What We Think About Jesus Changes Everything

Introduction

Good morning! You can join me in continuing to pray for Pastor Jim and the whole team in Greece following the Footsteps of Paul. I know from personal experience it’s a lifechanging trip, so let’s continue to pray for safe travels and they return home this week.

And last week, Pastor John Jacobs did a great job teaching us about the change that Jesus brings into our lives. And if any of you are like us, we’ve been going through a lot of water-damage-related change in the last couple of weeks.

Can I see the hands of anybody who’s had to throw out something that was damaged by the storms recently? Yea—okay. We’ve all been cleaning out basements and trying to figure out what needs to stay and what needs to go.

And if you’ve ever helped someone else clean out a basement or clean out a house, you know deciding what stays and what goes to the dumpster is sometimes the hardest part.

The box that has mold on it and will probably kill me and my family? Yea that should probably go! But sometimes the damage isn’t so obvious.

We deliberate because no one wants to throw out the wrong thing. And it’s the same thing when Jesus wants to bring change into our lives. Jesus wants to help us become a new person, He wants to transform us, and He’s the One who gets to choose what stays and what goes.

Some of our habits and ways of thinking are like moldy boxes; but some of them are a little more questionable. Sometimes it’s obvious to us, and sometimes it isn’t.

And it wasn’t always obvious to many people living in the First Century. God had blessed the nation of Israel with all this teaching called the Law of Moses that had helped them to form an identity as a nation and understand who God is and how to live with Him. But somewhere along the way, they got some water damage—they began to add all these man-made traditions onto the Law. And now that Jesus was on the scene, He was starting to clean house. And some people, like the Pharisees, were afraid that Jesus was throwing out the wrong stuff.

It’s interesting, when we read about these run ins with the Pharisees, it’s so easy for us to keep it all at arms-length. They’re the hypocrites. And Jesus is unpacking all this stuff that makes them upset. And it’s all well and good until Jesus picks up something that was near and dear to you, that your identity is built on, that gives you a sense of purpose and meaning, that you thought was secure, and starts walking toward the dumpster.

And how we respond in those moments has everything to do with the soundtracks that play in our mind and our heart about Jesus. And as we come to our text this morning, we’re going to see another confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees, where Jesus wants to show them who He is and how He changes everything.

Body

Luke 6:1–5 NIV

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. Some of the Pharisees asked, “Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?” Jesus answered them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 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.” Then Jesus said to them, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

For many of us, this may be a familiar passage, but I was amazed by some of the things that I learned as I began to ask questions this week. So as we walk through the text, I’m just going to bring you into some of those questions I was asking.

For starters, right at the beginning of the text we read that this story happened on “One Sabbath.” We don’t know which Sabbath; but it was one of them. So Luke isn’t giving us this story in chronological order, but rather once again we see Luke arranging his material with purpose—to help us see something about Jesus. So the first question we can ask is, “Why is this story here?” Why, when Luke was arranging his material, did he choose to put this account in this context? I think there are two reasons.

First, because it once again helps to demonstrate how Jesus is living His life on mission, freeing people from bondage, just as He said He would back in Luke chapter 4. He has come, and He has been sent, at least in part, to set the captives free! And His run-in with the Pharisees is a part of Him accomplishing this mission.

And that’s the second thing this account does—it’s building the tension between Jesus and the Pharisees concerning common Jewish practices in that day. So you can remember how we’ve been reading, and Jesus has just healed a paralytic man and forgiven his sins, and the Pharisees challenged Him; we’ve seen Him eat with tax collectors and sinners, even calling one of them to be His disciple, and the Pharisees challenged Him; we’ve seen Him feasting while everyone else is fasting, and the Pharisees challenged Him; and now we come to our text and He is apparently allowing his disciples to do what no one else would do on the Sabbath, and right on cue the Pharisees are there watching Jesus closely, trying to figure out what Jesus is up to.

Jesus is bringing this change, He’s bringing this new way of doing things, and He is challenging how people think in their minds and how they believe in their hearts about God, about forgiveness, about sin, about people, and about the Law. He’s challenging these soundtracks that we’ve been talking about. Because what Jesus sees is a bunch of people who have been locked up by their belief systems. And so He’s trying to change the soundtracks that exist in His day as a part of His mission to liberate people.

