February 27 Sermon: Lord of the Sabbath

Consider these questions as we look at Luke 6:1-16:

1. How does the concept of the Sabbath, as described in this text, relate to both the creation account and the Ten Commandments?

2. What does the encounter with the Pharisees regarding plucking grain on the Sabbath reveal about their legalistic interpretation of the Sabbath law?

3. How does Jesus' response to the man with the withered hand challenge the Pharisees' understanding of the Sabbath and demonstrate his authority as the "Son of Man" and "lord of the Sabbath"?

Transcript:

The idea of the Sabbath is something that we are familiar with. Right there in the very first chapter of our Bibles we find the created order and how God instituted our seven day week in the way that he created everything in six days and then rested on the seventh day. We not only find this in the creation account but it is one of the Ten Commandments and when we find this command of sabbath rest there we find that this fourth commandment is connected back to the creation story. The keeping of the Sabbath was an important part of the rituals of the Old Covenant and by the time of Jesus, many additions to the law had come into being and many of them revolved around the idea of keeping the Sabbath. As I’ve mentioned in talking about the Pharisees in the past, they were known for not only desiring to keep the law but also making laws to help you keep the law. Now, I know many of us have memories of our parents or grandparents doing particular tasks on Saturday so they wouldn’t have to do them on Sunday. The example I always think of is people pealing potatoes for Sunday dinner so they wouldn’t have to do it on the Lord’s Day. While the people we know who did this might have been pretty strict about it, my guess is that no one would have considered it a sin, in and of itself, to not peel a potato on Saturday. Imagine if you told someone you didn’t peel a potato on Saturday and instead did it with other prep you were doing on Sunday and they told you that you needed to repent. That is pretty harsh and, as we know, no where in scripture does it say thou shall not peel a potato on the day before you take Sabbath rest. Now, I know my idea is a little silly here but I’m trying to convey the extreme nature to which the Pharisees had taken the keeping of the Sabbath.

‌The Sabbath was intended to provide rest for creation and to point to the coming Sabbath rest when salvation would come in the Messiah and all things would be restored. It was not meant to be a law to be expanded upon and to be so rigidly kept that you couldn’t feed your family or care for someone who was in need. Again, it was about the rest that our bodies needed and also about the rest that the people of God have in the presence of God.

‌Our time in the book of Luke the last few weeks has found us looking at encounters that Jesus is having with the Pharisees and as we saw when we read our passage for this morning we find that these interactions continue and once again we find that Jesus is more than up to the task of dealing with the legalism of the Pharisees.

‌This morning we are going to break from the norm a little and only have two mains points as we look at Jesus taking the Pharisees to school.

‌In the first section we are going to be looking at we see that Jesus defends the actions of his disciples as they acquire food on the Sabbath. The Pharisees see plucking a few heads of grain on the Sabbath as a violation of the fourth commandment but Jesus goes back into the stories of the Old Testament to defend what the disciples did.

‌Secondly, we find Jesus defending his own action of doing good for others on the Sabbath. The Pharisees just can’t leave Jesus alone and he goes right at the by healing someone on the Sabbath. He not only shows his power in the healing of the man with the withered hand but also shows the intent of the Sabbath was not about a law to keep but about bringing glory to God.

‌As so we land in the first Sabbath encounter Jesus has with the Pharisees as we look at verses 1 through 5.

‌Before we begin I want to call you back to what I’ve been saying about the way Luke is telling us the story of Jesus here in his gospel. We have seen a few interactions that Jesus has had with the Pharisees. They got upset with him for telling the paralytic that his sins are forgiven and Jesus showed his power and his divine nature by telling this man to rise and walk. Jesus also faced criticism for hanging out with sinners. As I said a few moments ago this section of Luke is a lot of back and forth between the accusations of the Pharisees and Jesus.

‌I’ve mentioned before that the way Luke is telling the story is not meant to give us the impression that this is all happening in a sequence of events over the course of a few days. Instead, he is putting these stories together to show us how Jesus has come to do a new thing and to show that the extreme legalism of the Pharisees is not in line with what the law of God actually calls the people of God to do.

‌And you can easily see my point in this here as we start out in verse one as he says on a Sabbath. It isn’t a few days after the previous encounter but Luke is making a point about the Pharisees and brings in this even to help us better understand Jesus and his teaching.

