Jesus Lord of The Sabbath

Well, humans have a complicated relationship with rules. We love them and we hate them. Some of you are like, "We love them. " Well, we love rules when they serve us. They provide stability. Rules provide order. They provide a kind of predictability so you know what to expect when you go to work, you know what to expect when you go to school, you know what to expect when you're driving on the road — and someone doesn't use their blinker, you get pretty ticked. That's a rule, right? We like it when they serve us and they provide less chaos. Workplaces need them. Schools need them. Homes need rules.

And most of us, you know, even when we complain about rules, we don't prefer a sort of Lord of the Flies situation where everyone's just going crazy, right? So we appreciate rules, at least. But we also kind of hate rules. Rules tend to stack and constrict, and then you have to apply them to different kinds of situations. The more situations come up, you have to apply them. "Well, in this situation, do this. If this situation comes up, do that. " And so you're extrapolating and adding to the rule, and in doing so, we need to clarify them and expand them and amend them, and we add safeguards, and we heap expectations upon the expectations, and eventually the rules begin to feel heavy and restrictive and kind of suffocating.

And so we appreciate rules, we also kinda hate rules. And the trouble, I think, is underscored for believers, because for Christians, we don't just appreciate rules for what they do in society or in the workplace or in the home in general — we appreciate rules as given by a rule giver. There is someone, a being, God, who gives commands, who gives rules, who teaches what is right and what is wrong, and doles out do's and don'ts. And so for us, it's not just a love-hate relationship with rules in general, but a love-hate struggle with rules from a rule giver, which sort of raises the stakes.

We see rules as given by God to help us understand how to love Him and how to love neighbor. We're too broken to understand what it really means to love neighbor sometimes, and God has to spell it out. Let's start by not murdering them, not stealing from them. How about stop coveting your neighbor? I mean, if it's not spelled out for us, we kind of stray from it.

So we need those rules, and we appreciate those rules. But sometimes — I think oftentimes — we're tempted toward two kinds of opposite mistakes when it comes to understanding the rules that God has spelled out in scripture, his laws, his regulations, his commands.

Two Opposite Mistakes

On one side, we tend to sort of loosen the rules. We claim Jesus, we play the Jesus card. "Jesus freed us from the law, man. This is about relationship, not religion, rules, and regulation. Jesus has set us free from these rules. " And we're tempted sometimes to sort of reduce God's commands to suggestions. And we somehow emphasize relationship over rules as if they're exclusive to one another.

On the other side — rather than loosening the rules, we tighten them. In our desire to obey and worship God, in our desire to have order rather than chaos, we stick to the rules and we build fences around those rules so we can doubly make sure we don't break the actual rules. We add layers to protect them. And in our effort to guard God's actual commands, we can end up missing the purpose of those commands as we sort of slavishly heap rules upon rules.

So here's the real question: How do we apply God's commands in a way that honors the true intention of those commands — without gutting those commands, hollowing out those commands, and without suffocating under those commands?

I hope that tension makes sense to you, because that's exactly the tension that Jesus walks into in Luke chapter six.

Jesus Steps into the Rule Makers' World

We're moving through the gospel of Luke, and those first five chapters have laid out a lot of stuff for us to chew on. We get into chapter six, and Luke is showcasing how Jesus steps into a community that is highly influenced — not by the rule breaker types, but by the rule maker types. The types of religious folks that are on the extreme of so appreciating the rules that they wanna build guardrails around the rules and guardrails around those rules, because "we don't ever wanna break this rule, so we're gonna add all these other rules to it. " And the intention is to not break God's express command, but it has become something that the Pharisees end up becoming known for — a sort of hypocrisy, where there's so many rules, nobody keeps them, not even them. But they'll be the first ones to call you out on it if it serves them to call you out on it. And that's the religious setting.