And a key issue in our text this morning, as we’ll find, is surrounding this thing called the Sabbath. So the second question I want us to ask is, “What is the Sabbath, and why was it such a big deal?” Because it was a big deal to the Pharisees, and if we’re going to understand the change that Jesus is bringing, then first we need to understand what’s going on with the Sabbath, how that impacted the Pharisees’ soundtracks, and how Jesus’ response provides the solution.

So that’s what we’re going to look at: First the Sabbath, then the soundtracks of the Pharisees, and then what Jesus has to say about it.

The first thing we need to know is that Sabbath, like the rest of the Law, was and is a good gift from God. The word “Sabbath” literally just means “rest,” or “to stop your work.” And the Sabbath is actually one of the Ten Commandments! Exodus 20:8–10 says, “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work...”

So Sabbath was given from God, it was a good gift, and it was a mandated rest from work once a week, every week. If you remember back in Genesis chapter 1, the Creation narrative, we talk about the seven days of creation, yet on the seventh day God rested. He stopped creating; or as some people like to put it, He invented rest. But we can all recognize that God didn’t rest because He was tired! He rested because it was good. God’s rest is not merely the end of work, but also the presence of play and of delight in God and in His creation.

And so with the Sabbath, God was not mandating rest on principle. God was sharing one of His own greatest ideas, giving a lifeline and a blessing to people. And He knew that because of sin, mankind was prone to treat work improperly. He knew about both pride—thinking that the world revolves around me and that I’m the one keeping everything afloat, and sloth—thinking that it doesn’t matter what I do anyway, I might as well slack off and indulge.

See God had created us to join Him in the cycle of work and rest and play and delight, but instead we either live as though we exist to work, or treat work like we wish it didn’t exist. The problem is that people were not made to work endlessly, day in and day out. And when we treat our life as though we exist to work, as though if I take a break everything will fall apart, what we’re actually doing is we’re treating ourselves like God. It’s betraying a soundtrack in our minds that makes ourselves into the most important thing. Because God is the one who holds all things together by the word of His power; not us. And if God took a break from being God, everthing would fall apart. God is an uncreated, independent being on whose shoulders rest the entirety of the created order.

But we, by great contrast, are totally dependent beings. And so we enter into cycles of work and rest not only to share with God, but also so that we can remember that we need to trust in and depend on God. And so the Sabbath is like a superpower that God gives to humanity, that they can rest after His pattern, and He will keep the world spinning. That we can set down the tools and trust Him that He will provide for us. And we can rest, and play, and find delight in Him, in one another, and in His creation. So you can see that the Sabbath was really this wonderful idea that God had, and that He entrusted to His people.

**the problem in our passage isn’t the Sabbath. It’s easy for us to read these stories and get it in our heads that the Sabbath was the problem—it wasn’t. And in our day and age, we could really use some sabbath, because more often than not we find ourselves on the pride, and on the overworking side of things. Our workaholism is like this moldy box that’s stinking up our lives, and we need to receive the wisdom of living in regular patterns of work and rest. Because if you’re honest, when was the last time we took a full 24 hour break just to enjoy God, just to rest in Him and in His creation, just for play and delight. More often than not, we neglect the Sabbath; we neglect to live in patterns of resting with God. And If you read the Old Testament, we’re not the only ones.

The Sabbath was, unfortunately, consistently neglected by God’s people. Neglecting the sabbath was one of the charges brought against Israel and Judah by the prophets, which eventually led to one of the very worst things that has ever happened to God’s people. Their rejection of God, their idolatry, and their neglect of the Sabbath led to what we call the Babylonian captivity; to exile.

And so in the year 586 BC, around 600 years before Jesus was born, the Babylonians came and utterly destroyed Jerusalem and led the people away as slaves. And more than that, the Babylonians destroyed the temple that Solomon had built. We’ve just been reading out the dedication of this temple in our Daily Devotions, and how beautiful of a moment it was as God’s glory fills the temple.

And then here in this very same courtyard, everything is lost. Losing the land was one thing, but losing the presence of God in the Temple, losing their access to His presence, was even worse. The Temple was the centerpiece of their way of worshipping God, and now it was gone, and they had to figure out how they were going to live with God in exile.

And Jeremiah the Prophet was there when the Babylonians came and swept through the land. He writes about it a little book called Lamentations. We read in Lamentations 1:1–3 “How deserted lies the city, once so full of people! How like a widow is she, who once was great among the nations! ...After affliction and harsh labor, Judah has gone into exile. She dwells among the nations; she finds no resting place.”

