. You know, usually after you raise your set of children, with the grandchildren, you're more better at it. You're more experienced at it or whatever. With the Pharisees, it's like people fresh into religion or people actually not born again. Some Christians are not good at being Christians. They're too strict. They're too hard on other Christians. Those are the ones that bite knowing one another. That's how the Pharisees was. That's why I told you, I didn't write it down, it was some long verses, but Luke the 13th chapter, the 10th through the 17th verse. And he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath, and behold, there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity, 18 years, and was bowed down together and could in no wise lift up herself. And when Jesus saw her, he called her to him and said unto her, Woman, thou art loose from thine infirmity. And he laid his hands on her and he Immediately, she was made straight and glorified God. And the rule of the synagogue answered with indignation because that Jesus had healed on the Sabbath day. And she said unto the people, there are six days in which men ought to work in them. Therefore, come and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day. The Lord then answered and said, Thou hypocrite, doest not each one of you on the sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall and lead him away to watering? And ought not this woman being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan had bound be loose these eighteen years? and be loose from this bond of the Sabbath day. And when he said these things, all of his adversaries was ashamed, and all that the people rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by him. Grace always puts law to shame and to humility, a legalist, a person that's being legally bound by the law. Because as the bondwoman, Hagar, and Sarah's son, they couldn't coexist together. It's the same as the flesh and the spirit at odds with one another, fighting one another. And I'm not contradicting myself in what I say is you can't get rid of grace and law that they mirror one another. It's not a contradiction here. We have to see the spiritual implications of what I'm saying here. These were legalists telling the Lord of glory, God himself, Jesus Christ, who created the world, who had given the words that they didn't even know who he was. They're rebuking him for healing on the Sabbath. A woman that Satan had bound, he had loosed her from her infirmities. Isn't it good to do, lawful to do good on the Sabbath day? Isn't that why the, see he did this on purpose. because they were legally saying, you can't do this and do that on the Sabbath. They had set so many laws and things and borders and walls around the Sabbath. I allow people to learn. That's why a lot of people didn't realize when I was, they said, well, you're a Sabbath day keeper, huh? You don't do this and you don't do that. I try to get away from Brown and not even explain it to them because, like I said, I don't strive. You wanted to learn, I could have taught you, but you spoke it from a pedimentary position. There are those that work on Saturday, there's those that have jobs that they work on Saturday or whatever, and I hadn't condemned any of those. Some of their best businesses on a Saturday or whatever. If God had loosed them from that, if he had put them in a position where they didn't have to work and they grew out of that, I would tell you more blessings. It's like Paul with slavery, when he returned a missive back to slavery. He sent him back to his master. Jesus didn't deal with the thing, and Paul was saying, if you're a slave, you're God's slave anyhow, you're a bond-servant of Jesus Christ, but if he was under and dispersed, so Paul sent him back to his master, told him not to run away. That was in the letter of Philemon. In the issue where Jesus was talking about the Sabbath, the woman being loose, and they wanted to prosecute him and say they knew he wasn't of God or whatever because he had healed on the Sabbath. We see ourselves when we come to Christ in bondage to the world and things, to all kinds of things. And if Jesus loosed us, that woman had been trying to be looser of that infirmity for many a year, and Jesus loosed her on the Sabbath day from the bondage she had. If he see fit to loose us from something, who am I to condemn a good work? So if somebody, you know, and like I said, I can't condemn a person if God had, I don't tell somebody, well quit your job because you're a Sabbath day keeper and you can't work on the sacrament. Well then, I'm doing something God hadn't commissioned me to do. If he freed him, he freed him. Sometimes we grow loose in God and sometimes we're in certain conditions that we have to remain. So this woman was loose and now they're persecuting Jesus. About this and talking to Jesus about it, this was one of the few miracles Jesus performed in a synagogue. And his healing of that woman and his Sabbath day miracle pitches the purpose of God's plan of salvation. The Sabbath incident recorded in the book of Luke, the sixth chapter, verses 1 to 11, involves Jesus' lordship over the Sabbath. While this illustration I'm telling you about the woman that was stooped over or whatever, it illustrates its meaning. In other words, if you're nice enough to your ox or your ass or whatever animal you have that's tied up and you allow that animal to get loose to go eat something or to drink water or whatever. Well, if