But as Jesus deals with them, I want you to notice — Jesus' solution is not "dump the rules. " Jesus' solution, as he argues with the Pharisees, is not, "You guys are so dumb for wanting to follow rules. Bag the Old Testament. I came to give you freedom from rules. My father is a rule guy, but I'm here as your big brother to go, 'I'll take care of dad, don't worry about it. You guys run amok and do whatever you want. '"

That is not Jesus' solution to the other extreme of adding rules upon rules in a hypocritical kind of way. So what is the solution he provides? That's the solution we need so that we can go about our Christian lives not hating the rules but not so hyper-focused on the rules that we miss the intention of why the rules are there in the first place — not to restrict us or suffocate us, but to help us, to serve us, to give us life.

Plucking Grain on the Sabbath

So here we have a particular law — the Sabbath law. It's in the Ten Commandments to keep God's Sabbath. And it's a holy day to be set apart. In the context of ancient Israel, and the context that Jesus is stepping into, that was Saturday. That was the day of worship, that was the day of gathering, that was the day of not working, stopping your careers, all of that stuff. But the issue in this passage is not whether the Sabbath matters. The issue is whether the rule keepers have missed the point of the rule itself.

So we're gonna be talking about the Sabbath, but it's an exhibition on how to handle rules in general, because the Sabbath is an Old Testament rule. So it's not just about the Sabbath — it's about how you handle the Old Testament law. If you're doing a devotional time in the Old Testament, are you just like, "Ah, these are rules, these are rules, get me to a story"? Or do we appreciate the rules? And I think we're supposed to appreciate them in the right way.

So Luke chapter six, right at the top, let's read this first paragraph, verses one through five. We have two back-to-back scenes that deal with a similar theme of the Sabbath and the Pharisees trying to catch Jesus breaking the Sabbath, right? That's the occasion.

Well, that definitely ends on a mic drop moment. We'll get to that in a second, that final line. It's definitely a "shut your face" close to his argument. But his argument is different. If I were writing this — you know, stupid hypothetical — if I were writing this, that's not necessarily the way I would argue it. The way Jesus argues it is genius. And it's interesting. We have to keep in mind this is a legal debate.

What is lawful to do on the Sabbath? What is not lawful to do on the Sabbath? And in a theocracy like ancient Israel, if you break certain laws, certain laws are met with capital punishment. This was one of them. There was no such thing in the Old Testament as like, "Ah, it's Sabbath, but I'm training for a marathon. " You'll die, bro, okay? They will see you collecting sticks to make a fire, drag you out and kill you, which happens famously in the book of Exodus. Probably many of you are reading through the book of Exodus and you're like, "Boy, I could see if you murdered somebody that you get stoned. I could see if you stole things from the temple, maybe. But the dude was collecting sticks. "

Breaking the Sabbath law was met with a serious punishment. And so you can see the angle of the Pharisees, right? They wanna do what with Jesus? They would love Jesus to be erased. So if they can catch him doing something that is met with capital punishment, you can drag him out and stone him, and this prophet that's messing up their whole religious scene can be handled and be done away with. So if they can catch him breaking the Sabbath, they got him.

Now, you're not supposed to do labor on the Sabbath. Any of you have just ever taken any kind of Sunday school, you just have a cursory understanding of what the Sabbath is — you may not remember the festivals or the feasts or the sacrifices or whatever else that are involved in the ceremonial laws, but you remember the Sabbath is about rest, it's about ceasing from labor. That's kind of the most basic aspect of what the Sabbath was.

You're not supposed to do labor on the Sabbath. The prohibitions in scripture regarding the Sabbath focus on economic activity. Like, could you go into the town on a Sabbath? Sure. Can you go into town to do business? Nah. Can you — I'm extrapolating here — but can you have a fire in the home to keep from freezing to death? Yeah. Well, why was this guy killed for collecting sticks? Because I don't think he was trying to heat up the home. I think he was trying to do his normal labor — maybe blacksmithing, maybe trying to cook a meal for the rest of the week and break it into his little Tupperware compartments for his macros, whatever.

Whatever his normal labor was during the week, he didn't take a break from it on the Sabbath. So it wasn't about sticks, right? It was about not breaking from your normal labor and your normal routines. And so it focused on economic activity, occupational work, or normal weekly labor to support yourself, including making fires.

