Making Your Own Heart Clean (Part 1)

Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Abendroth. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the scriptures, verse by verse, with No Compromise.

Matthew chapter 12. We're looking at a few cameos of Jesus before we get into our new series this fall. This is cameo number two in the book of Matthew, the gospel of Jesus Christ according to Matthew.

What I want you to do two weeks ago today and then next week is to be impressed with Jesus. I want you to see Jesus in the Bible and say things like, wow, nobody's like him. Nobody talks like him. Nobody teaches like him.

Nobody does what he does. He's worthy of worship. There's no one like Jesus. And what a joy it is for me to preach Jesus Christ to you again today, talking about my favorite subject, the Lord of the church.

I read this week where a person said you blink 25 times every minute. Each blink takes about one-fifth of a second. Therefore, if you take a 10-hour car trip, averaging 40 miles an hour, you will drive 20 miles with your eyes closed.

And can you believe it? I just saw the new data that came out, the worst drivers, one to 200. And at the very bottom, I kid you not, I think it's Allstate who put it out, at the bottom, number 200 of the worst drivers.

Out of all the cities in the United States, if you had to number them from one to 200, at the very bottom, you would have Worcester, Massachusetts. At 199, you have Boston. And sometimes when we're not careful, you go through your life with your eyes closed to the magnificent Christ Jesus seen in the Bible.

So I want you to see Him for who He is and what He's done here in the text. I love to preach about Jesus Christ because there's no one like Him. Oh, yes, He's fascinating, yes, He's interesting. But I like to show you because He gives object lessons.

We also see that He lives the perfect life, and I need a perfect life credited to my account. I need more than just God to look at me as if I've never sinned. I need to have God look at me as if I've always obeyed.

And we see that very thing in our passage today, how Jesus Christ is the Lord of the Sabbath, Lord of humans, and Lord of lords. So what we're going to do this morning is we're going to look at Matthew chapter 12, verses 9 through 14.

Maybe we'll go a little farther if we have time. And we'll take a look at Jesus Christ in what we call the gospel of the King. But before we do enter into our exposition found in verse 9, let me read verses 1 through 8 so you can see the context.

As you know, the big context in Matthew is Jesus, out of all the kings kinging, He's the King. Out of all the lords lording, He's the Lord. And He's got the kingly, our royal pedigree. There's a kingly battle for who the Messiah is early on with Herod, with Satan.

He gives a kingly address on the Sermon of the Mount. He shows how powerful He is as King in chapters 8, 9, and 10. This is the gospel of the King. And here He's going to show how He's King of the Sabbath, Matthew chapter 12, verses 1 through 8 for context.

At that time, Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to Him, Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.

He said to them, and you'll notice He's going to say this twice, to the Bible teachers, to the Bible scholars, to those that should know better and do know better. He said to them, Have you not read what David did when he was hungry and those who were with him, how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests?

Or have you not read in the law how on the Sabbath the priest and the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. And if you had known what this means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice, you would have not condemned the guiltless.

For the Son of Man, the Lord's favorite description of Himself, is Lord of the Sabbath. These men are trying to put Him in the examination area and we're going to expose Him for who He is. We think He's a fraud, this Jesus, and now Jesus is going to turn the table on them and move them from the judge's bench, as one man said, to the prisoner's dock.

And it's going to be bad for the Pharisees, so much so the old scholar A .T. Robertson said, the poor, petty, fogging Pharisees are left in the pit. Let's watch this great illustration of the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

We have Awana Council time here, don't we? Where we bring in a teacher to teach a certain lesson, to teach a truth, so the kids can understand the spiritual truth. Here is the all-time greatest Awana Council time.

Jesus Heals on the Sabbath

Verse 9. Just how royal is Jesus? Let's find out. I think you'll be impressed. He, Jesus, verse 9 of Matthew 12, went on from there, we don't know exactly the time, maybe it's the very next Sabbath, and entered their synagogues.

So we're going from one Sabbath incident where there's, can you eat on the Sabbath, to can you heal on the Sabbath, except this time Jesus is going to be pushing the envelope. He's going to cause the problem and cause the issue.

And He's going to practice what He preaches. And He's going to talk about deeds of mercy are appropriate for Sabbath. And look at the text again. Remember, one of my all-time best pieces of advice I could give you, when you read the Bible, read it slowly.

Take a look, look at the words, they're important. Every single word is important. He went on from there and entered their synagogue. The Jews would gather at a place of assembly to worship. There's lots of community stuff going on there, of course, but mainly to worship.

And He goes into their synagogue. It's their home turf. Home field advantage, Pharisees. Verse 10. And a man was there with a withered hand. Now, NES does this. The Greek does it, but ESV doesn't. I wish it did.

There should be the word behold there, and behold. And behold, Matthew likes to do that. Hey, take a look, focus in. It's like you're watching a football game with 80 ,000 people, and then you've got the camera, focuses in on one person.

I remember when we'd go maybe to one Celtics game a year. It happens to be the Celtics-Laker game. But we would go there, and people try to do things to get attention so they can be on the Jumbotron, right?