this person is bound or tied up to have some handicap or infirmity and I loosed him from that on the Sabbath day, wasn't I being merciful in doing something, a good deed? So the meaning of the Sabbath day that he was Lord of the Sabbath, the meaning was God is a very merciful God. If I have the ability to heal you now, why would I withhold healing from you? So he healed him because he was a merciful God. The Sabbath day is a holy convocation according to Leviticus 23 and three. And Jesus uses it to teach us God's way. Jesus uses this illustration. That's why he healed on the Sabbath. The Sabbath service purpose is not for entertainment. It's not for me to entertain you or to be entertained, as so many churches seem to stress. And that's why we have a lot of entertainment-based church saying it's the Lord's Day and we're having this service and this and that day. But it's for vital and joyful worship of the one true God. The reason y'all should be looking for the Sabbath is not that we go socially do this and entertainment and singing and all these other things, but it's the Word of God, hearing the Word of God, coming to offer our blessings to God, to hearing God and giving God a day of worship and praise. This is a day that God had created, and He had hollered that day. He had made that day holy and set it aside that we would worship and worship Him in spirit and truth and not forsake assembling together on that day. That's why we're looking forward to that Sabbath day. It's an honoring and praising and thanking God for all that He does. Now Jesus' adversaries closely watched him, especially on the Sabbath, in hopes of trapping him, that he would break in. So have you ever had people that's always trying to catch you in something, catch you in something you're saying or something you're doing or whatever? Well, in their unbelief and perversity, those blind leaders failed to understand that they were condemning Jesus Christ. He was the original lawgiver. This person that you're condemning of breaking the Sabbath is the one that created and made the Sabbath. So who has the misunderstanding of spirituality? Who doesn't see the law? That's why it says, search the scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life. They was missing the spirit of the law. That's why it says the spirit give it life. So you're not merciful that that woman that couldn't walk without stooping over. You didn't see any people that has this curvature of the spine or whatever that are stooped over. That I said loose or let her go, that I called this demon out of her and now she has the ability to walk and praise God and you not merciful to care about someone else. You care about your laws and things more than you care about the individual. They were supposed to be religious leaders of God's chosen people, and it exacerbated their sin. The sin, that's what happens nowadays with the people, our leaders in the churches and in politics. And like I say, that's the problem with religion and politics are uniting together, and it's creating a monster that's destroying this nation. This is a Leviathan that God has to break. That's why it says we've got to throw away our idols and our images and everything. God is busy working here. We see the loosening of Satan's hands. We can see, we can feel This thing is coming. You feel strength coming. We're getting stronger every day. God's people are getting stronger. They see the sun coming much brighter. It's like me sitting at home today. It had rained. It was starting. I said, oh man, we're not going to have church today. We're not going to be able to have what we want to have on Wednesday. It's going to rain in the cold front. And I looking for the sun. And as the sun, I'm hoping for the sun to break through or whatever. I can feel this because the hearing of God's word, when I can preach and teach God's word, when I could deliver God's word to somebody in there, if just one person could hear it and it does them good, thank God for that. So the preaching and teaching of God's word, the loosening of souls, the loosening of the bonds that ties is what gives me joy. It's to set forth people free, to set the captives free. Instead, the Pharisees burdened the people with humanly reasons, restrictions, and taboos. You can do this, you can't do this. You can do that. How many times have I stood here and said, oh, you can't do this on a Saturday. You can't do this on a Sunday. No, you be led by the Spirit of God, and God has set you free. Eventually, God will loosen those ties that bound you. All the things that has you bound, you'll see your strength coming unto you. You'll see you getting more free in God. You're seeing that you can talk better than other people. You're spiritually stronger. All the time, growing in the graces, ever increasing faith, but faith has words. You have to, it's something we need to be doing, something we do. This healing is one of seven performed on the Sabbath. Jesus' adversary closely scrupulizing him, trying to get him or catch him breaching the law. A person's Sabbath conduct was the Jewish religious leader's litmus test. That's because they were thrown into captivity for violating the Sabbath day. That's the 70 years captivity came. But they didn't have a spiritual understanding of why that came forth. That's why we have to be as Hagar was. We can't go forth and drink the water of the well of life until God opens our eyes to see. that he opens our understanding to understanding