The Oral Tradition Problem

The law itself is pretty minimal. When you read the Old Testament about the Sabbath, it doesn't cover every example. Collecting sticks was just this guy's example. There's all kinds of examples of various ways that you could possibly break that law. But in Jewish oral tradition, they had to extrapolate, right? Because they're like, "Well, this guy got killed for collecting sticks. I wasn't grabbing sticks. I was grabbing rocks. Is that okay? " And they're looking through the Old Testament and they're like, "Well, it doesn't say rocks. I don't know — we have the stick example. What about rocks? " "Well, what's he doing with the rocks? " "Okay, if you're using rocks for this, it's this. If you're using rocks for that... " And then they add that to the law, orally.

They didn't add to scripture, but oral tradition. And oral tradition would collect and collect and collect. I think a couple hundred years after Jesus, they actually codified it and wrote it in the Mishnah. But these are oral tradition rules that, on the surface, they're not bad. I mean, anytime you give your kids a rule — "Hey, curfew is this time. " And they go, "Okay, but what if I have a flat tire? Do I still get punished? " And you're like, "Okay, no, man, if you have a flat tire, you're not getting punished. But if you have a flat tire because you were doing donuts on a parking lot that's full of glass, yes, you're gonna get double punished. "

So let's keep adjusting the rule, explaining the rule, extrapolating the rule. And as the Jews were in charge of adjudicating cases of Sabbath breaking, they'd have to weigh — was this actual Sabbath breaking or was it not? And so they started adding rules to it. To the point where, in their opinion, if you're walking through a field and grabbing grain, it's not just that you're eating. You can't just pluck it and eat it. What did the text say? They rub it in their hands. I don't really know exactly how this works, but you can't just eat it. You have to break off the chaff, throw that away, and eat the grain inside of it. They're not cooking it or anything, but they're just going through the field and eating. But this is why Luke says they rubbed it in their hands.

So Luke tells us the Pharisees were watching, okay? They're looking, they're waiting. "Do something wrong, man, do something wrong. " They're like Sabbath police — anything he does, that could be work. If there's a bead of sweat on Jesus' forehead, "We're killing him, " right? And they see these disciples walking through a field. While they're walking through the field, "Hey, Chuck, come here, check him out, look. " And they're grabbing — "Oh, they grabbed it. That's work, we got him. "

Jesus' Argument from David

Now, we should note that while their intention is to catch Jesus, we still need to wrestle with the dilemma. It's really easy to be like, "Man, stupid Pharisees. " Jesus is only violating their interpretation of the Sabbath, okay? He's violating their oral tradition. But I want you to see that when Jesus argues back, he doesn't argue that point. That's how I would've done it, right? I would've just been like, "Well, rubbing grain is not work, guys. Here's why. "

Instead, he goes to a deeper issue to catch them in their hypocrisy. And what he does is he goes to an Old Testament episode. Those of you who were here when we were going through 1 and 2 Samuel, you might remember this episode. David is on the run, and he did some weird stuff. Do you remember some of those sermons? I was like, "Is what David is doing right or wrong? "

And in this case, he and his men are on the run from Saul, who's trying to kill him. He's the next king, but he's not there yet, and so Saul hates him, and he's trying to spear him to death. David finds out through Jonathan that there's this plot, this plan, and so he runs. He's escaping, he's on the run, and these guys are starving. And David thinks, "You know what? The temple always has sacred bread. It's called the bread of the presence, and it's always there because no one's allowed to eat it. It's left out for God. " And I think, if we research, after a certain time the priest is allowed to eat it, and then you would put out the next fresh bread of presence. So the bread doesn't go to waste, but it's the priest's food.

And David goes, "Well, we're not priests, but we're starving, and I know the bread is there. " So he goes to the priest, Ahimelech, and lies to him. "I'm on a mission from Saul. Saul sent me. And on this mission, we're running out of food, and we need the bread. " It's like a half truth.

Notably, the priest doesn't go, "How dare you? How dare you ask for the bread of presence? You know it's against the law, David. And I'm not going to break the law for you, for Saul, or anybody else. " The priest goes, "Are you guys pure? " And David goes, "Yeah. " And there's a guy there — and that's part of Jesus' point.

