Legalism and Lordship

Mark 2:23–28 ESV

23 One Sabbath he was going through the grainfields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. 24 And the Pharisees were saying to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” 25 And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did, when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him: 26 how he entered the house of God, in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?” 27 And he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. 28 So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.”

Pray

Introduction

Years ago, I worked a job that was swing shift. We would do 2 weeks of day shift and then 2 weeks of night shift. We also worked 12 hour days which made the work day really long. There was a benefit to this set up though. We only worked 14 days a month. This was a great perk to the job. There were other factors in it that made it harder but I only had to work 14 days a month. That means there were days in the week where I could just do whatever I wanted, because I didn’t have to go to work. Most importantly, it gave me more than enough time to rest.

Many of you have never had that type of job and that is okay. Most of us though have experienced the opposite. Of working too much. I have had jobs where I was working 6 and even 7 days a week. Those are not fun. In fact, they are often times dangerous. I read a story this week from 2013 of a woman who died from working too much. True story. Here is the first line of the article on the guardian.com “Japan has again been forced to confront its work culture after labour inspectors ruled that the death of a 31-year-old journalist …had been caused by overwork.”

You keep on reading and it says that she worked 159 hours of overtime and only took 2 days off work in the month leading up to her death. Rest is important. Rest is biblical. In the Old Testament, God set aside a day every week to rest. It was called the Sabbath. Our passage today is dealing with the Sabbath. Hopefully we will deal with a lot of questions that you may have about the Sabbath and what it means for us today. But we will also be dealing with other issues. Like legalism. We see the Pharisees in this scene in scripture and they are being very legalistic about what is happening. And Jesus addresses that. We hear the word legalism sometimes. So, in the context of what we are looking at today, what is legalism? One of my commentaries had a great definition for it.

Exalting Jesus in Mark (When Man-Made Rules Get in the Way of God’s Gracious Plans (Mark 2:23–28))

Legalism is raising to the level of biblical mandate and command what God has neither commanded nor prohibited in His Word

We can all be legalistic about things. When we look at a text like this one today, we should be warned against the dangers of it. If you are taking notes and write down only one thing today, write this down. Legalism does not mix with following Jesus. Period. And as we go through this passage, my goal is that you leave here with a correct understanding of the difference between legalism and lordship.

Legalism is Burdensome (23-24)

Mark 2:23 ESV

23 One Sabbath he was going through the grainfields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain.

There could have been some time difference between the verses right before this and these verses. It says one Sabbath. It doesn’t say which Sabbath. The whole issue that we see the Pharisees have in this passage revolves around it being the Sabbath. This day that was set aside for rest.

On this particular Sabbath day, Jesus and his disciples were going through a grainfield. And they were hungry and began to take the heads off the grain and eat them.

Before we move on, I want us to really deal with what the Sabbath was. In the book of Exodus, Moses was given the 10 commandments. The fourth of the ten commandments dealt with the Sabbath. Exodus 20:8–11 “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 a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”

God gives Moses a commandment and in that commandment, we find clarity on why it is necessary to remember the Sabbath. It is about rest. God had given Adam and Eve over to work after they took the fruit in the garden of Eden. God told Adam that because of their disobedience, he would have to labor. Because of labor, we need rest. So God established a day out of the week that there would be no work. It would begin at sun down on Friday evening and last till sun down on Saturday evening. This was not when the Sabbath was established though. The Sabbath was established in Genesis 2 when we see the creation account. It ends with God taking a day for rest. There are many different laws that dictated what you could and could not do on the Sabbath and we will address a few of them as we go through this passage.

Mark 2:24 ESV

24 And the Pharisees were saying to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?”

So the Pharisees confront Jesus. If you have been here the last few weeks, you may notice a trend. It seems like the Pharisees just have it out for Jesus. And they do, because how Jesus operates really rubs them the wrong way. This is the fourth instance in a series of five times that the Pharisees confront Jesus in these events early in Mark. First, they had an issue with Jesus telling someone that their sins are forgiven, then they had a problem with Jesus eating with tax collectors and sinners, then they had a problem with his disciples not observing the laws about fasting. And now, in this text, they are saying that the disciples of Jesus are doing something that is not lawful on the Sabbath. So what are they doing that is unlawful?