and give us knowledge and wisdom to go forth. And only through his word, only through prayer does that come. And it's by God's grace and mercy that shed upon us select ones get to do these things. His mercy is shed upon us. Their tests followed their burdensome, humanly reasoned Sabbath ruse, 1 John 5 and 3. Christ loosed a woman from Satan's bonds on the Sabbath day. And we see 1 John 5 and 3 says this, for this is the love of God that we keep his commandments and his commandments are not grievous unto us. Remember I told you a law and grace existed and law and mercy existed in the same place. Now they're saying they keep his commandments and they're not grievous unto them. It says, for the true love of God is this, that we habitually keep His commandments and remain focused on His precepts. In other words, this is what we do all the time, but there are exceptions sometimes, right? There are things happen, there are reasons why we do certain things or whatever. So we love God's law and we wanna keep God's law, but we're not perfect and we can't keep those laws. the spirit help it up so we have a advocate with the father so if we're doing things or whatever we're not going to let what you say there's no condemnation in christ jesus i'm not going to let you worry me or whatever because i'm a child of god and my father knows and sees and he knows what i'm going through and what i have to do you have to explain to your father and my father knows and everything and i pray and talk to my father and he's leading and guiding me says it and his commandments and his precepts are not difficult for us and not difficult. The living says loving God means doing what he tells us to do. And really, that isn't hard at all. It's quite easy that we do that what God gives us to do. It's no burden unto us. So Christ is not gonna put anything on us that we can't bear. But it was them that making the Sabbath regretful and hateful. And there's people nowadays, untaught, unlearned, with a wrong theology that looks at the Sabbath the wrong way because they hadn't been taught. They hadn't learned. they hadn't received Christ. Christ doesn't go a contradict against his word and his way. So you must not be under the understanding if you allow somebody to bring doubt and these things in your mind. That's why Paul was sent to the Gentiles saying, let nobody judge you in food, eat or drink or any Sabbath day or whatever. Some people say you shouldn't eat this and you shouldn't eat that. It's unclean. Okay, well, God moves all of that away. I can understand. I'm not going to allow you to judge me. I'm being led by the Spirit of God, and I'm free in Christ Jesus. Now, their rules against healing on the Sabbath gave them the ammunition to attack, despite His compassionate healings. And Jesus later points out that a person is far more important than an animal, as I was telling you. And those people Humiliated because the people understood Jesus and whatever that verse I read to you there And it says and when he had said these things all his adversaries were ashamed and all the people rejoiced for all the glorious thing that was done by him and See, because the many understood Jesus, and He spoke this with authority, and they understand because they can empathize with the people. That's why it says, the public and sinners will go in, whereas the children of the kingdom will be cast out. It's so many hard-hearted religious people. They get mad when good triumphs. When the right thing is done, they're trying to suppress the truth in unrighteousness. And instead of saying, I was wrong, you repent and turn from it. They hold a grudge, and they was getting madder and madder at Jesus, instead of saying, you know what? We had this all wrong. I said the wrong thing. I misunderstood. I did wrong. See, if a person repents of their sin, okay it's nothing wrong with saying i misunderstood this i misspoke i'm sorry but if you don't confess your sin he can't forgive you that's it if you don't confess i've been wrong brother i said the wrong thing to you i did wrong i and a lot of us too proud to say that we just let it pass and everything returns to normal okay but you still got this stick in the mud over here because Repentance and being a Christian cause are turning away from that. You can't turn away unless you confess. It says he's faithful to forgive you unless you've done wrong. That's why you admit a person's sins to them. Unless a person turns and admit being wrong. When Peter asks how many times shall you forgive your brother? He says seven times seven. Okay, if Peter forgiving, if you forgiving a brother, what you're doing is remitting their sins back to them. But if they're not asking forgiveness, if they're not confessing those faults and those transgressions against God, they're storing up wrath for the Day of Wrath. That wickedness and grudges and hatred and bitterness builds in them because they hadn't confessed to God that I'm your child. I did something wrong. I misunderstood. I did the wrong thing. I committed a sin. Forgive me. And ask my brother, say, if you ask your brother to forgive you. If you have art against your brother before you come to church and doing all these things, you go make up with your brother first. Go confess this. So it's our actions where God shows mercy because look, that's my child trying to make this right. He's trying to make it right. He's not going trying to hide it. If a child keep hiding his wrong and hiding, you're