Jesus is telling the Pharisees: if you think there are no exceptions ever to God's rules, then how do you explain this? How do you explain David and all his men being fine with breaking it, and not only that, but the priest being fine with breaking it by giving it to them? How do you explain that?

And interestingly, this helps us when we're reading David and we're like, "Is David wrong or right? " Well, if the text doesn't tell us that he's wrong, it seems to me like he's usually pretty right, I don't know. Jesus is using a text where David is lying and breaking an explicit rule about the bread. But Jesus' point is that what superseded the rule about the bread is the fact that these guys are starving, man.

They weren't there for a snack. It wasn't like, "Man, I haven't eaten in two hours. My tummy's grumbly. " They're starving. They don't have fields out there. They're out there in the wilderness. They're dodging spears, they're hiding in caves, and they don't have food. There were no MREs, right? He needed something, and that's what he could get to stay alive.

So rather than arguing the point about their interpretation about rubbing grain, Jesus' argument is not that what he's doing is strictly legal and that it perfectly fits within the rules — that's how I would argue it — but he's arguing something different. He's sort of granting them that this is not strictly by the book, because what David did wasn't by the book either, right? David was obviously breaking the law. There's not even an argument to be made there.

You can argue that Jesus isn't breaking the law. He wasn't collecting sticks. He wasn't making a fire. He just rubbed it in his hands, bro — it wasn't that hard. You could argue that. But instead of doing that, he goes to a clear breaking of the law to show that there are exceptions.

So while a lot of things in scripture are black and white — you either do or you don't commit adultery, you either did or did not take that thing which didn't belong to you — other things take context. And Pharisees don't like context. When I talk about those two opposite types of people — the one who just claims freedom, "It's relationship, I can do whatever I want, " and the other opposite, the rule followers — they don't want chaos. They want rules, and they add to the rules to protect the rules. Those become the Pharisees. And they don't like non-black-and-white issues. That's why they try to black-and-white everything with their oral tradition — just solve everything. "What about the rocks? " Here's a rule. "What about rubbing grain? " Here's a rule. "What about if I wear this? " Here's a rule.

And in that, Jesus is challenging it by explaining that that's not gonna work. It doesn't work because when you read scripture, clearly, here's a black and white rule, David broke it, and God is fine with it. The priest is fine with it, the anointed King David is fine with it, and you as a reader, you're supposed to be fine with it. So what do you guys do with that? And now the Pharisees are caught in this dilemma — realizing their black and white system doesn't hold, and they don't know how to answer him on that text from 1 Samuel.

So Jesus is teaching that yes, rules are good, yes, there's a place for rules, they're there for good reason — but not every rule is the top rule. Sometimes there are other principles that supersede that rule, and you have to learn when to accommodate the rule to the thing that overpowers it, overcomes it, is more important. In David's case, the bread of presence is very important. God doesn't need it to live, but it's a symbol, and it's an important symbol. But if David and his men are on the brink of death — yeah, eat the bread.

So rules have a place, but sometimes there's context, and you have to understand the nuance. Which isn't an excuse to just break the rules all the time, but you have to understand that the rule is supposed to serve us. We don't serve the rules. And so when the rule is getting in the way of something more important — like life, like supporting life, and supporting the mission that David is on — then the rule is broken for that purpose.

And David kind of demonstrates this a few times. He demonstrates it by lying to the priest. He demonstrates it by lying to the Philistine king, acting like he's crazy to get out of a situation where he was going to get killed. And so Christians are like, "We're not supposed to lie. " And then people say, "Well, if you're hiding Jews in your house and a Nazi comes and knocks and says, 'Are you hiding Jews? ' you have to say yes, because you're not supposed to lie. "

I disagree with that. Because in that context, you're hating your neighbor by telling the truth rather than loving your neighbor by lying. And sometimes I think we wear a sort of spiritual pride — we're like, "I'm gonna go to heaven, I'm gonna be able to say I didn't lie. " But you sent these people to their deaths when you promised them you would hide them. That doesn't make any normal sense, okay?