The passage says that they are plucking the heads of grain off. This act in itself is not unlawful. In fact, it was completely legal for you to walk into someones field and take grain off the top. Deuteronomy 23:25 “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.” So they are not breaking the law by stealing.

In the eyes of the Pharisees, they are breaking the law in 2 different areas.

Reaping - You could not reap the harvest on the Sabbath. Exodus 34:21 “21 “Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest. In plowing time and in harvest you shall rest.” So by plucking, the Pharisees viewed this as them harvesting on the Sabbath.

Traveling - Yes, they had an issue with them walking. There is a term that is found in scripture called a “Sabbaths day journey”. On the Sabbath, you were only permitted to walk so many steps. 1999 steps is the most that you would be able to walk and it still be considered restful.

Because they were the disciples of Jesus, Jesus was held responsible for them disobeying Sabbath laws. They took these laws very seriously. The scribes could not carry pens with them. Carpenters could not use a hammer or a saw. You could not light a candle, you couldn’t do any type of farm work, a woman could not even look in a mirror because she might see a grey hair and be tempted to pluck it out. And my favorite, you could not take a bath because you might spill water on the floor and it would be considered cleaning the floor. Yes, these are all laws.

We laugh at these because we don’t do them now. But we still have this same mentality in a lot of ways. Many people like to think of Sunday as a Sabbath day now. This is the day that we come to worship because Jesus rose from the grave on a Sunday. So many of the traditions that used to be done on the Sabbath day, we do on Sunday. And don’t say that you don’t. How many times have you seen your neighbor mowing his yard and think to yourself that they shouldn’t do that because it is Sunday. We all do it in different ways. We have at some time, every one of us, been just like the Pharisees.

There was a story in the church I grew up in. It took place in the 1800’s I believe. I couldn’t tell you the name of the pastor. But there was a Saturday night when he was getting ready for bed. He was in the middle of shaving and noticed that his livestock had broken the fence and was out. So he wiped off his face and went out to get that taken care of. Well, it took him a good bit of time to get them back in and get them secured. When he made it back to the house, it was after midnight. At that point, it was Sunday. So he could not finish shaving because it would be work. So he preached the next morning with a half shaven face.

Having a mindset like this can be burdensome. It is a form of bondage. But God does not call his people into a life of legalism. He calls them into a life of Lordship.

The Lordship of Jesus is Freeing (25-28)

Mark 2:25 ESV

25 And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did, when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him:

He tells them this story of David. But don’t miss this little detail in this verse. Remember that the Pharisees just keep on coming after Jesus. What he says is almost insulting to them. He says to them, “Have you never read what David did”. These are the religious elite. And Jesus questions their knowledge of scripture. He is saying to them, “Don’t you know the bible?”

Mark 2:25–26 ESV

25 And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did, when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him: 26 how he entered the house of God, in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?”

Jesus challenges them with a passage from the Old Testament about David. If you were here on Wednesday night this week, we looked at the book of Ruth and 1st and 2nd Samuel. This is a reference to 1st Samuel chapter 21. David had been charged to go on a secret mission by the king. He and his men were on their journey and they were hungry. They could not go and knock on the door of peoples houses to eat. So they went and met with the priest. They asked him if he had anything to eat. All he had was the holy bread. What was this holy bread? The priests would keep bread in the temple on what was called the table of presence. This bread signified the relationship between Israel and Yahweh in many ways. It was a picture of how God did not rely on them for food and drink but that they relied upon him (wandering in the wilderness). The bread had a connection to the Sabbath and could only be eaten by the priests.

Jesus is using a historical biblical story to prove to them a point. They had become so legalistic in their view of Sabbath laws that they had lost any sort of compassion towards people. Jesus points out that David and his men ate the bread that was set aside for the priests on the sabbath to eat. Did God condemn David and his men for doing this? No, he did not. Did David and his men break a law pertaining to the Sabbath? Yes, technically they did. So why did God not condemn them.

Grace. God gives us grace. God showed them grace because he knew it was more important for them to eat and be nourished so that they didn’t die than it was for the bread to be taken care of rightly. Would the Pharisees have let David eat the holy bread? No, because they were too wrapped up in their legalism to care for the health of someone over breaking law and tradition.

