LOC 043: The Life of Christ:
A Second
Sabbath Controversy
In Luke 6, we find Jesus back in Galilee, in the North. He is being closely watched by the
Pharisees--those that have already been exposed as those who sought all the
more to kill Jesus. Jesus is travelling with the disciples he had already
called--five of them. It happens to be
Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath-day. This
is how the narrative of Luke reads:
Luke 6:1-5
1 Now it happened on
the second Sabbath after the first that He went through the grain fields. And
His disciples plucked the heads of grain and ate them, rubbing them in their
hands. 2 And some of the Pharisees said to
them, “Why are you doing what is not
lawful to do on the Sabbath?”
3 But Jesus answering
them said, “Have you not even read this,
what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him: 4 “how he went into the house of God, took and
ate the shewbread, and also gave some to those with him, which is not lawful
for any but the priests to eat?” 5 And He said to them, “The Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath.”
And additional comments made by Jesus from Matthew 12 and fill out
the concerns of the Lord Jesus Christs spoken in this context. No one Gospel writer tells us the whole
story, only that which serves their purpose for writing.
Matthew, writing to a Jewish audience with sensitivities about the
place of the Sabbath and temple added:
Matthew 12:5-12 “Or have
you not read in the law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane
the Sabbath, and are blameless?
6 “Yet I say to you that in this place there is
One greater than the temple. 7 “But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would
not have condemned the guiltless. 8 “For the Son of Man is Lord even of the
Sabbath.”
Mark adds the following showing his ability to state a lot in a
little:
Mark 2:27-28 And He said to them,
“The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. 28
“Therefore the Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath.”
We have already encountered issues surrounding the sabbath
twice. Jesus healed his mother-in-law
privately in an act of compassion or mercy on the sabbath. When she was healed she rose to serve them
immediately. We also noted in the last three messages how the leaders of the
Jews in John 5 had a wrong understanding of the sabbath. This issue now haunts the ministry of Jesus.
We see it again this week and will again next week. Jesus did not cater to the “weaknesses” of
the Pharisees as some sort of weaker brethren.
He stuck doggedly to his convictions. He had the right as Judge to
determine what was legitimate activity on that special day. As we saw last week
he viewed himself to have been always at work with the Father.
The fact that he was always working shows us something of the
right perspective we are to have of the sabbath. And, we find that articulated explicitly in
this passage. It is found in this simple
statement, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” He is its master, ruler and
judge. We had better listen to him as
messiah and authoritative teacher, if we are to understand it rightly.
Look at the text of Matthew 12:8 or Luke 6:5:
The Son of man is Lord of the Sabbath.
The Son of man is the title Jesus preferred for himself to show
himself to be the messiah of Israel. He,
as the messiah, is claiming to be Lord over something. He is taking to himself the rights,
prerogatives and place to rule over whatever follows. Just as a man has the right to rule over his
household, Jesus assumes that right to rule over the thing that follows. And, that thing that follows is the one day a
week solemn obligation to rest from labors in order to find rest in God.
The original command is given in Exodus 20:8 and following, Ex.
20:8 “ ¶ Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all
your work, 10 but the seventh day
is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your
son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor
your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the LORD made the
heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh
day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.
It is based upon the inherent principle present in the seventh day
of creation:
Gen. 2:2 And on the seventh day God
ended His work which He had done, and He
rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and
sanctified it, because in it He rested
from all His work which God had created and made.
From what did God rest? Is the issue in Genesis two and in the
understanding of the Pharisees in Luke 6 (matt 12) and that we saw last week in
John 5. From what did God rest and
why?
Immediately following the creation of all things, Gen 2 tells us
what it is that ended. “On the seventh
day, God ended His work which he had done and he rested.” The thing from which
God rested on the 7th day was the specific work of creation. It was not a total
cessation of activity--he only stopped his creative work specifically. Verse three tells us that he rested from all
His work which God had created and made.
His specific function of creating had ceased, it was done. A new phase of sustaining the work began.
The introductory words to the Book of Hebrews underlines this
important distinction between creating and sustaining or as it is expressed
here through the metaphor of carrying or upholding all things. Let’s start at verse one to get
the context of these words and the power of God present in the Lord Jesus
Christ:
Heb. 1:1 ¶ God, who at various times and in various
ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, 2 has in these last days spoken to us
by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made
the worlds; 3 who being the brightness of His glory and the express
image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He
had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on
high,
Through Jesus Christ the worlds were made past tense in verse two
and in verse three he present tense is upholding all things by the word of his
power. There is an important distinction
to be made between the creative work of God (and Christ) and the upholding work
of what he made.
God can rest from the creative work while continuing the
sustaining or carrying work. If he were
to stop, what is being carried would fall. There is an important
distinction.
