Well, good morning. It's good to see you all here. Glad you have joined us this morning.
I'm going to begin this morning by reading our passage that we're going to be looking at.
This isn't my normal practice, but we're going to start with the Word of God this morning.
And we're going to be looking at Mark chapter 2, starting in verse 23.
That's starting on page 786 in your pew Bible.
And why don't we turn there, and before we go to read God's Word, let me pray and ask for God's help.
So, let's pray together.
Lord Jesus, we come to you now.
And Lord, we ask that you would, Lord, allow your Word to dwell in us.
Lord, that as we look at this passage together, Lord, that you would be teaching us about who you are.
Lord, lay bare the realities of our hearts and the need that we have for your gospel,
and most of all, for our Savior Jesus.
Lord, I pray for your help this morning that you would give me, Lord, words that you would have me speak.
And Lord, that together we would sit under your Word.
Lord, we pray this in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Mark chapter 3, starting in verse 23.
One Sabbath, he, that is Jesus, was going through the grain fields, and as they made their way,
his disciples began to pluck heads of grain.
And the Pharisees were saying to him,
Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?
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,
how he entered the house of God in the time of Abiathar, the high priest,
and ate the bread of the presence, which is not lawful for the bread…
I'm sorry.
And ate the bread of the presence, which is not lawful for any but the priest to eat,
and also gave it to those who were with him?
And he said to them,
The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.
And again, he entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand,
and they watched Jesus to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath,
so that they might accuse him.
He said to the man with the withered hand,
Come here.
And he said to them,
Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?
But they were silent.
And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart,
and said to the man, Stretch out your hand.
He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.
The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him.
How to destroy him.
So if you are a good literary reader, you're reading this story,
and when you come to verses 5 and 6 of chapter 3,
it should be shocking.
Let me read them again to you, just so you can hear this.
And Jesus said to the man, Stretch out your hand.
He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.
And the Pharisees went out, immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him.
How to destroy him.
How do you get there?
How is it that a man being healed causes the heart to want to destroy the one who did the healing?
This is the question that I think we want to look at.
As we think about this story this morning, these accounts,
there are two stories that I think Mark put together for a purpose.
How do you get to a place where you want to hate a man and kill him for healing someone else?
These stories focus on the Sabbath,
and their understanding of the Sabbath.
And so we're going to spend some time looking at the Sabbath and what it is broadly in the Bible,
and then we're going to look at how the Sabbath was an issue in these passages,
and then we're going to look at how Jesus responded to those issues.
So if you're taking your outline, there it is.
The Sabbath broadly in the Bible,
and then the Sabbath problem in the passage,
and how Jesus responded is his third.
So let's look at this together for a few minutes.
What do you think the Sabbath means?
Maybe you grew up, like I did, reading Little House in the Prairie,
and Little House in the Big Woods.
You may remember, Laura Ingalls Wilder records this in The Little House in the Big Woods.
On Sundays, Mary and Laura must not run, or shout, or be noisy in their play.
Mary could not sew on her nine-patch quilt,
and Laura could not knit on the tiny mittens she was making for baby Carrie.
They might look quietly at their paper dolls,
but they must not make anything new for them.
They were not allowed to sew on doll clothes, even with pins.
They must sit quietly while Ma and Pa read Bible stories to them.
And then a little further on,
one Sunday after supper, Laura could not bear it any longer.
She began to play with Jack.
That's their dog.
And in a few minutes, she was running and shouting.
Pa told her to sit in her chair and be quiet.
But when Laura sat down, she began to cry and kick the chair with her heels.
I hate Sundays, she said.
So maybe this is the view of Sabbath.
If you've ever grown up in a church,
or you've thought about it, you've read about this,
you've seen it in movies,
this may be the picture of Sabbath that you think of,
something that's severe, without laughter, without joy.
It's a stereotype of a stiff, uncomfortable day,
with a set of rules that most of us would chafe under,
and that we would rather not do.
But that's not really what the Sabbath is biblically.
So let's look at it biblically for a few minutes, broadly,
to think about what it is, right?