So God has rules, yes. But those rules are meant for a purpose. They're meant to serve us. And Jesus is saying, "Yeah, ordinarily on the Sabbath, I wouldn't walk through a field. But we didn't have food, the grain is there, it's gonna get wasted anyway, and we didn't have to cook a pot or heat stuff up — we just rubbed it in our hands and ate it. We were hungry, and it was time to eat. " And so there are exceptions to the rules, and your oral traditions don't always make room for that.

You want it to be easy. You want it to be black and white so you don't have to think about it and do hard stuff — the hard stuff of figuring things out. You just want to follow the rules. And I think, reading between the lines as you learn about the Pharisees, you're using it to control people. You're using it to kind of prop yourself up. You're such good rule followers, you have so many rules. Anybody that you wanna take out in the community, you can take them out, because if you scan through their life, you're gonna find something. They broke some oral tradition somewhere, because it's not possible to uphold all of those laws.

So Jesus uses David's life — at least that one episode — and he takes it as normative. What David is doing there is an example to us of breaking a rule for some other greater good.

And so, as he does that, Luke — I'm sure the conversation was longer — but Luke ends it in verse five with Jesus saying, "The Son of Man is the Lord of the Sabbath. " I mean, who gets to explain the Sabbath? How about the Lord of the Sabbath? Does he get a say? "Yeah, well, I'm him, so shut your mouth. " I mean, he didn't say it that way, I'm sure, but that's essentially what he's saying.

This conversation is over because I, as the Son of Man — meaning I am taking that messianic title from the Old Testament, meaning I'm the Messiah, I'm the divine one with divine authority — but I'm also the Son of Man as the representative of man, as born of man, as one who is able to stand before men and tell men how they're supposed to relate to God. I'm the mediator, and I'm ultimately the lawgiver. That means I'm ultimately the law interpreter. And I'm telling you that you misunderstand the law when you obey it to the letter no matter what, because sometimes there are circumstances that mean you have to see it from another angle.

That's not Jesus saying laws don't matter. We're not supposed to cheer this on and go, "Yeah, see, I knew it, rules are stupid. " That's totally missing the point. But we have to be reasonable. So you've got your curfew, and you're already rehearsing your speech — the kid's late and you're rehearsing your speech, "This kid was late, " and you're not thinking there's any exception. No matter what, this kid is getting it. Then the kid walks in, has a good excuse, and you're like, "But if I bend this one, he's gonna bend it forever. I have to punish him no matter what. " That's foolish. That's foolish. We have to take context into the situation like David did, like Jesus is teaching us to do.

Healing on the Sabbath

So what he continues with in the second episode, this other kind of law episode — Luke is trying to help us understand that what Jesus was teaching is that the law is important, but it's a help. It's not a tool of destruction.

So here's where it really gets dicey in this next episode, because you've got this man with a withered hand. He was either born with it or he injured it on the job, but he probably finds it hard to work, and he's sort of trapped by this one-handedness because one hand is withered.

And on the Sabbath, Jesus sees the opportunity to heal him in front of the Pharisees that are just daring him to do something, right?

I think it's emphasizing right hand. Most people are right-handed. This messed him up. If he had some kind of carpentry job or some job with physical labor, this probably has messed up his career, and I think that's why it's pointing out it's his right hand.

The scribes and the Pharisees watched Jesus to see whether he would heal on the Sabbath — the little rabbi rascal. They wanna catch him. Why? So that they might find a reason to accuse him. It's a trap.

And I love this — Jesus knew their thoughts. He didn't overhear a conversation. He wasn't accidentally included in a group chat that he wasn't supposed to be a part of. They were just thinking it. And Jesus knows it. He knows their thoughts.

And he said to the man with the withered hand, "Come and stand here. " He's like, "I'm doing this. Oh, man, I'm doing it. I wasn't going to do it. But now that you guys are thinking that, now I'm definitely going to do it. Come and stand here. " So everyone's watching. The opposite of doing it on a sneak tip, right? He's putting it front and center in front of everyone.

