The Trap of Legalism

1. INTRODUCTION
1. (Renovation Church Logo)
2. Good morning. My name is David Sorn. I’m the Lead Pastor here at Renovation Church.
1. As most of you know we are growing very quickly here and not only running out of room, but we have a heart to reach the metro around us for Christ.
1. So we are in the process of starting a 2nd location in Shoreview next month…
2. And as I’ve been telling you, we are going to start a 3rd location this Fall…that will be “SOMEWHERE”…to be revealed.
1. …and we’ll be recruiting a launch team of a couple hundred people for that this summer.
3. And so today…I’m excited to introduce to you our location pastor for our 3rd location:
1. Please welcome to the stage….Nate Gustafson
2. QUESTION ONE: Tell us about yourself & your family

(Nate’s family photo)

1. QUESTION TWO: Tell us about your ministry experience
1. (Back to church logo)
2. QUESTION THREE: Tell us what excites you the most about this
3. Thanks!
1. I’ve actually known Nate for 20 years now as we went to Seminary together, and I know he’s going to do such a fantastic job leading that site.
4. THE PASSAGE
1. All right, let’s jump into our passage.
2. Go ahead and grab a Bible
1. Luke 5:33-39
2. Page 703
1. We are finishing our series on Luke chapter 5 today, and I’m going to even go a little bit into chapter 6 (gasp! I know!) as it will help us get a fuller picture of what Jesus is trying to teach.
1. If you weren’t here last week, Jesus picked a sinful, hated tax collector (Levi) to be one of his disciples, and then Levi threw a party with a bunch of his sinful friends and Jesus went with to meet those friends.
1. And so the conversation in our passage today takes place at that party, and the Religious Establishment is going to continue to try and trip up Jesus with questions.
3. (Luke 5:33-39) – NIV
4. 33 They said to him, “John’s disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking.”

34 Jesus answered, “Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while he is with them?35 But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast.”

36 He told them this parable: “No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. Otherwise, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. 37 And no one pours new wine into old ns. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. 38 No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. 39 And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, ‘The old is better.’”

