And for our Old Testament reading, I invite you to turn in your Bibles to the prophecy of Isaiah, chapter 58. Isaiah 58, and the reading will be verses 6 through 14. And in this passage, the Lord God, through his prophet, seeks to do something similar to what the Lord Jesus seeks to do in our New Testament passage, which is to correct the worship practices of his people. They had misunderstood many of the things that God requires of them, misunderstood many of the things about worship of the Lord God himself and of the Sabbath. So let’s give careful attention to this. This is the very word of God. Is not this the fast that I choose to lose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and to bring the homeless poor into your house, when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?
Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily. Your righteousness shall go before you. The glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer. You shall cry, and he will say, here I am. If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, the speaking wickedness, if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noon day. And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong.
And you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters do not fail. and your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt. You shall raise up the foundations of many generations. You shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in. If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable, if you honor it, not going your own ways or seeking your own pleasure or talking idly, Then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth.
I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob, your father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. And then for our New Testament reading, please, let’s return to Luke’s gospel, and we’re beginning chapter six today. Our reading will be verses one through 11. Luke six, one through 11.
On a Sabbath, while he was going through the grain fields, his disciples plucked and ate some heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands. But some of the Pharisees said, why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath? And Jesus answered them, have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him? 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. And he said to them, the son of man is Lord of the Sabbath. On another Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and was teaching.
And a man was there whose right hand was withered. And the scribes and the Pharisees watched him to see whether he would heal on the Sabbath so that they might find a reason to accuse him. But he knew their thoughts. And he said to the man with the withered hand, come and stand here. And he rose and stood there. And Jesus said to them, I ask you, 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 him, stretch out your hand. And he did so, and his hand was restored. But they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus.
That’s the reading of God’s word. Let’s pray once more for his blessing upon it. Father, as we come to your word together now, we humbly but earnestly pray for the ministry of your Holy Spirit and that he might be our instructor this morning and that he might magnify Christ before the eyes of our faith and before our hearts. For we pray in Christ’s name. Amen. My sister and I, when we were children, enjoyed going to visit our grandmother, who lived in a little farm town in the heartland. It was a great place for kids to be.
Obviously we loved to see our grandmother, spend time with her. But this little town had so much for us, so much available to us. Our grandmother lived on Main Street and just a few blocks down there was a grocery store and there was a drug store and a hardware store we could go and just look around and shop even. And literally right across the street from my grandmother’s house was a park.
It had playground equipment. It had a shelter. It had baseball fields. And it was just a place we could just walk right out of grandmother’s house and to the park and play and spend large portions of the day just having fun. And we made friends with kids from the town. We’d play with them there.
Well, that park was a public park, but it had been named after a prominent former citizen or resident of the town. The man’s name was Hopkins, and so the park was called Hopkins Park. And I remember going there once. My sister wasn’t with me, I don’t rethink, don’t think, but I was over there in the park, and along came this boy. He was a few years older than me, but not a man, a child, with some of his friends and he informed me that this was Hopkins Park and the Hopkins, after whom the park was named, was his grandfather. And so he was just informing me that it’s okay with him, that I can be in their park, but he just wanted me to know that he was a Hopkins and this was their park. He asserted authority over the park and over my right to play in it.
It was an unfounded claim because, as I said, the park was a public park. It just happened to be named after one of his relatives. But he wanted to throw his weight around. Now, Jesus in our text this morning makes a very audacious claim. A little bit like the claim that that young man made to me about his park.
But in the case of Jesus, his claim is absolutely true, and it’s absolutely valid. But it’s astounding what he said, and we shouldn’t lose sight of what a earth-shaking statement this was when he said, the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. And Jesus asserts His authority even over the Sabbath. And He asserts authority over its purpose, the authority to proclaim and to clarify the very purpose of the Sabbath day and the right use of it.
Now, I’m sure you’ve read the Gospels many times. You’ve heard the Gospels preached many times, and so you know quite well that questions and issues and accusations centered around the Sabbath were one of the central conflicts between Christ and the Jewish leaders.
Their concept of Sabbath had become distorted. It had become terribly legalistic. And it had become for them a basis not for glorifying God, but a basis for self-righteousness. As they determined through their rabbinic traditions, how the Sabbath ought to be kept and what ought not to be done on it.
Our Westminster standards. speak about the proper use of the Sabbath, the Christian Sabbath, the Lord’s Day. And Westminster teaches us that the whole day is supposed to be devoted to the Lord in holy rest and worship, except so much as to be taken up in deeds of necessity and mercy.