That makes me wonder how often we choose tradition over chances to see people liberated from their sin. I have a friend that is a pastor and the church that he pastors has seen some very rough times in the last 10-20 years. They wouldn’t let anyone use their building for anything. They raised money and built this very nice gym even. After they built the gym, they wouldn’t even let the youth pastor take the youth in the gym to play basketball. They didn’t open their doors to the community at all to show them that they love them. Well that was because they didn’t love them. They loved self much more than they loved others.

Since my friend has been there, they now have the facility being occupied by outside groups 7 days a week. They are being a light in the community. They are opening up their doors to people who are outside of the church in hopes of seeing people liberated from their sin. Of being freed from the bondage of sin. Of coming to know the Lordship of Jesus Christ. We cannot do this if we are like the Pharisees and hold tradition over the importance of people coming to faith.

Mark 2:27 ESV

27 And he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

Jesus says this to correct the Pharisees in their thinking. They were missing the whole point of why the Sabbath was established. What was it for? Andy Davis from FBC Durham says, “It was to bless man, to refresh him, to strengthen him, to free him for one day from the burdens of work and to allow him to refocus his mind on God and on his throne.” Having a time to rest gives us the chance to refocus ourselves on God. That is why the Sabbath was created. We were not created for the Sabbath, the Sabbath was created for man. The Sabbath was created for us to be able to refocus ourselves on God and rest.

But as this scene in Mark begins to wind down, Jesus makes a very bold claim. It is claims like this that infuriate the Pharisees.

Mark 2:28 ESV

28 So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.”

The Son of Man. This is a title that Jesus is proclaiming over himself. This is a very important distinction that he is making. This title is used many time in the Old Testament. It is found 93 times in the book of Ezekiel alone. The title “the Son of Man” in the Old Testament is pointing to the Messiah that is to come. Jesus, by saying that he is the Son of Man, is saying that he is the Messiah. This would have just given the Pharisees even more ammunition towards their hatred of Jesus.

He says that he is the messiah and that he is lord of the Sabbath. This means that he is the one who has the authority to say what can and cannot be done on a Sabbath. He is saying that the Pharisees have no authority over him and anything that he says. Jesus is the creator of all things. John chapter 1 tells us this. Jesus created this day. Jesus is God in the form of man.

This claim that Jesus is making is a claim to be God. This is what will take him to the cross and ultimately to die for the sins of man.

Jesus came not to abolish the law but to fulfill the law. This means that things look different on this side of Jesus. The Sabbath looks different for us than it did for people in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, they would have to lay a whole day aside to be refreshed and renewed to God. After Jesus has come and live a sinless life, went to the cross to die, and rose from the grave, we can rest in him. Where we have failed, he succeeded perfectly. We do not have this separation from God anymore. We have the Holy Spirit. We do not have to set aside a day to rest when we have the one to rest in with us at all times. Rest in the Lordship of Jesus.

Conclusion

Legalism or Lordship. I have spoken to both at great lengths this morning and I pray that we have a clear distinction between the two. One is burdensome, one is freeing. We are not free to sin because of the work of Jesus though. What we are free from is the eternal consequences of our sin. Because Jesus took that from us and put that on himself on the cross. This is grace. God’s redemption at Christs expense. Jesus willingly went to the cross so that we don’t have to be legalistic, so that we don’t have to be under the thumb of the Pharisees. There is freedom in Christ.

Maybe you are here today and you feel enslaved to your sin. I want to give you the chance to deal with that. How do you deal with that? You deal with that through repentance and belief.

What is repentance?

What do I have to believe?

And when you do this, you are saved. You are no longer seen as unrighteous in the eyes of God. He looks at you and he sees the righteousness of Jesus. On the cross there was a great exchange. Your sin for the righteousness of Jesus.

Remember what I said at the beginning. Legalism does not mix with the Lordship of Jesus. Maybe you are here today and you have been held down by the legalism of modern day Pharisees. I want to tell you that there is freedom in Christ. Repent and believe.

Believers, guard yourself of legalism. Continue to dive into scripture so that we understand the Jesus that is revealed to us in God’s word. So that we understand the freedom that comes with us submitting ourselves to the Lordship of Jesus.