‌So, what are they getting so worked up about. Now, in the past I would look at this story and read about what the Pharisees are getting worked up about and be confused. Maybe your thought process worked like mine and you were not concerned about the Sabbath breaking and wondered why the Pharisees aren’t going after Jesus because his disciples were stealing food from someone’s field.

‌Well, the reason is because in the law there was an allowance for people plucking the grain on the edge of the field. In Leviticus people were told not to harvest all the way to the edge of the field because it would allow for people to get food from it. In Deuteronomy it said that you could go to these edges and pluck grain to eat but not use a sickle and fully harvest it. And you can understand what God was doing in the law here. It was a way to provide for those in need and even those who might be traveling. Remember, they can’t just stop off and get some food off the dollar menu at a fast food joint.

‌But also notice the wisdom of God in these laws. You couldn’t take advantage of your neighbor and just run out and harvest his grain. As I said, you could pluck but not use a sickle. The law allowed for hospitality and charity and kept people from abusing this system.

‌And, so the disciples are taking advantage of this provision in the law, not stealing the grain of their neighbor. And so the Pharisees need to find something else to complain about. Notice the detail that Luke gives here about what the disciples are doing here. They plucked some of the heads of grain and rubbed them in their hands. Seems pretty harmless to you and I but the Pharisees are accusing the disciples of harvesting on the Sabbath.

‌Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t know how this is different than them being served a meal in their home and using their hand or a utensil of some sort to bring the food into their mouth. If I was in your garden and you gave me permission to pluck a strawberry and eat it would you think I had done any harvesting? No. You just ate a strawberry. But, as we have seen the Pharisees are not only looking for an opportunity to get anything they can on Jesus and the disciples but they also have come up with their own little system of laws to avoid breaking the law. This shows us an excellent example of how far they have taken their legalism.

‌And you have to love what Jesus does in response. You and I could come up with a bunch of responses. Everything from “come on man” to “knock it off you legalistic jerks”. But Jesus goes back to a story they would have known from the Old Testament to show them that not only is it important to care for those who need food but also to show the authority that the Lord’s anointed has.

‌If you were to go to 1 Samuel 21 you would find that David and his men are in need of food and in the temple there was nothing but the bread of the Presence. This was only to be touched by the priest but it was given to the men as food because they were in need of it. And, as I said, this isn’t about just giving bread to people who were hungry. David is the Lord’s anointed. He is in the line to the Messiah and he is a type of the Messiah. He receives the blessing of this food as the one appointed by God to rule over his people. And the priest makes the decision that it is a higher duty to care for others and meet their needs. And David was the anointed of God. The ceremonial activity that bread was used for their rituals was for Israel to learn that they were to set themselves apart in service to God and now that bread was being used in service of the Lord’s anointed.

‌And so what do you do with this response from Jesus if you are the Pharisees? Do you say that the greatest king in the history of Israel was wrong in requesting and eating the bread of the Presence? Do you say the priest was wrong in giving the bread to the anointed one of Israel? Yeah.....Jesus has them tongue tied.

‌And it’s easy to see how Jesus did this. If David could eat the set apart, consecrated bread in the temple on the Sabbath then his disciples could surely have a little bit of grain on the edge of a field. And remember they weren’t violating the actual law in doing this. They were violating the man-made laws of the Pharisees designed to keep people from breaking the law.

‌And Jesus has won and he could have easily stopped there and relished in the victory but we see that he takes it even further. He uses this as an opportunity to once again tell them and us who he is. You can see it there in the last statement of Jesus in our first bunch of verses. The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.

‌Remember what I’ve mentioned before. When Jesus refers to himself as the Son of Man he is not saying that he is someone’s son. The title Son of Man is a messianic term. He is claiming to be the Messiah by using this title and then notice what else he says about himself. He is the lord of the Sabbath.

‌Once again, we find Jesus making a controversial statement. We are used to this idea. We confess Jesus as Lord. We confess him as God the Son. Imagine you are a first century Jew and you hear someone making this statement. Who is Lord of the Sabbath? Only God. Once again we find another of example of Jesus claiming divine authority. In our time in God’s word together I have pointed out that there are those who claim that Jesus never asserted that he was God. Well, here we have another example of him doing just that. Who other than God can be Lord of the Sabbath?

‌And what does that mean exactly? Ultimately the Sabbath is not about law keeping. Taking a day of rest is not about a rule that will either condemn you or merit you righteousness. The Sabbath was to provide rest for the people of God and to set apart a day to bring worship to the Lord of heaven and earth. As great as keeping the command is and as great as the rest we are provided in it, Jesus is greater and we should be most concerned with bringing honor and glory to him.