Why am I going into all this? It’s because as I was studying this passage, I kept finding myself asking, “Why was following the Law so important to the Pharisees?” Why do they care so much what people are doing on the Sabbath? Very often we think of the Pharisees as these horrible, no good, very bad people. And some of them were! But not all of them. For the most part, they were fervent people who were doing their best to honor God, to understand His Word, and to live by it, but the pain of exile had shaped their soundtracks and their belief system so significantly.

It really is hard for us to comprehend the impact that the exile in Babylon had on the Jewish people. We get a taste of the impact with Nehemiah, who lived after the people had returned from exile. He sees the people once again neglecting the Sabbath, and he says “I rebuked the nobles of Judah and said to them, “What is this wicked thing you are doing—desecrating the Sabbath day? Didn’t your ancestors do the same things, so that our God brought all this calamity on us and on this city? Now you are stirring up more wrath against Israel by desecrating the Sabbath.” And this is essentially the same question that the Pharisees are asking Jesus’ disciples in our passage!

So it wasn’t their emphasis on the Sabbath that was the problem. The problem was that, over time, they began to believe that in the Law, and in the Scriptures, and in their performance, they would find life, protection, and salvation. And this was the birth of their legalism. They went beyond trying to honor God and began to focus so much on the rules, because following the rules is what would keep them safe from another exile.

And we can imagine what their soundtracks would have been like. In their eyes, they need to perfectly follow God’s Law in order to avoid exile, so I am not safe unless I am perfect. Unless we get it right, we are doomed. We need to get our act together. We need to figure this thing out, or else. This is one of the reasons they were so strict about the Law.

And that soundtrack changed what they were focused on. Rather than allowing God’s good gifts to focus their eyes on Him, they were focused on all this other stuff.

First, they focused on the Law. They had a Law-facing life that turned relationships into transactions. They thought, "If I can just get it right, everything will be okay." "God has given me the rules, and if I play by the rules, I can control the outcome." But all these ideas are just transactions. It’s just doing a certain thing to get a certain outcome. And so, rather than leaning into God as the One who gave them the Law in order that they could live life together, they buried their eyes into the gift and kept the Giver at arms length. In the case of the Sabbath; rather than using it as a time to delight in God and in His presence, they were more focused on making sure no one was accidentally doing work.

Second, they were focused on self. Their soundtracks gave them a self-facing confidence that they could perform well enough to save themselves. "It's all up to me in the end." "God only loves and protects me when I perform well." Rather than allowing the Law to make them aware of their need for forgiveness and repentence, they decided to try and shoulder the whole burden themselves so that they could remain in control.

And finally they were focused on the past. They had this backward-facing fear that became a burden to others and a distraction from God. They thought to themselves,"That exile can never happen again." "I will do anything in my power to prevent that from ever happening." And so rather than looking forward to what God had in store for their redemption, they looked backward and tried to avoid calamity.

Their solution was trying to “build a hedge” of rules around the Law in order to guard against any possible infringement of the Law by ignorance or accident. Because they thought that this was the only way to live.

Back in our text we read that the “disciples began to pick some heads of grain,” but when you look at what God actually said in the Old Testament, this was perfectly lawful. In Leviticus it says that farmers had to leave the edges of their fields unharvested so that people passing through, and so that the poor could have something to eat. So the disciples weren’t stealing grain. And the Sabbath Laws don’t say anything about not eating. The problem was that the Pharisees had taken what God said about the Sabbath, and they had added all this extra stuff onto it.

And even they knew that it was a little out of hand. In their own writings, it says “the rules about the Sabbath … are as mountains hanging by a hair, for Scripture is scanty and the rules many.” (Mishnah, Hagigah 1:8). You’ve already seen in Exodus the sabbath Law, and on the next slide I’ve got all the categories that the Pharisees created, all the rules they added to try to explain what rest meant.

God had let down this lifeline called the Sabbath, and they had proceeded to weigh it down and make it impossible to reach by tying a mountain of man-made regulations to the bottom of it.

Why? Because they were looking back at their failures. They’re looking down at the Law. They’re looking to their own performance. And because when we aren’t looking to Jesus, God’s good gifts (that are intended to lead to life) become dead religion. It happened for them with the Sabbath, and it happens today all the time with all sorts of good things. Whether it’s Bible reading plans, prayer, church attendance, serving.

There are all these things that we should do and that are good for us, but when we do them so that we can feel good about ourselves, or when we do them so that we can check a box, or when we do them so that God will be happy with us, or when we do them so that God will bless me, or when we do them for any other reason that to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, then we have fallen into the same trap.