You’re probably very familiar with that language because you’ve probably heard it many times. It’s lawful. It’s acceptable to do deeds of mercy and deeds of necessity on the Lord’s Day, and our text provides case studies in both. We have a case study in the acts of necessity and a case study in acts of mercy, and so we’re going to look at that.
And in this passage, Jesus teaches the true purpose and use of the Sabbath because he is in fact Lord. Of the Sabbath. Jesus teaches the true purpose and use of the Sabbath because he is the Lord of the Sabbath. So first of all, in the initial verses of this chapter, we see an event that speaks of works of necessity and the Sabbath. That’s our first point, works of necessity and the Sabbath. As you all know, people need nourishment. People need to eat. And we have, at the beginning of this chapter, the Lord Jesus Christ and his disciples. And it’s the Sabbath day.
So as they go about and as they’re going through these grain fields, they’re either on their way to synagogue or they’re on their way home from synagogue, one or the other. That’s where they were going. And as they went, they were hungry. Or at least the disciples certainly were.
And so as they’re going through these grain fields, what they’re doing as they pass the stalks of grain is reaching out and grabbing a little bit of grain off the stalks and then rubbing them in their hands like this because that removes the husk from the grain and then you have the actual kernel that you can eat. and satisfy your hunger a little bit. And that’s what they’re doing.
Now, it’s important for us to know, even directly from God’s law, that as they’re going through somebody’s field and pulling grains off of the, off of the stalks, they were not stealing. That specific activity was very clearly permitted in the Word of God, in God’s law. So back in Deuteronomy, before the people ever went into the land, he said, when you get into the land, when you occupy the land, and when you have your fields, and when you plant your crops, this is the way it’s going to work in my covenant land, the Lord says.
Deuteronomy 23, 25 says, if you go into your neighbor’s standing grain, which is exactly where the disciples were, 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. If you happen to be walking by your neighbor’s grain and you want to satisfy a little bit of your hunger, you can take a little bit off the stock. But you don’t say, hey, his crop seems to be doing quite well. I’m going to grab my sickle and go harvest a little bit in my neighbor’s field.
No, no, that was not allowed. But particularly for travelers, for foreigners, the grain that was in the field could be used in small quantities in the moment. And that was not only allowable, but God commanded his people to let that happen. So the disciples weren’t stealing from any farmer’s crops.
They’re just taking the grain, rubbing it in their hands, as the text says. Here’s the problem. There was rabbinic teaching. There was rabbinic tradition that defined them reaching out with their hands and taking the head of grain off of that plant, defined that as harvesting. And then the process of rubbing the grain in their hands to remove the husks so that they can actually eat the kernel of grain. They defined that, the rabbinic tradition defined it as threshing.
And you weren’t supposed to harvest on the Sabbath day. And you weren’t supposed to thresh on the Sabbath day. And so the Pharisees accuse Jesus’ disciples. That’s what you see in verse two. Why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath? Not lawful. And Hendrickson commenting on this makes reference to these rabbinical teachings, these rabbinical traditions. And he said, to a considerable extent, the rabbinical Sabbath regulations amounted to misapplications of God’s holy law. This was true also in the present case. And so Jesus answers in behalf of his disciples. And he answers by asking a question.
Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him, how he entered the house of God and took and ate the bread of the presence, which is not lawful, not lawful for any but the priests to eat and also gave to those with him. Now, you know, the story David was actually fleeing from Saul.
Probably on the Sabbath, because the showbread had just been taken out from the tabernacle. And the priest himself actually gave the bread. He didn’t just take it autonomously. The priest gave him the bread because it was available, and David said his mission was urgent.
But when he says to these Pharisees, these teachers of the law, these scribes, have you not read? That was essentially saying, surely you’ve read. You scholars, you teachers of the law, surely you’ve read. what David did. They did what was not lawful. But it was in a situation of necessity. And in that situation of necessity, ceremonial ordinances, ordinances gave way. ceremonial ordinances gave way to human need, as it should.
Now, Matthew and Mark both record these same events. In fact, they put them together the same way Luke does. The grain field issue and then the situation in the synagogue with the man with the withered hand. So these are intentionally coupled by the Holy Spirit as he inspired three different gospel writers to tell us these accounts. And in Matthew’s gospel, he mentions something else Jesus said. He, after referring to David and what David and his companions did, he makes references to the priests.