And the man rose and stood there with his messed up hand, probably wondering what's going on, maybe hoping, "I hope this is a healing, I hope... " And then Jesus said to them — the man is standing there and he asks a question to everybody, mainly focused on the Pharisees — "I ask you, is it lawful on the Sabbath... " You think he's gonna say, "To heal or to not heal? " And he puts it in different terms: "To do good or to do harm. "

What's the purpose of the law? What's the function of the law? Well, it's not to do harm. It's to do good. And when the law starts causing harm, maybe we're doing something wrong. That's the point. "Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm? To save life or to destroy it? "

And after looking around at them all, he said to the man, "Stretch out your hand. " And he did so, and his hand was restored. But they were filled with — amazement? Wonder? Gratitude? "Wow"? — fury, man. Fury. And they discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus. And they don't mean, "How do we get him on a healing circuit? " They mean, "How do we kill this guy? " Because he did this in front of all of them — he embarrassed them, didn't he? He embarrassed them.

So I'm gonna save him. I'm gonna deliver him from this thing that's keeping him from his work, keeping him from his career, keeping him from providing for his family the rest of the week. I might have to do a work on the Sabbath. He's not allowed to work Monday through Friday, bro. He can't. So yeah, I'm gonna do a work so he can get to work. That's the point.

You remember that the Sabbath command is a two-sided command? The Sabbath command is not just one day rest — it's six days work. Six days work, rest one. But this guy can't even do it. And Jesus rescues him from the inability — there's the irony. Jesus is doing a work to rescue him so he can fulfill the Sabbath command of work and rest, the rhythm of work and rest.

So the Pharisees watch him, Jesus puts the man in front of everybody on display, asks this question to expose their hypocrisy, and heals the man in front of them. Why? Because that's the point of the Sabbath rest. He's giving him rest from his injury. So Jesus heals the man because to help is better than to hurt, and clearly the Pharisees were missing the point of the Sabbath, which is to give man rest — to remind man that he's dependent on a sovereign provider, not the mere strength of his ambition or effort. And Jesus honors that in the healing.

How We Handle the Lord's Day Today

Now let's try to apply this today, carefully.

These two stories, back to back — they're about the Sabbath, right? And since we recently adopted a statement describing Sunday as the Christian Sabbath, and there's a somewhat recent sermon on that you can go back and listen to if you want to, I think we should take this opportunity to think carefully about how we handle the Lord's Day each week, which is Sunday. There's maybe another sermon — maybe it was that same sermon — where I explained how we got from Saturday Sabbath to Resurrection Day, Lord's Day, and how every Sunday is Easter for Christians.

But as we apply Sabbath law and its intention, I think the easiest parallel, the closest parallel, is how we handle the Lord's Day each week now, today, as Christians. And we're not Israel. We don't treat Sundays exactly the same way Israel treated Saturdays under the Mosaic Covenant, and I think that's why the framers of the confession that we adopted put it as the Christian Sabbath — it's different. There are similarities, but it's not the Sabbath. It's a Christian version of what we see in the Old Testament. Just like communion is Passover, but it's not exactly Passover — it didn't take us an hour to do it, but it has elements of it, and it's the descendant of it. It's the new covenant meal, but it has its roots in the old covenant meal, right?

And in a similar way, there are parallels between the Sabbath and Sunday worship, and there's debates as to how parallel it is, how much continues over, and that's fine. But I think we need to recognize that there's an underlying principle in it — that rhythm of rest and worship — that is not just embedded in the Ten Commandments, which it is, but it's rooted in creation, I believe. God created the world in the rhythm of six days of work and one day of rest.

When Moses came down with the tablets, they weren't like, "Uh-huh, worshiping all the gods, uh-huh. Sabbath — huh? " The creation story builds it into life and the world, and there is no place in the world that manages any kind of calendar that does not have a seven-day week. It has nothing to do with moons or stars or how the sun is positioned. It's because God created it that way. And cultures that have tried to do something other than a seven-day week have reverted back to the seven-day week. I think that's because it's ingrained.