And so even though the disciples aren’t actually disobeying the Old Testament Law, the Pharisees ask… “Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”

But their question isn’t genuine. They don’t want to know why. So their question is really a rebuke and a warning. “How dare you do this on the Sabbath?! Don’t you realize what you’re doing? Don’t you realize what’s at stake?! This is life or death! There’s no room for failure, or grey areas, or mystery, or grace. We are either perfect, or it’s game over.”

And as they built this hedge of rules around the Law, they thought they were building walls that would keep them safe, but instead they were building walls that would keep them trapped. All their hedge ammounted to was a prison. And when Jesus came to knock on the door of their hearts, they thought He was trying to break in, to put their lives at risk, when in reality He came to give His life to set them free!

… don’t you see that we do the same thing? If you’ve ever seen the musical or the movie Annie, we’re like the orphan Annie, who gets adopted and sits in a mansion given to her at no cost, and all we can think to do is try and earn our keep by cleaning the windows and sweeping the floors. We’re so quick to jump into a legalistic prison because it gives us the illusion of control; and even if I’m trapped, at least I’m safe. Even if I’m trapped, at least I’m comfortable. At least I don’t have to stretch like the new wineskin. At least I don’t have to be flexible and let God transform me.

We like legalism because it keeps the ball in our court. But it becomes a prison that keeps us stuck.

And Jesus wants to break us free and move us forward. Jesus is not willing to leave us where we’re at. This is why we're talking about the NSS, because we’re convinced that we all have a step to take deeper into the freedom that Christ offers.

And so, yes, we should all do things like taking the next step survey; but understand that doing the Survey isn’t the point! The t-shirt isn’t the point! And even taking a step isn’t the point either!

Far be it from us to turn an exciting opportunity to grow into a dead religious exercise. Rather, the point is becoming more like Jesus, who lived in perfect connection with God, and who invites us into that connection. So if you want to grow in your faith, and if you want to join us and do it together, then by all means, take the survey! But don’t let taking the survey become the point. Look at your results. Talk with a mentor or a friend. And let the means of this survey take you to the ends of having a deeper, richer walk with Jesus.

So now as we turn the corner in our text, we’re going to look at Jesus’ response. The Pharisees had this soundtrack that was keeping them stuck; This is our next question: How does Jesus respond, and what can we learn from it this morning?

Jesus answered them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry?

Obviously, they had read this text. Jesus is making a statement: You have read, but you have failed to understand. You know the Scriptures, but you don’t know Me.

But He’s also making this comparison with King David. The key word here is “when they were hungry”; or in Mark’s version of the account, “when they were hungry and in need” (Mk 2:25). Jesus is saying look what David did when he saw people in need:

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.”

Nobody in that day condemned David; David was the best king Israel had ever had! So Jesus is saying that if you accept that David was able to overlook the ceremonial requirements of the Law because his men were in need, then you have no right to condemn me for overlooking the hedge that you’ve set up.

David saw the needs of his men, and he ate the bread that was meant for the priests in the interest of loving people, which is the point of the Law anyway. And Jesus is setting aside man-made regulations that missed the point of the Law and became a burden to people. The point of the Law was not to give people the chance to prove their righteousness. The point of the Law was not so that people had something to follow. In this very same account in Mark, Jesus goes on to say “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath!” (Mark 2:27). The Law was not the point! People were the point. The Law was given for their flourishing!

What’s being revealed are Jesus’ priorities: People are more important than the Law, because the Law was given for people.

What’s interesting is that if you look at this story about David in 1 Sam 22:9-10, it suggests that the priest “inquired of the Lord” before responding to David, so even though David technically broke the Law, people said it was ok. So David gets a pass because someone consulted the Lord on his behalf, and now Jesus is here, the very One who they said gave David a pass, and He’s saying, “I am the Lord of the Sabbath!”

He is the I AM! And all the Law and the Prophets point to Him. Just like Jesus said to the Pharisees in John 5, “You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” See because the Law was given for people, but it was also given to point people to Jesus.

It points out our need for forgiveness and salvation. It points out the foolishness of trusting in our own performance. It begs a question that only Jesus can answer: Who will save me from my sins and change me? Only Jesus Christ! Not our legalism. Not our striving. Not our prayer life. Not our Bible degree. Only the redeption offered in the blood of Jesus. This is what the Pharisees failed to understand. They took the Law as a challenge, when in reality it was an invitation! Not a challenge to perform, but an invitation to recognize your need for God.