1. METAPHORS & LEGALSIM
1. (The Trap of Legalism)
2. Let’s start by unpacking those metaphors
3. What is Jesus talking about when he says no one puts a new piece of garment on an old one?
1. Well, clothes often shrink after the first time you wash them, so if you use a new, unshrunk piece of cloth to patch up an old garment…
1. …as soon as you wash your garment, the new part (the patch) is going to shrink, which is going to tear a huge hole in the old garment it’s now attached to
1. You can’t fit the new onto the old.
2. It doesn’t work.
4. His metaphor about the wineskins makes the same point.
1. Back in Jesus’ day, people mostly used animal skins to hold their water or wine.
1. However, over time, these skins would wear out and lose their elasticity.
1. And you couldn’t pour new wine into an old wineskin….
1. …because new wine EXPANDS while it ferments, so if you poured new wine into an old brittle wineskin, the fermenting process would cause the old skin to break, and your new wine would leak all over the place.
5. And Jesus is saying the same thing with both metaphors:
1. What He’s bringing with the New Covenant, the New Testament (his system of grace) is not meant to fit within their old systems.
1. Jesus is not coming to start a reform movement within Judaism
2. He’s not coming to patch up their ways.
1. The Gospel…His grace and forgiveness would never fit into their ‘wineskin of rules and regulations.’
1. He’s doing something new.
6. Now, in fairness, the Pharisees of Jesus’ day had distorted the actual teachings of the Old Testament.
1. Yes, in the Old Testament, there were a lot more rules and sacrifices, but even the sacrifices were meant to be a symbol of God’s grace.
1. The animal was receiving God’s just wrath instead of the deserving sinner…it was all a symbol of God’s grace.
1. Just like Jesus is our new sacrificial lamb.
2. But over time, the Pharisees had turned the laws of the OT into what we now call Legalism
1. Legalism is the idea that we need to create a bunch of extra rules, obey those rules, and then, and only then, we’ll earn God’s love.
1. And what Jesus is bringing is not a PATCH that can reform a system like that.
2. (License ---Biblical Christianity ---- Legalism Continuum)
7. And speaking of legalism, all throughout church history Christians have done pendulum swings between emphasizing legalism (‘Jesus will only accept me if I follow this list of dos and don’ts perfectly’)….
1. …and emphasizing license (saying ‘Jesus forgives me so I can live however I want’).
1. But Biblical Christianity is neither of those things – it says Jesus loves us unconditionally AND we are to walk in His ways.
2. And throughout the last 2,000 years, the church has seemed to struggle more with legalism
1. And even though, in the 21st century we’re seeming to struggle more with license…
1. …legalism still seems to lurk around.
2. POINT #1
1. And so, being that we have a passage on legalism, I want to look at 3 ways we still fall into the trap of legalism today
1. Here’s the first one:
2. 3 Ways We Fall Into the Trap of Legalism
3. #1: The radical love of God feels foreign to our life experience
1. …and thus we end up choosing to live as legalists instead
2. So in verse 33, the Pharisees complain that Jesus’ disciples aren’t fasting like they are
1. But Jesus says that his followers don’t need to fast while he the groom (his followers are the bride) is with them.
1. And no one fasts at a wedding!
1. Can you imagine that on a wedding invitation?
1. Bring a gift! And we’re fasting for dinner! No! It’s a time of celebration.
2. But the Pharisees can’t wrap their brain around his answers of love and grace and relationship
1. Because for them, God doesn’t work like that!
1. They’re fasting (twice a week even!) so they can EARN God’s love.
3. And now, it’s easy to take an off-ramp from the passage right here and say, “Pastor David, I got a lot of problems, but fasting too many times a week isn’t one of them…”
1. And yet, don’t our own hearts trick us into thinking that God is somehow MORE in love with us when we are obedient?
1. That’s how the Pharisees saw God.
2. Don’t our own hearts trick us into thinking that God loves us less when we struggle?
1. Even something as simple as reading the Bible.
1. You lose your YouVersion streak of days reading the Bible…and you feel this sense of shame…as if God’s love has dropped.
1. What is that?
1. That’s legalism: The idea that God’s love for you is dependent on how well you’re doing
3. But the Christian Gospel is this: IF you are a believer in Christ, as your level of faithfulness and obedience goes up and down throughout your life (move right hand up and down), that God’s love for you is constant (keep left hand constant) never changes.
1. If this next year you fall into sexual sin, develop an addiction to pain killers, and get divorced, God’s love for you is still here ( don’t move hand)
1. That doesn’t He wants that for you or is indifferent about it.
1. But his LOVE for you…his GRACE for you…is immovable.
2. If the following year, you break free of your substance addition, come back to church, and get remarried to your spouse, God’s love for you is still here (don’t move hand)
1. It’s one thing to intellectually understand that, it’s quite another thing entirely to live as if that’s really true.
1. This is point #1: The radical (and immovable) love of God feels foreign to our normal life experience.
1. It’s not how people tend to treat us.
2. For a lot of us, it’s not how we grew up.
1. It’s not how our (in many ways broken family relationships worked.
1. You did this (hand drops) and your family did this (hand drop)
2. Or it’s not how even “religion” worked for many you.
4. This is part of why Jesus uses intentionally uses the language of the bridegroom (an old-fashioned word for groom).
1. When someone has vowed, through the covenant of marriage, “for richer or poor, in sickness & in health, till death do us part”…
1. …you’re not spending all of your married life trying to earn their love and acceptance so they won’t leave you.
1. They’re committed to you: No matter what.
1. That’s the gospel! The love of God!
2. But many of us keep falling into this trap of legalism because legalism actually feels much more familiar to our normal life experience.
3. LEGALISTS ADD RULES
1. And unfortunately, our hearts fall into this trap of legalism in more than one way
1. 3 Ways We Fall Into the Trap of Legalism
2. #1: The radical love of God feels foreign to our life experience
3. #2: Adding extra rules makes us feel better
2. I want to show this to you in the next few verses, so let’s actually go to chapter 6 now.
1. Luke 6:1-5
2. Page 703
4. (Luke 6:1-5) – NIV
5. One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and his disciples began to pick some heads of grain, rub them in their hands and eat the kernels. 2 Some of the Pharisees asked, “Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”

3 Jesus answered them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 4 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.” 5 Then Jesus said to them, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