‌And so, we have seen the response of Jesus to the accusations against his disciples and now we move to see the Pharisees once again taking issue with Jesus himself.

‌And we see that on another Sabbath Jesus was back in a synagogue teaching. We’ve seen so far in Luke that this is the primary activity of Jesus but this time we are hearing about someone else as well. There is a man whose right hand is withered. Now, if you were stop at that sentence you would wonder why Luke gives us that detail but we quickly are brought into why this is important. It would seem that the Pharisees have gotten an indication that Jesus has healed on the Sabbath in the past and so they want to see if he will do it again so that they can accuse him.

‌Now, I read that and stop and think about it and wonder about how you get to the point where you are so concerned with someone else that you go to worship God and hear the word with that level of malice and not see the hypocrisy in your own heart. But, we know that this was the aggression the Pharisees had toward Jesus. To steal an expression from Jesus in the sermon on the mount they are looking for the speck in someone else’s eye while they’ve got a log in theirs, right?

‌And so we see that Jesus knows the malevolence thoughts they have towards him and so he tells the man to come and stand near him.

‌And as always, Jesus asks the right question doesn’t he. Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save a life or to destroy it?

‌Now, I had to stop as I looked at that sentence. What is Jesus asking? Is it lawful to do good or to harm? Uh, Jesus, when would it ever be lawful to do harm? When would it ever be lawful to destroy life?

‌And as I say that, if you were asking the same question I was, I bet it dawned on you. Jesus is implying that not doing good on the Sabbath would be to do harm by not doing the good. To not save a life on the Sabbath would be to functionally destroy a life. So you get what Jesus is saying. How could healing someone on the Sabbath be violating the Sabbath? And that is exactly the point Jesus is making and it exposes the hearts of the Pharisees doesn’t it. They are more concerned with catching Jesus doing something wrong than rejoicing that this mans hand will be healed. Honestly, you know what this exposes? It exposes that the hearts of the Pharisees have become withered. They should be rejoicing that this man has come into contact with the one who can heal him.

‌And we read here that they do not rejoice after Jesus heals the man. Jesus shows compassion and shows that he has divine power to heal and all they are concerned about is what they might do to him. We read that they are filled with fury. Luke exposes just how hard their hearts are and we get the sense of what is coming. They want to do him harm and they do not have the compassion that the commands of God are meant to lead them to.

‌And as the passage closes out we see that Luke wants us to know more details about those that are following Jesus.

‌And we see that Jesus is devoted to prayer and solitude even amidst the busyness of his public ministry. He is committed to his relationship to the Father and we also read that he was praying over who would be the 12 in his inner circle.

‌And we know this list of names and some of them we have seen in Luke so far but as we get to the end of the list we get further foreshadowing of the future. We’ve seen the Pharisees are after him and when we get to the end of the list of the twelve we get the information that Judas Iscariot is going to betray him. As Luke is telling us the story of Jesus he is giving us the tension of the future that we know is coming. Jesus is the promised messiah but his path is a path of suffering.

‌And so, we leave Luke today with this thought hanging there for us but how can we take the truths we have seen in the story of Jesus today and apply it to our lives in the coming week.

‌As we think about these two stories that center around activities on the Sabbath it is important that we remember that the Sabbath is a day of mercy. It is a day God has mercifully set aside for us to rest from our labor and to rest in his mercy. It is a day where we gather to worship him and hear of the mercy that he has give to us in the Lord Jesus. He is the Lord of the Sabbath. He is the one who receives are praise. God gives us these good gifts and he calls us to gather with the people of God and to care for one another. The actions of Jesus on the Sabbath day where he heals the man with the withered hand shows us that we are called to have compassion for others and show mercy and love to those around us who are in need. The compassion of Jesus that our day of rest and our day of worship is not inherently a passive day where we do nothing. We are called to visit the sick and care for those around us. We can welcome strangers and visit those who are home bound.

‌And of course, this is not merely bound to the Christian Sabbath the Lords Day. We are called to live a life that shows mercy and blesses others each and every day because God has first shown mercy to us. We have the opportunity to show love to others and to show them the rest that faith in Christ brings us. For he is the Lord of the Sabbath and he is our ultimate source of rest.

‌May we be a people of God who shows mercy and love to one another and as we step into the world after a day of rest and worship may our lives reflect the grace that God has shown us in Jesus.