Lord of the Sabbath

The Gospel of Luke   •  Sermon  •  Submitted   •  Presented   •  53:08
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When we left Jesus last week He was correcting the Pharisees…telling them that you do not fast when the bridegroom is present you rejoice!
And a parable about new cloth on old clothes and new wine in old wine skins.
Both of these parables are making the same point.
He is not an add on to the religion of the day.
Jesus is not a new patch that you add on to old religious regulations…he has come to bring something new…new wine.
He warns not develop rules for self-righteousness…earning your way to God’s favor.
Our righteousness must not be trusted…we must abandon our righteousness so that we can accept the righteousness of another…the perfect righteousness of our savior Jesus Christ.
The new thing that Jesus provides is grace…and grace is not opposed to effort…grace is opposed to earning.
The Pharisees gave nobody grace…they not only kept the letter of the law they and added to its regulations.
Which is exactly what we see in the beginning of our passage today…let’s read
Luke 6:1–2 ESV
1 On a Sabbath, while he was going through the grainfields, his disciples plucked and ate some heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands. 2 But some of the Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath?”
For the children of Israel, the Sabbath was the best day of the week. It was a day for worship and for resting in the goodness of God. It was a day for ceasing from the labor and toil of the workday week.
Cutting through someone’s field and picking a little grain was not against the law.
In fact, it was one of the ways that God provided for his people.
As it said in Deuteronomy Deut. 23:25
Deuteronomy 23:25 ESV
25 If you go into your neighbor’s standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor’s standing grain.
As long as they did not try to do a full-scale harvest, it was acceptable for the disciples to help themselves. This was part of the legal code.
The Pharisees did not see the situation that way, however. As the self-appointed Sabbath police, they thought they spotted a violation here.
Why did the Pharisees think that picking grain was against the law?
The answer is that they had developed their own list of regulations for keeping the Sabbath.
The Pharisees strived to prove themselves to themselves and others by keeping all these regulations.
To make sure that they did not violate the fourth commandment, they specified all the different ways that someone could break the Sabbath, and then avoiding these activities became their law.
According to the Mishnah, no fewer than thirty-nine different kinds of work were forbidden on the Sabbath, including reaping, threshing, winnowing, and preparing food.
When the disciples picked some heads of grain, the Pharisees thought they were reaping.
When they rubbed them in their hands to separate the wheat from the chaff, they considered this threshing and winnowing.
And when they started to eat the grain, they were guilty of preparing food on the Sabbath. So with every mouthful, the disciples were violating the law four different ways.3 Thus said the Pharisees.
The problem was that this was their law, not God’s law. It was their way to strive to be justified.
Before we completely throw the Pharisees under the bus keep in mind that the penalty for not keeping the Sabbath was death. So the children of Israel wanted to know exactly what they could or could not do.
Again the Sabbath was a day of rest and a day to reframe from work a day of worshipping the Lord.
Jesus answers their question.
Luke 6:3–4 ESV
3 And Jesus answered them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him: 4 how he entered the house of God and took and ate the bread of the Presence, which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those with him?”
Why did Jesus bring this up?
He wanted to free the law from the perversion of the Pharisees by explaining its underlying purpose.
Here he was referring to a story from the life of David.
In those days God had rejected Saul and anointed David to serve as Israel’s rightful king.
But Saul was not dead yet, and because of his raging envy, David had to run for his life.
This is where the story picks up in 1 Samuel 21, with David and his men fleeing from the wrath of Saul.
They left in such haste that they did not have time to gather much in the way of provisions. So they went to the tabernacle, where Ahimelech was priest. And David said to him, 1 Sam. 21:3
1 Samuel 21:3 ESV
3 Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever is here.”
But Ahimelech said to David, 1 Sam 21:4
The priest was referring to the bread of the presence, which was kept in the tabernacle. This sacred bread of the covenant was baked fresh every week and then set out before the Lord on a golden table. It was only for the priests to eat, and no one else
Because the bread of the presence was consecrated to God, his holy priests were the only people who were allowed to eat it.
But David and his men were famished. Technically, for them to eat the sacred bread was a violation of the ceremonial law that governed the worship of the tabernacle.
But as Ahimelech considered the total righteousness of God, he recognized that he had a higher duty to meet a basic human need 1 Sam 21:6
1 Samuel 21:6 ESV
6 So the priest gave him the holy bread, for there was no bread there but the bread of the Presence, which is removed from before the Lord, to be replaced by hot bread on the day it is taken away.
By telling this story, Jesus was arguing from a harder case to an easier one. Follow his logic.
If it was proper for David’s men to eat the bread of the presence, as holy as it was, it was all the more appropriate for the disciples to pick a little grain on the Sabbath.
