The Sabbath was Jesus' Idea, Silly Pharisees

Introduction: What did you do on Saturday? Did any of you do yardwork? Did you have to clean your room? Did you help make any of the meals that day? Did you tie your shoes? Did you write anything down? Did you erase anything? Did you go hunting? Did you play with legos? Did you knock over legos? Did you start a fire? Did you carry anything to or from the car? Then you broke one of the Ten Commandments. According to Jewish law, you didn’t keep the Sabbath.

What is Sabbath?

What’s the Sabbath: : “Honor the Sabbath and keep it holy.” No work on the 7th day. (Reference to creation).

The Story

So, for the Pharisees, sabbath was a big deal. It’s one of the ten commandments. So they added all these extra rules in order to make sure they didn’t break it. So, when the disciples are eating in the field, they Pharisees are supes mad.

The Story - Mark 2:23-3:6

What’s interesting is that the Pharisees claim that the disciples are breaking the law, but they aren’t. They are breaking the extra rules the Pharisees had put in place.

So, Jesus throws back to this other Old Testament story where David ate holy bread. In the temple, they had this specific bread that was there for God and sat on the table all the time. Only the priests were allowed to eat this bread. David and his crew come into the temple and they’re hungry so he asks the priest for some bread, and they eat the holy bread. The point that Jesus is that things are holy, set apart for a reason. And that reason is for the people. But when someone gets so stuck on the technicalities of the “rules” that they actually miss the point of the rule—people—then the law becomes wrong. (This is the point of much of Romans.)

Here’s an example: Cool Runnings. Jamaican Bobsledding Team. They get disqualified because of last minute rules change that was done intentionally done to get back at their coach. The rules were used as a weapon to hurt someone.

Jesus explains: “The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people, and not people to meet the requirements of the Sabbath.” And he goes on: “The Son of Man is Lord, even over the Sabbath.”

Son of Man is Jesus’ favorite name for himself. It comes from the Old Testament—the book of Daniel. Basically, it means human, but in Daniel it’s specifically this human who rules from God’s throne, which seems kind of wack, but is really

So then, it gets even crazier because Jesus is such a boss. He’s in the synagogue (like a Jewish church) and there’s this dude there with a deformed hand. And it’s Sabbath, so the Pharisees are keeping tabs on him, making sure he’s not breaking any of the rules, and he knows it. So he brings the dude out in front of everybody and he asks this brilliant question: “Does the law permit good deeds on the sabbath, or is it a day for doing evil? Is this a day to save life or to destroy it?”

He’s getting at the same thing as earlier here: The point of the Sabbath is to do good - to make it holy and use it to connect with God. But one of the primary ways we are connected to God is when we love others. Jesus sees right through the Pharisees—that they use the Sabbath and all their extra rules to make it so that they don’t have to actually do good to those around them.

Do you guys want to know about my beef with Frontier? Frontier does our internet here, and earlier this year, our line got cut, and they kept half-fixing it but not really fixing it and I had to call like 12 times before it finally got fixed. Honestly most of them were kind, but a couple times, I got people who were basically like, I can’t help you. That’s not how it works. We do it this way, so nothing I can do.

It’s like....

And I’d like to pick on Frontier, but I do it too. I think, not my problem. I should probably go talk to that person, but no, they’ve got other friends. That’s not my job. I should probably give money to that person, but I’ve already given a little to church. I should probably listen to that person, but I’m in a hurry to get stuff done for Jesus. This the Pharisees. They’re using the law to actually shield themselves from having to do what is really right.

Then, we get a picture into Jesus’ heart. There are a few times in scripture where it tells us how Jesus felt, and he’s mad. He’s mad and sad at the same time because they won’t accept the obvious truth. I don’t know if you guys ever do this, but I used to do this all the time, where my parents and I were in an argument, and I would say the opposite of what they wanted just to make them mad. I remember one time where I had a legitimate 10 minute argument with my mom about whether golf was more important than school.

That’s what the Pharisees are doing. It’s obvious what the right answer is: The Sabbath is about good, not evil. But they won’t give in because they don’t like Jesus, because his way of living was a threat to their perfect system. That’s why, when Jesus heals the guy anyway, they try to figure out a way to kill Jesus.

Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath

Now, here’s the deal.

If you were an Israelite, you took the Law incredibly seriously. I mean this was literally what God said to do. And everything you’ve ever known was that the Pharisees were the best at doing it. Not everybody could keep up with all their extra rules, but that was definitely the way you were supposed to be doing it. And then, this random dude Jesus comes along and it seems like he doesn’t care about the Sabbath. He’s blatantly ignoring the rules they had set up in order to keep the Sabbath holy. But here’s the thing. He wasn’t disrespecting the Sabbath. He was actually showing it MORE respect because he was using it for what it was for.

What’s a book you have to read for school? Who gets to say what it’s about? You? If the author showed up to your school and was like, actually it’s about xyz, you would have to listen. They get final say.

This is what Jesus is doing by calling himself the Lord of the Sabbath. He’s saying, “Listen, guys, this whole Sabbath thing was my idea so I’m pretty sure I get to define how it works. And this is how it works: It is a day to do good, to save life, it is for the needs of the people.”

So I have three questions for you:

Do you rest in Jesus and set aside time for connection with God?

The point of the Sabbath was to spend a day focused on God. It was a day where the people were not working so that they could trust God as he provided for them and could remind themselves of his goodness and prepare them for the coming time. And honestly, our culture is SO BAD at this. We fill our time until there’s no more room and then we squeeze more into the cracks. And it only ever gets harder. Listen, I firmly believe that you can follow God, serve God, connect with God in and through any of your activities, but if you don’t ever rest in God, if you don’t ever slow down just to pray, to listen, to remember God, you’ll never be ready to worship God through band or tennis or track or homework.

Do you use the rules for good deeds or for evil?

The Bible gives us a lot of commands, but Jesus sums up all those commands with just two: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and Love your neighbor as yourself. The problem with the Pharisees is that they followed the tiny laws and the extra rules, but they missed the purpose of those rules: love. That’s not to say that we don’t follow the rules. Jesus says, “You carefully measure out a tenth of all your spices to give to God, but you forget to treat people rightly and give to them generously. You should do both.”

Important here is to remember what is a biblical command and what is a thing we’ve come up with to help us follow that biblical command. So the Bible says, “Do not murder.” You can’t be like well, I murdered that guy out of love so it’s fine. Jesus, in , commands us to remain in him. Most Christians have set up a system of doing that: reading your Bible and praying daily to remain in Jesus. Going to church weekly or twice a week to remain in Jesus. Here’s the question: Can you miss a day of Bible reading to serve your parents breakfast, or to get to school early to talk to a friend about something they’re struggling with. YES. Use the rules for good deeds.

Do you trust Jesus as Lord of everything in your life?

Ultimately, what it comes down to is that Jesus is LORD. He’s in charge. He created everything. He gets to define how it works. He gets final say on everything we do. He gets final say on your time and your activities. He gets final say on what you do each day. And what Jesus is about is healing. He heals this guy because it’s good—because the point of all the laws is love. Everything Jesus does on earth is about bringing healing, wholeness, and final peace to the world. That’s why he heals, that’s even why he calls out the Pharisees, and most of all, that’s why he goes to the cross. According to the law, Jesus, God himself, could have obliterated the Jewish leaders. They were breaking basically every commandment. But Jesus chose grace and chose love, and he healed the world of sin and evil through his death and resurrection. Follow him. Trust him.