This is why Jesus could tell the Jews in John 5:16 ¶ For
this reason the Jews persecuted Jesus, and sought to kill Him, because He had
done these things on the Sabbath. 17 But Jesus answered them, “My Father has been working until now, and I
have been working.” Jesus made himself equal with God by linking his work (even
on the sabbath) with God’s continued work.
The original day of rest was a rest from a specific creative
activity. It was not a complete
cessation of God’s necessary work in upholding the cosmos he made.
Yet, the misunderstanding of the Jews was that God had ceased from
all labors on the Sabbath and so should he people. They saw the sabbath as having been an
accommodation of GOD TO HIMSELF that he might find a time for rest. It refreshed God in some way beyond our
understanding. The mythological
connections added to this notions that since God rested (meaning ceased from
all activity) on the sabbath, so should his people because he cannot come to
aid those in need on the day of rest. They were wrong to universalize the idea
of God’s rest. He rested from the
creative work alone. The sabbath day was not made for God, but for man. Jesus tells us the sabbath was made for man.
The final creative act of God was to create a sabbath for man.
Jesus destroys their man-centered application of the sabbath
principle by instructing them of the true nature of the sabbath. Jesus said in Mark 2:27, The Sabbath was made
for man, not man for the sabbath.
The Jews had gotten it backwards. They thought works of necessity
and mercy somehow violated God’s perpetual commandment. They were intoxicated
with rage when he made a man complete on the sabbath, now they were upset when
he plucked corn and ate it with his disciples. Jesus knew he was being watched;
Jesus was correcting them and their misunderstanding.
The sabbath is a sacred and Divine institution; a gift from God’ a
privilege that brings mankind great benefit.
It is not a task and drudgery. God did not create it to be a burden to
believers--but a delight. Therefore we must not make it a burden to our lives
by our perspectives about it. The sabbath was given for the good of mankind, as
living in society, having many needs and afflictions. Man was not made for the
sabbath, as if his keeping it could be of service to God, nor was he commanded
to keep it outward observances to his own detriment or injury or in this case
his own hunger. It is a blessing and delight, not a drudgery, therefore, every
command respecting it, and narrative that helps interpret it needs to be
interpreted by the rule of mercy and necessity.
1. At that time Jesus went on the sabbath day through the corn —
"the cornfields” (Mark 2:23; Luke 6:1).
and his disciples were hungry—a
very natural thing — not as one may be before his regular meals; but evidently
from shortness of provisions: for Jesus defends their plucking the corn-ears
and eating them on the plea of necessity. and
began to pluck the ears of corn, and to eat — "rubbing them in their hands” (Luke 6:1).
2. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto him, Behold, thy disciples do that which is not lawful to do
upon the sabbath day — The act itself was expressly permitted (Deuteronomy
23:25). “When you come into your neighbor’s standing grain, you may pluck the
heads with your hand, but you shall not use a sickle on your neighbor’s
standing grain. Jesus knew the Law, so did the Pharisees. The Pharisees saw
this passage as only referring to the manual labor of servants. They reasoned,
since this is “servile work,” which was
prohibited on the sabbath day, it must be regarded as sinful. Therefore they challenge Jesus/
3. But he said unto them, Have ye not read — or, as Mark (Mark
2:25) has it, “Have you never
read.” what David did when he was an hungered, and they that were with him
— (1 Samuel 21:1-6)
4. How David entered into the house of God, and did eat the shewbread,
which was not lawful for him to eat,
neither for them which were with him,
but only for the priests? — No example could be more appropriate than this.
The man after God’s own heart, of whom the Jews ever boasted, David, when
suffering for God’s cause and lacking necessary provisions, asked and obtained
from the high priest what, according to a rigid reading of the law, was illegal
for anyone except the priests to touch.
5. Or have ye not read in the law, how that on the sabbath days the
priests in the temple profane the
sabbath — What do they do? Mundane or “servile work.” and
are blameless? — The double offerings required on the sabbath day (Numbers
28:9) could not be presented, and the newly-baked shewbread (Leviticus 24:5; 1
Chronicles 9:32) could not be prepared and presented every sabbath morning,
without a good deal of labor and work on the part of the priests; not to speak
of circumcision, which, when the child’s eighth day happened to fall on a
sabbath, had to be performed by the priests on that day.
Jesus goes on to make his case even more profoundly:
6. But I say unto you, That in this place is one greater than the temple — or rather, according to the
reading which is best supported, “something greater.” The argument of Jesus to
counter the misunderstanding of the Pharisees goes like this: “The ordinary
rules for the observance of the sabbath are superseded by the requirements of
the temple; but there are considerations
present in your midst before which the temple itself must also give way.”
Indirectly, the Lord Jesus Christ put in His own claim in this question. He gets to the point rather directly.