So the Sabbath was established in creation,
and then clarified in the law that Sarah read earlier
in the giving of the Ten Commandments, right?
So, and the fourth commandment,
for in the six days the Lord made the heaven and the earth,
and the sea and all that is in them,
and rested on the seventh day.
Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath and made it holy.
God in his creative work set apart one day out of seven,
where he did not work.
He worked six, and then on the seventh day he rested.
And so, God commanded his people to follow this pattern
in order to show this creative pattern that God had done.
But it's not just in this creative pattern
that God rooted this idea of the Sabbath,
but in Deuteronomy, in the second telling of,
the second explanation of the Ten Commandments,
he says,
you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt,
that you were a slave in the land of Egypt,
and the Lord your God brought you out from there
with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.
Therefore the Lord your God commanded you
to keep the Sabbath day.
So it was grounded in creation,
but then it was also grounded in God's creative work,
that they were slaves who had to work seven days,
and then as God rescued them,
he said, restore yourself to this creation pattern.
I'm restoring you into a place where there is rest
as a part of your work,
because I'm redeeming you into a place of rest.
And God said the Sabbath is so important.
It is one of the key signs, along with circumcision,
of being a part of the nation of Israel.
So in Exodus 31, 16 and 17,
Moses writes,
therefore the people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath,
observing the Sabbath throughout their generations
as a covenant forever.
It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel
that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth,
and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed.
These are God's words to his people through Moses.
And again, just as I was saying,
this is one of the most important things in the Old Testament
to say this is what it means to be part of my people,
is to observe this rite of six days to work
and then seventh day a rest.
Okay?
Now, the people of Israel didn't always follow this.
You can read through the story of the prophets
to see where they failed and where they succeeded in doing this.
Fast forward to the New Testament.
And in the New Testament,
the Jewish setting of this was the Pharisees.
And the Pharisees, who were a small sect of Judaism
but had a lot of influence more broadly in culture,
and they had a particular love for God's law and the Torah
and a desire, a zeal even, to obey it.
But their zeal, as Jesus pointed out,
missed the mark because they loved the letter of the law
and missed the heart of the law.
So Jesus in Matthew 23 says,
that you tithe mint and cumin,
but neglect justice, mercy, and faithfulness.
The Pharisees had this pattern of building a hedge around the law.
That is, they put on extra regulations
so that you couldn't get even close
to breaking one of the laws of the Old Testament.
So when they kept the Sabbath,
they built all of these extra rules
to make sure that you didn't even come close
to working on the Sabbath.
Fascinating.
I looked up the website,
the Orthodox Union website.
You can look it up today.
There are 39 categories that were established
in the first century that still are practiced
in Orthodox Judaism.
39 categories of things you must not do
in order to observe the Sabbath and to not work.
The first one is you may not carry anything.
This comes from Jeremiah 17,
if you're interested in looking it up more.
You may not carry anything outside of your home.
Okay?
That's fairly straightforward,
but this means things like you can't carry firewood
out of your home into your home to light a fire.
You also can't light a fire,
but that's a different thing.
That's why you can't turn on light switches.
But they built all these other rules about this.
Not only could you not carry things outside,
but even they said,
well, to make sure that we're really honoring this,
you also can't carry things inside your home
that aren't necessary.
So things like small rocks.
Not sure why you'd carry rocks in your home,
but that was on the list.
Also pencils.
You can't use a pencil.
Because using a pencil means to carry it,
and that's doing work.
You can't carry candles.
You can't carry money.
There are all these things.
Even when you go to synagogue,
you can't carry your keychain.
You can't carry your wallet.
You can't carry a purse.
These are the ways that they make this hedge
around this don't do work on the Sabbath
in an honest desire to honor God in it.
So this was the context of first century Phariseeism
in the way that they practiced the Sabbath.
Now I'm going to fast forward just a little bit.
And what about the church?
What did the early church do?
Well, many early Christians were Jewish by background.
So some of them observed the Sabbath
as an ongoing part of their tradition.