In the words of Joseph Pipa, “if it was proper to violate a ceremonial law when the Lord’s anointed was on the Lord’s business on the Sabbath, then surely the Anointed and His followers may break a man-made law while they are doing the Lord’s business on the Sabbath.”
What David did violated the ceremonial law, but it was still the right thing to do because it was necessary to help people in need. God always desires mercy more than the observance of sacred rituals.
Which is what Sam read to us this morning…Matt 12:7
Matthew 12:7 ESV
7 And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless.
The problem with the Pharisees was not simply that they were too strict.
Their problem was that they did not understand the true inward purpose of the law, which demands love for God and love for our neighbor
Luke drives this point home with the events that happened on yet another Sabbath.
Luke 6:6–11 ESV
6 On another Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was withered. 7 And the scribes and the Pharisees watched him, to see whether he would heal on the Sabbath, so that they might find a reason to accuse him. 8 But he knew their thoughts, and he said to the man with the withered hand, “Come and stand here.” And he rose and stood there. 9 And Jesus said to them, “I ask you, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it?” 10 And after looking around at them all he said to him, “Stretch out your hand.” And he did so, and his hand was restored. 11 But they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus.
What made the Pharisees so angry?
It was partly because Jesus broke one of their precious rules, but it was more because he exposed their lack of love for people in need. They were using the very law of God as an excuse for not showing mercy.
What they do not yet see as they look to trap Jesus is that Jesus is greater than their law. He is not meant to submit to their law. He is Lord over the true law of God.
This is the point of the whole passage…and it is found in verse 5…Luke 6:5
Luke 6:5 ESV
5 And he said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”
Here Luke has done it again: he has told a story from the life of Jesus that builds up to a climactic statement about his person and work.
This is in keeping with Luke’s grand purpose of helping us know for certain that Jesus is the Christ.
To that end, he has told us that Jesus is “the Son of the Most High” (Luke 1:32), “a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:11), the beloved and well-pleasing Son of the Father (Luke 3:22).
Luke has also shown the authority of Jesus to preach the gospel, heal the body, cast out demons, forgive sinners, and call disciples. Here at the beginning of chapter 6 he announces a new title, with new authority. Jesus is the Son of Man, and as the Son of Man, he is Lord of the Sabbath.
And once again Jesus declares that He is God…this is why the Pharisees were filled with fury and started to discuss plans to how to get rid of this mad man who thinks he is God.
What does it mean that Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath?
First and foremost in the context of our passage He gets to decide how the law for the Jews gets interpreted…after all I made the law. The Pharisees made all the extra rules so that they can define work…Jesus says meeting the needs of people…loving people is not work.
Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath what does that mean for us?
It releases us from the striving to prove yourself to yourself and others and ultimately proving yourself to God.
This is the life of a Pharisee…if we go back to chapter five and their complaint about fasting. The Pharisees were striving to use their religious example as a requirement for everyone else to obey…we fast why don’t your disciples.
They are so reliant on their striving that they are convinced their rules are more important than Jesus.
Jesus said you missed the purpose of the law…the law was to help protect you…the Sabbath was made for man not man for the Sabbath.
The Sabbath was there so that your work did not become an idol.
Yes for Israel it was a day to stop the outside physical work they did and rest and honor their God by worshipping him.
We to need to rest from external work, and physical exertion, but there is a deeper problem that Jesus fixes by being Lord of the Sabbath.
And that is this inner sense that I mentioned before that you need to prove yourself to yourself, to others and to God.
It is like we never get REM sleep…the deep rapid eye movement sleep that repairs the mind and body.
Are you in need of that kind of rest today?
We suffer from the Rocky syndrome…Polly asked Rocky in the first movie…Yo Rock why do you do all this…train the way he does…Rocky said, “I want to go the distance…then I know I am not a bum!
This is what we struggle with day in and day out…we are striving to prove our selves to ourselves and to others and to God.
Where do we go to get rest from this inner striving that never seems to end…Jesus said I am the Lord of the Sabbath.
“I am the one the Sabbath regulations all pointed to. I can give you the deep rest of the soul that you will most need. I am the Lord of Rest.” Jesus says, “I am the Lord of Rest.”
You know what this means. If you want rest, you have to go to him, and if you think you’ve gone to him, but you don’t have any rest, you still don’t know what you have. You still haven’t taken hold of what you have. You still haven’t understood what you have.
I have taken the penalty for breaking the Sabbath with all your work with all your inner striving…I took the penalty of death on the cross so that you can have rest.
Where will you find this rest…in His presence…by spending time with Him.
Matthew 11:28–30 ESV
28 Come to me, all 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. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
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