And the fact that Levitical priests in the synagogue every Sabbath day broke the Sabbath, and yet they were blameless. Why? Because they were doing the work of the Lord in the Lord’s house. Being a priest, being a Levite at times was pretty strenuous work. Slaughtering animals, cutting them up, placing them on the altar, all the different things. Those at times were very, very physical works. And they did them on the Sabbath. And Jesus said they do them on the Sabbath and they’re innocent. because God commanded them to do that work. They were responsible to do the work of the Lord’s house.
In Mark’s passage, he records a statement of Jesus that Luke doesn’t mention. And that is, Jesus says the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. So Jesus was making the point that it’s not as if God, when he was creating the heavens and the earth, created this Sabbath day, and then he came along and said, oh, I’m going to create something now to keep this Sabbath that I’ve made. No, God created man, male and female, in his image, and then he gave them the gift of the Sabbath. The Sabbath was made for man and not vice versa.
And so Leon Morris makes this comment about the passage. He says it’s the interesting thing about Jesus approach is that he did not simply argue that the repressive regulations should be relaxed in a more liberal attitude adopted. He said that his opponents had missed the whole point of this holy day. Works of necessity are lawful on the Sabbath.
And most of us in the OPC are Sabbath keepers. Some of us keep it more strictly than others. But even the most strict Sabbath observers would not argue. I’ve never met one that did anyhow. Even the most strict Sabbath observers would not argue that on the Sabbath day, on the Christian Sabbath, we should just shut down the police department and send all the officers home. Or that nobody should be on call at the fire department. or that the urgent care places should all shut down. And if somebody is in dire need physically because of some health emergency, well, you know, it’s the Sabbath, so wait till tomorrow, please. No one would argue that. No one would argue that we ought to call upon our armed forces to stand down on the Sabbath.
Works of necessity are permitted on the Sabbath, and they’re permitted on the Lord’s day, the Christian Sabbath. They always were. and always ought to be. Well, secondly, in the second incident recorded in our text, we see reference to works of mercy and the Sabbath, works of mercy, and the Sabbath. And at this point, I’ll, I’ll make note of the fact that the Sabbath is a creation ordinance. creation ordinance. And I’m going to mention that again because it’s very important in terms of our doctrine of the Christian Sabbath. The Sabbath is a creation ordinance, and it’s a perpetual one, even in this fallen world. It didn’t go away when the fall took place. In a fallen and cursed world, then, there are always ample opportunities for us to show mercy. Because there’s always ample need of mercy in a world that’s under the curse, in a world that’s fallen.
And we have before us in the text an object of mercy. It’s this man with a withered hand, and it’s his withered right hand. Some of us are left-handed. Most of us are right-handed. That’s the hand of strength, even in biblical language. The son of my right hand is what Jacob named Benjamin, meaning he’s the son of my strength. The dominant hand. And this poor man couldn’t labor because his hand was withered. It was paralyzed, or it had atrophied, or maybe it was even deformed. We don’t really know. The text doesn’t say.
But he’s right there in the synagogue on the Sabbath day and Jesus is teaching, he’s preaching in the synagogue and the scribes and the Pharisees are watching him. Watching him to see if he’ll heal on the Sabbath day. That word that’s translated watching suggests someone who comes right alongside and is keeping careful watch over something or someone. And you notice how Jesus had the power to heal. They knew he had the power to heal.
And yet they were seeking an opportunity to accuse him. They knew he could heal and yet they hated him. They sought his harm. Luke soft pedals things a little bit in verse 11, when he says they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus. Matthew and Mark aren’t quite so subtle. They said they were seeking to destroy him. How can we destroy this guy?
That was their desire. That’s what they’re plotting to do. They’re blinded by their animosity to Jesus. There’s someone in their midst who can heal the sick, who can heal the lame. They knew it. And yet they hated him. It was completely irrational. Now, again, there are parallels in Matthew and Mark. And if we patch them together, what we find out is these scribes and Pharisees actually questioned Jesus first. He was teaching in their synagogue. The man with the withered hand is there.
And they asked him, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? And so in verse eight, Jesus calls the man to himself. And he responds to their question with a question. Keep in mind, they’ve probably already asked him, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? So Jesus says, I ask you, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm?
To save life or to destroy it? You see how Jesus tried to reason with his opponents? He tried to bring them along. But he doesn’t allow any neutral ground. Tell me, is it lawful to do good or do harm? You can’t sit on the fence. Is it lawful to save life or to destroy it?