But, and this is not the point of the sermon,
but I'm just going to say it
because we might as well deal with it.
But I don't believe that Christians are obligated
to keep the Sabbath in the Old Testament way.
Not because there isn't good wisdom
in keeping the Sabbath in the sense of
setting it apart from other days
and setting it apart as a day of rest.
There is wisdom in having a rhythm of work and rest.
It is good for human beings
and it's good for us to flourish with that.
What the early church did is the early church,
rather than following the Sabbath on a Saturday,
they said, we're going to worship and gather
on Sunday morning.
So they moved from the Sabbath to the Lord's Day.
And on the Lord's Day, they gathered
because it was the day of resurrection,
the first day of the week in the first century.
They gathered together for fellowship and worship.
They gathered to say,
rather than doing our regular work that day,
we're going to gather specially to be with God's people
for fellowship and for prayer and for encouragement.
And that's what they did.
And there are lots of ways to celebrate the Lord
and the Lord's Day that honor God,
but not in the spirit of the Pharisees.
But in the spirit of freedom,
that we do this because this is a wise thing,
not because it is a required thing.
So Colossians 2, 16 says,
therefore let no one pass judgment on you
in the question of food or drink
or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath.
Romans 14, 15 says,
one person esteems one day is better than another,
while another esteems all days alike.
Each should be fully convinced in his own mind.
Again, I don't want to pick a battle.
If you want to come talk to me after it, this is great.
This will be a good conversation.
But I want you to hear,
this is broadly how we would understand at Trinity
the issue of how Christians should or should not
follow the Sabbath.
But having looked at this biblically, broadly, right,
we recognize that God gave the Sabbath as a day of rest,
as a day to honor him,
as a day to set aside from the busyness of our week,
to focus on him in special ways.
And that was true in the Old Testament.
And as we practice it today in the Lord's Day sense,
there's still good value in this.
And it was meant to be a blessing.
But so easily,
what is meant to be a blessing in God's economy
can be twisted.
And this is what happens as we look at this passage.
So let's look at the passage together
and think about how it is in this passage
that we encounter the Sabbath.
Right?
So if you go back to starting in verse 23, right,
this Sabbath creates a conflict
in both sides of the parts of the story.
In the first story,
we see Jesus and his disciples
are walking along the road or through the fields,
and there's grain,
and they're just picking grain
and, you know, shelling it and eating it.
That's what they're doing.
And the Pharisees come and they say,
wait a minute.
You're not a serious Jew.
You're not serious about following God.
The Pharisees come and they say,
I don't know who you think you are,
but you are not,
you can't claim this role of being a religious leader
if you are going to so blatantly
break rules of the Sabbath.
Right?
Because harvesting would be one of those works
that would be forbidden on the Sabbath.
And what they were doing
in the mind of the Pharisees
was harvesting.
And so they looked at him and his disciples
and they judged and condemned by this question.
Right?
Why are they doing what is not lawful
on the Sabbath?
So the Jewish Pharisees had this perspective
and Jesus is leading his disciples
to do something very different.
And this then becomes accelerated
in the next story,
this conflict that's happening,
where in chapter 3, verse 1,
Jesus goes into the synagogue.
There's a man with a withered hand.
And it seems very clear
that somehow this was a setup.
Verse 2,
they watched Jesus.
It's like they set the man up
and they're like,
okay, let's see what he's going to do.
And they didn't just watch him,
but they watched him to see
whether he would heal on the Sabbath
so that they might accuse him.
They were not curious to see,
hey, I wonder what Jesus is going to do here.
Is he going to do something good?
Like, let's find out.
They already had in their hearts
a desire to accuse him
because of what he's already done,
the way that he's already showing himself
to not be submitting
to the religious worldview of the Pharisees.
they had the spirit not of,
maybe we have something to learn from Jesus.
They had the spirit of,
let's see if we can catch him.
Verse 5 describes Jesus
as seeing their hardness of hearts,
which is remarkable, right?