He said:
7. But if ye had known what this means, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice — (Hosea 6:6; Micah 6:6-8,
etc.). ye would not have condemned the
guiltless — that is, If they had understood
the great principle of all biblical religion, which the Scripture
everywhere recognizes — that ceremonial observances must never take the place
godly duties, including the necessities of nature — the Pharisees would have
refrained from these petty complaints against men who in this matter are not to
be blamed for doing what the Law allows. Jesus, the Lord added a specific
application of this great principle to the law of the sabbath, preserved only
in Mark: “And he said unto them, the sabbath was made for man, and not man for
the sabbath” (Mark 2:27). A glorious
and far-reaching maxim, alike for the permanent establishment of the sabbath
and the true freedom of its observance.
As long as there are men on the earth, the sabbath is needed and good
and can be used with profit to the body and the soul. The Pharisees had it wrong.
8. For the Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath day — In what
sense now is the Son of man Lord of the sabbath day? Is Messiah Lord over something good from God
in order to abolish it? — that would be the strangest of lordships, indeed,
especially just after saying that it was made or instituted for MAN — but to own
it, to interpret it, to preside
over it, and to ennoble it, by teaching a
right understanding of it and then merging it in the “Lord’s Day” (Revelation
1:10) to include the perpetual celebration of the day of the Lord among his
people, by breathing into it an air of greater degree of liberty and love
necessarily unknown before that men who follow the Lord may learn to truly call
the day a delight for their souls, and thus making it the nearest resemblance to
the eternal rest we shall enjoy, better displays the Lordship of the Lord Jesus
over the Day. A Lordship in harmony with
a right understanding.
I would add another maxim for purposes of remembering this
important principle. If Jesus is Lord of
the Sabbath, and we desire to submit to him as Lord, in some way, we must
submit to him as Lord of the Sabbath.
The sabbath is not ours in the sense that we can do what we want to do,
it is given by God to man, that we might do what we ought to do. That we should remember and rest in Him
rather than in ourselves or our labors.
In our day and age, the Sabbath can remind those in prosperity the
true source of all they enjoy as we come to remember all he has provided for
men since the creation.
In the hustle and bustle of life we need to be reminded that it in
and through the Lord Jesus Christ that we find true rest for our souls. This life is a quest for rest, in body and in
soul. But, not for the present--for the
future.
Matt. 11:28 “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy
laden, and I will give you rest. 29
“Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in
heart, and you will find rest for
your souls.
2Th. 1:7 and to give you who are
troubled rest with us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His
mighty angels, 8 in flaming fire
taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the
gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
22.36 a‡nesißa , ewß f: relief as a cessation or
suspension of trouble and difficulty — ‘relief.’ ouj ga»r iºna a‡lloiß a‡nesiß, uJmi√n qli√yiß ‘for this is not for the purpose of relief for others while
constituting suffering for you’ 2Cor 8:13; kai« uJmi√n toi√ß qliboume÷noiß
a‡nesin ‘and relief to you who suffer’ 2Th 1:7. In rendering ‘relief to you
who suffer,’ it may be necessary to restructure the semantic relations, for
example, ‘to cause you who suffer not to have to suffer longer’ or ‘to cause
you to no longer have to suffer.’
It is interesting that the Greek word in 2 Thess 1:7 is Anacin. I
do not know if the name of the aspirin is taken from this word for relief or
rest, if not it is a strange coincidence, is it not? But at least you can grant
me the pun: A proper understanding of our need to rest and for sabbath rest in
the Lord Jesus Christ is a wonderful pill that we should easily swallow. It
should bring us great delight and joy.
This is his promise: Is. 58:13 “ ¶ If you turn away your
foot from the Sabbath, From doing your pleasure on My holy day, And call the
Sabbath a delight, The holy day of the LORD honorable, And shall honor Him, not
doing your own ways, Nor finding your own pleasure, Nor speaking your own
words, 14 Then you shall delight
yourself in the LORD; And I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the
earth, And feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father. The mouth of the
LORD has spoken.”
The sabbath was made for us, let us seek to use it rightly to
remember who God is and what he has done for us. To remember he is creator and sustainer. To remember all he has given that we don't
deserve. And, to rest from our usual concerns that we might profit on this day
of rest and gladness. It is not a day of
drudgery and repression, but a day of delight in the Lord. It is God’s remedy for all that troubles
us. In this life we meet with trouble
tempered with grace, in the life to come there will be glory as we find rest
forever with the Lord Jesus Christ in his presence as he is the temple. How can
I say that? Speaking of heaven we read: Rev. 21:21 The twelve gates were
twelve pearls: each individual gate was of one pearl. And the street of the
city was pure gold, like transparent glass.
22 ¶ But I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and the
Lamb are its temple.
The Sabbath instruction rightly understood prepares us for all of
life, now and forever. AMEN!
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