And they're doing all kinds of different things. And the focus of the camera zooms down in to this man with the withered hand. How unlike the Holy Spirit compared to what we would do. We wouldn't want to talk about someone who had maybe a deformity or something physically wrong with them.

We would be too polite. We wouldn't want to embarrass them. But the Holy Spirit through Scripture draws the attention. Look, at center stage, there's a man with a withered hand. Matthew doesn't even give us a verb in the original Greek.

It's just translated, and look, a man. He's got a withered hand. Luke tells us it's his right hand. Based on the Greek tense, he wasn't born like this. There's been some disease, some accident, something that has made his hand wither to have some paralysis, to have some atrophying.

The language of this is his hand used to have vitality, but now it's dry. It's shriveled. If you go to California for the summer and come back, you have certain plants that haven't been watered. They droop.

Well, they're actually brittle. But they're drooping. His hand was droopy. It's dried up, lifeless, shriveled. It's used in Matthew of a dry land. And just think, this poor guy, what do you do if you can't use your right hand?

You can't work. It's hard to work without your right hand. Tradition, not the Bible, but tradition, a traditional book, the Gospel according to Hebrews, said that the man said to Jesus, I was a stonemason seeking a livelihood with my hands.

I pray thee, Jesus, restore my health that I may not beg meanly for my food. And so Matthew says, look, the spotlight's on this man with a withered hand. And he can't work. And I think the Pharisees have actually brought him in for a plant to defame Jesus.

This guy can't earn. He can't work. He can't provide. I probably would write something like this. And look, the Pharisees are all in the synagogue. The big shots, the guys with the PhDs. I wonder what would happen this morning if at 1055 Tom Brady walked in and sat down right over there.

I wonder if a rock star came in and sat down right over here. I wonder if President Obama came in and sat in the back. I think we would all be saying, look at them. Did you see? Did you see that person?

Have we had anybody famous ever come to our church? I don't think we have. Maybe somebody that came second place in the Heisman Trophy. I think that's as good as we got. Here, it's not look at the Pharisees.

But as it is with God so often, look at the needy person. Look at the person with this need that can't work. Verse 10 goes on to say, and they asked him. Right? It's all set up. One thing you don't want to do is ask Jesus questions.

Because you're usually going to get questions back. Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? Why did they ask him? The text says, so that they might accuse him. They're taking the initiative. They want to discredit Jesus.

They want to kill Jesus is what they want to do. Now, the rabbis had rules found in Torah, found in the Old Testament for the Sabbath. But then they, like self-righteous people like to do, like to add rules and more rules and more rules and more rules.

And one of the rules they added, that wasn't in the Bible, is that you couldn't try to heal somebody who was sick on the Sabbath unless they were about ready to die. So if they're about ready to die, you could help them.

But anything less, you've got to wait until the next day. So this guy's not going to die. He's had this problem with a deformed, withered hand for a long time. These Pharisees don't want information. They're trying to shoot Jesus.

The text says in Luke 6, a parallel passage, the Pharisees and scribes were watching him closely. They were spying. They were watching with sinister intent that they might accuse him. John Wycliffe translates it, they aspied in him.

They were spying on him, watching. The Greek text would tell us, over and over and over, over. We know he can heal. Will he? And if he will, we've got him. They're not thinking, will he be merciful to this poor guy who's got the withered hand and can't work.

But we want to use this to kill him. Before I go any farther, did you know that Jesus pulls out his largest guns to attack self-righteous people? Jesus launches the patriot missiles, not at those who knew they were sinful, not at the tax collectors, not as those who are prostitutes, but those people who, like these scribes and Pharisees, were self-righteous religious people.

Why would Jesus go after the self-righteous? Answer, because self-righteousness is poison. It's toxic. The opponents of Jesus were the pious. The opponents of Jesus were the religious. The opponents of Jesus were the moral.

And the same thing is true today. The world war that's waged by Jesus is not against people who knew they were scumbags, who knew they were lowlifes. If you had to read the whole New Testament and say, who's the biggest disaster in all of the New Testament?

I wonder who you would pick. Here's who I would pick. Ruler asked Jesus, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus said to him, why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.

You know the commandments. Do not commit adultery. Do not murder. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. Honor your father and mother. And he said, here's the tragedy of tragedies in all the Bible. He said, all these things I have kept from my youth.

The damning doctrine of self-righteousness. I hate sin in my life. I hate all the sin in my life. But the sin in my life that I hate the most is self-righteousness. See, friends, because if you are self-righteous, you don't need anybody else's righteousness.

There's no need for Christ's righteousness when you've got your own. Think of the worst people that you can imagine in the world. Are you like them? Are you better than them? Think about terrorists in Syria.

ISIS people, they behead and crucify people in front of children. Think of them. Think of abortion doctrines. Cutting up babies in the womb for money. Think of heroin addicts. Think of people in Hollywood that commit suicide.

Think of anyone and then say to yourself, are you better? Are you better? And you know what my gut reaction is when I ask myself the question is, I am better. I don't do those things. I'm not like that.