Because Jesus is coming
and the people who are broken and needy,
the sinners and the sufferers,
they're flocking to Jesus for help.
But the religious people are sitting back
watching him,
seeing if they're going to follow,
play by their rules
and are growing in their heart,
a heart of condemnation
and judgment for his actions in the world.
It even led to an unholy alliance.
The Pharisees went out
and they met with the Herodians
who were their enemies religiously.
The Herodians would compromise
in all sorts of places
where the Pharisees wouldn't,
but they came together
because they saw,
they shared with them
this hatred of Jesus
because Jesus was upsetting
their system
and their understanding
and their power.
Ultimately, he was upsetting
their commitment
to their religious life
in such a way
that they would do even,
even seek to destroy him.
So before we go on,
let's just stop for a minute.
What about us?
Can our hearts be so twisted?
Are we too committed
to religious righteousness
in such a way
that we end up actually rejecting Jesus
along the way?
Now look,
we need to be clear here.
As Christians,
there is a proper obedience
to God's word.
God's word does speak clearly
and we need to think about
what it says
and we do need to seek
to obey it
and we're not shrinking back
from submitting
to God and his word.
But the Pharisees
do something more
and something different
than that.
Here's how I want to explain it
to help us see
how easily it is
that our hearts do
what the Pharisees do.
Even the best spiritual practices
can go wrong.
If you're a Christian here,
you may have
how to have a quiet time,
how to pray,
how to disciple others.
We may have a discussion
about things like
what kind of music
do we play
in our church service.
We might have a discussion
about what you should wear
to church.
There are questions
about how do we act
in the world, right?
In the old-fashioned church
in days gone by,
we talk about
don't drink,
you don't chew,
you don't go with girls that do.
Do you guys know that?
It's a silly little phrase,
but it's this sense of
this is how we protect ourselves,
right?
This is the spirit
of the movie Footloose,
right?
We can't have dances
because sexual immorality
might break out.
And we need to think carefully
about this spirit
that can so infuse the church
where we end up
judging one another
based on these rules
that go beyond
what the Bible actually says,
right?
And look,
in its heart,
there's a desire
for us to avoid sin
that is good,
but it can become
a platform
for self-righteousness.
When our zeal
to do what is right
and to follow God,
even when it leads us
to counter-cultural
and sacrificial changes
in our lifestyle,
when we do that,
that can be a glorious thing
to God's,
that honors God.
But it so easily
becomes something
that we then turn
and heap on others
as a burden,
right?
And so we start doing this
and then in our zeal
we become self-righteous
and then we look down
on other people
who don't do
the same thing we do,
right?
And I honestly think
as I look at my own life
and times when I have done
this in the past,
it has been done
often out of fear.
Well,
if I'm going to obey
the Sabbath
in this particular way,
if I'm going to keep
the Sabbath
in this particular way,
then I want everyone else
to do it as well
because I feel weak
and if everyone else
is doing something else,
then I might feel left out
and I don't want to feel left out.
So I'm going to impose
this religious rule
in order to be accepted.
Or sometimes we just do it
to say,
look at me,
look at how righteous
I'm being.
I'm more serious,
more zealous
than you are.
And how easily
this becomes
not only
a self-justifying spirit
in our own hearts,
but a spirit of condemnation
for everyone else
who doesn't do
what we do.
Now look,
in the church today,
broadly,
in the Bible-following
churches in the world,
we've often,
I think we've swung
further away
from this legalistic
judgmentalism,
but I wonder
if we've replaced it
with other things.
Friends,
we need to be
just as careful
with our political alliances,
our views on social issues,
our understanding
of how to navigate
some of these things
as we have in the past
on what music
you listen to
or how long
your skirt can be.
We need to recognize
that the way
that we carry
these attitudes
can have the same spirit
whether we come
to conclusions
out of honest desire
to honor the Lord,
but when we heap them
on others
and require others
to agree with us,
to do as we do,
and judge others
when they don't
follow with us,
then we are in the same spirit
as the Pharisees.
We need to recognize that.
And what does Jesus say?