But there’s one final thing I want to point out in the Text that’s so important, and it’s the title that Jesus uses. Because if you look back at our text, He actually doesn’t say “I am the Lord of the Sabbath.” He says “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” Some of you are thinking, “wait, I thought He was the Son of God—what’s going on here?” Well, Jesus is the Son of God, but His favorite way to refer to Himself was as the “Son of Man.” He does this over 80 times in the Gospels, and this is the second time in Luke.

And what the Pharisees would understand is that when Jesus calls Himself the Son of Man, He isn’t just talking about being a human being—He’s claiming that He is the fulfillment of prophecy. The Son of Man is a figure from all the way back in the book of Daniel, who has a vision and writes “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him."

In the book of Daniel the Son of Man was not a merely human figure, but was an exalted, Messianic figure who ushered in God’s kingdom. So in Jesus’ response, He’s saying to the Pharisees that if they are going to understand the change that Jesus is bringing, they need to know who He is. That He has come to fulfill the Law, and that He is coming with sovereign power to make a way for us, and to set us free from the tyranny of sin and death. That He comes with authority, but He also comes to humble Himself, identifying with us by taking on human form, and becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. This is Jesus’ identity: He is the only One who fulfills the Law; and so He is the only One who can offer His life to save us from the curse of the Law.

And that changes everything, because that means that we don’t need to focus on the Law, we don’t need to focus on our past, and we don’t need to focus on ourself. All we need to do is set our eyes on Him, and follow Him, to learn from Him, to become like Him. Jesus reveals Himself so that we can set our eyes on Him.

Conclusion

As we close, I want to ask just one more question. What have you set your eyes on?

For everyone listening to my voice, there are really I believe only two kinds of people.

You know what it’s like to fail, and you don’t ever want that to happen again, and so you have dedicated yourself to being perfect. You don’t smoke, you don’t chew, and you don’t go with girls that do. You rely on your ability to get it right to feel good about yourself; but this is legalism. And you’re trying to hold on so tight. And you try to hold everyone else in line. But at the end of the day you feel crushed by the weight of getting it perfect all the time. You wear your performance like a badge of honor, like the Pharisees did, and you think you’re a good Christian because of what you do or don’t do. Or, on the other end, you think that you’re a bad Christian because of the things you do or don’t do. In any case, you are at the center. It’s all about you and your performance.

You’ve been hurt by people who have tried to cram the Law and the rules down your throat. You’ve felt suffocated by the expectations of everyone else. And somewhere along the way, you decided enough is enough. And you either said, “I’m going to do whatever I want because Jesus will forgive me anyway,” or you said “I don’t care if it’s wrong; I’d rather be wrong and live how I want than be right and feel so stuck all the time, because I can’t do it anymore.” For once in my life, I want to do what I want to do. For once in my life, I want to be free. But you’re still living as a slave to your own desires.

And people in group one look at the people in group two and think, “Well, at least I’m not those people. Those people are the problem.” And the people in group two are doing the exact same thing! And yet the irony is that it’s just two sides of the same coin! In both, the emphasis is all about me. It’s either about me and my performance, or it’s about me and my desires and my hopes and my dreams. And in both cases, it’s a hedge that we believe is keeping us safe, but in the end it’s nothing more than a soundtrack that’s keeping us imprisoned.

What Jesus is inviting us to do is to stop allowing fear to keep you looking at the past. Stop looking at the Law, and let the Law point out your need for the forgiveness that’s offered in my name. And stop looking to yourself, because you are not God! But I am. So look to me! And let me take out some junk that’s been sitting in your flooded basement. Some of us have added things, we’ve added a mountain of expectation to our lives, when only one thing is necessary: To live with Jesus.

Jesus is offering you a lifeline today. He’s knocking on the door of your prison that’s always been locked from the inside. And He’s inviting you to step into freedom. He is the One who has come to set us free from the curse of the Law so we can live with Him in freedom. Some of us have spent so long working so hard because we’re so afraid of what will happen if we let up, if we let go, or if we fail. And we’re so tired. And Jesus says “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Mt 11:28-30).

Let’s look to Him, and let’s enter into that rest this morning.

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We’re going to close our service this morning by celebrating communion together. And this is your opportunity to do business with God! Paul says, don’t come to the table without examining yourself. So the ushers are going to pass out the elements, and we’re going to sing a song that reminds us of the price that Jesus paid to give us rest. And after the song, I’ll come up and lead us as we partake together. Let’s look to Him.