not looking for this to be corrected because until it comes out in the open, everything done in the dark, it's gonna come to the light one day. And now that it did come in the light and you had hid it, See, St. Kane hid his sin. He didn't confess his sin. He says, I am my brother's keeper. He didn't confess that he murdered his brother. The hypocrisy and the foolishness of religious leaders is obvious, and that's why I say this is a hypocritical nation. We're a hypocritical religion, and we have large problems that only God can solve, and He's in the process of solving them now. Now, as a result, Jesus' opponents are humiliated. Okay, I'm going to read the second thing. Shame will always be the result of sin. If a person does not repent of his opposition to Christ, shame will be his reward. When sin and its curses are dealt with properly, good people rejoice. Dealing with the sin in a lenient and a lackadaisical way does not bring true happiness. Just like I was saying, until they deal with January the 6th, until they deal with this, if they keep dealing with it the way it is, it's not gonna be any healing in the nation. It's not gonna be a right way for this nation to come up against because that was a great sin. It was a great transgression against democracy and the nation itself. If we transgress God, if we transgress our brother, it can't heal properly unless God always talking about bandaging and healing the wound. If you receive a broken leg or something and it doesn't heal back up the right way, and you don't place and set those bones, each joint, fitting it back together, it's gonna heal crookedly. You're gonna walk crookedly, or you're gonna stand, something's gonna be crooked at that. The only way to correct that is gonna be a horrible thing, a horrible thing then, because you have to re-break that injury to reset it right, and it's gonna be harder because of the way it had grown over that. it had festered over these things. David writes, blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven and whose sin is covered. When you cover someone's sins by forgiving and forgiving transgressions, God counts it as a blessing unto you. But not when you cover your own sins. He said, who who cover their sins shall not prosper. Now we're talking about not humiliating or bringing something out in the opening. I think the people nowadays in Twitter and all those things are saying, throw and shed towards someone. It's a lot of people that love to put people's stuff out in the opening. Anyone ever told you a secret or said something, they were ashamed and embarrassed about it or whatever, but you didn't tell everybody or whatever, you just kept it under wraps, you covered it up or whatever. But now the newspaper and the media, they love to expose or uncover people's sins and transgressions. Isn't there a lot in your life? Have you ever done things you wish that God would cover up and never expose to anyone? That's what God does. He says, it's thrown in the sea of forgetfulness and it's not held against you. That's repentant of sin. That's sin that's changing and transforming. That's not iniquity or anything. That's not, like I say, you would have to stay under teaching or whatever. I can't redo that in five minutes here. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity. All of these things that David is saying in the psalm, it says, when sin is forgiven and overcome, people find true joy. Now, certainly we would never publicly proclaim our righteousness in church, would we? Yet it's so easy, it's almost impossible not to put someone else down. People love putting one another down. That's part of this culture, putting each other down. Being high above somebody, talking light of somebody's intellect, what they know, or the way they say things, or the way they do, or the way they dress, or whatever. This person might not pray as good as this other person. This person might not preach as good as this other person. This person drives this kind of car or whatever. This person lives over here. You understand what I'm saying? This person dresses this way or this person is his size or something of his looks or whatever. We live in a critical society that judges everything about people and that's what makes our churches a dress parade now. That's all we talk about is how much we make. how much we have or what we're doing and the clothes our children have on, our fancy dresses or earrings. It's putting others down, raising ourselves up, social standing on the job. And the churches, the preachers are so competitive, calling each other doctor and apostle or bishop and all these different names and things. It's crazy, you know, it's just crazy. We do these things and the church is doing. This lifts us unmercifully above another brother deriding one's faults, laughing at each other's calamities rather than supporting the weak. How many of us supports he that's weak? He that can't sing as well as we can sing. He that doesn't have this. He that is worse off than we. That's what Jesus Christ teaches, supporting the weak and the unfortunate among us, the poor, the oppressed. How many of us are partnering with those things? Is there a difference between this and the classic Pharisees? So I say we have Pharisees of the day. We're continuing in our Phariseeism. What I want to go from right now is do we bite and devour one another? I'm gonna have to finish that Wednesday. If we meet Wednesday, I'll have to finish that Wednesday weekend.