What does Jesus say to us
and to the Pharisees
in response
to these challenges
to his disobedience
of the Sabbath law?
Jesus says,
I am the Lord
of the Sabbath.
Jesus does not shrink
back from this,
but he actually goes into it.
In the story of the man
with the withered hand,
Jesus takes it on.
He walks into the synagogue.
He sees the withered hand.
He sees the people watching.
He knows what they're thinking.
He looks at the man
and he says,
come here.
He makes a spectacle
out of him.
Can you imagine this man
with the withered hand?
He probably spent his whole life
wanting to hide.
He's like,
I don't want to go up front.
I don't want to be...
Jesus says,
come here.
And he's looking at the Pharisees
and he's like,
okay,
you want to see
what I'm going to do?
I'm going to show you
exactly what I'm going to do
and I'm going to make
a spectacle of it
in order for you to know
exactly what I think
about this.
Is it right
that on the Sabbath
I would not do good?
I would not heal?
In the law
in the first century,
that's exactly
how they understood it.
If you were injured
but you could make it
through the Sabbath,
then you couldn't do
anything about it.
Now,
if you were really,
really life-threatening,
you could do something
to try to keep,
get them to stable,
right?
But if you had
a broken bone,
you couldn't set it
until the end
of the Sabbath.
Jesus is looking
at them and saying,
really?
Is that what
the Sabbath is for?
Jesus confronts them
and he says,
there is something
new here,
better than this system
of religious rules.
It's echoing
what Nick preached
on last week,
what he said
about fasting.
The king is here.
Something new
is happening.
Pay attention
and be ready
to follow
because this is
what he's saying
in the end
of chapter 2.
This is what he's saying
when they challenged
the disciples
about not eating
food on the Sabbath,
right?
If you look back
in verse 25
of chapter 2,
have you never read
what David did,
right?
What is he saying,
right?
He's challenging
their understanding
of the Sabbath
by quoting
this Old Testament story.
And in case
some of you
are paying attention,
if you go back
to 1 Samuel 21
where this story happens,
it's not Abiathar
who is the priest
at the moment.
His name is Ahimelech,
right?
And most Bible scholars
understand that
in the days of Abiathar,
you even look
in the ESV notes,
it says in the passage
about,
right?
And most people think
that in referring
to this story
in the Old Testament,
it'd say,
oh, well,
this is the story
about Abiathar the priest
because he's the most
prominent one
in that section
of 1 Samuel.
So,
just in case you're wondering,
that's why it refers to him.
But he refers back
and he says,
don't you know
that David did this too?
David and his men
were running for their lives
and they were hungry
and they came across
the priest
outside the synagogue
or the tabernacle,
sorry,
it was outside the tabernacle
and they said,
hey,
we're hungry,
give us something to eat.
And he said,
well,
all we have
is the food inside
that's on the altar
that's set apart
for the priest.
And David said,
bring it to me.
And the priest went in
and he brought it out
and he shared the food
and he blessed it.
Now,
some people might have said
that what Jesus is saying
is the need is so great,
the law doesn't matter.
Right?
The need is so great,
the law doesn't matter.
And that's a reasonable explanation
because Jesus clearly
is seeing a need.
But his disciples
weren't starving here.
It doesn't seem to make sense
that that's actually his point.
It seems that the point
that Jesus is making
is more of a correspondence.
David,
who was the anointed one,
who was the one
who would be the king of Israel,
was claiming an authority
in that place.
And Jesus is now coming
and saying,
I have greater authority
than David.
And I have the right
to say,
it is good and right
for my disciples
to eat on the Sabbath
in this way.
Just like David did
in the old way.
Right?
Jesus is saying,
the new thing has come.
The new one is here.
I am the Lord
of the Sabbath.
Right?
And he's saying,
look,
the principle is that
the Sabbath has always been
by God
for mankind.
Right?
Not so,
so,
we see the,
the Sabbath was made for man,
not man for the Sabbath.
Right?
And he's trying to say there
that,
that the principle ultimately
is that this was something
given for humanity,
not for humanity
to fit into.