And the text says they refuse to answer. And so look at verse 10, after looking around at them all. So Jesus asks his question, and then he scans the room. He looks at every scribe and every Pharisee in there, and he waits for a response. Answer me. And they won’t answer.
Mark, again, gives us some meaningful additional information Because in Mark 3, verse 5, which is the parallel here, it says, Jesus looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart. Our Jesus, our Savior, had emotions. And his emotions were all pure. They were sinless. But he had anger, you see. It angered Jesus. It grieved him deeply that a man in these people’s midst could be disabled and have this condition from which no human medicine could deliver him. And they had no compassion on the man. All they were interested in is destroying Jesus. And that grieved Jesus rightly so. And then Jesus heals the man. He just commands the man to stretch out his hand.
Jesus performed miracles lots of different ways, didn’t he? Sometimes he would touch the person he was healing. Sometimes he’d do some symbolic act. In this case, and in others as well, he didn’t have to even make physical contact with the person. All he did was issue the command, stretch out your hand. And in my mind, I can imagine this man’s hand probably I’ve always pictured it as being deformed because Scripture uses that word withered, you know, and that’s a word that’s usually used of plants or plant life that’s withered. But I can just imagine him reaching out his hand and it taking full size and shape and the musculature even in his fingers and everything completely restored. And Jesus didn’t lay a hand on him. Humanly speaking, he did no work. He didn’t touch the man, but in his divine power, Christ did a wonderfully merciful thing.
Something that Matthew relates in his version of this incident is that there’s something else Jesus said as he was challenging his detractors, as he’s really, I think, trying to reason with them and trying to open their eyes to soften their hearts when he said, which one of you who has a sheep, if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not take hold of it and lift it out? Of how much more value is a man than a sheep?
So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath. Works of mercy are lawful on the Sabbath. And that’s what Jesus is teaching in this passage. He teaches the true purpose and the true use of the Sabbath. And so for our third and final point, because the emphasis and the focus of this passage is on the Sabbath, we’re going to consider the nature and purpose of the Sabbath. branch out a little bit from this text. But this is one of the areas in which we differ from some of our other Christian brothers and sisters because we in the free form tradition take a higher view. I think it’s fair to say we take a higher view of the Lord’s Day of the Christian Sabbath.
And so the first thing that we need to take note of that scripture teaches about the Sabbath is that the Sabbath is a moral issue. The Sabbath is a moral issue. It’s not merely a Jewish ordinance. It’s not merely an Old Testament ordinance. And it is not merely a ceremonial ordinance that passed away with the Old Testament and with the coming of the gospel. We read earlier in the service, the Decalogue, as it’s called, the 10 Commandments, and all 10 are moral commandments. That’s why we call it the moral law. Sabbath-keeping is a moral issue.
So when you think through those commandments and how they enforce and impress upon us the sanctity of life, you shall do no murder. The sanctity of marriage, you shall not commit adultery. The sanctity of private property, you shall not steal. The sanctity, the holiness of the truth itself, you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. That’s the kind of stuff that the Ten Commandments are made up of.
If you think back then to what we call the first table of the law, those four that pertain to our relationship with God and how we relate rightly to him and obey him and love him. The first commandment says there’s one true God. It’s immoral to worship another God besides the living and true God. And we need to worship him in the way that he prescribed.
And so we’re not to make an image of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath. Sanctity of worship, purity of worship, and the sanctity of God’s name shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain and sandwiched in with all those commandments that are so clearly and undeniably moral.
You’ve got remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Is it possible with all those other commandments being moral in nature that remember the Sabbath day is somehow not moral, that it’s somehow ceremonial and it’s going to come to an end? Not possible.
The Sabbath is a moral issue. Secondly, the Sabbath is a creation ordinance, Genesis 2, 3. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it, God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. So you see, the Sabbath predated Moses. It wasn’t about Moses’ law. The Sabbath predated Jacob, predated Israel. So it wasn’t just an Israelite thing. The Sabbath predated Abraham.
The Sabbath goes all the way back to the beginning. It goes all the way back to before the fall. And therefore it’s applicable and it’s binding on the whole human race. Think about that. God requires all people to keep one day holy in seven to him. And it’s worth noting too.
Because the Sabbath was an issue between Jesus and his opponents so frequently, and because so much time in the New Testament, in the Gospels, is spent describing how Jesus corrects their misconceptions of it, Christ wouldn’t trouble to teach and clear up misconceptions over a law that was going to expire once he was resurrected and the New Testament church began. You don’t see him going around and correcting people’s misconceptions about the blood offerings and the sacrifices or how to keep this or that Levitical law. And the Holy Spirit wouldn’t have given it so much attention in the scripture. These words were written for the church to use in all ages, because it’s a creation ordinance.