And you can just hear us with the self-righteousness that invades a person. In Romans 1, they were filled with all manner of righteousness. Evil, covetous, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice.

They are gossip, slanders, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents. They are foolish. They are faithless. They are heartless. They are ruthless. And everybody says, Amen.

Look at them. And then Paul says in Romans 2, Therefore, you have no excuse, oh man. Every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another, you condemn yourself. Because you, the judge, practice the very same things.

These self-righteous scribes and Pharisees come up to Jesus. They've got their own righteousness. Thank you very much. And for those that think they have their own righteousness, they are on the receiving end of the blistering of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

How unlike these scribes and Pharisees are compared to Jesus. Levi made a great feast in his house and there's a large company of tax collectors and others reclining at the table with him. The Pharisees and the scribes grumbled at his disciples saying, Why do you eat with tax collectors and sinners?

Jesus answered them, Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Think about this. Let's think about the Reformation for a second.

The Reformation's battle was not primarily fought over, do we sin? Both sides would recognize the sinfulness of sin, the holiness of God, the justice of God. But where Luther and Calvin wanted to separate from others was not over were we sinful, but how do we deal with the sin?

Can we deal with our sin alone? Can we cooperate with God and deal with sin? Synergistic, S-Y-N? Or does God alone have to do it? And if there's any vestige of morality and virtue and righteousness, self-righteousness in us, in you, then you don't need to think monergistically where God alone has to do the work.

So much so that you don't even need Jesus to be crucified for you. Because if you can get to heaven on your own, what a waste of a life that was to kill Jesus. Paul even says it in Galatians chapter 2, I do not nullify the grace of God for if justification were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.

Inflated self-adequacy, the scribes have, the Pharisees have, self-righteousness has. I can do it on my own, I don't need Jesus. Charles Spurgeon said, The greatest enemy to human souls is, what would you say?

The greatest enemy to human souls is the self-righteous spirit which makes men look to themselves for salvation. What damns more? Gross immoral sin or self-righteousness? I've told you the story many times.

I remember when I was a seminary student at Master's Seminary, and we had to go to evangelize door to door. I don't know if I've ever been more nervous in my life. So you just go to the door, you take a deep breath, and you knock with force.

Okay, nobody's home, gotta go. Knock on the door. Hi, my name is Mike Avendroth, I'm with Grace Church. We're here to tell you a little bit about a concert that we're having to talk about Jesus Christ and how you can be forgiven of sins.

You know, are you interested? The first guy that I remember, we visited several, but I remember a big guy, a Harley Davidson guy, a brood of a guy. And I thought, man, I'm so dead. I mean, he's just got like a 12-gauge pump in his hip or something.

I'm just blotto, I'm gone. And with another guy, I thought, I'll use him as a human shield. Hey, come on in, no problem, you want a beer? Ezekiel 4, 9 beer maybe, I don't know. I thought, you know what, this is so easy.

God has ordained my steps that I might walk in them. House number 2, screen door was there. It was a grandma coming. I go, she looks like my grandma. I love like my grandma's sugar cookies. She's going to just invite us not for beer, but cookies.

I love my grandma. Only she could take margarine and put them in cookies and make the cookies good. Margarine is awful. Oleo is awful. She came to the door and said, Hi, my name is Mike Abendroth with Grace Church.

Here to talk to you about forgiveness found in Christ Jesus and invite you to one of our concerts. And the door slammed and the anger came and she said, I'm a Catholic. Now whether Catholic, whether Lutheran, whether Episcopalian or Baptist, the door slammed was, I've got my own righteousness.

Thank you. I've got my own righteousness. If you don't know you're sick, you don't go to the doctor. But if you know you're sick, you know you need to get help. I'm not getting better on my own. I have no righteousness.

I need righteousness. If I'm going to stand before God blameless, if I'm going to stand before God with no sin, I can't even stand before the holiness of God with one sin, not one sin. I need them all covered, everyone washed and cleansed.

I need someone else's righteousness because my own righteousness is a bad fig leaf of religion and virtue. I'm clean cut, therefore I go to heaven. I don't look like you, therefore I go to heaven. Something wicked this way comes.

No wonder God hates free will. No wonder God despises this idea where I am not touched by the fall in my will and I will by my own free will allow God to work in my life. I'll take the first step and if I do that, then God can do the rest.

No wonder that is an awful way to think about salvation and not in a sovereign grace way. If I were to give you a million dollars today and one year off and you were to go around the world and I will give you one more million when you complete the task, I want you to go around the world and find 100 worst, deceptive, deceitful things in the world.

Get a little taxonomy chart, a little classification. One through 100 and find out the worst deceivers, the worst deceptions, the worst lies. Go all around the world, you get a million dollars. Be very careful, work hard for your money.

There's another million once you give me the list. 100 deceitful things. What would you find? Here's what you should do. You should leave at the top number one blank because we already know the answer.

The heart is desperately wicked, deceitful above. Say it. All else.

We're located on Route 110 in West Boylston, Massachusetts. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400. The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.