Right?
But more than that,
it's the last part of that
where he says,
the Son of Man is Lord
even of the Sabbath.
Even of this thing
that is so critical
to being a part
of God's people.
Even over the thing
that along with circumcision
is the greatest sign
of being a faithful Jew.
Jesus is saying,
I am the Lord
even of that.
And I'm gonna change
what that looks like.
I'm gonna bring
something greater
than the Old Testament
understanding
of the Sabbath.
Because I've brought,
come to bring a kingdom
that is better
than the law.
What does he mean by this?
Well, friends,
we,
we look,
if you wanna turn with me,
you can,
but in Hebrews chapter 3 and 4,
we see the final goal
of what Jesus is doing here.
Because what Jesus is saying is,
now that I am here,
the Sabbath,
as it's been practiced,
was meant to be a sign
pointing to something else.
Right?
Hebrews chapter 4,
verse 9,
says this,
So then there remains
a Sabbath rest
for the people of God.
For whoever has entered God's rest
has also rested from his works
as God did from his.
What does this mean?
Well,
what the writer of Hebrews,
in a complex argument
that I'm not gonna try to reproduce
at 10 after 10 this morning,
is a complex,
he's saying,
Jesus has come to fulfill
all of these threads
of the Old Testament.
And here,
Jesus is,
is presented as the one
who's the fulfillment
of the Sabbath.
So that by faith in Jesus,
there is a salvation
that brings rest
from the works of the law
and works of righteousness
that were seen to be
the basis
of how one might be
acceptable to God.
Right?
Fundamentally,
he's saying,
the Old Testament understanding,
faulty in many ways,
of faith was,
you will be acceptable
if you keep the law.
And Jesus has come and said,
no,
there's something better than that.
I'm going to be
the law keeper for you
so that I might give to you
instead
an obedience
and a rest
from trying to justify yourselves.
Right?
We so often want to be
justified before God
because we have done
something right.
And the rest that Jesus offers
is the rest that says,
you will never be good enough
and you will never be
faithful enough
and you will never work hard enough
to please God
and to overcome your sin.
But Jesus comes in his perfect work
and as a substitute
for us,
lives that perfect life
and he says,
now by faith in me,
you can rest
from your work of righteousness
because instead of working for it,
I'm going to bestow it upon you
when you come to me in faith.
And because I bestow it on you,
then you can rest.
You can rest in God's acceptance.
You can rest in God's love.
You can rest that you are a child
in God's kingdom.
And this is what Jesus is saying
when he says,
I am the Lord of the Sabbath.
So we rest from our works
and we rest from the fear
that we'll never be good enough.
We rest from the hamster wheel
of religious activity
in trying to prove that we're worthy.
And we're free.
We're free to worship.
We're free to serve God.
We're free to pursue him
with sacrificial zeal
in whatever that looks like
for each of us in our lives.
But we do it
not to achieve God's favor,
but out of the wonderful rest,
the Sabbath rest
that we have in Jesus.
So this is the invitation
to see the Sabbath
ultimately as a sign
pointing ahead to Jesus,
the Lord of the Sabbath.
Jesus says to us today,
come to me.
Come to me if you are weary
of your religious works.
If you're weary
of trying to be good enough.
If you're weary
of somehow seeking to earn God.
Come to me and find rest.
Rest from your righteous
self-righteous works
from your self-justifying heart.
Come and find freedom
from the tyranny
of religious performance.
And come to me
and find joy.
Joy in the Lord of the Sabbath
who has given us rest in him.
Let's pray together.
Lord Jesus,
we thank you for the rest
that we do have in you.
And we thank you
that this is what
the Sabbath is for.
Lord,
that we might find
ultimately in you
our Sabbath rest.
Rest from works
of righteousness.
Rest from works
of obedience.
Lord,
rest
from
all these things
so that we might
be still
and know
that you are God.
to know
your salvation
bestowed upon us
by faith.
Oh Lord,
be with us we pray
this morning.
In Jesus name we pray.
Amen.
Thank you.