Sabbath has to do with who we are as image of God. So it’s a moral issue, it’s a creation ordinance, and the Sabbath is a day for holy rest. It’s a day when we rest from our labors, we lay aside our ordinary work to the extent that we can. One of my sons is a first responder. Sometimes he has to pull duty on the Sabbath. He can’t always lay aside his ordinary labor, but most of us can. Most of us should. All of us should. It’s a day to rest from our labors, but it’s a day more than that.
It’s a day to rest in Christ, to rest in the Lord, to rest in the grace that he has offered to us in the gospel, to rest in the salvation that he has accomplished in our behalf, and to rest in the fact that the work of salvation is completed. Jesus said it is finished. There’s no more for you to do. I’ve done it all, Jesus says, and on the Sabbath, we rest in that.
And then the Sabbath is for holy convocation. I imagine I might start to sound like a broken record sometimes, but the Sabbath is for holy convocation. It’s not a day when the Israelites ever were supposed to just hunker down in their tents or in their houses and stay put and do nothing. They were to come together to worship Almighty God. This goes all the way back.
And when when the Lord was giving his law to his people in Leviticus 23, three, speaking of the Sabbath day. So six days shall work be done, but on the 7th, but the 7th day is a Sabbath of solemn arrest, a holy convocation. In other words, you gather, you come together, you shall do no work. It is a Sabbath to the Lord in all your dwelling places. So there’s still a Sabbath day.
Brothers and sisters, and it’s a binding moral obligation that we must remember and observe, but. But it’s not a drudgery. Never allow it to become a drudgery. It’s a gift. The Sabbath was made for you. By a God who loves you. So don’t neglect that gift. Call it a delight. As it said in our passage from Isaiah, and remember Christ’s audacious claim. Verse five, he said to them, the son of man is Lord. Of the Sabbath. It’s one like that. Smarty pants kid I met in the park that day who wasn’t Lord of the park, Jesus Christ is Lord of the Sabbath. And therefore, he has authority to change the day, which he did. Maybe someone’s challenged you before.
Maybe you’ve talked about how you like to keep the Lord’s Day holy, keep the Sabbath holy. If you use the word Sabbath, invariably, somebody’s going to say, well, the Sabbath, that’s the seventh day. That’s for Jewish people. Aren’t you supposed to keep Sabbath on the seventh day?
Well, our catechism says that the day that in question 59 it says, from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ, God appointed the seventh day of the week to be the weekly Sabbath and the first day of the week ever since to continue to the end of the world, which is the Christian Sabbath.
So Jesus has authority to change the day and he did because the most monumental event in all of human history took place on the first day of the week. And from that point on, we mark that day as the day in which we rest in the Lord. So the day changed. And that was a redemptive change. One step in God’s glorious work of undoing the fall, undoing the curse. It takes us all the way back. First day Sabbath takes us all the way back to creation. Think about it.
Adam was created on the sixth day. He was created late in the day because God had created everything else before him. And then he creates man, male and female, in his image, after his likeness. And yes, Adam apparently had some activity to do before that day was done. But the first full day that Adam experienced was the Sabbath.
And so therefore, for the first day of the week to become the Sabbath, it’s a picture of redemption. Rest precedes work. That’s a gospel principle. Rest precedes work. Christ has accomplished salvation for us. We rest in him first. Then we rise and walk with him and serve him. Even in the days of creation, how are they described? There was morning and evening the first day, the second day? No. It says there was evening and morning the first day. Begins with rest.
So under the new covenant and in the church age, we first rest in the Lord. Then we walk in those works that he prepared beforehand for us. We rest in him on the Sabbath. And we look forward to the eternal rest that awaits us. In the age to come. Let’s pray.
Father, we thank you for our Lord Jesus and we are in all of him. that he is Lord of the very Sabbath day. We thank you for him. We thank you for his instruction and teaching us the true purpose of the Sabbath and the proper use of it. Lord, may we love your day.
And we pray that you’d give us grace more and more to rest in Him, to rest from our works, to rest on this day from our worldly employments, but more importantly, to rest spiritually from our own efforts to try to clean ourselves up. Let us put our trust in Christ and believe in Him. Rejoice that his blood was shed for us and that the work is truly finished. He finished the work that you sent him to do. We thank you. And as we come to the table now, we ask you please to help us to feast on him by faith. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.