1. 3 Ways We Fall Into the Trap of Legalism
2. #1: The radical love of God feels foreign to our life experience
3. #2: Adding extra rules makes us feel better
4. So not only have the Pharisees already added extra rules to the Bible like “fasting twice a week,” but now they’re adding even more.
1. For instance, the Bible says we should not work on the sabbath (1 of the 10 commandments)
1. But the Pharisees said, “Yeah, but what IS work exactly?!”
1. So they defined 39 different kinds of “work.”
1. And this included things like carrying something or writing or cooking or tying knots…and all types of work
2. And they said if someone did ANY of these things on the sabbath they were now sinning against God!
5. And so what’s happening in this particular passage, is that the Pharisees are saying, that when Jesus and his disciples are picking some heads of grain from the field…they are actually reaping and harvesting…(and that’s one of our 39 types of working, so you are a Sabbath breaker!
1. Even though the Old Testament says explicitly in Deuteronomy you can walk through the fields and pick food with your own hands.
6. So what’s happening here?
1. Why have the Pharisees added so many rules?
1. And if you study Christian history, so much of our story, unfortunately, is a history of adding extra rules that aren’t in the Bible (just like the Pharisees).
1. From the mid-20th century’s obsession with don’t drink, dance, chew, or go with girls who do.
2. To other traditions of how you were supposed to dress in church, how confirmation was a “must,” or Sunday NIGHT worship was a “must,” and we could literally talk for hours about all of the rules we’ve added to the Bible over the years.
7. And as much as think we don’t do this anymore, I’m not sure it’s fully disappeared either.
1. We always have a way of subtly trying to tell each other how REAL, HOLY Christians should actually live.
1. Think about how people talk about raising Christian children. They say:
1. Real, Godly Christians should discipline their children like… (insert a rule)
2. Real, Godly Christians should HOMESCHOOL their children, real Christians send their kids to Christian School, real Christians send their kids to public school to reach people for Christ
2. And Social media is the worst when it comes to point #2
1. Because social media is full of lifestyle-shaming on all sorts of topics…
1. And unlike the Pharisees of 2,000 years ago who got virtue points by getting out there and following their law, in our culture today, you get virtue points just by posting about the issues…
2. We live in a world of pocket Pharisees.
1. You don’t even have to do anything to win virtue points.
1. Just start telling everybody else exactly what a good Christian should do (or goodness, even just telling everybody what they need to think about an issue), and you will apparently inherit the cultural crown of righteousness.
3. But the point of this section of chapter 6 is this:
1. We must be careful to never add rules that all Christians must live by if those rules are not in Scripture.
1. This is actually an important point of the Protestant Reformation: Sola Scriptura.
1. That means Scripture ALONE.
2. The Catholic Church isn’t the final say on how people should live.
3. And neither is the Baptist Church the final say on how people should live
4. And neither is the culture final say on how people should live.
1. The only thing that can tell us how every Christian should live…
1. …is the BIBLE ALONE!
2. But it’s so tempting to start adding extra rules for everyone because when you have extra rules, you start to feel like you’re a really GOOD Christian…
1. And you start to think, yes, God loves me because I vote the right way on that issue, I send my kids to the right type of school, and listen to the right type of music…I obey all the rules & check all the boxes.
3. But that’s not the Gospel
1. The Gospel is that you don’t need to keep impressing Him to earn his love, He already loves you!
8. LEGALISTS USE RULES TO FEEL SUPERIOR
1. There’s one more trap of legalism that Jesus addresses that we need to look at
1. 3 Ways We Fall Into the Trap of Legalism
2. #1: The radical love of God feels foreign to our life experience
3. #2: Adding extra rules makes us feel better
4. #3: We use rules to feel superior to others
2. Let’s read a few more verses in Luke 6
1. (Luke 6:6-11) – NIV
2. 6 On another Sabbath he went into the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was shriveled. 7 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. 8 But Jesus knew what they were thinking and said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Get up and stand in front of everyone.” So he got up and stood there.

9 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?”

10 He looked around at them all, and then said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so, and his hand was completely restored. 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.

1. 3 Ways We Fall Into the Trap of Legalism
2. #1: The radical love of God feels foreign to our life experience
3. #2: Adding extra rules makes us feel better
4. #3: We use rules to feel superior to others
5. Notice, firstly, that the Pharisees are basically stalking Jesus
1. They’re at the party at Levi’s… (even though they rebuked Jesus for being there!)
2. They’re somehow following him in the grainfields (“Oh, hello there!”) That’s crazy!!
3. And now, they’re stalking him, even at the synagogue.
1. Why…because legalists love to look down at those they perceive to be below them…
1. …because it feels so good to breathe in the feeling of being superior to other people. It’s like an addiction.
2. And so if you catch yourself tonight…just spending all your time talking about people who don’t do or believe as you do…
1. You might be struggling with this aspect of legalism…where you’re trying to feed your soul with your supposed superiority
6. So what’s happening in this particular section?
1. Once again, the Pharisees have added rules…one that says, “Healing a person is working on the sabbath”
1. First of all, that’s insane!
2. Second of all, again, not in the Bible.
2. But now, we see that these people are so blinded by their tradition and feelings of superiority that they can’t even rejoice when God does a miracle right in front of their eyes.
3. For example, this happens less and less as the years go by, but I’d say over 20 times since I started this church, I’ve watched as someone visits our church, and walks out before I even get on stage…
1. I find out why later…when they send us an angry email…
1. And they tell us that the way we’re doing the music, isn’t holy unto the Lord...because it’s not a hymn, and there is no organ.
1. As if the original disciples would have worshipped with an organ and hymnbooks…on the Sea of Galilee
2. I should probably just let these people go and shake it off, but I always want to run after them in the lobby and say, “Hey! Don’t you care what God’s doing here? And all the hundreds lives are being saved and radically changed?!”
1. But honestly, they wouldn’t care… just like the Pharisees didn’t care about the man’s hand being healed.
1. Because to them, the rule (and superiority they’ve supposedly gained by following that extra rule) is more important than God’s heart for people…
2. And throughout the history of the church, the church has often been unfaithful to Jesus’ true heart for lost people, and instead chosen an adulterous affair with tradition.
7. But the point Jesus is trying to make in these 3 passages we read is that his way is NEW.
1. It is different.
1. It is the way of grace and love.
1. And we are to walk in His grace…so we can give grace to the others around us.
1. Let me pray.