Sermon Tone Analysis

Happy New Year!

After taking a break during the month of December, we’re back today in the gospel of Luke, which we’ve been in since the fall.

So far in this book we’ve seen Jesus’s birth, his dedication at the temple; John the Baptist came preparing the way for him; Jesus grew up and began his ministry, he began to make disciples and perform miracles and proclaim the kingdom of God.

, :

Happy New Year!

After taking a break during the month of December, we’re back today in the gospel of Luke, which we’ve been in since the fall.

So far in this book we’ve seen Jesus’s birth, his dedication at the temple; John the Baptist came preparing the way for him; Jesus grew up and began his ministry, he began to make disciples and perform miracles and proclaim the kingdom of God.

And in today’s text, we have a wonderful glimpse into the heart of Jesus’s ministry—so if you’ve missed the series so far, you can always go back to our website and listen to those sermons again, but you’re in luck today: this is a good place to jump in again.

Now, to understand what we’ll see today we need to do a little homework.

In the Old Testament (roughly the first two-thirds of the Bible) we see God giving the Law to his people through Moses in the wilderness.

The Law contained regulations for regulating the whole life of the people of Israel—their day-to-day practical life, their social and civil life, and their religious life.

These rules were very exhaustive and very strict.

The people of Israel always had a kind of love/hate relationship with the Law: this Law was supposed to rule their lives, and yet they were consistently unable to follow it.

And even when they did manage to observe the Law in all its particulars, they often missed the point of the Law entirely.

This is why many Old Testament prophets rebuke the people—most of the time they fail to keep the Law, and when they do observe the Law, they ignore the heart of the Law.

The prophet who probably puts this most succinctly is the prophet Hosea, who speaks for God in :

Amos 5.12, 21-24:

I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

and how great are your sins—

you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe,

and turn aside the needy in the gate...

6 For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,

21 I hate, I despise your feasts,

Anon, 2016.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version, Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.

22 Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,

I will not accept them;

the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

and the peace offerings of your fattened animals,

I will not look upon them.

23 Take away from me the noise of your songs;

Anon, 2016.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version, Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

to the melody of your harps I will not listen.

24 But let justice roll down like waters,

and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

So you see the point.

The Law was a reflection of God’s character, of his heart.

And it was meant to rub off on his people—as they observe the Law, they were meant to be more and more like God.

But that didn’t happen.

They observed the letter of the Law, but they missed the point.

All of the sacrifices and rituals and offerings that the Law required of the people meant absolutely nothing if they didn’t produce in the people the love that God felt toward the human beings he had created.

Mercy cannot be separated from real faith.

Anon, 2016.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version, Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

That truth is what we see at work in our text today.

We have Jesus in action, doing things that seem to break the Law, but which in fact accomplish the heart of the Law.

So let’s begin reading in , starting at verse 1.

sacrifices and burnt offerings in themselves held no weight with God.

What pleased God was a heart devoted to him and a life characterized by mercy.

Mercy is inseparable from real faith.

Grain on the Sabbath (v.

1-5)

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.

Now, we need to clear something up real quickly: Jesus and his disciples weren’t stealing from whoever owned this field.

The Jewish Law contained a provision for the poor, which allowed them to go into any field and pick fruit or grain to eat—it was a way of legally providing for the poor, so they wouldn’t go hungry.

The problem was that they were doing this on the Sabbath.

The Sabbath was the day of the week which was to be a day of rest for the people—they were required to do absolutely no work.

And after the Law was given, the Jews took this particular law very seriously: you couldn’t pick anything up, you couldn’t prepare food, you couldn’t till or grind any grain (which was, essentially, what the disciples were doing here with their hands).

So according to the way the Jewish people interpreted the law of the Sabbath, Jesus and his disciples were breaking the law.

So some Pharisees were there, and they saw this.

The Pharisees were a group of hyper-religious men who observed the Law to the letter.

They knew it all by heart, and they took great care to observe every law in great detail.

Jesus had already proven a threat to them (as we’ve seen before), so they’re constantly following Jesus around and trying to catch him in some sin or another so that they could reveal him to be the imposter they thought he was.

So that’s what happens here (v.

2):

6 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?” 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?” 5 And he said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”

2 But some of the Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath?”

They’ve caught him red-handed.

Jesus is right there with his disciples, and he sees them picking this grain and eating it, and he does nothing.

So this is great news for the Pharisees, and they jump on him.

And this is probably just my movie-lover brain kicking in, but I imagine them behind Jesus, and they say this—“Why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath?”—and

I picture Jesus slowly turning his head, like he’s just now noticing they’re there, and he’s got a grin on his face, like, “You really want to go toe-to-toe with me?”

He probably didn’t do that, but that’s how I picture it.

Here’s what he says (v. 3):

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?”

What’s he talking about?

Anon, 2016.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version, Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

The Jewish legal code contained a gracious provision for the hungry that allowed for a person to handpick fruit or grain for personal consumption… So the disciples were not guilty of pillaging someone’s field.

The rub was that they picked the corn on the Sabbath, a day on which the Fourth Commandment specifically prohibited work.

The “bread of the Presence” was bread that was kept in the temple and not eaten—every Sabbath they would take out the bread from last week and replace it with new bread.

This bread was meant to symbolize that the presence of God, who dwelt in the temple, was the source of Israel’s strength and nourishment in everything.

It would only be eaten once it was replaced with new bread, and even then it was only eaten by the priests.

f

The incident that Jesus is referring to is found in .

David is fleeing from King Saul; his men are starving.

It’s a Sabbath, so David goes to the priest Ahimelech and asks him for bread for him and his men.

Ahimelech tells them that the only bread he has is the consecrated bread of the Presence which had just been replaced by new bread.

After making sure that David and his men are ceremonially clean, he gives them the bread, and he and his men can eat.

The Jewish legal code contained a gracious provision for the hungry that allowed for a person to handpick fruit or grain for personal consumption… So the disciples were not guilty of pillaging someone’s field.

The rub was that they picked the corn on the Sabbath, a day on which the Fourth Commandment specifically prohibited work.

Hughes, R.K., 1998.

Luke: that you may know the truth, Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.

Hughes, R.K., 1998.

Luke: that you may know the truth, Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.

Now, why did Jesus bring this up here?

He brought it up to illustrate that

The “consecrated bread” consisted of twelve loaves of unleavened bread (Josephus, Antiquities 3.6.6)

that were arranged in two rows of six on a table of gold (, ).

Each Sabbath the old loaves were removed and replaced with fresh ones (24:8).